Sid Roth - Supernatural Lightning Split My Pulpit in Half with Tommy Tenney
Supernatural lightning hit an indoor pulpit, splitting in half, throwing the pastor nine feet in the air then miracles erupted, next on this edition of It's Supernatural!
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm so excited because my guest was involved in a legitimate supernatural explosion from God. Most of you, your mind goes tilt, your religious mind goes tilt and you think, oh it's church, I'm gonna go see wrestling or Psychic Network. No, church is so far removed from the power of God. But God is about ready to demonstrate His reality to a lukewarm, pathetic race called humans. Now Tommy Tenney, you were in Houston, Texas minding your own business, speaking at a church. Tell me what happened.
Tommy Tenney: We don't have enough time for me to tell you all the things that happened, Sid. But the short version is God showed up and all of the other things that occurred, just like the wind ripples the waves on the pond, this was just the rippling of the waves.
Sid Roth: You know, Tommy, most Christians would not know the difference whether God showed up or not.
Tommy Tenney: They would have that day.
Sid Roth: But they, why?
Tommy Tenney: Well first of all, I don't know if you've ever felt the hairs stand up on the back of your neck kind of situation.
Sid Roth: Yeah, I have.
Tommy Tenney: It was the awesome presence of God so filled the room until you felt like you could hardly breathe. It felt like the air was liquid. It was incredible and grown men were just weeping. The service was sort of out of control.
Sid Roth: Now there's a lot of people that get scared when they hear, "out of control". What do you mean by that?
Tommy Tenney: Well out of control in the way that it wasn't manipulated by man. These were not emotional responses that we were calling for. There wasn't a pumped up singing or hyped up speaking. It was just the presence of God literally. When we walked in at 8:30 that morning, we walked, it's like we walked into it.
Sid Roth: Why were these men weeping?
Tommy Tenney: Well men, women, children, everybody there. The presence of God so permeated the atmosphere until...Every time the Glory of God shows up it seems to bring with it fear. Perhaps in church tones we may be more accustomed to people falling backward out of blessing than falling face-ward out of fear. But in the Old Testament at the dedication of Solomon's Temple, the priest and the ministers couldn't minister. They were literally in a colloquial way wiped out. And I'm not talking about just feeling weak kneed. I'm talking about a sheer impossibility. When the presence of God demonstrated itself that morning, everybody makes a big deal about the pulpit splitting. We hardly noticed it. We were so preoccupied, would be the right word, with the manifest presence of God that the pulpit split, well let's just get it out of the way. And it didn't dawn on us until some point after exactly how and what happened and there were hundreds if not thousands of people there, between 800 to a thousand is my guess. Nobody has ever even bothered to find out.
Sid Roth: But tell me for my benefit and for our viewers' benefit, this was a pulpit that, was it thick? What was it made out of?
Tommy Tenney: The pulpit was this, we would call it acrylic. That's what I always called it, or Plexiglas. That's really not the legitimate term. We've had the engineers check it out since then. It's basically a space age Lucite type plastic that is the engineers said you could basically drop it from a ten-story building and it may shatter, but not split.
Sid Roth: So there is no scientific explanation for what occurred?
Tommy Tenney: No, sir. The manufacturer just said, we don't accept that.
Sid Roth: What do you mean, we don't accept that?
Tommy Tenney: Well they don't know what made it split. Their terms to us were, in fact I can quote it, I may be off one figure or another, but it was built in such a way that it had a band in it and they said it would take 150,000 pounds per square inch to break it. And nobody touched it. The pastor just was resting his hands lightly on it when all of this happened.
Sid Roth: Explain exactly what happened. I know that you were preoccupied with God. But for those of us that are preoccupied with that pulpit, exactly what happened?
Tommy Tenney: Sometimes when I talk about this I get a little emotional.
Sid Roth: But why do you?
Tommy Tenney: I, it's like I'll never forget that day. It has nothing to do with the pulpit, Sid.
Sid Roth: It was a holy day in your life.
Tommy Tenney: I had been preaching for many years and thought I knew God.
Sid Roth: Now you come from several generations of preachers.
Tommy Tenney: Yeah three generations. We just buried my 96-year-old grandfather. As far as successful in ministry, I was successful. I preached to the largest churches across America. On that day when God showed up the difference it made in my life is as much as the difference between before I was saved or after I was saved, as before then and after then. His presence changed me. And really, from then until now all I want to do is be in His presence.
Sid Roth: Most people, they hear a word in His presence, "help". What does that really mean?
Tommy Tenney: There is the omnipresence of God, which is the everywhere, all the time presence. I make a statement in my book, "The God Chasers", that sort of raises eyebrows that God is in most bars as much as He is most churches. That's the omnipresence. It's the everywhere.
Sid Roth: He's everywhere.
Tommy Tenney: Right. But God has an ability to concentrate His presence in a location and when He does that we call it the manifest presence of God, like He concentrated his presence between the cherubims over the Ark of the Covenant. And on that day in Houston, what I knew about God just got blown off the Richter scale and everything I knew about Him was exponentially multiplied.
