Sid Roth - Your Healing Paid In Full
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome. Welcome to my world where it's naturally supernatural. My guest went, in five years now, from zero miracles to over 3000 miracles. He has meetings where a hundred percent of the people are healed. In fact, he just got back from, I think, five meetings like that in a row, a hundred percent healed. He says, and I believe him, that he's shocked when people aren't healed. That's normal. He wants to make you normal. Are you ready? My guest is Art Thomas, and as you can probably see, he's 30. What a great age. That's when the Messiah started. That's actually when I was called into ministry, when I was 30 years of age. It's a good time. But Art, I never did what you're doing. I'm going to, but I never did what you're doing. You just got back from Uganda. Now tell me about the meetings, how many did you have where everyone was healed?
Art Thomas: Out of roughly ten meetings, we had five of them where we saw a hundred percent results.
Sid Roth: You know something, when I talk to him, he kind of thinks this is normal. You know that this isn't normal, Art.
Art Thomas: It is now. It is now.
Sid Roth: Do you believe that everyone watching us can do what you can do or you have just a special gift?
Art Thomas: No, no. Jesus said in Mark 16, "These signs will accompany those who believe". That's the only qualifier. It was not if you're old enough, if you've got credentials, if you've had enough experience, if you have enough fruit of the spirit. It was, "if you believe". And so we have people, a lot of these meetings, I'll have someone just get saved. Usually I'll grab one of the kids. They've just asked Jesus into their heart, and they come up and show everybody else how to minister healing.
Sid Roth: Did they really get healed?
Art Thomas: It always works.
Sid Roth: Always. I like always. How about you? Okay. I'm going to take you back to 2003, and you had a visitation from an angel. What happened?
Art Thomas: Yeah. I was working with a church plant and we were just praying. And I was wanting a life of miracles so desperately. So what I did, you know, I'm praying, God, would you make this happen, and while I'm seeking miracles, this angel appeared to me. I saw it in my spirit, it wasn't my physical eyes, but it said to me, "The only thing necessary for a life of miracles is the presence of God. So stop seeking miracles and just seek him". And I learned in time that it wasn't even about seeking his presence, because he's always here.
Sid Roth: Yes. But you know, I see when you pray, as casual as you are now. Why don't you work something up?
Art Thomas: You don't have.
Sid Roth: Shout just a little bit.
Art Thomas: John says, "The anointing you've received abides in you". It doesn't say it abides in you if you're in the right mindset or if you shout loud enough, you know. He's with you all the time if he lives in you. So I just, you know, I'm down to earth because Jesus is down to earth. In fact, that's the whole thing he did, he came from Heaven down to Earth to be like us.
Sid Roth: Okay. And then the latter part of 2003, you have a vision of Heaven. Already you're provoking me to jealousy. But you know that's the call of the gentile, to provoke the Jew to jealousy. Come on now, that's your call, gentile.
Art Thomas: Yeah. You know, we were at a men's prayer meeting with a small group of men that I was a part of and as we were praying, the best I can call it is a trance, you know, like Peter had when he was, you know, seeing about the gentiles being saved. And during that time, it was like I was walking in the woods that was like a beautiful woods that I had never seen before. Everything is lush and green. And even though it's a thick canopy of leaves over my head, everything is bright and vibrant. And then I realized Jesus was walking next to me. And he took me over to the base of this tree and peeled back the grass as though it was freshly laid with sod, ran his fingers through this rich soil, and he said, "You see everything in my Father's Kingdom is full of life". And I said, "What do you mean? The soil is alive"? He said, "No, no, no. I didn't say it's alive. I said it's full of life. Everything in my Father's Kingdom is full of life. In fact, as a citizen of this Kingdom, you, too are full of life. You are a life-bringing who is full of life". And then I realized in John 5, Jesus said, "Just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the son gives life to whom he chooses". And I used to think that verse was only about Jesus. But I realized it was right on the heels of him saying that the son does nothing by himself. He only does what he sees his father doing, which is also true of me. I can't do anything by myself. I can only do what he does.
Sid Roth: Is that why you're almost like in an observer? You read what God does, in the Bible, and you just do what he does.
Art Thomas: If he says it, it's true. It's impossible for God to lie.
Sid Roth: I'll tell you what. You have child-like faith. Did anyone ever tell you that? Never grow up.
Art Thomas: I believe you.
Sid Roth: Okay. I'm commanding you, never grow up. Okay. You saw a video with Todd White.
