Is Cleveland poised for a spiritual awakening?

This "everything is possible" conversation includes a prophetic understanding of Cleveland, Ohio. Plus ... could your life be a preview of coming attractions in ways you can't imagine?This is a special recast episode.

Go further with this episode  >  see the show notes for Is Cleveland Poised for a Spiritual Awakening? with Steve Witt (#287)

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Foreign.

Hey there.

Welcome my friend.

This is Brian Del Turco.

Thanks for connecting with me today on Jesus smart, the podcast.

Episode 143.

How are you doing?

How are you doing?

This global pandemic which has shaken the world and a Pandora's box, a seeming seemingly a Pandora's box of events and challenges that have also sprung up on us.

Well, Jesus knows.

And that brings up our third P word pandemic.

Pandora's box Prophecy.

In the book of Revelation, John wrote that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

And here's the truth that you're going to hear from today's guest.

When we focus on Jesus and talk about him and learn about him and learn from him the future good news about your individual future, your relationships and your family life, communities of faith, businesses and initiatives.

Whatever your hands touch, whatever you're involved in, the designed future shows up when we become, shall we say, Christocentric.

I'm so pleased today to have with us Pastor Steve Witt from Bethel Cleveland.

You can learn more about the church Bethel [email protected] Community of Faith with a passion for worship and presence, to connect and to empower people for the kingdom of heaven in Greater Cleveland and beyond right here in the state of Ohio, Midwest America.

Also SteveWitt.com, a recent site he's developed that's designed to equip you to identify your identity and your destiny and to create a legacy.

Well, today we're going to get right after it.

Steve Witt talks about a kairos season that we are in.

A season of pruning and a refreshing and a reset in our walk with Christ.

And what is the Lord after pruning is always after a cleansing and increased fruitfulness as individuals, as groups, as communities of faith, as a business, a cause or that initiative.

The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

This is what John wrote in the book of Revelation.

When we focus on Jesus and talk about him, the future starts showing up.

Jesus is our personal prophetic map.

Steve talks about Cleveland.

The Lord revealed to him has been in a prison and if he would find others to worship with him.

Like in Acts 16 when Paul and Silas were worshiping in prison.

It can be broken.

People can come into liberty.

Transformation can come.

We'll talk about Quake on the Lake.

120 Churches involved called Quake on the lake.

Steve said there would be an earthquake that would follow as a sign of massive spiritual awakening coming that next January, several months after this event.

Just two or three months, I think.

An earthquake 5.0 on the Richter scale hit the Cleveland area.

But Steve believes that the awakening which was prophesied is yet to come.

The scale of it, even though Cleveland is doing much better since then, then there's still a massive spiritual awakening on the horizon.

This is part one of our conversation.

I'll come back at the end and recapitulate with you and talk about part two of this conversation.

Pastor Steve from Bethel, Cleveland, I really want to thank you for carving out a few minutes today to talk with us on Jesus Smart, the podcast.

Thank you for doing this.

Thank you for being with us.

Well, glad to be here.

And I'm going to give Pastor Steve a proper intro his bio in just a moment.

But first, if I could ask you, Pastor Steve, one of the things you've recently have been saying is that we're in a season now of pruning and refreshing, an opportunity to refresh our walk with Christ.

Yeah.

You know, naturally pruning happens because the necessity.

I think I was referencing something publicly about fruit trees.

And fruit trees need, you know, at the beginning of the season, right, as they begin to blossom, typically is when you go in and you see which branches are not bearing fruit and you trim those off.

And also look at depending on how much blossoms are coming, because blossoms are future fruits.

Right.

You look at it, you see some that are weak that may only have one blossom on it, and you actually prune those off also, even though you know they're going to bear fruit, you prune them off so that the other branches get more the energy from the trunk and the flow from the trunk, and they bear greater fruit.

And so Jesus refers to this also in the Bible.

