Sid: We are living in the days of Joel Chapter Two and Joel Chapter Three, we are living in the days that there is going to be such a mighty outpouring of God’s Spirit that it will be like the first church, the very first believers, the least believer in the Messiah could walk in the Supernatural to the point that the Catholic Church would declare them a Saint today.  But that’s normal, I want to be normal, I want you to be normal and there’s a missing ingredient you see we spend 1/3 of our life sleeping.  What if in that state where we’re so open to God’s speaking to us he spoke to us in dreams that we really understood, he would tell us about perhaps disaster that might be coming.  He would redirect our jobs or what we do for a living; He would give us solutions to problems.  He would give us direction, he’d give us Devine inspiration and my guest Mark Virkler says that he can even give us gifts in dreams we perhaps will get into that a little later in the broadcast.  But Mark on yesterday’s broadcast we found out that your first fifteen years of ministry you thought all dreams were pizza, you were too pragmatic, too logical and if you couldn’t figure out you were not going to speculate.  And then you came under the ministry of Reverend Herman Riffle who lived for ninety-three years and studied dreams and understanding and he gave you insight; then your whole life changed at least 1/3 of your life changed where you slept you began receiving a dream a week and understood it.  You told me before we went on the air that God gave you a prophetic word for our listeners.  Tell me that.

Mark: Alright, I was journaling a couple of days ago and here’s what the Lord said.  He said, “My children can have direct ongoing living encounter with me that includes hearing me throughout the day as well as during the night.  I speak through my still small voice as well as through dreams and visions; I give myself to my children daily.  I am not a God who holds back, I give Myself completely to my children daily; I hunger for them to hear and see, they can hear and see.  Many do hear and see and you are teaching them how to hear and see more clearly.  Raise their faith and awareness of my voice to them through their dream.  Call them into faith, call them into belief for all responds to faith and belief; I respond to faith and belief.  If they will believe for me to speak to through their dream then they will receive; call them into faith and I will do the rest.

Sid: Mark, we don’t have to be a prophet to recognize we are in the midst of and it seems to be getting progressively worse, tough economic times.  And if there’s every been a time that we have to take a third of our life that is normally wasted, except our body is restored and be able to hear from God and get redirection etc.  But one of the things I like about your course and it’s three CD’s five sessions and a workbook called “Hear God through your dreams” is you are very very foundational in scripture in fact you go thoroughly at discussion of every dream in the Bible.  Tell me some of the scriptural basis for us to be looking expecting God to speak to us through dreams.

Mark: Okay, well one verse would be Psalm 16:7 David says, “I will bless the Lord who has counseled me in deed in my inner man; (in Hebrew it’s kidneys) my inner being instructs me in the night.  So that’s a really clear verse saying God gives everyone of us instruction and counsel at night through our dreams.  He’s the Wonderful Counselor the Bible is full of Him giving wonderful counsel to people.  You just look at the birth of Jesus, I mean the wonderful counsel He gave to Joseph to go to Egypt; He counseled him to come back to Egypt.  He counseled through a dream he told the wise men not go back to Herod, this is all wonderful counsel from the Wonderful Counselor protecting you and directing you so that you take the right steps to avoid calamity and are able to walk into the destiny that God has for you.

Sid: Well, you teach a bit about how we literally can have a covenant established with us through dreams.

Mark: Well, that’s a powerful story, it’s Genesis 15 and it’s the Abrahamic Covenant and God is entering into a Covenant with Abraham and of course the first covenant which is of course the Old Testament.  And what I didn’t even notice for years is that that happened in a dream.  God starts with a vision and then in the beginning of the chapter and then sends into a dream by the time you get into verse six or so and in this dream God show up, interacts with Abraham’s pretty afraid, he gets pretty terrified at one point, but that doesn’t mean it was a dream from Satan just because there was fear or terror there, it still was a dream from God.  And God specially said, “God entered into a Covenant with Abraham and then he awoke.”  And I thought what, I thought this was pizza and I’m finding out that God can enter into a covenant with me and with you and with our listeners and establish covenantal relationships with us in a dream?  I said, “His view of dreams is completely different than my view of dreams, I need to readjust my view of dreams.”