Art Thomas: I saw a YouTube video. I saw Todd White on there, and he said, "Mark 16, Verses 17 and 18, says, 'These signs will accompany those who believe,'" and it lists them. And he said, "And that means if these signs don't accompany you, there must be something up with your belief". Now I was a youth pastor. I got credentials in the Pentecostal denomination. Surely my belief is perfect, right? You can't tell me there's something wrong with my belief. So it made me mad, actually. And in order to prove Todd wrong, I started searching. I threw away, not threw away, but set aside every book I had been reading, every Podcast I had been listening to. For three months, I studied only the four Gospels, The Book of Acts and people who were doing the stuff or had done the stuff like John G. Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, and many of the contemporaries. And when I saw the common thread among them all, which was that they all believed it was always God's will to heal, and they believed that Jesus paid the price for it with his own blood. He wouldn't pay for something that he didn't want, that's what tipped me over the edge. And I decided, all right, I believe this, I'm going for it.
Sid Roth: First miracle, tell me about it.
Art Thomas: Well I came to that conclusion three months later. I got up in my youth group and I preached, God wants to heal and he wants to use you to do it. And I still never laid hands on anybody and seen them healed. But I preached it with boldness. And I had these kids break up into the groups and had them lay hands on each other and minister healing. And I stood back because I still didn't actually believe God was going to use me, even though I preached it with such boldness. And there was an intern at our church named Josh who had an ear infection and some seventh grade boys were praying for him. And he came up and he said, "Pastor, I feel really bad. They prayed for me, nothing happened. What should I do"? From what I had seen on YouTube, I said, "Well just tell him to minister to you again". I didn't know, right? So he goes back to lay hands on him again. This time the seventh grade boys come up, "Pastor, I tried everything. What do we do"? Now I'm just, again, I don't think I can do anything. I'm just trying to be a smart aleck youth pastor who thinks of something they haven't tried yet. So I go, "What did you try"? They said, "We laid hands on him". We said, "Be healed in Jesus' name. We prayed for him, we asked God to do it. Nothing worked". I said, "Did you try this"? And I walked up to him and stuck my finger in his ear, and I said, "Open", just as a joke. And the intern goes, "Oh my goodness, that worked". Of course, I said the same thing.
Sid Roth: Man of great faith.
Art Thomas: What I learned out of that is that it's not so much about what you need to do, it's about who you believe. I didn't have to feel the right feeling, think the right thoughts, say the right word. Just let Jesus do what he wants to.
Sid Roth: Okay. He says it's so simple that his two-year-old son prays for a miracle. I want to find out about that when we come back.
Sid Roth: Simply, when you pray for someone and they're not healed, and it does happen, you must get very discouraged.
Art Thomas: It would be easy to. In fact, that's something I talk about a lot in my ministry, is how we deal with the process of as we're growing into the faith we need to do miracles like Jesus. And it's a struggle sometimes. But what I do is I say, alright, if I were to successfully see a healing here, I don't walk around hogging the Glory from that. That belongs to Jesus, so I give that to him. So it would be wrong for me as well to hold the burden of it, especially since Scripture commands me, "Cast your burdens on Jesus who cares for you". So my job is to not hog the Glory or the burden. All of it belongs to Jesus. And so sometimes people aren't healed, but that's not my emotional weight to carry. I do, however, take responsibility and go to Jesus and say, why couldn't I do what you could have done if you were standing right here. And to be honest, about a quarter of the time I get an answer. The rest of the time, I'm left wondering. But that quarter of the time I've put it into practice and I see results the next time.
Sid Roth: You know what? That sounds like the way we're supposed to pray. What if you pray for someone and they die?
Art Thomas: It's heartbreaking.
Sid Roth: It's worse than that.
Art Thomas: First thing you do, you shoot for resurrection. I mean, Jesus commanded, raise the dead, right, Matthew 10:8. But if they stay dead, you know, you still process through it, but you let it fuel you for the future. It makes you say, "I want this to work, Jesus. Life is precious. You consider these people precious and it always worked for you, and I want to be as much like you as possible".
Sid Roth: What if, and I know one case like this, you were in Uganda and there was a woman with an eye problem, and you're praying for, and nothing happens. So you pray for her again and something happens. People get up and walk out. Tell me about that.
Art Thomas: Yeah. I had just taught this congregation how to minister healing, and I said, "I want to demonstrate for you. So how many of you here have eye problems"? And I think three or four raised their hands. I just picked this woman at random from the front. I said, "What's your problem"? She says, "I can see far, but I can't read". So I opened up the Bible and I said, "Alright, look at it. Can you read that"? She said, "No". Set the Bible down, hands on her eyes, "Eyes open in Jesus' name". Opened up the Bible. "Any change"? She said, "No". I did the same thing, I don't have to change my words. I'm not looking for the right magic words to convince God, you know, and I did it over and over, and 15 minutes goes by, and one woman gets up and walks out of the church, and I'm like
Sid Roth: I'm glad it's only one.