And, you know, we really don't like to talk about it in church circles.

I mean, who wants to be pruned?

You know, nobody.

And so, yeah, I want to bear more fruit, but I don't want any pain.

And I really feel in America right now, the American church, specifically the Western church, is being pruned right now.

And it's being pruned of a lot of things that, you know, I don't really want to mention because they're dear to people's hearts.

But I will mention a few.

Okay.

I mean, in some ways, worship has got out of control in people's churches where they get so bent on having perfect sounding or perfect presenting Worship, that they're.

We're missing the core of worship.

And I'm all for excellence.

I really want to do things excellently.

But sometimes we do take things over the top, and we're more concerned about the production of something rather than the anointing, the presence of God, that thing which actually does the transformation.

So I honestly believe that some of this is being pruned, and at the same time, it's being improved in the sense that churches are being driven to the Internet to do services in the middle of this.

I was in Florida back in March, and so I was doing mine on my front camera of my phone.

I was preaching to our church every week for, I don't know, about five or six weeks, something like that.

And it was out of a little place I had down in Florida that I was doing it, and I actually then got a church building to do it, so I did it.

So, you know, since then, we've sunk some money into the Internet in order to better broadcast, podcast, webcast, live feed, everything to an emerging audience.

So, you know, there's churches now that are going from having hundreds of people to thousands.

It's true.

And some that are doing it right are getting tens of thousands.

So we're being pruned, and in different ways, ideologically, we're being pruned.

We're being pruned as far as our.

What would I call it, the passive ignorance of the need that is within people of color, particularly African Americans.

And so we're being kind of quickened on that.

There's some pruning away of, you know, wrong thinking wrong, you know, from racism to just ignorance is being pruned.

And so I, you know, I love, hate this time.

It's the Bible talks about the great and dreadful day of the Lord, you know.

Yes, yes.

That's a common theme throughout the Bible.

And I always thought, wow, what is that?

Great and dreadful.

That's both great and dreadful.

Yeah, we're kind of in a great and dreadful right now, you know, where there's.

It's dreadful, it's difficult.

Wearing a mask is just pain, you know, and social distancing with my grandchildren is terrible, you know, but in the midst of it, we're being whacked on the side of the head, and new ideas, new thoughts, new ways of ministering are coming out now.

So it is an interesting time, and I like it.

I love, hate it.

And I think it's.

It's a necessary tunnel that we're having to crawl through in order to get to the next place.

When I was a business trainer, we learned a lot of different approaches to business.

One of the things I learned over the years was the stage S T A G E gate G A T E stage gate process, which typically is used for a new product or a new idea.

A process, a product or something that you want to take to market.

And you know, there's typically six, seven, eight stages in that.

And you swirl around in one stage and then there's a narrow opening that will take you to the next stage.

That narrow opening is almost always a person, a word, a revelation, an idea, something.

But it always involves a decision.

So in order to go to that next stage, you've got to make a decision.

Am I going to leave behind what I have?

You know, build upon that and go into a place, go from a place that is great comfort?

Am I willing to enter a place that's going to feel like I'm going from grade three to grade four?

Yeah, I mean all new friends, all new material, feeling out of place, like learning to drive a car or whatever.

When you're 15, it feels terribly difficult, both hands on the wheel.

Later on you're steering with two fingers.

But at the beginning it's hard.

And I feel that God is calling us through a narrow tunnel.

The Bible says broad is the way to destruction, but narrow is the way to life.

And so there's a narrow gate the church is walking through.

In order to get through the narrow gate, you've got to set things down that will not fit through that gate.

And sometimes you even have to lose personal weight, pounds to get through that gate.

So it's a thinning down, a pruning down of who we are so that we might obtain something that is better in God.

That's the exact spot that I think we are.

Yeah, I think we normally, at least I have think of that narrow gate statement that Jesus made as sort of a one off, kind of a dynamic.

You enter through the narrow gate and you go to heaven someday.