Sid: Let me stretch you a little and maybe I won’t be stretching you.  But I have had guests say to me that when they dream many times they see themselves in another country and their ministering there and most people would think it was a dream but it was actually going on.  And then years later they go to that area they have never been there before, it’s actually the way it was in their dream and people say, “I saw you here and they’ve never even been there before!

Mark: Well, that doesn’t stretch me okay, I think it’s exciting that…

Sid: Have you ever heard of that?  Has that ever happened to you?

Mark: Well, I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening, alright it hasn’t happened to me personally, I a little bit to left brain to probably go quite that far down the road of visionary encounter.  It seems like right brainers and prophets and prophetesses go further than left brainers do.  And that’s okay, I don’t have to be everything, I can be who I am and they can be who they are and we can team up and complement one another, prophets and teachers can get together.

Sid: But that’s what makes you such a great teacher.  Anything you can do, anyone else can do because you can teach it.

Mark: That’s our goal is to lay it out clear enough that anyone can do it.

Sid: Okay, I have personally interviewed many people have given me charts of symbols and I have followed it and I’ve understood to a degree but I can honestly say it’s still multiple guess in many instances.  What’s wrong with me?

Mark: I’m not sure any thing is wrong with you, okay, I’m you know I don’t go to a dream dictionary book to find out what these symbols mean.  I go to my own heart because my heart was the one drawing the pictures trying to communicate a message to me and I do believe the symbols are going to be different based on a person’s experience.  I mean if you look, I believe the symbols in your dreams are going to come out of your experiences.  You look at Joseph he’s a shepherd boy he lives in the open field.  The symbols in his dream are the symbols that surround him, it’s the sheaves bowling down, it’s a sun, moon and stars bowing down.  These are the symbols that surround a shepherd boy; his heart took those symbols wove them into a story for him and gave him a message.  Now when Nebuchadnezzar dreams, he’s a king who lives in a palace so he dreams of a statue of gold and iron and bronze and a little stone hitting it.  Well, what surrounds Kings who lives in palaces, statues of gold made out of themselves normally.  So you see the symbols were different based on the life of the person because the symbols come from the person’s heart, they do not come from a dream dictionary book in my estimation.  So see a person wants to ask their heart, hey what is that symbol mean to me?  I mean I grew up on a dairy farm, we had big red barn that meant a lot to me, I planned on being a farmer, if that big red barn shows up in my dream it means something unique to me.

Sid: Why is it, I’m going to ask a question for myself right now, I have had several dreams in my life time that were absolutely literal, I did what God said and it came to pass.  And so as the pragmatist that I am said God, “Just give me literal dreams, but I feel like I’m wasting so much valuable information because of the symbolic dreams that I haven’t understood.

Mark: Okay well you are right God can and does literal dreams, we have that in the Bible and He also gives symbolic dreams, the sun, moon and stars bowing down, that’s all symbolism; the sheaves that’s all symbolism.  You’re right if you missed that part then you’re missing an awful lot of counsel that you could be receiving.  So why don’t God just give us all literal dreams?

Sid: That’s what I want!  Ha-ha-ha.

Mark: Well, the Bible says that these are called dark sayings and what it is it’s your heart trying to communicate things to you that your mind wasn’t quite ready to accept in a really verbal approach, so your heart says let me give you some symbolism here and then you can pull out of it what you are ready to accept and what you’re not ready to accept we’ll just leave on the back burner and someday down the road and you’ll be ready to accept that.  So rather than forcing the message upon you it offers the message to you so if your heart is ready it will reach out and get it; if not it will just be on a back burner until you are ready for it.

Sid: Now, one of the things that you urge people to do is to put a little pencil and paper next to their bed on say the table next to their bed.  Why do you do that, why can’t they just when they during their normal prayer time when they get up recall what they dreamt?

