Sid Roth - Stone Me If You Don't See Miracles
Sid Roth: Mike Francen challenges crowds of thousands of people to stone him if they don't see authentic miracles, next on this edition of It's Supernatural.
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter. My guest Mike Francen has seen miracles that most people just read about and they say they're not true. Tell me the first miracle you remember seeing, Mike Francen.
Mike Francen: The first miracle I ever saw was something that happened to my mother. We were not brought up in a church home at all and I didn't believe in Christ. In fact, I professed to be an atheist. I believed in basketball as my religion. I believed in basketball and that's what I did all of my life, every day. And to make a long story very short, a miracle happened to my mother. We weren't brought up in a church home, never went to church. They weren't Christians. They were not even a religious flavor at all.
Sid Roth: I'm so glad. You know why? I hate religion.
Mike Francen: Nobody hates religion more than I hate religion.
Sid Roth: Good. We got something in common.
Mike Francen: Christian religion can be just as despicable as any, if we've taken the Word of God and just made it traditions and superstitions.
Sid Roth: Rules. Rules and traditions. See, I'm Jewish and we got a corner in the market on tradition. But you Christians are catching up real fast.
Mike Francen: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, it's, I hate religion in all forms. And so anyway, the first miracle I ever saw happened to my mother. And like I said, I claimed to be an atheist and I knew they weren't church people or didn't believe in God. A lady prayed for her. She had lockjaw and she arthritis in her knees so bad she couldn't walk upstairs, and her jaw, she could only open it just maybe only half an inch.
Sid Roth: Okay. I don't understand lockjaw. Is this something that just by itself gets better?
Mike Francen: I don't, no, it doesn't get better. She had been to the doctors many times. There was nothing, they couldn't tell, you know, she was eating a lot of her food through a straw. She'd get a hamburger and she'd mash it down to try to squeeze it in her mouth. And the doctors couldn't do anything for her. They couldn't do anything for the arthritis in her knees. They gave her some different pain things, but she couldn't walk up and down the stairs. And a lady prayed for her one day. And she was too embarrassed to reject the prayer, so she let her pray for her. And when she woke up the next morning the pain left her knees, her jaw was freed and open, and that was the first miracle I ever saw.
Sid Roth: Did you believe it was a miracle?
Mike Francen: I knew something happened because I saw a radical change in her life, and then it made a big difference to my father who was far from living for God.
Sid Roth: Better question: did you ever think that you would pray for people and see miracles far more spectacular than that?
Mike Francen: No, no.
Sid Roth: Beyond the wildest imagination.
Mike Francen: No, I never, basketball was all the, the only future I ever saw.
Sid Roth: All right. I want to tease some people right now. There is a woman in the Bible that was hunched over. She literally, she had to walk looking at the floor. And the Messiah touched her, and she was healed. In Tanzania, this very same thing happened to you. Tell me about it.
Mike Francen: It was an awesome miracle. It was a muslim woman who heard for 30 years, this woman, for 30 years was bowed over. She walked, she had to walk on all fours, her hands on the ground.
Sid Roth: I've seen people like that. It's the saddest thing.
Mike Francen: It is. All dignity has been stripped from their lives. They have nothing left. They can't stand and talk face to face. They look at people's face. They look at the dirt. For 30 years...
Sid Roth: She had to be so depressed.
Mike Francen: She had given up hope. You know, she, for three months she had not even been outside of her home and for 30 years bowed over. And then for four days, we had a five-day crusade in Tanzania, and for four days, she heard her friends and her neighbors come talking about the miracles, the blind and deaf, and crippled.
Sid Roth: But why would a muslim woman come, because you believe in Jesus?
