It was like the
finger of God tapped this dam that
had been building up
for years. ♪
Hunger, wanting the
Lord to touch me. ♪
He said, "Did you know
I was healed"? ♪
When he said that, man,
something stirred in me. ♪
I could feel the presence of
God on the golf course. ♪♪ ♪
Genesis 26:18 tells us ♪
"Isaac dug again the
wells of Abraham." ♪♪ ♪
In every generation, there
have been revivals, ♪
massive moves of the Spirit ♪
that changed the course
of history. ♪
In every revival, there
were believers like you ♪
who chose to answer the call ♪
to become the one
in their generation. ♪
Discover your call
to be the one ♪
in your generation. ♪♪ ♪
We are about to take you ♪
face to face with history. ♪♪ He said, "You know, I'm having a
healing service tonight because when I got healed
in Benny's meeting, Benny told me I'll
pray for the sick so for the last 10 years, I've
seen blind Presbyterians see, He said, I've seen cancers
vanished, stage 4", he said, "But I don't
want you to preach
tonight. I just want you
to come because you preach enough,
you need a break". He didn't even know me. That was the first day
meeting him. I thought that was bizarre.
- Yea. - We got done. He said,
"I'll take you to the hotel. You can clean up and then I'll
bring you to the service". I said, "Yes, Sir". So we went. He said, "Before we
go to the service, I want to show you the video of
my healing testimony". I said, "Great, I'd
love to see it". So he drives me to his house, turned on the DVD, back then
they were still using DVDs, and...
[Chuckles] it came on and he got
called to the platform and all of a sudden, all of
us, our eyes got this big
watching it because I was the one catching
him and his wife. - Oh, wow.
- Yea. - He goes, "Dude, that's you"? I go, "Yea, that's me"! I could feel the presence
like building even more, right? And then, we went to the church. It's gonna be hard to get
through this one for me. We went to the church and Austin, Bruce's son looked at me and I knew something was coming. I don't know how to explain it. - Yea.
- You know the Bible says, "The high priest was anointed
with the fragrant anointed oil". You could smell it coming, you could smell it while he
was with you, and you could smell it
when he left. That speaks of Jesus' presence. Austin looks at me. Austin
is a great...loves Jesus. Now back then, I wouldn't say
he was on fire or anything. - Yea. - We walked in and he goes, "You ever feels like something
is about the happen to you"? [Dr. Gene chuckles] I go, "Yea". I didn't tell him
anything I was going through. "Yea", he goes. "Oh"! And
he walks away. I thought that was the weirdest
thing I've ever seen. - Wow. We walks in and a YWAMer and this old Lutheran
and beautiful like a wooden church out
in the woods. He grabs his acoustic guitar,
you know typical YWAM, had his sandals on,
t-shirt, jeans, he hit the first cord
and when he did, I felt like I got
lifted to Glory. - Oh, wow. It was like the arms of the
Lord wraped me. I grabbed on to the pew,
they were wooden pews, and I was
shaking. I was crying, I wanted to cry and laugh more
and laugh and cry more and I couldn't breathe
really well, I was hyperventilating. My hands were throbbing. They were bright red like
beat beat red and they were sweating
and dripping and it was hot and it was cold and it was good but
it was fearful. I felt like if I grieved the
Lord, I could die like literally die but I
still liked it. Like Marilyn Hickey told me when
she went to Branham's meeting, when she stepped
into that whirlwind when she was barren, he
called her out, told her where she came from
and she said she stepped into the fear
of the Lord around him and the power shot through her
and the next thing you know, she went home and had Sarah. It was that kind of deal
like this fear but a beautiful, glorious,
ecstatic encounter. And Gene, I said, when I
was holding on to the pew, "My God, all these old
people are dead. There is no way they
could survive this" because there were
some older people. I said, "If this power hit
a weaker person, they'd die". - Yea. - And I looked and some of the
people were just like, "Let's get
through that meeting". - Yea. - And I said, "Lord,
you came for me tonight". - Yea. - So, I prayed a wild prayer, right there in His presence. I said, "If this is what
I've been asking, have this Lutheran guy give
me the meeting". And when I opened my eyes, he
was standing right in my face. He didn't know me from Adam. He said, "Would you take
the meeting"? That was the first
night where... - How far into the meeting did
all this happened? Well, the encounter
started immediately and then he walked up to me
an hour later. - An hour later, okay. - Yea. - So what happened? He says,
"Take the meeting"? - I walked up there, here
was the weird thing. Bruce is on the
piano...by accident. - Ha ha! - I'm going, "Is this
happening"? - Yea. Because for those if
you don't know, Bruce traveled with
Pastor Benny for years and years and
years over there at
the church and obviously was prepared.