Mark: Well, because they are probably not going to be able to recall stuff.  The simple act of putting that pencil and paper next to your bed you are communicating a message to your heart saying, “I take you seriously, I’m taking dreams seriously, and I’m letting you know if you are giving me a dream I will write it down when you give it to me.”  And your heart says, “Okay, he’s taking me seriously he doesn’t believe it’s a pizza dream anymore and because he’s taking me seriously I’m going to wake him up and remind him of the dreams, because if your heart does not wake you up…

Sid: I can tell you this I find that I forget my dreams if I don’t write them down.

Mark: That’s right and if your heart…

Sid: Oops, our time is up, we’ll pick up here on tomorrow’s broadcast, Mark.

Sid: Now, I have in the studio with me a Messianic Jewish friend and I do say friend that I’ve known so many years, but last month you and I did a fund raising banquet for a friend that has a Messianic Jewish Congregation in Tel Aiv Israel and so I found out how many years we have known each other.  How many years is it Jonathan Bernis?

Jonathan: Twenty-eight, Sid.  Twenty-eight years.

Sid: That’s a long…

Jonathan: I was just a kid when I met you.

Sid: Actually you were, and a boy I have some funny remembrances, you do too on second thought.  So you keep them to yourself.

Jonathan: I have many; do you want me to start?  I’m ready to begin.

Sid: Oh, no, no, no.  Zip your mouth.  Any way I am interviewing Jonathan because of his book and it is a must read for every Christian in America.  Why do I say this, let’s start out with the title “A Rabbi Looks at Jesus of Nazareth.”  Now when I hear the term Rabbi, I think of a Orthodox Jewish Rabbi looking at Jesus of Nazareth.  And to be quite candid with you Jonathan, that interests me minus zero unless they know who He is.  But many Messianic Jewish Leaders call themselves Rabbi and personally I have a little bit of difficulty with that title.  And were friends so we can discuss this.  I have a little difficulty with the title because when I hear Rabbi I think on a Orthodox Jewish Rabbi that has all the trappings of tradition and not as much scripture as I would like.

Jonathan: Well, I have a problem with the title also because I was brought up being taught that there was Judaism and Christianity to distinct religions that had nothing in common.  We had Rabbi’s and Christians had Pastors.  But one of the reasons I wrote the book is to break down that wall of misconception.  You talk about the wall between Jew and Gentile becoming one; well I believe there is a wall that’s been falsely erected between Judaism and Christianity that needs to be broken down.  And Rabbi is a biblical term, the reason I had trouble with it…

Sid: We know the word Rabbi means teacher and the Hebrew word for teacher.  However that’s not the way it’s defined in our society, it’s defined with having a beard and having a black hat or having a yamaka on or having tradition at a higher level than the Word of God.  That’s what I have trouble with.

Jonathan: Right, but we’re also taught that a Jew, the definition of a Jew is one that believes in a different Covenant, a different God and so on than the God of Christianity.

Sid: Well, their wrong.

Jonathan: Well, I say no that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book.  I made some amazing discoveries when I read both the New Testament for the first time and went back and read my own Jewish scriptures which I had never read before, were the people of the book, you said this in the banquet last month.  But we don’t read our own book and the reality is Sid is that Judaism is defined today as much by what Jews don’t believe as what Jews do believe.  And the miss conception is that Jews can’t believe in Jesus, that’s what I was taught and I’m trying to bring back the Biblical understanding that to be a believer in Jesus from a Jewish background is to be completed or to be fulfilled as a Jew.  Not to be converted to Christianity and in that I assert that our spiritual leaders have every right to be called Rabbi because we’re defining Biblically.

Sid: Well, I look at it differently on another subject, Jonathan.  I have a theory if the word Jew comes from the Hebrew word that means a worshiper of God then every Jew and every Christian must become a Yehudah a Worshiper of God.

Jonathan: Well, we’re in agreement there.

Sid: It’s really the olive tree is the Jewish olive tree and it’s wonderful the gentiles now are grafted in and taking the parable of prodigal son where the Father said of the older brother who I look at as a type of the gentle believer that’s worked for 2000 years in the harvest and then there’s this big deal coming into their own olive tree and the Father representing God says to the Gentile Believer, wait a second, you’ve been grafted in everything I have is yours.  So I see it as one olive tree, one new man.  Anyway it’s a you know its semantics and yet I see there’s only one people of God.  It’s not Jews and Christians it’s one people

Jonathan: I agree though Sid, but a marriage is a male and a female that become one flesh.  And my issue or my problem with the one new man, Jew and Gentile being one in Messiah, is what are all the Jews?  There’s plenty of gentiles but where all the Jews and that’s what I talk about in this book.  Why aren’t more Jewish people believing in Jesus today?  There’s many reasons.

