Sid: My guest by way of telephone is George Otis, Jr. the leader of an organization called “Centennial Group” that does investigative reporting of transformations of cities or states or countries. They’re located in Lynwood, Washington. And many of you perhaps have seen his city of transformations; if you have not he has 4 cities that people have prayed for and literally the entire cities have changed. I’ll tell you George it can’t get much worse than the city we were talking about yesterday. Cali, Columbia the drug capitol of the world, it was loaded with New Age occult, and there was one weekend when 25,000 Christians gathered to pray. I don’t think any of us can comprehend… just as we’re talking about a city being transformed with the power of God this city had been transformed to be under the thumb, if you will, of demonic powers. I mean they were having like 15 murders a day so these 25,000 Christians show up and they pray and what happened?
George: Well the marvelous thing was that within literally a matter of hours the headlines of the city newspaper blazoned “No Homicides.” Now think about that this is the city newspaper that’s how rare the event was that it would become the city newspapers headlines.
Sid: Hm.
George: Nobody was murdered over a weekend this was huge news in the city of Cali one of the most violent places on the face of the earth. Those 25,000 people that saw that headline in the newspaper began to reflect back on what they had just been talking to God about a few hours earlier. They made a connection somebody was listening to us somebody had inclined their ear unto our desperate petition and answered our prayers. And so they said “Well, let’s do this again.” And 90 days later they met again in the municipal auditorium about 25,000 people, and this time they began to talk to God about corruption, political corruption which had become an acid a corrosive with in this society and in their lives and in their emotions. Within a matter of days 900 police officers were fired on corruption charges along with multiple other civil servants.
Sid: But wait a second with the control that the organized crime had in that city, as you pointed out yesterday, how in the world could they do that?
George: There was tremendous pressure brought by federal authorities that were now beginning to intrude upon the city and this had never happened before…
Sid: They probably wouldn’t have been able to do it if it wasn’t for the prayer.
George: And once again, no I’m convinced that’s true. And the people made a connection and they said “My goodness somebody is listening to us.” So they stuck their necks out and decided to lease the largest public venue in the city which is the Pasqual Guiro Soccer Stadium seats about 60,000 people. Ninety days later they filled it to capacity and now this time they began very boldly to call out upon the Name of the Lord and ask Him to release them from the icy death grip of the drug lords. And again within a very short span of time the entire city was closed off by federal authorities, all the roads were barricaded, the airport was closed. The air space over the city began to buzz with helicopters. The doors slid open on the sides of the helicopters ropes dangled down and 1000’s of Special Forces troops landed on the streets of the city under orders from the federal government to find and arrest the drug lords. And over the coming weeks all of those drug lords were either arrested or were killed. And I have actually walked through the compounds of these drug lords and I can tell you they’re ghost towns. They’re completely empty now…
Sid: For those that were not listening yesterday would you describe what they looked like at their height.
George: Their cities, their small cities behind huge 15 to 25 foot concrete walls with the most sophisticated surveillance you can image. Fleets of black Mercedes cars, helipads, airstrips literal shopping malls not stores but malls inside these compounds, restaurants, they have sports teams that they owned that will come in and play. They’ve got their own militias. It is absolutely beyond comprehension and many of these compounds these assets have been turned over now to the churches. There’s one tall building in the city of Cali where this garish penthouse is not the headquarters of Christians television city. (Laughing) Because the guy who owned it got saved while he was in prison and turned over the assets to the church. Increasingly the body of Christ has begun to become a force to be reckoned with replacing the power of the drug cartels to the extent that today as you and I speak the body of Christ in the city of Cali, Columbia is doing more in the public health sector and the public education than the municipal government is doing.
Sid: My goodness the democrats and republicans ought to go to Cali rather than what they’re doing and find out how to change a city, let’s change a country.
George: Yeah.
Sid: Can you imagine if we had all of our senate and have all of our congress go out there and get hit with the power of God what would happen in America?
George: Well one of the exciting things Sid is that’s happening now is the increasingly around the world we’re getting phone calls and emails of heads of state, from governors, from police chiefs, from all kinds of top business leaders who have seen the transformations videos and have called us to travel to their nations to meet with political and business leaders saying “Tell us how can this happen?” This last year I’ve been in a number of countries around the world meeting with presidents and with prime ministers talking to them about how God intends that the church and the state come together under His name and under His banner to solve the problems that vex all of our cities and nations today. And we’re now beginning to see the firstfruits of people obeying God in the nation of Uganda and more recently in the nation of Fiji, and also in the Canadian Arctic. We’re seeing civil governments working hand in hand with men and women of God to see their societies absolutely turned around and transformed.
Sid: Now when I think of Uganda I think of Idi Amin, and I think of just a tremendous murderer and the last thing that I would think of is that being a godly nation. Tell me what happened there.
George: Well you know once again you had a disruption to their society that brought the church out of it funk and out of its disunity and out of its game playing into really serious petitioning of the Lord of Hosts. Many of the church people were chased out of their churches into the jungles and into the swamps where they learned how to really pray; how to really call upon God there. There was no television, there was no bowling, there was no football going on, there weren’t even fun church meetings, there weren’t home cell groups there was nothing. It was where faith… the rubber meets the road. During those years they learned how to pray and how to call upon the name of the Lord. And the Lord came down in a mighty way and removed not only Idi Amin, but his successor who was just as bloody a man by the name of Milton Obote. And they were chased out by the current president a man by the name of Yoweri Museveni whose wife is as fervent and as passionate a Christian as you’ll find anywhere walking this earth. And that government is now stocked with one fervent man and woman of God after another. They even formed a new department, a cabinet level post in Uganda called The Ministry of Ethics and Integrity.
Sid: Hm.
George: And the woman who heads up that ministry is featured on our 2nd transformations video. And she stood up in front of all of the nations she said “Here I am. I am the Moses of Uganda appointed by His hand to lead the nation away from immoral and unethical conduct into the right direction.” And she showed me this road map this manifesto that they developed to see the nation led away from corruption. And they have appointed judges who’ve begun to do their work to bring down corruption to a manageable level. And the Ugandan economy is now the third fastest growing economy of all of Africa. They have lifted the AIDS and HIV epidemic; the only nation in Sub-Saharan in Africa today where the rate of HIV has plummeted. The church has taken it upon themselves to adopt all of the orphan children of parents who have died from AIDS. And now abstinence and faithfulness in marriage has played a huge role in overcoming the spread of AIDS in this country. And also, many people who had contracted full blown AIDS and had a death sentence on their lives God graciously has come and healed these people. We interviewed scores of these people Sid and literally 1000’s of people dying of AIDS have been healed by the gracious hand of God in the nation of Uganda. It is a marvelous thing of what God is doing in this country today. And this is one example…
Sid: I’m wondering why the world doesn’t know about it. Well one reason is that that they haven’t gotten a hold of your videos. We have the first video called “Transformations” which has 4 Communities and this is a reward winning documentary and it shows exactly what George is talking about.
