You know how the Bible
says in the book of Acts, when they cried out
for boldness, the place that they prayed
was shaken, doesn't say the walls,
we say "walls" but the Scripture says, "The
place was shaken". Even the air reacts
- Right - to the presence of Jesus, ♪♪ 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. ♪♪ Welcome to Revival
Radio TV, I'm your host, Gene
Bailey. Listen, I am excited
about today because
we're gonna dig into some stuff that you
may have heard about and you may not have
heard about. My guest today is none other
than Michael Koulianos. Michael, - Thanks you, Gene.
- Thank you for being on today. Man, I just want to hear what
God's got in your heart today but I want people to
know first, your story. So tell us...Those who don't
know, I used to work with Pastor Benny Hinn for many
years and I traveled the
world with him and there's a connection that
we have with Pastor Benny and I want you to tell
your story so go ahead. - Sure, well, thank you
for having me. What a joy to be here
with you and-- Here at KCM, it's
just--it's a joy and I really believe the Lord's
knitting all of our hearts
together - I agree, amen. - for massive End Time Harvest.
- Right. - Yes, so in 1984, my
cousin had just died
from cancer and I grew up Greek Orthodox,
incredibly, incredibly
Orthodox. My cousins were archbishops. One was Archbishop of North
and South America, the other Archbishop of
Hong Kong in Asia - Wow. - I grew up as an altar boy, my
cousins were priests so I had
bishops, priests, I mean, you name it...Choir
singers. We were really
in the Church and I love the traditions.
They're wonderful,
wonderful people... It really impacted my life
and still does today. So in 84 my cousin died, my
uncle of cancer and in our culture, you have
memorials or you know like,
you go from home to home and eat and kind of
celebrate the memory of the
person who died. Well, at one of those
meetings at the home, it was super packed with
a big family. The women were
dressed in black and we're just hanging out talking
about the life and mourning and a man walked in the room
through the front door and when he
walked in, it was like the only way my seven-year-old
little heart could process it because I was seated
there on the floor, I processed it this way, I said,
"Man, Jesus just walked into
this room". - Wow, - His face had a-- had a brokenness to it but a focus also at the same time because Jesus is Lion and Lamb,
all at once you know,
- Right. and his eyes were like
beaming with the compassion and the fierceness of the Lord
and he sat down on the chair, he was a Greek Orthodox priest
who had been recently baptized in the Holy Spirit.
We didn't know what that meant - Yea, and he's been baptized in the
Spirit in the Pittsburgh area right where the outpouring was
going on with Ms. Kuhlman during the Charismatic Renewal
- Right, - so he came in and just
kinda looked everywhere and I was used to priests
consoling you, just telling you it's gonna be
okay, which is all valuable but he was different and he looked
across the living room at my dad and out of nowhere,
asked my dad who had been stricken with this disease
called mycobacterium marinum. He was in a wheelchair
or on crutches for about 5 years and he
had had 5 knee surgeries.
2 in that year and he'd actually
just come out of that surgery about 2 days prior and still
had the staples in the incision but the crutches, that my dad
had been using were behind
the couch that he was sitting on, totally
out of sight and my dad had
long pants on so the priest sits down and
looks at my dad in the eye which is against, you know,
memorial protocol. He says, "Have you
ever seen Jesus"? And my dad said, "No". He said, "Why not"? And I mean, nobody talked to
my dad like that. My dad, he was a military,
trained officers in Vietnam, drove around with a .45
caliber on the dashboard. He was just a hard-nosed
Greek old-fashion guy- - Yea. He used to fight people for fun. His brother would give him a
dollar just to fight with
his friends and my dad would do it.
- Yea. I thought, "Oh, this priest
is in trouble. - Now you're 7.
- I'm 7 going,
"This priest is done". - Got you.
- Bad move. My dad said, "I don't know why
I haven't seen Jesus"? And the priest said, "Do
you want to"? Now you've got to remember,
everyone's in black mourning, - Right, - Well, right around that
time, people start falling on
the floor. I had never seen anything
like it. We had never seen... We didn't watch Christian TV.
In fact, if we did, we were following the devil to
be honest with you. - Sure, sure. But I remember some of the women
hitting the ground under the
power of God, sobbing, screaming and then the priest,
after he said, "Do you want to"? I thought Jesus was gonna
like teleport like Star Trek or
something. I didn't know
what he was talking about. I just thought, this is gonna
be pretty cool. He made a beeline for my dad, went straight for the knee
that was covered up-- had no way of knowing that
that knee was the diseased
knee and grabbed it and squeezed
it with the staples in it,
- Wow - and my dad winced
with pain and he said something that I
think really framed my life. He said, "In the name of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, get up
and walk". When he said it, the
air changed in the place, the atmosphere changed.
