“Unfortunately, you won’t survive to see Christmas of 2009”

These past few days, healing and miracles have been discussed intensely. The testimonies that you can find on our homepage, with photos and videos where people describe how they have been miraculously healed, are those things really true?

The truth is that when Jesus did miracles, there were many people who had a hard time believing that it had really happened. It is for that reason that I want to tell you about a miracle that happened in Sweden. I know this person and the people close to her; in fact the pastor who baptized both her and many others close to her is one of my close friends. But I don’t want to mention her name here since she has only recently been saved. We agreed to wait a year or two until everything settles down for her, but listen to my story.

This woman was the kind of Swede who knows nothing about God, and even less about the church; a total non-believer. In 2005 she got cancer. She had an operation and got a bit better, but in the spring of 2008 the cancer came back and had now spread to several organs in her body. The doctors could do nothing and in the summer of 2009 they told her that she didn’t have much time left. She might make it through autumn, but:

“Unfortunately,” they said, “you won’t survive to see Christmas of 2009.”

When she came home she called a woman she had met at the cancer clinic, a friend of Carina’s and mine, who is an everyday evangelist.

“You have to come with me tonight,” the everyday evangelist said, and brought her to a tent meeting where the woman received Jesus as her savior.

That fall I had an evening Bible school in a large city in Sweden, where I was teaching on how we should do what Jesus did. It was a practical Bible school for mature Christians. That is why I was surprised when this newly-saved woman showed up. She was very sick, her whole body was shaking and she had to go out to smoke constantly. But she listened. I taught on how to lead people to baptism in the Holy Spirit. I also led a prayer for baptism in the Spirit and she came forward and was baptized!

The following week she called the everyday evangelist and said:

“Now I’ve gone crazy too, I started speaking a language that sounded very strange and I couldn’t stop.”

The following month I taught on how to get set free from darkness. After the meeting she came forward and I remember that something manifested even though it wasn’t major.

What was strange, however, was that she had started to feel better, her cheeks were rosier and she looked healthier in general. When she went to the hospital for tests in December they (the doctors!) were in for a shock: the cancer was gone. In February of 2010 she went to the hospital again, and there were no symptoms of cancer left. This woman, who was supposed to have died by Christmas 2009, is alive!

Today she and both her sons have been baptized in my close friend’s church. She goes to the dance club every weekend and tells people about Jesus, prays for her unsaved sick friends to get healed and is a living miracle!

When did this healing happen? She doesn’t know! One thing she remembers is that when she was fishing with some of her friends, she went off by herself for awhile a few meters away, although she could still see what the others were doing. Then a man came along, she doesn’t know where he came from, and placed his hand on her back. She was surprised because it was so warm, and he didn’t say anything, and then he left. But the warmth on her back remained so she went back to her friends and asked if they had seen the man she had seen. But no one had seen this man!

“But look at my back. It still feels warm.”

When her friends looked at her back, there was a reddish mark in the shape of a hand in the same place where the man had placed his hand.

What had happened? I don’t know. Who was that man? No one knows. The important thing is that she is saved, healthy, and tells others about Jesus.

There are some people who ask me about our crusades. How do we double check to make sure that the people who get healed really have been healed? We don’t. We believe that they are telling the truth! Why would anyone lie about that? Why would the parents of a child who has been healed lie to us, with tears of joy in their eyes?

Healing and miracles are a natural part of the gospel. It is wonderful for the person who is healed, but the healing has a higher purpose. It points to something that is bigger than the healing: salvation in Jesus Christ. The greatest miracle of all is a born-again soul, saved for eternity.

P.S. Check out our homepage, where you can watch short videos.

An extra 100,000 SEK to Israel, the baptism party continues, and how can we know what’s right?

Dear Readers,

Above you can see two photos from Nepal. We have 8 staff members on PTL’s Nepalese team. They lead their own small churches, work with my large crusades and hold their own smaller revival crusades. The latest one they held was in the first week of July, during which seven people were baptized.

Right now preparations are in high gear for our big crusade in Lusaka, Zambia, in the first week of September. Hundreds of volunteers are involved and next week our coordinator is going to appear on several different TV shows, and trailers from some of our previous crusades will also be shown.

In July we are giving an extra gift of 100,000 SEK to the survivors of the Holocaust. You already know that our focus is on helping Jews home to Israel. But not everyone knows that the elderly who have returned, most of whom have no relatives since they were all exterminated in the concentration camps, often have a very difficult time. When Carina and I were in Israel in May we met many of these survivors, who are very old today. But they are still plagued by nightmares from the concentration camps. It would be great if you would like to help us with this extra gift. We walk by faith and are convinced that the Lord is going to encourage our brothers and sisters to stand with us in this. One way you can help us with this gift is to use the “Donator” button on the right and give online. Your entire donation will go to Israel.

