Sid Roth - I Saw the Last 2 Days of Jesus' Life
Sid Roth: Welcome, Holy Spirit! Go and flow. My guest, Chris Garcia, grew up Catholic. At 12, he felt the tangible presence of God, and heard God's voice. Then at 16, he was strangled. Strangled?
Chris Garcia: Yes.
Sid Roth: Tell me about what happened to you before and at 16.
Chris Garcia: Yeah. Absolutely. One day, just the long story short, my mom was radically touched by the Holy Spirit through these two wild, older Pentecostal women. And they brought her to the church, and they said, "We'll leave you alone, but we want you to come to the church". She's like, "Well, I want you to leave me alone. If I don't like it, I won't come back, but I'll just go because you guys are pestering me". So they go. And the next thing you know, my mom comes back home, and her eyes are bloodshot red, pink. And I said, "Mom, what's going on"? She had been weeping all day. And she said to me, "Chris, the presence of God is in that building". And I said, "Well, what do you mean"? She's, like, "I don't know, but God is in that building". So I said, "You know, I want to go". So that was 12. Next week I go. And as soon as I walked into the parking lot, Sid, I felt the tangible presence of God for the first time. And I remember walking through the threshold of the stairway of that door, and I can feel people interceding for my soul. I don't know how, I just felt that. And as I walked into the sanctuary, what began to happen was, worship began to go. People's hands were lifted up. It looked like a Holy Ghost stickup, everybody's hands were lifted up. And I didn't know anything about that! And so I started laughing. I didn't understand, you know, I was used to just the somber stood-up and stand-down, and the presence of the Holy Spirit began to come into the room, stronger and stronger, the more the people of God began to worship the Lord. And so all of a sudden, I heard, at 12 years old, this voice that said to me, "Lift your hands". So I looked around, I looked to the left, to the right, and I started to half-mast the sail, just like a little bit of worship here. Then I felt the flood gates of the Glory of God just touching my soul again. And then I yielded again, and the Holy Spirit said to me, "Lift them all the way up". And when I lifted them all the way up, the Holy Spirit spoke almost audibly to me. And the first time I ever heard, He said, "I love you and I want to use you". And I remember feeling, hearing, and seeing the presence of God do things in my own spirit in an atmosphere of worship. What began to happen shortly after that, my mom got offended with some things in the church, she stopped going subsequently because of that. I stopped going as well. And I started spiraling into my own things. And I started looking into spiritual things that weren't God. I started looking into Buddhism, a little bit of Islam, peppered in with a little bit of yoga and meditation and martial arts, and that's what I was getting myself into. But I started struggling a lot with immense depression. Then my grandmother died of cancer. And that's it, I lost my whole sense of understand and love, and I felt that God hated me, and I hated God because of it. And then what began to occur was, I heard the gospel preached again very clearly on a wrestling mat, after I had broken my arm. And it felt like God was putting me in a corner. The wrestling was my way of coping with pain, but now I could not wrestle. I was wrestling with God and I didn't even know it. So I heard the gospel, and I said, "I don't want to hear the gospel". But my friend, again, like, history repeats itself, he said, "I'm not going to stop bothering you until you start coming to my church". I said, "Do you guys speaking in tongues and stuff"? "Oh, yeah, we do all of that". I said, "I don't want anything to do with it". What began to occur, Sid, was every day until March 3rd of 2006, demonic spirits began to manifest in my room and began to attack me. And at first, there was like a person there. And then it got closer and closer and closer to the day of March the 3rd of 2006, around 3:00 in the morning. I was suddenly strangled by a demonic spirit. And it came through the window. At that time, my mom protected me from a lot of my spiritual background. I did not know that in my family line there was a whole host of spiritualism, mediumship, Santeria, voodoo, things of the Caribbean, things of those nature. My mom protected me from all that. But that spirit began to strangle me after I started praying and asking God to help me. So I said, "God, please help me". Nothing happened. I said, "Allah", I went down the list, I was desperate. You know, when you're drowning, you're going to go desperate. I said, "Allah, please help me". Nothing. "Buddha, please help me". Then I went to my old Catholic ways, I I started praying the prayer for the Virgin Mary, nothing. As soon as I said the Our Father, it began to choke me even stronger, and my head was pounding against the floor. And out of sheer desperation, the last name that I mentioned, I said, "Jesus"! But before I can say "Jesus," it was like a holy explosion. It went, boom! And that strangling immediately left me. And that's when I understood that the Name of Jesus has power.