Sid Roth: I am going to believe right now that when we come back, everything you've believed about God is going to be as nothing compared to the experience with God's mercy that you're going to have when we come back. Don't go away.
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative report. I'm with Tommy Tenney. Tommy was in Houston and he had an encounter of such a magnitude with the anointing or the manifest presence of God that it was just a total change of his life, and he comes from three generations of preachers. As a matter of fact, Tommy, you said that you normally don't even talk about this. Why?
Tommy Tenney: That's one reason when I wrote the book, "God Chasers", I almost didn't put it in there, but I put it in the first chapter because it's difficult for me to talk about that without getting a little weepy and just wishing that day had never ended, might be the best way to put it. There's something about the manifest presence of God that if you're ever exposed to that, there's absolutely nothing that holds any allure to you at all.
Sid Roth: Tommy, I believe that for every one that hungers and thirsts for God that is watching us right now they will enter in to what you are describing and it won't just be for one day. It will be seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and I believe that day is coming soon.
Tommy Tenney: I pray that it does.
Sid Roth: But tell me about that day. Tell me what happened exactly.
Tommy Tenney: We went into the auditorium at 8:30 that morning for the first of what was to be two services that day. The pastor slipped into his office to pick something up and I preceded him just maybe by two minutes. When I walked in the presence of God was already there. This was the third week I had been at this church. I don't want people to think because I had been speaking there that's why God showed up. But three weeks prior to that I spoke and on the following Wednesday, this pastor called and said, "Please come back the next Sunday". And I cancelled and felt to come back because there was something twisting in the wind. That's the only way I know how to describe it.
Sid Roth: You had an intuitive hunch something was up.
Tommy Tenney: We sure were hungry. And I appreciate what you said about hunger and thirst. It's the one promise He said He will fulfill. And our collective hunger determines the size of our collective visitation.
Sid Roth: That's interesting.
Tommy Tenney: And I wonder how long God has waited to get a pastor and a church, and an evangelist all hungry at the same time. That happened basically. We came back the second Sunday and then this was the third Sunday. So it wasn't like I was unfamiliar with the church, the pastor and I have known each other 25 years or more, walked in and I went back and got him, and I said, "Richard, you'd better come out here. This is unusual". The worship team was trying to worship, could hardly worship for weeping. Finally, one by one, they would just collapse in a heap, weeping until there was nobody singing any more except the keyboard player who was the music pastor. And he let out this incredible sob and just collapsed, collapsed, literally. And the presence of God was so intense in there until, it's like you take everything you knew about God and dial it up. And I may not have made many good decisions in life, but I made one good decision. My wife was with me and I leaned over to her and I said, "Jean, we've never been this close to God before and I'm not going to stop". She's an incredible worshiper, worship leader, intercessor. And I said, "I want you to go up there and continue to just play and sing, simply and softly". It was not manipulated, it wasn't high decibel, it wasn't high volume. She just continued to lead us into God's presence. It became so strong until people would stand up to maybe even try to slip to the altar and just kind of fall in the aisle, weeping, repenting, out of control, but at the same time with a measured level of dignity. And the pastor leaned over to me and he said, "Tommy, are you ready to take the service"? And my response was, "Richard, I'm about half afraid to take the service because God is going to do something". He said, "I think I have a word". He slipped up and read Second Chronicles 7:14. "If my people called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face". And he said, "The Word of the Lord for us today is to stop seeking His benefits and start seeking Him. Stop seeking His hands and seek His face".
Sid Roth: Everyone is after: God, what's in it for me? God, what can you do for me?
Tommy Tenney: We want His hands.
Sid Roth: And I guess God is just hungering and thirsting, just as He tells us if you hunger and thirst for righteousness in that day I'll be found, I think God is hungering and thirsting for us to seek His face.
Tommy Tenney: We want a God encounter. God wants a man encounter and that's all He's ever wanted, just a level of intimacy with us. Unfortunately, sometimes we take the very blessings that He's given us and use them to finance our journey away from him. You know, the famous story of the prodigal son in the Bible, he took the blessings of the father, the produce from the father's hands to buy his plane ticket to get away from the father's face. He took the blessings to get away from the father's presence. But when he came to himself, he said, I've run out of blessing and I know where the source of all things I ever really need are, at the father's house. And he went back and he said, "I don't want the blessings. I'll be a servant. I don't need the authority. I don't want, I just want to be here, can I be here"? And the father said, "No, you're my son. You're welcome here," and brought him back in. But our abuse often takes us away from the Father's face. That's the difference between seeking His hands and seeking His face.
Sid Roth: And the thing that I like is the father, in that parable in the New Covenant, the father, the minute the prodigal took one step towards the father, one step, the father ran to him, put his arms around him and clothed him with righteousness. We'll be back right after this. Get ready.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm speaking with Tommy Tenney. And you talk about the dead being raised. That's what's going on. People that are in dead religion, dead tradition, dead formalism are having God encounters. Tommy, what happened next in this church in Houston?
Tommy Tenney: When my wife began to sing, the presence of God got so heavy I liken it to, it's like you say God is there. You feel a little tingle. But remember when Princess Diana got married, that's my memory, she entered the building, but even though she was in there her train kept coming.
