Mark Cowart (00:00):
So I just want to give a little context for the video you're about to see with Howard Pittman. I actually flew out to meet with him in June of 2015. On August 3rd, 1979, he had a physical attack in his body where a major artery erupted, erupted, and they basically judged him to be clinically dead. It was the encounter that he had after that when his spirit left his body, I first saw Howard Pittman on the 700 club in 1980. I actually reached out to CBN to see if they could find that old footage. They were unable to, but it was riveting. There's something about when someone has had a near death experience that's very genuine that grabs you. So this has some intense subject matter. It's very disturbing. There's nothing I've found that Howard Pittman has said that is not biblical, but it certainly flies in the face of religious tradition.
(01:05):
He was a bi-vocational pastor. He was a law enforcement officer. He was a good man and a moral man and has children of his own biologically. He's gone to be with the Lord now in 2019, but they adopted, I believe 32 foster children through their care, good people. And yet when he left his body and the Lord began to encounter him, he said his life was an abomination because he served him in a pharisaical fashion of dead works. So there's so much more that I could say, but I wanted you to understand the context. It is one of the most riveting things I could say a lot more, but I want to have you be able to get right into the video and I trust that it'll be a blessing to you.
Howard Pittman (01:53):
Okay, brother Howard, I thought if we could just start from the beginning and you had an encounter where something physically happened. Could you share that story with us?
Mark Cowart (02:05):
Yeah. This was August. On August 3rd, 1979. I was involved at that time in a political campaign. I was running for sheriff, criminal sheriff, office of Criminal Sheriff, and there was about seven of us in the race. The primary election was going to be held on August 7th, 1979. On the first day of August, we took a little unofficial poll. According to that poll, I was one of the leading candidates that was going to be involved in that, and there was one particular bank in the community that was very important in politics and out of east that worked in that bank, and she made an appointment for me with the president and some of the members of the board of directors trying to solicit their support for my campaign. And I went down that morning, I got up. I wasn't sick, wasn't different from any other morning. I was slightly nauseated because of sinus problems.
(03:09):
I'd had sinus problems for years, and this is sinus country here. It's what they call the pine belt, and the doctor said there's no allergy like pine allergy. So anyway, I skipped breakfast and went to town to keep my appointment and when I arrived at the bank, my niece who worked in the bank looked out through the plate glass window. She saw me coming. I got out of my car and went across the street and she got up from her desk and came to the door to greet me with one hand. She opened the door and others reached out to greet me. As I stepped in the door, I dropped to my knees and she grabbed me, what's the matter? I said, I don't know. All of a sudden I just lost my strength. Something's wrong with me. I cancel my appointment, I'm going back home.
(04:02):
I turned around, went back to my car and sat down. That's when the pain hit me like a music would kicked me in the midsection and consumed my entire body. So all I could think of was go home. Go home. I was within a mile of the hospital, but I didn't go to the hospital. Instead, I started up my car and I started home. About halfway live were 11 miles from the bank. Then about halfway home, I suddenly stopped breathing. I felt as though my clothes were literally smothering me to death. I break my car right in a stop in the middle of a busy highway and I felt that my clothes was smothering me and I started just trying to tear out of them and somehow I don't know how, but somehow realized I had panicked, and when I forcefully calmed myself down, I could breathe with difficulty, but I could breathe and I knew I was growing weaker because I was hemorrhaging massively.
(05:10):
I was able to start my car and I made it rest of the way home. When I got there, no one was home, wife was going somewhere, the kids was all going to school, but I struggled to get out of the car. Everything's kind of hazy about how long it took me to get out of the car. I just can't. But anyhow, I made it in the house and fell on the floor right inside. I hadn't been there very long until she came in. My wife came in one look. She recognized the gravity situation. She got me up back out into the car and rushed me into the town to the very town I just came from right up in the family clinic and just as she parked, one of the doctors pulled in his park right in front of us, but she ran around, opened the door and tried to pull me out of the car.
(06:02):
By that time I was so weak I couldn't even lift my hand. I'd lost so much blood and when she pulled on me, I literally fell out of my car on my face and the doctor stepped out of his car. He saw this. He rushed over to give eight one. Look. He knew I was already in shock. Now, they didn't know what had happened to me because I was in shock, but he knew that I was in shock. Later on, they told me what had happened. There is a main artery that runs across the back of the stomach. An ulcer had formed on that artery. Well, they called it silent because it gave me no symptoms and it had slowly eaten away the wall of that artery until it ballooned out. They called that aneurysm. It just kept on ballooning out until it reached a place that the wall was so thin.
