Sid: I have to tell you when I was a brand new Jewish believer I didn’t know my left hand from my right hand. I met a woman by the name of Katherine Kuhlman, and she had a relationship with the Holy Spirit that just provoked me to jealousy. And I guess that’s what the Bible says “The Gentile believers are supposed to provoke the Jew to jealousy.” Well my guest John Bevere, most of you are familiar with him. You probably read his book, it’s a classic “The Bait of Satan” along with a number of materials but that’s the one I thing I think of when I think of John Bevere. Well John Bevere has a very close relationship with the Holy Spirit and I’m so excited about his brand new book and his DVD and CD collection. So he shares the secrets he has learned about the Holy Spirit so that you can have that type of relationship. John did you know much about my friend Katherine Kuhlman and her relationship with the Holy Spirit.
John: How I wish I would have I got saved after she went home to be with the Lord. I got saved in 1979. So I did not know her.
Sid: Well I have to tell you John I was shocked, absolutely shocked when I found out what type of a student you were. I mean you are one of the premier teachers of our generation and (Laughing) did you really get on your SAT scores 370 out of 800?
John: (Laughing) Yes sir, I did.
Sid: How?
John: I’m laughing about it right now but believe me I wasn’t laughing when it happened and it’s the highest score I ever scored. In all of my travels I’ve only met one human being that scored lower than me on the English. So…
Sid: So what do you attribute to the fact… how many books of the “Bait of Satan” have sold, do you know approximately?
John: It’s well over a million.
Sid: So how do you attribute selling a million books and not being able to get by the SAT decently?
John: Well and I think the other thing that’s most startling you know there’s 16 other books and I think that there sales are pushing getting close to 5 million. So I mean it’s just to me, it always lets me know that it’s really truly the Holy Spirit that does this. I tell people my name are on these books because I was the first guy to get to read them.
Sid: (Laughing)
John: And to be honest with you one of the most wonderful encounters with the Holy Spirit when I sit down to write. So I’m so glad that I obeyed God years ago when he told me to write. “Bait of Satan” by the way is 20 years old this year, the publisher told me that Walmart cannot even keep them on the shelves they done…Walmart has done 3 massive orders in two weeks. So that to me it just shows it’s a God miracle.
Sid: In other words you don’t have to read a book with 10 principles on how to remain humble, you know.
John: Ha, listen here’s the thing. You know God spoke to me one day, I was a very poor public speaker too. The first time Lisa heard…
Sid: So you couldn’t score decently on SAT and you couldn’t speak and you speak all over the world; I know it’s so difficult to get you to be a guest. (Laughing)
John: Well this is ridiculous when you hear this. The first time Lisa heard me speak 30 years ago after we were married she was sound asleep within 5 minutes and she’s in the front row; and her best friend was drooling out of the side of her mouth she was in such deep sleep. And so God spoke to me one day; I still have that message archived in a place where nobody will find it but me. God spoke to me and said “Son, I let you experience that and the SAT’s everything so that you will always know how bad you are without Me.”
Sid: And you know I have this statistic right in front of me over 20,000 churches in North America alone use your materials. It’s… God gets all, all the glory. As a matter of fact your pastor had a vision about you before any of this happened, tell me about that.
John: Well it was quite interesting; I was a member of a large church and there was 11 or us pastors I was a youth pastor. And he came into a meeting and he looked at us and he said “Gentleman I had a vision last night and said it was so vivid it was almost like I was watching it on a television screen.” And he said “In this vision one of you pastors will not be on our team much longer, you’ll be going out and coming out and back and you’re going to be a blessing to the Body of Christ and that man is you John Bevere.” When he said it the Spirit of God fell on me and I just began to weep. And I said “You know I was in prayer 5 months ago and God whispered that to my heart but I didn’t tell anybody but my wife and a best friend who was in another state. And it just affirmed to me that what I do in traveling and speaking all over the world is something that God absolutely wanted.” And it’s helped us through the hard times in the beginning when you know invitations weren’t coming in like they come in today 25 years later. But it’s just amazing to me; I stand in awe literally at what God had done and I know that He’s done this for the sake of His people, not for the sake of John Bevere.
