Sid Roth

SID: Hello, Sid Roth here with Hank Kunneman. And Hank, you’re pretty happy and chipper now. But in the early ’90s, things weren’t going too well for you, were they?

HANK: No. I was a lot younger then. I had just tried to start my ministry and I was recently married. I have been married 22 years to a wonderful wife. I was praying, Sid, and I felt like God wasn’t answering my prayers. All of a sudden, something amazing happened, I’d like to tell you. I was praying and I thought I saw something out of the right side of my shoulder move.

SID: That’s happened to me. I’ll bet that’s happened to you sometime. You’re in a room alone and all of a sudden…nah, I didn’t see it. But what was it?

HANK: Well I’ll tell you. I thought I saw it and I looked over, and I thought, boy, there’s something there. So I looked again and I couldn’t believe what I saw. And I didn’t have pizza, so I knew it wasn’t a pizza dream. I looked over on the right side of my shoulder and there was an angel standing right next to me. And I looked and he looked at me. I looked at him. And of course, I was afraid. So I thought, well I better pray, because I didn’t know what else to do. So I went over by my prayer chair.

SID: When all else fails, pray.

HANK: And I stood in front of my prayer chair. I couldn’t believe that this angel stood right next to me. And I thought, I should do the spiritual thing, you know, fold my hands. And so I folded my hands. I looked to my right. The angel was folding his hands. I thought, okay, this is interesting. So I began to pray. And he had the same form that I had. I knelt down. I thought, well the spiritual thing then, is not just to fold your hands, but to kneel. So I knelt down, too. The angel knelt down next to me on my right. I looked over at him, he looked over at me. I could hardly believe it. I said, Lord, this is so crazy. I started praying and worshiping the Lord. He started worshiping the Lord. But here’s what’s amazing. All of a sudden, I began to pray about the nations and about my ministry, and as soon as I did that, Sid, something happened. All of a sudden, this angel shot out of my room! I mean, just with such force and such power right when I was praying for the nations. You know 20-some years later…

SID: So you could see…

HANK:  Yeah.

SID: …and you could see that when you’re praying, whether you can see that angel next to you or not, when you’re praying I want you to capture this vision, the angel shoots out to cause your words to come to pass. That’s what you learned from that. That’s what I’ve learned.

HANK: Angels are waiting for us. But you know what’s amazing? After this happened, two weeks later, my wife Brenda and I are in this auditorium and Benny Hinn is conducting a service. And he points out, you know how Benny does, “You right back in the back.”

SID: Were there a lot of people?

HANK: Yeah, it was a pretty good size. It wasn’t as big as the huge auditoriums. But this was back in 1990. It was a pretty good size room. Probably not as big as obviously as the main convention centers, but big enough to be lost in the crowd; called me out and my wife, and began to prophecy to us the very things now, listen to this, that I was speaking in my room that nobody was listening to but God. Benny began to prophecy to my wife and I about the things, Sid, that we are walking in today. Now here’s the thing. Right after he prophesied, the angel shot out of my room, the opposite happened in my life.

SID: What happened to your job?

HANK: Well, I got fired.

SID: You got fired!

HANK: And it looked like I was never going to amount to anything. It looked like I wasn’t going to even be in the ministry.

SID: By the way, tell everyone why you got fired. I think this is important.

HANK: Well I got fired because I was working for a particular corporation and they wanted to go out and get drunk, and they wanted to go to a strip club, and I said, no I’m not going to do this. They said, well you don’t have to go in, you’re just the designated driver. I said, “No, I will not do this.” So the boss fired me for insubordination. I don’t know what is insubordinate about moral standard. But the powerful thing is, after I got fired, that night I prayed over all of their beds, and they came back drunk and everything. And here’s the funny thing, Sid. Sometimes we don’t think our prayers are working. I tell you, the power of God went into those beds. They couldn’t even sleep in their beds. They had to lay out on the floor and they were so miserable, and they kept saying, “What did you do to my bed?” And I thought, oh boy, because I kept my heart right, I forgave them and I kept praying. See, that’s the thing about breakthrough.

SID: That’s the key to breakthrough.

HANK: You have to be determined to stay with it. Even the lineage that led up to the Messiah was determined spirit that you see in people, you know, Jacob wrestling for the blessing. There’s that determined spirit.

SID: Okay, but here’s the thing that you don’t know. Here he has an angel next to him. The angel darts off to answer this prayer. Then he and his wife are in a meeting and Benny Hinn doesn’t even know them, he calls them out, he prophesies what’s been going on in his bedroom. I mean, everything wonderful is going to happen. And then he loses his job. The bottom falls out. And so much…How much time went by until you had your breakthrough?

HANK: Well it was probably, the Lord spoke a phrase to me. He said, “For the next seven years,” He said, “you’ll be like Joseph,” He said, “because I want to teach you character to handle the anointing and the responsibility of what I’m going to give you.” But you know one of the things that happened, Sid, I got to tell you this story. When I got fired, my wife and I, the only thing we knew to do was just go back to the Lord and pray. So we were praying one day and my wife’s sister was living with us at the time. We began to pray, worship the Lord. My little boy, who is now 17, was two years old. We were worshiping the Lord and we started smelling this smell of fire. And we thought, what is this? We’re worshiping the Lord and…

SID: All you need is a fire. You’re praying, you’re trying,

HANK:  We were already in the fire!

SID: …you’re doing everything you know to do, and all of a sudden, smoke! Where there’s smoke…

HANK: Yes. And so we thought, what is this. We rushed outside. I couldn’t believe my eyes. We looked up above my house. There was a cloud of smoke. It wasn’t a natural smoke because there was no fire. But it was visible in the natural realm that we were in. And even the neighbor, who was a sheriff, came out, couldn’t believe it either. Didn’t know what it was. But it was the Glory of God. And it was right after that time that a businessman called me out of the blue, after I got fired this happens. And he says, “Hank and Brenda,” he said, “you are called to the nations to preach my word and God has his Word in your mouth.” And the Lord to me, “For the next year, year and a half, I am to support you…full medical benefits, and I am to support you a full salary…”

SID: What did you have to do for this?

HANK: Just pray and read the scriptures.

SID: You didn’t have to go Heaven. He had Heaven on Earth. But it took seven years for his breakthrough.

HANK: Before the breakthrough.

SID ROTH: Here’s what I believe and this is what Hank believes. We are in the decade of the breakthrough right now. What that means is, it’s not going to take seven years. But there are certain keys and there is an anointing that I believe God has personally called Hank to release upon you so that you can have your breakthrough. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back after this word.