Sid Roth: At 17, you decide you're going to really get spiritual...
Chris Garcia: Yes.
Sid Roth: And for the first time, you're going on a fast. And rather than a half a day or one meal, you go big-time. Three days.
Chris Garcia: Yes. Yes, yes.
Sid Roth: Tell me about what happened.
Chris Garcia: So one day when I was 17, the Holy Spirit, I call it an invitation. He invited me to a three days' worth of fasting. I said, "I've never done that before, Lord, but I will do it". The first day, I was just fine. Everything was hunky dory, everything was great. I was working at an Assisted Living facility, I was vacuuming, happy as happy can be. The second day I started feeling some resistance. And I just kept going through. The third day, I started weeping. I felt the whole weight of sin and all of the weight of the world, and all sorts of strange oppressions over my shoulders, and I started growing very, very tired. Very, very weary. I knew that there was some sort of spiritual attack, but I didn't know exactly just what it was. And so finally, after work, I'm literally vacuuming and I'm sobbing in the living room vacuuming, and I feel terrible. I go to my room, and I have a holy fit with God. You know, God knows our hearts, so I'm literally shaking my fists in the sky in my room, and I said, "God, I feel terrible! I feel lousy. You called me to fast for three days, and this is what I get"? And so I go to my bed, and I said, "God, I don't even want to talk to you". I said that to Him. And see, the Holy Spirit is such a gentleman, and He's so friendly that as I began to doze off, all of a sudden the Holy Spirit says to me, "Oh Chris, you're seeking My hands when you should be seeking My face. So repent and return to Me". So it was true, at that time I discovered, I was trying to fast or try to get something from God, but God wanted me to fast to simply be with Him, to use it as a time of consecration. So I remember saying, quick adjustment in my heart. I said, "Lord, You're right. I repent, please forgive me". And I went back to sleep. I saw my spirit coming out of my body, and my flesh literally wrestling with each other, and it was like a tug of war. And I heard the Scripture in Galatians where it says that "The Spirit fights against the flesh and the flesh against the Spirit, so that you're not free to do what you want to do". And when I opened my eyes from that dream, apparent dream, lo and behold, I was still seeing it with my eyes wide open. It was no dream. It was a literal vision that was coming to me. And inside of the room, I heard audibly a voice of a man, a man's voice with authority. And he said to me, "Romans Chapter 8, Verses 1 through 3". So at that time, I had a prayer partner of mine, a friend of mine who discipled me, we're the same age, but he was well along in the Lord than me. And every time I had a question, he would always point to the Word, always point to the Word. And I was on my knees and I was praying. And I began to sob. And I called my friend, Carlos, and I said, "Hey, I feel like I'm dying. I feel like I'm dying". And he says to me, "Well, what did you pray for"? I said, "Well, I was reading Galatians Chapter 2, Verse 20 where it says I've been crucified with Christ, it is not I that lives, but Christ lives in me". And he stopped me. He says, "It sounds like God is answering your prayers, that you're being crucified with Christ". When he said that, I instantly fell into a trance. I started weeping uncontrollably, and it was like the eyes of my heart began to well up within me, and then it went into my chest, then it went to my neck, and then it went to my eyes. And then all of a sudden, I opened my eyes, just like this. And I'm in this garden. And I see a man dressed in white. And He's rocking back and forth very fervently in another language that I don't understand. And I knew it was Jesus, I knew it was Him, because He had the hair long, and He was very Jewish looking from the side. And I couldn't see His face at that moment. And I started seeing that. And I kept saying out loud with the phone, with my buddy listening on the other line, he's, like, "What's going on"? I said, "It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. He's so beautiful". I just started weeping. And then everything went black. And then everything went back to normal in this vision, and I saw what looked like to be a tree stump. And I saw Jesus' naked body wrapped around this stump, and they were beating Him. They were beating Him very, very hard, and very much so, to the point that I can almost feel it. And I fell on the floor, and with each beating I can feel it, not physically, but spiritually. And I began to feel the sorrow of the heart of the Messiah. And I started feeling