- Yea. [Laughs] So I'm going, "This
cannot be happening". - Yea. - Paul Teske, the pastor
gets healed in a crusade. Bruce and I go to play golf. I get touched. Bruce is my pianist. - He's not from there. He's not from Connecticut.
- He's from Florida. And then I hear the violin. And I'm like, "Who in the world
is playing violin"? I turn around and it's
Maurice Sklar - Oh, wow! - who traveled to
the crusades with us. So I said, "What do you
do in here"? - [Jessica chuckles] - He goes, "Oh, I was just
passing through". I'm like, "You live in
Southern California". He goes, "Yea! I just heard
you were coming. I figured I'd come play".
- Wow. And then I had to gather myself. I was like,
"This is a dream"? And I said, "If you want
Jesus, get up here" and before, Gene, I depended
on my sermons. - Uh-huh - That night, He started to
do the work and a girl was healed of
leukemia and that's the
night I discovered, "It is not by might, it is not
by power, it's by My Spirit". - Yea. - I went to the hotel vibrating
under the power of God, just like I did when her
daddy prayed for me in 89. Same anointing but it was... I needed another touch
and I called her, I said, "Babe, He touched me. He came, He
came, He touched me. He's real, He came. He stopped
everything He was doing in the whole universe and
He came and He touched me". Her dad got on the phone. I said, "Pop, He came. He
touched me, He touched me. He's like, "Oh, that's
amazing". I call my mom. I said, "Mom"! The moment I
said "Mom", she starts sobbing. She goes, "I
feel the presence of God" and that was the night
and that was the journey. So you asked earlier and
I've been going around... You asked earlier, like, "What do you do"? I do today what got me there. - Uh-huh. - What brings Him
is what keeps Him. - Yea, that's good. - Bill says it like this. "The Lord starts the fire, the
priest keeps it burning". - Yea. - So today, we're
staying downtown, I didn't have many places to go
pray. I went in the bathroom. - Yea. - Laid some blankets down on
a hard cold floor, put a towel down as a pillow. This is raw, right? Got on my
face in the bathroom, took my Bible and I told
the Lord in the dark, "I'm here for You". - That's wonderful. Tell me a little bit about
the school. - It started with... We were doing our
events, the Jesus
conferences that had really turned
into a movement so now there is Jesus '17,
this year, it's gonna be
Jesus '18 so on and so on.
- Sure So we had a moment where
we were all together, All of us...Todd White is there,
Daniel Kolenda, we have my father... Brother Copeland was with
us last year. It's just amazing. The
older generation, the younger generation...It's
just awesome, what God has done and we were all sitting
in God's presence and I think Daniel Kolenda said, "Wouldn't this be so cool if we
could do this all the time" because by the end
of these events, we, the speakers, we
don't want it to end like we love it so much. It's like the
highlight of my year not because we are
hosting this event. It's because we are all in the
presence of Jesus together with people we love and people
that had become like family that fly in from all over
the country that come to these events like I
just want to be in Jesus'
presence. I have to just be in
God's presence and it feels like there
is like a blessing on that so we thought, we've got to
keep this going like this is not common. This is not usual, this is
amazing what God is doing. This is special. We all grew up like in
revival times, so we knew the feeling like
this is not something that just happens every day. We've got to steward this well
and keep it going so that's really where the
school was birthed like we have to just build a
culture where people can come, young and old from all
over the world and just be in the
presence of the Lord like there is nothing like
it. Nothing like it. Like last event we had, Jesus
'17, the highlight of it, the highlight for me was
the very last night. Lou Engle was still there,
my dad was there. All of the young--youngs smart,
the seasoned people were there, - The young Jedis. - The young Jedis were there and we just had a moment where the Holy Spirit just showed up and people were on the
floor, crying. - Nobody would touch the pulpit. - Nobody wanted to speak. - Nobody felt qualified.