But you seem to be suggesting that there are a series of narrow gates in our walk with the Lord that he will process us through.

When Jesus talked about it, he really talked about the kingdom.

So when you talk about the kingdom, one aspect of that kingdom is the narrow way.

And so that narrow way is a way of, well, narrowness.

It's a way where you're having to.

I don't know if you ever been.

When I was in college, there were some caves nearby and so a lot of the college students used to go over There you kind of lay sideways and you shimmy through these, like, cracks and rocks.

You go into a place that you hear is really cool.

There's this cave in there that you're going to get to, but in order to get to there, you've got to squeeze through these rocks.

And if you have any claustrophobia, you.

Know, you're like, oh, my gosh, start panicking.

Yeah, don't like this at all.

But.

But on the other side, there's reward.

Yeah.

It opens up.

You haven't been there before, and so you do.

I really do believe that for Christians, there's certain things that they could do before and they didn't really feel bad about.

And God is pulling that back.

He's streaming us into a holiness before God.

And I'm not talking about, you know, what they used to call in Pentecostal churches a kind of a clothesline holiness.

Hey, dress this way, act this way, keep your hair cut, you know, blah, blah, blah.

It's not about that.

It's about the stuff that Jesus and Paul talked about, particularly the Apostle Paul.

But Jesus said, or God said, be holy as I am holy.

So there's a narrowing down.

Sometimes we get a little sloppy and a little loose.

And the Bible also says in Hebrews that we have to set aside every sin and weight and wait.

That so easily besets us.

So it's not all sin.

You know, sin needs to be set aside, but it's also just stuff that you collect, just waits.

In America, we are so busy.

Are we ever?

Yeah, I mean, not now, but we were, you know, we were busy.

And who would have thought in a moment the Lord could stop us and send us home and cause us to sit around for a couple months and think about where we were.

Yeah, I know.

That's a gift from God.

We have so much.

We're a very weighty culture.

Right.

I mean, it manifests as physical clutter, but there's like emotional weights, mental weights, distractions.

We're just so weighted down.

And I mean, if we're going to be like, maybe the Lord wants us to be more agile and more accelerated.

Right.

And more fit.

Well, that's it.

And, you know, I feel like we've had warning of this, like, for almost a decade now.

Coming out of Asia, there's been a lot of books on decluttering and simplified life and simplifying your world.

And so people are starting to do that.

You know, I actually started doing it.

I cleaned my closet out, threw a third of my clothes out.

You know, took them to veterans association.

I, I was heavy into this and cleaning my office.

I got rid of over 500 different personal books that I've had over the years just because they cluttered, you know, and I just, I don't know how else to explain it.

Maybe, like, maybe this is what a woman feels like when they get pregnant and they had this nesting thing come upon them.

They've got to paint the bedroom, they've got to buy the supplies, you know, that you need for the child.

I think I feel that in a way, but it's more about making my life simple and agile.

Yes.

I think you're onto something there.

The fluidity, the flow that when he says go, we can say, I'm ready, here I am, Lord, send me.

So we're just, I think in that process and I'm trying to take advantage of it personally.

And then I wrote a book last year, your Prophetic Life Map, which we're really positioning now for the pandemic.

That this book just so beautifully kind of helps people navigate through to find out their identity, their destiny and ultimately their legacy.

Great timing on that book.

Right the way it's worked out.

Really excited about it.

And we have an E course now, an Internet course that we designed, put together, that's [email protected] and I basically walk people, it's kind of like coaching really, but I walk people through what they've been through, the pain they've been through, all the things, the thread of what God has done in their life and what in the world do you do with that?

This is what I need to do now to get to where I need to go.

So helpful to see that visually.

Yes.

Yeah, it sure is.

For me it is.

I'm a visual person.

Yes, I really think it is helpful.

Steve Witt is the senior leader of Bethel Cleveland.

