Sid Roth - God Took Away This Pro Golfer's Ability to Golf
This is absolutely ridiculous. I mean, can a professional golfer forget how to play golf?
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with brad McClendon, and I mean, this is absolutely ridiculous. It's hard for me to believe a professional golfer absolutely forgets how to play golf. I want to take you back, five years old something amazing happened to you. Tell me about it.
Brad McClendon: Well I grew up in a pastor's home and my daddy was a preacher and at age five I had a visitation from the Lord, and he came and actually talked to me in the spirit of what I would be doing today.
Sid Roth: What did he tell you?
Brad McClendon: He said I would, he would call me to the nations and to teach his people how to hear God for themselves.
Sid Roth: Can everyone hear God for themselves?
Brad McClendon: Oh everybody, everybody.
Sid Roth: So why, how come most people that call themselves Christians don't?
Brad McClendon: Well it really bases itself on the Holy Spirit. The Lord said that if we're not baptized on water and the spirit we're not able to see the Kingdom of God. And I think by the Holy Spirit we can enter into that.
Sid Roth: But there are a lot of people that are filled with the Holy Spirit and they still say they don't hear God.
Brad McClendon: Well that goes to the scripture of Romans 8:7. That was the foundational scripture the Lord gave me to walk in the spirit.
Sid Roth: Which was?
Brad McClendon: And he said, it says, 'the mind is at enmity with God. It can't even understand God's ways'. And so the things the Lord started showing me at an early age, I would just believe in as a child. But as we get older our minds get older and we start understanding the world's ways instead of God's ways. And so a lot of times we have to almost train ourselves the opposite way to hear the Lord.
Sid Roth: You know, I'm a very logical person and that's a great asset for me. But I find in the invisible world it becomes a liability because I'm not dealing with all of the facts even though I think I'm dealing with all the facts. Is that what you're saying?
Brad McClendon: That's exactly what I'm saying.
Sid Roth: I'm glad you said that. So how did you find out you had this talent?
Brad McClendon: Well when I was eight, at age, you mean the golf?
Sid Roth: Yes.
Brad McClendon: At age ten, my sister actually took me out and played golf at a little nine-hole course and I ended up shooting 52. That's a really good score at age ten. Never picked up a club. And I came home. My mother...
Sid Roth: Were your folks athletes? I mean, where did it come from?
Brad McClendon: My dad was very good in sports. We've always been good in sports as far as the family is concerned. But my grandfather was very good in golf. Never became a professional golfer, but could have been a professional golfer. And so after my sister had taken me out to play she told my mother, 'you need to get him on the golf course'. And so I started playing with little old hickory sticks with my grandfather.
Sid Roth: How good were you at your best?
Brad McClendon: I can't say how good I was. I'd say I was pretty good. You know, I could probably hit with the best of them.
Sid Roth: How important was golf to you?
Brad McClendon: It was more important than God.
Sid Roth: Seriously.
Brad McClendon: Serious.
Sid Roth: I mean when you practiced, did you really practice?
Brad McClendon: I would hit a thousand balls a day.
Sid Roth: A thousand. Was it more important than your family?
Brad McClendon: Definitely. I had such a different life.
Sid Roth: What about that little kid that had this visitation from God?
Brad McClendon: Well as I grew up, as I grew up in age I saw different things being in a pastor's home and it caused me as far as the religion is concerned, religion came in, in this movement that was a part of and really caused me to get hard. And it was really the enemy trying to take me out because of what the Lord had called me to do. And I got hard toward the Lord and this whole religious thing.
Sid Roth: Yeah, but what happens when you develop cancer? You developed cancer. What type?
Brad McClendon: Well it was a rare sarcoma and I was actually playing golf one day, and I bent down to actually pick up the ball out of the cup and my knee wouldn't bend back, and I thought, well something is wrong here. And so my wife said, 'we need to go get it checked out'. I said, 'let's wait'. And so I can't stand doctors, you know, not in a bad way. I just don't like to go to doctors.