Sid Roth: Yes, I remember that.
Tommy Tenney: When God was there and I thought, okay, this is as much of God I ever felt, then He kept coming and kept coming until it's like He packed himself in that building. And then the pastor said, "We need to seek His face, not His hands". When the pastor got up to slip up to the pulpit to say that, I was so positive that God was going to do something. I got up and went and stood back at the sound board because I didn't know where it was going to happen, whatever it was, but I knew you can't get that much of God in the building and something not happen. And after he spoke those words, he trembled just slightly, and this clap of, I don't even want to call it thunder, and I objected to you even saying supernatural lightning. I don't know what it was. It sounded like thunder.
Sid Roth: That sound, there's a term like that in the Bible, "It sounded like". And then what?
Tommy Tenney: I can't say.
Sid Roth: What happened?
Tommy Tenney: Well the next thing is he flew backwards about ten feet, laid prostrate in what wound up to be two and a half hours. And this is a man, I've never seen him dance. I've never seen him fall down, none of the even normal charismatic manifestations. He's very joyful, he claps, he worships.
Sid Roth: Not overly emotional.
Tommy Tenney: No, not at all. Very much in control, you know. And that doesn't, yet his church, people would fall down if you prayed for them. It's not that that didn't happen there.
Sid Roth: But it didn't happen to him.
Tommy Tenney: And at the same time he flew backwards, the pulpit flew forwards only in two pieces and one piece landed over here, another piece over there, maybe six feet between them. And if you could imagine a tree trunk, it didn't like just break in half like this is a spiral break. It split down, I don't.
Sid Roth: I'm want to go back to this pastor. When he flew in the air, say nine feet, did he hurt himself?
Tommy Tenney: No. He had incredible visions that affect him to this day, some of which he still can't talk about.
Sid Roth: Tell me some specific physical healings that happened that day.
Tommy Tenney: I don't even know how to begin, but within that same timeframe, there was a blind lady. I didn't know she was blind, but people were, that service, Sid, started at 8:30 that morning. It lasted all day Sunday, all night Sunday night until 2:00 Monday morning. And normally the people would leave the first service so that the second service could come.
Sid Roth: Right.
Tommy Tenney: The second service people came while the first service people were still there, and they would begin to get out of their cars, and the presence of God was so strong, it was so strong in the parking lot that they would begin to weep. And I sent one of the ushers to get my children because they were at the hotel and coming for the second service. I said, "Please go get my children. I don't want them to“...
Sid Roth: Miss this.
Tommy Tenney: Miss this.
Sid Roth: I don't want our viewers to miss a visitation from God right now. Would you speak to them about the God that you love?
Tommy Tenney: I'll be glad to. Whoever you are, wherever you are, you may have met Him, and you may have just heard about Him, but I want to talk to about really meeting Him. Why don't you just close your eyes with me right now, and don't close your eyes because it's something spiritual. Close your eyes because it gives you some personal privacy, and let's pray right now. Father, your presence is what people are hungry for. They're tired of church and going through motions and religious rituals. I pray that wherever they are in living rooms or bar rooms, or bedrooms, let your presence begin to manifest itself, show up. Lord, it's a simple prayer, but show up where they are. And as they do, let them make you the Lord of their life. Let them repent of their sins. Wherever you are, friend, if you'll reach for Him, I promise you He'll reach for you. He loves you that much. Everything that I've ever talked about, everything that any of the biblical writers have ever written about, everything that Sid has said, it's available for you right where you are. You just have to reach. He's already reached. Father, touch them right now in the name of Jesus.
Sid Roth: Amen. I don't know about you, but I know about me. I mean I'm a reporter, and I feel the tangible presence of the Living God, and where that presence is there's not death, there's life. There's not hate, there's love. There's not war, there's peace. You say yeah but Sid, look at all these religious people that have wars. That's it. It's religious people. It's not people that have had encounters with the Living God. This is what you have wanted and you thought it wasn't available. Tommy, you just got back from Argentina. Most of our viewers aren't familiar. What's going on in Argentina?
Tommy Tenney: It's pretty incredible. Some places, whole cities are being taken. This particular meeting was in what I would call the strongholds in Buenos Aires. It's an incredible unity that has come to the body, and as a result of that unity, incredible visitation. God is calling for us to become one and lay down all of these artificial barriers. I don't want to get to Heaven and realize I've got brothers there that I didn't recognize on Earth.
Sid Roth: What about you? God is up to something. God is moving. God is shaking countries. In Argentina, people are getting in taxis and going to churches, and getting healed and delivered, and coming to know God. In the day that you seek God with all of your heart, you say, I don't know how to do it. Yes. Will! Will to right now! When we go off the air, you get down on the floor on your face, not on your knees, on your face, and say, God, I'm not getting up until I know You. I believe in You, I love You, but there's something more. I know there must be something more. I need You, God. I'm desperate for You, God. This life is a big facade without You. And if you will hunger and thirst for His presence, He's not far. You know, God is crying for some of you right now. I can feel His tears. They're tears of love, and He says, "Come unto Me all that you are weary and are tired. I've got shalom for you, peace". In Jesus' name I speak shalom over you right now, peace, amen.