Sid Roth - I've Seen What's About to Hit the Earth
My guest and his congregation are forerunners of the greater global glory that will change the face of humanity.
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm here with Todd Smith, pastor of the great North Georgia Revival. I'll tell you what, we'll get into that in just a little. But your wife, Karen, has a course she teaches at your church, and she asked you to come in as a guest teacher and you thought, "Well, it'll be fine. I'll just do that," but you got a big surprise.
Todd Smith: We had a visitation from the Lord. She did ask me to come in to our ministry training center and teach on revival, revivalists and great moves of God. In that particular night, Sid, we were reviewing the Brownsville Revival, and I had visited there about a dozen times. I was talking about my experience, and about 15 minutes into my talk, God walks into the room.
Sid Roth: Now, when people use a phrase like that, what do you mean by that?
Todd Smith: I didn't see Him. I didn't smell Him. I didn't see a cloud, but the whole atmosphere of the classroom shifted. And before I knew it, I looked up and the students in the room, about 25 to 30 of them, pushed back from their table and found themselves on their face, crying and weeping and repenting. God stayed in that room, His presence, His glory for 30 minutes and after 30 minutes, He left the room. But we were forever changed and marked.
Sid Roth: So the next Sunday, you had been to Brownsville. You saw something phenomenal. Guess what happened the next Sunday service. You could hardly wait.
Todd Smith: I could hardly wait, and honestly, my expectation was way up here, but it was just a typical, normal service with no dynamic visitation from God. I was sorely disappointed.
Sid Roth: And so a year goes by and guess what? Nothing happened. How could that be, Todd?
Todd Smith: You know, Mark, Chapter 11, I really found the answer to that because I was whining to the Lord. I was saying, "God, you showed up in such power in the classroom, and we haven't heard from you in that dimension, in that level in a solid year". But in Mark, Chapter 11, the Bible says that Jesus entered His own house and in the Bible, it says in Mark 11:11 that He took a look around. I really feel that when Jesus walked into that classroom, in that February day, I believe He came in and took a look around at our students and our church to evaluate the environment, took the temperature of the room and measured our capacity of whether or not that we can sustain the glory of God. I think He waited on a year for us to develop and to prepare so that He can trust us with that greater glory.
Sid Roth: But you tried to figure him out, and you got discouraged, even in a point that you thought it was your fault that nothing was going on.
Todd Smith: That's exactly what I thought. I called our church in January of 2018 to a fast. I was so disappointed.
Sid Roth: So it was a fairly big church.
Todd Smith: No, it wasn't a big church at all, but about 85 percent of our congregation participated in the fast. They fasted social media, some of them fasted complete food, nothing but juices. They all fasted, and we went into the prayer chamber to see the Lord. But I was so discouraged. And in that fast though, Sid, I had the vision of fire on the water in our baptismal tank. It lasted 8 to 10 seconds, and I saw our baptistery that was empty with no water in it. But it was fully in This vision and fire on top of the water. And the Lord said to me very clearly, "Todd, I'm going to baptize people with Holy Spirit fire. When they get baptized in water, they're going to come up, and fire is going to fall upon them". It was in the middle of that fast that I had that vision, but I was so discouraged by not seeing the manifest presence of God, the glory of God in our services after that first visitation, I went into a staff meeting and resigned my church.
Sid Roth: Even though you saw that vision?
Todd Smith: I had no reference point for it. I didn't know what it meant. I didn't put all the things together to think I'm going to be in a global revival in just a few weeks, but I was so overwhelmed with discouragement that even on the Friday before I resigned to my executive staff, I'm in a dark room. I throw my hands up, and I say, "God, I quit". Then, that's when I walked in the following Tuesday and resigned to my executive staff that I'm no longer going to be their pastor.
Sid Roth: And one of your associate pastors is talking to an evangelist, and he said something strange.
Todd Smith: Yeah, Pat Schatzline had a dream. Never met him a day in my life, but he knew my youth pastor. He called my youth pastor, and he said, "Marty, you're not going to believe this, but I had a dream about your pastor last night. I saw him in a dark room with his hands up, and he's quitting". He put the phone on the conference-room table, and Pat introduced himself to me. He says, "Todd, I don't know you, but I had a dream about you last night. I saw you in a dark room with your hands up, and you're quitting. God told me to tell you don't quit. Don't quit". Sid, I was 2 weeks away from missing what I believed to be the greatest move of God in my life that I had ever witnessed or encountered, 2 weeks because of discouragement and frustration and not understanding the processes and the ways of God.
