Evangelist Steve Hill was at heaven’s doorstep after years of fighting incurable melanoma. Those closest to him were making funeral arrangements and securing a burial plot after doctors told them he had three days to live. Yet as Hill faced eternity, the man known worldwide for his fiery preaching at the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola, Fla., made a deathbed deal with God.
“Jesus,” he prayed, “they just told me that I’m going to die, and to die is gain. You and I are madly in love with each other, Jesus. You’ve been my best friend for decades. Now they say it’s over. If it’s over, that’s fine … but You’re hard-pressed for evangelists, Jesus. There are very few evangelists out there that do what I do, and You know that. If You’ll let me live, I will win another million people to You, Lord.”
True to his radical spirit, Hill wasn’t referring to just anyone, but “hardcore people,” as he describes them. And today, after miraculously coming off many of the medications he was on, Hill is seeing “the unsavable getting saved,” he says.
Hill cautions those who follow his ministry not to mimic his method of coming off prescribed medications, but he says “the Lord really spoke to us, and it was also a conscientious decision to start coming off some of this stuff so I wasn’t in such a zombie state. But it took months and months and months.”
Indeed, Hill’s journey includes an entire year in which he was unable to communicate. Jeri, his wife of 33 years, continued to care for him throughout the painful process as his health declined from ongoing chemotherapy treatments, believing that God had instructed her to “take care of the man of God.”
Hill continues to live with pain and is undergoing cancer treatment while employing more holistic means. But he also feels more driven than ever to win the lost.
“Right now I am so sane and so on fire,” he says. “I’m back holding massive crusades, praying for thousands of people. I’m still on fire. I’m like a soldier. A soldier often fights in pain.”
The message now burning hottest in Hill came from a vision he received while in a similar season of pain—when he was unable to walk and feeling useless. Though Hill says he doesn’t often receive visions, he believes God gave him this one as a warning for the body of Christ.
In what he describes as a “full-color, open vision,” Hill saw a ski resort, which represents the church, where everyone was having fun yet few heeded the ski patrol’s warning to avoid areas where snow had become unstable and death lurked. The church has been snowed under by false teachings, Hill asserts, and is paying the price for believers’ deception. (See “The Seven Great Lies in the Church Today” for more on this.)
After Charisma published an abbreviated version of the vision online in mid-December, responses began to pour in, and that article—“The Spiritual Avalanche That Could Kill Millions”—went viral on social media. Now, with the full message published in a Charisma House book released in March, Spiritual Avalanche: The Threat of False Teachings That Could Destroy Millions has been endorsed by church leaders from Jack Hayford to Mike Bickle to Sid Roth to Perry Stone.
While the timely book cautions readers against deceptive teachings in the church, such as cheap grace and universal salvation, it also calls believers to holiness and purity—a message that has driven Hill’s ministry through the years.
His health improved, Hill now preaches around the globe and has launched a website and TV program, From the Frontlines with Steve Hill. The show has been translated into other languages, including Arabic, and Hill says he has received reports of it even reaching members of the militant organization al-Qaida.
To read the complete vision and its multifaceted meaning, get a copy of Spiritual Avalanche online or in bookstores across the nation.
