Sid Roth - The Supernatural Power of Hope
Sid Roth: Hello. Welcome to my world where it's naturally supernatural. Just breathe in that rarified air of Heaven. Well there's a problem going on today and the problem in a word is there's hopelessness in one or more areas of most people's lives, and it's almost epidemic. My guest comes from a hopeless background and he has supernaturally found how you can get rid of hopelessness in every area of your life. And he heard from and He said, this is what God said to him: "Your season of hopelessness is over". You want that? I do. Get a little excited at home, too. You know, so they're predicting bad things for the United States, bad things for the world that there is a breath of fresh air coming from Dutch Sheets. Dutch, just about six months ago, God spoke to you audibly and what did He say?
Dutch Sheets: He told me we would see a billion souls saved in the next 10 years.
Sid Roth: Now is this going to start 10 years from now or when is this going to start?
Dutch Sheets: You know, I believe we've already moved into the greatest awakening the world has ever seen. I believe God is so passionate about people. You know, sometimes we think we want somebody to be saved. We don't realize God wants to save them more than we do. He has saved the best for last, Sid, and He's about to send a wave of revival that is unprecedented.
Sid Roth: Okay. The third great awakening, it is so, Dutch had two visions that were so clear as to what it's going to look like, and I'll have him share that in just a little bit. Your background in a way provokes me to jealousy. You were raised in a church where your dad was a pastor and miracles were common. Tell me a couple things you saw with your eyes as a youngster.
Dutch Sheets: Oh I saw so much. I remember a lady with stomach cancer. And you know, God healed her. He could have dissolved it, but He wanted to perform a sign of wonder and I literally saw this woman vomit up this cancer before my very eyes. Woman: I receive this healing in Jesus' name.
Dutch Sheets: And she went back to the doctor and was completely, pronounced completely cancer free. Man: There's no cancer. Woman: Thank you Jesus.
Dutch Sheets: I saw a young boy with braces who had never walked. I saw him prayed for. I heard the bones begin to pop in his legs. I saw this kid begin to run for the first time around the room. When you see something like that with your very own eyes, you know it can't be fake. You know no one could fabricate this. You're just never the same.
Sid Roth: So his father was his hero and he was actually participating and praying just as a youngster for these miracles. And at 17, his heart was broken. There was a church split. His father ran off with the secretary, and what happened to you, Dutch?
Dutch Sheets: You know, I have, had a great relationship with my dad at the time he died and I like to honor him with that. He did have a great turnaround. But I tell you, my world fell apart, Sid. I did not know how to reconcile what I had heard all these years from him and what he did. I didn't know how to cope with the pain. I didn't know how to deal with the confusion. I didn't know how to deal with my mother, who sobbed in my arms for two hours and said, I don't want to live. And as a 17-year-old kid I became angry and bitter. I became cynical. I began to doubt everything. How could God allow this to happen to me? We were serving Him. We were faithful. We made sacrifices for Him. How could God allow this to happen? And I went through this horrible season of rebellion looking through drugs, alcohol, the party scene.
Sid Roth: Speaking of alcohol, he was in a bar just feeling sorry for himself. That's what people do in bars and then they take alcohol to just numb the pain, and he hears a voice. What did you hear?
Dutch Sheets: You know, it couldn't have been any more shocking to me. This place I was in, I heard God very clearly say, "What are you doing here"? God often gets our attention with a question. And my first response was I looked around. It was so clear to me this was God talking to me. I said, "What are you doing here"? And He said, "I'm here for you and you know this is not who you are and this will never be who you are". And I was instantly sober. I walked outside and spent about an hour just talking with the Lord, and He started going deep in my heart. And I talked to Him about the pain, and I talked to Him about the confusion. I said, "I don't understand". But I knew that I still loved him and I knew that He was right. This is not who I am. And it began a two-month process of the Lord and I having a lot of conversations. I didn't repent immediately. I didn't turn back to God immediately. The process began.
Sid Roth: And you know what? You had let your father's failure define who you were. Now who's defining who you are? We'll be right back.
Sid Roth: I am absolutely amazed at the statistics of people that are in hopeless situations, whether it has to do with their employment, whether it has to do with their family, whether it has to do with their health, whether it has to do with just past things that they've been stuffed down and it's just popping up now. It's a spirit. Dutch, tell me some of those statistics of hopelessness.
Dutch Sheets: You know, I was shocked, too, Sid. I found these things staggering. The divorce rate in the last 30 years has risen 300 percent, two and half million people every year, 50 percent of first time marriages, 60 percent of remarriages. When they try it again, it still doesn't work. The pressures are overwhelming, a million children a year affected by new divorces. Fatherless homes, this was staggering to me, 63 percent of youth suicides are directly connected to being raised in a fatherless home. Ninety percent of runaway homeless children and 85 percent of youths in prison because they don't have a father. People are looking for that security and hope. Nineteen million adults have a depressive disorder. It is the leading cause of disability in America, depression. The youth suicide rate has tripled in the last 35 years. It is the third leading, the third leading cause of death among young people in America is suicide. Twenty-five percent of high school seriously consider suicide every year, a fourth of them. Psychiatric admissions account for 25 percent, a fourth, of all hospital admissions, suicide, depression, 25 percent. Even our spiritual leaders are not immune from this. Seventy percent of pastors said they constantly fight depression. Eighty percent of adult children of pastors seek professional help for depression. Fifty percent of pastors said they would leave the ministry if they could, but they don't know how they would survive.