the weight and the pain that He felt, just a sliver, just a little bit of it, and it broke me. And then everything went black again. And then what began to occur was, I saw, kind of from the angle of Jesus' eyes, the cross. And they were nailing His hands, and they were nailing His feet. And it was very painful to feel that. And the strange thing was, I don't have words for this, I'll try my very best to understand this, but it's like I was in Him and He was in me. And at the same time, we, the Body of Messiah, were somehow in Him, and He was in us. Like before we were even thought of, before we were, through the ages, God knew us and loved us and died for us, even before we were. And as I'm talking, I could just feel the anointing just saying that. And then everything went black. And the final vision that I had was the sky was jet black. And I saw Jesus' face. And He had his hand stretched open on the cross. And He looked to the left, and many people asked me, "How did he look like"? Well, he looked very Jewish. Very, very Middle Eastern, olive skin, very Middle Eastern complexions, very thick hair, but the most beautiful eyes. And what struck me about him wasn't just about the physical appearance, it was the love that was on His face. I always say it to people. If love had a face, that would be the face of Jesus. And all of a sudden, He starts saying something, I don't know what He's saying. Then He directly looks at me, and our eyes lock eyes together. When I would look into His eyes, it was like this beautiful innocence, this purity, almost childlikeness. I have kids of my own. Sometimes my youngest child, he'll draw me something and he'll go, like, "Here, daddy, look what I did for you"! I'll go, "That's good, son, I'll put it on the fridge". What Jesus did, when I saw, He was, like, "Look what I've done for you". But there was a childlikeness to Him. That's the only way I could describe it. And I completely lost it. I started sobbing uncontrollably. Then He looks up, then He starts saying something, then He looks up again, and He begins to wail, this groan. Reminded me of Romans 8, where it says that, "The Spirit groans for us". There was a groaning. It was almost as if the cross was a... I thought of, in Isaiah, where it says that, when you make His soul and offering for sin, the atonement, His soul was poured out. And He was crying and wailing and groaning. And then He died in it. And then all of a sudden, the vision subsided. And I looked to the clock, and it was exactly 2:20 a.m., which I was just meditating on Galatians 2:20.
Sid Roth: "I've been crucified with the Messiah".
Chris Garcia: Yeah. "It's no longer I who live..."
Sid Roth: "It's no longer I who live, but the Messiah who lives in me". Now the reason I invited Chris to be my guest is, I've been watching him on the internet, and he carries just about the strongest presence of God all the time. And I want to find out what he did to get that presence, so that I can and you can operate in that presence 24-7. Be right back.
Sid Roth: All right, Chris, how did you get such an awesome presence? Every time, every day I look at you on the internet, I feel coming out of you such a presence of God. How? What did you do?
Chris Garcia: Well, there are certain things that for me, the Lord has highlighted to me. And as I obey those things and yielded to those things, I noticed a greater way of God's glory in my life. And the first one is this: To give Him reverence. To the degree that you give Him reverence is to the degree you become aware of Him. Jesus told us in the Lord's Prayer, He says, "Our Father, who is in heaven, Holy is Your Name". The Scripture says when we enter into His presence to come in with praise, with thankfulness. And the reason why that is, is because He's our heavenly Father, but He's also holy. And what holiness is, is purity and specialness. He's sacred. And many people don't approach Him with that hard posture of reverence. This is why worship is so very important. Many of us begin to experience God's presence through worship. And the reason why that is, is because we are elevating Him to His proper place. And as we do that, and as we give Him reverence, there is a greater degree of the awareness of the presence of God.
Sid Roth: Excuse me, when you say, "worship"...
Chris Garcia: Yeah?
Sid Roth: ...give me a practical way to worship.
Chris Garcia: A practical way of worship is just taking your eyes off of yourself and lifting His person, and just adoring Him. What that means is, "Father, I come before you. I give You glory. I give You worship. I give You praise". I rightly see Him through worship. And as I experience God through worship, the presence of God becomes palpable and noble and aware to me.
