Eleven years ago was my 25th wedding anniversary. My wife and I had decided to go to the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia and use that as our headquarters and travel for 16 days through-out the region. Shortly before leaving for the trip the Holy Spirit spoke to me. He told me I was going to have a significant encounter and that it would change everything. I assumed I was going to meet someone. We rented a house that was actually attached to the walled city, it was part of the stone drawbridge and had a magnificent stone terrace that overlooked the enchanting harbor of the city.
As I stood there one day, basking in a warm sun that was rising majestically from behind ancient mountains, a glorious and indescribable presence enveloped me. I had experienced the manifest presence of God many times before but nothing like this. It seemed to permeate my very DNA. Every part of me was alive and captivated, from my head right down to my toes and all around me and then suddenly I was in another place. The strange thing was that I was consciously aware that my body was still standing there but my spirit was “standing,” in this vision.
I was looking at some amalgam of the old testament Tabernacle and Solomon’s temple. In a grand square there was a great number of people. I asked who they were and was told they were the vast majority of people who called themselves Christians.They were standing in what I was told was the court of the gentiles. A great sadness came over me as I witnessed a tremendous amount of activity going on in the court. I wondered why they were not passing through a low door that was in a wall that led to the inner sanctuary. I was told that they would not bow down which would enable them to pass through the door. I could see what was behind the door in the wall, it was the inner sanctuary.
There was first a brazen altar. It was a foul-smelling place but deeply loved by God. The few who came though the door brought sacrifices of sin it seemed to me. They were coming forward not to get something but to give up foul-smelling sins that had so easily beset them. It took great humility to come before this place and acknowledge these secrets of their heart but they were readily burned up in a fire that continually burned. People sacrificed rags and were clothed in fine white linen. People sacrificed perversions and were given purity. Lies were sacrificed and truth was given. All manner of sin was replaced by holiness and purity.
Then they moved forward to the laver bowl where they washed themselves before moving on to be fed by shewbread which filled them in a way that they would never again hunger. Then they stood in the light of the lampstands, no longer ashamed but washed clean and made pure and able to stand in the light of God for He had cleansed them. Lastly their prayers began to rise up and come before the throne of God Himself. I looked again at the vast crowd outside of the manifest presence of God, engaged in much activity in the court of the gentiles and I was amazed that they would not enter. So close to entering in, but so unwilling to give up the things of this world, too proud to bow down and enter through the door, too ashamed to give up their innermost foul-smelling sin.
Suddenly I was back standing on the terrace. I looked out over a motionless sea where it met a cloudless sky and the rising sun warmed me with such a fierce intensity. In this fire of His presence I was alive with a life I knew would never end. This was my encounter with my glorious indescribable Jesus. When I returned home I was given a word from the Lord by a dear saint who knew nothing about this. I was to “write to the nations.” It seemed such a grandiose word, “write to the nations.” Nevertheless I was obedient to the Word. I started a website and began to lay bare my heart with what the Lord had taught me.
I was to speak to the remnant. I was not to try to convince anyone of anything but simply speak to those in the courtyard and encourage them who had ears to hear, to bow down low and enter through the low door and into the inner sanctuary. Just over ten years later I have written over one thousand articles,more than 300 poems, two books and many hymns that have been recorded. and the inspiration for all of that flowed from that encounter. Amazingly I have reached over five hundred thousand people from over 160 nations. God is faithful to those He calls, may we be faithful to His calling.
I want to be honest. Shortly after I had a second vision. It was somehow connected to the first. I was standing in church one Sunday morning and suddenly I found myself plunged under a fast flowing river on a bed of smooth stones. It took my breath away and I immediately began to struggle and panic. I was going to drown. The Holy Spirit held me gently but firm and spoke to me ” breathe Frank.” That was all He said. I fearfully opened my mouth and found that I could breathe. Then I somehow “knew,” what this was about. The waters that were rushing over me were troubled waters. The Lord wanted the troubled waters of this life to remove my hard edges, I was not to fight it. The following ten years were the most troubled years of all of my Christianity. Trial after trial. Despair. Wretchedness. Loss, like an incoming tide, came to me over and over again. Sleepless nights pacing the floor, sometimes on the floor crying out to God. And I thought often of the time I had cried out to God with somewhat naive optimism saying “whatever it takes Lord to make me useful in your Kingdom.”