Sid Roth: Right. I understand totally.
Brad McClendon: And so anyway, I waited a month and within a month that tumor on my leg was double its size and she said, 'you need to go get it checked out'. And so finally we had it checked out and the guy was going to take a biopsy, or actually going to take it out to start with. And then I woke up out of the, in the recovery room and he was over my bed and had this weird look on his face. And I said, 'what is it, doctor'? He said, 'I've never seen anything like it in my life'. He said, 'i had to just take a biopsy of it,' he said, 'because I don't know what it is'. And so that's when it started, and they sent it off to the pathologist. They didn't even know what it was. Then they sent it to mayo clinic and they misdiagnosed it. And so next thing you know he's calling the national institute of health and gets me there to do experimental medicine on it.
Sid Roth: Well how life-threatening was this?
Brad McClendon: Oh it was enough to, it could kill you.
Sid Roth: So your wife heard about a woman that prayed for the sick. Marilyn Hickey was her name and she coerces you to go there. What was Marilyn like when you went there?
Brad McClendon: Marilyn was not there. At this point in my time in my life I was still playing professional golf and I had gone through all of the three months of treatments and they sent me home to heal. And so long story short, my wife says, 'i want to go hear Marilyn Hickey at this church'. And I fought it to no end.
Sid Roth: I'm sure.
Brad McClendon: I didn't want to be in a church. And so we drove to this church. We stood in line. There was all these people in line to be in this church and I thought, what am I doing here? And we get there and this man comes out and starts preaching the word. And she leaned over to me. She said, 'we're in the wrong church'. And I said...
Sid Roth: You made a mistake after standing in that line that whole time?
Brad McClendon: Oh yes.
Sid Roth: You must have been upset.
Brad McClendon: I was so mad I couldn't wait to get home. And so...
Sid Roth: By the way, who was that man?
Brad McClendon: That man was benny hinn.
Sid Roth: You made a mistake.
Brad McClendon: We were, I call it a divine fluke.
Sid Roth: What happened with that divine fluke?
Brad McClendon: Well he came out and started preaching. I was mad as a hornet and he said, as he was preaching, he stopped in the middle of his preaching and he said, 'i feel like I'm supposed to call people up for salvation. Anybody want to give their heart to the Lord'?
Sid Roth: Not you.
Brad McClendon: That's exactly right. Well and my wife looked over at me and she said, 'you need to go on down'. I said, 'I'm saved'. And she said, 'it's okay. You got to have some kind of prayer. You're gonna die anyway. Just get on down there'. She pushed me out on the aisle and there I was.
Sid Roth: Just a matter of speech or really?
Brad McClendon: No really shoved me out. And so there I am this country boy standing there in the middle of the aisle and I wanted to get mad. Of course, my pride, you know, kept me from making a show of things. And so I walked down and he called all the elders up to pray for everybody, and guess who was left out? They didn't have enough elders.
Sid Roth: For you.
Brad McClendon: To pray for people. And there I am standing by myself.
Sid Roth: And you're happy.
Brad McClendon: Oh I'm very happy. I look at, I'm looking over my shoulder looking at my wife thinking, oh just wait, you know. And so benny comes out of the side door and lays his hands on me, and just speaks in an unknown tongue through the Holy Spirit.
Sid Roth: Anything happen?
Brad McClendon: I didn't feel not one thing.
Sid Roth: Oy vey. So what's he doing there? He's in the wrong church. The wrong person is praying for him. He's got life-threatening cancer. Didn't feel nothing. But obviously something happened. Don't go away. We'll be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter here brad McClendon. Brad, I mean, you are bad, professional golfer and he develops life-threatening cancer. His wife drags him to hear an evangelist by the name of Marilyn Hickey. He waits in this long line. Finds out they're in the wrong church and there's this guy preaching. His name turns out to be, his name is benny hinn and he goes up for prayer. This guy benny hinn prays for him and nothing? You didn't feel nothing? So what happened?