- Exactly. We knew like there is nothing we
can say at this moment. The Lord is here so we just sat
on the stage together, just sat like on our faces, some
of us, some of us laying down, some of us just sitting. We had our children on
the stage too, that was really awesome and we
just sat there like for an hour and a half. - Imagine being like
your kids... - Ah! - Gone. Totally incapacitated,
intoxicated by the Spirit and then you look and then there
is my father-in-law and you look to your right and
Lou Engle on his back with tears streaming down his
eyes, worshiping the Lord and then you have
everything in between and something was awaken
within me like, okay, it's in His presence that
we are transformed. So JESUS SCHOOL is about
His presence and as my friend
Eric Gilmour says, "There is not a scalpel thin
enough to divide Him and
His presence". He is His
presence, so obviously, we are teaching the Scriptures, the instructors are
second to none. Jesse and I will be there to
pour into the school and the students that come
so we are calling all of those radical, laid
down, "Jesus lovers" who want to come and run and
live with people who have impacted their lives,
for one year of their life and then be completed
transformed and then be sent to the
nations to transform them. That's the model so we
know, look, there are amazing schools
everywhere. There are amazing
conferences everywhere. We honor
them, we champion them, we give to many of them. We are family with many of them. We just feel like our
wheelhouse is very simple. - Yea. The presence of the Lord.
- Amen - and that's what we
are burning for. - Yea. - And we want to steward it
well. You know... - That's right.
- And give it away, Gene. - And give it away, yea. I feel like
people are asking me, "What was it like to be with
Pastor Benny all those years? What's like to be close
with Reinhard. What is it like
to be friend with Bill? All these wonderful
people, Heidi... What do they like? And I
start to think, "Maybe the reason the Lord graced us to sit with these
people is because He wants to give it away to an
entire generation". - Right. - And that's our heart,
that's our longing. - Yea.
- That's wonderful. What about those that are
watching that have kids or even some are older and have
grand-kids that are seeking God in a new way. What would you say to
encourage them or what should they do, if
there is something to do? What would you say? - I can start and then you...
- Yea, yea. - I would say, number 1, you have to become the
message...Become it. - What does it mean "become"? - Well, okay so Jesus says,
"I'm bread and wine". He said that, He used those
beautiful pictures. In other words, He used to be
consumed, - Right. - And there is a little union
that takes place. So first and foremost, I have to sit with Jesus enough. I know, we keep
going back to that. But there is no replacing it. I have to sit with Jesus
enough, feast on His Word and His presence until
His nature begins to overtake me and I become
like Him, that's Romans 8. My son asked to get
saved when he saw me, one afternoon walking out
of my prayer closet. He goes, "Daddy, I want
to get saved". - Now, how old was he? - 5.
- Wow. - He said--
well, actually he said, "What are you doing in
there"? I said, "I'm with Jesus". He said, "I want
to know Jesus". All of a sudden, you become like
the expression of the Lord. There is an authenticity there. And especially
if you are in the ministry, look, the kids aren't stupid. The real "you" is you at home.
- Yea. - Okay, so they know that and so I would
always--Uh, my kids knew that that was my priority
but I've never made them feel like they were ever
replaced by the ministry, number 1--or number 2, I
should say, but I've always encouraged what
I saw of the Lord in them. Like my kids are very prophetic, they are very sensitive so I would encourage
that, I'd speak into that. Some of it didn't
look like ministry. Sometimes, it's sport.
