Sid Roth welcomes Jim Rutz

SID: Sid Roth here with Jim Rutz, and I’m talking to him about his new book, Mega Shift, the best news since year one, the first part of the book deals with miracles, why? Because there is a new wineskin for a new outpouring of God’s Spirit and I think if I had to come up with one word to describe this new wineskin, it’s called freedom. Tell me about a woman that, it’s just so amazing, Mrs. Chang?

JIM: Yes, well the amazing person is an unknown nurse, I don’t even know her name, but Mrs. Chang was dying, and over the course of many years she got to the place where
she just had to go to the hospital, her son pedaled her about twenty kilometers to the hospital, the doctors there quickly discovered that all of her organs were basically almost
dead and said go home and die at peace with your family. Yet, before she left there was some unknown nurse that came up to her with the gospel of Mark, and said, “Just read this when you get home.” She did, they get home and she asked her some to read this
and she opens it up and starts reading, “This is the good news of Jesus Christ,” and her arm moved. Her arm hadn’t moved for years, her hands moved, and she said that

SID: So was she quadriplegic?

JIM: She was, yeah, she was pretty much paralyzed, but she had been that way for a long time and she started moving, and she sat up, and she was completely healed, just from reading the first

SID: Just from reading a little bit?

JIM: Just from reading the first few verses of the Gospel of Mark that had been snuck into her hands and then so the next morning she was walking down to the village
well to get some water, and everybody was looking at her, “Aren’t you Mrs. Chang?
What doctor did you use; we want to use him too?” And so she told them about Jesus.
That night she had everybody she could cram into her house, everybody became Christians, and so there was a huge spread of the word of God in that area, and the army
found out, the police, public security, they call it over there, and they came in and they beat up all the villagers, they killed all their cattle, they burned their crops, and they
left, figuring that this Jesus business was taken care of.

SID: Wiped out that particular group.

JIM: But years later there was just thousands and thousands of people all through the whole region because there was one nurse that was faithful to say, “Just read this when you get home.”

SID: You know but that isn’t so unique, I mean it’s what I understand is, you teach someone a tiny little thing in a third world country, and rather than taking ten years of
being faithful in a church they go the next day to their neighbor, just all they know is that little bit but they use it?

JIM: Oh yes and it’s just out of control, which is good.

SID: Tell me what is the difference in your opinion between our normal church model and the house church?

JIM: Well the obvious thing is that one takes place in a small living room, usually, ordinary living room, and the other is in a building that is paid for, maybe several
million dollars, a long difficult process, but really it is a question of lifestyle, the question is, “Is SID empowered to do anything but sit in a row on Sunday morning?” Are you free now to do what God has gifted you to do? And as we come along in the house church, we are touching lives and saying, “You can do this.” We see that God has a gift in you for teaching, or praying, singing, or helping other people in someway.

SID: If you see that God had a gift in me, let’s say, how long would it take me to start exercising this gift, how long would I have to be part of your house church?

JIM: Five seconds.

SID: Say that again.

JIM: Five seconds.

SID: Okay, so if you were the leader you would allow me to do it in five seconds in a house church.

JIM: Yeah, to start in, see the old rule was if you will believe our set of beliefs in my particular church, and you go through a confirmation class, then we’ll let you sit for a
few years, soak things up, maybe you’ll become a Sunday School teacher, but if you want to actually get up in front and minister to people you are going to have to go off to seminary for three years and when you come back, we already have a pastor then, you are going to have to go someplace else, so there is a lot of these roadblocks. And what we are having now is something that the post modern young people are very much in tune with which is, let’s be friends, let’s relate to each other. I want to start helping you and enabling you to minister to other people, I am going to mentor you, and as things go
along, as I am discipling you then you change your heart, you repent, you see that God is real and you become a Christian, so it’s all reversed.

SID: What about the worship team, what about the Sunday School, what about

JIM: The mortgage, the parking lot

SID: Yeah, yeah, what about all the traditional things?

JIM: Praise God, free at last. We don’t have those things. That is not to condemn having a pastor, a program, and a parking lot, because God works miracles through those, has been, will continue to do. It’s just as you look at the church as a whole, the new coming thing, the attention of the Holy Spirit is on empowering individuals in a free atmosphere.

SID: Okay, who does the leader of the group submit to, so there isn’t any wildfire?

JIM: The leader, now where in the New Testament do you find congregations with “the leader”? We are looking at elders, we are looking at gifted people who lead by their giftedness, in case of emergencies and what not, and to keep the meeting going along in the right avenue, we have elders, people that are respected that people will listen to if a certain subject comes up, you know if a question of finance comes up, the heads move
this way, a question on counseling or Biblical truth comes up the heads swivel the other way.

SID: But if they don’t take up money for the mortgage what do they take up money for?

JIM: They give, it depends somewhat on the economic strata, in some groups, lower economic strata people have lots of needs and so they give for each other, in upper-middle class, or upper class house churches, there is frequent giving to outside the group for mission work.

SID: Does someone take a salary for opening up their house?

JIM: Not usually, but see we are trying to develop people who are free to travel and help people, apostolic type people we call them, or even traveling prophets, and so

SID: What about wildfire? What about things that are unscriptural? I mean that happens if they are not part of a normal system?

JIM: Okay, we just shifted subjects here, Sid.

SID: That’s all right.

JIM: Uh, the problem of heresy is about way down here at the bottom of my list because if you try to sneak a piece of theological fluff pass a room full of Bible toting, steely eyed, Spirit filled Christians you are going to have a tough time, and so we emphasize the truth of God’s word and we kind of watch out for each other so we don’t get off the
tracks, there is really no need for a seminary trained, doctrinal police manual.

SID: Okay, going back to the question, who is their covering?

JIM: Who is their covering? Yeshua. See the word covering show up once in the New
Testament to describe a woman’s headband, her hair, her shawl or whatever, the idea of covering really is a disguise usually, for the idea of control. People say who is your covering, what they want to know is, are you a part of the same subjugated system or the
same top down primeval thing that I am.

SID: Hold that thought, this is getting kind of interesting, but you and I both know that over a period of time, tradition, layer upon layer upon layer, and for the next move of God’s Spirit we have got to be pure, we have to be new wineskin, God is going to use the old wineskin but I tell you that there is a new wineskin and you are being mentored whether you realize it or not by watching “It’s Supernatural,” don’t go away, we’ll be right back.