Sid: Well, you know what I think before we get to that, what I believe and here’s the thing that you know but, maybe our Mishpochah don’t know and that is my wife came from a Baptist background, when she got into college she had atheistic professors and they took away all her faith from her.  She wouldn’t have called herself an atheist she called herself an agnostic, just in case.  And then when we got married she converted to Orthodox Judaism, she didn’t know Jesus in any of these camps so to speak.  And it was only when we started a Messianic Jewish Congregation and our first Rabbi preached Jesus out of the Old Testament that she said, I have to believe, I have no choice.  And the average Gentile Christians never had to have it proven to them, never had to have that dimension and so therefore if an Orthodox Rabbi  tried to talk them out of their faith which, they would not if they are not Jewish, if that were to occur they would not standing on as firm a foundation.

Jonathan: That’s right, you said as simple as this statement is often shocking to Christians.  That the first disciples, the apostles revealed or proved that Jesus was the Messiah to their Jewish brethren out of the Old Testament, not out of the New Testament, the New Testament hadn’t been written yet.

Sid: No, it was just letters that were circulating also, it was never in a nice big brown leather Bible.

Jonathan: But Christians are shocked when I say that, you’re kidding me I didn’t know that.  But that’s the truth, it was the Tanakh it was the Jewish scriptures.

Sid: You know after all these years of reading the Jewish scriptures and the New Covenant I don’t find anything new in the New Covenant.  I find everything in the New Covenant in the Jewish scriptures if you have eyes to see.

Jonathan: Absolutely.

Sid: And when you find this Jonathan, it just, you marvel at the brilliance of God.

Jonathan: I agree, the New Testament it’s been said, it’s concealed in the Old.  And the Old Testament is revealed in the new.  And I think that’s very accurate.  It’s amazing when you really study there’s this incredible harmony congruity between the Old and the New Testaments from Genesis to Revelation.

Sid: So Jonathan, tell me a bit about your background, today Jonathan and for those that aren’t familiar with him, he literally, I hate to use the term, Rabbi, I hate to use the term apostle, I hate to use any titles to be quite candid with you.  But so I can say this, my friend Jonathan is truly an apostle in the New Covenant sense, I was there at his very first outreach in the former Soviet Union and from there they started congregations and we saw Jews not walk to the altar we saw Jewish people for the first time in our life, run to the altar and it’s still kind of gives me goose bumps so to speak when I think about that moment.

Jonathan: I remember it almost every day just vividly Sid, because it proved to us that the blindness is truly coming off the eyes of the Jewish people.  And this is a prophetic fulfillment Sid of prophecy relating to the soon coming of Jesus to this earth.  Which is why it’s so important for Christians to understand the relevance of the Jewish people coming back to the Lord in great numbers.  It signals the near return of the Messiah to this earth.  He’s coming back soon.

Sid: I am absolutely convinced as it says in Matthew 25, the nations will be divided in the last days, there will be goat nations and there will be sheep nations.  And the issue is found in Matthew 25:40 “Which says as you have done to the least of these my brethren, on the Greek that means from the womb, so obviously the Jewish people, it’s going to be done unto you and all of end time prophecy is centered on the Middle East and in particular Israel.  And all the blessings of God are being poured out on those that are on the right side of the fence that are not only sheep nations and goat nations but there are sheep people and goat people.

Jonathan: Absolutely, Sid you know recently a month ago our President made the statement that “Israel had to return to their original 1967 borders.”  Do you know literally within an hours of that statement we experienced the worst tornados in American history or certainly in the worst in the last sixty years.  Over fifteen hundred people that lost their lives, I believe it’s directly connected to that statement.  Any time America’s interfered with Israel and tried to force Israel to give away Covenant land we have experienced the curse that Genesis 12 talks about.