Sometimes, it's super spiritual to shoot junk
shots with your son. Sometimes, it's really spiritual
to take the pellet gun out back and hunt squirrels. It means something to them. I
was on my stomach the other day, with a Sig Sauer pellet gun shooting in the backyard. Right?
- Yea. - And my son goes, "How can I be
a great dad like you, one day"? - Wow! - It rocked me,
right? It rocked me. Now, you also--and this is
very important. Bill Johnson taught us this. You have to get them in the
environment of the anointing - Uh-huh, because it re-calibrates them and adjusts their taste buds. And they have to know,
I also think that that marriage and time
together is the priority. Your grandfather, Pastor Benny's
dad used to tell his family. I thought that was a
great saying. He said, "I love my children
most when I love their mother". - Um... - And I know
that didn't sound like
super-spiritual advise but it works.
- It's true. - Yea. - Yea, I would just add to
that, I was gonna say, definitely for us, having them
in the presence of the Lord, has been key. Like of course,
there is a practical side like we were saying, have a
good marriage, read the Scriptures with your
kids or your grandchildren. That's important. Every morning, the first thing we do, and it
sets the whole atmosphere in
our house, is we put on YouTube...Now
everyone has a Smart TV, most people do... Or you can put on the radio
or whatever you have and we have Christian
music playing. We have worship
music playing in the house. It's the very first thing. We
get up, I make my coffee, put on YouTube, have
worship playing, just in the
background and I feel, it just sets the tone in the
house like this is a place
of worship where our family loves
and honors God. Read the Bible is
important to us so the kids will see, I
would sit in the morning and have my coffee and
listen to that and I start reading
the Scriptures. They see that. They see Michael
praying, reading the Scripture and we tell the boys, now
they are old enough, they are 12 and
9, we say, "Go in your room, have you talk to
the Lord yet, today"? - Yes, we use that
terminology, intentionally. Maybe a Pentecostal from
the 50's would say, "Boy, you go down and seek
the Lord"? We are like, "Hey, did you talk
to the Lord, today? Let's see what He has
to say to you"? And they love it. Sometimes,
to be honest with you, they put me to shame. I would wake up after them
and they would be ready like reading the
Scripture. And I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, you guys
are so amazing" but it was taking a few years of
just kind of teaching them that, not shoveling it down
their throat, like you have to get in
there, read the Bible. No, go talk to Jesus and see
what He has to say. Our daughter, she is 6, she
can't read like her brothers can but she loves to sing
so we'd say, "Go in your room, why don't you sing a few songs
to Jesus and talk to Him" and she loves to do that. - Yes, and we would ask her,
"What did He say to you"? Like last time,
I asked Sophia and she said, I said, "What is He saying"?
