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"Not by Might, nor by Power, but by My Spirit!"
In phenomena that were prophesied to be characteristic of
the Last Days, the Lord Jesus Christ is appearing to many
men, women and children in dreams and visions, particularly
in the Middle East.
“And it shall come to pass afterward,
that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons
and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream
dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the
servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour
out my spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in
the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun
shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood,
before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come. And
it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name
of the LORD shall be delivered.” (Joel 2:28-32)
God’s methods of communicating with us have not changed.
Today his main method of communication is through His
written Word, the Bible. But because “a picture is worth a
thousand words,” the Lord still speaks to us in pictures—in
dreams and visions—just as He communicated in the Bible to
all ranks of people. Through dreams and
visions, God sends his children “love letters” of
revelation, warning and guidance. Without a doubt, he
employed the use of dreams and visions in the Bible from
Genesis to Revelation, and he declared that he would
continue to use them in the Last Days.
In every age the Lord
has granted revelations that are often inaccessible to the
human intellect and are sometimes regarded simply as
hallucinations, or are attributed to the infernal realm. The
Bible gives clear-cut guidance to “test the spirits to see
if they be of God.” The private revelations in this volume
contain nothing contrary to Biblical faith and, in fact,
point the Way to Jesus and are conformable to Scripture.
Why
does the Risen Lord appear differently to different people?
In visions, we do not see the transfigured Lord in all of
His Glory, as this would be too awesome. But He chooses
according to His infinite wisdom to reveal Himself in
different ways or in varying cultural aspects so that people
can understand, or relate to Him, and receive Him.
A Theophany (literally, Greek for "manifestation of God") or a
Christophany ("manifestation of Christ") often occurred in
the Old Testament, as when Abraham entertained God for a
meal (Genesis 18), or when the Lord appeared in Joshua 5:
13-15 as the captain of the heavenly armies.
Ibrahim, a
former Muslim in Egypt, experienced supernatural dreams from
his childhood resulting from a habit of praising God and
asking for guidance before bedtime. A believer gave him a
copy of the Injil (the Gospels), and he was arrested by a
verse in Acts 1: 10 where angels announced that the Ascended
Jesus will return in clouds in the same manner that He
departed.
Concerning that very verse, Ibrahim had been experiencing recurring dreams such as
Muslims are experiencing all over the world:
“I was
surprised to see clouds gathering on top of a mountain.
After the clouds gathered, two angels dressed in white robes
stood on top of the mountain, and Jesus was standing between
them. He left the angels and came to where I was watching.
As He approached me, I knelt down, and He laid His hands on
my head. With the deep love I felt for Him, I began to
repent. The dream was so powerful to me, but in the morning
I told no one for fear of what my family would do to me. I
remained silent for that year, telling no one what I had
experienced.
"A year later I had the same dream, but this
time, Jesus was trying to walk past me. I begged Him not to
pass me by, and again I knelt down and repented. But I
remained silent because of my fear.
“In the third dream
which came yet a year later, as I looked upon the face of
Jesus on the mountain top, He was full of compassion and was
smiling down upon me. The two angels were absent this time,
but instead a vast multitude of people was present. We were
going to where Jesus was, full of peace and joy. The next
morning, I sat down to meditate upon this most recent dream.
After three years, I finally made an important decision to
follow this Jesus who appeared to me these three times in
such overwhelming love. The Lord spoke to me as I read the
Gospel of John, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No
one comes to the father except through me.’ This verse
provided a bridge between myself and Jesus, and I placed my
full trust in Him.
As a minister called by God to the Middle East, I,
too, have seen the Lord.
Middle-Eastern Jesus Appears to Western Girl
As a very young
child, I was very ill and almost died. My Mother said that I
had lost all of my hair, suffered from rheumatic fever and
was wasting away. One of my earliest childhood memories was
the Lord Jesus appearing to me in an open vision. But unlike
some Sunday School pictures of a “Western Jesus,” this Christophany was a Middle Eastern Man with long dark curly
hair, brown compassionate eyes and Mediterranean complexion.
He was wearing a green and white stripped Biblical robe.
From His appearance, He could have been a Jewish King or a
Middle Eastern sheik; He was definitely Semitic. I believe
He knew that I would one day live in the Bible lands. He
said with warm compassion, "You are going to be healed.