(06:53):
The day I stepped in the hospital, I mean in the bank door, it had reached a place. The wall was so thin it couldn't withstand the brush pressure, the heartbeat, it just popped like you popped a balloon, and that was the massive hemorrhage. Well, they called an ambulance. They rushed me from local clinic, family clinic to the local hospital. They kept me there overnight. The next morning, three times during the night, they brought me out of shock. The next morning my doctor come in and said, we got to move you. We got to have more equipment. We got to have more skilled technician. We've got to have him in a hurry. So we're going to send you to the regional medical center at McComb, Mississippi. They put me in an ambulance, hooked me up to all that machinery assigned, allowed my wife to go with us, assigned a paramedic to attend to me, and we took off post haze 19 miles before we reached that hospital, I lost consciousness.
(08:03):
I passed into a world of darkness. I mean, it was so dark that there's no words in the human language to describe crossing the veil, but I passed out in this darkness. I felt I really felt abandoned all alone. First time I'd ever experienced that kind of darkness. There was no light. And then all of a sudden I saw something that come right out of the top of that darkness, and it was like a tape that was just twirling around like this as it come down. You ever seen those confederate, confederate parades in New York where they throw that confederate out the window and twirls down? That's what the thing looked like, a single one. And I watched it. It came all the way down right in front of me. I can't tell you how I saw it because I saw it with no light, no light at all.
(09:09):
It's total darkness. But I saw this thing just like this tape. It comes right in front of my eyes and turns just like that three times, and every time it turned, I'm reading. It's the verse of scripture, Hebrew chapter nine, verse 27. It is appointed unto all men wants to die after this, the judgment it is appointed unto all men wants to die after judgment three times, that thing turned and three times I read it. When I realized then this was God's way of supernaturally revealing to me that I had met my appointed time to die. We all know we got dime, but being human, we've dealt with that. We dealt with it in our subconscious actually in reality, we look at deaths, physical death at something that happens to others. It don't happen to others. We just put it out of our mind and keep going. Didn't it drive us crazy? We just put it out of our mind and keep going. But when you come to the realization that it's not others, it's you. It takes on whole new perspective. Then I didn't want to die. I left home to win an election, not to die.
(10:27):
To die would be total defeat. So I prayed a very short and pointed prayer. I asked God to extend my life. I was familiar with the fact that he had a precedent in his word for extending life. Of course, he extended his kind's life for 15 years, and I knew that. So I asked him to extend my physical life, and then that's when I had the first ever supernatural encounter. Out of that vast darkness come the most beautiful voice I've ever heard in my life. There's no music created that would any way mimic the beauty of that sounding, of that voice. As the voice spoke to me, the voice said to me, stop. No more pain, peace, rest, security, all that you've ever wanted. Just don't breathe.
(11:37):
I'm breathing by willpower. At that point, every breath took all the strength I could get in, and when I got in the area, it took all the strength I had to get it out. I'm breathing by willpower and he's telling me, stop, don't breathe. And my spirit was saying to me, listen, God's speaking. God's speaking said, don't breathe. And then I got to try to shut it down what I'm doing, and then the realization hit me as though, as I screamed as loud as I could in my spirit, no, what am I doing? I just asked God to extend my life. Don't breathe. I'm going to die. You are not God. With that explanation, Satan fled from me.
Howard Pittman (12:19):
So this voice you had just asked the Lord to spare your life and a beautiful voice said, just let
Mark Cowart (12:26):
Go. Yeah, but look what he said. Listen to you. See 50 just what he said tells what I've been taught on my security. Security. That's what Baptist teach. Once you save, you save forever no matter what. That's what they teach. And he used that on me right away. The first thing you use, security, peace, rest all you've ever wanted, just stop breathing there in the valley of death at the door, he lied to me. He told me he was God. He couldn't kill me. He had to get me to kill myself. You better know the spirit that speaks to you. We're all going to come to that same place. I call it the veil. The veil is not in this world and it's not in the other world. It's the door between the two. We all got to go that way. Christians refer to it as crossing Jordan.