Sid: Well, you know the one example you gave, that’s a fresh example, but throughout the history of modern day Israel, if you study the times the United States has gone against Israel, I’ll tell you the greatest example, FEMA.  Since they’ve been keeping records of the cost of natural disasters nine out of the top ten worst economic disasters in the history of America, since they’ve been keeping records, were within hours of the United States doing something negative with Israel.  Nine of the ten worst economic disasters that is not coincidence!

Jonathan: And Sid, I think that makes the statement very clear, God cares how the nations respond to Israel and the Jewish people.  Let me say this in Genesis 12 is very much in affect today, “I will bless those that bless my people and curse the one that curses my people.  Which is why Christians must, I say must understand how to bless the Jewish people because in response they’ll be blessed.

Sid: Well, it’s the heart of God; I want to catch the heart of God.

Sid: My guest Nasir Siddiki is red hot for the Messiah, I mean coming from a Moslem background and in a hospital dying, over hearing the doctors saying that he has no chance, Jesus came into his bedroom and the healing process began.  And he has seen so many miracles in his own family and among other people and he wants to see other people healed.  And you and I were discussing about Kenneth Hagen and how he got so many people healed; would you repeat that to me.

Nasir: Well, what he would do when he had his healing and all faith crusades he would teach the word Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday same thing, Wednesday, Thursday same thing and he would tell people, “You must sit under the word, I’m not just going to pray for you I’m going to give you the word.”

Sid: Now, people don’t want that, people want just lay your hands on me.  That’s all I want, stop the music, music, stop the worship, stop the teaching.

Nasir: Yes, and then only those that attended those teaching sessions would he lay hands on on Friday the last night and he had every single person healed.  They would get up out of wheel chairs; they would leave their walkers on the platform.

Sid: Did you see this with your own eyes?

Nasir: Yes, I saw it with my own eyes and not only did they get healed, but what was the exciting thing was that they had so much word in them that they kept their healing.

Sid: And isn’t that what happened to you and your wife Anita?

Nasir: Yes, that’s exactly what happened, symptoms of shingles tried to get back on me, symptoms of MS tried to get back on my wife but we were grounded in the word, we listened to the word twenty four hours a day.

Sid: But wait a second now, let’s take your wife for example she was, if I understood you right, she was completely paralyzed!

Nasir: Yes.

Sid: From the neck down, and it was on her right side but it was…

Nasir: It was on her right side and she lost her eyesight and her hands and her feet were twisted.

Sid: So I image she couldn’t walk, she couldn’t get to the bathroom.  Did you have to carry her around?

Nasir: I had to carry her; we had to have someone come in constantly at the house to take care of her 24 hours a day.

Sid: But can you image, when those symptoms tried to come back on Anita and I mean I could picture her having a picture in her head of the way she was and it had to be a fight!  How strong was she?

Nasir: Well, at the beginning all she was thinking about was what the doctor said that she would lose her organs and that she would have to be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life.  But then as she listened to the word, listened to the word on those tapes and those CDs constantly she realized that Jesus carried every sickness and every disease and she didn’t need to; then she started having thoughts of playing tennis!  A crippled, blind, paralyzed and your thinking about playing tennis, why, because she put her trust…

Sid: She must have known that she’d be healed because you don’t think about playing tennis when you are in that condition.  But actually my question was when those symptoms came back she still must have had pictures in her head of the way she was?

Nasir: Yes.

Sid: How did she deal with that?

Nasir: Because of the word in her she realized that the symptoms of MS were not the sickness of MS.

Sid: Say that again because I think that some people missed it.

Nasir: She realized that the symptoms of multiple sclerosis were not the sickness of multiple sclerosis.  And once she came to that revelation she dealt with the symptoms so she didn’t have deal with the sickness.

Sid: But how many people are healed because of the strong anointing and a word of knowledge and then those symptoms come back as they try to do with you as they try to do with your wife and they don’t know what to do?

Nasir: And what happens is they are fooled in their mind to think that the sickness is back when it was just the symptoms that were back and then they start saying well, “I guess I didn’t get healed or I guess the sickness is back” and that opens the door for the entire sickness to come back.

Sid: How important in your opinion is worship?  I look at Benny Hinn and I say to myself when I observe him, “The worship is almost his key for the anointing which then gets people healed.”

Nasir: Yes.

Sid: So how important is worship in this whole process of receiving your healing?

Nasir: The worship is really important to receive the anointing for the healing.  But the word is what’s going to make you keep your healing.

Sid: So you really need both.

Nasir: Yes, you need the anointing and you need the word, the anointing will heal you, but the word will keep you healed.

Sid: Have you, now to me any healing is a miracle, but have you ever seen what are known as the Messianic miracles, someone being risen from the dead?

Nasir: Yes Sid, what happened was, I was living in Tulsa I got a call that my brother Aasif was in London, England and was in Westminster Hospital, and the call that I got was from my sister that he had died and we started praying.  Because you got to remember that I came from a Muslim background so my brother was a Muslim and so we started praying and standing on the scriptures, and as we were praying the Holy Spirit said, “You and your household shall be saved!”  And so we prayed, prayed, prayed the next thing I heard his body came back to life in the morgue and they brought him back to intensive care.  I got on a plane, flew over to England and there he was with wires and tubes all over him.  That was just a miracle of God, laid hands on him and after several days he came out of the coma and he started to share.  And he said, “I died” and I said, “Aasif, I know you died, I saw the report, the doctors told me you died, but how do you know that you died?”  And he started describing Sid, what he saw.

Sid: What did he see?

Nasir:  He had left his body, he was looking down, he saw his body on a stretcher, he saw the doctors around him trying to revive his heart.  He had overdosed on morphine, his heart had stopped and when they could not revive his heart he saw this with his own eyes, that they put a sheet over him, put him in the elevator and took him down to the morgue which was in the basement of that hospital and left him there.  And the next thing he saw he was falling in a very very dark hole.

Sid: Because he was Muslim and did not know the Lord at that time.

Nasir: Exactly, and he was going down, down, down and he would look to either side and there were creatures, ugly creatures and he was even terrified to describe them because you could see that fear in his eyes.  And as he was going further and further down, finally he looked up and there he saw a cross.  I said, “What do you mean a cross?”  He says, “You know the cross, you know the cross that Jesus was on?  And I said, “Yes, yes yes, you saw Jesus on the cross.  He said, “No, I saw myself on the cross, what does this mean?”  Well the Lord prompted me to share the scriptures with him, “That the wages of sin are death, we all deserve to be on the cross because we’ve all sinned, unless we accept what Jesus did which was to take all of our sins when He went to the cross.  And as I started to describe that, my brother gave his life to the Lord.

Sid: Now, I don’t think that your brother would have given his life to the Lord if he hadn’t experienced that miracle.

Nasir: Yes.

Sid: And that’s what we were talking about on yesterday’s broadcast.  We’re coming into a very very challenging time for the world, but isn’t that going to be God’s greatest opportunity for evangelism?  And I believe that if others can do what you can do, we can make an impact on the Kingdom of Heaven.  Is there any doubt in your mind, are you someone special?  Do you have special gifts from God?

Nasir: No, no, no I’m just an Ex-Moslem that got hungry for Jesus and hungry for the word and kept studying the word, and I’m still studying the word today.  Because I know that Heaven and Earth will pass but His word will never pass and it has just as much power today to work in our lives as it had when Jesus walked the Earth.

Sid: And someone says to you right now, yes but I prayed and prayed and it’s been years and I’m not healed!

Nasir: Yes, the key was not just praying, the key was building your faith by hearing the word.

Sid: How many people miss that and say, “Well God you have the ability to heal me, why aren’t you doing it?”

Nasir: Because the scripture says that “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

Sid: And they’d say, “Well I believe.”

Nasir: Yes, you can tell what someone believes by their thoughts, their words, and their actions.  And you can see them talking about their sickness all day and then claiming they believe in healing.

Sid: So it sounds to me like that’s what James was talking about when he talked about being double minded.

