SID: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural.
My guest says, you do not have to take it any more from the devil when you realize, when you come to your senses that you are dressed to kill. Now we Jewish people have a word. It’s called meshuga and it means crazy. My guest Rick Renner takes three small sons and a wife and goes to the former Soviet Union before it was the former Soviet Union. I’ve been there, Rick. How could you do that?
RICK: You know, it was just, God invited me to go on a trip. And when I was there, I stood in front of this Bible school where we were speaking, and when I opened my Bible to speak for the very first time, I heard the Spirit of God say, “Welcome to your new home.” And the whole rest of the time I taught that class, I kept hearing the Holy Spirit saying, “Welcome to your new home.” And I understood that God was calling my family to relocate to the Soviet Union, and it was still the Soviet Union at that time, not the most desirous place to move your family.
SID: As we were checking notes, I went to the former Soviet Union, involved in an outreach at about the same as Rick. And we were in a hotel room, and in the hotel room the bugs were so bad in the room that many had to take their bed and move it into the hallway. If you have never seen a Soviet hotel from back then, you don’t know what living is. I can’t imagine your family going to that place.
RICK: Sid, it was supernatural. I fell in love with the Soviet people. In one week, it’s like they entered into my heart. And when I went back to the United States after that short trip, everything in me just beat with the desire to gather my family together and move back to the Soviet Union. And the Lord spoke to me very clearly, and I said, “Why? Why are you calling my family to move to the Soviet Union?” And he said, “Because there’s going to be a revival here that’s going to need great Bible teachers and you’re going to be more needed here than you are in the United States.
SID: And you know what, I see why he did that with Rick, because you started the first Christian television station there. You have a TV network today. You have an apostolic network, over 400 congregations. You have a brand new church building in Moscow, what, 3700 members. And I think you haven’t even touched what God has you for there. Now in 1980, you had a visitation of an angel.
RICK: Yes I did.
SID: Now I have seen angels, but I have, you’re provoking me to jealousy.
RICK: I was in my apartment and I had laid down on the couch to take a nap, and suddenly I felt a presence, and sat straight up on that couch. And it was one of those moments when you feel someone’s presence, but you don’t see anyone. And in just a few moments, just about as far as you are from me, a man materialized, and he began speaking to me, but he never opened his mouth. It was non-verbal communication. And he said, “I am a man from the presence of the Lord.”
SID: It was going from spirit to spirit.
RICK: Whether it was spirit-to-spirit or mind to mind, I really don’t know. He thought a thought and I received the thought. And he began to speak to me about my ministry, and that my ministry would be a sojourning ministry, and that particularly, I would be sent to a people who had suffered. Now at this particular time, Denise and I were not married. In fact, Denise was not even in the picture yet. And so my life was young and I certainly had no thoughts of moving to the Soviet Union. And suddenly, a map came in front of me that filled the whole room, and the whole map began to violently shake. And this angel began to communicate with me that my ministry would be located in the part of the world where there would be violent shaking and many, many changes, and an end-time ministry. And certainly, that is what we have.
SID: 1985, another visitation.
RICK: Yes.
SID: But this time from Jesus.
RICK: Yes.
SID: What happened?
RICK: I was awakened in the middle of the night and I went to the back room of the house, and began to pray in tongues, and I began to pray very deeply in tongues. And I closed my eyes as I walked back and forth in that room, and when I opened my eyes, the room was gone, and I was standing in the spirit realm. Now the spirit realm has substance. I was, it was a dark place, but yet it was not a scary place, but it was the spirit realm. And far in the distance, I saw a light and the light got brighter and brighter, and brighter until finally it manifested in front of me, and it was a throne, it was a chair. I can even draw a picture of the chair. It’s that real to me. And seated in that chair was Jesus, and Jesus began to speak to me about my ministry. I was on my knees because I had already gone to my knees in prayer. And the Lord reached out and took my hands, and he took one hand at a time, and I say that He sandwiched my hands. He put one hand on top, He put another hand underneath, and He said, “See today, I give to you an anointing of love mixed with hate.” And I said, “Well what is that?” And then He did it to the other hand. And I said, “Lord, what is love mixed with hate?” And he said, “That is an anointing of compassion.” When the love of God is so strong and yet the hate for the work of the enemy is equally as strong as they float together, and when they float together they create compassion. And suddenly, I saw myself in the spirit walking through a hospital ward of people very different. And I know today, it was a Russian hospital ward.
SID: But at that time, you just knew it was a hospital.
RICK: I just knew it was a hospital and it was different, and it was dilapidated. And the Lord began to speak to me again about the fact that he was going to send me to a people who had suffered great lack and great hardship. And then the most amazing thing happened. The Lord held his hands out to me like this and He said, “See today I place before you finances on a realm that are already amassing more finances.” And Sid, it felt like those finances entered into me, greatness of finances, and I understood that God was going to supernaturally provide for whatever it was He was calling us to do on the other side of the world. And God has been absolutely faithful for everything that we have done. And now 24 years later, we’re still there.
SID: And you know what’s so amazing? I mean, God, our God is so brilliant. Do you know that? What is so amazing, Rick is a world class Bible teacher in a realm way beyond anything I’m familiar with. He’ll take one Greek word, because he’s a Greek scholar, and for instance, on the End Times, he has teaching you’ve never heard before. Have you ever read in the Book of Hebrews, it begins, “In these last days…” and some skeptics say, well back then they thought it was the last days and look, they don’t, we don’t even know when the last… But you don’t even understand from the Greek, there is a difference between the last days and the last of the last days. But if you don’t know the Greek, you don’t know it. I want Rick to teach on that when we come back.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth