Sid Roth welcomes Charles Vance

SID: Hello. Sid Roth here with Charles Vance. I have had many prophets that I trust tell me that next year the finances, especially in the United States, are going to really shake. We’re going to go through some very, very tough times, and I believe that God has raised Charles Vance up for such a time as this. Why? He was born, raised and lives in West Virginia. Every time I see statistics West Virginia has the lowest per capita income of any state in the United States. And Charles Vance was no exception. Charles, there was a point in your life where you were below the poverty level and you probably had a mentality, this is just the way it is.

CHARLES: I really did. I remember a year that I got a raise and I thought, this is gonna push me up over atop of the edge of the poverty level. And just as soon as I got the raise the government raised the poverty level and it kept me under it. But I mean, you were in a construction industry and there was a time where in real estate you couldn’t lose money in this country.

CHARLES: This is true.

SID: But you still had those images in your head of this is the way it’s always been and this is the way it’s always going to be.

CHARLES: Sid, if you don’t believe it’s God’s will to be blessed or prosper financially you’ll probably do something to sabotage the finances even if they come your direction. And as I look back over my life I could see how many times I’ve done that over and over again, because you just really don’t believe that it’s going to happen or you don’t believe that there’s going to be an opportunity. So you end up missing windows of opportunity that many times are supernatural windows of opportunity. Certainly if you meet some criteria, biblical criteria, there can be supernatural windows of opportunity for financial prospering.

SID: Okay. In ’75 you get into the construction industry. In ’81 you bump into 21% interest rates and you’re in big trouble. What turned you around? And when I say turn around, Charles now is in the top 1% of wealth in the world, in the top 1%. How do you go from below poverty level to the top 1%? How did you?

CHARLES: I had a friend. I was raised in what I call old church, old traditional church. We grew up hearing God would do something for somebody, but he wouldn’t do it for somebody else, and you just never knew about God because God was mysterious. Well I had a friend of mine that showed me a few verses of scripture that whet my taste for a different perspective on God, that God is good, that He created me in His likeness, and after His image gave me as a person a dominion over all the works of His hands, everything that He created, that He wanted me to be healthy, that He wanted me to be prosperous, that He wanted me to be happy. Man, when I got a hold of those verses of scripture, I mean, I just started digging. I couldn’t get enough because I had never heard anything like it before. You know in the old church we were kind of raised, you know, you’re just gonna kind of be beat down and if you make it on this planet, you know, you get to go to Heaven where things are great, you know, walls of jasper gates of pearls, streets of gold. And I thought, that’s kind of weird, because if you look at the Garden of Eden, the word “Eden” means pleasure. That’s the Garden of Pleasure. You find gold at the head of the river there in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve didn’t want for anything. You finally go into the New Jerusalem. You got streets of gold. I’d say that would be about the ultimate in prosperity. I’m thinking where is God at in between here where I am right now? If Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever, if the Word of God never changes, if it’s settled forever in Heaven, and Jesus tells us to pray a prayer like, “Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven”, what’s going on? Are we in a time warp of some sort? As I continued to study the Word of God I discovered we’re not in a time warp. It’s our responsibility to believe God. And when I say believe, I mean to take faith in the Word of God, develop faith in the Word of God and put it into motion. See, a lot of times people think all they have to do is hear the Word. But James said if you hear it and don’t do it or practice it, or perform it, you deceive your own self.

SID: Okay. You were in a cycle. It wasn’t downward. You just stayed down.

CHARLES: Yes.

SID: And now you get the light bulb goes on and you find out that God wants to cooperate with man so that you would prosper in every arena of life. But it took you years, generations if you will, to get in that position you were in. Did it take a long time to get out?

CHARLES: You know, it took me a long time to get out, I believe, because I kept sabotaging things.

SID: But had you not sabotaged, had you known then what you know today?

CHARLES: Oh within months I could have gone to someone who was extremely prosperous.

SID: Okay. You went to the top 1% of incomes in the world. But you must be unusually gifted, unusually smart.

CHARLES: [laugh] Thank you very much. That’s not correct. The word “talent” means that there is something that it is innate inside of you. I’m a guitar player and I learned how to play guitar by practicing six to eight hours a day for about six years. Nothing has come easy for me. But when I discovered principles and laws in the Word of God and started applying them to my life they all work. If I don’t back, if I don’t waiver, you know, Peter was walking on the water. Everybody remembers that story. He starts to sink because he looks at the wind. Now a few verses prior to that the Bible says the wind was already blowing, so it’s not that the wind started blowing. So Peter looks at the wind, he sees the wind boisterous and he starts to sink. And Jesus, he says, “Help me.” Jesus pulls him up. And Jesus said, “Oh thee of little faith.” But I researched that word. That word “little faith” means faith with short duration. A lot of times we have just spikes of faith, you know, everybody. You can get in a church meeting–

SID: To be consistent, but Charles, you have this 40,000 square church office building. It’s totally paid for. Your uncle comes by. What does he say?

CHARLES: He said, “Charlie, son,” he talked kind of funny, country. He said, “I know that this had to be the Lord,” he said, “because you’re not smart enough to do this on your own.”

SID: Do you agree with that?

CHARLES: You know, I do agree with him because there’s a lot of things that come into our lives when we learn to have a relationship with God by favor, the favor of the Lord.

SID: I tell you what, that is such a wonderful thought. We’ll talk about that in a moment. Be right back. Don’t go away. I want to hear about the FOG. That’s an acronym for favor of God. Are you ready for FOG? Don’t go away.