SID: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. Are you stuck? Would you like to get unstuck? Let me explain to you what I mean by that. Have you been praying for years for your spouse to become a radical believer in the Messiah? Year after year, after year goes. Have you got a death sentence from a doctor, an incurable disease that you’re praying and you’re praying, and nothing seems to be changing? Have you got children that are rebellious and you’re praying year after year, after year. Someone is saying right now, yes, that’s me. Well my guest is going to help you get unstuck. His name is Dave Hess. And Dave, never, never in a million years would you go to get flu-like symptoms checked out in November 1997. And what did the doctor say was wrong with you?
DAVE: She looked at me and said, “Mr. Hess, you have cancer. You have leukemia. In fact, you have the most aggressive strain of leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia. She was very concerned because it is barely treatable by chemotherapy. Other strains of leukemia can be treated other ways, but this is aggressive.
SID: So it was too late, in other words, for anything. Now they offered you chemo and you took it.
DAVE: Yes.
SID: But in their opinion it had advanced too far.
DAVE: It had advanced very far. My gums were bleeding. The whites of my eyes had become discolored. I was bruising. If I lightly bumped anything a bruise would appear on my body. And my ability to fight any kind of flu or infection was nil.
SID: So you leave the doctor and you hear from God.
DAVE: Yes.
SID: What did he tell you?
DAVE: I stepped out of the doctor’s office. It was a November night, leaves blowing. All I needed was a wolf howling somewhere in the background, and it felt very eerie. And it hadn’t fully hit me what she had said. But I found myself saying out loud, “I’m shocked.” And not a split second later I heard the voice of the Lord say to me, “I’m not and I’ll take you through this.”
SID: How did it sound? How did His voice sound?
DAVE: His voice was calm and confident. And the way I describe is it was like a warring peace went through my soul.
SID: You needed it because you were in confusion. You were in fear. Your family didn’t even know this.
DAVE: They didn’t know.
SID: But interesting enough, God wasn’t shocked because he received a prophetic word from a young man. How old was he?
DAVE: He was about eight years old.
SID: Eight years old?
DAVE: Eight years old.
SID: Okay. And you told me that you look like he was hesitant to give it to you.
DAVE: Yes.
SID: Because it wasn’t a good word.
DAVE: No.
SID: But it was a good word. It wasn’t a word and it was. Tell me about it.
DAVE: We had received a prophetic ministry and it was very encouraging words, and we got up to leave the room, and this young boy said, “Sir, I have one more word to tell you.” And he said, “Satan is about to make a grave tactical error. He’s about to come at you and take you down a dark corridor.” But he said, “When you come out the end of the corridor you’re going to be strengthened and what happened to you will be used to strengthen the faith of others.”
SID: Now how long did they say you would live?
DAVE: They had said that they didn’t think I would live to see Christmas, and I was diagnosed at Thanksgiving.
SID: So they’re giving you a month to live.
DAVE: That’s right.
SID: So how does a man go home to his family and tell them, “Honey, I have a month to live”? What did you do?
DAVE: Well I’m a preacher. So I was trying to think of the right words to say.
SID: There are no right words.
DAVE: There were no right words. And I got out of the car and walked up the front sidewalk to the house, and I still have no words. And when I got inside and saw my wife and my three children I knelt down, hugged them and I looked them in the eye and the words came, and I said to them, “Daddy has cancer but Jesus has Daddy.” And the words came from Him because I couldn’t have thought those up at that time. My emotional state was all over the net.
SID: But you know what I think is so wonderful? Sometimes the spouse has a bigger problem than the person with the death sentence. And God was so gracious. What did He do for your wife, a supernatural sign?
DAVE: He was faithful to her. As we headed into what we would later find out would be a six-month process, I was in the hospital for six months during this treatment time and healing time, she felt as if a hand had been placed on the back of her head.
SID: Was this one or two times or what?
DAVE: Continuously.
SID: 24-7?
DAVE: 24-7 she had the sensation. In fact, at first she tried to brush something away. She
thought she’d left a hat on or something was on her head, but there was nothing physically there. It was as if the Lord took His hand and put His hand on her head and said, “I am with you.”
SID: By the way, what was the name of that hospital?
DAVE: The hospital we went to was Holy Spirit Hospital. I kid you not.
SID: [laugh] I tell you, I’m laughing, but Dave, this was no laughing matter.
DAVE: No.
SID: I mean, you had, even with these prophetic words, even with your wife having a supernatural sign it had to be hard for you.
DAVE: Yes. Yes. I have a new appreciation for what people walk through when they battle cancer. I had known it from a textbook side. I had known it from a professional side. But now it became personal, the fears that assail someone who is battling cancer.
SID: Listen, it’s so personal that he has a cancer-free zone, and we are going to hijack that for this show. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back after this word.