The Ministry Of Visions

Let's look at Acts, chapter two, and also, while you're turning, acts chapter two, and then also 1 Corinthians, chapter 12.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

And 1 Corinthians 12, let me get that All right.

Acts two, verse 14.

This is on the death penalty cost.

They were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

They all began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

And then, but Peter, standing up with the 11.

So he was on the ground drunk, just so you get the picture.

He was on the ground drunk.

Everybody say Peter was drunk in the Holy Ghost.

But Peter, standing up with the 11, lifted up his voice and said unto them you, men of Judea, and all ye that are dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you and harken to my words, for these are not drunk as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day, nine o'clock in the morning.

But this is that spoken by the prophet Joel, and it shall come to pass.

In the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy.

Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams, and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out, in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesy.

And then first, corinthians, chapter 12, verse one.

Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant.

Well, the word gifts there is italicized.

It's not in the Greek text, so literally we could say concerning spiritual, concerning things of the spirit, that'd be a better rendering.

Concerning the things of the spirit.

I would not have you to be ignorant, as I mentioned this morning, ignorant, you could be totally ignorant.

Some people are totally ignorant of the gifts, some people are partially ignorant.

They know a little bit, just enough to be dangerous, about the gifts or the things of the spirit.

And then there's people that ignore things concerning the spirit.

They ignore it.

Ignorance, you know, all of those are bad.

I don't want you to be ignorant.

Paul said to the Corinthian church, and they came behind in no good gift, they had lots of gifts flowing in the Corinthian church, verse seven.

But the manifestation of the spirit is given to every man to profit with all.

For to one is given by the spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same spirit, to another, faith by the same spirit.

That's not calling, that's not talking about Bible faith, it's talking about miracle operation of faith, and to another, the gifts of healing by the same spirit.

To another, the working of miracles to another.

Prophecy to another, the turning of spirits to another, diverse kinds of tongues to another, the interpretation of tongues, but all these work that one in the self same spirit, or they demonstrate, you could say, that one in the self same spirit, the Holy Spirit dividing to every man, severally or individually as he will, the gifts of the spirit operate as the spirit wills.

We need to know that.

So tonight I wanted to take one of these gifts of the spirit, the discerning of spirits, and it's minister to you on the ministry of visions, ministry of visions.

And so in the gifts of the spirit we have nine and they're divided up three classifications the vocal gifts, which would be prophecy, tongues and interpretation tongue.

The gift of tongues is different than your prayer language.

The gift of tongues is your prayer language is not meant to be understood.

It's your spirit praying and you're praying to God.

Your spirit is active.

But the gift of tongues is different administration.

It is meant to be spoken out and it's meant to always be interpreted.

A gift of tongues manifesting in a service, like tonight, if you were to stand up and start speaking in other tongues and you didn't have the interpretation.

No one had the interpretation.

Well then, that would be out of order.

So a gift of tongues then is as the spirit was, can't just decide to do it.

You've got to be having an ocean from the spirit of God, and then it always is accompanied by interpretation, and then the two of them together, tongues and interpretation.

Then prophecy is without the tongues, prophecy is the same basic gift.

You just stand up and prophesy and they both.

We've had all these manifestations, the vocal manifestations, and you know the vocal gifts are the gateway into all the other gifts.

You know, if you don't have the vocal gifts operating in a church, well then you're kind of down, you're three quarters empty.

You know you need to get filled back up.

This is a manifestation ought to happen in every church when you're full of the Holy Ghost.

And then, of course, then the power gifts, which would be the gifts of healings, the gift of working of miracles, and those two.

Then you have the gift of faith to operate.

That, the gift of faith, it's a sudden belief that comes upon you where you can have the power to work a miracle, just working of miracles, gifts of healings, not, you know.

We lay hands on people and people get healed.

Sometimes it's instant, but it's the gifts of healings.

Is a different administration, it's only as a spirit wills.

And then the revelatory gifts, which include the word of knowledge.

The word of knowledge is a piece of God's or a word, or a piece or a partial revelation of God's knowledge about a person, place or thing in the present time or in the past time.

And the word of wisdom is the same thing, only futuristic, it's in the future, it hasn't happened yet.

And then, of course, the discerning of spirits, which is some people I've heard it talked about.

Well, discerning, you've got to have discerning, the gift of discernment.

Well, that's not the gift of discerning of spirit.

The gift of discerning, most of the time is somebody being suspicious, and that's not a gift, that's a fault.

So discerning is not a gift, it's really not right, it's flesh.

But the discerning of spirits is quite simply the seeing into the spirit realm.

And the discerning of spirits is quite simply the seeing into the spirit realm.

And many times when you see into the spirit realm, then associated with that vision is a word of knowledge or a word of wisdom.

Usually they.

You know, when you see, you see something right, or you hear something, and that's something then can be what God wants you to know about a person, place or thing in the present time, in the past time or in the future, and so that's what, what, how it works.