Sid: Okay this is a Sid question and I feel like I want to ask most of the top 5 fold ministers in the world this question. “What is your personnel prayer, Bible reading, meditation life like with that busy schedule, do you still carve out time for God?”
John: Yes Sir. I make sure that almost every day I’m not going to say every day because I don’t want to lie online. There are times that you just have from flights and everything and I’ll literally read the word of God on flights. But I make sure that I’m in taking the word of God because I know that it’s food to our spirit. Then as far as prayer goes I will have days and days where I carve out an hour, half hour, hour. And then they’ll be times I just go for longer and then there will be times I’ll set apart to pray and fast. So yeah, I see too many examples Sid of guys that became very well-known and lost that private time with God and their ministries went flat and they ran into trouble later. So it’s pretty much a priority for me because my wife says “I get kind of grumpy if I don’t get that time with God” (Giggling). So I….
Sid: I understand you have something that I understand that many Christians of today don’t have; you have still retained, and I know that this will sound crazy when I say it that it’s an exception. But you have still maintained the holiness and the reverence of God, He’s not your good buddy, He’s not your high 5 friend, He is your friend but there’s a reference and holiness that you have maintained. Talk about that.
John: Well to be honest with you the fear of the Lord is really the cornerstone message of my life. I had one very well-known pastor when he was introducing me at a conference say “You know whether John speaks on the “Bait of Satan” whether he speaks on “Undercover” or he speaks on “Holy Spirit” or whatever he speaks on it always comes out “In the fear of the Lord.” And the reason is because God did that in my life and in my heart. One of the things that I look at is that I had a real powerful, powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit in Malaysia and literally women… and the auditorium was packed and it was the largest high school in the nation people had come from all over. And I remember that we were at the very end we had done 10 meetings; this was the biggest; this one was jam packed. And I remember I came down to minister to these women and as I came down the Spirit of God fell on them and they were all on the floor within 30 seconds. And they were howling laughing now I had never seen this before in Asia and I just sat there and this was years and years ago this was back in the ’90’s. And I remember I was like “Woe,” so I stood back and I watched and literally these women were howling. Now Asian women are very reserved, very quiet but these women were just like I mean watching the best Three Stooges program they had ever seen or the funniest movie they’d ever seen. And it was just literally it was so wonderful the presence of God’s love was so amazing. And then what happened was it lasted about 5 minutes and all of the sudden the atmosphere changed and I thought “What is up?” And a total different presence came in an awesome presence a terrifying presence but terrifyingly wonderful if that makes sense.
Sid: Well it does to me if I remember right you have a Catholic background, I have a Jewish background and to be candid with you yes God’s my best friend. Yes I understand intimacy with God but I am never going to forsake the fact that He is holy! And that’s like the furthest extreme in society, in Christian society today.
John: Well this is what marked me these women that were laughing hysterically all of a sudden started screaming like they were on fire, yet it was not demonic it was wonderfully holy. And they’re literally like on fire, I don’t know how else to describe it, it lasted about 90 seconds to 3 minutes, it gradually passed out. I remember while they were screaming I was walking back and forth Sid and I thought “Oh my God. Oh my God” and that’s what kept coming out of my mouth. And I realized that when they were laughing hysterically Daddy, Abba was ministering to His daughters. When they started screaming like they were being on fire I realized that the King had come in. And Sid I knew no irreverence would be tolerated in that presence. For the first time in my life I understood the atmosphere that Ananias and Sapphira lied in.
Sid: I’ll tell you what we’re out of time right now I wished we weren’t I’d like to talk forever on this subject. But you have such a genuine gift from God in teaching and I can’t wait because the most misunderstood personality of the Godhead is the Holy Spirit.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth