"Is there a supernatural dimension? A life beyond the one we know? Is there life after death? Do angels exist? Can our dreams contain messages from Heaven? Can we tap into ancient secrets of the supernatural? Are healing miracles real?" Sid Roth has been looking into these matters for more than 30 years, and he's the host of a television show with an intro that asks those probing questions.
He's also the reason for a plague of flyers that descended upon Miami Beach's car windshield population Monday. Peeling Roth's card-stock overture off your vehicle yesterday morning, you might have wondered what the ads meant by a "lecture on the supernatural." You might also want to know what's up with Sid's promise that "many are PHYSICALLY HEALED."
Sid Roth would not be sympathetic to your confusion. The answers are quite obvious, really, the 74-year-old says.
"It's pretty clear on the flyer as far as I'm concerned," he says. "I'm giving a lecture on the supernatural. People will be healed."
Roth was born to Jewish parents in Washington, D.C. His mom was a bookie, his dad an electrician. As a kid, he would check out books on hypnosis from the local library, and by the time he matriculated to American University to study public relations, he was visiting fortunetellers and reading up on astral projection.
For his first job after college, Roth moved to Miami Beach, where he worked as a venereal disease inspector for the Department of Health, he says. He would seek out the sexual partners of people with STDs to inform them they needed to get tested. Roth lasted a year at the gig and summarily moved out of Florida.
His next stop was Merrill Lynch, where he worked as a stockbroker, he says. It was a dark time for Roth. The job was soul-crushing, and he was studying supernatural topics on the side that terrified him. He read that the soul could leave the body during sleep and never return.
"I was afraid to go to sleep. I was afraid of everything," he says. "When I was 30, a presence came into my room -- liquid love. I've been moving in the supernatural ever since."
It was an event that changed his life. Today, he describes the visiting presence as Jesus, and he spends his time lecturing to Jews about the Messiah and his healing powers.
The miracle man's investigative talk show, Sid Roth's It's Supernatural, airs on Trinity Broadcasting Network. At 8:30 a.m. Wednesdays, the 18-year-old program can be caught on the Discovery Channel as well. (Discovery's official programming schedule begins at 9 a.m.)
Roth also makes stops -- like the one at Miami Beach's Deauville Beach Resort this Friday -- to serve as a conduit for God's healing powers.
Besides complimentary hors d'oeuvres, this is what people who attend the free event can expect:
"The minute I get the microphone -- before I've even spoken -- I hear physical conditions, and i speak them out loud. Those who feel healed stand up and state it," he says. "Quite often, 25 or 30 people will be instantly healed before I even start my lecture. And then during the lecture, more people are healed."
Roth has taken his lecture all over the world and has seen it work to varying degrees of success. His proudest accomplishment took place in Brooklyn (where a woman in a wheelchair stood and walked), but he apparently bombed in Braunau am Inn, the Austrian town where Adolf Hitler was born (too much evil presence.)
In the latter case, he was able to heal only a handful of people. He has higher hopes regarding Miami Beach's aura. Still, regardless of whether Roth believes he's healed one or 20 people, the idea that he can channel God fascinates and delights him.
"I like to see miracles, and I've been seeing them now for all these years," he says. "I would never get bored of it."
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