There is so much happening on the Christian scene today, and if you’ve followed my blog you know that I am writing about the Bible code. I am going to provide a few answers on how we should read the Scripture and how we can know what’s right. The first answer is good to keep in mind when you are evaluating something that you have read or heard: is there fruit coming from this, or is it merely empty words?

ANSWER NR 1: You will know the tree by its fruit.

It’s good to be full of God’s word and to continually meditate on it. But if the code is wrong, then the answers you get can be wrong. The Pharisees and the rabbis in Jesus’ day really did know the Bible. They knew everything about God, but when God walked among them, they didn’t recognize Him. That is why Jesus said that, “you will know a tree by its fruit.” In other words, that 2 + 2 = 4!

If you put the Word into practice with the right code, then the Word will produce a pre-determined result!

But if you plant an apple tree and get thorns instead of apples, then something is wrong. If a can of mineral water comes out of a Coke machine, then it isn’t a Coke machine – even if there is a Coke sign on the front!

So when we assess believers in general, as well as leaders and churches, it is the fruit we must look at carefully. “But what kind of fruit should we look for?” you may wonder. My answer: “The only fruit that is impossible for Satan to produce: born-again Christians.”

This is the test I use on myself, the churches and PTL Ministries. We always have many balls in the air, with different cultures and a broad spectrum of people. But the question I always ask is: “Is what we do resulting in people getting born again?” If I it is, then I know we are heading in the right direction. The reason: you will know the tree by its fruit.

Now you might say, “Tommy, if I’m not winning anyone for God, does that mean I’m a failure?” Well, not necessarily, if you are active, praying, supporting work that is winning people for God, and doing what you can. Remember that God’s kingdom is work that we all do together. One good example is my wife Carina: she works hard for the gospel, but likes to do so in the background. The reason that she puts up with having me travel so much all over the world is that she longs for people’s salvation! In her case it is about the fear of God for the great commission. Of course she wants to personally see people close to her get saved and she does what she can to see that happen. But she is not a super-verbal evangelist; it is not her calling or gift. Her name is Carina, which means keel, the part of the boat under the water. She is still there, just not up front; what she does is to make sure that the rest of the boat stays balanced. Without Carina, Tommy Lilja would capsize! The work that she does out of the limelight releases results that can be seen by everyone. Do you understand what I’m getting at? You might not be the one who helped someone take that final step to get saved, but you have definitely been a part of the process, I am sure of it. The great commission is something we all cooperate together on: one for all, all for one. Carina and I, along with you and many others, are a team, and the fruit is (thank goodness!) people who have been born again.

P.S. Be my friend on Facebook!

The Bible Code: How to count correctly! Why entire denominations are getting it wrong.

Dear blog readers,

As I have been considering the Bible code, the Holy Spirit spoke to me on our final morning in Italy. So, instead of part 3, here's an introduction! Some of you have asked what I mean by code, so I hope that this introduction will help you understand what I mean.

Introduction to the Bible code

You were created by God, in God’s image. He is the only one who knows more about you than you know about yourself. He knows what is going to happen, no matter what you think, speak or do – before you do it! That is why he has given us the Handbook of Life, the Bible. That is where God describes cause and effect based on a big picture perspective. It is based on the spiritual perspective, the sphere of faith, which means that we can’t always explain the outcome of a certain action. One example is the feeding of the five thousand. The thing is, if you believe and act based on what the Bible teaches, the outcome will manifest itself in the physical world sooner or later. That is the law within the Word of God – it governs cause and effect, it is an absolute.

It is like learning to count. If you follow the rules of counting, the outcome will be correct. If you change the rules or do something wrong, the outcome will also be wrong. That is what Jesus means when he teaches about the man who built his house on the rock. This man correctly followed the rules for how to count.

When Jesus came into the world, he gave us the code, the solution to the equation, so that we could learn to “count” and thus put the Handbook of Life into practice. “Do this,” Jesus said, “and this is the outcome you will get, it has already been calculated for you.”

But, the enemy has planted weeds and has cunningly snuck in the wrong code. Which means that when many Christians count, 2+2 = 5! Yes, even entire denominations have counted incorrectly in a major way. This is because over the years they have developed a certain way to “count”, meaning a certain way to read the Bible and put it into practice, that has given them an entirely incorrect outcome.

That is why I want to, in all humility, summarize for you how you can count in such a way as to get an outcome where 2+2 = 4. I want to describe for you how to read the Handbook of Life and put it into practice in such a way that you arrive at the outcome that is waiting for you.