All of this brothers and sisters I have found along the narrow path that we sojourn together. Like all the pilgrim saints , the long narrow way home is often a lonely, weary and exhausting road. But we have glimpsed something glorious have we not? We have in our mind and soul and spirit saw something of our eternal destination. It is high and lifted up. He is high and lifted up. The Lord Jesus is not only our companion along the way He is our destination. Don’t ask me to explain that. He is behind me and He hedges me around about, He goes before me and He dwells within me. Yet my destination is the unadulterated presence of the living God where the flesh is no longer a barrier that limits the glory. A place where this world is no longer a distraction nor competes for my attention. To finally dwell in a high and lofty place where I know as I am known. Oh to know as I am known, tis another world indeed, it is our world, it our home, it is our destination and every step we take is another step closer. Keep on walking saints though the road seem hard and lonely, keep on walking and lift up your head and see the glory. It is closer than you think.
Many years ago I had a vision. I have not had too many visions, but this was the most vivid of them all.
The beginning of the vision was a loud booming voice calling all Christians to awake , “Awake you sleepy Christians.” “Who will ascend Gods Holy Hill? Those with a pure heart and clean hands. This was scene 1, a call to arms. Then the second scene unfolded. I saw thousands of baby turtles heading from the dunes towards the sea. They had a wide beach ahead of them. Before most of them could cross the beach and reach the water they were attacked by birds of every kind. The power of the air had come to attack them, seagulls by the hundreds making a horrendous shrieking noise as they feasted on their helpless prey. Birds of every kind joined the attack, swooping down and pecking and carrying the baby turtles off. Then from the dunes came raccoons and critters of every kind to join in the frenzy and drag these hapless baby turtles away. Just when I thought the slaughter could not get worse, and the turtles were so close to the sea and safety, out from under the sand came crabs, crabs with large pincers which tore into the turtles and they dragged them under the sand to be devoured. As all of this was going on, I could see Scripture framing this whole scene. “Many are called but few are chosen,” “Broad is the road that leads to destruction, narrow is the path that leads to life.”
Suddenly the scene changes, I am on a beach. It was the Normandy landings from WW11. Death was all around me. Young men being killed right where I stood and the severely wounded were all around me, the young men were desperately seeking for a place to hide, for some kind of barrier to protect them from the onslaught. There were kids with their innards hanging out and they were trying to stop them from spilling onto the beach, while screaming for their mothers. Men with their limbs blown off, total chaos and mayhem all around and the screams were deafening.
Suddenly the scene changes again. There is a Rock with a sword embedded into it. This sits right in the middle of an arena.On strolls a man who is dressed like William Wallace,he addresses his vastly outnumbered army who are thinking about fleeing from the battle. The man, who is actually Jesus dressed in full Scottish battle dress, reaches forward , and with both hands, pulls the Claymore from the Rock and turns to address the crowd in the arena.
“ I am Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I am maker of heaven and earth and I am the Holy Son of the Living God. I hold in my hand the two-edged sword. And with this sword I will surely destroy all the enemies. This vast army of evil that you see here before you. This army that has dared to challenge the living God, this army that has exposed itself on the battlefield will be completely destroyed this very day. I see another army here before me, the army of the Living God. You have gathered here today in defiance of darkness and tyranny. You have come here to fight as free men and free men you are, for it is I that gave you that very freedom. So you see with your eyes that you are few and they are many, you see that you are vastly outnumbered. Will you fight today? “No, we will run and we will live,” shouts a man from the crowd. “Yes, if you run now you will live a while. If you stay and fight you may die, but I have called you here this day to die in a battle that will be celebrated for all eternity. Yet for those who run and “live,” what kind of life will you live? When you are dying in your beds, many years from now, how many of you will cry out with regret, having lived a life of compromise and shame and know in your heart that you would be willing to trade forty years of compromise for one day of glory in this great battlefield of the flesh. This battle of light against darkness. To be able to say to your enemies “yes, you may kill me and I may have to lose everything this very day but one thing you will never take, you will never take my soul.”
Now the scene changes again. I am in the stadium or arena . Men of God form a semicircle in front of the crowd of young people. Behind the men of God is a sea of flags. The flags are blowing in the wind. The flags represent the enemies that the Holy Spirit had just shown me. The enemies that attacked the turtles each had names and the names were written on the flags. Some of the names were rebellion, lust, sex, drugs, beer, abuse, suicide, bitterness, hatred, greed, materialism, incest, rape, murder and many many more. The call is made to the crowd, it’s the call that Jesus has just made, “Will you come forward and die to these thing this day?” They respond to the call to arms and begin to move forward in obedience. They run towards the enemy, they kneel and pray with the men of God and then arise and move past them and with pure hearts and clean hands they make their way towards the flag that represents what they have just laid down. They pull up the flag and they break it over their knees and throw it to the ground. Freedom rings out into the night sky, the rejoicing rises up into heaven itself and all of heaven rejoices to see Satan’s kingdom torn down and Gods young people taking back that which is theirs, that which is Gods, their very heart. And Satan trembles at the rise of this army.
