>> My name is Isaiah Saldivar, and 10 years ago
I was an atheist and had a radical encounter with God
that changed me forever.
Growing up, I had constant times in my life
where the enemy tried to take me out.
I had even family members saying, man,
Isaiah must have a strong call in his life.
Because I had so many near-death experiences as a kid,
I fell out of a car.
I almost drowned as a child, at 12 years old
I actually accidentally hung myself.
I was 12 years old.
I was with a friend in a big, large metal barn.
And that was that was a large metal chain.
They used to pull out engines and transmissions.
And I just got done watching American Outlaws
where they were hanging the outlaws.
And so as a joke, I put that chain around my neck
and I started swinging on the chain telling my friend,
look, I'm Jesse James. Well my friend at the time,
rode out of the barn
and I was just swinging in the barn all by myself.
Well, the next thing I remember
is I'm hanging probably like four
to six feet off the ground looking at my feet.
My hands are to my side and I'm just up in the air
having this really weird out of body experience,
watching myself hang on this rope
and I'll never forget this.
At 12 years old, the softest hands I could say
I've ever felt was the only way I could describe it.
Put their hands in that rope,
pulled that chain link rope open,
and I fell to the ground.
I crawled to the corner of the barn.
And at 12 years old, I turn back.
I'm bleeding from my neck with chain marks.
And I looked at that chain that was twisted
so tight up in the air,
still with a hole about that big,
still tightened up on the chain. And I had this one thought,
something's fighting for my life.
There's one side,
something's trying to kill me, another side, something saved me.
Not really fully realizing that day
that God pulled me off that rope. Went into another time
where I overdosed as a teenager, should have been dead.
The doctors I was in the hospital,
the doctor said you were three times
over the legal limit of drinking,
adding severe alcohol poisoning, up
until actually a month before I got saved.
I had my encounter with God in January 2011.
This was in around November, December.
I was at a party hotel party and I was at the 13th floor
and I'll never forget it was about two o'clock in the morning
and I had this voice. Now, I was never suicidal.
I never wanted to take my life.
I was never at a point where I wanted to.
But there was a strong voice at about two o'clock in the morning
telling me to jump off this balcony to the point
of where I was standing over the balcony.
And this overwhelming force,
this overwhelming voice was saying,
just jump, just jump, just jump.
But then there was this other voice that was saying,
go lay down and go to sleep, go lay down and go to sleep.
Now, I didn't know I was going to get saved a month later,
but there was just this constant battle
my entire life for my life.
I can name these four or five times
where I should have been dead.
Another time I got drug under a trailer
that was broken on a tractor forty five miles
an hour a mile down the road.
I got drug under a broken trailer.
Should have been dead. Angel saved me.
So I just time after time,
the enemy was fighting to take my life out.
In January 2011, I was a self-proclaimed atheist.
I was raised in church. Sixteen years old.
I decided I was going to be an atheist.
I was no longer going to believe in God
after a whole life of going to church.
And at nineteen I'd graduated high school at sixteen.
I was about to graduate.
Nineteen years old, a month away from graduation.
My sister was begging me, just go to church
one time Isaiah, just go to church and I would tell her
I don't believe in God, I don't want to go.
And so after months of her begging me,
I told my girlfriend,
I said, let's just get her off our back and just go one time
and I'll never forget stepping foot through that church door.
In my mind, I said to myself, this will be the last time
I ever step foot in church again.
And I sat in the very back
where you're not supposed to sit of a large church.
I heard the preacher preach and during the altar he said,
If you want God, if you want to encounter God, come forward.
I felt something pulling on my shirt. Now,
at the time I didn't know
"no one comes to the father, unless the spirit draws them."
I just knew something was drawing me to the altar
and I went to that altar.
Didn't really know why, honestly. I went and I said,
Now if you're religious, you're going to cringe here.
I said, God, I don't eff'n believe in you.
I didn't know what else to say, how else to say it.
I didn't believe in God. So I thought, well,
it doesn't really matter if I say n' cuss n' say whatever.
So I said, I don't believe in you.
I said, but if you're real, I'll give you everything.
I'll move out of state,
I'll break up with my girlfriend.
I'll leave the job that I had set up in law enforcement.
I was getting hired turning twenty years old
to go to the academy to be a police officer.
I had everything planned out.
I said, God, I'll give everything
because I just didn't believe God was real.
So I said, I'm just going to make all these bold statements.
And in that moment, after making all these statements
and in the very inward core of me saying, if you're real,
and I so badly wanted God to be real,
although I was an atheist,
I so badly wanted something to believe in, in that moment
an audible voice. we're not talking about a whisper
or a still small voice
or, I'm talking about the audible voice of God, said Isaiah.
Now, when God said my name, out of seven million people
that already shook everything in me,
he said, I don't want ninety nine point nine percent of you.
I want everything. I want all of you.
And I went into like an out of body experience.
I call it a trance.
What the Bible would say is a trance.
And I don't know, you could say vision, you can say trance.
I just know I was seeing bright lights.
I was in another world, another dimension.
I wasn't at the altar any longer.
And God begin to speak to me.
God begin to tell me you're going to preach to all nations
and you're going to travel and you're going to see revival.
And what I'm doing ten years later,
I saw myself doing at that altar.
God radically changed me.
And so I come back, I guess, into my body.
And at this time now I'm speaking in tongues,
which I'd only heard
tongues one time in my life, it was as a kid,
I heard my parents praying in tongues.
I'm now speaking in tongues just in a crazy way,
not like just small.
I mean, I'm just shouting in tongues.
So I'm trying to cover my mouth because,
one, I don't know what in the world I'm saying.
I don't know what I'm doing.