So, according to 1 Corinthians 12, all believers can potentially operate in these gifts.

They can be given, and each time a happen is a gift that's willed by the spirit of God.

The spirit of God is distributing that gift and wants you to operate in that gift.

And, and just because you prophesy, though, doesn't make you a prophet, and just because you might have a discerning of spirits, maybe you have a dream and God paints a picture of something and it's a word of wisdom and contained in that dream.

That doesn't make you a prophet, it just means that you are seeing into the spirit realm.

Maybe it's a dream, we'll get into dreams, and so forth, because we are talking about the ministry of visions, but we have to be careful about the manifestations of the spirit and not go to seed, so to speak, not not to go wacky, flaky in these areas.

Why?

Why am I saying that?

Why am I making a condition?

Well, I just think back about Brother Hagin.

You know, brother Hagin was, was a prophet and he was part of the voice of healing revival back in the 40s and 50s.

And the tent revival that you had with Brother Oral Roberts and Branham and you had, you know, all these A, a, allen and different magnificent preachers.

Well, brother Hagin never did have a tent.

God told him to stay and teach his people faith in the churches and he never had a tent.

He never went along with the tent.

He wanted to stay with the tent he wanted.

And and, of course, a great personal sacrifice, because you know you have 10,000 people in a tent.

I mean one offering, I mean out of a, out of a 10,000 member crowd.

I mean that probably more than Brother Hagin made in a year.

I'm not, I'm not knocking it, I'm just saying he obeyed God to stay in the church and I'm not saying anything against the others.

They did not want them.

The churches didn't want Oral Roberts.

The churches didn't want them because they just they, they were, they just didn't want all that controversy.

They didn't want.

They just didn't want that.

He would, they, they, they had very strict rules.

You had to go by the rules, you know so and but anyway they had the voice of healing, brother Lindsay, gordon Lindsay, who later formed Christ for the nation's Bible school, and Gordon Lindsay was kind of the the one that kind of kept all these egos in check.

I mean, preachers, you preach to 10,000 people and you've got a traveling ministry.

It costs five or six, 18 wheelers have to bring the tent to the place and you, you erect that tent, you're there for two months or something.

I mean you've got to have it.

You've got to have some confidence in yourself, you've got to believe in yourself.

You don't have a denomination behind you.

It takes a huge amount of money to do it.

So these guys, you know they were pretty independent and they weren't.

They weren't, they were kind of competitive.

And so, brother, so they would have these meetings, the voice of healing meetings, and they'd get together and and brother and Lindsay had a heart to keep them all in in relationship with each other and make sure that they walked in love toward each other and that they were for each other and not out there competing and all of that kind of thing.

And but brother Hagan tells the story.

One time he was in a meeting with all of them and sitting in a room, I guess, and he said well, you know, while you guys are on the scrap heap, I'll still be preaching strong.

Oh Hagan, what are you?

You know, you, they didn't.

You know they didn't like, they didn't appreciate that.

What are you talking about?

He said well, I'll tell you why.

It's because you base your ministry on the gifts and I base my ministry on the word Amen.

Well, I heard that law many, many years, 30 years ago.

I heard that, that testimony, and, yes, we have the gifts of the spirit and we value the gifts of the spirit.

And there are, there are ministries of visions, but we don't go to seed on it.

Let's let's stay, let's stay with the word, because the gifts are all as the spirit wills, spirit wills.

You can't just operate in any kind of gift you decide to operate in.

In fact, there, I won't mention names, but there were, there were a couple of them that just got hooked into the, the, that type of thinking where they just had to perform 10,000 people are coming to see you and you better have something for them, you better have.

You know, and a lot of times they would get, they would have this gifts gifts one night and then the next night they'd be familiar spirits, demon powers would be calling people out, and and so it was.

It was a.

You know, some of them died young, some of them died and didn't last.

And brother Hagan lasted a long time.

He was 83 when he went to heaven and he had a very you know, and I appreciate his ministry because he did have a heart for the local church.

What if everybody had just been like the same and the and the local church had not given been given the benefit?

Are you with me now?

So we do love the gifts, we want the gifts to operate, and but we have to let God be the one who decides when and where, you know.

And so verse 11, it says all these work or demonstrate that one in the self same spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.

God is the administrator, the father, it administrates Jesus.

Let's see how is that?

The father originates, and I get it back to brother Dr Ed Dufresne.

I heard him say this many years ago.

He said the father originates, jesus administrates and the Holy Ghost demonstrates.

Praise God.

So God is involved.

And so I think about thinking about brother Hagin and the minister of visions, and he had some major visions that he writes about.

I believe in visions.

He has little mini-book talks about some of the ones where he went to hell.

First he died and went to hell, cried out and got saved and the next time he died he went to heaven and God sent him back because he wasn't ready.