Sid Roth: Todd, the miracles you tell me, they're even increasing. They were pretty dynamic when I was going to it, but tell me what's going on. A few of the miracles that are going on.
Todd Smith: Right now, Sid, our church is experiencing I believe an uptick of the glory of the Lord. We have witnessed in the last few months blind eyes open, deaf ears open. We have literally seen miracles transpire right in front of our very eyes in the baptismal waters as people are being immersed. One little fella, 9 years old, by the name of Reed, his family had heard what God was going in this revival, this move of the Lord. So little Reed drives down with his family from Delaware, 12 1/2 hours through the night because he had little to no vision. A vision of 20 over 3,200.
Sid Roth: Wow.
Todd Smith: That means that he can only see about six inches in front of him. He gets into the water, and we have it on video.
Sid Roth: I watched it.
Todd Smith: Yes. That when he goes up underneath the water and he comes up, he rubs his eyes and his ears to get the water out, and he opens up his eyes and he realizes for the first time that he can see out of his left eye. That along with a lady just here recently, in one of the churches we visited, needed hip replacement. She came and got baptized in a baptismal tank. Jesus encountered her. She goes to the doctor the next day to verify where they're going to replace the hip, and the doctor says, "We don't know what happened, but your hip is perfect". And Sid, maybe one of my favorites of all times is a lady walks into the room with stage-four leukemia. She had lost 50 pounds, lost her appetite, could not eat, could only drink some Boost to sustain her appetite. She came to get immersed in the waters. She gets baptized, goes the next day, have the test run. The doctor calls her and says, "We think something is wrong. We think maybe something is wrong with our machines. Can you come back in and let us do lab work and run another nuclear PET scan on you? Because you have cancer right"? She goes, "Yeah. I have leukemia". He said, "We need you to run a test". She goes in the next day. They run the test a second time. Everything that is supposed to light in her body that says you have cancer. Nothing there. And the bloodwork even says all the leukemia, all the cancer in your body has been gone because she encountered the healer, Jesus, in the baptismal water.
Sid Roth: You know, I think it has to do with your Baptist background that you are a stickler to verify medically when people get healed. I mean, I will never forget meeting this woman and seeing the PET scan of all those malignant tumors. How many did she have at that particular one?
Todd Smith: 50 cancerous lesions in her body that were lit up on this PET scan.
Sid Roth: And right after being baptized, she just happened to have another PET scan taken and what did it show?
Todd Smith: Zero cancerous lesions.
Sid Roth: I'll tell you what. When we come back, Todd is going to pray to jump-start the greater global glory in your life. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Pastor Todd, you say that prayer is a deposit in the spirit. Explain that.
Todd Smith: In the early days of the revival, Sid, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to sustain the glory of the Lord. I had been used to moves of the spirit that would last 2 to 3 weeks, but then it would go back to normal. But I knew that we were in something very, very special because the tangible presence of God was sustaining itself in the sanctuary. We would walk in and our shoulders would slump forward because of the weight of the Lord, because we were in the presence of the Holy One. I reached out to Pastor John Kilpatrick at the Brownsville Assembly of God and asked him. I said, "Pastor Kilpatrick, help me. What do I need to do to pastor and to sustain this move of God"? He said, "Todd, number one, keep Jesus central". I checked the box. I said yes. Then, he said something that changed my life. He said, "Todd, prayer is the key". And he said, "Prayer is like a deposit that you make in the Spirit so that when you stand up to minister and the needs of the people walk into the building, you have an account that you can withdraw from to meet the needs of the people. We're sowing to the Spirit, and we're reaping by the Spirit. That's where our power comes from, not from just our preaching and worship, but finding Jesus in the secret place and spending significant amounts of time praying. Our church corporately prays five times a week. We gather together, and we don't ask Jesus to heal people, but here's what we do, Sid. We seek the face of God. We run after Him, and we say, "Jesus, fill this sanctuary with Your glory. We give You the keys to the room. We give You access to every compartment and department. We want You to come and do what You did in the Bible, with no agenda but Your agenda". Then, we finally said, "God," and we say it every week, "Search our hearts. May nothing that grieves you remain in our life".
Sid Roth: What is the difference between a visitation and a habitation?
Todd Smith: It is a significant difference. A visitation is like, I'll use an analogy of an in-law coming to your house and staying the weekend. You prep the house for a visitation. You remove all the clutter from underneath the bed in which they're going to stay. You clean up the closet. You dust the frames. You clean the house. Then, you push all the unwanted stuff in that room in a closet, and you lock the door. You know, within 72 hours, she's leaving. But you made a good impression. But a visitation is when the in-laws comes to you and says, "Oh, by the way, they canceled my lease. I need a place to stay, and I need to be here for 6 months". They went from visitation to habitation.