He partners in ministry with his lovely Canadian kingdom wife, Cindy.

And his passion is to see believers come into their God given potential motivated him to plant churches both in the United States and Canada.

Pastor STEVE what's the unique niche that Bethel Cleveland fills in the.

If we could say the Greater Cleveland landscape, kingdom landscape, how would you describe the church?

Yeah, I love our church.

It's not perfect by any means.

It's got a lot of flaws.

We goof up a lot.

But in the 24 years that I've been here, I have not ceased to just love the very spirit of what happens within the congregation.

And what happens is we've become a place of sparking for a lot of other churches where people come here, they get excited about what the life in the Spirit looks like.

They go back to their church and they kind of set it on fire, you know, so we've done some of that.

But we also are a.

We'd be like the equivalent of a training hospital where people come and get trained and equipped, and many become a part of the corps and attach themselves to this training.

They become nurses and doctors and so forth to help people be discipled, be mentored into what God has called him to be.

So I feel our greatest strengths, number one, is the presence of God.

I'm not saying that other churches don't have that, but we go after it.

It's a real priority.

It's our strongest currency is the presence of God.

And if he's not there, nothing happens.

And so we're trying to get people to walk in the presence, which in New Testament terms would be walking in the spirit.

That you have days where you have whole days where you lay your head on a pillow at night and you say, that was an adventure in God.

And, you know, no matter who you met, where you were, what you did, you know you had, God was there and he upheld every situation.

So presence is huge.

And then we're, you know, so that involves worship and everything else.

But we're also about the prophetic.

The Bible says that the testimony of Jesus, the spirit of prophecy.

That's mentioned a couple times in the Bible.

And here's my interpretation of that.

There's a lot of interpretations, but mine is this, that everything attached to the name and person of Jesus has power into it to open up the prophetic.

Now, the prophetic, as I understand it, is the revelatory.

It's the connection of hearing God's voice and communicating what he says.

So we've been training hundreds, now thousands of people over the 24 years into hearing the voice of God and being available to allow the Lord to take you over and use your senses for the purpose of God.

I'm working on this right now, actually kind of a prophetic profile.

Certain people in the Spirit.

I'm not talking about natural, but just like the natural, because natural things speak of the spiritual Realm the same way that you see naturally, you can see spiritually.

And when I'm out in the streets talking to people, which I do about every day, I bring up my little deal that I do.

I say, are you a Jesus follower?

I ask everybody that doesn't matter whether they're a believer, doesn't matter whether I know them.

I say, are you a Jesus follower?

It's a diagnostic question that goes to the soul of every individual.

And Brian, within three minutes, I'm at the gates of their soul in their hearts, and they're telling me everything, man.

They're opening their hearts and sharing their hearts.

I was with the guy.

I was parking my car in downtown Cleveland the other day.

And the guy, the parking lot attendant, had an accent that I thought that sounds Eastern European to me.

I said, hey, you've got an accent.

Where are you from?

He says, I'm from Romania.

Oh, I know a little bit about Romania.

It's a beautiful country, blah, blah.

Talking to him, I said, hey, let me ask you a question.

This is as I'm paying for my parking.

I said, are you a Jesus fellow?

And he says, no.

And I said, really?

And I said, well, let me tell you something.

I said, God has worked in your mother and is going to impart to you something of the knowledge of God.

It's going to change your life.

And he says, did you see my bracelet?

And I said, no, no, I don't know.

He shows me his bracelet, and it's this.

It's got like these little.

I don't know how to describe them, but they're little squares on this bracelet that are obviously pictures of saints from the Greek Orthodox Church.

And so apparently I didn't put this together until after I left talking to him, but apparently his mother gave him that.

He saw that as a sign.

What I did, I said, when your mother gives that to you, which she already had, I said, it is a sign that God is seeking you.

And this Romanian guy said, oh, no, am I in trouble?

And I said, no, no, no.