She said, "That He loves me". - Yea. - You know, like my son's
first word of knowledge, Gene, was somebody last name. - Um...I remember you
telling me that. - Yea. - Well, I can't take
credit for that. In fact, I'd loved for him
to lay hands on me for that but the point
is we've...The house-- This is a very powerful
scripture and I think it's Exodus 33 verse 7, or
37...I think, it's 33 verse 7. The Bible says that Moses
pitched his tent outside the camp and that
that tent experienced the
glory of God. It's prior to Moses pitching
the tent of the Tabernacle. God had to entrust him with
His tent first, with the presence of God
in his house before God could have trust him
with the corporate house. Glory. And so that's been... that's why we do
our best to live by. - Yea, and it's important
and it's basic but go to church, go take
them to church. I feel like-- part of the reasons I did
backslide as a kid is, I think, it was so much
pressure, my parents felt bad but I
stopped going to church. I just could not handle it so
I just stopped going. I wish that they would had
said, "No, stick it out, it's okay. I know it's
hard but keep going because that probably
would of saved me years of running from the
Lord. So, we always try...When we
travel, we do our best to take them with us
when we can. If we are going
to a meeting and we know that the presence of
the Lord is gonna be there, they are gonna sit there,
they're gonna be there, they're gonna take part in it. They're not gonna
be on their phones or just enjoy and they've
learned to love it. But we don't force it but
it's just part of who we are. So, it's part of
their daily life. And we prophecy over them
twice a day. - Yea. - And I don't think I
shared this part, I didn't shared it publicly but I think it
would be good. I take them, I lay hands on
them. If I'm gone, I pray for them by
FaceTime or on the phone and this is what I pray with
my kids. I say, "The blood of Jesus over you,
the anointing of the Holy
Spirit. The angels of Heaven" and then I begin to speak in
their future. I said, "You are a great son, you're a great husband, you're a great father". I say, "And you're a
servant of God" and I do that every day. And then they go
through scriptures...About 20 and then Jesse walks them
through the Armor of God. Today, on our way here,
on FaceTime. - I had a dream
years ago and it was... It was deeper than a dream,
I don't know. It was like an encounter but I saw--I think it had
to be an angel that came to me and said, "Put the Armor of God
on your children every day. Every day, you need to be
doing that... - So how do you do that?
What do you do? - I just sit with them. They were young when we
started doing it so I would say, "I've got
the helmet of, and they go, "Salvation". I've got the breastplate
of? - Righteousness. I've got the sword of? - Spirit and so on and we say it every
morning together. - You are training them. - I'm training them. So even sometimes, I
would forget and they'd go, "We didn't
do the Armor of God, today. - Oh, yea, yea, yea". So... We want to bring them in... - It's awesome!
- Yea. - I think the generation
before is kind of... There was the ministry, there
was the anointing on, and then the thought
process was, one day you will get here.
- Right. Okay. So in the meantime,
what do I do? So we try to bring our children
into that experience so recently, one of
them had a dream. It was very directional for
our family. So I have to honor that and
bring them into conversations, what we were thinking about and Reinhard
told me that, to always... Children are
naturally gonna see the struggles of ministry. You have to make sure you bring
them into the celebration. - Right.
- The good moments.
- Oh, that's good. - And also, if there is like a
sick person, we say, "Go lay hands on them". Like they're in there
with us like laying hands. Last time with
Todd, there were some-- A sick little girl and he
grabbed all the young
kids around and our kids were right there. Lay hands on the kids and
they all lay hands on her and I think she got better, I
can't remember what happened but even when my grandmother
was sick once, we all prayed
for her, nothing happened so she said, "I want the
kids to pray for me" so they all went around,
prayed for her. Her back was completely better. So we put them in
situations so and they're kids so they
have the faith and they don't doubt themselves
and it's celebrated. - They are secret weapons
with street evangelism. I'd take one of them
if I feel like the guy might get mad at me. We were just in Nashville,
North Carolina... - We do it all the time. - You see that young guy,
little sweatshirt on, trying to look tough outside
the Barnes & Noble and I was like, "I need to go
minister to him" and so I grab little Benny, I
said, "Hey, dude, come with me". So we did and he kind of look
me up and down but there was a little
kid there. There is not too much
you can say. And we ended up laying hands on
him, praying for him, telling him about Jesus. So...Yea! - You do with them. - So valuable!... - Good. How important is music in
what you do? - Oh wow. - Oh, man. That's a
good question. - For me, it's huge. So Elijah did not
have the minstrel, Elisha did. I don't want to be limited to
music but I don't believe-- this is my personal opinion, that worship is a
means to the destination. It is the destination. The
point of salvation is so that man
can be restored unto worship. - Right. - So worship is not a way for
us to get miracles. It is not the case. We don't
worship so we can get healings. We worship Jesus
because He's Jesus and in the midst of that,
He heals. It's important to me because
what worship does, Gene, it takes somebody's heart, somebody's thoughts,
somebody's brokenness and lift it above their issues. And it directs the heart to God
which is why Jesus died. Miss Kuhlman used to say,
"Miracles happen when Jesus becomes more real
to us than the need". - Uh-huh. - Often times, I don't know if
you'd noticed this but people who are really gifted
at intercession, prophetic prayer, sometimes, they struggle with
the breakthrough for healing. - Yea. - So a lot of times, what you'll
see in that environment is, people would come forward, they
content,...content, content, Pray, call out, ask God
to do something which is all legal and okay. But it never happens. I shouldn't say, it
never happens. It struggles to happen. Why? Because often times, we're
asking for what's already there. Worship links my heart with the
presence of a God who already accomplished it all. So in the corporate setting, worship takes the people's
heart from their issue, even from their need and
puts it on Jesus and then He
overshadows the need. It's just like me when
I got healed as a kid, I forgot I was sick.
