It's Supernatural

Sid: My guest, and I’m so excited to have caught up with them are Heidi and Rolland Baker from Mozambique. I caught up with them here in the United States. But Rolland is… I interviewed you previously as I mentioned to you I read a book a number of years ago and the title of the book was “Visions Beyond the Veil.” It was about a missionary that went to China and he worked with the street kids, and these street kids had more things going on from the Kingdom of God than any people I’d ever heard of. They were having visions, they were going to heaven, they were knowing things about the scriptures even before they’d even read the Bible. I remember before I put the book down I said “Boy, I’ve got to interview this man.” And I go so upset when I found out that he had already been promoted to heaven. But then I found out that his grandson is around and that’s who I have on the telephone right now, Rolland Baker. And I understand that more people have become missionaries from reading that book “Visions Beyond the Veil.” And I have a picture in your new book of a city in China where your grandfather was. So obviously you went there and did some investigation, is that right?

Rolland: Well actually I was born in Kunming.

Sid: Ho.

Rolland: Where “Behind the Veil” took place. And that picture in the book is of the very court yard and chapel in the old Chinese building where those visions took place.

Sid: My goodness, did you spend many hours in there praying?

Rolland: Well it means a lot to me because the book affected me as much as anybody else. And so yes, it was very very meaningful to find that old building. I came back many, many years later and my father helped me find it. I was standing in the courtyard and in that chapel and it was just a beautiful amazing overwhelming time for me.

Sid: Now did you as a young person did you, did you have the desire to do the same thing your grandfather did? And that is work among the needy people in China and see these young kids become powerhouses for the Lord?

Rolland: Well I was overwhelmed by my grandfather’s testimonies and as I grew up I would visit him often and sit on his lap and he would tell me stories upon stories of supernatural encounters and demons and angels and visions. But I myself just simply as a young boy and man never thought I would be a saint like that, never thought that I could ever attain to experiences like that. So at first I settled for another life, a life of science and study and career back in the states. But it took a while for me to realize that God was calling me to a similar missionary life.

Sid: And now looking backwards, for those that aren’t familiar with the Baker Ministry they’re in Africa. They have started upwards of 5000 churches, they support 2000 orphans where they feed them daily and take care of them under their ministry; some 17 people have been raised from the dead. And I have to tell with all of those things the thing that tickles me the most, that excites me the most is you now and your wife are reaching orphans that are having the same experiences that the orphans your grandfather reached.

Rolland: That’s true, one of our main motivations to coming to Africa was to try to find the poorest people that we could find and the most helpless which would mean street children. And see a continuation of visions beyond the veil.    

Sid: Now how did you happen to come to Africa because I mean, I know your history, I know you were in Hong Kong and in England. And you know you did a lot but how did you happen to come to Mozambique?

Rolland: Well God dealt with us in several different streams and several different ways. Heidi herself long before she met me was filled with the Spirit and caught up in a vision in which Jesus audibly appeared to her and spoke to her and told her to be a missionary to Asia, England and Africa. I eventually also realized that God was calling me and that there was actually a possibility (chuckling) of my experiencing a life of missions in faith like my grandfather. And so while we were both in Hong Cong at the start of our missionary life in the ’80s I was reading a Time Magazine article and it was talking about the revolution and the persecution of Christians and the atrocities in Mozambique. They were having a terrible protracted civil war and I saw… I read to Heidi that the Red Cross trucks were being blown up by rebels and so many people were being killed by land mines and it just was one of the most horrible places on earth to be at the time. And even though we were ministering to so many poor street people in Hong Kong we had this restlessness. We knew that Hong Kong was not the poorest most remote and neglected place on earth. So we were looking for a more drastic place to prove the gospel like my grandfather did. He tried to get as far away from the nearest white man as possible and he ended up 10,000 ft. in the mountains of China to find the most needy place that he could find. But I read about Mozambique, Heidi’s immediate reaction was “We need to go there” (chuckling). And then over the next few years while we were studying in England and working with a street ministry there that we started as well the Lord began to supernaturally encourage us and point us and facilitate our interest in Africa. We did a lot of research in various countries of Africa and we kept zeroing in on Mozambique as the most poorest and the most needy.

