This was told me in June of 1995.  The story Bob is telling is from his own experience with a root of bitterness.

Bob: In ’82 I was in a place (he is speaking of a certain church with which he had a connection. This is not Mike Bickle’s church.  This experience came before he even knew Mike.) and He told me to go resign being a prophet and to put my mantle on another young man and go home and sit.  A man in his obedience removes the mantle.  It is not of his doing.  It’s the Spirit.  So I did that and Viola (his first wife who died) and I thought we could go back to that same church and we’d sit on the back and maybe get away with it.  So I walked into the church the next Sunday after doing that and saw a woman I’d prayed for who was having a miscarriage—and she stopped and the baby was born healthy. She always came and laid that baby in my hands.  But that Sunday she said: ’’Will you get out of the way?  You’re always in my way. You’re always standing here.”  Then the pastor came and said: “Bob you sure are distracting things.  Would you mind going and sitting down?”

So we sat down in back and there were two or three “words” coming in prophecy at us that were critical.  And I said: “God what’s happening?” And He said: “I’m helping you leave, Bob. I told you to and you came back.  Now I am helping you.” I said: “I heard you, Lord, don’t help me anymore.”

So—I went home in August.  I was praying sitting out on the back porch—praying. And I said: “I am sick here at my stomach.  I am sick here from this abortion stuff.  This is really bothering me  and I’m really hurting all over and I’m hurting inside like I’ve never hurt before….and from my own sins I’m hurting, Lord.”

And I saw like two fingers coming out of the West and they came and hit me right in the eyes and I fell back on the divan.  When I opened my eyes I was blind.  I have no idea how long I was blind, but I was blind quite a while.  I was wondering if this was a stroke or something.  So I just sat there. I waited and just sat there and wept.

After a while, my sight returned to me…and He began to speak to me about a new group of people He was going to bring…and He began to speak to me of a root I had in my heart and He said: “Pull it out.”  So I got a hold of it like a root that had suckers on it and I tried to pull it out.  When I did I’d almost faint.  He kept saying: “Pull it out, Bob.” And I’d say, “God, I can’t.”

I know now it was on the Day of Atonement when He came.  He said: “Can’t get it out, huh?”

I said: “Oh, Lord, I need help.  That thing hurts so bad and I’m rooted into the earth—the worldly things.  It hurts so badly.”

He said: “Dear friend, I’ve come to help you.  He reached down and ‘took–a-hold-of’ the root in my heart with both of His hands and He just began to pull it out. I was in the spirit but I fainted in the spirit.  And He began to pull the thing out…and it had root systems. It was all over my body like a ROOT OF BITTERNESS. It was a bitter thing.  I’d grown up in bitterness (it was usual for those that came from his part of the country to hold grudges and seek vengeance–). On the ends of the roots were knots…and they were so hard to pull out without the help of God.  And what He pulled out of my heart was a ROOT OF BITTERNESS.

So what I’d done until that time, I’d kept all that bitterness cut down like a sprout.  But I couldn’t get the root out.  And when He pulled the stump out, He pulled my memory out with it.  I couldn’t remember a week past.  People would come and say: ’Do you remember this or that?’ Before, they were talking about un-forgiveness and hurt and pain.  Now there wasn’t any memory of it.

So He pulled out the whole root system. Then He started speaking to me about young people coming—and what they were and everything. So I filled it in with that. (Instead of seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, he filled his thoughts with the coming young people with whom he would work.) I kept filling it in that God was bringing a group of young people…He’s told me that since 1975….and I filled it in with that.

God said: ’You must watch that because that is fertile ground for another root to grow.  But it won’t be of the past…it will be the present. With the persecutions and everything that’s going to happen, you must watch the root system and keep it daily pulled out.  Keep the weeds pulled out of your heart daily.’

You see, anger over a length of time gets more anger in it—then your imagination adds to it. It becomes bitterness.  When bitterness comes into you, you start looking for anything that will keep you alive until the next day….anything that will stimulate the soul to try to live.  It was sin—and that sin was anger and bitterness.”

Anna:  “But Bob you understand.”

Bob:  “I think that understanding came because I had no man to understand and I had such a hunger for it. I just kept seeking Him and at different times He’d give me an understanding on a different level. In all the persecution that I went through, He’d excite me because the things I’d been asking Him for years—what it really meant–, He’d give me the meaning of it.  I’d get so excited in the time of persecution I wouldn’t have time for the persecution….because of what He was saying.  I’m still having it now.

But those fingers (he held up his index and second finger toward me in illustration of these two fingers going into both his eyes) hit my eyes and they began a new thing in my life.  These fingers are used to plant seeds in the growing cups. Life.”