Sid Roth: That is...
Dutch Sheets: Staggering isn't it?
Sid Roth: Everything coming out of your mouth, it shows you how what critical times we're living in.
Dutch Sheets: It's amazing.
Sid Roth: What does the Bible say about a term called "hope deferred"?
Dutch Sheets: Hope deferred, it says makes the heart sink. If you think about what happens with physical heart disease, you lose your energy, you get tired. Eventually you'll die. You can't run. That's what happens what hope deferred sets in. It doesn't just affect your mind. It affects your body. You know, serious depression they're now saying is the equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. It takes a toll on your physical heart, but then again, your emotional heart, it affects. You can't dream. You don't eat. You don't run the race of life. You quit looking at the future with hope. You can't have faith. Hope deferred is the common cold of the soul. You can't go through life without experiencing setbacks. You're going to be hit with something: loss of a loved one, a disease, you lose your job, your marriage.
Sid Roth: What are stages, briefly, of hope deferred? And I believe you're going to recognize you're actually in some of these stages.
Dutch Sheets: Well the first stage is simply discouragement. You know, you just get slammed by this and discouragement sets in. If you don't deal with that, the next phase you come to is confusion. You just get disoriented. How did this happen? What do I do? What do I latch on to now for hope? And then of course, if that doesn't stop, unbelief sets in. Now you're in trouble because your trust is wavering and your connection with the Lord begins to waver. The next step if that isn't checked is disillusionment. That's what happened to me in my life. I became disillusioned. I don't know if I believe in this God. I don't know what I believe any more. I just don't know. And then of course, the real killer, bitterness sets in. Once you become bitter, you just, you're just a target for the enemy. He just begins to steal your health, he steals your joy and in the last phase, and I certain came into this, is simply cynicism. You just don't believe anything anymore. That's where I was. People talked to me about God. I don't want to hear it. I don't believe this stuff anymore. Completely cynical, hopeless, cynical.
Sid Roth: Tell me about your brother observed a heart surgery. Tell me what he found out.
Dutch Sheets: This is the most amazing story I think I've ever heard. He was actually allowed to go into the operating room and stand at the head of the patient, actually three of them. He had a heart surgeon in his congregation and he watched them over the person, take the heart, work on it, and they actually would sometimes disconnect it from the arteries, take it out, work on it and hook the person up to a machine that would do the work of the heart. When they were finished, they would reconnect everything, they had to get the heart beating again. And everything worked fine until the last patient. And he didn't know exactly what was happening, but he could tell they're trying to get this heart to beat. And tension, you could feel the tension start come into the operating room. Finally, he realized they can't get this heart beating. And in desperation when they exhausted all of their methods, the lead surgeon leaned down to this obviously unconscious person, whispered in her ear and said, "Ma'am, I need your help. We can't get your heart to beat. Please tell your heart to beat again".
Sid Roth: This is an unconscious person.
Dutch Sheets: Obviously. Can't hear naturally. Instantly, the heart began boom-boom, boom-boom. And the surgeon, all the people around the table looked up at each other. He looked at them and just kind of went, and they went on with the surgery, and he of course realized, that's what we have to do with our emotion, with our spiritual heart.
Sid Roth: Tell me what God has shown based on that story and the power of choice.
Dutch Sheets: Oh you know, that's where it all starts. God said to me, "Listen son, I know it's not your fault that you are in this condition. You didn't know. You didn't know how to deal with this. I'm not angry with you that you turned to these things. But it will be your decision if you remain this way because I'm here to heal you". And I had to activate my will and say, I'm going to choose to live again. I'm going to choose to dream again. I'm going to choose to not allow this to define me. I'm going to let God define who I am. Alcohol is not who I am. Depression is not who I am. Anger is not who I am. And I made a choice. Now I wasn't in denial because when we make a choice God's life, God's power, God's energy is activated in us and all He needs is us to make that choice, and His power comes along and gives us the ability to do it. It's not denial. It's denying the right of that circumstance to control my life through to believe God can turn things around for me.
Sid Roth: It's the supernatural belief in the supernatural God. It's not natural. And when we come back, we're going to talk about the third great awakening, and Dutch has literally seen it, and he's going to describe what he saw, and it's starting right now.
Sid Roth: One billion souls are going to have revelations that Jesus is the Messiah in the next 10 years, and my guest Dutch Sheets has seen this. Tell me what you saw in the visions.