That's what a lot of people I talk to after they think of God's coming, that they're in trouble, you know, I said, no, no, no, this is all good, man.

He loves you dearly.

But when he comes, you've got to say, jesus, I follow you.

Can you do that?

He goes, oh, you know, he wasn't totally sure.

And there was now another car behind me.

So I said, hey, man, you have a great day.

And I walked by him several times and talked to him after that.

But the bottom line is that I want to walk in the spirit.

I want to believe that God actually was involved with me going into that parking lot at that particular moment.

And that guy is not there by accident.

In fact, he is there and I'm connecting with him possibly for one time in my life.

And I'm going to plant the seed of Jesus Christ in his life.

So that's it.

When you the testimony of Jesus becomes a spirit of prophecy.

So when I talk to people, I am confident that God is with me.

I am confident.

I have no doubts at all.

And I know that he is going to flood me with knowledge that is not my knowledge.

And he will flood me with wisdom that is not my.

Trust me, I am not a very knowledgeable or wise guy.

But in the spirit, I am awesome.

In the Spirit, I am awesome.

And everybody in the spirit is awesome.

So we are raising up a church of people that I want to call awesome.

And I want God to see awesome spirit led people that are out there destroying and kicking in the gates of hell.

What I like to say is I've heard many times from other people, I want to plunder hell and populate heaven.

That's how my life goes.

So whatever means the church can use to do that, I'm all in on it.

Yeah.

You know, as you're talking there about the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

I'm just thinking sort of a new angle I've never thought of related to that.

And that is that this is really about Jesus story.

It's about his narrative.

And he's moving history in a certain direction.

And of course that trickles down to individual lives.

He wants to bring intelligence and wisdom into lives and move them along, invite them into that story and move them along in that narrative.

Yeah.

You know, Brian, it is so simple that the name of Jesus has power to it.

I mean, if you're there like, well, I don't know what to say to people.

Just say Jesus.

Wow.

So when you say, are you a Jesus follower?

You are already, you are already crowbarring a, a bronze gate open by the grace of God when you use the power in the name of Jesus.

I've seen him do it now over the past year and a half, probably 300 times I've seen him do this with people that I've encountered on the street or talked to in a restaurant or whatever.

And within minutes their soul is being challenged by the name of Jesus.

You know, when Jesus came, the thing that was so outstanding about Jesus and The reason why religious people have a hard time with Jesus, even though they believe in him, they kind of don't, you know.

But the religious carry all these rules.

By the time Jesus showed up, they believed, which eventually became the Talmud in Jewish understanding, there was 613 laws that they must follow if they were going to be righteous.

613 Laws hanging around your neck.

And so they tried to trick Jesus, said, what's the most important commandment?

And Jesus says there are two.

So Jesus reduces 613 laws in the two commandments.

Simple.

Love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, body, soul and strength.

And love your neighbor as yourself.

It's kind of two and a half to three commandments.

You've got to love yourself so that you can love your neighbor, love God.

And if you do that, that's all that God really cares about.

And Jesus is the only one that's going to help you be able to do that.

He empowers through his spirit.

You are empowered to do things that otherwise you could not do.

Yes.

So he reduced from 6:13.

So that's why they're impressed with him and that's why children could understand him, is because he was not complex.

He took a complex religion and he simplified.

That's why he was hated by the religious, the Pharisees, because he's cutting out the legs that support their job, the legs that support their ideology.

Keeping people, women, people of color, keeping children, keep them all oppressed.

Only wise, smart men felt righteous.

And the funny thing is they had righteousness, but it was self righteousness.

And the Bible says it's like filthy rags.

The only righteousness that counts, that comes through the gift, the righteous gift of Jesus Christ.

The Bible says through the gift of righteousness, through the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, you will reign in life through Jesus Christ.

That's so liberating and simple.

I know, it's so powerful.

I'm getting liberated talking about it.

