SID: Hello. Sid Roth here with John Fenn. And John had three visitations from the Messiah of Israel in which the Messiah told him how to recapture what the first Jewish believers in the Messiah had. And John, tell me about this third visitation.
JOHN: Well the third one was later that same year in November of 2001. Again, I was up in Canada ministering. And this is so important because it demonstrates the heart of Yeshua. It was in a church that really ministered to the former drug addicts, prostitutes, the red light district. And in the middle of the worship service, after I had already contemplated this. In fact, a couple of weeks earlier, I had already told my wife, I said, “You know, I don’t want to pastor a church again. But if I ever did it would be in my living room, just like the Apostle Paul did.” And so when the Lord appeared in this worship service, He came walking over, the first thing He said as He’s walking is, “I love these kinds of people.” And it was so important because that’s the heart of the Lord. There are no facades on people who have been through difficulties in life and such. And He came walking over, and the power of God was so strong. And I want to say He turned it up. But the pastor next to me fell, first to his knees, then flat on his face. My streak left me. I fell to my knees and three guys that we had brought with us said that they saw the Lord that night and He walked passed them later. But He said, “You’ve learned much from the people I’ve brought across your path and your studies in the Word the last few months. Now I want you to start a house church and a house church network, and I want you to structure it in such a way to facilitate the development of house churches around the world.” I said, “Why?” And He said this, He said: “It’s against a time to come to resource and be a resource to them.” Now this is in 2001. And so a time to come, against a time to come is saying this will be a provision for a time to come. And now we have a network that spans the world of home based churches. But the point is it’s relationship based faith. It’s relationship based Christianity, meeting people exactly where they are in life. So we’re very much aware.
SID: Now how would this differ from, say, a traditional church that has house groups?
JOHN: House churches and cell churches are two separate animals completely. A house church is completely autonomous on its own, independent, taking care of each other’s needs. A cell church still is attached to the larger church where the main meeting is a large congressional meeting. A house church, see, we’ve discovered that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in the world, according to the U.S. Center for World Missions, almost eight percent per year. And, you know, we see all this stuff on the news about Islam and everything. But the fastest growing religion is Christianity, and it’s nearly all in-house churches. And so one of the main differences is that people are learning that Christ lives in me and I can gather with other people and be committed to them, and meet with purpose. And in our case, in our network in what we believe is the Book of Acts is normal Christianity, which means it should be dynamic. It should be organic. It should be full of miracles. And that’s what we see happening. God meets us right there because that’s the pattern they did in the Book of Acts.
SID: You want him to provoke you to jealousy? Tell me about that meeting when the Glory Cloud came in.
JOHN: Well, you know Sid, the supernatural happens so often. It’s more a matter of picking which one do you want to hear about. But we’ve had several times where as we’re sitting around in the living room and just in worship, and just not afraid of the silence, not needing to go on because we’re comfortable with one another, just staying in the Father’s presence. There have been so many times where we have felt that several people have seen at the same time this bright white fog that just settles on people and just peace. When the Father ministers there’s a real depth to it. And I say the anointing for that is like an inner healing. And His presence makes you want to be still and wade in his presence. But we’ve also had times where we have had several where there’s been like a swirling tornado. Several people in the same house church had witnessed, not only a sound that they heard in their spiritual ears, but had seen this swirling tornado of fire. And when it touches them all the cares and all the attacks, the, I want to say the ramifications of the attacks that they’re going through are just swept away and burned away, and replaced with the presence of the Lord. It’s like a swirling tornado. It expands and contracts with the worship and with the presence of God.
SID: Now the Lord told you that you were to start these house congregations to prepare for the times that are coming. How do they help one another? I mean, we know what the Bible says. But how does it work practically? Someone loses their job.
JOHN: Well I’ll give you great examples. You know, the Book of Acts, like you said, they took care of one another. And what we do is the same pattern. That we expect each house church will take care of its own if there’s a need. But if it’s too large, if the need is too large for that house church that’s when I hear about it and we appeal to the network. Very similar to the Apostle Paul going around to the Corinthian church and the Philippian church raising funds for the Saints of Jerusalem. We recently had a gentleman who was involved in a car wreck, lost about six weeks worth of income. Too large for that local house church. We put it out to the network and we were able to send over $2200 to help out. This week in Tulsa, at our core house church in Tulsa, we’re having regular church, we have a young family that needs a room finished out. The walls are torn out and we’re getting the sheetrock and the spackle, and all that’s needed, and we’re gonna finish up that room in lieu of church.
SID: Well how do you, how could you do that? I’m kidding you, John. But how does this differ from, say, a regular church just smaller?
JOHN: You know, if a house church is a miniature of what we left it’s not a house church. We believe that the Lord is going to move through the particular gifts that are present. Paul said it this way, 1 Corinthians 14:26, he says, “How is it, brethren, when we come together somebody’s got a psalm, someone’s got something that God has taught them. Someone’s got a revelation–”
SID: Yeah but we’ve all been taught to be a spectator, John.
JOHN: House churches are discussion oriented, not sermon oriented. And so in the relationships that develop, and often there’s food.
SID: Well that’s the Jewish part.
JOHN: That’s the Jewish connection right there. And so a lot of what you see is the multi-generational, the older moms helping the younger moms, the older dads and the younger dads, and you see this happening over the food and over the worship. And it’s participatory in nature. What we do is we ask folks to consider rotating homes and rotating leadership each week.
SID: You don’t have a single leader.
JOHN: Don’t have a single leader. It’s mutually–
SID: So we have to look to one another rather than a one-man show.
JOHN: Exactly. Exactly. And what happens is, say somebody has an anointing and a gifting in music. You know when they lead and they host it’s all going to be without worship, and that’s fine because that’s their gift. Somebody else who’s a teacher, it’s like don’t even bother putting in a CD because just get out the concordance and get out the study books because it’s going to be digging into the Word. It varies each week.
SID: John, hold that thought. But the Lord has given John insight into what’s going to happen in the future. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back.