Art Thomas: I figured, I've got to do something now. So I turned to the congregation, I said, "Did Jesus pay for this woman to see"? And they sheepishly started to nod their heads. I said, "Did he pay a very high price for this woman to see"? And they smiled. I said, "Does it matter if I look like a fool in front of all of you while I contend for Jesus to receive what he paid for"? And without an answer, I went right back, "Eyes open in Jesus' name". Any change? No. And that on for five more minutes until..
Sid Roth: Why do you keep doing it? I mean, most people when they pray, I watch them on TV, "Be healed in the name of Jesus", and before you can even find out if they're healed, then the next person will be healed. You don't see to work that way.
Art Thomas: No. I want to see something verifiable. So you know, what I do is I am for now and I tell people, you know, in practice, sometimes we see miracles happen the next day or a week later, or even a month later, in practice. But as a target, I want to be like Jesus, and he healed every single person the same day that he ministered to them and almost all of them, it was immediate.
Sid Roth: Well what happened to the woman?
Art Thomas: Well she started to see the large print. And I turned to the congregation and I said, "Alright, you can see this is starting to work, but I'm going to go back to her and keep ministering until we have a hundred percent. But now that you see how this works, if you need healing, come up to the front". Ten people lined up. I said to the rest of the congregation, "You know how to do this. You're the prayer team. Come on up. They gathered around and started ministering to these people. I went back to that woman, "Eyes open in Jesus' name". Opened up the Bible and she smiled and started reading all of it out loud. And then she goes to sit down and I said, "Where are you going"? She sat down. I said, "No, no, no. You come pray for somebody". She smiled. She found the one man no one was praying for yet and he was an old man who was completely blind, and he was the first one healed out of that line of people. All ten of them were healed. I only prayed for one.
Sid Roth: What do you believe as far as, does God really want everyone healed. Is it because we don't have enough faith that we're not healed?
Art Thomas: Well Hebrews 1:3 says that, "Jesus the son is the radiance of God's Glory and the exact representation of his being". And Jesus went around, there are nine different scriptures throughout the Gospels and The Book of Acts that say Jesus healed all. There's no question about it. There was a never a person who came to him and he said, "I'm sorry, my Father is building character in you" or no, or not yet. You know, all these things that we've come up with in our American ideology, right, of, you know, why people aren't healed to make ourselves more comfortable. It always works for Jesus. The only time someone tried to minister healing in Jesus' name and it didn't work was when the disciples tried to cast out a spirit from an epileptic boy and then Jesus was still able to do. And they did what I do. They asked Jesus, why couldn't we do it. So I believe Jesus always wants it because he always did it. But second of all, it's what he paid for. Isaiah 53 talks about the atonement, "He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for inequities. The punishment for our peace was upon him. By his stripes we are healed". So Jesus paid for it. He wouldn't pay for something he didn't want. And for that matter, I tell people, you can answer most of your own questions about God's will to heal by just replacing the word "heal" with "forgiveness". Would a sinner ever ask for forgiveness and he says no or not yet? Or would he ever say, I'm sorry, I'm building character in you with this sin and once I've got that worked out then I'll forgive you. It would never happen. So why do we believe that about healing when he paid with the exact same blood for that.
Sid Roth: Okay. I have to ask you this. You prayed for me and I am not healed. Is it my lack of faith?
Art Thomas: No. I never, ever put it on the person.
Sid Roth: Who's lack of faith?
Art Thomas: I put it on me. You know, I have faith in my wife. I trust her implicitly. But if she says, hey, jump off the roof, I'll catch you, I don't trust that because I know my wife's limitations. But the beauty is God has no limitations. The only limitations he has are between our own ears. We think that he can't do what's in front of us. And so as a minister, I take the responsibility, I go to the Lord with it, I process it with him. But again, I don't carry the burden. I know my salvation is secure. That's taken care of. But this is faith for this specific instance. Something was amiss. And many times, he wakes me up to what it was and corrects me as a son and then we see results in the future.
Sid Roth: Okay. When we come back, I would like Art to pray for you. Would you like that?
Sid Roth: You know, here in America, if someone becomes a believer and they go into a good church, Art, the pastor will usually say, "Sit, sit", year after year, after year. Is that really necessary?