Mike Francen: No hope. Her religion offered her no hope. Her religion offered her no help. There was nothing the doctors could do for her, nothing her religion could do her. And all her friends, which were, some of them were Muslims before, but came back talking about this Jesus, talking about the miracles, all of a sudden her friends came talking about this, and she said, "I'm gonna to go. I'm gonna go". She, on the last day of the crusade, she said, I'm going, on her hands and knees. She hadn't even walked for the last three months, not been outside of her hut for three months. She lived on top of a mountainside, and on her hands and knees, she got up early that Sunday morning, and she crawled on her hands and knees down that mountainside, crawled down the dirt road and crawled onto a bus. And it took her all day long to get to our crusade, and she got there that afternoon. She crawled into the stadium and we had just thousands of people packed in this place. And she crawled in there. She sat and she listened to me talk about Jesus Christ and his goodness, and his faithfulness to fulfill his promises as I proclaimed them.
Sid Roth: What happened?
Mike Francen: I'm not going tell you.
Sid Roth: Oh come on, I'm going to hit you over the head.
Mike Francen: It was, you know, to see the miracles, Sid, what's the greatest miracle you've ever seen? You know, there are so many.
Sid Roth: I want to know about her. I want to know about this one. You can't do that, Mike Francen.
Mike Francen: I've got a video you could buy and you can see the whole thing.
Sid Roth: I have box top to send you. Now tell me.
Mike Francen: She sat there. She listened to me preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She crawled up right next to the platform and then I began to pray a mass prayer for the sick. When I asked, how many of you want to receive Jesus Christ, she didn't really do anything. She prayed and went through the motions.
Sid Roth: What do you expect for a person to do?
Mike Francen: You can't expect it. Then I prayed a mass prayer for the sick and all of a sudden, her body began to shake and just quiver. And she came up in a little bit and told me the story. She said, "My body began to shake. My arms shook and my legs shook". And then I said, I just spoke to the crowd. I didn't know she was there. People said, "Oh, look at Mike Francen, he's got great faith for healing. Mike, you've got great faith". I didn't even know she was there. Don't blame me. It's God honoring his word. Don't blame me for the miracles. It's God and Jesus Christ.
Sid Roth: You know, as you state the truth, that builds their faith and causes a miracle to happen.
Mike Francen: That's what happened to her. I prayed a mass prayer for the sick. God began to touch them. Then I said, "Do what you can't do before, which you could not do before and see if God has given you a miracle". Well she felt something shake and happen to her body. So she began to stand to her feet and for the first time in three months, she was standing, but she was still bowed over. And I said, "Do what you couldn't do before". All of a sudden, she began to straighten up. And she came up on the platform and for the first time in 30 years, she stood up straight, and she held her hands up, and the crowd just went wild. But the story went on from there. She went back home.
Sid Roth: And how did she go back home?
Mike Francen: She walked back home.
Sid Roth: Strong and erect.
Mike Francen: Dignity. I mean, she held her head, just a smile.
Sid Roth: How old a woman would you say she is?
Mike Francen: I would say she was in her 60s, late 60s.
Sid Roth: So would she, had she been this way her whole life?
Mike Francen: For 30 years she had been bowed over. All of her friends knew it.
Sid Roth: Thirty years.
Mike Francen: And we took her home.
Sid Roth: Nothing but the crowd. I can't think of anything more depressing.
Mike Francen: No, no. She had no hope. But Jesus gives hope and hope is the foundation of faith, and faith brings on miracles from God.
Sid Roth: So she went home and what happened?
Mike Francen: When she went home we had, we drove her home because we heard her story. It was just a phenomenal story. She had a great, we need to just interview her for posterity sake if nothing else. And so we went to her home. We drove up this mountain and then one of the pastors walked up there with her, and he was holding her by the arm. When she got near her home, she shook her arm loose. She said, "Let go of me". She said, "I told my friends and my neighbors I was going to get healed," and she said, "I want them to see what God has done". She walked home, walking up straight. All of her neighbors, "Look at mama get healed, mama got healed, mama got her miracle". And it just, I mean, the Gospel was preached in that little village, even though some of them never went to the crusade.
