Sid Roth - This Angel Came with a Strange Message
Sid Roth: Welcome, Holy Spirit. Go and flow! My guest, Chaz Strickland, was raised in a Baptist home void of the power of God. He walked away from God. Tell me a bit about your background.
Chaz Strickland: So in my background, my father was in the military, and him and my mother, they got divorced. And so I experienced some trauma as a child from that, and I was extremely angry. And I remember even at times being bullied by some people that lived in the home with me. So I grew up extremely angry, as a young man. And then over time, we ended up, my mother was remarried, and we ended up going to a Baptist church. But in our time at the Baptist church, I never saw the power of God. I truly did not know Jesus at all. So in my time there, I wondered if God is real, why don't I see anything that I read in the Bible? But that was a language I didn't know that I had. It just was something internally. So during this time, around 16 years old, my mother, she moved away from the church that we were going to because of a moral failure of the pastor. This created a lot of offense and hurt, especially for me. So because of this, I didn't want anything to do with God. And I began to go deeper and deeper into the world. I started falling into sexual immorality. I began to deal with depression very heavily. I barely graduated school. I graduated with a 2.0, I remember that when it was time to walk across the stage, I didn't know until the last minute that I was actually going to walk across the stage. And I began to get involved with selling stolen items, and next thing I knew I was robbed at gunpoint. And I just came to ground zero. But during this time, my mother had begun to go back to church, but it was a spirit-filled church, it was a church with fire in it. So the next thing I knew, I see this change in my mother, Sid. And so I decided to go back with her, but this time, while we were on our way to church, she's, like, "We're not going to that one. There's a completely different church that we're going to". So we pull up, we reach the parking lot of this ministry, and the sound of the glory of God was literally thundering out of this church. You could feel waves of His presence just in the soundwaves that were coming out of the building. And I remember being in the car, and I started weeping and crying. And at the time, Sid, I was not the type of person to cry. At the time my heart was hardened, but God was doing something. I was shaking, I was, like, from within, it was so unusual. So as I got closer to the building, it intensified. Then when we got inside, it got even crazier. So people were praying and singing in tongues. There was a woman on a keyboard, tears were coming down her eye. I never saw anyone be emotional about God. And next thing I knew, I decide I'm just going to sit here and kind of blend in and survive the service. So once I got to the end of the service, I'm thinking I'm right at the end, finishing. I could go home and go back to my old life. The man of God steps off of the pulpit, and he releases a prophetic word over me. And when that word was released, it changed everything about my life. I don't know how I knew, but I knew it was the Word of the Lord. I knew that God was speaking to me. Now, once that happened, I give my life to Jesus, but it takes three months for me to get baptized in the Holy Ghost. And one of the reasons why is, no one told me that all I needed was someone to just lay hands. And so I was going and getting water-baptized over and over and over again. I mean, I got baptized...
Sid Roth: You were hungry, at least, for God.
Chaz Strickland: I was so hungry, Sid. So the next thing I knew, I found out that all I had to do was go to the altar. So I go to the altar, hands get laid on me. I get baptized in the Holy Ghost. I started speaking in tongues. But what I loved the most was, though I was speaking in tongues, it opened a realm of the supernatural. And for a full year, Sid, I encountered visitations from the Lord, and the angel of the Lord coming to me was one of the first visitations that I remember. And it came to me and said, "I am an angel of the Lord, and I was sent to bring you a message". And then after that, I was waiting on words to come out, because I still didn't understand the language of God; I didn't understand that God speaks in diverse manners. But words didn't come out, Sid. The angel was standing right next to me. Physically I could feel the presence, but I couldn't see the angel. But water came out of the angel's mouth, and that water went down into my spirit. It was like a supernatural impartation. And it went down into me. And it was, like, after that, it was the beginning of me understanding secrets and mysteries in the Kingdom of God.
Sid Roth: You were visited in this dream, and prayed for by a man in a deliverance ministry. Explain that.
Chaz Strickland: This was so unusual. I wasn't expecting this to happen. I believe many times, in prophetic dreams, there's prophetic language where a person, it may not be that that person has come to you, it could be that that's someone that you respect and they prophetically represent a certain manifestation of God. So I believe that this man of God that I saw, he's a deliverance minister with a pronounced anointing on his life. He comes to me in the dream. No words were exchanged, but I knew in my spirit, when I saw him, that there was an impartation. He lays his hands on me. It was so tangible, Sid, that it shook me and woke me up out of my sleep, and there was still fire all over me. What I didn't expect was that when that deliverance minister visited me in the dream, and I believe it was an angel of the Lord, that when that happened, that I ended up being thrusted into a different dimension of the deliverance ministry, one that I had never saw before. Sid, after this angel touched me, everywhere that I started going, demons started manifesting. I would be in a service just talking about something that has nothing to do with deliverance. And demons would begin to manifest. And for a while, I tried to run from actually focusing and emphasizing on deliverance, because there was a part of me that was afraid of the controversy. But then I said, "You know what, God? I'm going to obey You. You've obviously thrusted me into a different dimension, so I'm going to obey what You're saying". So we started holding these meetings called "Out By Fire". And the reason we called it that is because when the fire of God comes, demons don't like fire. And the fire begins to drive them out. So we started hosting these meetings, and people began traveling initially all around the state of Florida. But over time, they started coming from different countries. I had to train a whole team of deliverance ministers to handle how many people were coming in. But this was the thing, Sid, while we held one of the first meetings, we were in this intense worship, there was a line of people outside the door before we even started the service. I walked in, and I'll never forget, it was one of those times where you knew something special was about to happen. And while the worship was going, it was extremely prophetic, and the cloud of glory started to actually manifest.