He talked about all of that in his book and in the mini-book and then he's got a bigger book about different things that he experienced.

But in 1952, he was preaching in church in El Paso and he fell off the platform and broke his elbow and had taken to the hospital, had to put a cast on his arm and he's laying in the hospital bed and he's really feeling terrible.

I mean he's never been in the hospital.

I mean he received healing from heart defect and I don't know seven different kind of blood diseases.

He should have died when he was a teenager and he was raised up off the bed of sickness through the Word of Faith and I mean the doctors didn't give him any chance.

The preacher there in town didn't give him any chance.

You need to accept death.

You need to.

You know cope, coping skills.

You know Well, I don't cope with the devil.

I beat the devil in the head, so.

But here he is, laid up in the hospital.

He's feeling terrible.

He doesn't understand what in the world am I doing here?

How did I get here?

And he hears footsteps down the hallway and Jesus comes walking in the door and sits on the side of his bed.

The bed goes down like this.

He said he was wearing a white robe with a cinch, a gold cinch, around his waist, roman sandals, 5'11", 180 pounds.

And he said well, you're in here because you've been disobedient.

But he said it's going to be all right, don't worry about it, you're going to be fine, you're going to be healed.

You know I'm going to accelerate the healing.

I'm going to.

It's already starting and you're going to be out of this cast a lot quicker than what the doctors are saying.

And he said well, lord, what disobedient.

What in the world?

He said yeah, it's just a wrong emphasis in your ministry.

You've been saying for quite a while you know, I'm a teacher and a prophet, I'm a teacher and a prophet.

He said you got it out of order.

It's a prophet and teacher and you put the wrong emphasis on your ministry.

You put the ministry of teaching ahead of the ministry of the prophet.

You see, the prophet's ministry, the five-fold ministry, prophet is a seer, it's someone.

It's not like the Old Testament.

Now don't get, don't get New Testament prophets mixed up with Old Testament prophets.

They're different.

But yet as a New Testament prophet you see things sometimes you don't want to see.

I've heard him say that he was at Lakewood one time and he started weeping and he started speaking.

You know this was a big old convention.

The place was packed to the gills in the new building, I mean it's you know, 7,000 people in there and everybody's all.

You know Brother Hagin's preaching, brother Hagin's preaching, and he just he said some of you won't be here this time next year.

Oh, sometimes I just rather not see it.

He walked off the platform and the whole, the whole service just went.

You know it just fell down to the ground.

I was glad I wasn't budding following Brother Hagin that night because there was nothing left.

I mean, everybody went.

What did he say?

Everybody's looking around his eye.

Lord, am I not going to make it by next year?

Am I going to be dead?

I don't know who he was looking at, but he was.

Everybody was wondering who was he looking at?

But I heard him say this that being a prophet was uncomfortable.

It was not his comfort zone to know some of the things that God would give him to see and know.

And so, as a young preacher, you know, at that time he was just early in his traveling ministry, he had gotten off and started, just like it.

He was a teacher, like to teach, you know.

And so Jesus had to correct him mildly, said now, look, get back on course.

You're a prophet and a teacher.

Don't ignore the prophet's ministry.

He said the church will not set you in the church.

You have to function.

The church won't mature if you don't function in your gifting.

And he sent to the local churches.

So there's local churches that are never going to see a prophet, never.

They'd have to go see Branham, or they'd have to go see somebody like that in some tent meeting and then you know it's just goodbye and that's it.

You might see him one time in your life.

You know the prophet's ministry.

It's one of the five fold and we all need all five of them, or God wouldn't have given them as gifts.

We talked about some of that this morning and he spent an hour and a half with Brother Hagin.

So when he said you have been the wrong emphasis, you opened the door to the devil.

I didn't do this.

I didn't send this trouble, you opened the door at the devil.

You know, by being the wrong emphasis in your ministry, the devil was able to cause you to fall and hurt yourself.

He said just repent and you'll be fine.

And start majoring and emphasizing more of the prophet's ministry.

Pay more attention to the prophetic words and the prophetic insights that you have and don't shut that up.

And so he began to talk to him about his ministry.

He began to talk to him about the witness of the spirit.

So what was that when Jesus?

So he saw Jesus, that's the discerning of spirits right there.

And then when Jesus told him, you have not been emphasizing what was that?

A word of knowledge, and you're going to be just fine word of wisdom.

Y'all following how it works now.

And then Jesus began to talk to him about, you know, walking on the witness of the spirit.

Brother Hagin was always.

He had been invited to a church and he kept wadding up the acceptance letter.

He would say, yeah, I'm going to come.

And then he'd wad it up and throw it in the trash.

And then he'd get back and he'd write it again and he'd wad it up and throw it in the trash.

He said that is the witness.

I don't want you.

I'm telling you now, I do not want you going to that church because they won't accept your ministry.

But you've been thinking about maybe going to another church and they named the church.

