Sid: My guest Todd White is red hot for the Messiah, that is normal and it’s so contagious. As matter of fact I was telling Todd just before we got on the air, there is such a presence of God. It’s literally like a river is pouring out of this interview right now. And this river is healing wherever the river goes people are going to get healed. Todd, tell me a bit about your background.
Todd: At twelve years old I started using drugs and at eleven years old I was actually put in a boy’s home after my parents got divorced so I was in there for probably about six months and I started to use drug. I was in there for about five and a half years; it was called the Masonic homes. I was raised by the masons, by the Masonic organization. I came out of there; I got kicked out when I was right before I was a senior in high school.
Sid: What kind of drugs were you using?
Todd: Well, I basically I started smoking marijuana in the beginning and then drinking of course was associated with that. And then I did acid and mushrooms and just…started to use cocaine a little bit but…
Sid: Talk about a sabotage. Here you’re in an orphanage, now you’re into drugs, you didn’t stand a chance.
Todd: Yeah, I didn’t stand a chance by the world’s standards, but Jesus had something else in mind and I just am so thankful for that. I was sixteen and half I got kicked out of there; I came home got kicked out of my house, I was just in a real…I had trouble with authority and rebellion. My stepdad and I didn’t get along very well, and he dared me one day, he said you would never make it in the Marine Corp. He said there is no possible way you would ever make it and I showed him, I joined the Marine Corp. Went through boot camp and did all right and about a year into the fleet I went to go home, they wouldn’t let me go home so I went home anyway. It is not a good idea to join the Marine Corp with an authority complex, with an authority issue. So actually took a bunch of friends and drove them out, stole some money from a home, drove them out to Colorado, went out there and became a ski bum for a little while. God busted by the police one day, came in and arrested me, extradited me back to the Marine Corp. I went back spent a bunch of time in the brig. I was awaiting orders after I got out of the brig and I went AWOL again, I just didn’t want to hang out there so.
Sid: Did anyone up until that point told you about the Lord? Had you gone to Sunday school?
Todd: Oh well sure, people had talked to me about God, but Sid the fact remains that if you can’t see Christ in somebody you don’t want what they have. So I really didn’t see what I, I never really saw something that I really was attracted to in Christians. And the Jesus that I knew about was the one that I was told about in Sunday school when I was really little. And most of the people that talked to me about Christ actually walked out hypocrisy more than a love relationship with God; so I didn’t want what they had. My friends on the street gave me more love than anybody inside of a church did.
Sid: So you’re drifting lower and lower, what happened next?
Todd: Yep, I went and was just extradited back again to the Marine Corp again. I got out of there and then I went and came home and I got arrested because the charges that I’d stolen money had finally caught up to me back home. I went to jail, I was in jail for awhile I have a felony rap sheet and a few years later I met a girl at a blind date at a bar. And actually trick her into having a kid with me. Kind of hid the drug addiction and after we had the baby about a year and half into our life she had found out about the drugs and she just told me she hated me constantly. And I threatened actually to kill myself or to take her out if she ever left me. It was really really really bad. It was actually, I was like the devil’s number one guy. I was destroying lives everywhere I went. I was an open freight train for the kingdom of hell to destroy peoples’ lives including my girl friend, my daughter who only knew her dad as a drug addict for the first seven and half years of her life. And I went to, one night I went out on the street and my girl friend chased me into town with my daughter in the back seat and she actually told me that you’re coming home and it’s 1:30, I didn’t have any money so I went and lost them down a back street and in section in New York City where I’m from. I picked a kid up and when I had him in the car, he’s from New York City, he wasn’t from a small town, he’s from the big city. And when he handed the drugs and I was hooked on crack at that point, it was about four or five years I was really hooked on crack at the end of this addiction. This kid said he knew that I was a cop, I told him I was a cop, I didn’t have any money. He handed me the drugs, I told him to step out of the car and put his hands on the hood and when he did I hit the gas and at that point he opened up a nine millimeter and unloaded it from ten feet away and I could literally see the gun blast from ten feet away. And an audible voice spoke to me and said I took those bullets for you, are you ready to live for me yet? And it was the voice from Heaven and I didn’t understand what it was. I went and did the drugs and I didn’t get high. I came home that night, my girl friend was up.
Sid: Did you realize that you had had a supernatural shield from those bullets?