” Some of us have already left institutionalized Christianity either because we were pushed out for asking the wrong questions or because we could no longer continue to serve the demands of an institution that seemed so at odds with the passion growing in our hearts. None of us did so easily, having spent decades serving in local congregations and engaged in multiple efforts to reform them. In the end we left not to abandon our faith but to explore that faith on a more vibrant journey than those structures would allow.” ( Wayne Jacobsen, Finding Church)
There is nothing more important for each saint than His journey home. This journey with the Lord is a vibrant unexpected one where we never really know what is around the next corner. The wind of the Holy Spirit blows where it will and none of us truly know from what direction it will blow next and where it will lead us. Many years ago the Lord gave me vision. It was as if I was hovering over the land of America. I could see the States kinda mapped out below me. There was a great migration taking place. People from the Midwest were striking out in a great journey westwards in wagon trains just as they had in this country 150 years ago. They were leaving everything they knew behind and were fully committed to the journey ahead. They knew some of what lay ahead from others, but still there were many unknowns and dangers. None of that put them off. They were committed to the journey ahead. So they struck out from a place called Independence.
They struggled over many different landscapes and each landscape seem to represent some portion of their sanctification. There were rivers and mountains and valleys and storms and deserts and so on. And they represented pride and independence and lust and anger and un-forgiveness and all the many sins and deficiencies of the human nature. As they got further away from Independence, their dependency upon God grew. Each mountain climbed, every river forded, every storm endured drew them closer to the Lord. They were being shaped by their journey and by their dependence upon God. Finally I saw them arrive at the Pacific Ocean. Now shortly after arriving there, a ship approached and the captain urged them to get on-board. They shouted to Him, ” where are you headed, where will the ship takes us?” The captain pointed at the horizon. They asked Him if he had any maps or charts to show them what lay beyond the horizon, He did not. A few decided to get on board but the vast majority decided to stay. They had had some ideas and maps of how to get to where they were now, but to get on this ship and sail into completely unknown territory was simply asking too much and they were not prepared to risk it all.
Their temporary wagons were broken down in the beautiful place and they began to set up permanent structures. Each day the ship would re-appear and each day the captain would beckon to them to get on board but His voice grew dimmer and dimmer and suddenly the ship and the captain appeared no more. With the journey over and the permanent structures erected the people grew weak and had no vision. While on the journey the storms had made them strong and drew them closer to the Lord but now the storms were weakening them and they withdrew from the coast. Yet each time they fell back and restructured they became weaker still and had to continually fall back. They eventually arrived back at the very place they had left all those years before, Independence.
I don’t want to expound too much on the vision. I would simply like you to reflect upon it and see if the Lord would speak to your heart through it…………………bro Frank
” It is amazing how unbelieving a believer can become. One might as well call Christ a liar, and His apostles false witnesses of God, as to deny that God is going to have a Body functioning in absolute unity of the Spirit, with each member in his proper place, and all members working together as one harmonious whole. Here again, there is only one reason why ” believers” refuse to believe it, and it is because we have never seen it wither in our own experience or in the history of the church…….The churches long and bitter history of disunity and strife does not prove that God’s word means disunity when it speaks of unity. If God said it, it is going to come to pass; and if Jesus prayed for it, all the devices of Satan cannot prevent the glorious fulfillment of that prayer of faith.” ( George Warnock)
I read this passage from George Warnock the other day as I was reading a small book by him a friend and brother from Canada sent me. He sent it a couple of years ago and I am just getting around to reading it. It is always exciting when God confirms a word that He gave to you and that is what the above passage was for me. The Lord burned the above truth into my spirit last year. I was out walking in the springtime last year and I came to the entry point of a path that I walk. I was amazed when I looked down the small hill. The path was gone, and had been replaced by a raging river that could not be crossed. The Spirit of God fell on me and He began to show me things.
After the drought comes the rain. Perhaps you feel like your in a drought? Perhaps its been a long time since you encountered the presence of God? For those who believe and prevail and overcome, can I tell you that there is a cloud , the size of a hand, on the horizon. There is a deep penetrating rain coming for Gods people. He has taken His people into the valley, the valley of death, the valley of decision. Because of the intensity of the battle that lies just ahead, it was and is necessary for the Lord to take His people into the desert of testing, a place of scourging and stripping away of every single thing that we have relied upon that is outside of Him. Read the rest of this entry »
Mere preachers may help anybody and hurt
nobody; but prophets will stir everybody and madden somebody.