He said that's me.

I want you.

I'm telling you now, I want you to go.

You knew it all along because you had that nice velvety kind of feeling in your spirit Every time you thought about going.

You were, you had an ease about it.

You just knew that was good and you kept resisting that.

Going to the other one, he said the witness is working in you and you're asking me to do it?

Right across the sky.

I'm never going to do that.

In fact, I'm never going to lead you this way that we're talking again.

You're going to have to walk by the witness of the spirit.

So he taught Brother Hagin personally, eyeball to eyeball, sitting on the side of his bed for an hour and a half in the hospital room.

Ministry of visions, boy, isn't that all?

Come on, lift your hands.

Thank God that we've had these kind of men and women that have blazed a trail for us to follow by.

I like it because he always, and Brother Osteen too they preached out of their mistakes.

I preach out of my mistakes.

What good is it?

I mean, I don't beat myself up, but everything I feel, like everything I've been through is for your benefit.

Why would I put a fence around it and say, well, I can't talk about it.

No, I'm going to talk about everything that I've been through.

It'll help somebody at some point.

So we have, then, different levels of visions, and basically, the Bible says that we're going in the last days.

We're going to see people with more of this manifestation.

We're going to see people, they're going to have visions, they're going to dream dreams, and it's a sign of the last days.

I know in this church, some of you are like that, and I want to encourage you with this message.

I think it'll help you to stay in the middle of the road, not get off in a ditch.

And so I had a person I won't say man or woman.

I had a person a number of years ago that had a, really was developing a very strong prophetic gift.

I wouldn't call that person a prophet, but I would say a prophet in training and I corrected a few things and they wouldn't receive it, got in a huff and left and wrote a prophet friend of mine, one that I'd had a long relationship with, complaining about me, and he gave me a copy of the letter.

He wrote back to this person and he said you can't ever leave that church, you will never progress in the ministry if you don't submit yourself to this man of God.

He is seasoned, he's been sent by God to make you accountable and you're bucking him and you're bucking God and you're going to get on the scrap heap If you don't repent.

Get back in that church.

And they never did come back.

I said they never came back.

See, some people just don't want to.

They're just too independent for their own good, and so it's good when you have gifts of the spirit to be teachable, all right.

So the highest level of vision is the open vision, that's your physical senses are not suspended, your eyes are not closed, yet one hears and sees in the spirit realm.

That's a lot of times when I'm ministering the word of knowledge for healing.

I see things with my eyes open and I see like X-rays.

That's been functioning in my life for a long time and I have to have the right.

I mean, I can't.

I do that every time we had church If it was up to me.

But it's not up to me, it's up to the Holy Ghost.

And I've got to make sure that I don't ever get off into something trying to perform it or trying to operate the gift.

No, the gift operates through me.

I don't operate the gift.

But that's the highest time of vision is your senses are not suspended, your eyes are wide open and yet you see into the spirit realm.

And so you know, when Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection, their eyes were wide open.

He comes walking in the door, in fact right there in Mark, chapter 16, one of our favorite verses, you know, right before he's given them the great commission in Mark 16.

Mark 16 · chapter mention

Let's just look there.

Look at it real quick.

I know you know it, but let's look at it.

This is an open vision and they all had it at the same time.

Verse 14, afterward he appeared.

Jesus appeared under the 11 as they sat at me and up braided them with their unbelieving hardness of heart.

You know he didn't pass out hugs.

I said he didn't pass out, he just risen from the dead.

He just hung on the cross.

He didn't come in there.

And all you little darlings, come here, give your savior a hug.

No, he, he, he chewed them out.

What's wrong with you?

Because you believe, not them, which had seen him after he was risen.

Mary Mary tried to tell them.

They didn't want, they didn't want to hear.

And then he said unto them you're fired.

I'm going to find somebody else.

Now, what he said going to all the world, preach the gospel, the every creature, the great commission was attached to a word of wisdom and a discerning of spirits.

Come on, lift your hands right now.

I mean, god is very practical about the things that he shows you.

Very practical.

You know, when I, we were in the first building, it was the summer of 1996.

In fact, it was late spring and our landlord called me and we were out growing.

I mean, we didn't have enough parking.

We were just kind of, we were overflowing.

We were already at the point where we had to do something and my landlord called me and said, john.

He said, look, I've got all this land.

Pick out a piece.

I got to pick out a five acre tract of land.

I'll build you a 15 to 20,000 square foot metal building and I, if you sign a five year lease, I'll lease it to you with the same money you're paying now for this old junkie of a building we were in.

I mean, every time it rained, those, those ceiling tiles that get wet.

Jay spent most of his time changing out the ceiling tiles because they they'd milled it in between services.

I mean, you go in there.

I mean the the alarm would go off in the middle of the night.

You know who set off the alarm?

The rats in the ceiling set off the motion sensors.

I'd go in there with my gun.