Art Thomas: Hopefully, that's not happening anywhere, but I know it does, but not necessary at all, no. Jesus was sending people out even before they were ready. Luke, Chapter 9, he sends out his 12, and before the chapter is even over, they're arguing who's the greatest. They're proud of themselves for shutting someone else down and he's like, no, whoever is not against is for us. They even wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village that didn't receive him. Like that's murder, that's wrong. But he, you would think he's going to think.
Sid Roth: They should have been sitting for the next 20 years in the church.
Art Thomas: I know. But the next thing he does, Luke, Chapter 10, he sends out 72 more. And in Luke, Chapter 11, one of them asks, "Lord, teach us to pray". You know, they're not even confident in their prayer lives yet. So I tell people, don't wait until you're perfect to do the commission or you'll never do it. Do the commission. Jesus will perfect you along the way.
Sid Roth: Okay. Kenya, 300 children. Tell me.
Art Thomas: Yeah. I was invited to this school.
Sid Roth: Were these kids perfect?
Art Thomas: No, they weren't perfect. In fact, it was probably a good number of them were maybe Muslim. You know, this is a part of Kenya where that happens a lot. And so there's 300 of them. I was invited to speak in this school. They were probably about third or fourth grade in American age group and I preached to them about Jesus. And at the end, I told them about people who I had seen in Uganda who were thrown out of their families for choosing to follow Jesus. I said, "I can't promise you that if you choose to follow him that your whole life is going to be wonderful, but I can promise you that it's worth it". And I said, "If you want to receive this Jesus knowing what it could cost you, I want you to stand up now". And as far as I could tell, all 300 of them stood up, and they walked through a prayer of salvation in their own language. And then I said, "You know Jesus says these signs will accompany those who believe. How would you like to see what Jesus can do through you now that you believe"? And I taught them very briefly about healing, three minutes maybe. And I said, "If you've got eye problems, ear problems, pain in your body, sickness, disease", and I made the mistake of saying, "a bump, a scrape or a bruise", because every kid stood up. Right? So I paired them off. I said, "Alright, just lay hands on each other and say, 'Be healed in Jesus' name', we'll see what happens". They do it and some of them, I've got it on video, some of them are goofing off, some of them are taking it seriously. But it's not these signs who will accompany those who believe if they don't goof off, right, or if they're old enough, or anything like that. At the end, I calmed them down. I said, "Now test it out. If you know you're healed, pain is gone, you can see, you know, your skin is healed over, whatever it is, I want you to sit down. The rest of you stay standing. We'll minister again". Half the group sat down.
Sid Roth: Wow.
Art Thomas: And so they did it again. Half of that group sat down. Did it again. The rest sat down except one boy in the front row. And when I watched the video later, no on prayed for him a second or third time. So I said, "You, what's your problem"? He said, "My eyes. I can't read". I put my hands on his eyes, "Eyes open in Jesus' name", opened the Bible. He smiled and started reading. Three hundred kids, all of them saved, all of them minister healing, five minutes later, I only touched one of them, so it's not my fault. Jesus did the work.
Sid Roth: Okay. Jesus is doing the work right now. I want you to know this. Anyone with a wrist problem, if you'll just move your wrist, if you have a problem with your hip, just stand up and walk a little bit. You'll see you don't have a problem with your hip. Art, would you pray.
Art Thomas: Absolutely. Jesus, I thank you for those watching this right now and I know that you have even touched some already as we were talking. And so right now, I just speak to everyone who's there watching start to move something you couldn't move before. Try to do something you couldn't do. I think you're healed already. But if you're not, in Jesus' name, right now I speak complete wholeness to your body. I'm specifically feeling right here just under my right shoulder blade, somebody's got something going on there, maybe a rotator cuff going on. So just move your arm around, be completely healed in Jesus' name.
Sid Roth: And you know what? I am hearing that someone's elbow, I don't know, it doesn't matter what's the matter. But if you'll do what Art said, if you'll start moving it, the pain will just vanish. You'll see. I also believe that God is doing healing in teeth. I saw a gold tooth, someone is getting a gold tooth. One nugget that is going to really stick with us, tell me.
Art Thomas: Yeah. I would say minister with the authority that Jesus has given you. Don't ask God to do something he told you to do. Most of the time, my whole life not seeing results, I was asking God to heal the person in front of me, when in Matthew 10:8, Jesus commanded his 12, "You heal the sick". Everything he says is an invitation to partner with him and let him move through you to do what he's commissioned you to do.
Sid Roth: Are you ready? I can tell you this. I want you to become like a little child. I want you to forget what lies behind and press forward to the high calling God has on your life. It's not an accident you've been called to the Kingdom for such a time as this and it's time for you to start laying hands on the sick and seeing them recover.