Sid Roth: Could others see that?
Chaz Strickland: It was visible. It wasn't in the Spirit, it was a visitation. And many times when the cloud shows up, we see, for example, Jesus was, He ascended by the cloud, which means that God uses the cloud as one of His transportation systems in the Spirit. So when a cloud comes, it's really a sign to us. It's God trying to get us to notice that there is something being transported from heaven into the earth. And it could be a technology of the supernatural, it could be something that is in the glory realm. And so this cloud was visible, Sid. But here's what shocked me about the cloud.
Sid Roth: What shocked you?
Chaz Strickland: Because I would hear about the cloud when I read books. But normally gold dust is left, or there'd be some type of sign, it made deliverance easier, Sid.
Sid Roth: Hmm.
Chaz Strickland: It was so easy to cast out devils.
Sid Roth: All right. Speaking of it's easier, it's probably the most misunderstood ministry on earth, the deliverance ministry. Why is it so misunderstood? You read the Bible, Jesus did it.
Chaz Strickland: I think it's misunderstood, and I don't say this in a disrespectful way, but Satan is extremely strategic with what he does. And because he's strategic, he does not want the church to begin to embrace spiritual warfare, because he knows that the only advantage that he can have over us is ignorance. And when we begin to cast out devils, it makes me think of when Jesus sent the disciples out two by two. He sent them out, and He told them, "Go and heal the sick, cleanse the leper, raise the dead, and cast out devils". So there's a list of four things He told them to do. While they were out doing it, they returned, and I found it interesting that when we look in Scripture, they said, "Even the demons are subject to us in Your Name". What that tells me is that, as they cast out devils, they saw the sick healed. As they cast out devils, they saw the lepers get healed. As they cast out devils, they also saw the dead get raised. And the reason why is because when we do deliverance, we are destroying the works of Satan. We're enforcing what Jesus paid for on the cross.
Sid Roth: So it's no wonder it's so controversial. Just tell me briefly what God has shown you is coming for the last days, soon. Very soon. If not... I expect it any day now, to be candid with you. I expect it now, to be candid with you. What's coming?
Chaz Strickland: So right now, when people think of "the last days," or they think about "the end times," they think about the anti-Christ, which there's a place for that. There's precedents to discuss the anti-Christ. However, the Bible says that in the last days, I'll pour my Spirit out on all flesh, and so this means that the context of the last days is actually the move of God. And so that means that we are in days where everything that God had done in the past, things we saw in the early church, they're going to come, but at a greater scale. He said that the glory of the latter house shall be greater than the former. So this means, dead raising is going to be normal. That means that it's not just going to be preachers, there's going to be people that are single mothers at home, they're going to raise the dead. They're going to cast out devils. They're going to prophesy. So we're going to see, but not just the gifts, there's going to be such an invading presence of heaven, that entire nations are going to experience Jesus Christ risen from the dead with infallible proofs which will even lead to a revival of the Jewish people.
Sid Roth: Tell you what. Sometimes a lot of people don't realize it, sometimes God is imparting things to us in our dreams. But sometimes it's the enemy. When we return, Chaz will explain how we can know if a dream is from God or the enemy. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Chaz, this is very controversial, but a lot of people are asking this. "I'm a believer in Jesus. I can't have a demon. I don't think a Christian can have a demon. What is he talking about"?
Chaz Strickland: I love this question, because I get it all the time. When you think of salvation, a lot of people, they'll say, well, because of the finished works of the cross, they'll say there's no way that a Christian can have a demon. Now it's not that I'm disagreeing with the finished works of the cross because this is extremely significant to our faith, but I'm going to use healing as an argument concerning the deliverance ministry. Many people that say that about deliverance, they don't apply that same logic to the healing ministry. For example, Jesus took stripes for every single sickness, but when we get saved, we don't instantly get healed in our body. We have to press in for our healing. Well, deliverance is exactly the same. Jesus gave us the authority to be delivered by going to the cross, He made a provision. But we have to press in by faith to manifest the freedom that Jesus paid for.
Sid Roth: Chaz, you say we're fighting a collapsing kingdom. Explain that.
Chaz Strickland: And so, a lot of people when they talk about Satan, they think of Satan from the context of after Adam fell. So they glorify Satan, they think of Satan in a sense, not intentionally, but they're thinking of him before the cross and resurrection. The Bible says that Jesus took the ordinances that were written against us, and He nailed them to the cross. And the Bible lets us know this disarmed Satan's kingdom. So Satan's kingdom was disarmed, and because his kingdom was disarmed, from that moment of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, Satan's kingdom, Satan's status is different now. The authority and dominion that he stole from Adam has actually been given back to the church. So the real issue is that Satan only looks as powerful as we are ignorant of our dominion.
