Sid: Well, my guest is red hot for the Messiah, his name is Leif Hetland and Leif goes to countries like Pakistan and he puts things up on billboards and Leif, you remind me of myself because I do this with Jewish people all the time; but he goes to a country in Pakistan and he proclaims if Jesus is alive you’ll see miracles and you have bill boards. Do you ever think well what happens if I have several thousand Muslims in the audience and there aren’t any miracles, does that thought ever cross your mind?
Leif: I need to be honest with you, yes I do. Ha-ha, some of the things that keeps you awake and…
Sid: I know because the same thing happens to me, but go ahead. As you and I know I can’t make anything happen, I mean if God doesn’t show up I’m in such big trouble. Ha-ha.
Leif: I know I’ve realized that I cannot have a plan B because the advertisement is very simple that Jesus is going to be like just like a little over a month ago in this cricket stadium. So the advertisement that He is there and He’s alive and you are going to see these things as evidence; and if He is in me and if He’s alive if not I know you are going to kill me. So I realize that that is when you go into an area and your sharing about his goodness and your sharing about His love, but your also sharing about something that is totally supernatural and that is that if He doesn’t show up I know that I will not come home. I share that with my wife; I hope that He’s going to show up.
Sid: I could tell you some stories that I’ve done in Israel and Russia the same way with unsaved Jewish people, so tell me about a meeting you had last year.
Leif: Yeah, last year in November we went into the country of Pakistan and this is my sixteenth trip there, I have been to seventy six different nations and have a very special love towards the Moslem people. I believe that part of my calling was similar like I’m not trying to preach, but I got a word when I went into Pakistan from Genesis 33:10 and it says actually and is about Jacob about to becoming Israel. It says that when I saw Esau’s face I saw the face of God, and I also saw that you were well pleased with me. So Esau had married into Ishmael’s family, into the Muslim, that’s where Esau was and he came with vengeance, he was actually a terrorist coming to terrorize, but something had changed first of all with Jacob, he had become a prince, he had become Israel and as a result when Israel looked at him, when Jacob looked at him he did not see him as he was, he saw the face of God. And I knew that that was something I had as I want in there, when I’m looking at those faces, some of them have never heard of Jesus, never heard about love; they’ve lived there entire life; they don’t know anything about life and so I realized that my mission was very clear there that I was going into an area where there has not been any evangelistic meetings where Jesus never has been.
Sid: But Muslims in particular, what did God tell you about them as far as are they open to the gospel now?
Leif: Yeah, I have traveled now since this impartation in 1995, actually in 1996 was my first time doing an open meeting and I’ve been doing it on a regular basis. Muslims have a great honor for Jesus. There’s a tremendous hospitality; I believe the biggest thing that I want to do is to change our world view toward Muslims. And I have sit down with radicals; I’ve sit down with people that want to cut my throat; I’ve sit down with people that are like Saul who wants to kill a Steven; that wants to kill the Jesus in you. But I do believe the love in me is greater than the fear that is in them. I believe the light in me is stronger than the darkness in them, so if we don’t have the proper world view toward them because all these people, they’ve lived their entire life and they never heard about the love…
Sid: How many would you reach if you did not operate in the supernatural? How many Muslims would you reach?
Leif: I would probably say zero, to be honest.
Sid: And how many have you reached over the last few years?
Leif: Well, we have in sixteen years had over one, actually it would be probably about 960,000 people that have had an encounter with Jesus on one level or another. That means either they have prayed and invited Jesus in, because they saw him they’ve seen signs, wonders, and miracles, they’ve head dreams; they’ve been taken up to Heaven, there has just been all these amazing things that…
Sid: Okay, let’s go back to that revival that you had in Pakistan, where you literally you take a deep breath and you go out on a platform where you’ve advertized miracles. How many Muslims were at this particular meeting?
Leif: Well, there was at least in the thousands and we do have both pictures and videos from that meeting.
Sid: Okay, so there’s several thousand Muslims there, you go out on the platform, what happened?
Leif: Well, what we do is we use a lot of cultural songs and everything else in the early stage, that is just connecting with them. I would be introduced, many times I have top Muslim leaders introducing me and that’s vary because they are my friends, but when I come up the first message I preach was Jesus, when Jesus shows up good things happen. And I just started to describe pretty much from the New Testament all these people when they were blind like Bartimaeus, the woman that had been bleeding, I’ll just tell story after story when Jesus shows up good things happen. And then I describe their very city and the place we were at and I said, Jesus, if He is here tonight, you are going to watch good things are going to happen. Lame people are going to walk, blind people are going to see, and literally the major reason most of them are there is curiosity because none doctor could help them. They have no answer; they’ve been living there and when there hearing the testimony they came in that’s how we double the meeting night after night. So when you are literally seeing, and to see Moslem Mom carrying their children, or to see Moslem Mom coming there with His Father that is blind, when you seeing people with a long beard, or the women behind the veil, literally they are coming there hearing for the first time the Name of Jesus and they recognize that when Jesus shows up good things happen.