Sid: You know as I have looked over your life story I can see the hand of God on your life starting with your grandfather and maybe it goes back even before that. Was your great-great-grandfather in ministry?

Rolland: No, I think it started with my father, I didn’t know my great-great-grandfather very well. He was in Ohio, it began with my grandfather actually. He left as a traditional evangelical missionary in the early 1900’s and then in his earliest times in China he encountered the Pentecostal Movement and was…that was a life changing thing for him. When the Holy Spirit filled him in that way and just kept pouring into him he was radically transformed and the Holy Spirit began to speak to him. And he was moved to go to the city of Kunming in far west China without support. And when he got there he and my grandmother just began to take in poor orphans he basically did everything upside down. Instead of beginning with big conferences, and conventions, and speaking with leaders, and government officials, and so forth he began with the least of these. Just the kids that he could find in the gutters, many of them were so sick that they would die in a few days but my grandmother would keep bringing in and washing them off. And he just started at the bottom and other missionaries thought that he was wasting his time you know he wasn’t dealing with potentially influential people. But he just kept doing it he just kept taking the low road and the result was one day the Holy Spirit just fell on these children and poured out more revelation on them than I’ve ever heard of in church history.

Sid: Now I’ll tell you I just couldn’t get over that book; somehow it came into my hands and experience it. But I have your book now and guess what? This could have been part of your grandfathers book.

Rolland: That’s true we came to Mozambique and we picked up and we volunteered to take over and we picked up, the volunteered to take over and take care of this old dilapidated government orphanage the government and other missions didn’t have any money to help with. And within a few months the children were saved and filled with the Holy Spirit and began to receive visions just like my grandfather’s children did. And almost every day children were coming to us with visions. Jesus appearing to them, as some of our rascally kids you know they were causing trouble and stealing and fighting. Jesus would come and in one night just tell them just to stop that, stop your stealing, stop your fighting and start serving Me and start preaching for Me and tell the people that “I’m coming soon and they’re not ready.” And the next morning they’re out preaching to our whole group.

Sid: I have to tell you after knowing your story and your wife’s story and how God has used you. What we call Christianity in the west, what we call religion in the west I don’t think that we can even call it that compared to what you’re doing. How would you like to be in a nice beautiful church as the pastor say in a beautiful city in the United States, have 1000 plus people and an IRA your retirement, everything compared to what you’re doing.

Rolland: Oh, we wouldn’t trade it for anything. (Laughing) The most valuable thing that we can ever have is faith, faith in our God, faith in our Savior and have our minds up there where He is instead of bog down here. And what the American Church needs is faith.

Sid: Now why don’t we have it here?

Rolland: (Laughing) Well Jesus has competition.    

Sid: Who’s His competition?

Rolland: Competition is the cares of this world, it’s exactly what Jesus said, it’s not a new concept He talks about the seed. Some seed falls on rocky ground and some seeds falls in the weeds and it’s the cares of this world and the attraction of the things of this world that distract us. So it’s the love affair with Jesus that we’re really after and the problem is if people don’t have enough faith in Him to be attracted to Him and so they’re diverted by other things.

Sid: Our talk is right but we don’t get the experiences your kids get, we don’t get the miracles your kids get. You think that’s it?

Rolland: Yeah, it’s an issue of word and Spirit. We need the word to understand the truth but it takes the Holy Spirit to take those words and use it like a sword to convict us and change us and to fill us with a fiery real love for God and for each other.

Sid: Well you know Rolland I heard your wife Heidi speaking about the sermon on the Mount I have never heard someone teach on the sermon like that because she taught by this is how it plays out in life as opposed to theory. And I’m going to ask her on tomorrow’s broadcast to do some teaching on that. And also it’s all supernatural the way the two of you got together, I see how God put the two of you together. I mean it’s perfect for the ministry that God’s called you to. But we’re out of time today….