I'm, I'm looking around and you hear the rats in the ceiling.

Man, that was spooky, I hated that job.

I quickly gave that to Jay.

I'm going to go from now.

It seemed like it was always Saturday night, I don't understand, but anyway.

But he said, and I prayed.

I thought, wow, look at this, look at what God is doing.

God didn't give, wouldn't give me a witness on it.

I had no witness.

So I went back to him.

I said, look, I appreciate that, but God won't let me go forward on that.

But I am interested in maybe buying some land.

It showed me now, and so he showed me some different tracks.

He had several five acre tracks, one 10 acre track, and so I was out looking at this one particular five acre track, on, on, on Hafer, hafer, no, huh, haynes, on Haynes.

If you've ever been down Haynes, don't, and it's like a pig trail.

I mean it's you, two people can't get.

I mean you got to get one, you got to get one tire in the bar ditch, you know, to pass two people.

I mean, like that, if we don't, if we'd have bought five acres on that man, it floods.

Every time it rains an inch it's flooded, and it's over between 1960 and the all.

And so so I was sitting, I was parked in the road looking at the five acre track, and all of a sudden my eyes are wide open, my senses are not suspended, and I see this, this big old thing in the skies, a circle with a around a star, and the first thing I thought about was Marshall Dylan, the Marshall's badge.

I mean not no, no, joe Gunsmoke, that's what I thought about.

And I see this Marshall's badge, you know, and it's, it's in the sky and it comes down and just lands right here.

It's as big as this center section, right here about 30 foot circle, in the middle of that five acres.

It just lands there and I'm just going.

What am I seeing?

What does that mean?

And then suddenly I zoom up, up, up, up and I'm looking straight down at it like a you know an aerial photograph, until that circle got so small that it reminded me of how you look at a map and you designate Austin as the capital of Texas, or even Washington DC the capital of the United States, and so they always designate the capital with a circle and star on there.

And so I'm I'm befuddled, I don't know what I'm seeing.

I haven't heard anything, I've just seen.

And so I asked the question well, lord, what are you trying to tell me?

You're going to make of some kind of capital, what?

And I heard two words regional center, word of wisdom, regional center.

I didn't know what in the world.

A regional center was.

Never heard of it, but it's been.

It's been over and over.

I mean confirmed.

One time, when we were preparing to build a building, we still had the property down the street and we were having to move out of the church down the street under duress.

We had 90 days to move.

I started trying to figure out a way that we could.

We could do a building like this on grass.

You know this, this building doesn't have to have a slab, you can build this building on anything.

And I thought, what if we just built a big tent on that property and we have mobile bathrooms and we could have mobile air conditioning?

You know, we could.

Just we could occupy that land down there without building a big building.

We could just have, you know, a temporary structure.

Well, you know, I.

So I had to hire experts to go to the city and we went, we went through down this, this road for a little while and of course we didn't get very far.

But the guy was so interested, he was a Methodist, I think, and he's called a plan.

What is his expertise?

Well, I can't think of the net kind of name of his profession, but anyway, he came from my engineer.

My engineer recommended him.

So we we talked to him and we gave him a couple of thousand dollars for his trouble and he sat and met with me and so I went through this whole thing and he said so, you're a regional center.

And okay, and I said, wait, hold on, hold on.

Just what did you say?

He said well, you're a regional center.

I said regional center.

Here's a professional.

He's not exact, he's not a spirit field Christian and he's using the same language that the Holy Ghost told me what we had.

And so we didn't wind up doing business, we didn't wind up going that direction because the county wouldn't let us.

I mean, the county has got more ways to stop you from doing what you want to do than you can imagine.

We, we just think we're free.

We're not really free, got too many.

We've got too many regulations as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, we can't even drill a well.

Did you know you can't drill a well?

You can't have a water well in Harris County, the law and so forth, anyway.

So that door was closed, but at least I had a.

You know, I had a witness on the.

You know, I had a witness on the.

You know a witness on the on the regional center.

And so I'm talking about open visions, highest level of open visions.

Another time we were in a prayer meeting in June of 1998, thursday night prayer, and suddenly, suddenly, I'm just, I'm a hundred foot off the ground on post oak road.

I'm on, you know, the south side of post oak, looking toward the Williams Tower and I'm looking off to my right and I see this pipeline of fire coming down the sidewalk, about eight inches in diameter, and it stops in front of the Williams tower, goes into the building and goes up the elevators and goes to every floor.

This fire, and I'm just in awe.

I mean, I'm, I'm, what am I doing?

I'm a hundred foot off the ground.

I'm looking at all this, trying to what does this mean?

And and I heard this voice I'm about to judge corporate America, june of 1998.

I'm about to judge corporate America.

And then I thought, well, where did the fire come from?

So I looked down the street to the east and in the distance I saw the capital, I saw Washington DC.

So I knew then that judgment was going to begin at our government.