(13:29):
It's when we pass from this life to the life to come. Once you cross that veil, flesh and blood can't cross it, it can't cross it. So that's when the angels took my spirit out of my body and we went from darkness to light just like that. Out of darkness in the light had crossed the veil. I was on the other side. The first thing they brought me to see was a verse of scripture being acted out like a stage play Ephesians chapter six, verse 12, before we wrestle not against flesh and blood against principalities, word, cruel powers, word cruel, rulers of the darkness of the world, the menagerie of our enemy. There was this looked like a long table with all these beings sitting around. The devil himself sets it in and all these spirits are princes that operate the principalities of the dark world.
(14:35):
That's where the warfare plans for spiritual war is actually designed and planned. Satan does nothing without plan. He plans everything. Everything is planned. It's right down to the, let me show you how it works. Every one of those people, not people, spirits sitting at that table, head of principality, he has divided the world into principalities territories. Over these territories. He puts a prince. Each prince is given as many as demon spirits as he needs to carry out his plan for that principality. You take some continents might be one principality because no threat to the kingdom of darkness where there's no threat, no major threat to the kingdom of darkness. One prince could handle old continent necessary, but America is many principalities. There's many threats even down to an individual. Could be a principality depending on what the threat is, but this is how that thing works. As I watched it, they let me see part of a plan that really shook me up because I knew about the plan. I call it a skeleton. It was just an outline and it was the same identical outline that John was able to see and he wrote about it in Revelation
(16:12):
Chapter 13, beginning at verse seven through nine, and this really shook me up. Revelation. Lemme get to it, I won't read that. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints and to overcome them and power was given him over all kindred's tongues and nations and all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him whose names are not written in the book of the life of the lamb, slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an heir, let him hear. Revelation 13, seven through nine, the master plan to capture the world that captures church. That's why we've got cotton, candy, religion today. What is cotton candy? Religion, doctrines of demons. Paul Cole doctrines of demons being expound from the pulpits of so many churches today he's captured the church what he said he was going to do and he's done it. He's already got it. When they brought me first, they let me see this guy. That's the first thing I saw was this out outline, this outline. They let me see that.
(17:42):
So John the Baptist wrote about it because I was very weak on spiritual warfare of Southern Baptist. We didn't have too much teaching in that area then. In fact, I'd never heard but one sermon in my entire life that ever mentioned the devil and that was when I was 12 years old and it scared the devil out of me. That's when I first came to the church. You see, and then no more even in the seminary. He was never mentioned, didn't mention the devil, didn't mention the demons or anything. It was the ministry of the children that first opened my eyes. As we brought these children into our home, most of them had been used, misused, abused. For instance, the last girl, the last child they brought into our home state, rescued her that day. She was locked up in a cage with a cat.
(18:33):
She's only 18 months old. This little girl and the only thing that they said that she'd had to eat for that solid week was a drops of that cat and that demon possessed individual that had that little girl got his jolly offs by putting his lighted cigarettes out on the bottom of her feet, you ought to seen her feet. You see, this is not human. Something beyond humanity had to do that. This is not human. And it was those children, how they had been abused, misused, neglected, and all of 'em was crying for help and they came to my house, expected me to help 'em, and I was the least prepared person in the world. I had no training in the spiritual ward at all. I didn't even know, but as I looked at the, I knew that there was a force out there far greater than I knew about, and that's the first thing God took me to see.
(19:31):
He educated me quickly. He showed me how this is done by design, how spiritual war is done and how they operate on two emotions in that world. Hate and fear. They hate all humans and they fear their balls. There's no love in that all and that's why he has enforcer enforcing the rules of the satanic world. It is a world without love. There's no love at all there. It is operated by fear and hate. They hate all humans and they fear their boss. They fear him. Now people don't pay any attention to this, but Satan show you how devious he is. Took one third of the angels of heaven with him in his rebellion.
(20:29):
What did that tell you when you think about this? There's no dummies in the angel corps and yet he deceived one third of the angels. How did he do it? This tells about his ability. Two Corinthians four verse four says, he's the God of this world. That word God is not a name. It's title. It's translated from the Greek word theo, from which we get our word theology. The definition of English in English is divine ruling. Magistrate high potentate. Think about that. That's his title. Divine means set apart. Put above ruling magistrate who is a ruling magistrate. One that has authority by law to control the conduct of those under his jurisdiction. That's why Satan says two Timothy chapter two, verse 25 verse 26. He can take any lost person at will. He's a divine ruling magistrate. Not long ago I had a lawyer call me from Lou York.
