Sid Roth welcomes Jeff Burke

SID: Hello Sid Roth, your mentor of the supernatural. I am so excited about my guest Jeff Burke. You see Jeff Burke supernaturally knows people’s names, what types of cars they drive, even their address. You think this is strange. No, this is natural in the supernatural, of God. Jeff it wasn’t always that way. You were a pastor at a young age. What 21 years old, your father was a pastor in a nice Baptist church, but you got frustrated. Why

JEFF: Well, it just didn’t seem like there was any type of power; didn’t seem like there was any kind of victory. And even though we preached victory it didn’t seem like any of that was happening. And I yearned for something more: just victory. And it just seemed like we were preaching that the devil always does like what he always did. But God don’t do it anymore. So I began to really yearn and believe there’s something more than what I experienced.

SID: Well did you ask your Dad about that?

JEFF: Yes I did. I went it him one day and I said Daddy we preach victory every Sunday morning. And as we preach victory and then we turn around and tell the people that Satan does, but God don’t. I said, what’s the victory in that? Heh Heh Heh. And he responded to me and he said well there are some people, they’re called charismatic Pentecostals, Spirit-filled, and they seem to get their prayers answered a whole lot better than we do.

SID: So why didn’t you just become charismatic?

JEFF: Well, it’s just an ingrained teaching and training that we were taught that people that spoke in tongues or other languages, that was from the devil so you couldn’t do that.

SID: Ok so that door is closed, nothing is happening in your church. Dead, dead, dead! So what did you do?

JEFF: Well, I started studying things beyond just the natural. I started first of all with things about demonization. And we were coming to understand there were some things about that. But I began to be so yearning for something beyond the natural; what I did was began to study things other than the Christian literature and it kind of got me in a trap.

SID: Like what?

JEFF: Well, there was something called The Fifth Book Of Moses.

SID: Did you actually get into witchcraft?

JEFF: I did get into witchcraft and some Satanism.

SID: But you knew better. You know what he did? He settled for the cheap counterfeit because the real thing isn’t happening in churches. Shame on you if the real thing isn’t happening in churches because God’s word says it’s supposed to! And that’s good enough for me. And you know what I believe that the devil doesn’t play fair. You start taking a little bit of this witchcraft and it gets deeper and deeper. You were actually starting to do well with that. You started to prosper in your business. How well were you doing?

JEFF: Well I began to get promotion after promotion. I actually reached a place where I was right under the top place that I could go. But also, at the same time, I was dying; things were pulling me down.

SID: You told me one time you were with a witch and she said she saw something that startled you. What was that?

JEFF: Well we were riding down the road and she looked at me and she said, “You really aggravate me.” And I said, “Well what did I do?” And she said, “I know my own heart,” she said “my own heart’s black, but when I look at your heart it doesn’t matter what comes out of your lips.” She said, “When I look at your heart,” she said “there’s a light that encircles your heart still. That light is still there.”

SID: Did that shock you?

JEFF: It did.

SID: Did you think you were just so far away from God that it just didn’t matter?

JEFF: Yeah I was pretty far away. And I felt like…actually I felt like there was no hope. So I didn’t see a way out.

SID: In the meantime, his parents get filled with the spirit of God, speaking in unknown languages, and praying for him. What effect did this have on you Jeff?

JEFF: Well, my mother was in a prayer meeting; I went and I decided life wasn’t worth living, so I went and grabbed a bottle of sleeping pills. I took those sleeping pills. At the same time my momma was about 250 miles away in a church service. It was on a Wednesday night, and she jumped up and stopped my Dad and said listen God just spoke to me and said we need to stop and pray; my son’s in trouble. And said we need to stop and pray for him. So they stopped and prayed, my momma prayed a prayer,

SID: But wait a second, did you take the full bottle of sleeping pills?

JEFF: I took the bottle of sleeping pills.

SID: That would take some prayer to stop you from dying, but go ahead.

JEFF: So she prayed the prayer of Hannah for Samuel and she said Lord, as long as he lives he belongs to you; and you do with him whatever you choose to do with him, ‘cause I give him totally to you. Now in the meantime, I go, I lay down in the bed, I’m gazing at the ceiling and I keep gazing, I kept gazing, I kept gazing, and the sun came up.

SID: You didn’t fall asleep?

JEFF: I didn’t fall asleep.

SID: Did you get that? I mean with one sleeping pill you should fall asleep; two, three, four, five; a whole bottle? You should die! But if you don’t die, you should at least fall asleep. Those were powerful prayers.

JEFF: I know. Praise the Lord.

SID: So what’d you do when you woke up? – not woke up, when you got up?

JEFF: When the sun came up I didn’t know what else to do so I got up and went to work. And so I came back the next day, I laid in the bed again, I went to bed that night and I looked at the ceiling again for another full day. The sun came up. And so for two full days I stayed awake after taking a bottle of sleeping pills.

SID: Now that’s supernatural.

JEFF: Amen.

SID: So what happened next?

JEFF: Well, things began to really go downhill for me.

SID: Well what happened to all your witchcraft power? What’s going on?

JEFF: Well, it’s…

SID: You think it was another power working against you that was stronger? What was that?

JEFF: That was the power of prayer, of God’s mercy and grace that my mother and father were praying. I came to a point where I didn’t have anything else. I had about a couple of hours to stay in a trailer; didn’t know what to do. I remember falling on my knees and I said “God if you’re real, I need something.” Now I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, I don’t even know if I’ll go to heaven or hell. I just don’t know what to do. And I heard a voice and I couldn’t tell you whether it was in the spirit or audible, I just heard a voice. And that voice spoke and it said “Go find a phone and call your father.”

SID: Hold that thought. We’ll be back right after this word. Don’t go away.