SID: Hi, Sid Roth here, what happens when you graduate from Dallas School of Theology, a Master’s no less, you are taught that the gifts and the tongues, speaking in unknown languages, it’s not for today, and you have a housekeeper that minds the children and what happened Linda?
LINDA: Well this was actually a lady that we became very good friends with, and for a period of five years any time one of our children was sick, God would speak to her and tell her, and some days she would just show up at our doorstep and say, “Is anyone here sick, the Lord told me to come and pray for them.” And we didn’t believe God spoke to people, we didn’t believe you could pray.
SID: Yeah but did your children get better, that’s the question?
LINDA: Well, yes, yes they did, and this went on for five years and it actually got to be sort of a joke in our house that if someone got sick the kids would say, “Well, it must be time for Pat to come over.” Even our children recognized that when she came and she prayed that they were healed.
SID: Now Robert, this flies in the face of what you actually spoke against praying in unknown tongues.
ROBERT: Oh and all the way through this year, or all the way through those years with Pat coming over and praying I was preaching and teaching against healing and against the Holy Spirit, baptism of the Holy Spirit, against tongues, and I would stand up on Sunday and teach that these things don’t happen
SID: And they were happening in your own house. ROBERT: And they were happening in my own home, probably thirty times over a five-year period she would come, she would pray in tongues, and they would be healed. And we might not see her for six months, but if one of our kids got sick she would show up at the door and pray, and they would be healed.
SID: So in 1982 you had what Linda labeled, “a year from hell,” what happened Robert?
ROBERT: Everything in our life fell apart, it started out I had a kidney stone, was in the hospital with that
SID: No fun.
ROBERT: It was not fun, I went through strep throat, bronchitis, pneumonia, literally I was sick for the entire winter, I could usually get out of bed go and preach on Sunday, and come back home and get back in bed and be sick until the next week. Our kinds were all sick, of course the church didn’t do well because I was only there once a week, our finances were devastated, I mean we would go to the doctor at least weekly during that entire year. And Lindawould keep a schedule on the refrigerator to tell who got what medicines when. And we just got lower and lower and lower.
SID: Linda, I remember you were so in love with the Messiah, you couldn’t wait to read your Bible, did you grow cold too?
LINDA: Yes, I became very angry with God that this was happening, I felt like we were in the ministry and He should not let this happen to us. And we got so desperate during this time that we even called our friend Pat, we said, “Pat, we’re all sick, where are you?” And she said
SID: Robert, did you let her do that?
ROBERT: Oh yeah, we were desperate.
SID: Okay.
LINDA: She said, “Well, the Lord didn’t tell me to come.” And we said, “Well Pat, you have got to come and pray.” And she came and prayed and nothing happened. And we said, “Well what is wrong?” And she said, “Well maybe it’s time for you to learn to do this yourself.” We did not like that answer at all and
SID: But, one night they go to bed, depressed, angry with God, it must have been awful you preaching on Sunday and going through that hell, you must have felt like a hypocrite.
ROBERT: Well it got to the point where the only time I would pray or read the Bible was for official church things, and we were really making serious plans about leaving the ministry and moving away
SID: But one night, what happened Robert?
ROBERT: Well a friend of ours who is a charismatic came to visit us, and we started to talk, he asked us how things were going and we lied through our teeth and said, “Oh, everything is great.” And he knew in his spirit it wasn’t, and so he started asking these questions and finally we just began to dump, and we told him how discouraged we were, how bitter we were toward God, what the last year had been like and he said, “I don’t have an answer for that, I don’t know why God would let that happen, but I know He wouldn’t let it happen without a purpose.”
And then he asked if he could pray for us and we said sure, we were at a point where we really didn’t believe in prayer but we let him pray, he prayed and then he had a vision, and we didn’t believe in visions but he went ahead and had one right there in our living room, and he said, “I have been seeing a picture and I’m seeing that you two are looking at everything through stained glass window and you can’t see clearly, but God is going to do something and you will.”
SID: And you went to bed that night
ROBERT: We went to bed
SID: I don’t think you had a great deal of hope from that prophetic word
ROBERT: No
SID: What happened?
ROBERT: We went to bed depressed, bitter against God, just a weight of oppression on us, we woke up the next morning and everything was changed.
SID: I mean overnight.
ROBERT: Overnight the presence of God filled our home
SID: Linda, what about you?
LINDA: Oh, it was the same thing, I woke up in love with Jesus, I could not stop singing, I couldn’t stop reading my Bible.
SID: What happened?
LINDA: We did not know what had happened, we just knew something had changed and we couldn’t imagine that it could have anything to do with the Holy Spirit because we didn’t believe that the Holy Spirit did that kind of things.
SID: But A few days later Robert you are by yourself and what happened?
ROBERT: Well let Linda tell hers first cause it happened to her first.
SID: Okay.
LINDA: I was standing at the sink washing dishes and I, singing, and I felt something very strange inside, it felt like bubbles coming up, and I knew I was about to speak in tongues and I thought oh no, what am I going to do. And I ran back to our bedroom and I closed the door and locked it, and then I ran into our bathroom and closed the door and locked the door and about that time I just began to speak in tongues. And years before I had asked God why the angels worshipped all the time, I couldn’t understand that, well as I began to speak in tongues I sensed the presence of angels around me, and I knew whatever I was saying was the same thing.
SID: Robert, that same day what happened to you?
ROBERT: I was walking down the hall in our home and just enjoying the presence of God
SID: Did you know she was praying in unknown languages?
ROBERT: I had no idea.
LINDA: Oh no.
SID: Okay.
ROBERT: I was just enjoying the presence of God, hearing praise songs running through my mind, and as I walked down the hall, the Holy Spirit said, “You can pray in tongues if you want to.” And without missing a beat tongues began to flow out of my mouth.
SID: Do you realize that simultaneously they both started speaking the same day in unknown language, one didn’t know the other was doing it and it wasn’t something they were instructed to do and it was wonderful, but this led to an entire paradigm change in their church, way beyond what is known as the charismatic movement, I mean way beyond, don’t go away, we’ll be right back.