Sid Roth: You think that's a good miracle. Wait until you hear how this whole phenomena of miracles started with Mike Francen. It's amazing. And guess what? God is not a respecter of persons. Guess what that means? What he did for this woman, he can do for you. All things are possible to those who believe. Don't go away.
Sid Roth: Hi. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm speaking to Mike Francen and I want to find out how blind people get their sight back, deaf hear. I mean, did God come to you one day and call your name out three times, and say, "Mike Francen, go to Africa and you will see miracles"?
Mike Francen: It was interesting the way that this all came about to happen. To me, I accepted Christ two years after my mother had gotten healed and I realized that I had better make a decision on what my internal destiny is going to be. And I got a hold of one of t. L. Osborn's books, and T. L. Osborn has probably preached to more people face to face than anyone who has ever lived. Just for nearly 60 years he's traveled the world with the Gospel and had massive crowds of hundreds of thousands of people.
Sid Roth: I remember reading a book about him and he went to a foreign country and came back so discouraged and burnt out, and then he went back and miracles happened, and everything changed.
Mike Francen: Yeah. The first place he ever went to was India, and he went there for a five-year tenure, and came home after 10 or 11 month defeated because he couldn't convince the multitude. The only thing that separates what we have from all the religions in the world, it's not a prayer, because they all have prayer meetings. It's not a book, it's not our Bible because they've got, you can't go to India and open your book, they've got their own books. The Buddhists have it. Everybody has got their own holy writings. They all have their holy service. They all have their religious prayers and they all have their songs. The only thing that separates what we believe from all the religions in the world is miracles. And that's what T. L. Didn't go to India with the first time. He didn't go with the miracles. He went trying to convince them, trying to persuade them by simply opening a book. But you see, Jesus qualified his life by miracles. He said, "Go and tell John the things that you see and hear, the blind see, the lame walk". T. L. Went back to India years later after he had gotten the revelation and the understanding that God uses miracles today just as he did in Bible days. He never, Jesus never changes. And so he went back with that and shook the world in incredible ways. Tens of thousands of churches are doing it today.
Sid Roth: I want to know what happened to you because you're just a nice, normal, American. You have an experience with God. You want to serve him. How does someone get from point a to having thousands of people in these miracle healings?
Mike Francen: It was, I guess the brief version that I saw in one of T. L. Osborn's books called, "Soul winning" and I saw the pictures, and I saw the crusades, and I saw the miracle testimonies. And I thought, I'm going to spend my life going to the world and telling people that Jesus Christ is alive. He's not dead. It's not another religion. He's living today. And so I saw that and I made plans. It was shortly after that I found myself in Nigeria with one of the great men of God, recently went home to be with the Lord. His name was Benson Idahosa.
Sid Roth: I knew him.
Mike Francen: Powerful man. I just, I could spend all day telling miracle stories of things about him. But I sat there and I watched him in crusades, and I lived with him in his home for three months in 1984. And he took me from crusade to crusade, and I met T. L. Osborn at that time, and I watched them as they prayed for the sick. And I watched the miracles, and I watched all these different things. And then as I sat on one of his crusade platforms, and I watched T.L. Osborn, and I watched Benson Idahosa preach and pray for the sick, and miracles happening, it was like a thousand voices began to whirl on the inside of my head: you can do this. You can do this. You're going to do this. You're going to do this. And it just, it was just bombarding my ears. And I went back in December of 1984. I left January of '85. I went and started to do my own miracle crusades.
Sid Roth: How did you start, just out of curiosity?
Mike Francen: When I was in Nigeria, I had spent those three months with Idahosa and I asked him several questions the last day I was there, and I said, "Papa, I said, "What am I supposed to do now"? I said, "You've never done this for anybody and you've invited me here, and you said I needed to learn how to do big crusades. What am I supposed to do now"? He said, "Son, go down and do likewise". Well nobody told me I couldn't do it. I just, I said, okay, that's good enough for me. And so the next month I got on a plane and went to the Philippines. Didn't know anybody there, didn't ever been there before. Jesus just said go. And so I went there and I had a massive budget of $120 for my first crusade. And I got over there, and I made a few flyers, a few posters and handbills. I made two 15-second radio spots on this little 5-watt radio station that didn't do anything.