And after the judgment fell in our government, we were going to have judgment in corporate America June of 1998.

So in just a few weeks after that.

So then, so the I saw the vision.

So then I looked down in the prayer meeting.

I looked down at my shoes, I felt something and I was standing ankle deep in blood.

Blood was over my ankles, thick, dark blood, and I'm horrified.

It began to weep.

I said, oh God, I plead the blood of all the soldiers that have died in this country.

No Heard, that, no man.

And so I said, well, lord, the blood of Jesus.

Then, and then I came out of the the vision, and I was shaken.

Five hours later, five hours by that, by the time of when I had that visitation with that open by vision, our embassies were attacked in Tanzania and in Kenya.

Al Qaeda that was their first major attack that they perpetrated against our embassies and we lost about 200 of our military personnel and over 1000 Africans died in that attack.

And Clinton was the president at the time.

He had a chance to kill twice, been lauding and didn't had him in that.

You know, had a team that had him in the sights, they he wouldn't pull the trigger and and so then also, I was watching.

Are y'all getting anything out of this?

I was watching the news one night and this was after.

Tom delay was our Speaker of the house and he's from Houston area and his head of security was killed.

A guy, a crazy person, broke in through the capital security and it was armed and he killed two people.

One of them was was the head of security, and then another one was another peace officer and they had arrested this man.

He was Waco and had happened to be watching the arraignment and they talked about how, what this man had done, and I remembered that that was maybe a little bit before my vision, talking about judging court, judging them, washington.

I saw something going on in Washington, something had gone on in our embassies.

Did God do it?

No, god, just we've gotten.

And so, anyway, get back to my story.

So I'm watching television and I'm just watching this whole thing.

They have a rain, the guy, he's going to go to trial and the Holy Ghost, just his loud voice.

See, you can't protect yourselves, so part of judgment is God lifting his hand of protection.

We talked about the hoopla this morning.

We talked about the wedding canopy, we talked about the covering, the spiritual covering that's over this nation, and we've been interrupting that, we've been blowing holes in it for a long time and God was alerting me.

We're part of a regional center.

We have authority in the spirit realm executive, legislative and judicial authority.

I didn't give it to myself, god gave it to me, gave it to us.

Are you with me now Talking about the ministry of visions?

That's why we're so determined to push back right now against these lies.

We can't let it go, can't let it go.

We can't let these people lie to us, take our rights and privileges away from us in the name of some stupid epidemic that's no worse than the flu.

This is not leprosy, this is not smallpox.

They find one person that dies.

They keep giving you one person that dies and you know, in a huge population you're bound to find some kid, 12 years old, that dies of it.

Did he really die of it?

I don't even believe it anymore.

I don't believe what they're saying.

I don't believe a thing.

They say Defund the CDC, defund the National Institute of Health.

Praise God, I'm on a roll time.

I'm on a roll time.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And so, anyway, this is June when I had this visitation.

Then, a couple of weeks later, you can't protect yourself.

And then our illustrious president got up and said I did not have relations with that woman, lied to the American people.

God pulled back the curtain and showed his sin and his and anybody else would have been driven out of Washington on a rail.

If it would have been a Republican, he would have been, he would have perished in infamy.

But oh no, all of the big preachers got together and had a prayer meeting and said you're absolved.

I spoke out against that too.

If he repented he would have resigned.

That's what repentance means.

He never repented.

He hadn't repented to this day.

Are you with me now?

So the corporate America?

I mean.

If you go back in 1990, right in there, that was the beginning of the big tech you know they were selling dot com, they were selling internet addresses.

In the early days of the internet that was inflated to like to the end degree.

All of that failed the tech market.

The NASDAQ fell huge and right up in front of the 9-11 disaster, we started seeing God lifting his hand off of our nation.

He judged not only Washington, he judged corporate America for their godlessness.

He's gonna judge them again.

They're too involved.

I just don't believe that corporations should have the ability to back these kinds of communist organizations like Black Lives Matter.

It's a communist organization.

They should not be allowed to give money to that.

That is not a charity.

That is a.

They ought to prosecute everybody in it.

That's not a charity.

They're not doing anything.

They're spreading sedition.

Let's push against it.

Come on, let's quit.

Quit letting them call us all these names.

They're the ones that are racist, they're the ones that are awful.

We're the righteousness of God in Christ.

Our hearts are pure.

So, ministry of visions, all right.

The second highest level Get anything out of this tonight.

All right, the second highest level is a trance.

Let's look at 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, where, no, it's wrong.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Acts 10, excuse me, acts 10, where Paul Peter, excuse me goes up and verse verse nine.

Halfway through the verse, peter went up upon the house top to pray about the sixth hour that's noon and he became very hungry, would have eaten, but while they made ready, he fell into a what Fell?

Into a trance.

Now trance.

Your physical senses are suspended and you just see nothing but what you're seeing.