The preacher may go with the crowd; the prophet goes against it.
A man freed, fired, and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic
because he speaks against his nation’s sins; unkind because his
tongue is a two-edged sword; unbalanced because the weight of
preaching opinion is against him.
Below is a post from David Wilkerson. He shared this prophetic word on hs blog a couple of days ago. I very rarely publish other people on my blog, yet this is a man that I greatly respect as a true man of God. This post is not designed to scare anyone, in fact I am sure that we all believe that “perfect love casts out all fear.” This post is more in the Agabus tradition. If there is something coming, and it is just around the corner, now is the time to draw near to God if that is not where you dwell. In His presence there is fullness of joy despite circumstances. “He prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies.” Even in the very depths of tribulation, we can feast on the presence of God. Consider brother Stephen as he was being stoned to death. Consider the countless martyrs down through the corridors of time who sang hymns as flames consumed their mortal bodies, releasing their spirits into His hand. Rejoice, for perhaps our groom is at the door, our betrothal period may be coming to an end, this is a matter for great joy.
You have gathered here today in defiance of darkness and tyranny. You have come here to fight as free men and free men you are, for it is I that gave you that very freedom. So you see with your eyes that you are few and they are many, you see that you are vastly outnumbered. Will you fight today?Read the rest of this entry »
There is a time for shouting and praising God, but if we are ignoring the knocking, then we must stop shouting. If our lives are not reflecting the Glory of God, if we are not becoming like His Son, daily, then all of our shouting and praising God will just be so much noise. How tragic for the church of the living God if, when He looks down, He does not see praise but just a group of people making a noise.”Read the rest of this entry »
“Jesus has many who love His kingdom in heaven, but few who bear His cross. He has many who desire comfort, but few who desire suffering. He finds many to share His feast, but few His fasting.All desire to rejoice with Him, but few are willing to suffer for His sake. Many follow Jesus to the breaking of the bread, but few to the drinking of the cup of His passion. Many admire the miracles, but few follow Him to the humiliation of the cross. Many love Jesus as long as no hardship touches them.”
This is a vision that I had as I stood on a terrace in Croatia. My wife and I went there last year on our 25th anniversary. Before I went the Lord had shown me that I would meet someone there and that it would be significant, just did not know that He was talking about Himself. The whole piece was my vision, He gave me a new way of writing my testimony and of writing about coming into His presence, then the Word that He gave me for the church, I wrote in red at the end. I pray that this will challenge and convict you………….
They will gather together and throw in their gold and rise up and play, or in this case, fall down and play. You see the people are without leadership, and the Lord has with-held His rain. So the people have demanded gods to go before them, listen to what they said to Aaron…”make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him. “
Madam Guyon writes…………….I am deeply grieved that so many in this day(she lived 300 years ago, people never change)even some good people, allow themselves to be led astray by the enemy. Has not God warned us against false prophets and lying wonders of the last days? All true prophets have spoken in the name of the Lord-”Thus says the Lord.” The enemy gains great advantage because people love extraordinary manifestations, signs and wonders. I believe the inordinate love of external signs is used of the enemy to draw people away from the Word of God and from the inward way of faith.The signs that come from God encourage you to die to yourself. (Intimacy with Christ..p21)
string> If you are known personally by God, If He knows every hair of your head, then how is it that you could ever imagine yourself insignificant? Is that not a lie from the pits of hell? How much evil and mischief has the enemy of your soul been able to achieve by simply convincing you that you have no worth and are insignificant?Read the rest of this entry »
The only true path is the path that begins with and ends with “Yet not my will be done but thine.” This is the glorious path of victory, the path of faith, the path of death but this path leads to life and that more abundantly. It will be the life that He chose for us, with all of its trials and tribulations, but to be in the radical center of His will is to be on the narrow path that leads to life.Read the rest of this entry »
Its about being transparent in our walk with Him. Its about taking back ground and being more effective for Him. Its about the fact that darkness must flee when it is exposed to light. This is the battle and it mostly takes place in the mind, the flesh demanding that it be protected at all costs, not wanting to be “humiliated,” or “humbled,” in the sight of man.
If it was not for this fire, that rages in the night
This blood that runs like molten to my soul
I would fall into the darkness, never more to fight
My light would be consumed and the dark would take its toll
So what is there a desperate need of today? The power that the Apostles exercised before Pentecost? Or the power that they exercised after Pentecost? May the Spirit of the Lord fall upon His church and may we be endued with “Katanusso,” power, the power to penetrate the hard hearts of the lost and the dying . Read the rest of this entry »
A Call To The Remnant 