SID: I’m here with Pastor Todd Smith on location in Israel, and I have to tell you something Todd. I’m reminded of something in the Bible. Can anything good come out of Dawsonville, Georgia? That tiny little… how big is that town?
TODD: Our whole city’s 3500 people. Our entire county is only 23,000.
SID: 3500, and how many come to your church of 3500 people?
TODD: On a baptism night it can be up to 2000 people. Yes.
SID: That’s equivalent to almost 2/3 of the population. Why are they coming to this?
TODD: They are coming to our church, Sid, because I had a vision in January of 2018, that as I’m walking across the stage, and I see our baptistry, I’m just in a moment of prayer just walking across the stage, nothing unusual. We’re in a time of fasting with our church. And I look at our baptistry, and I see the baptistry completely empty in the natural, but in the spirit I had my first open vision. And I see the tank full of water and a strip of fire on the water. The Lord spoke to me, “I’m going to baptize people with Holy Spirit fire.” Ever since then, we’ve been baptizing people. After revival hit our church, we started baptizing people and they’re encountering the fire of God in that water.
SID: Speaking of the fire of God, I want to take Todd back. Before you received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the fire of God, what was your thinking about such things as that?
TODD: Well I was raised Southern Baptist. I thank God for my heritage. I was saved as a Southern Baptist, schooled as a Southern Baptist, started pastoring a church that was a Southern Baptist church. So I was not completely open to the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, and even the gifts of the spirit. I wasn’t even open to them. I was more of a cessationist. A staunch dispensationalist if you will.
SID: But you developed such a God hunger inside of you, that led to people praying for you, and tell me about that, for the fire.
TODD: Oh yes, and so Sid I would start reading the Bible. Not that I didn’t before, but I was reading the Bible and I started seeing things in the word of God. Miracles and signs and wonders. How demons were being cast out. How the lame were walking, the deaf were hearing and the blind were seeing.
SID: What do you mean you started seeing that? You’d been reading the Bible for years and years.
TODD: Well I thought that was dedicated to that particular season, you know, when the apostles—
SID: So you kind of almost went over it. That’s old time.
TODD: Yes, I skimmed over it and said, That’s not for us today, that was for them.” And so, but I started reading the Bible and I got hungry. I said, “God what you did for Peter, James, and John, why isn’t that happening in my ministry? Why isn’t that happening in my life?” Now mind you, I was pastoring one of the fastest growing churches in the state of Georgia, Southern Baptist Church. We were seeing tons and tons of people getting saved. We were adding a brand new sanctuary to accommodate the growth, but in my heart I hungered for more of God. I said, “There has to be more.” But I would read the Bible and I said, “I want what they had.”
But here’s what happened. I took my denominational glasses off, Sid, and I said, “Lord, I want to read the Bible as if I just got saved.” Because I was reading the Bible with these Baptist lenses on. And now these lenses that I was reading the Bible through, cost me a lot of money. Private education, you know, seminary education, and everybody in my family and all my friends had matching lenses, matching glasses. But I got so hungry for God and I said, “God, I want to know what your word says.”
SID: So, to make a long story short, you had a group of pastors lay hands on you, what happened when they did that?
TODD: Yes something very interesting happened. You know, a Baptist went to a Pentecostal prayer meeting and that was scary enough for me, because I had never been to that. So, I’m sitting there and I said, “Fellows, I’m ready to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, and they walked around me, prayed, and said, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” They laid hands on me. And Sid, my throat tightened. I got… there’s a constriction around my throat, and I stopped the gentlemen and I said, “Listen, my throat… it’s hard for me swallow. It’s hard for me to swallow.”
One gentleman said, “Well Todd, here’s what’s going on. There’s a prayer language that God wants to release through you, but it’s being constricted.” He says, “I want you to denounce all false teaching. I want you to repent of teaching false teaching.” As soon as I did, I said, “Lord, I’m sorry for believing false doctrine. I’m sorry for teaching false doctrine.” Immediately my throat loosened. It relaxed. He put one index finger on my forehead and he said, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” And at that very moment, at that very moment the power of God came upon me. The kavod, the glory of the Lord sat upon me, and I fell backwards and began to speak in other tongues.
SID: The Bible talks about Holy Spirit and fire. What is the fire like?
TODD: I believe that the fire of God is the power, the unction of the Lord. An unction not only to do the works of Jesus, but also an unction and a power and fire to walk in purity and righteousness and holiness before the Lord. Because before that, I was striving to be holy. I was striving to be pure. But when the Holy Spirit came upon me, it was another element. It was like it energized me. It was the fuel to allow me to resist sin, and also to walk in an authority I had never walked in before.
SID: You think his misconception on the baptism of the Holy Spirit was major, he found another misconception when he took those denominational glasses off, that most Christians suffer from, that’ll totally transform your life.
TODD: It will.
SID: We’ll be right back.