Yeah, it helps just to talk about it now.

It does.

Well, you know why, Brian?

It helps because we're talking about Jesus right now.

That's right.

That's right.

There's a spirit just mentioning his name, just talking about the kingdom, freedom starts showing up.

I see something on you, Brian.

I can't see you right now because we're doing this by audio, but there is.

I get this combination thing a lot lately and I've seen it in your life that you're two turns into a combination, like a high school locker.

One more turn and you're Going to hit the right number, and the number is 31 for some reason.

But you're going to turn left 31 when you go left to 31.

And left means you're leaving something, you're separating from something to 31, whatever that's going to mean.

But you're left 31.

And when you do that, there's an outpouring of joy, what I like to call flow.

Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water.

Out of flow, you are going to experience something that's going to launch you into the rest of your life.

I mean, the rest of your life is going to be governed by this moment that takes place in your life.

And I didn't think anything about that when we started this recording.

But in the presence, shoot, you just talk about Jesus.

See what happens.

I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine at Starbucks one day.

We're talking about Jesus.

The other side, we get up, we finish our coffee.

We get up, we leave.

And this Hispanic guy ran after us.

Out he goes, wait a minute, wait a minute.

He said, were you guys talking about Jesus in your conversation?

I said, yes, we were.

He says, oh, I'm a new Jesus follower.

He said, I'm so excited.

And as soon as we started talking about it, boom.

I got revelation over his life.

Interesting.

I prophesied over him, and it shaped.

Within 30 days, his life shaped into a totally different direction.

And he went in the direction that God had for him.

All because two guys had a coffee and a Starbucks and talked about Jesus.

Wow.

I'm hearing you say, we need to talk about Jesus more all the time.

You know, my first book, I minimized the use of the name Jesus because I was trying to reach an audience that in order to pull people in closer to God.

And I mean, the book was good.

It did okay and everything, but after that, I just felt grieved in the Holy Spirit.

I said, you know what, if I write another book?

This is like 10 years ago.

I said, if I write another book, I'm going to put Jesus on every page.

Your prophetic life map is all about Jesus.

He is our map.

He's our map.

He's our guide.

He's our destination.

He's everything.

The Bible says, set your eyes upon Jesus or look unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of your faith.

The author and the finisher of your faith.

And so I've devoted the rest of my life to do nothing but talk about Jesus publicly and let him show me.

I go into it in total faith because I don't have anything about anybody, really.

Honestly, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

But I know that when I show up with me and Jesus, it's a majority.

I just talk about Jesus.

And when I talk about Jesus, I get emotional, I get wisdom from God, I get understanding from God.

That's way above my pay grade.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, I love the glove that he's putting on.

That's it.

It's like God tell shows up, right?

You start God tell starts coming down.

Well, listen, I appreciate you sharing that personal word about me, and I will be serious about taking that into prayer and reflection and talking with my wife about that.

And, you know, there's always things.

While there are things stirring, you know, I've been asking, I'm sorry, do you have a son?

I don't have a son.

We have four daughters.

Daughter.

How old's your oldest?

26.

She works at the Family Research Council in Washington.

She works with international religious freedom issues there.

Yeah.

I don't want to say too much about this, but I think that because I got a child and I assume for some reason I assumed a son, but I'll take a daughter there at.

I think it has something to do with her age.

That may be the left 31 that there's.

When she turns 31, there's going to be a shift and a change that you feel in your life, and she's going to be part of the inspiration of that.

She's going to.

She's giving revert what you've sewn into her has been coming back strong into your life and will come in all.

I think it was Peter in the Bible that had four daughters who prophesied.

And so we just speak into this right now, into your.

You said four daughters, right?

Yeah, that's right.

We speak into those four daughters, Lord.

They will be like Peter's daughters that are powerful in the prophetic and understand the things of God and see things, Lord, that's going to help shift society in this nation.