Sid Roth: So what are you thinking when you're saying those words?
Chris Garcia: How wonderful He is. How great He is. How glorious He is. And as you elevate Him, as you exalt Him, He draws you to Himself. He says, "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself". And we can do this daily. We can be elevated to the presence of God as we elevate Him. And as we do that, we become aware of God. It's not that God showed up, He was there waiting on us. The second thing that I would say is, humility. Without humility, there can be no grace. The Scripture says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble". And the third thing that I would say, and this is so very important, is to develop holy hunger. If you don't hunger for the...
Sid Roth: How do you develop it?
Chris Garcia: Yeah.
Sid Roth: Isn't this just a gift from God?
Chris Garcia: Yeah. So it takes God to want God. It takes God to want God, so the closer you get to God, the more you see how wonderful He is, and the more you want another drink. And as I said the other day to you, Sid, what happens is, in our lives, we drink Coca Cola and OJ and pineapple juice all day, and we don't even touch water. And people get used to drinking other things that are not true water. So what happens, Jesus is living water. He says, "If any man thirsts, let him come unto Me and drink, and out his being, his belly will flow rivers of living water". As we come to drink God through worship, through the meditation of the Scriptures, we drink this water, and then we become more thirsty to drink more water. And I would say it this way: The Kingdom of God is upside down, compared to the world, when in reality, it's right side up. The first will be last, the last will be first. If you hunger in this world and you eat, you'll be satisfied. But in God, as you partake of Him, you will become more hungrier and more hungrier and more hungrier. So to the degree that you hunger is the degree that you will become filled. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled". God is looking for the quality of your time, not the quantity of your time. But once the quality of your time is increased, you can't help but for the quantity of the time to catch up with the quality of time. So that's what happens, Sid. It's like, so what do we do, practical? What can we do practically to become aware of the presence of the Lord in our lives? Well, first and foremost, we go to Him and say, "God, Father, I need You". That's a great start, right there. "Lord, without You, I am nothing. I throw myself to Your presence". And you begin to worship. What begin to take place is, your spirit on the inside of you grows stronger and stronger. It grows more sensitive and sensitive. And then the next thing you know, you start to hear God. You start to perceive the Lord. You start to adopt the heart of the Father. And there's this oneness that occurs. And so practically, I would just say it's more about the quality of time than it is about the quantity of time. And the second thing I would say to that is, be present in His presence. We cry out this: "God, we want Your presence". And then God says, "Son, I want your presence".
Sid Roth: If you'll say this prayer with me and mean it, Jesus will live on the inside of you. Out loud. "Dear God, forgive me for all of my sins. I believe the Blood of Jesus has made me clean. Jesus, live inside of me. I make You my Lord and Savior. Amen". Chris, pray whatever God tells you to pray in the camera now.
Chris Garcia: For those that are watching right now, I want you to stretch forth your hands, and even those who are here, just lift your hands. Father, I pray for the heavy weight of the Glory of God, the Kavod, the heavy, weighty presence to come and touch Your people. Saturate them. Inundate them in the presence of Almighty God. Father, help them to see that the highest ministry that there is, is the ministry of the presence of the Lord, that we would become priests and kings to know our place as the manifested sons of God. Father, I thank You. Let Your glory become palpable in this moment. Let the tangible, weighty presence, Father, touch Your people and make them thirsty, make them hungry for the things of Almighty God. I see the heavy, weighty glory just touching you right now, even now, there's this heavy weight. It's almost like a beautiful glory yoke. He says, "Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light". I thank You, Holy Spirit, for rearranging our affections, reorienting us and recalibrating us to the things that matter to Your heart the most. And I thank You that You would awaken Your people for first love in the Name of Jesus. "And the Spirit and the Bride say come". And I think that this would be the greatest revelation in the hour in this moment, Lord God, that the Spirit and the Bride would say, "Come," that we would take our rightful place as the lovers of the Messiah, that You are preparing Your Bride, You're preparing Your people for the great outpouring of Your glory, in the Name of Jesus, Yeshua, our great and holy Messiah. Amen.