Sid Roth

Sid:  Now my guest, I’ve been looking forward to interviewing for a while, his name is Rob DeLuca. He is from New Zealand, Senior Pastor of His Way Church in Auckland, New Zealand.  And the reason I’ve been looking forward to interviewing him is that I have a pet question that I ask people that are being used mightily by God.  I’m very disappointed in a number of the prophets because I look in the old covenant and I see people wouldn’t say thus sayeth the Lord unless it really was God because they’d end up being stoned and today prophecy is cheap, the words fall to the ground.  So I said, “Who do you know, who’s the top prophet you know?”  Well, he a prophet from New Zealand, his name is Rob DeLuca and that’s why, well I made it a point of meeting Rob and inviting him to be a guest.  Now Rob could you tell me the circumstances of the prophecy of the Lakeland, Revival?

Rob:  I had a vision from the Lord and I saw four nations being touched.  The vision was of a boomerang and…

Sid:  So you get the boomerang in Australia, now that fits.

Rob:  That’s right and I saw it touch the nation of England, Australia, New Zealand and America.  So I saw this boomerang and I saw it come to America, but it had a little bit more accuracy to it and it flew straight into Florida.  And I saw it hit the city of Lakeland. The Holy Spirit said, “What took place with Pensacola and the Pensacola revival; what took place with Rodney Howard Brown in the awakening in the ‘90s is about to take place.”  And the Lord showed me that it was going to go from thousands to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands.  And I saw a nail spike over the state of Florida, and I saw the Hand of God come out of the heavens and hit the spike into the ground of Florida.  And as I saw that I saw a scroll out from the spike and there was one sentence on the scroll and it said “The Kingdom of God has now come.”  I saw news media, I saw journalists, I saw television broadcasts in the news witnessing this revival, witnessing the miracles and I saw journalists dumbfounded awestruck by the presence of God and the testimony of the miracles that were taking place.  It was pretty intense and it was accurate because 3 ½ weeks later it started to take place.

Sid:  Rob let me take you back a bit, at 11 you were saved and unfortunately as is happening to many young people they get saved and even in Christian homes you drifted into the culture of the day.  And at 18 you hit bottom, explain.

Rob:  Well, when I was 11 I accepted Jesus Christ in my heart, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, but I had no root in the word of God.  And we were just coming out of Catholicism and the charismatic movement was taking place in the 70’s. I even had prophet’s prophecy over me when I was young that God was going to use me to be a preacher and that I was going to minister to the masses.  But as time went by in my teenage years I started doing drugs and I got mixed up with a wrong crowd by the time I was 18 I ended up homeless in a cardboard box.

Sid:  You know you read about things like that, you don’t think it happens, that was probably the last thing in the world you thought would ever happen to you.

Rob:  I never ever imaged that that would take place.  I lived in a cardboard box in an ally in the streets of Los Angeles.

Sid:  But there was an occasion where a woman walked up to you and started talking to you and sharing the gospel, tell me about that.

Rob:  There was a woman named Barbara Martin. My friend and I were standing on a street corner, we were waiting to get some drugs and she walked up to us and she started sharing about the love of Jesus Christ. She told me how I was feeling in my heart and that I had sin in my heart and I knew that because of my experience when I was a young boy.  And she asked me “Did I want to give my heart totally over to Jesus?”  And as she prayed for me she asked me to say the sinner’s prayer and ask Jesus to come into my heart once again afresh and I did.  And then she laid her hands on my head and the presence of God came all over me and I started almost to fall back and I knew that day that I totally surrendered to the Lord.

Sid:  You know one of the things I see a lot of the people that are touched by God are then going out on the street and doing the same things that caused you to become a believer.  I have to believe that it’s hard for someone to walk away from having an experiential thing happen to them, verses something they can’t say I remember when the power of God came on me.

Rob:  Well, our God is a God of experience, our God is a God that you can feel, or God is a God that can touch us.  And that’s what took place, it was more than just a prayer it was the Lord touching me by the power of the Holy Spirit and that’s what caused me to really want more of Him, more of that experience in His presence.

Sid:  You know I’m reminded of the scripture says, “This is eternal life, that you might know Him.”  But somehow the gospel in America anyway is that you might believe in Him, not know Him.  There’s a lot of people I believe in, but I don’t know them; the whole objective is to know Jesus.

Rob:  Well, if we know Jesus then we’re going to know the Jesus of the gospels. When Jesus walked into a town or when He walked into a home He carried supernatural power.  And people experienced the witness of that supernatural power all around them whether it was a person being healed or a person being forgiven of their sins and weeping and crying and being cleansed; or if it was just watching that type of encounter with the Lord they saw something that was supernatural.

Sid:  You know Rob when I first met you, and I decided I was going to interview you, I said “What teaching do you have that’s important to get into the hands of those that are listening as a tool to mentor them?”  And you told me a couple teachings, but the one you really wanted people to get is the one on “Breaking the Power of Covetousness” which has to do with prosperity.  And I have to tell you it turned me off, why because I have seen such an unbalance in what is called the gospel of property where it’s really based on wrong motives and wrong desires and so I actually backed off, not completely because I’m a giver, but I’ve backed off because I’ve seen the excess.  And after listening to your message I was actually backing off more than I should have in over reaction to what I see on television.  What did God tell you about this particular message, “Breaking the Power of Covetousness?”

Rob:  Well, when God gave me this message I felt like it was a word for the entire world, the Lord showed me that this message would go throughout the nations and it would set people free from wrong motives in the prosperity message.  You see I really believe that God wants to bless us. The Bible says that He is the God of blessing but our desires must be pure concerning blessing, concerning prosperity.  The Holy Spirit showed me that many people have made prosperity, or the prosperity message to be all, end all and they think that is the great harvest, or that is the end of what we call Christianity, but it isn’t.  It’s a means to the end; you see, God will bless us for a reason, but the means to the end or the end of the result of being blessed is to be a blessing to the world, to see souls saved, and to see the kingdom of God you know established throughout the nation.

Sid:  Now God wants us to prosper. What does prosperity mean to you?

Rob:  Prosperity to me personally is being able to have all your needs met, and also have more than enough to be able to be a blessing to others.  Now the definition of prosperity verses say a person that’s going to work and has a wife and kids and they’re saying “You know what?”  We have our house, God’s blessed us and you know what we want to be a blessing to the mission field.  I can see that as prosperity, but then there’s others you know you can be a businessman and say you know what I’m believing for millions of dollars so I can build churches and take care of orphans and do all the work of kingdom and take care of widows and what have you.  You know that’s prosperity too so really it’s defined depending upon where you’re at in your life.

Sid:  You know what I think is amazing that as wrapped up as you are in revival which is really seven days a week, 24-7 you still are a businessman.  How in the world do you juggle both?

Rob:  By the grace of God. You know in New Zealand I owned three restaurants and also I have two coffee houses and a coffee roasting business, and that has enabled me to be a volunteer at our church.

Sid:   I’ll tell you what we’re out of time.