Brad McClendon: Well that Monday I was scheduled to fly out to go back to the national institute of health for checkups. And so I got on the plane like I normally would every week, and flew up there. They did all of my tests and they came out saying, 'what did you do during the week'? And I said, 'nothing'. They said, 'you had to do something'. I said, 'no, not really'. And they said, 'your cancer is gone and it's dead'.
Sid Roth: At that moment, what did you think?
Brad McClendon: I got mad.
Sid Roth: Did you say God, you got mad.
Brad McClendon: I got mad.
Sid Roth: Why?
Brad McClendon: Because I was such, I had such a hard heart toward the Lord through all of my life and through all my runnings, and everywhere I'd go the Lord would show up. I would go in a bar and a drunk would say, 'I need to get my life right with the Lord'.
Sid Roth: You had this prophetic gift from a child and you were perverting it, and people were paying you to use it.
Brad McClendon: Oh well what would happen, what happened was is that a lot of times with different people that were, I was actually wanting, needing some money to do something and I would start presenting them what I wanted to do and then I would be able to hear their thoughts of the idea they had toward it, and then be able to say what they were thinking and make it my idea, and they'd go, 'that's exactly what I was thinking. I think that's the way we need to do it'. I said, 'i think so, too. Let's do it'.
Sid Roth: Now you have a pretty stiff neck. Now let me ask you a question. Then after all of this you have this vision. Tell me about it.
Brad McClendon: Well I was in a crusade. A friend of mine called me to be a part of it and I was, I didn't want to be a part of it. But I was standing in this crusade and all of a sudden the heavens opened and I saw myself as a five-year-old boy, and I saw my, the beginning of my life with the Lord and where I was now. And one of the first things he said, he said, 'if you don't repent I'm going to remove your lamp stand'.
Sid Roth: What does that mean, die?
Brad McClendon: No. He had put in me an impartation of who he was, of his love and of his light, his lamp into my heart when I was a young boy, and he was about to remove it because I knew the truth and I perverted what he gave me. And he said, 'if you don't repent I'm going to remove your lamp stand'. And he said, 'I'll hand you over to a fake mind'. And of course, fear runs down my back and a holy fear, and I literally feel like my eyeballs are going to pop out of my head. I said, 'Lord, help me'. That's all I could say. And as soon as I said that, benny was on the stage and he, it looked like he was about to pass out and he said, 'there's a wind of Samuel coming in this auditorium'. And everybody started falling out. There wasn't any catchers.
Sid Roth: By falling out, explain.
Brad McClendon: They just started, if you've been in a coliseum and you see the nosebleed section, what I call it, way up in the top, people were literally coming under the power of God and falling.
Sid Roth: Falling out of their seats?
Brad McClendon: Yeah. Just falling out of their seats under the power of God and nobody was getting hurt. That was the miraculous thing.
Sid Roth: What does this wind of Samuel mean?
Brad McClendon: It was really an impartation of God's spirit that was coming to impart the prophetic on his people again so that his people would be able to speak and hear his words.
Sid Roth: So what happened to you?
Brad McClendon: Well everybody fell out except me.
Sid Roth: What do you expect?
Brad McClendon: And so I think at this time I've lost it. It's over. And Kent yells at me and as soon as all that happens, and benny leaves the stage, and he says, 'come on with us. Benny wants you to come eat with us'. So I had to go feeling this turmoil in my heart, eat with all of these preachers, Jesse duplantis and different folks like that, having to sit around a table and act like I'm, you know, know the Lord. And Kent, his assistant, looked over at me and h says, 'i want to come to your house'. And so I said okay. So he came to my house the next day. And we're sitting in my living room and we're talking about golf, and all of a sudden he just raises up and he says, and he points his finger, and he says, 'God knows your sins'. He said, 'if you don't repent he's going to remove your lamp stand'. And of course, I fell out of my chair.
Sid Roth: But those were the same words you saw in that vision.
Brad McClendon: Exact same words. God was literally confirming it.
Sid Roth: All right so did you repent?