(21:41):
He says, I have a man up here charged with murder. He's got a copy of your book, demons Eyewitness God. It says in there, the devil can make people do what he wants. He wants you to come up here and testify that the devil made him do it. I said, well, if you send me a subpoena, I'll come up here and testify what the Bible says. Just what I wrote is what it says. He says, okay. Two weeks later he called me back. He said, I'll get the subpoena. Two weeks later he called me back and said, the judge, get out of here. Man, I ain't opening that can of worms in this court, but he let me see the God of this world at work and he is a God. All them people out there serving him and don't know it, they don't know it. The strongest one are his princes. They're at the top. They're from the giant warring order of demons. They were actually angels who fell with him and angels. They got some angels that looked like animals, some that looked like birds. They all described in the Bible the difference. And the guardian angel looks just like a human being and this is why Revelations says, I mean Hebrews says, when you deal with strangers, be careful. Many times you deal with angels unaware.
Howard Pittman (23:18):
Now Brother Howard, good works. You took in abused children. You were a police officer. You served, but something happened where he said your works weren't acceptable to him.
Mark Cowart (23:30):
Yes, he says, well, when I stood before him to plead my case, see the angels brought me there to plead my case because all the time I kept asking him, is he going to let me live? I knew that my spirit had crossed the veil flesh and blood can't go there, and I knew the only way I could come back, God would have to permit it at the Grammy. And I kept asking the angel there a time, no matter what I saw, I still was in love with this old piece of clay. And so they brought me there and let me plead, brought me to the gate. They wouldn't let, I didn't go in. I came to the gates of the third heaven and they told me I watched 50 saints being permitted to enter the gates of heaven, but they didn't let me go in.
(24:19):
They said they stopped me. The angels stopped me there and says, when I got to the gate and he says, if you go in, you can't come out. You've got to stay until he brings you back. I said, if I can't come out then that means my physical life is over. And you told me I could ask him. Angel said, you can't ask him, but you stand outside this gate and ask him. And so I did. I came and I was allowed to plead my case and I was pleading to God. I couldn't see, but I knew it was total silence while I pled my case. I was telling him, I reminded him of all my good works. I told him about all the things that I'd done, all the things. That's what I was basing on on my good work. I told him about all of that.
(25:13):
And when he was never said a word until I finished. When I finished, then he answered me and a voice that sounded like thunder wasn't anything like the voice of Satan had used on him. He says he started, I'm going to try to quote verbatim exactly what he says. Your faith is dead. Your works are in vain. The life that you lived and offered to me as a life of Christian service is an abomination that I rejected in the Pharisee. What made you think I would accept it from aian type Christian? In fact, untold millions are living the same, same kind of life that you live and they stand in danger of my everlasting wrath. The living God. I couldn't believe he was talking to me. I'm a preacher, I'm a teacher. I just told him about all my good works, what I've done. And I said, no Lord, don't you wait.
(26:15):
You don't understand. He said, you didn't do those works for me. You did 'em for a false God. I said, Lord, I worked for you. I called you Lord every day. Yes you did, but you never made me. Lord. What a difference to call him. Lord gives him a title to make him Lord promotes him to ruler of life. Who is your Lord? But Lord, I was serving you. No you wasn't. You served a false God. Then he named him Satan's number one, selling false God, SELF. Instantly I knew everything he said was true. Had he reached down and picked me up and dropped me in hell, I would've said amen. But I couldn't move. I'm laying on my face, spirit in the spirit. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. They came and angels came and took me away. They took me out and let me regain my composure and brought me back and let me plead the second time.
(27:17):
The second time I never opened my mouth. Then he began to talk to me in a compassionate tone as he said to me. Suddenly I realized this is my father and I hurt him. He was hurting for me. The God that created all of this was hurting for me. The smallest, insignificant piece of flesh that he had. He was hurting for me. Nothing mattered. Now, I didn't ask him for my life. I didn't ask him for anything else. But when this life meant nothing, he gave it back, sent me back to do what I'd done.
(27:56):
Give me a five point message for the church and placed two restrictions on me restriction. One was that I was not to ask anybody to hear this because he was sending me to his church. I didn't know what was his church, but he knew which one was his church. He was sending me to his church. All I had to do was go wherever a mask. When I get an invitation, put it down, get to it when I can. And if I'm not supposed to go there, he'd close the door. But if he opened the door, no man would close it. And that's the way it's been ever since the five point message he gave me the 0.1. This is number one point. This is the Ian church age in which we live today. This is the Ian Church age where the overwhelming majority of so-called Christians are just that.