- Yea. - Because I was worshiping and I haven't been sick again. So worship is massive. First and
foremost, because Jesus is
there. I don't--This is my opinion, and I'm totally open
to be corrected. The sermon is not the center
piece of the gallery. - Yea. Jesus is the center piece
of the gallery. In the Ark of the Covenant, you had the manna, that was
the revelation of Jesus. You had Aaron's rod, that
was the resurrection power and you had the
Scriptures, the law. - Uh-huh. - Above that, you had
the mercy seat, the sacrifice, the blood. Above that, you had the
presence of the Lord. In other words, all of this
together, in one environment, all of this being valued, the
power of the preached message, the power of resurrection power, the power of the
revelation of Jesus-- All of that should culminate:
the power of the cross. It should culminate into
something, Him. That's what you felt when you
walked in the stadium we were
talking about. - Yea. - Worship is everything to me. - I'd say the same. For
me personally, I can't minister until I feel
like Jesus is there. I mean, I'm not saying
that's everybody's rules but that's for me. To me, it's an honor to
even have a platform to talk to God's people. So it's all about Jesus
in that moment. It's not about impressing you
with what I can say, with my sermon, I'm not here to make you
think I'm so great. I just want Jesus to come
like I want to feel Him myself because if I'm not
feeling the Lord, then how are you
gonna feel God, when I'm ministering to
you about Jesus. You're not going to. But if I'm feeling Him and I
can feel His closeness, then maybe you can feel
It too. So that's kind of how... That's how we minister, that's
just how God touches us and I just love it that way
because it's all-- it's all about a relationship. It's all about this beautiful
dance as you can call it. You know, with Jesus,
it's a dance and I used to say because I haven't
been ministering... I have recently started
to minister so I would get nervous and say, "Oh, my gosh"! Well, I'd study all the Word and have
all these cool notes taking down and I'm like, "Well, I don't
know what I am supposed to say and what do I do, what
do I do"? And he said something
to me once. He was just like, "Just yield. - It's all what you
gonna tell me? - Just yield". And all the people I
look up to, I ask the same thing.
"What do I...? - Just yield, Jess. Just yield". And when I learn to do that, I'm not even aware that there is
anybody in the room. It's just me and Jesus. We are like on this
beautiful dance together and I can believe that "I touched Your heart, Jesus,
and that's all that matters but the amazing is, when you
touch the heart of Jesus, everybody else's heart in the
audience is getting touched too. - That's good.
- Right. - So that's just a
beautiful thing. - I think it's important we
say that music, it is important.
- Yea. - But worship and music are not
necessary the same thing. I don't want to imply that I can't minister
if I don't have the musician. What if I'm on the
street, or at a Publix. Okay, if I touch your hand, if you have something wrong
with your hand, my heart is going up
to the Lord, I'm first aware of Him and then from that position,
I'm gonna minister to you. That's worship. So, now if I
have musicians available, of course, I'm gonna use them,
- Sure, - because just look at
the Levites, how they ministered in
one accord with excellence, on key,
everyone in unison. There is power in that. It's not to say that I need
it everywhere I go but of course, it's
very valuable. ♪♪