" I
was fearful and awed by the vision and momentarily turned my
head to the side. When I looked again, He was gone, but I
was healed! To this day I am blessed with vigorous health
and travel throughout the world for Jesus!
Many years later
when I was interceding for the Mideast, I saw the Lord again
in a vision. I beheld His sacred wounds, which remain open,
so that His stripes and wounds continually heal us by faith.
The stigmata (marks) Jesus still bears are evidence of the
penalty He paid for our sins and sicknesses so we do not
have to bear them. He accomplished a perfect Atonement. What
a Savior! What a Healer!
I also saw the whip that was used
to tear His flesh when the Roman soldiers scourged Jesus. To
my surprise, in the vision my hand was holding the whip!
This was because my sins and sicknesses were the cause of
His sufferings. (We must all recognize ourselves as
accomplices in the death of Jesus, because it was our collective sin that killed Jesus. Evangelist
Mel Gibson, who produced the film “The Passion of The
Christ,” understood this concept. In the film, Gibson’s hand
drove the nails into the Savior at the Cross.)
In my vision
of the wounded Jesus, He pulled me to Himself with the cords
of the whip, and as I embraced Him, His precious blood oozed
through my fingers. In the vision, He also placed my hands
into His side, pierced by a Roman soldier. He prophesied
with great might and urgency into my ear: “Pray for the
sick! Pray for the sick!" I have not been disobedient to
this heavenly vision and have prayed for the sick in every
nation that the Lord has sent me and I have seen Him do the
same miracles TODAY!
As the Holy Spirit continues to outpour
visions of the Risen Lord, very prominent in these visions
are the wounds of His sacrifice on the Cross.
It is notable
that “Doubting Thomas” demanded to see the marks of Jesus’
suffering and sacrifice. He might have asked for some other
sign or proof of the Resurrection, but for Thomas the “print
of the nails” and the wounded side would seal his faith. It
is also interesting that even though Jesus’ death was
vindicated and He now exists in a glorified body, the wounds
of His crucifixion remain in His body for Eternity.
Even today Jesus is revealing His sacred wounds to the people of the
Middle East. Having been buried alive, an Egyptian child who
was rescued testified that a supernatural Man had sustained
him—a Man with bloody holes in his hands. There is only one
Person in the world who fits that description—Jesus Christ
of Nazareth!
Outpouring of
Visions Helps Us to Share the Gospel
As Islam becomes more
conspicuous in the West, Christians are increasingly coming
into contact with Muslims. Often we feel inadequate and
overwhelmed in our attempts to share our faith. But if we
will ask our Muslim acquaintances if they have experienced
dreams or visions about Jesus, chances are more than not, we
will be amazed at their positive response! Supernatural
dreams and visions currently being outpoured amongst Muslims
open doors to share the Gospel of Jesus. Their dreams are
preparatory and often inconclusive, offering clues or “bait”
that need an evangelist or a bold believer to explain the
way of salvation through faith in Jesus.
Most of the Muslims
I’ve approached this way respond positively. Recently a
Muslim drove me on a 45-minute taxi journey from Jerusalem
to the airport. He was very talkative so I asked him if he
had ever experienced a dream or vision about Jesus.
“Strange
that you should ask!” he answered, “Just last week I had a
dream about a man in a bright robe whom I assumed was Jesus.
I was confused about why I should dream about Jesus and not
about Mohammed since, after all, I’m a Muslim.” Thus his own
experience in the realm of the supernatural enabled me
freely to share the Gospel all the way to the airport and to
pray with him. I also gave him a copy of “The Jesus
Visions.” What an entrée! The Lord is setting up many such
opportunities.
Every church seems to be offering courses on what Muslims believe and how
to reach them. It is all rather overwhelming to the average Christian. But, very
simply, Muslims can be reached through yielding to the anointing of the Holy
Spirit! He desires to impart to many in these Last Days the gift of evangelism
for the unreached Muslim bloc. Effective evangelism will not be
through argument or through an extensive knowledge of the
Koran, but through the power of love and the gifts of the
Holy Spirit. It has rightfully been said that arguments
produce sceptics, but love makes saints.
Muslims will
increasingly figure prominently in prophetic events destined
to occur in the End-Time generation before the Second Coming
of Jesus. Today Muslims are building mosques all over the
Western world. There are mosques in Rome, the center of
Catholicism, and in Geneva, the citadel of Protestantism.
