Welcome to The Eric Mataxas Show. Would you consider yourself smart, insightful, precocious, astute, clever, wise, beyond your years, and good at checking a thesaurus for synonyms? Well, then you've come to the right place. Here now is the handsome, attractive, striking, gorgeous, and quite frankly, breathtaking, Eric Mataxas. Continuing my Miracle Monday conversation with Chae Ahn, that's A -H -N. That's a Korean name, isn't it, Chae? Yeah, you're one of the first to really pronounce it correctly, by the way. What do people say? They call me Chae, they call me Ahn. You know, yeah, whatever, yeah, which is fine, whatever. Now, Chae, by the way, doesn't strike me as particularly Korean. Is that Korean? It is Korean, but my whole name is Chae Ho. Aha. But when I came to this country, they thought it was my middle name, and so it was just dropped, and so all my papers, my citizenship is just primarily Chae Ahn, and so. Chae Ho, does anybody call you Chae Ho? My mom did. She did? Yeah, especially when she was mad at me. That's the classic thing, right? All right, so we were talking about this moment in your life that God has supernaturally called you to go all the way across the country with your wife. You have three kids, then you get four kids, and you're telling me that even though you knew God spoke to you to do this miraculously, it was a struggle. So you're saying from 1982 to 1992, you were struggling. Well, we didn't move out until 84 because it just took time to make the transition. And by the way, it wasn't just me. I invited Luengo, his wife, and a few singles and others to come, and so we had around 15, 18 people that were part of the church planting team. And yeah, it was a struggle. 84, I remember after one year not seeing anything happen, I'll be on the floor just prostrated, weeping before God. And I would say, where's the God of revival? You said, come to LA for a great harvest. We're not seeing a harvest. But you see, I believe those 10 years, and I would joke the 80s were from Hades for the 10 worst years, but they were the best years because God was developing character. He was breaking me. You gotta realize I was 28 years old. I was so cocky, and I thought, because everything came easy before, ministry -wise. And just like Joseph, even though he got this incredible vision dream that his family's gonna honor him as a ruler, yet he had to go through the whole Potiphar situation, the prison experience. And so I went through my wilderness experience, but they were great years because I had the privilege to go to Fuller, and because I had nothing else to do. So four years at Fuller, getting my master's and my doctorate, another four years. And I had the privilege to meet Peter Wagner and get mentored by him. And so it was all part of the preparation. So I really believe when it comes to making of a leader, there's that preparation time before you come into convergence. And it's the character development time to be like Jesus. And so that's why Paul says, I exalted my tribulation, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. And hope doesn't disappoint because the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Well, you talk about that. I can relate to that because I had many years of character building and I always joke around, I say, don't you hate that? But it's true. I mean, I don't wanna talk about me right now, but just to say that I know that this happens and it was years of humbling, real humbling, brokenness, difficulty, struggle, never doubted God, but often was thinking, wow, this is not fun. This is not fun. Yeah, and it's just something that I think every believer has to go through. And of course, we never graduate. And so we're being constantly conformed into the image of his own. Hallelujah, that's the name of the game. Okay, so at what point did things begin to turn around for you? Well, really it began in 92 when I quit, I resigned from the church, not because I didn't love the church, but because unfortunately the movement was part of, the church planning movement got caught up in what I would call the discipleship shepherding movement. Oh, I think I know about that. Was that like Derek Prince? Well, I don't wanna mention names, but yeah, there are. Well, let's just give the initials, Derek Prince. Okay. Yes, but they were called the teachers and they were like these amazing teachers. They were great. And by the way, many of them did repent for the wrong teaching because they were talking about authority and we needed spiritual authority because we're all hippies, rebellious and all that. But they took it to an extreme. And so - It became almost cult -like. It almost did. Right. And so, yeah, just controlling. And so here I'm observing this in California as I'm going to Fuller and I'm seeing my whole movement get into this whole other movement. And so I wanted to leave. And so Sue, my wife gets the word, we're to resign and give the church back because they really planted the church. And so we did in 92. I didn't know the backlash I was going to get from our pastors, our leaders. They thought I was betraying them even though I wasn't taking the church. I was not splitting the church. I wasn't trying to, you know, move the church out of the movement. I just basically was going to itinerate as an evangelist. I've never heard that verb. I was going to itinerate. You were going to go out on your own, I think, is what you mean. Yeah, exactly. Do your own thing, man. Do my own thing and not very successfully. And so 93 was the worst year because economically, you know, I have four kids now in Southern California, a mortgage and no salary. And so we had to refinance our house just to survive. But then in 1994, something happened extraordinarily in Toronto. So Toronto outpouring of January 20th, 1994. And at the same time, a lot of people don't know this, but the Holy Spirit fell in Los Angeles with John Wimber. The same spirit of revival that was in Toronto manifested in the Anaheim Vineyard. And we got hit by the power of the Holy Spirit. I felt, Eric, I was born again again. I mean, people, I know there are many people listening. They have no idea what we're talking about. This is hard to explain. I had Randy Clark on this program a few weeks ago. Yeah, I saw it. And he was talking about this. And I didn't even know that he'd been affiliated with the Toronto Blessing as it's called. He was a starter. Why no, I didn't know that. And it's hard. A lot of people get really freaked out by this. They say, this cannot be God. I don't trust it. And a lot of people that I respect a lot, I disagree with them, but they would say that, I just don't believe the Holy Spirit would have people acting out in this way and that way. And they make a lot of sense. I just think ultimately they're missing something. So you, where were you physically? Were you still in the LA area? Sure, yeah, I was in LA and where I got touched was the annual Anaheim Vineyard Healing Conference they have every January. So this is Wimber. John Wimber, he was hosting it. And Francis McNutt was one of the speakers, just great, great speakers. And he begins the conference on a Wednesday night by making the announcement. This is around January 25th. He said, we just got word that one of our churches in Toronto, there's been an unusual visitation of the Holy Spirit. And so he said, the same thing happened to our people this past Sunday. We were sending out all these young people to New Zealand on a short term winter trip. And as we prayed for them, they fell down laughing and they could not stop for over an hour. He said, this is not normal people. This is not normal for our church. So we know something is up. And so what basically what he was saying was fasten your seatbelt because God's on the move. There's another visitation. And of course, John Wimber was the one who brought the third wave that was come Holy Spirit with him and he was one of my professors at Fuller because I took his course, Signs and Wonders in Church Growth. Amazing miracles were being done through the vineyard movement. And of course, Jesus is a healer, but they were being used powerfully in Southern California. And so here I get powerfully touched. I mean, I have never shook, even though I've been born again since 1973, but I got prayed over by Mahesh Shavu who's a dear friend now. And I shook violently for like 20 minutes. You see, this is the kind of thing that I think freaks out some people. And when I was at the Global Awakening here in New York, I saw some people, quote, unquote, manifesting in this way. One thing you can say for sure, it's not the person, it's something going on. So then the question, the logical question becomes, is this demonic or is this God? And that's the only question to try to figure out because anybody who says like, oh, it's made up, whatever, it is not made up, it's something spiritual. Now convinced I'm that it is God. So it could be demonic. But it could be demonic. And this is where you need wisdom. You need people that are really steeped in the scriptures and have walked with God and have discernment. We're gonna go to a break, but I'm just so glad we came to this spot. We're gonna continue the conversation as long as you can hang out. Che Ho An is with us. Che An is with us in the city. I'm so excited. This is a Miracle Monday. I'm just so thrilled to have you. We'll continue the conversation. Folks, you do not wanna go away.