It was... You know, how the Bible says in
the book of Acts when they cried out for
boldness, the place that they
prayed was shaken. It doesn't say "the
walls". We say "walls" but the Scripture says "The
place was shaken". Even the air reacts to the
presence of Jesus. We've all been in meetings like
that where there is such a
glory, you feel it in the air and
that's what happened. He grabbed my dad's knee and
said, "In the name of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk" and he was real
clear, Gene, about the Jesus he was talking about and it had
to be the Jesus of the Bible, - Right the real one, not
the one we make up,
- Sure. You know, the Israelites made a
golden calf and named it
Jehovah. You can create
your own Jesus so he said, "In the name of Jesus of
Nazareth, get up and walk" so
my dad, he said after the pain, he felt
fire shoot up his leg. So he reached behind the couch
to grab his crutches and he picks up the crutches
and the preacher says, "No, no crutches. You walk
in Jesus' name" so my dad takes a step and
another step and another step and then he starts sobbing and
I never saw my dad cry, outside of his
mom's funeral at the casket and now tears are
running down his eyes.
- Wow. - He went back to the doctor the
next day and leg pressed more with the leg that had
staples in it then the good leg--his leg. His leg had suffered such
atrophy that it was--it was about the size of my arm after
five years of not using it.
- Sure, sure. What did this do to your dad?
What was he thinking? He just didn't know how
to explain it so he went to the doctor-- How he took me to the doctor
which was all the plan of God. - Right - God had to make sure that
I saw all this and the doctor, "What's
going on"? He goes, "Doc, I don't know, you
won't believe me if I told you". So nobody shared the
gospel with my dad. In 1989, five years later, I
got micro--or actually right
around 1990, I got micro--I'm sorry,
Epstein-Barr disease - Right - which is like advanced mono
that they say never leaves
your system and I was in bed for just
about a year and I've withered away, I've
lost weight, my parents had to take me out of
school, I was homeschooled and we heard about a
preacher in Orlando who was also raised Greek
Orthodox, named Benny Hinn. My cousin, I don't know if
you might have met him
actually, Gene. His name is father Sam
Kalamaras, he was an Orthodox priest, he had just come back from my
father-in-law's meeting and my father-in-law
prayed for him and he went flying across the
platform like he got shot - Right - and came back with a
healing ministry so I was an altar boy in his
church, he came back and held up the
communion elements and a blind guy's eyes opened
- Oh, wow! - so we are like, "What's
happening to our uncle"? - Talk about rocking
your church! - Yea, it was as dead as a
doornail, just been real
with you. Now he comes back, we are
thinking, "What's going on"? So father Sam says, "We're
gonna take Michael there". ----
Holy Spirit My dad is like, "You're not
taking my son", even though my
dad had been healed... To leave the Church in any
way was horrible. So my mom basically told my
dad, she says, "Look, have I ever not taking care of
you"? He said "No". She said, "Do you have 3 meals
a day on the table"? He
said, "Yes", "You have clean clothes"? He
said "Yes". She said, "I'll
do anything for you but you can't keep me from
Jesus. I'm taking him". So they took me and man,
I feel it now. I pulled down on that property and the minute I crossed Forest
City road and got on that
property, it was like I stepped into
another world. It was--instantly, it took me
back to what I felt in that living room with
that priest.
- Right. It was the same Jesus, same
sense of His presence and my
legs start shaking. I got in line and there were
people lined up to get into Sunday
morning church. - I remember. - And I thought to myself,
"Man, we lined up to get out
of church" - Yea, [Laughs] - What are these people doing?
And they were all so happy and they were singing songs,
some of those old like
Integrity songs, you know, - Yea, and there was a man at the
door name Jimmy, he was a
Jamaican usher, shaved head and a big ol' smile
on his face and he was waiting and we were
lined up for hours and when he came out to
open the door, you would've thought a
stampede was let loose and he opened that door and all
I knew is this, Gene, I said, "I love this presence and it's
increasing, it's getting
stronger and stronger. When that door opens
I'm running for"... I don't know what I'm running to but I'm gonna get as close to
that platform as I can. Remember, I'm sick but Ms.