Brad McClendon: I repented. I repented, but the thing about it is he told me everything that I was even doing in hiding. I had a total different light out on the road than I did with my family, you know. And so I'm sitting there just scared, repenting and my wife has been praying for me. She's crying. Everybody is sobbing. And he lays his hands on me, and he says, 'the Lord wants you to fulfill your contract, but he's going to deal with you while you're out on the road, so hang on to him'.
Sid Roth: Did you fulfill your contract on your own?
Brad McClendon: Yes.
Sid Roth: I want to find out what that is. This professional golfer all of a sudden gets the shock of his life. He forgets how to swing. Don't go away. We'll be swinging right back in a moment.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with Brad McClendon and brad is a professional golfer. So tell me, how does a professional golfer forget how to play golf? I mean, that takes a lot of talent. Did you not play for a while, was that it?
Brad McClendon: No. No, I played every day. Like I said, I hit a thousand balls a day and I played since I was ten, 11 years old. But since the Lord had really called me and I chose to do what he called me to do when I was a young boy, I was told that he was going to deal with me while I was out on the road, and he still wanted me to fulfill my contract. And so I didn't have a clue what that meant, but I knew something was coming. Well I'll never forget it. I was at a tournament down in Hilton Head, South Carolina and they called me up to the tee to play, you know, to tee off on the first tee. And just like any, every day work, I just put the tee in the ground and stood back, looked down the fairway and went to put my club down. And as soon as I put my club down behind the ball I felt this presence literally lift out of me and it felt like something just, that I was emptying one segment of my body, the mental aspect of golf, and I forgot how to play. I didn't even know how to play.
Sid Roth: A thousand times a day for all these years.
Brad McClendon: That's exactly right.
Sid Roth: It's impossible.
Brad McClendon: That's exactly right.
Sid Roth: I tell you that's impossible.
Brad McClendon: It is impossible. I thought that myself and I said, how am I going to hit this.
Sid Roth: Was anyone watching you?
Brad McClendon: Oh there was many people watching me.
Sid Roth: Were you embarrassed?
Brad McClendon: I was very embarrassed. I was very scared. This was the first time I was actually nervous and scared. And I thought, well I've got to hit it somehow. And so I just took the club back, you know, as good as I could, and I just wacked and I barely topped the ball, and it drove it down the ground, and it bounced up. It almost hit me on my nose and it road off the tee, and everybody just, ooo, you could hear this, you know, this mood in all the crowd. And there I was hacking it out of these weeds to get it in the fairway. Well it was a par 4. It takes you four shots to get in the hole. It took me 14.
Sid Roth: So did you just throw in the towel and quit?
Brad McClendon: No. I had to keep playing. God, the Lord was really sTripping me of all of these pride issues I had in my life. I thought I was too good for anything. I even thought I got healed because I was a good guy. And by the ninth hole, I was in such, I felt so humiliated and my body was literally in pain from being sTripped of this pride, and I started to walk off the golf course and quit. And the voice of the Lord said, 'where are you going, boy'? And I turned around and I said, 'what'? He said, 'i thought you'd do anything for me as long as I let you say that'. And that was my prayer. And I started to cry, and I said, 'Lord, I will'. He said, 'get back out there and play'. So I played. I had to turn around like a little old boy and walk back out up to the golf course and play the last nine. And as I came in, I wasn't going to turn in my score because it was so bad.
Sid Roth: I don't blame you.
Brad McClendon: I was so humiliated. And I started to walk by this huge scoreboard, and he said, 'turn your score in'. And I said, 'oh God'.
Sid Roth: What was your score?
Brad McClendon: Well I turned it in. They put it on the big scoreboard. It was 110.
Sid Roth: You're a professional.
Brad McClendon: That's exactly right. A good one.
Sid Roth: That's not even. That's not even good blood pressure.