I just know another language is coming out of me
two, my girlfriend of four years is next to me and I'm,
I don't want her to think I'm crazy.
And so I'm trying to cover my mouth, couldn't. I'm crying.
Now, what you need to know is I had not cried in up to ten years.
I had friends that had taken their life, that had overdosed.
Family members die.
I was so hard hearted, I just couldn't cry.
Now I'm crying. I'm speaking in tongues.
And here's something crazy that started happening
at that altar, literal dirt. Now,
this is going to strike unbelief in some people listening, right?
Dirt started coming out of my eyes.
I'm talking literal dirt.
I'm not talking about spiritually. Now,
I didn't know the Bible talked about dirty scales coming off.
I didn't know this happened to Saul
before he came became Paul.
I just knew that there was something coming out of my eyes.
And so I'm rubbing I'm seeing, like, literal dirt
and I'm wiping it on my shirt and I'm trying to get it off.
And I didn't realize. Now, about five minutes later,
the pastor's on stage going right now,
God is moving the dirty scales off of your eyes.
And I'm like, and so God is just I'm in this radical encounter.
Service gets over. I don't know what's going on, guys.
I didn't recognize anything. I didn't recognize the color.
I didn't recognize people. I just said I got to get home.
I had a born again experience. I'm talking about death to life.
I was born again that night, so I stayed up,
actually ended up staying up for three days.
The next day I stayed up all night,
ended up at my college campus.
I'm crying in my car on the side of the road.
I'm like, I'm seeing the sun for the first time.
I'm seeing demons and angels at my college campus.
I'm hearing people's thoughts, words of knowledge,
words of prophecy.
I didn't know because I grew up in more of a religious church.
I didn't know about the gifts of the spirit
that First Corinthians Twelve talks about.
I just knew I was an atheist a second ago.
Now I believe in God and God has a plan for me.
So I ended up breaking up with my girlfriend.
I ended up telling my lieutenant at the time,
I'm not going to pursue a career in law enforcement.
I'm going into Kingdom enforcement,
which I didn't know what that meant.
He didn't know what that meant.
And God radically transformed my life.
We ended up starting a prayer meeting at my house
where hundreds of people began to come.
I had family members get saved.
My brother was a big time drug dealer.
He got radically saved.
My sister was like, I don't know what, scientist, atheist
or whatever you want to call it,
into science and Indo-philosophy.
She came home from college.
She got radically saved my little sister.
It was like everybody started getting saved around me and
the power of God started moving.
And it was just an organic revival broke out in my life.
And I realized and I look back on my life
and I realize the time I overdosed,
the time I accidentally hung myself,
the time I got drug under that tractor,
the time that I drown, almost drowned as a kid.
The time I fell out of a car, over and over, a month
before I got saved where, wanting to jump off
the balcony when I wasn't suicidal.
I realize that all those times God began to show me
Isaiah, that was my hand saving you.
That was my hand sparing you for such a time as this.
I didn't just pull you off the rope.
I pulled all the people
you were going to preach to off the rope.
I was pulling America all the impact you're going to have.
I was sparing you for such a time as this.
And so we saw this amazing revival for a year in my home.
Hundreds came within about three months.
We had 400 to 500 people coming to my living room.
I moved out all the furniture again.
My whole family got saved. My cousins got saved.
My aunts and uncles were getting saved
we moved out all the furniture,
all the TVs and all the people I was partying with,
and at the time I was throwing these big parties,
I was in a metal band. We are going on tour.
All these people that I was partying with
are now coming to my house
thinking it's a party because there's all these people
and they're getting delivered of demons.
People are getting, demons are getting cast out.
People are getting out of wheelchairs.
I always like to say December 31st, New Year's,
I was at a beer pong tournament and January 15th of 2011,
I was casting out demons in my living room.
So it was a very radical death to life experience.
God really did radically open up my eyes,
took the dirty scales off, changed my life.
And you might say, well, that's all good.
You know, you were radical. But ten years later,
I am more on fire right now than I've ever been.
I'm telling you, I'm more in love with Christ.
I'm more in love with God.
I have a better relationship with the Holy Spirit
than I've ever had, I'm more excited about
God than I've ever been.
We're still, ten years later, in revival,
live streaming, preaching, traveling, seeing a move of God.
And I know this, to every person that's going to watch this
and listen to this. If God can do it to an atheist,
God can turn an atheist into revivalists.
Just think what God can do in your life right now.
Like God can touch you.
God can change you, God can deliver you,
and God can use you and do great things with you.
And so I want to I want to say a quick prayer over you.
If you're listening, you say, Isaiah, man,
I'm hearing your story and I just feel stirred.
I want to get closer to God. I want to know God.
I want that encounter. I want to lay everything
now, I'm not talking about just leading you in a prayer.
I'm talking about you saying, God,
I want to lay down everything. So right now, Father,
I just ask you over every person listening,
they might be at the end of their rope.
Well, the end of their rope is the beginning of God's cross.
And so you might be listening.
And I just pray over you, a divine encounter.
I just pray an encounter right now with the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit wants to touch you.
Jesus wants a relationship with you.
And we just pray, Holy Spirit,
that you would touch every person listening.
You might be at the end of your rope.
You might be watching this and you're suicidal.
And God wants to right now deliver you,
God wants to save you,
God wants to break in and touch your life.
And so, Holy Spirit, we just pray,
do what only you can do.
We just pray that you would go right now
over every person listening,
that you would bring deliverance,
that you would bring healing,
that your fire would rest upon them
and those that might be atheists watching,
I pray that you would save them by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We just pray the fire of God and the anointing of God
in the mighty name of Jesus. God bless.