Sid: Now describe some of the good things that happen at this most recent meeting.
Leif: Yeah, I would say that there’s five in the first meeting and then it doubled and then it doubled and then the last night it was out of control. But the first night when it was there it is not enough to have healings and miracles, but Jesus knew to do significant so that it’s creative miracles so that they can see. So one of them, he came crawling in, literally his limbs are very deformed, almost like and animal and by the time he got closer and closer to the stage and came up I have seven people with me from America and a couple of key leaders, but by the time he came up on the stage the limbs has been straightened out and the audience is watching and he comes up and he walks up on the stage and he starts to testify what Jesus had done. And other one was born blind, and you cannot see anything in her eyes and they carried her blind. And when she starts to come up and she sees the audience; I will never forget that face when that girl and when both the Momma and Poppa’s holding that girl and for the first time in her life she turns towards the audience and she looks at me her face just shines as she can see for the first time in her life. And we had five significant miracles, one of them…
Sid: But but wait a second, now on this young girl you said that there was nothing in her eyes; what do you mean by that?
Leif: That means that when you looked there, I’m trying to remember the word in English, but the pupil or the eyeball we didn’t see it when she came.
Sid: Now there was no color, it was just all white maybe?
Leif: It was like white yeah, whitish and grayish, but you saw that the process and before when we’ve been there I have not that many, but we took a lot of the pictures of the people and video’s of the people while there in the audience and in their desperation hoping that Jesus is going to come and we watch them like this one boy out of the wheelchair the same. Like this girl we watched the process even while she was up on stage and started to see a little bit better, we saw the change taking place and eventually even just talking the testimony of Jesus up on stage.
Sid: Now you did this for three nights, the first night there were some notable miracles, the second night there were more, I image the faith level was spectacular the third night. What happened the third night.
Leif: Yeah, I have never seen anything like it and I have one of my dear friends, Dr. Bob Philips and he said, and he’s been all over the world, the thing that I think surprised me was the hunger level. It is the first time I understand the scripture why they would cut a hole in the roof to try to get your friend to them. It is the first time I think I understand how this woman with the issue of blood will press herself in hoping to touch Jesus. They broke actually protocol, because there was a rope there for security reasons and they tried to storm me hoping that if they touch him that Jesus in him I’m going to be well.
Sid: Now, did many come to the Lord?
Leif: Yeah, we had night after night that’s always very, very clear, now if you have seen Jesus, you’ve experienced Jesus and if you believe in Jesus that He is alive, now how many and you will see it when we get together that literally in the thousands each night. The most conservative number on this last trip, and this was totally on registered, it was fifteen thousand names added to the Lambs book of life; they received Jesus, they prayed and they invited Jesus, please come into my heart, I want you to be my Lord and my Savior. Or Jesus the last night I preached Jesus as King, and He is the King over this area and He rules and reigns. And it was a kingdom message. I said how many of you would like Jesus to be the King of your life. All over the place literally I don’t think that there was anybody that did not, I mean the whole place was just changed because the presence of God was so thick in that place. That’s the thing I’ve been in meeting and conferences all over, but that is the most significant night of my life.
Sid: You know what that reminds me of? As I read about Solomon dedicating the Temple in the Old Testament it said, that the Shekinah, that’s the Hebrew word for the Glory of God, it is the Shekinah, it’s was so thick that the priests could not even stand. Did it get to that point?
Leif: Well, it started to get to that point, it became dangerous of the presence of God, and the miracles it was not just the miracles, the line of people that want to testify. And not just miracles but we see literally thousands and thousands of people waving that they have already been healed of everything that you can imagine. But in the end it got so wild that the guards, those Muslim guards, wonderful, wonderful people with machine guns and everything else escorting us out because they were storming the stage getting up trying to touch me.
Sid: They weren’t upset that you were preaching Jesus, they were upset because they couldn’t touch you. That’s great!
Leif: That’s what I’m saying, the whole thing I have never seen I’ve been there many many times, but it is the love that these people had for Jesus and they were coming after Him, they wanted a touch from Him, they believed He was alive, if not they wouldn’t risk their own life coming…
Sid: I’m sorry our time has slipped away