SID: Hello. I’m here with Pastor Todd Smith, from the North Georgia Revival. It’s unbelievable, a little sleepy southern town in Georgia. Sometimes he’ll have more people on a Sunday night for the water baptism service than are in the entire town. It’s a matter of fact, why? Because they have found it’s like a point of contact, when they go in the waters of mikvah, of baptism, and come out, many are healed. Tell me your favorite miracle that’s happened recently.
TODD: It was a gentleman that had 280 cancerous tumors in his bones.
SID: 280?
TODD: 280 cancerous tumors in his bones. He was so sick, he could not even make it to the revival. His wife came to be baptized as a point of contact for her husband.
SID: He didn’t even come.
TODD: He did not even come. Hospice was at his house. He had two to three weeks to live and his wife got baptized and we sent her home with the towel, anointed it, and said, “When you get home, as a point of contact, lay it on his body.” And after just a few minutes, after she laid that towel on his body, began to pray for him, the pain lifted off of his body. Goes the next day—
SID: He must have been in excruciating pain.
TODD: Excruciating pain. I’m telling you, Sid, to hear the testimony. Goes the next day to get a PET scan. They wanted to see what the cancer was doing in his body. I heard with my very own ears, the doctor’s phone call to the couple. She says, “I’m looking at the old PET scan and the new PET scan. I’m looking at the old PET scan and the new PET scan.” And she said, “We cannot find any bone tumors, cancerous bone tumors in his body.” Completely healed and walking in full strength today.
SID: And again, how long did he have to live at the hospice?
TODD: Two to three weeks, they said at most.
SID: And what did letter say from the hospice?
TODD: The letter the hospice sent said that this isn’t curative. And they gave him a window of six months because they said, “We may be there six months, but we’re looking at a two to three week window until he dies.”
SID: You get that? The power of God is so awesome. God did that. Now, as a Southern Baptist, you are as strong against speaking in tongues as you are strong for, “God is a miracle-working God today.” How bad was it? If I had walked up to him and said, “I want you to start speaking in a language you’ve never been taught. Here look [foreign language].” What would you have done to me?
TODD: I would have said, “Sid, you’ve lost your mind.” I would’ve said you’re crazy. In fact, I mocked people that spoke in tongues. I scorned them. I literally told our congregation, “Don’t do it. It’s of the devil.” That’s what I spoke as a leading Southern Baptist pastor that was pastoring one of the fastest growing churches in the state of Georgia. But Sid, in the midst of it all, I got hungry for God. I got thirsty for the Lord. And when I began to read my scriptures without my denominational glasses on, it became real to me that the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues was valid for today.
SID: Tell me briefly how you got filled with the spirit.
TODD: Well, after a year and a half of research, I’m talking about—
SID: You are really a cerebral guy.
TODD: I’m thinking, “I want the real and I want the authentic.” So I had this copious research and I came to the conclusion that it was real. And I went to a Pentecostal prayer meeting. I did. And that’s the last place…
SID: I won’t tell anybody.
TODD: Yes. Listen, that’s the last place that a Southern Baptist pastor ought to be. And there were four Pentecostal pastors there and they ended up laying hands on me. And one gentleman weighed 140 pounds soaking wet, put his index finger on my forehead. And he said, be filled with the Holy Spirit. Instantly at that moment, the Holy Ghost came upon me. I’m falling out in the spirit and I began to speak in tongues. And my life, since that moment Sid, has never been the same. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me outside of my salvation experience.