The Queen of England, the head of the Anglican Church,
officially cut the ribbon at the opening of the mosque in
London's Regent's Park. British Muslims have made no secret
out of the fact that they intend to conquer Britain. In
France, Muslims outnumber Protestants two to one. At the
dedication of a mosque in Paris, the message of the Second
Vatican Council was stressed: [The Church] "looks with
respect upon Mohammedans, since they believe in God"
(Source: "The Unholy War" by Marius Baar.) Yet to build a
Christian house of worship in an officially Muslim country
is a near impossibility. The Muslims are not as cooperative
as naive Western leaders.
Mecca, the most revered Muslim
city, is totally closed to "infidels." As believers in
Christ, we are not allowed to set foot in Mecca. Yet
Christians once dwelt in Mecca, and Jesus Himself appears in
open visions frequently in Mecca and elsewhere in Saudi
Arabia!
North Africa was once also a bastion of
Christianity. The spread of the Church in the Middle East
and North Africa was strong enough to endure crushing
persecution from the Roman Empire. Many famous Christian
leaders, such as Origen and Augustine, were native sons of
the North African church. It was an evangelizing church.
In the lands that first experienced and
preached Jesus, the greatest defeat and reversal in the
history of the Christian faith has occurred. Our generation
must reclaim lost territory! However, this will never be
accomplished without Holy Ghost evangelism. Many devout
ambassadors for Christ have laboured for years, not only in
unripe harvest fields, but also without the promised baptism
of the Holy Spirit. Consequently they have enjoyed little
results.
Yet there are others who preach with an anointing
of the Holy Spirit and with the gifts of the Spirit. Veiled
women have instantly raised their hands to receive Jesus
after witnessing testimonies of healings of breast cancer
and other miracles. In a recent Gospel campaign in Pakistan,
the author was thrilled that a blind Muslim woman was
healed. She came onto the platform to testify of regaining
her sight after a terrible accident. Her Muslim Mother
verified the miracle and said publicly that Jesus had healed
her daughter! A man working in the fields had not intended
on attending our meeting, but he told me on the platform, “I
was compelled to come when I saw seven huge angels guarding
your tent!” That was a special joy for me to hear, since I
had that many armed guards in the natural!
Muslim miracles
also multiply under the ministry of Evangelist Reinhard
Bonnke in Africa. After witnessing the Lord's miraculous
healing power, many Muslims have boldly testified from
Reinhard’s platform that Jesus is the Son of God. The Lord
heals Christians because of the Bible’s covenant of healing.
He also heals non-Christians because of His mercy--and
because healing is a sign and a wonder attesting to the
Lordship of Jesus!
God delights in choosing the foolish
things of this world to confound the wise. Women in Muslim
societies enjoy little authority and
practically no rights. (The Koran sanctions wife beating in Sura 4). Yet God will anoint not only men but also women to
reap a harvest in the House of Islam! He will choose the
foolish and weak vessels to confound the wise in Islam.
Among women evangelists to the Muslims, "Shaeeda," Jenny de
Mayer, one of my heroines of the faith, was a pioneer.
Unable to journey any further than Jeddah with the Gospel,
in 1920, she prophesied to the gates of Mecca, "How long, O
God? How long before the Gospel of Jesus is proclaimed in
Mecca?”
Since my childhood, I have been fascinated with the
Sahara regions of Africa and with the desert peoples of
Arabia. Even when I saw the painting of a camel, pyramids
and palm tree on "Camel" cigarette advertisements, something
in my spirit was attracted--not to smoking, but to the
camel's domain. The patriarchs of the Bible and Lawrence of
Arabia held a fascination for me. The Lord transplanted our
family in Jerusalem, where a unique door opened for me to
preach to groups of Israeli soldiers twice a week as they
visited Christ Church inside the historic Jaffa Gate. Many
signs and wonders happened. A Sephardic woman bent over
double was healed on Prophets’ Street. A Palestinian man
with terminal lung cancer was healed. Dreams and visions
abounded in our work. An orthodox Jewish man dressed in the
typical ghetto black garb prayed with me not far from the
Western (Wailing) Wall. I held meetings inside the Old City
and was allowed by the Jewish jail keeper to preach in the
jail at the Jaffa Gate police station every week.