Nasir: Absolutely, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”  So when you listen to someone’s words, you soon get an idea of what they believe.

Sid: What do you believe?  What do you believe if those symptoms come upon you, are you ready for it?  Now is the time to prepare, now’s the time to get a foundation, why don’t you start fresh right now, because “Let every man be a liar, but God’s word is true.”

 

Sid: My guest John Finn has had several visitations from the Lord in which the Lord showed him that because of what is coming to America it is, and not just America to the world, it is vital for us to recapture what the first church had.  And the first church had a revolution in relationships and I have to tell you the more you talk about it John, the more excited I get about; it’s almost in the American culture, in church it’s a missing commodity.

John: Well, one of the things the Lord has spoken to me about this is just fairly recently was He said, “You’re going to see the emergence of an underground economy of Christians just like in Acts Chapter 2 where no one had any lack because no one said what they had was their own.”  And he wasn’t talking about everyone moving into little communes, He was talking about the sense that you know what, the Lord is my ultimate supply and if I have two coats, you can have one of them.  You know if I have 2 gallons of milk I’ll give you one of them because the Lord will take care of me.  And we’re already starting to see glimpse of that, certainly within our network we are seeing that, we are able to contact people in our network to give money, thousands of dollars.  We have helped pay mortgages and car payments and tuition and repair cars and all the different things that are required to keep people going.  If there is a need larger than a local house church then, I find out about it and we put the word out to the network and people respond; people travel back and forth.  And this is one thing that is going to continue to happen as stresses in the world happen.

Sid: And I have an idea people aren’t doing it to get, there doing it out of a heart of love, out of a heart of love because we’re in relationship with one another.

John: We have an affiliate in Fiji where one of the brothers is very ill and I just received an email today who has been praying diligently, “Do you have an update from Fiji?”  People genuinely, even if they don’t know anyone more than email or you know internet phone, sometimes we actually visit back and forth with each other, but even if it’s just over the internet people get genuinely concerned and say, “You know I can’t send much myself but I can send twenty-five bucks to help pay their medical bill.

Sid: John, our time is slipping away, what did the Lord show you about the future of the United States in reference to catastrophes?

John: Well, one of the things that He shared with me, and this was, this was actually right around the time of the elections last fall before any policies were in place or doctrines, so to speak of a new administration.  But He told me that, “There would be three earthquakes in this nation, and He said, “Two of which you would not think of as being in the normal earthquake prone area,” but He said this, He said, “It won’t happen until the new administration policies are all in place and the government will be very stressed to meet all the needs.”  And He said, “Also there will be a hurricane that will hit and maybe a second one,” because sometimes He kind of hangs sometimes on His words, you kind of get a feeling, but specifically what He said, because of hurricane and natural disasters, He did say that plural, He said, “It will stretch the budget of the country even more,” He said, “And then the earthquakes will happen.”  So you know that’s something to look out for.

Sid: John, “Where are these earthquakes going to take place and these hurricanes?”

John: Ha-ha, that’s a good question, I don’t know the answer to that, but I had a sense of the Midwest with the two that were unexpected.

Sid: So, it looks like we have a short window of time from what you’re saying?

John: And, you know if people don’t hear what the Spirit is saying, they’re not going to make proper preparation, I think back to the book of revelation, where each time it says, “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”  And that’s why there has been a tremendous move in the Body of Christ and for those that heed it.  For people to get out of debt, for people to set their lives in order, and believe me I’m not a doom and gloom, I am fully believing and fully praying that the United States will be one of the mountains, one of the nations that stands with Israel when it faces it faces its World War III.  But it doesn’t preclude, that doesn’t mean that difficult times won’t happen between now and then.

Sid: Now the Lord’s told you something about World War III.

John: Well, it’s actually illustrated very clearly in Ezekiel Chapter 38 and 39 about the alignment of the nations with Russia.  If you modernize the names of what it meant in Ezekiel times, it’s very clear the nations that will form alignment including Russia, Libya, Sudan and Persia as Ezekiel I note as Iran.  What is interesting is Sid, this is something I really haven’t talked very much outside of our network of home based churches but one of the things the Lord told me a couple of years ago is that Russia is training terrorist units and funding a lot of it because they have an eye for Middle East oil.  And the Lord also shared with me, “Watch out for Putnam, this was a couple of years ago, watch out for Putnam, he will be in charge of Russia again, and then watch out.  And so…

Sid: He also gave you and indication of when everything was going to happen in reference to an alliance between Russia and another country.