The Bible Code. Part 2: Mineral water in a Coke machine

One early morning as I was in prayer on a hotel balcony in Rome, I was thinking about how the Catholic church could have been ended up as it is today, and I realized that everything depends on which Bible code you use. One of Satan’s most effective weapons is to change the code. It is a brilliant move that is hard to protect oneself against, and one that mainly deceives the group of Christians who are the biggest threat to his kingdom – the Bible believers. He knows that it doesn’t matter how much you believe in the Bible, if you have the wrong code!

The Bible believers, people like you and I, believe that we are protected just because we have realized that God’s Word is God’s Word. But what the enemy has done and continues to do is to preach from the gospel, but he mixes up the Bible verses, yanks them out of context and thus creates a gospel that is deceivingly similar to the original.

Satan is good at using the Word incorrectly. When he tempted Jesus he quoted from the Scripture, but the code was wrong! He used Bible verses pulled out of context. In our world, there are many sermons and doctrines that are built upon Bible verses, but the code is wrong. The consequence is dire because if the starting numbers are wrong, then the final outcome will also be wrong.

It’s like putting a coin into a Coke machine, only to have a mineral water pop out.
Or working hard to produce a growing church, only to get the opposite: a shrinking church.

When:

• The evangelist is sitting on the sidelines
• The healthy get sick
• The generous get stingy
• The free become tied up
• The happy become depressed
• The believer becomes a doubter
• The condemned become even more condemned
• Sin becomes something natural
• The manifestations of the Holy Spirit are forbidden
• Those who want something disappear and those who don’t remain

…then something is wrong!

This is why we have places where energetic, happy seekers come to meet Jesus, but once they get saved they are remodeled into lukewarm churchgoers stuck in their seats. People come to the church fully healthy and leave it sick! Others come filled with love and hope, but after a few years in church they’ve been transformed into manipulative “besserwissers” who know what everyone else should do but who never accomplish anything themselves. Certain preachers’ holiness sermons are so heavy that if you come in crawling, you’ll be carried out. Or at the other extreme, the message is so thin, pointless and liberal that everyone loses hope. Even though we have a message of hope it is forbidden to laugh.

From the fire of revival to systematic theology
We see this most clearly in our international ministry, in newly-evangelized regions. There is great joy at having found Jesus. Everyone wants to evangelize, give, help out and live for Jesus. They don’t have any Bible schools, no systematic theology, no Bibles, they just have Jesus and the Holy Spirit and they are brimming with life!
Then something happens. We Westerners come to help them out, since “they have to study theology!” We are both well-meaning and arrogant. Arrogant because in many cases we want to teach something we don’t have ourselves: church growth. In too many cases a transformation occurs. Why? Because the code has been changed. Instead of a wild, dynamic revival movement, we get a prim and proper, well-organized and theological church unit. With one big difference: the uncontrolled revival has died out. The code has been changed, the fire has been tamed, and Satan has succeeded again! “But,” someone might protest, “they are teaching from the Bible.” Yes, but what good does that do if the code is wrong?

Can you see the brilliance of Satan’s plan? The more they know about the Bible, the less revival they have. So is it the Bible that is wrong? Absolutely not, the Bible is the Word of God. What’s wrong is the code.

This happened back in Paul’s day among the Galatian churches. Judaizing teachers came and visited the churches, and they believed in Jesus, but…they had the wrong code. They used the teachings of Jesus but added another teaching from the Old Testament. Paul was devastated because even though these “false” Bible teachers only taught from the Bible, it had a dire outcome because “it was not a gospel.” Even though it was the Word of God, the code was wrong. “Who has bewitched you?” Paul asked. “Christ was portrayed as crucified.

So how can you know what is right? The answer is rather long, but very important.

I hope to give it to you by Tuesday!

The Bible Code. Part 1: The Catholic Church

Several years ago some researchers claimed that they had found a code in the Old Testament that revealed details about world events. A few years later “The Da Vinci Code” came along, a fiction novel that claimed that Jesus had children with Mary Magdelene.

A few weeks ago I held a weekend crusade in Rome and met several leaders of the revival churches there. Many of them were of the opinion that Rome had replaced Jerusalem and that every time we see the word Israel in the Old Testament, we should read the word church! “We are very strong on these issues,” they said.

A few days later I visited the Vatican, a museum of the Catholic Church. The Vatican contains one of the world’s largest collections of ancient idols! In the Sistine Chapel, Luther is portrayed in hell, while outside former popes who have become saints now have their own icons. Jesus is there somewhere, but he is overshadowed by Mary and the holy child, etc.

It was after these events that I, during my morning prayer time, realized that there isn’t just one Bible Code but many! The Bible is such an extensive book that you can combine many statements, depending on which code you use. If you use replacement theology and read Rome where it says Jerusalem and church where it says Israel, then of course the consequence will be that your theology changes according to the code! That is why doctrines of purgatory, transubstantiation, papal succession and the worship of Mary have been able to emerge.