(28:49):
So-called their mouth professors and not heart possessors. And unless they wake up, he's going to spew them out of his mouth. He promised to do that, you see? But he gave 'em a chance in his word. He gave a chance if they wake up, if they wake up. Point number two, your adversary is a personal and powerful adversary. Satan, the devil, he is anointed. Point number three, if you ever ever expect to have any of God's power manifest in your life, you're going to have to live the life, not talk it. You got to walk it. And point number four, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of man.
(29:44):
What he's saying there, keep your eye on the eastern sky because redemption draws. Now because we have reached the days of Noah once again and we look in history and in the Bible to see how it was in the days of Noah. And we see that mankind had but two priorities, wealth and pleasure, wealth and pleasure, wealth and pleasure. Everything else is secondary. That's the way it was in today's nowhere. And he said it was going be that day at well again. And we have reached that stage point number five. Now, this is one that really the main one, one that he sent me back for, and a lot of people can comprehend this. What he said was, let me go back to Matthew. Matthew in writing was quoting John the Baptist when he said this in chapter chapter three, verse 11 and 12. He said, I indeed baptize you with water under repentance, but he that cometh after me as mighty than I, whose shoes I'm not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with Holy Ghost and with fire whose fan is in his hand and he will fairly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
(31:22):
The baptism of the Holy Ghost, so to speak, is going to come with fire. He's going to burn up the chaff in the Christian. So a lot of people think that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is evidence speaking in tongues. Well it might be, but by the same token, the real evidence is the fire burning the chaff out of the individual and that's going to take tribulation.
Howard Pittman (31:56):
How would you summarize that fifth point then? The fifth point is
Mark Cowart (32:01):
The bap baptism of the Holy Spirit. True baptism of the Holy Spirit. We got some people that come to church and talk in tongues all day and go to the honky tonk first thing Monday morning. You know who they are. You know who they are. But the fires coming. The true baptism of the Holy Spirit's going to bring fire into the chain for the life of the individual. That's your five points for the church.
Howard Pittman (32:32):
And that was the message the Lord
Mark Cowart (32:34):
Gave to you to come share the FivePoint message to the church. And I didn't know where the church was because everything it caused itself is church is not a church.
Howard Pittman (32:48):
Brother Howard, you talked about you saw a certain amount of people die and enter heaven. Yes sir. But at that same time, how many, what was it the Lord showed you about the people that didn't make it?
Mark Cowart (33:02):
97% didn't make it. 2000. They showed me his harvest for 15 minutes span a time, 15 minutes span a time. They occurred August 3rd, 1979 from where the paramedic judge my body to be dead until it arrived at the hospital. In that 15 minutes, 50, I was allowed to see 50 saints that go into heaven. That was some total of his harvest on a planet earth for 15 minutes span of time. And that same 15 minutes, 1,900 and more people died. 950 more died. Only 50 out of 2000 made it two and a half percent dovetails with just exactly what he said in Matthew seven. For many will say to me in that, David, Lord, Lord, have we not preached in your name? Have we done many marvelous worked in Your name? In your name? Have we done all this work? And he would say, depart from me. And I knew you, your work of iniquity. I never knew you. You were never saved. Not that you would saved one day and turned you back. You I never knew you. You were never mine.
(34:15):
Two and a half percent. Now they let me see that because on August 3rd, 1979, that was the condition of the planet Earth. Had that been the day that trumpet would've blown so loud, he was waking the dead. He would've got two and a half percent of the population of the world, two and a half percent. He allowed me to tour the second heaven, which is Satan's kingdom. He allowed me to tour the whole kingdom and see the different spirits that he has. And that was the first thing because I was weak. I was weak in that training. Sometimes I remember in the seminary, we had professors come and tell us one time, teaching how to go to heaven was like climbing the mountains. They got somebody come up, side side, somebody up this side, somebody up this. But when they get there, they're all at the top. Well right now, that's a doctrine that's very popular in the Christian Church. You're a good old boy, you're going to make it and all that stuff. God loves you. Don't worry about it. And we got the devil under his feet and he's laughing all the way. The bank.