Sid Roth: You didn't have much money.
Mike Francen: No, I had $120 for my first budget.
Sid Roth: $120. So how many people came to your first meeting?
Mike Francen: In that first crusade, we had somewhere near 4000 people accept Christ.
Sid Roth: Your first time. How old were you?
Mike Francen: I was 22, 23.
Sid Roth: Twenty-two years old, you take a plane to the Philippines, you have a little over a hundred dollars. You put up a couple of little flyers.
Mike Francen: Bring the blind, deaf and crippled.
Sid Roth: Tell me your first thoughts. I mean, you're still kind of, was there a little fear?
Mike Francen: There wasn't any fear in the beginning. You know went over there. Benson Idahosa said, "Son, go down and do likewise, so I did. I couldn't make the nice colorful posters he had, but I made these tiny little posters that said, "Miracle healing crusade. Bring the blind, the deaf and the crippled and Jesus will heal them all".
Sid Roth: Did many sick people come in?
Mike Francen: I got there the first night of my first crusade. I was there with excitement and when I got to the first night I looked at those people, and I had never seen so many sick people all my life. I said, my God, what have I done. And they were carrying them in on stretchers. They were leading the blind in. I saw women with huge goiters hanging off of their throats. And I had never seen so many sick people in all my life as when I saw that first day.
Sid Roth: You know what I'd like to do, I'd like to see a clip right now from the Philippines, and this is someone that, a lady that was born deaf and dumb. Do you remember her?
Mike Francen: Yeah. Yeah. It was a powerful testimony.
Sid Roth: Tell me about her.
Mike Francen: I'm not sure which one they're showing now because there were several in this clip.
Sid Roth: I'll tell you what, let's just show it right now.
Mike Francen: Let's show it.
Sid Roth: This woman from the Philippines.
Narrator: "This precious 23-year-old Filipino woman was born deaf and dumb. Silence was the only world she had known. Her friend who came with her to the crusade testified that she had never spoken a word in her life. But this night Jesus proved himself alive as her ears were opened and her tongue loosed. She spoke her name for the very first time. Tears of overwhelming joy covered her face as the reality of the miracle dawned".
Sid Roth: Listen, how would you like to be a young man, Mike Francen starts seeing these miracles and then make a statement: "Stone me if you don't see miracles". You better have the guts. I mean, you'd really better. Can you picture being in a foreign country. I mean, I'm not talking about New York city. I'm talking about a foreign country. "Stone me if you don't see miracles". We'll be right back and we'll find out if he got stoned.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter. What could possess a young man out in a foreign country, thousands of people listening to him? He comes out and he says, "If you don't see a legitimate miracle," I mean, don't not come back the next day, "You can stone me". Were you out of your mind? How did you even think to say something like that? You were telling me something about the man that mentored you, so to speak, Benson Idahosa, who was a tremendous man of God in Africa, Nigeria. When did you see him?
Mike Francen: The first time in 1984, when I saw his first crusade, and I had seen the pictures, but it's different when you're there. And God was just pouring so much of my life at that time. And I saw Benson Idahosa stand up, and I went to three of his crusades, and I saw him stand up in one of the crusades. And people were challenging him. They said, oh, there's no miracles. And he's had incredible things that God has used him to do. One time the police brought, you know, he had talked about healing Jesus and going all over the world and how you raise the dead. During one of his crusades, the police threw a corpse on his stage to mock him in front of all these people. And I don't know if it was a gift of faith or something came over him. And Benson looked over at them and just peered. I mean, he had piercing eyes. And he looked at them, and he went over and grabbed that corpse, and he said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, come"! And in a moment of time, that dead person came back to life. I mean, it's...