I was privileged and very content to minister to the wounds of the Jewish
people for the sake of God Almighty and his End-Time purposes. To witness the
Jewish people return to the Lord in these Last Days is God's greatest
vindication. It is proof of the validity of the Scriptures and of
the Lord, who declares the end from the beginning, and who
said that in the Last Days he would regather his ancient
Jewish people from the four corners of the earth. He
promised that he would bring them back to their own land
eventually to call on the Messiah. This, in turn, would
unleash dynamic, resurrection life for the Church. What an
event! What a vindication! Anyone who cherishes in his heart
this desire for Israel’s redemption truly loves God and his
honor.
But God also greatly enlarged my heart for the other
children of Abraham, the Ishmaelites. (Usually Gospel
messengers to the Arabs absorb the Arabs' offence and enmity
against the Jews, and emissaries to the Jews are not always
sympathetic toward Arabs.)
Nevertheless, God enlarged my
heart with a desire to minister to all the children of
Abraham—Jews, Arabs and the spiritual seed of Abraham-- the
former Gentiles who are grafted into the Church. The Lord
granted me the capacity to love them equally. Though drawn
to the Jews because of their covenant relationship with God,
I was equally drawn to the Arabs. The Lord opened my eyes
and I began to see that if the Arabs could be won to God,
then his holy purposes would be furthered. I identified with
Abraham’s prayer that Ishmael might live. I saw the Muslim's
desperate need of a Savior because they, like the Jews, are
heavily laden with Law. God consequently opened a door
through my great friend George Otis to preach every day on
the radio throughout the Middle East (the “Voice of Hope” in
Lebanon). I received letters from behind the Islamic
curtain. I began to preach in Arab homes and in Bedouin
tents, in open fields and even from the rooftops in
dangerous places.
Through a dream, God called me to Israel
to stand with the lonely Jews when the entire world turns
against them prior to Messiah’s return. Later, also through a dream, God called me to
Arabia, where I became involved in one of this generation’s
most supernatural Revivals in the territory of the Mideast
Principality! In short, I was flabbergasted at the Arabs’
openness to the Gospel. It was as if they were just dying
for someone to reach them with the Good News that there is a
Savior!
God opened the eyes of Ishmael’s mother Hagar to
behold water in the desert!
“And God heard the voice of the
lad; and the angel of God called Hagar out of heaven, and
said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? Fear not; for God
hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up
the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a
great nation. And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of
water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and
gave the lad drink. (Genesis 21:17-19)
The Lord also opened
my eyes with a great desire to give Ishmael a deep drink of
Living Water from the Savior in the sands of Arabia!
Although I had already been ministering among the Jews and
Muslims of the Middle East, God handed me a new commission
in Mombassa, Kenya, to go to the House of Islam in North
Africa with the Reinhard Bonnke Christ for all Nations (CfaN)
team. I said to God, "How can this be? I have a covenant
with you for Israel and the Palestinians!" (When you make a
covenant with God, he always graciously overfulfills it!)
The Lord said to me, "If you will be not only obedient but
willing to go to the House of Islam, we'll talk later about
Israel. It is not yet harvest time for Israel. You must now
go to the House of Islam. Will you be not only obedient but
willing?"
I quickly adjusted my thinking
and said, “Yes.” (Sometimes we are like Jonah who was
eventually obedient but not willing in his heart.)
"OK,
Lord, but please confirm this call. I'm a wife and a mother
and I'm very fair-skinned. You know that hot countries and I
don’t really mix! You are always calling me to hot
countries! And how can this be since I know no man?"
He
said, "I will confirm it, ‘And blessed is she that believed:
for there shall be a performance of those things which were
told her from the Lord. ‘ “ (Luke 1: 45)
At the time, I was
attending Reinhard Bonnke's meetings in Mombassa, where
Islam entered East Africa. After one of the evening
meetings, eight Muslim women dressed in black from head to
toe wandered onto the grounds. They had missed the sermon.
When I saw them, for a moment, I thought I was back in
Jerusalem. I was so happy to greet them that I asked if I
could share about Jesus. I had time to preach only a
five-minute sermon because my transportation was ready to
depart. Then I asked if they wanted to receive Jesus. They
all said, “Yes!” I led them in a very thorough sinner's
prayer—their understanding of English was excellent. They
said they believed in their hearts that Jesus was raised
from the dead (which is something that Muslims are taught
not to believe). And they confessed with their mouths that
Jesus is Lord. Afterwards I exclaimed happily, "How
wonderful that all of you have received the Lord Jesus
together! Are you friends?"