Todd: Nope, I didn’t understand it, now I do looking back I know, but I didn’t have any idea I was still clueless. But I knew that something needed to change and God had griped my heart in such a way that when I came home I told my girl friend I got to go. She said you do because I hate you. And three days later I went to a program called Teen Challenge, I went to Teen Challenge I was in the program for two months. They told me I couldn’t see my girl friend, because in Teen Challenge you can’t see your mate unless you are married. I could see my kid in four hours once a month. I went into Teen Challenge and when I was up there I had submitted myself to the Word of God and even though I did not understand because I had ADHD so I couldn’t understand any words that I was reading in a regular book, let alone the Bible. But I knew that if I pressed in that someone I knew that I saw Christ in, His name is Dan, he’s a spiritual father of mine. I saw Christ in him and he told me that if you seek Him, you’ll find Him. So every morning I’d wake up early at this place and I’d tuck away for an hour and open up the Bible; I didn’t understand anything I read. I never read a book before in my whole life. I actually went the whole way through school, never really read, I just kind of skimmed to find reports and take notes and different things. But the Bible actually started to open up to me, I read a scripture in James and it says if I lack wisdom ask God and He’ll give it to me. And I said, that’s it God I’m wisdom less. And then all of a sudden little bits and pieces started to unload. And then I had three dreams, because I had nightmares the whole time in there. At the end of a two month period of time, I had met a homeless guy across the street at Teen Challenge and he had told me that I had a demon and I didn’t know him and he didn’t know me, but he shared with me the gospel and I asked him why he wasn’t preaching in a church. And he told me twenty years ago told him to pick up his cross and follow Him. And he’s been pushing a shopping cart full of Bibles going from Mission to Mission across America preaching the gospel to anyone who would listen. He said, I’m going to pray for you and this thing is leaving you and it is never going to touch you again. So he prayed for him and I didn’t feel anything different, but that night when I went to bed instead of nightmares I had an encounter in a valley where the valley shook and I thought these demons were coming after me and I prayed for the first time. God help! And all of a sudden a voice came, it makes me cry because it is so real and He said, “Do not fear, I’ll never leave you or forsake you.” And all of a sudden, I woke up and I went into the prayer room at 5:00 in the morning before the day started and I opened right up to Psalm 23. And I didn’t know what I was opening, I just opened the Bible opened the Bible opened supernaturally and I read “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil,” and I knew that it was God. But I wasn’t going to leave because Teen Challenge is a year program. So the second night I had a same dream, the third night I had the same exact dream; and that third night “He told me go home restore friends and family.” So I packed my stuff up, it’s ten months early, I called my buddy Dan, I told him, I said I’m ready to leave now. He said, “Todd is this God.” I said, “I met Jesus and he said, “I’m on my way.” He came and picked me up and that was four and a half years ago and I’ve only known what I’ve known not because I’ve been taught by the church, not because I was raised in the church, but because I have a personal relationship with Holy Spirit.
Sid: Wait, wait tell me about you girlfriend and daughter, what happened there? I’m getting there.
Todd: I came home and my girl friend had come to Christ when I was in Teen Challenge and four days later in the middle of a church service and I got married. And we have been together for, oh she is so amazing…we’ve been together for thirteen, about thirteen and one half years. I have a twelve year old daughter; I have a three year old daughter.
Sid: Now with your twelve year old being raised with a father that was an atheist drug addict, how she turned out?
Todd: Yeah, she actually, God for my wife and four my twelve year old, God has supernaturally erased our past one hundred percent so that there is not even a memory of drug addiction, or atheism in our lives. He supernaturally has grafted into our DNA and I believe that DNA stands for the divine nature of Abba; grafted into our DNA the fact that we’re brand new creation and all things become new and old has passed away.
Sid: Now you have a view different than most Christians I know, you’re shocked if someone isn’t healed when you pray for them.
Todd: That’s right.
Sid: Most Christians are shocked if someone is healed when they pray for them. Ha-ha how come, you’re normal?
Todd: I don’t have any of the upbringings and honestly when I look at the life of Jesus I don’t ever, because Jesus is perfect theology. Whether its Old Testament of New Testament Jesus is perfect theology. So if you can’t see it in the life of Jesus you have a right to question what you’re believing. He’s perfect theology in every way and I never, ever, ever see Jesus coming up with any reason why they weren’t, He only had the reason why they were and why they were. And every time He touched someone, every time it happened minus none. And He told us to walk, in 1st John it says that if any man, it said abide in Him he also aught walk just as He walked.
Sid: Whoa, our time is slipping away.