You're immersed to a higher degree in the vision.

He fell into a trance and the trance, of course, was the.

You know the sheet knit together at the four corners and all these unclean animals rise.

Peter, kill and eat.

Oh Lord, I've never eaten anything unclean.

Don't call not what God has cleansed, don't call it unclean.

Three times happened, three times.

Then he woke up and then a man was there to take him to Cornelius's house and you know, this is where the Gentiles were saved and Peter's a Jew, they had all this hangups about Judaism.

They were still hung up and they weren't doing what God told them to do.

Jesus said we're not going to all the world, not the Jewish world.

So they were still hanging around in Jerusalem doing just preaching to other Jews Come on, get the Gentiles involved.

And so that's what God had to do.

He had to grant a trance, and here's another one.

Another trance is Acts 22.

And it really occurred earlier in Paul's testimony.

This is when he's testifying the Festus, but he's talking about a time in Acts 22, verse 17, right when he had first gotten saved on the road to Damascus.

Acts 22:17

And it says verse 17,.

And he's giving his testimony.

It came to pass that when I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance.

See, this is Paul, and I saw him saying unto me.

Jesus appeared to him in this trance and said make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me, they will not.

So, word of wisdom, future tense they're not going to listen to you.

Get out of Dodge, get out of town.

And so a trance.

Everybody say a trance.

And so in October of 98, I had gone to a Rodney Howard Brown meeting.

He was here in town, in Umbil, and it was a morning meeting.

And Brother Osteen came in to that meeting and I hadn't seen him in a while.

We had prayed for him a few months.

He had his sons and daughters come in a special service at Lakewood.

We all gathered around Brother Osteen, we laid hands on him, prayed over him, and I hadn't seen him since then.

But in that meeting, when he came in, someone brought him and he looked so frail, he was so pale, he was white as a sheet, so frail, lost weight.

He looked terrible, you know, and my heart just sunk at seeing him and he sat right in front of me.

I just wanted to take him in my arms and hold him.

I mean, I just felt so bad.

And then later that month, when I was at my house and I had gotten a phone call that let me know that he had been on dialysis, they had had to put him on dialysis and so I was sad for that and not surprised, but sad for him.

And later that morning, about 11 o'clock I guess, I was in my house, coming from the kitchen, going through the part of my house there's a little short hallway from the kitchen to the dining room and there's a little short hallway there's my utility room on the right-hand side of this hall and then I'm going to my study and I'm headed there and I stop and I'm looking into the.

For some reason I looked into the utility room and I fell into a trance and in the trance I saw this paneled room.

This looked like I mean I just thought of a lawyer's office.

I don't know why, probably because of this big, long mahogany table.

I didn't see anybody, but I heard a voice saying and to John Griner I bequeath and I knew in the trance that they were reading Pastor Osteen's last will and testament and to John Griner I bequeath.

And then there was a pause and I didn't hear what I got left.

I didn't hear the thing that was mine and I felt the emotion, the awe and the wonder of it.

Right after that, right after I mean I'm sitting down, didn't hear what it was, but I had this awe and wonder and I said in the trance you mean, he left me, that I'm not even his blood.

And then I came out of the trance and I rebuke the devil.

I said, oh, I'm that the vain imagination, I'm G, you know, pastor, oh seems going to live and not die and to clear the works of the Lord.

I felt guilty.

I felt like it was the devil trying to get me out of faith for believing for my pastor.

And so then, a few few weeks later, this is the end of 98.

So then, january of 99, 23rd, two o'clock in the morning, they got a call.

They've taken brother Osteen.

He collapsed, they've taken him to the hospital.

He's.

He's not responding very well, he's, and so glad it's got a man.

She was praying up a storm, she's, she's shouting at the devil.

And the Holy Ghost speaks to me.

He says Moses, my servant is dead.

Now therefore rise.

And I suddenly thought about that occasion that I told you about the trance, and I recognize that it was a trance.

God replayed the whole trance for me and I said honey, don't, don't pray, he's gone.

And then I had a vision.

I guess I don't know what, how to describe it, but in convention, in the trance, I remembered the vision I had.

I remembered the trance and correctly realized it was God.

And then I was like on, I was like the nose cone of a rocket.

I wasn't on it, I was the nose cone of a rocket.

I mean, I'm hurtling through space and I'm not aware of my body.

It's like my nose is out there.

You know, I'm like Superman, you know.

Only Superman always had his arms out.

I didn't have my arms out, I'm just.

My nose is leading away and I'm going through this space and I go through this narrow spot and when I did it, just everything closed in around me and then I burst through, accelerated and burst through the other side and I began to hear Joshua, chapter one be strong and very courageous, you'll cause these people to inherit their promises.

And I knew that God had given me my inheritance, my spiritual inheritance, from my years of service.

Praise God.

And somebody.