"No," said one of the women. "We
are eight blood sisters." I was amazed. Usually it takes
time to build trust before a Muslim will pray the sinner's prayer to receive Jesus. And for
eight sisters to confess Jesus all at once-- this is most
unusual.
That night the Lord said, "What more confirmation
do you need that I am calling you to the House of Islam?" I
remembered also that eight is the number of new beginnings.
Humanly speaking, I am not qualified to preach to the House
of Islam. I am a woman, a despised Westerner educated as a
journalist. I am not an Arabist. I cannot read the Koran in
the Arab language. But Reinhard Bonnke also taught that God
has a habit of anointing unprofessionals to accomplish a
task. It's the un-anointed professionals who often go to a
field and accomplish little. I have observed through the
years that God absolutely delights in granting territorial
authority to persons of different nationalities to
accomplish his purposes. He will choose a German like
Reinhard Bonnke and give him territorial authority in
Africa. He will call African preachers to Britain and the
former Soviet Union and elsewhere. He will pick up a girl
like me from the American South and plop her down in the
Middle East! He will transplant a British man like Hudson
Taylor in China, and he will choose a Chinaman like my
friend “The Heavenly Man,” Brother Yun, to carry the Gospel
back to Jerusalem!
God desires to impart the gift of faith
for the House of Israel and the House of Islam to all the
Church. He is able to reveal Jesus Christ (Yeshua HaMashiach
in Hebrew) to the chief rabbi or Yesua Al Mesia (Jesus the
Messiah in Arabic) to the chief mullah in any city whenever
He so desires!
Humanly speaking, Islam is formidable. But Christians for too long have
used fear or other excuses not to evangelize the Muslims. True, Islam
acknowledges Jesus as a prophet, but it denies the very heart
of the Gospel. Islam denies the Death, the Sonship of Jesus
and the Resurrection. And since Islam is a universalistic
religion with a missionary spirit, it will fight back.
Therefore we must determine in our hearts not to be fearful
if we plan to serve the House of Islam, our Muslim
neighbors.
What are our advantages and benefits? The Name of
Jesus, the authority He has given us in His name. Our
testimonies and the blood of Jesus. "And they overcame him
by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony
and they loved not their lives until death." (Revelation 12:
11)
Do you believe that Jesus is able to win the Muslims? I
have found too few in the Church—and especially in the
Eastern Church in the Middle East—who will dare to believe
that the Muslims will confess Christ.
A Saudi sheik's
daughter was dying. No hospital could help her. His money
could not save her through specialists. Then the family's
Filipino Christian maid humbly asked if she could pray for
the girl in the Name of Jesus. The daughter was healed, and
the family believed, and reportedly has a house church in
Saudi Arabia, the bastion of Islam! “And upon my handmaids
in those days will I pour out my spirit."
So nothing is
impossible with God. A book published about a Muslim
missions conference contained a photograph of the dry,
barren Saudi sands. In the sand a believer had drawn the
name "Jesus" in very large letters as a sign of His claim on
all nations, even Saudi Arabia. That photo affected me
profoundly. It is still working in me deeply today.
Without
thinking it through, one time a Western “Christian” asked me, “Why do you preach to the
Muslims? They all believe in God!” That person’s question
displayed a typical ignorance of the Gospel. The Bible
teaches that “all have sinned” (Romans 3:23) and that the
eternal consequences of our sin is death—“For the wages of
sin is death.” (Romans 6: 23) Furthermore, the Bible teaches
that there is NOTHING that a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, cultural
Christian, atheist, etc., can do to save himself, but God’s
love has made a way! “God commended his love toward us, in
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much
more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be
saved from wrath through him.” (Romans 5: 8-9) However, we
must place our faith in Jesus in order to receive God’s
complete forgiveness, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth
the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God
hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Romans
10: 9)
But how will people know the Truth without a
preacher? The Lord Himself has been preaching and showing
Himself alive to many Muslims-- and Jews-- through healings,
through dreams and through visions. This book will continue
to chronicle these amazing accounts. May your faith be
greatly stirred to realize that our God is not standing by
idly in these momentous Last Days, but he is mightily at
work pouring out his Spirit through supernatural signs and
wonders!
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