Sid Roth: We Jewish people have a word called chutzpah, nerve.
Mike Francen: Yeah.
Sid Roth: Benson had chutzpah.
Mike Francen: Yeah. I saw so many things like that. I wasn't there that particular one. When I saw him do one of the crusades, when we were in a city it was tough. They were resistant to the Gospel. There's a very strong muslim, Islamic hold in the nation of Nigeria. And I was there, and he stood up, and he said, "If there are no miracles here, he said, "You stone me. If Jesus does nothing here when we pray you stone". And I'm watching this as a young 22-year-old man. And then I saw him on the second day of that crusade and things were tough, and he was just preaching. And there was a paralyzed woman, paralyzed from the neck down for years. He said, "Bring that woman up on the stage". And I'm just on the edge of my seat, what is going on here.
Sid Roth: I mean, if you're going to pick someone, pick someone with a headache.
Mike Francen: Yeah. Any backaches here, you know, just come up here. He said, "Bring that one". She was laying there, couldn't move her fingers. "Carry that woman". And they flopped her up there just like a bag of rocks. She lay there on the stage, couldn't move. And he begins and he says, "I'm going to pray". He says, "If this woman walks you'll know that Jesus is the Christ and if she doesn't you'll know that I'm a false prophet". And so I'm just, I'm about ready to run off the stage or something at that point.
Sid Roth: That's right. It could be contagious.
Mike Francen: Oh yeah. And so he takes her by the hand and he says, "In the name of Jesus, get up and walk". And he almost pulled her arm out of the socket. He said, "Get up and walk"! And she got up, and she started walking, and she started dancing, and the crowd, I mean, the place went wild. There was probably 40 or 50,000 people in that field and they went wild.
Sid Roth: You realize what would have happened if she had fallen down and collapsed.
Mike Francen: Thank God she walked.
Sid Roth: I mean, can you imagine what would have...
Mike Francen: Thank God she walked.
Sid Roth: I guess there's nothing more you can say than that. So you had seen that. So what did you do?
Mike Francen: My first crusade, you know, see, I just remembered Benson's words when he said, "Son go down and do likewise". And Jesus said, "Go into all the world". And he said, "These signs shall follow". And so my first crusade, I get to the first night and I'm looking, and I'm seeing all these sick people and I said, my God. And you asked, were you afraid, are you scared, are you concerned. I saw all the sick people at first and I ran behind the stage, this faith man, you know. I ran behind the stage of that first crusade and I said, "My God, what have I done". I said, "Jesus, I'm so sorry. I'll never do this again". I just said, "Get me out of this, God". Because I was scared. I didn't know what to do.
Sid Roth: I can understand.
Mike Francen: I told them to come and they came. I guess I was halfway expecting they wouldn't. Then the thought came to me. I didn't come here in the name of a church. I didn't come with the name of a religion. I didn't come on my own name. I came in the name of Jesus Christ. And when that thought came to my mind, I grabbed the microphone and I preached from Benson's messages, and I preached like I preached a thousand times before. And then I began to make statements like I heard him make. "Jesus is the Son of God and we're going to pray for the sick, and if the sick get healed, you'll know he's the Christ. But if they don't, you go ahead and you stone me and you run me out of your town".
Sid Roth: This was your first meeting.
Mike Francen: First crusade.
Sid Roth: Oy vey, I can imagine how you are right now. So what happened? I mean, you told me there were some very sick people in the crowd.