Dutch Sheets: You know, Sid, I never had an open vision. I was teaching, just talking to a group of people, and all of a sudden, I wasn't seeing them. I was seeing a scene in front of me. It was in 1991 and I saw stadiums filled with young people, teenagers, college, passionately worshiping, praying, crying out to God. Then I saw them go to the parking lot to leave and they were transported back to their cities, and became balls of fire. Revival began to spring up all over the nation. Ten years later, the week of 9/11, I was preaching at a conference later in the week, and it was like preaching at a funeral. The nation, of course, was in trauma. People were just depressed and discouraged. I thought, what do I say to them. As I was speaking, I had another open vision. It was like the finger of God began to write on the back wall of that auditorium the word, "Acts, reference 3:19". I saw it as a neon light, huge. And then it began to flash on and off, on and off. I knew that that verse talked about times of refreshing, coming from the presence of the Lord. That word "refreshing", it's a revival word. It means the blowing of breath or wind again intensely. God was saying to me, "I'm about to send the winds of revival again with intensity". And then I closed, I didn't know what else to do, so I closed my eyes and began to pray, and I saw it was like someone flipped on a television screen, and I began to watch a movie. And I saw this awakening that was coming. I began to see all over high school, all over America, high schools, college campuses, fires, revival. I saw groups of kids where healings would just start happening. They didn't know what to do with it. Somebody would scream, "Yeshua, Jesus just healed me"! Someone else would jump up and say, "I've been delivered from sexual abuse! The pain of it is gone". And someone else would say, "I don't want these drugs anymore"! And it was just spontaneous. And they would worship. I saw meetings go for days without stopping. I saw administrators come and say, "We've got to get these kids back in class". They would walk in the room, the power of God would overcome them. They couldn't talk, they would fall to the floor and begin to weep. I saw this all over America. I saw it spread from high schools to college campuses, to universities, to the streets, every, it was not orchestrated. God would see to it that these things would go on for 24 hours at a time without stopping. It was amazing. Signs and wonders, deliverances, lives transformed, and the most amazing thing, they were falling in love with Jesus. It was not religious. It was love. It was violent love.
Sid Roth: Now is this just the United States or it's the whole world?
Dutch Sheets: It's the whole world. I saw it beginning here because that's where God uses me the most. But I knew immediately this is going to go around the world. That's how we're going to see these billion souls saved. All over the world, people are going to begin to have supernatural encounters with God.
Sid Roth: Are you seeing any signs of this happening now?
Dutch Sheets: I am. I'm seeing pockets of it break out.
Sid Roth: Tell me one pocket.
Dutch Sheets: I saw, in Tennessee recently, Chattanooga, Tennessee, a friend of mine contacted me. In fact, before the meeting started, he called me one day, actually texted me and said, "Pray for me right now. God is beginning to move in a truck stop I'm in". He had prayed for a waitress, she fell to the floor under the power of God. Other people came, Sid, "Would you pray for me". The owners of the truck stop, I don't know, they must have had a hand in it, I guess they were believers, put worship music on. And he said, "I have people on the floor all over this truck stop receiving". Then he started ministering in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and for nine weeks now, God has been moving signs, wonders, miracles. Over 800 have received the Lord, been baptized. Actually went and saw it myself. God is just pouring out His spirit. Children, young people, adults, marriages being transformed, drug dealers being transformed. Two drug dealers, one that had a gun to the head of the other one two weeks before this were both in the same meeting being born again. I tell you, this is just God breaking out.
Sid Roth: Dutch, tell me, listen, Dutch heard about you. Your season is changing. That's what he heard about you. And would you pray a supernatural prayer right now for their season to change and for hope to be infused.
Dutch Sheets: Oh I would love to. Father, we thank you so much for what you are doing and about to do. I thank you for your passionate love for people. I thank you that you are breaking hope deferred. The winter season is ending. A springtime is coming. You're coming with power. You're going to heal the sick. You're going to transform lives. Emotions are going to heal. Depression is going to leave. You're going to pour out your spirit all over this earth, and we live in the greatest season of time that history has ever seen. I thank you Father for what you are about to do. In the name of Yeshua we pray. Amen.
Sid Roth: What do you believe just happened to someone that believed that prayer?
Dutch Sheets: I believe hope, the seeds of hope are coming alive right now. I believe that they're going to be able to believe again. I believe that they felt something literally as we prayed, hope began to rise up. And they said, is this real, is this God? I believe that they are moving now into their new beginning. I believe hope is springing up for marriages. I believe hope is springing up for the future. I believe dreams are coming alive again. I believe that they are daring to believe, they're choosing, they're telling their heart to beat again even now as we speak.
Sid Roth: Your season is changing. I say to you that the presence of God just went right into you. That seed is in there. You let it grow. You make Jesus your Lord. You start reading your Bible. You start believing every promise in that Word is for you. You start believing that God called you for a season now. The next 10 years a billion souls are coming to the Lord and you are part of it. Your season has changed.