Brad McClendon: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And I grabbed my bag and I threw it in my car, and I'll never forget it. I drove to the hampton hotel. I walked in my room and I threw my bag on the floor, and I fell on the floor, and I started crying like a little baby in pain and asking the Lord, 'why are you doing this to me'? And suddenly I looked up and there were feet there, literal feet. And I had glasses on, and I took my glasses off, and I said, 'oh God,' I said, 'I'm sorry for, you know, hallucinating'. Because I thought I was out of my mind. And I put my glasses back on and they were literally there. It wasn't a vision. It wasn't anything but the Lord standing right there in my mind. And I looked up and there he was in my room and he looked at me with this half smile, and he put his hand on my head, and this lightning of love shot down into me that I cannot even describe, and I totally miraculously forgot all the pain, and he never spoke not one thing about what he was doing to me. He only spoke his purposes in my life and what was to come.
Sid Roth: What was his purposes?
Brad McClendon: His purposes were the things that I'm doing now, exactly what I'm sitting here saying.
Sid Roth: What was that liquid love you talked about?
Brad McClendon: It was such love that I literally got the revelation that his love covers a multitude of my sin and I could look at him straight in the eyes, my Lord, without feeling humiliated, without feeling shame. And there I was a sinner, and I felt so loved and such a friend that I could say anything to him and he would talk to me back. That's the kind of love I felt. And he said, 'arise,' he said, 'and sit down, grab a pen and paper, and write down every word that comes out of my mouth'. And from then on through that year I lost everything I had.
Sid Roth: Did you try to play golf again after that?
Brad McClendon: Oh the next day I walked out and I thought, well hallelujah, you know, I'm going to do good. I had a visitation from the Lord. And I walked out there and the same thing would happen. My, even all of my buddies thought I was either on drugs or having a nervous breakdown.
Sid Roth: So what are you doing now?
Brad McClendon: I am actually doing, I'm actually preaching the word and teaching people how to hear God for themselves.
Sid Roth: Out of curiosity, in recent years, how many years ago was this about?
Brad McClendon: Oh that was probably ten years ago.
Sid Roth: Have you played golf in the last year?
Brad McClendon: Oh yes.
Sid Roth: And how do you do?
Brad McClendon: I do pretty good.
Sid Roth: Are you a pro?
Brad McClendon: No. I still probably shoot in the 70s, but I'm not a pro any more. I actually enjoy it.
Sid Roth: Now you know things about people.
Brad McClendon: Right.
Sid Roth: You also told me before we started this show that God told you about something that was going to happen. Would you speak that right now?
Brad McClendon: Sure. I believe somebody is about to be touched and her name is Mary Johnson, and you've had pain in your left hip and God wants to heal you. And I really believe the Lord is going to heal you right now, and I'm going to pray for you because the power of God is about to come on you right now. And there's a, there's something even about your blood system to where you feel almost lethargic and you've almost had depression come upon you. But God is about to rejuvenate your blood.
Sid Roth: Quickly.
Brad McClendon: Lord, I ask that you touch this Mary Johnson right now and heal her in the name of Jesus. Let your healing power flow through her hips and her blood in Jesus' name.
Sid Roth: You know, just as Brad knew someone by name, how did he know that person? He's never heard of that person. God knows your name. God knows where you live. God knows your home. God knows the home that you're supposed to be living in right now. So why are you just not listening to him? I pray in the name of Jesus that those earplugs come out of your ears right now and that you hear God clearer than you ever have before, and you experience that love, that love right now that that same love brad experienced, it's flowing. Oh, it's coming. It's coming. It's pouring. It's like a gusher. It's like a river. It's going through your room. It's going through your body. And where there was no hope, there's hope right now. Where there was depression there is peace. I'll tell you what, I wish I could bottle this peace right now, but I can't. But I can tell you how you can experience it all the time. Turn your life over to Jesus. Say, Jesus, I make you my Lord. I'm a sinner. But because of your blood I repent of my sins and I'm clean, and now that I'm clean, I ask you to live inside of me. I am so hungry for you, God. I pray that everyone watching give them no rest until they hunger and go all the way with God. Not religion, not tradition. Intimacy. Intimacy into God. Into God. That's what's going on right now. It's going on right within them right now.