Mike Francen: The first person to testify was a man who had been in a war and a shell went off, and let him totally deaf for 35 years. I prayed like I saw him pray. I preached his message. I shared his testimonies. First man, totally deaf 35 years. The next man was a man who had not walked and had not spoken in seven years and he got up, and he was walking and talking, incredible things. So I come back the second night of the crusade and I'm just, you know, I'm filled with boldness and confidence, and probably some stupidity, but thank God, he sees pass our stupidity sometimes. And I remember Benson, while I was preaching, I remember, all of a sudden this thought came, yeah, he picked up that crippled woman. And so I remember seeing a woman came. She had two crutches. She had a man on each arm that helped her get there and I watched her come in that night. And so while I'm preaching, all of a sudden I remember what Benson did. And I looked and I said, "Bring that woman up on the stage". She, her legs were dead. They were useless.
Sid Roth: Dead, dead.
Mike Francen: Dead, dead. And I said, "Bring her up on the stage". And I said, "Put her in this chair". So she's sitting there and all of a sudden I'm starting to make an issue. I said, "I'm going to pray". And I said, "If this woman walks you will know that Jesus is the Christ and if she doesn't you'll know that I'm a false prophet". And I'm just like Benson did.
Sid Roth: Weren't you fearful?
Mike Francen: At that point I wasn't.
Sid Roth: So okay, what happened? And you'd better tell me.
Mike Francen: I grabbed her by the hand and if you buy my video tape you can see exactly what happened.
Sid Roth: What happened?
Mike Francen: I grabbed her by the hand.
Sid Roth: I'll buy your tape.
Mike Francen: It's not on tape. It was my first crusade. I grabbed her hand and said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, get up and walk". And I pulled her. Thank God, she got up and walked. She walked. She started trotting back and forth across the stage. The audience went wild, an incredible miracle. And then when you give an altar call and ask people, "How many of you want to accept Christ, after they see something like that happening, their hearts, wholeheartedly.
Sid Roth: Okay. I want you to see something like that happen. We're going to take you to a Mike Francen campaign that is in Thailand, and as a matter of fact, this is someone that needs to learn how to walk also.
Narrator: For 11 years, this woman had not walked. The head man of her village brought her to the campaign where she received a miracle. He verified her story in the new found miracle. Her first steps may have been shaky, but the smile on her face testified of the amazing miracle. She is walking. Her joy has spread across the entire mass of people, who witnessed her first steps in 11 years. The cripples are walking.
Sid Roth: What does it feel like, Mike Francen, what does it feel like to see someone like her walk that couldn't walk. The blind see, the deaf hear. What is it like?
Mike Francen: You know, I've been doing this for 14 years and the miracles never get old. The testimonies never get old. I look at that and I look in their eyes and I see Jesus in their eyes. And you look at it, for 11 years, she had not stood on those legs. You say, well she wasn't running. This is the first time she stood in 11 years, let alone walk. And the head man, that was like the chief of that village came. They jumped in the back of a pickup truck. They heard about the crusade, they came. And this woman prayed. She had not stood on her legs for 11 years. She had not walked in 11 years, not one step, not standing for one second, and there she is. After we prayed a mass prayer for the sick, we said, "Now do what you couldn't do". All of a sudden, she's there walking. And we went on later and she walked back to that truck. She walked, incredible miracle.
Sid Roth: What kind of miracle do you need? Maybe it is walking. Maybe it's hearing. Maybe it's the heart. Maybe it's cancer in your body. Maybe it's diabetes. Maybe it's high blood pressure. Maybe it's pains in your body, your back and your neck. Do you remember the very first message that Mike gave? He said, "I don't come in my own my name. I don't come in the name of a religion. I don't come in the name of a particular group. I come in the name of Jesus the Messiah, the anointed one". And it's in his name you are healed because the Word of God says, "By his stripes, by his stripes, you were healed". And then Mike said, "Do something you couldn't do before". So I say to you, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, do something you could not do before. Bend that elbow. Move that head. They're a thing of the past. Eyes are being healed, the gums, whatever you need. It doesn't matter whether I said it or not because he paid the price for all. He's irrespective of persons. It's yours. It's yours. It's yours. Do something and praise God. Lift like your hands like king David did, all the way above your head. Lift holy hands to God and you'll see that he is a God that does miracles.