Kuhlman used to say, "Miracles happen when Jesus
becomes more real to you
than your sickness". - It's true. - So I ran forward and got in
the second row and that presence increased
and it seemed to like build
inch by inch. You could
just feel it intensifying and then a man came out named
Steve Hill, not Brownsville
Steve Hill, pastor Steve Hill who
was on staff. He also was smiling which I
couldn't figure out because
I thought, "Why are these people so happy
to be in church? Mama made me
come to church! Why are they so excited about"? And he was beaming and he got up
and prayed and then
Bruce Hughes came out and played "He touched me"
on the piano and I've never seen anyone play
the piano like that but more
importantly when he played that feeling increased that I
know now is the presence of the
Holy Spirit - Right. - Then the choir walked out and they walked out like in a
single file line and they were all smiling and
you know, the air was different in there.
It seemed to be more crisp, it was like Heaven and then they started singing and then
Jim Cenero came out and stood
on his little box started directing and I didn't know you were
supposed to raise your hands. I didn't know what
was right, I had no grid, I had no frame of reference but when that first course
started, my hand shot up and I just started worshiping
Jesus because it just seemed
right, - Yea. - It was not an ounce of
religion in my heart. - Sure - I didn't know what any of this
was supposed to look like. - And you're still sick
at this point? - Oh yea, yea. I was still sick
and my hands shot up, I didn't
know the Lord, I just know I loved what
was going on and my eyes were closed and I
remember looking behind me and
there was a girl there, her skin was like oozing from
the red sores on her arm
- Right - and during the
worship, I started hearing these
screeching sounds like of these horrible sounds and
I knew they weren't people and I asked my cousin because
father Sam came with me, I said, "What is that"? And he
goes, "Those are demons
leaving people" and you could hear the
demons leaving and and I look
back after the worship set and that girl's arm that
was completely raw from a
skin disease, would have skin
on it like a baby. - What did that do to you? - Oh! I just felt like the
Jesus I heard about was actually in that room
- Right - that He was there, that He
had feelings that I could
talk to Him. So I closed my eyes and kept
worshiping and then all of a
sudden, I felt--whatever I was feeling
in that room, like triple and instantly I said in
my heart, "Somebody who knows Jesus just
like that priest has just walked
into this room and I opened my eyes and my
father-in-law was on the
platform - Right - and he started singing. He
wasn't singing a song. He was singing straight
to the Lord, that makes all the difference
in the world and then he said, "Jesus is real
and if you want to know Him and you want to give Him your
life, get down here" so I jumped over, I tore down
to the altar and I was praying
and I received Jesus and then he said, "You, the
little boy, come up here". And I couldn't believe he was
talking to me and I went up there and I'm
still on that platform. I felt like I walked into glory and he just took a few
steps towards me and the next thing I felt was
like this ocean of love go through my body and next
thing I know I'm just gone,
I'm on the floor. I didn't know how to describe it
but I loved it. They picked me back up. Probably someone as big
as Curtis-- They picked me back up and then
he just waved his hand at me
again. I went down again and then I
heard a voice... - Now at this point, you
didn't know, you didn't have
the Christian culture to know, I'm supposed to go down"...
- No. - You just went out under
the power. - I just have a vague memory of
seeing a guy in an off-white
suit coming at me. His hair is part straight to the
side and a funny voice... with my skin tone just coming,
and then I'm gone. And then I heard his voice, my
father-in-law's voice but it
seemed like it was far away because that's how I was just
totally under the power of God. It seemed like it was like in
this tunnel and he said, "This young boy will
carry this anointing. He'll carry to the nations of
the world and he'll
preach the gospel. I didn't know what
the anointing was. I knew what the--was, I was one
of them, I didn't know what the
gospel was. I didn't know any of
that, but it felt good and then he picked me back,
they picked me back up, he prayed for me again and I
shook under the power of God until the janitor closed shop. I forgot about my sickness,
Gene. I didn't even need anyone to
say, "Oh, test it out". Actually, my mom had to tell
me, "Did you know you got
healed that night"? I said, "Oh, that's right.
- Yea. - I went home, I started reading
my Bible, read about the Holy
Spirit. I started watching
Christian television and I started to spend time
with the Lord and I take my Bible. I grew up
in a little Greek town called
Tarpon Springs, Florida and I just start--It's not
the best way but I just start to tell people they
are going to hell!
[Laughs] I told my aunt that, I
said,"Aunty, you're going to
hell"! - Yea How did that go over? - She said, "Why am I going to
hell? I said, "You're a sinner". She said, "If you call me a
sinner again, I'm gonna slap
you... [Laughs] Somebody told me, "There is
another way to do it"! That's true but there
is another way. So, that's how it all started. And then years later, you end up
marrying Pastor Benny's daughte,
Jessica. - Yes, actually through ORU.