John: Well, one of the things he said is “Watch Turkey, He said, “Watch Turkey now.”  And of course in Ezekiel 38 Turkey is called, “Turgama and it will come in alliance with Turkey but what I didn’t know at the time when He told me that was that Turkey was trying to become a member of the European Union and France and some other nations are dead set against Turkey becoming part of Europe.  And what the Lord had told me was, he said, “Watch for Europe to reject Turkey and nearly throw it into the arms of Russia.

Sid: But when Turkey aligns with Russia what will happen?

John: They will try to invade Israel.

Sid: Okay, I want you to give me a brief picture, a snapshot of what one of your house church meetings look like.

John: Well, what happens is we gather together at a particular time and it varies here in Tulsa, we meet at 10:00 on a Sunday morning usually, but not always.  Sometimes around our network it will be in the evening, it will be another day of the week, maybe a Tuesday evening but always you know being Christians you can’t start anything on time.  So for the first half hour or so people are just coming and visiting and catching up because when you’re in house church your relationship with one another and often times there are phone calls and sometimes people get together for lunch in between, but the first half hour is kind of catching up from all of that.  And then somewhere around the bottom of the hour thirty minutes into it whoever is leading that week and we do rotate leaders as we rotate homes usually; the leader will ask for prayer requests or if there are any needs there present.

Sid: Well, that takes the pressure off of you rotate homes and rotate leaders.

John: Oh, it’s not all on one person’s shoulders, and also it empowers people realize they do have something to share.  You know when Paul said, “Everyone of you have a Psalm,” well if you think of Psalm as something of worship, but also prayer comes under that and so we have people that are gifted in worship or gifted in intercessory prayer.  And Paul went on to say doctrine which is teaching, something God taught you or revelation which is something God showed you this week, something really neat that you saw in the Word as the Lord spoke to you.  And then He mentions tongues and interpretation, gifts of the Spirit.  And so when people are empowered to lead all they have to do is share what comes naturally within just share naturally what the Lord has on their heart.  And I’m telling you we have some of the best discussions; some of the best prayers; some of the best miracles; some of the best healings that happen when people are just free to be empowered to go with what they feel the Lord is leading them to do.

Sid: What I’m hearing you say is, “Everyone gets empowered!”

John: And that’s the beauty of it, because we all have Christ in us.  And I now tell you we had some people come, one lady in particular I’m thinking of who said, “Now, I’m not use to this, so don’t expect me to talk the first week or so.”  And I said, “No problem, just come and be a part and everything.” Well that lasted about one week, ha-ha and in fact it didn’t even last that full first time because by the time things had rolled around about forty-five minutes later, there was a big discussion going on about something and she just jumped right in with both feet, felt completely normal, completely natural, completely at ease.  And that’s the nature of house churches, everyone gets accepted; Paul said this in Galatians 2:9 He said that Peter and James perceived the grace that was in Paul and Barnabus.  Peter, James and John perceived that grace that was in Paul and Barnabus and that’s really what it’s all about.  It’s, when you can sit there across the living room from somebody and they may not be from your socioeconomic or even race or even background but you can perceive the grace of God in their heart and you can look at them and say “Wow, that’s neat how the Lord saved you; that’s fantastic!”

Sid: So, you’re seeing Jesus in the person and not a title?

John: Exactly and what you’re doing, you can love the grace.  This is a hard time that people have they say “How can I love that person?”  You don’t have to, love the grace, perceive the grace of God that is going on in their life and in their heart.  Love that grace.

Sid: This is My commandment, that you love one another.

John: And, that’s how you do it; perceive the grace in one another.  You strip away all the normal social things that you might think might bind us together or drive us apart and you just look for that commonality in Christ.  Where have you received the grace of God, and I can latch on to that and I can love that in you.