Sid Roth: Got it.
Todd Smith: How you treat someone that's visiting you to someone that's living with you is completely different. What God is looking for, Sid, He's not looking for weekend visitations of church, of where we get all cleaned up, put on a good show, a good production and then the rest of the 6 days of the week, we live our lives like we choose and how we want to. God is looking for particular environments and cultures that He's attracted to so that He can come unpack His bags, so to speak, and reside in that place. That's the difference between visitation and habitation.
Sid Roth: So let me get this straight. When you are, when God is inhabiting where you live, does that carry over to where you work, where you play, where you go to school, your whole life, or is it just your home and your church?
Todd Smith: We have done a good job of compartmentalizing the Father. We got our church life, our spiritual life, but then the rest of our is our choosing. But when the glory of God comes in, Sid, when the presence of the Lord encounters you, it changes everything. It changes your entertainment preferences, how you communicate, how you talk to people, what you put in front of your eyes. You become aware of what grieves Him and harms Him. You see, so many in the body of Christ are being entertained by the very things that nailed Him to the cross. But when He walks into the room and you see Him in the purity of His holiness and His righteousness, it affects you to the very core. No longer are you interested in just doing church as usual and checking the box and going on, but you want to love Him, and you want to love Him well. You want to pursue Him. You want to please Him, and you open up your heart and say, "God, I don't want anything in my heart that's offensive to you because you love me so much, and I know understand that".
Sid Roth: Repentance is so important. I'm going to say a prayer with everyone that is viewing by divine call of God. That's you. I want to make sure that you know and have your own experiential knowledge with God. I would like you to repeat this prayer out loud with me and mean it to the best of your ability, out loud. Dear God, I am a sinner. I'm so sorry. I believe the blood of Jesus washes away my sins, and I am clean. And now that I am clean, Jesus, come and live inside of me. I make You my Savior and Lord over my entire life. Give me my own experience with You. In Jesus' Name, amen.
Todd Smith: Amen.
Sid Roth: Todd, the glory of God is so strong in this studio right now. Tell us three principles you learned, so that all of us can experience the glory.
Todd Smith: Sid, before the glory of God fell into our church, I got ahold of Psalm 27, verse 8, where God said to David, "Oh, David. Would you seek my face"? David said, "God, your heart will I seek". David, the most powerful man on the planet, the wealthiest man with the strongest army, that in the middle of doing life, evidently lost the face of God. He had God's protection. He knew God's provision. But God had to call a time-out, put things on pause, and said, "David, would you come back and seek My face"? David realized that he had lost the face, and he said, "Oh, God, Your heart will I seek". Sid, the Lord spoke to me when we called our church to a fast. He said, "Ask Me for nothing. Don't ask for financial provision. Don't ask for healings of your body, but seek My face," because as a pastor, I had lost the face of God. In my preaching, I loved Him. Ministry, counseling, I loved Him, but I lost the face of God. I believe that's the key to encountering the glory of the Lord. We prayed during that fast that we would see the manifest glory of God. We said, "God, manifest your glory. Do whatever you want to do in this place. We want to see your glory". And the third thing that we prayed for, God pressed into us. Lord, push your holiness into us so that we can see the true identity of our souls and our spirits. He began to do that. I believe that this is the pathway to that greater glory. Seeking the face of God, wanting nothing but Him. Crying out God, manifest Your glory among us. And anything that's offensive to You, please reveal it so I can remove. That's the pathway to the glory of God in your life.
Sid Roth: Todd, look into the camera and pray very briefly a release, the glory or anything God is telling you to pray.
Todd Smith: I asked the Lord about a year ago. I said, "God, increase Your glory in my life". And I heard the Spirit of God say to me, "Todd, increase your brokenness". The Lord taught me that the more broken I am, the more glory I can handle. The Bible says that God will not refuse a broken and contrite heart. I just believe right now, I want you to find a place on your floor and put your nose in the carpet or on the tile floor, whatever it is and see yourself in the very presence of a loving, gracious, merciful Savior and become real with Him. Get real with Him. I promise you, the presence of God will fill you and come to right where you are. These are the most serious times that we've ever lived, and God needs us. so Lord, I bless them right now. Greater glory, a greater dimension, not that we can flaunt it, Lord, not so that we can say or boast, but, God, so that You can use us to the hurting, the dying and the sick. To all those that are around us. Lord, unprecedented manifestation of your glory right now. Father, send it forth, the weight, the glory and the power. In your Name, Jesus. In your Name, amen.