I was recruited by ORU for golf scholarship
and instead, I went to the
University of Florida. I backslid. Amazingly the Lord
touched my life so amazingly and next thing you know,
I'm not even-- I didn't crack my Bible for
about a year and a half and partying like crazy and my
brother actually went to ORU. He said before he left,
he said, "I believe that my obedience
in light of your disobedience will actually
bless our all family. So he went and he met my
wife's first cousin, Henry's
daughter Rachel - Yea, yes. - and they are
married now and they said, "Hey, you ought to meet my
brother. He's in Gainesville,
Florida. At the time, I was injured so I
was coaching the golf team and I flew out there and I was
nervous Gene, because you know, I had the joy of
spending the day with brother
Copeland yesterday
- Right - and when a father speaks
into your life, you sense the weight of the
responsibility. Steve Hill from Brownsville
told me something. He looked me in the eye, he
said, "I can't change the
gospel because one day, I'll sit at the
Marriage Supper of the Lamb and have to explain to a martyr
who is sawn in two why I changed the gospel
he died for". So there's a weight that comes
with this golden chain, like all
these backdrops are amazing but they're here to remind us
that these men paid a price that we have to
bring the harvest in full. So I was afraid to see my
father-in-law. I flew out to
California to see Jesse and... I was nervous and the door
opened and Jesse answered
the door. I hadn't seen her since
OCC, it's been years,
- Wow, - and let's just say time had
a way of making her a little
more-- a little different since she
left at that awkward stage and she was beautiful - Right - and the Lord said,
"That's your wife" and I go, "Oh, no! No, no, no... I'm not marrying into this. I
want to play golf. I'll give God the glory when I
win a tournament, make a lot of money and read
my Bible once a day. The Lord said, "This is
your wife". Well, then pastor Benny came
behind her and my father-in-law said,
"I remember you. Where have
you been"? Not where have you been
physically. "What are you doing
with your life"? And it shot through me like a
light went off. It was like Adam when he heard
from the Lord in the Garden, "Where have you been"? - So this is what year?
- This is 2004. - So we're talking 14 years?
- Yea. - Wow. - No, this is 03.
- Okay
- Yea. And so I said, "I've been
around, sir, I guess". He said, "It's good to see you"
because after I got healed and
saved, he'd always call me into his
office and asked me to do my Orthodox cross because it
brought back memories of when he
was an altar boy so that night, he goes, "Are you
gonna marry my daughter". - Wow!
- I go "Uh, I
don't know, sir". - Ha-ha, no pressure. - I was like, "Well, do you want
me to"? I started stuttering. "I could, I mean, I guess. I
mean, what would you like
me to do"? He said, "You are taking her
on a date tonight"? I said, "I'd like to". He said,
"Good, go and have fun". So I took her out and I prayed a
prayer that night. I said,
"Lord"... No, the next day, we pulled up
to the house. I think it was
the next day, right around that time. I said,
"You can call me full-time". When I walk in that house, I
want Pastor Benny to offer me
a full-time job. So I walked
in and he said "I have a..." and before he could get it
out, I said, "I'll take it". He said, "You don't know
what it is". I said, "If it's cleaning
toilets, I want it". He said, "You don't even know
if it's for any money". I
said, "I don't care. I want to walk with Jesus. I
want Him to mark my life. I don't want an average life. I want to live that kind of
life, you know, Gene. I want my tombstone to have the
thumbprint of God on it. And so he said, well, Jesse and
I continued to date and then he brought me back and
he said, "If you gonna marry
my daughter I want you to be my assistant". And everyone around started
laughing at me."You have no
idea"... - That's right, you didn't.
Ha ha! - You can kiss "sleep" goodbye.
- - Yeah, that's right. Jess goes, "No, dad,
anything but that position.
He cannot be your assistant. He said, "Well, I
gotta know the guy so I need him to move into the
house and be my assistant". She goes, "This a death wish for
you because you're not gonna
have a break". She was right but it
wasn't a death wish, it was an amazing experience so I worked for no money. He
said "I'll give you 90
days, no money". Jess goes, "Dad, he has bills".
He goes "That's the deal". I said, "Sir, if I do well after
the 90 days, is there a future
here"? He said, "No promises". I
says, "I'll take it". And I caught the wind and that
was it and that's when
everything changed. I learned how to walk with
the Lord with intimacy to love Him and steward
His presence. - How did that happen in those
90 days? Let's dive into that
a little bit. Tell me--You say you learned
to walk with the Lord. How did that happen? - Well, first of all, when
you live in the house, you
get to watch behind the scenes. I knew, don't go near his
bedroom when he's with Jesus.
Don't go near it. Don't knock, don't text, don't
call. Don't do anything. So I learned how valuable
time alone with Jesus was. All alone. A couple of hours a
day, I did that. I learned how to protect the
anointing, to value it, to
protect it. You know, like a lot of people
from my generation, they have
an issue with first-- let's say, order in a meeting or creating an atmosphere
where the Holy Spirit can move. They would call that religion. A
lot of it, it's not religion. You know, when Jesus
multiplied the food, He broke them up in the fifties
and hundreds. He understood how to bring orders so
the miracles could flow. I learned that but I learned
above all, Gene, that it wasn't about the
miracles. It was about
worshiping Jesus, about the presence of the
Holy Spirit.
- That's it. He never once taught me, like we
just had a lady at Jesus '17, 58 years with polio. She
left her braces on the ground, starts sprinting, completely
healed, completely healed. I just got the healing
testimonies in late last night, there's too many to talk about but he never gave me like, "This
is how you empty a wheelchair, this is how you open deaf ears". These are the steps". He said
"Make Jesus real by yielding to the
Holy Spirit and worship Him and He'll come and do
everything. And that's what I learned. Yea,
that's what I'm left with and that's what I have the desire to
give away to our generation. - You hit on something that we
really--I've seen, because I'm
older than you. I have seen generations, you
know the Charismatic Renewal in the 60's and in 70's,
in the Christian world-- Protestant world was
much different. We almost lost the baptism
of the Holy Spirit because there is so much
craziness with tongues and
people being out of order. - Sure, - So with the generation now
what you talked about, you learned how the Holy Spirit
operates in order. Well, let's go a little bit
deeper in that in just the last few minutes here on
this program because I want
people to understand, it isn't and you said it,
"It's not religion, it's understanding the flow of
the Holy Spirit. - Yeah, I think you have to
create a wineskin. You know, the
Lord told Moses in Exodus 25, "Create for me an habitation so
that I can come and dwell there" and he said, "Build the
habitation that you saw while
on the mountain". In other words, you can't
build anything that God
doesn't show you. You have to spend time with
Jesus all along and get the blueprint. The blueprint is the wineskin
that the new wine flows
through it in. Now at the same time, we
have to remember that the wineskin
always serves the wine so some people say, "Oh, I
want order". Well, that's really an excuse for
death, to be quite honest
with you. It's an excuse for
the fear of man because we shouldn't be, to be honest,
so freaked out by the way people react by the power of God
like John Arnott says, he's so
right, "We should be amazed that
they survived their encounter
with God". And we're talking about the
Ancient of Days touching us. Man, we should
celebrate we made it through it. At the same time, for instance
God's opening church service, His opening service, His
church launch was Pentecost
- Yea. - So God thought that would be
seeker friendly. Send the power of God. You know, the skeptics are gonna be
skeptics, I've learned that. - True. - Now when it becomes
disorderly, you'll know because
it's taking Glory from Jesus. It begins to point to a person,
it begins to bring a
distraction. It quenches the flow of the
Spirit and you can't teach that, you can't learn that in a class. You have to feel
that, you have to sense that and that only comes by being in
the atmosphere but I tell
people all the time: Pipes were made for water. Water
was not made for pipes. These air conditioning ducts
would be useless if there's no air flowing. So our first
priority has to be this, at least corporately and
even in our daily lives. "What do You want, Lord? How do
I get You to manifest here and then I need Your wisdom to
teach me how to steward it. And that comes in many facets.
One of which is "How do I give
this away"? I don't want to be the guy
who's-- if I'm the guy, it tells the
next generation. It amazes them but it doesn't invite them.
- Uh-huh. - You follow me?
- Yea. - It continues this model that
it's only for the guy on the
platform. - Right. - And it's not only for the
guy on the platform. The guy on the platform should
be an invitation into the
"more of God". That's why Jesus is
also Son of Man. Because He's Son of Man, it's
also an invitation. He did it as God and man because
He did it as man also, it says, "I can do that too,
even greater". And that's why we have to give
to a generation--Stewarding
the presence, you have to know what God wants,
what He enjoys, that on the
Scriptures, what He loves,
what He doesn't like, create a culture that invites
Him and then once He comes, steward it, fan
the flame and give it away. I love what Bill Johnson says.
He says, "God sends a fire but the priest keeps it
burning". That comes through wisdom
and revelation. Keeping Him requires the same
stuff that brought Him. In other words, what brought Him
is what keeps Him. Hunger brings Him,
hunger keeps Him. The minute hunger dries up,
we are done and in the Kingdom, we are made
hungry by eating. If there's anything--I told
those kids of CFNI last night, if there's anything I want to
leave you with is this. Get alone with Jesus. Lose your ministry before
you lose your secret place. Lose it all. Don't leave
your secret place and God will give you
everything you've dreamed of. - Right. ♪♪