Thank you, Lord, for giving them sharp minds and clarity of thought that's going to bring about great fruit in Brian's life.

In Jesus name.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

Wait till I share this with my wife later.

Wow.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate that.

And you're so gifted in this and you.

And you help equip others in this.

And it's such a.

The one thing I do just so appreciate about your prophetic ministry, Pastor Steve, and the way that you train in it.

The word integrity comes to mind, you know, because prophecy, the spiritual gifts can become sloppy, they can become immature or, you know, kind of crazy.

Integrity is an important element in the way that you equip.

I appreciate that.

Now, Cleveland, let's talk about Cleveland for a minute if we can.

You were saying you were downtown Cleveland, right, talking with this Romanian about Jesus.

All right, that's right.

Remain.

Romania means a lot to me.

I'm half Romanian.

I've been to Bucharest once.

Yeah, I've been to Bucharest once on a, on a, on a missions, short term missions trip.

You know, I, I understand a little bit about Romania.

It's a pretty, pretty raw country.

Yes.

Cleveland.

Now you have.

I've recently heard you say that you felt years ago the Lord told you that this uplifting word that Cleveland is a prison.

Okay.

Yeah.

And like in Acts 16, when Paul and I think was it Silas were worshiping in the prison and there was an earthquake and you felt the Lord tell you, find others to worship with you.

You have to break this heaviness.

You have to unlock this prison.

And then you held an event called Quake on the Lake.

Can you just give us sort of a recall of what happened during that year?

I was pastoring a church here in Cleveland and I had gone into my office and checked my voicemail.

Back then we had, I don't know what they call them now, message machine.

They had the machine push the button.

On the message machine and one was an obscene call and the other one was a life threatening call.

So I got off and I felt like, jeez, man, I just felt slimed by it.

So I started praying and as soon as I did, the Lord gave me revelation that that the city of Cleveland was like a prison, just like in Acts 16.

And then if Paul and Silas, if you got a few people together, two or three together in my name, he'd be there in the midst of them.

And so this whole thing began to open up in my mind and the Lord said, I will like Acts 16, I'll send an earthquake.

And so I considered Quake on the Lake.

Prayer to shake a city.

That's what we called it.

I recruited 120 churches.

I was only 20, I think I was 27 years old at the time.

I recruited 120 churches to be involved in Cleveland and Lorain.

We had two separate sites.

One was at the top of what was then a Holiday Inn on Lakeside.

I think it was 11th and Lakeside or 9th or somewhere around there.

Anyway, they gave us the 18th floor, which overlooked the county building and the city Hall.

And we did.

This is before.

So this or 84.

This is before.

This was before 24.

Seven prayer.

I mean, people done that or was kind of a popular concept.

Yeah.

For seven days during Halloween week, we had 120 churches.

Hundreds and hundreds of people went through their praying.

I gave them a title every day of something to pray for.

We were praying specifically against pornography.

At that time, Cleveland was one of the top spots in the nation for pornography distribution.

It's not anymore, by the way, but we prayed for that.

We prayed about abortion, we prayed for our government, all these things.

Every day was a different thing for seven days.

And I was on Christian radio during that week.

They were interviewing me.

Wzle.

I actually got it on tape.

And they asked me, they said, so, quake on the lake.

Tell us about that.

Blah, blah.

I started telling them about it like I am now.

And I got a little carried away.

And I went and said that I believed a physical earthquake would mark this time.

And they said, really?

You mean there's going to be an earthquake?

And I said, yes.

And I'm thinking, shoot, Steve, there's no way to manipulate earthquakes.

You got, this either happens or it doesn't.

You know, should you have prophesied that?

But I. I was in turmoil for about 24 hours thinking, oh, shoot, why did I say that?

I get in front of a microphone sometimes.

I get talking and I maybe.

Maybe I went too far or something.

But anyway, the seven days ended.

Great time.

Everybody loved it.

We had a great time.