One major example of this is the Catholic requirement of celibacy among their leaders. The foundational command from God is for us to “fill the earth.” Peter, who is considered by Catholics to be the first pope, did not live in celibacy, because Jesus healed his mother-in-law. But the Catholic Church has changed the code, with dire results: Instead of happy families they now have pedophiles and victims. The latest scandal erupted in Belgium, where not only did a bishop assault his nephew, but his crime was kept secret by the cardinal. This is just the tip of the iceberg and indicates the severe consequences of changing the original code.

The problem with replacement theology is that it falsely interprets the Old Testament, leading to a change in how we read the New Testament. When we change the code, another gospel emerges, and it is one that has affected and continues to affect the worldwide church.

Is there a code? Yes, absolutely. Jesus has “encoded” the Old Testament for us. That is what happened with the men who were walking along the road to Emmaus. They couldn’t understand anything that had happened in Jerusalem, but their eyes were finally opened when Jesus revealed the code to them. The Gospel of Matthew and the Letter to the Hebrews, etc, are a compilation and encoding of the building blocks from the Old Testament and through the Holy Spirit they are connected to form the New Testament, the foundation for our faith.

The Catholic Church does not accept the sovereign authority of the New Testament. Instead, the pope and tradition (what previous popes have canonized) are weaved together to form the Catholic doctrine about the Bible. This allows for changes and additions to what has been written, for example the Cult of Mary, who has been canonized.

This is where the problems begin, when we go beyond what was written, or when we change the contents of what is written. That is when we change the code, and instead of Jesus’ church we end up with something entirely different.

Wanted: 1000 evangelists for Rome!

Dear blog readers,

I am writing from Rome. It’s just past 9 o’clock in the evening and today we have had two intense meetings. This morning I taught on “Who you are in Christ”, and the Holy Spirit didn’t want it to stop, and the same thing happened this evening as well. I didn’t have any notes with me; instead the Holy Spirit wanted me to preach what he had given me – and when that happens, BIG things usually happen! The sermon this evening surged this way and that for nearly two hours, not even including prayer time. People were healed during the sermon, two demons manifested and in the 45 degree heat we were covered in both sweat and the anointing!

We started in Acts, when Peter healed the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, continued to the name of Jesus and ended up in a teaching that I didn’t even know I had in me: that “one shot is enough”!!! What I mean by that – well, there isn’t enough time here – is that you have to stock up on the right ammunition, and then aim and shoot. It isn’t about the number of bullets but the power in the bullet. I continued on how to avoid getting hit yourself and then continued into the morning prayer time. So, as you can tell, things went really well. People went crazy in the Holy Spirit. What is amazing is that everything that happened was all connected.

Did we shake Rome? No, a city of 5 million people and one of the strongest religious centers in the world isn’t easily shaken. But…we have an open door and this morning when I spoke with my friend Johannes, he wanted us to flood Rome with 1000 wild street evangelists from Sweden. That would stir things up, at least! So what do you say? Will you join us? Healing in the streets, Street Church, all you wild evangelists in Sweden…will you accept the challenge?

Rome is the center of the Gentile church. This is where Peter founded his apostle movement, and it was to this church that Paul wrote the letter of Romans and from this city Christians were sent out to evangelize Europe, all before the queen of heaven seduced and corrupted the church of Rome and its leadership.

But we can take back the initiative, not through crusades, or 1000 wild Scandinavians, but by being channels for an initial offensive!

Look! This woman was healed from paralysis!

Dear friends,

I am sitting here waiting for dinner. It is 9 o’clock in the evening and night is beginning to fall over Rome. I am staying on the outskirts of Rome, where the hotels are cheaper. Rome was built on hills, and so in the photo above you can see the view from my hotel, where I can look directly into the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica. There won’t be any time for sightseeing this weekend because of the intense schedule we are keeping.

This morning I had a meeting with the leaders of the largest Charismatic church in Rome and was made aware of the problems they are battling with. It isn’t easy to be a Charismatic church and to preach the full gospel in a country and city where many people worship the Pope. The power of the Catholic Church is substantial; it works powerfully and purposefully against revival Christians.

I’ve just gotten back from a sweaty healing meeting. There was a good crowd, mostly Christians, but prayer time was powerful. The woman in the photo is one of the ones who got healed. Half of her face, her left arm and a part of her leg were paralyzed after a cerebral haemorrhage. When the healing power of Jesus swept across the room, she was healed.

Thank you for standing with us in prayer. Tomorrow we have two meetings and are hoping for a bigger crowd. If we thought it was hot today, it is going to be a sauna tomorrow!

In brotherly love,

Tommy

PS. Don’t forget that you are good, better, best!