Sid Roth: Give me an example of someone you prayed for, you've talked about at another time a woman that had cancer, and how deliverance fit in with her healing.
Chaz Strickland: Absolutely. There was a woman, we were having a service, and it was actually a normal Sunday, so it wasn't a conference, it wasn't a special meeting. And it shows how God's power can move every time we gather together; it can move every day, everywhere that we go. Well, she traveled from Orlando, so from us, it was about two and a half hours or so. But the reason she traveled was because she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, and the doctors said, "There is nothing else that we can do for you". And they were basically waiting on her to die. And so she was in the service, we didn't have any advance knowledge. So I was actually ending the service, and this is one of the reasons why we can't be structured, we have to be willing to follow the full of the Holy Spirit. So I'm actually about to walk out, we're almost done, I'm about to go to my office, and the husband comes up to me and says, "Can you please pray for my wife"? I'm, like, "Well, what's going on"? He mentions the cancer. And I said, "Okay, let's pray". So before we closed out, we had everyone in the room praying in the Holy Spirit, because I love the corporate anointing; there's something about when we come together. So we started praying together. And the Holy Spirit told me, He said, "Rebuke the spirit of death and infirmity". So this let us know that the cancer was not of natural cause. The root of the cancer was a spirit of death working along with infirmity. So the infirmity brings the sickness, and death swallows the person's life. So what we did is, we rebuked those spirits. When they came out, Sid, she shook violently. And I tell people, "And it wasn't Kundalini. It was the fire of the Holy Ghost". And after that she went back, so she goes to the doctor about two weeks. They looked, there's no trace of cancer at all. Completely gone.
Sid Roth: Now this is a little tricky. How can you tell if a dream is from God or from the enemy trying to just plant something bad in you?
Chaz Strickland: Oh, this is a great question, because a lot of people have trouble interpreting their dreams. So one of the first thing I'll say, to being able to interpret dreams properly, number one, the enemy brings a fear. This is one of the primary things that he does. If it's a dream from God, and it's a fear, it'll be a fear of the Lord. So He may give you an urgency, or a high regard or value for what He's showing you. But it's not the same as watching a horror movie, so you'll have fear. Another thing about a demonic dream, you'll see something that defiles you, usually. So if you're in a dream and you're doing something that's unclean, something that's unpleasing to the Lord, is one of the first signs that it's demonic. Another thing is that, in dreams, if something is being taken from you in a dream, let's say for example someone's in a dream and they're wearing, like, a royal garment.
Sid Roth: Hm-mm.
Chaz Strickland: Because our Spirit man wears clothing. We know that through Luke 24, and wearing clothing of power. We have garments of righteousness. So the enemy wants to defile our garments, so there may be a dream where an enemy comes and stains a garment, or there could be a dream where something's taken off of you. So it's all about looking at, does this dream violate the nature of God?
Sid Roth: So what do you do when you have a dream like that?
Chaz Strickland: I tell people the most simple thing to do is pray the opposite of what you saw. So if you had a dream and you saw someone get sick, you rebuke sickness and disease. But the worst thing you could do is wake up and don't pray. A lot of believers don't think their dreams are significant. But dreams are extremely significant. It's one of the primary ways that God communicates. And because Satan is a copycat, Satan is also going to use that as a language of the spirit, but the other thing about God's language is, whenever the Lord speaks, He's creating. So this means dreams are intended to take things that are in the spirit world and release them into the natural. That's how significant they are. They're connected to the governing realm, they're connected to the more superior realm, meaning that whatever we dream is going to influence this natural world.
Sid Roth: Let me explain something to you. You're either all in, or playing games. It's time for you to be all in to the Kingdom of God. It's time for you to say, "God, I can't do it, but I give myself to You. I yield my being to You". It's time for you to say a prayer with me to know that you're clean, and know that Jesus lives inside of you, and Jesus is your Lord. Say this prayer out loud, mean it to the best of your ability, "Dear God, I'm a sinner. I'm so sorry. I believe Your blood washes away all of my sins. And I'm clean. And now that I'm clean, Jesus, live inside of me. Be my Savior and Lord. Amen".
Sid Roth: Pray for people to be healed and set free, right now.
Chaz Strickland: Father, right now, in Jesus' Name, I take authority over every sickness and disease. I take authority over the spirit of death. I decree and I declare right now that because Jesus destroyed the one that had power over death, we thank You that every spirit that is under the umbrella of the spirit of death, in the life of the listener, all around the world come out in Jesus' Mighty Name. And Father, we thank You that by the fire of the Holy Spirit that demon powers are coming out, they're loosing people, chains are breaking. We declare that in Jesus' Mighty Name that every spirit, python, everything associated to Satan's kingdom is under the feet of Jesus, and we release creative miracles right now. We release right now the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit. And from head to toe, we decree that miracles are happening in your body. We quicken your body with resurrection. Receive resurrection. Receive resurrection in Jesus' Mighty Name.
Sid Roth: It is finished!