The city did a resolution called the October 31, the quake on the Lake Day.

Really, prayer for the city governor or Mayor Voinovich signed it, all that stuff, you know.

86.

Right, 86.

I may have this.

It may have been 84, 85.

Now I'm thinking about.

But it was either 84, 85 or 85, 86.

But in January, probably 85, January of 85, we experienced the strongest earthquake in our history.

We did Cleveland's history, 5.0 on the scale, and it was just outside of Mentor.

And I collected all the newspapers clippings from that day.

It said, what's shaking Cleveland is.

You know, and then my phone started ringing off the hook because a lot of Christians had heard that Christian radio thing, and they said, oh, revival's here.

But that was the thing, is that when the earthquake came, it'd be a sign that God would visit this city.

That's what I said.

And so, you know, I'm 27.

I think, shoot, this is amazing.

God's coming.

It's going to be powerful.

Well, here we are.

That was, you know, 35 years ago, or whatever it was.

Hasn't happened the way it's going to happen, but a lot of amazing things have happened in this city.

So here's the deal.

I believe we have an unfulfilled prophetic promise hanging over this city.

And when Heidi Baker, the famed missionary from Mozambique, when she came in, she prophesied and said hundreds of thousands are about to be swept into the kingdom of God.

I stopped her.

I have the video online.

It's gone viral since then, but I stopped her and I said, are you talking about here, Cleveland?

She said, here in Cleveland.

She wasn't talking about nationally.

She said in the city of Cleveland, hundreds of thousands would be swept into the kingdom.

So that's what I'm leaning on right now.

I'm believing that hundreds of thousands are going to come to the kingdom in a short period of time and we're going to be a part of it.

And there's this quake on the lake, did something in the Spirit 30 some years ago that I don't understand.

It was necessary during Halloween week, and I believe it broke something over the city.

And since then, the city is steadily turning.

And I believe that actually now we're in one of the best positions we've been in a long time in many ways.

But touch of the Spirit of God is coming to the city, and I believe it's soon.

That is awesome.

What do you think are maybe several key things that the Northeast Ohio Church should be focusing on to facilitate that?

I value Steve Witt and his work.

He is avant garde in the Lord.

I would say he's a person of presence.

He's a person of the voice of God, a high value, and he moves in integrity.

And I just value it and appreciate it.

Now, next week is part two of our conversation.

We are going to hear more about Cleveland and Ohio, looking at it through a prophetic lens, looking back, looking forward, if you are not from Ohio, no worries.

You are going to pull out principles and I think maybe a prophetic template for your own application.

The Lord can speak to you uniquely, even in other nations.

And he is seeing deeper difficulties.

That's that Pandora box part.

Okay.

Deeper difficulties between now and the end.

Of the some relief and clearing beginning in January.

But he does feel that things come in couplets.

When a difficulty or a challenge comes, it's like a plow that goes into the ground and turns over the fallow ground, the hard soil, and opens up hearts so that seeds of destiny can be planted.

And we just may be in a fourth crucible in American history.

The Revolutionary War era, Civil War, the Depression, and World War II, and now this era that we're in now.

I hope to bring you more about that in the future.

A crucible experience brings a refining and a new future, and that's what we're looking for.

We'll talk about that.

And Steve talks about the value of an abiding presence that breaks the yoke.

Psalms 91 Jesus talked about the secret prayer closet.

Shut your door.

Your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

Well, I appreciate you connecting with us today.

Go to the show notes [email protected] Steve and you can stream again this episode there.

There's other listening options.

There's some notes, some links, some resources.

Bethelcleveland.com is the church site and SteveWitt.com is the site he's developed to equip individuals in their identity, destiny and their legacy.

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Share it with them somehow.

Get it before them.

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You can check that [email protected] well, as we always say, Jesus is brilliant and if you stay with him he will make you you brilliant too.

He knows how this life works best.

We'll see you next time.