I was telling the story once before this testimony, and somebody said well, you went through the birth canal.

I said, well, you know, that's kind of right Birth canal.

That's what happens.

But baby gets in that birth canal and they don't stay there.

They were right through.

And they come into this world.

Praise God, aren't you glad they do come into the world.

They don't stay there.

So everybody say a trance.

And then the last one I'll share I've been going along while having a.

Are you tired?

You want me to stop now?

All right.

The last one is a spiritual vision, a vision in your spirit, or you see something in your spirit.

In Acts, chapter nine, for instance, saul of Tarsus is on the road to Damascus and he, jesus, appeared to him and he was blinded and knocked off his horse.

Who art thou, lord?

I am Jesus, whom thou persecutes Now.

He didn't see Jesus, but he saw him in his spirit.

He didn't see him.

His eyes were already blind, his eyes were crusted over and he didn't get healed from that for three more days.

And the Ananias came and laid hands on him and their brother, paul, received thy side and he, he, he was seeing after that.

But so he had a spiritual vision.

He saw Jesus and heard Jesus.

It was a spiritual vision and this includes dreams.

Dreams are called night visions.

Think about Paul and Silas on their first missionary journey, after Paul and Barnabas had split up.

Remember they had a fallen out.

Oh my God, they don't.

I mean, you know I've had a few fallings out.

I try my very best to always maintain on my side a spiritual connection that I have with another minister, but sometimes there have been a number of times when I just couldn't keep us together, and so then I just have to know how to move on.

And so where do you have the courage to do that?

Well, I, you know, paul taught me that Paul's.

You know, paul, barnabas was the, was the elder of the two.

He was the one that showed Paul the ropes.

He's the one that introduced him to all the apostles in Jerusalem.

Yeah, he's the real deal.

I mean, he used to persecute us, but now he's one of us, and they didn't really believe him for a while.

They were pretty, they kept him kind of at arm's length, paul, you know, but Barnabas was his friend and his entree.

But yet, as they progressed, it was obvious when you read your Bible, paul, it was Barnabas and Paul, barnabas and Saul, actually Barnabas and Saul, and then suddenly it was Paul and Barnabas.

That's significant, because the Holy Ghost noticed that Paul had outranked him.

If you, if you will, paul had been promoted in the spirit realm.

And so they, they fell out about a, about a relative, and later on that relative was useful to Paul.

Paul, it wasn't anything about the young man, he just wasn't mature enough to be going on a missionary journey and he had already left them in alerts before and in.

Barnabas was just determined to take him.

He just threw it lying in the sand and try to pull rank Didn't work very well.

And you never hear about Barnabas again.

He falls out of the pages of the Bible.

But Paul, but Paul kept keeps on going.

So in this first missionary journey they're on the road and and they're saying to go into Bithynia, but the spirit suffered them not.

And then they were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia Minor.

God told them what?

No, no, no.

In one night he had a dream, a night vision, and there was a man of Macedonia come over here and help us.

And so they went to Macedonia, shuring, being assured that that God had sent them there.

So sometimes you have spectacular guidance in a dream and that dream had to be, you know, it was obvious what the it was obvious.

You know, sometimes dreams have to be interpreted.

That's where I've seen people get kind of hung up on dreams and if you're not careful you can get misled.

And I'm speaking from my own personal experience.

I found and it's, you know, it's not necessarily scriptural, but it's just what I've learned myself that the more complicated a dream is.

You know, sometimes dreams are just short and quick, and that's it, one's thing, and that's it.

Sometimes, though, they have a segments they're the first segment and the second segment, and sometimes they're connected.

Sometimes they're not quite connected, and, and so it makes it a little more complicated to really find out.

What does the dream mean?

And I found in my own life, dreams were so vivid, they had four or five segments.

I got down and rode and rode, and rode and rode, and I had no idea what in the world the Holy Ghost was trying to tell me, and I've held on to things like that for sometimes two, three, four weeks, and finally I just released it and said well, you know what, if you want me to be guided by something, well, you'll have to make it clear I've had to release and finally, just not worry about a dream like that.

Most of the dreams that I know were from God were fairly short, they're quick, they're, they're pretty easy to, they're not really that hard to interpret.

So if the harder it is to interpret, the more suspicious you should be, and if you get a dream that you believe is from God, then you ought to ask the question, father, why did you show me this?

Why did you grant me this gift of the spirit discerning of spirits which is associated with a word of knowledge or a word of wisdom.

Why did you give it to me?

And I like to tell people, you know, if you're in a church like this number one, we have the gifts of the spirit.

You're under a covering that has those gifts operating on a pretty regular basis, and I'm not saying all the time because I I don't have that many dreams.

I don't have that many visions.

I have enough.

I don't ask for them.

I'll be honest with you.

I never asked for those.

Why would I ask for a trouble?

Because when you get a dream and from God, you're going to have a bunch of trouble or well, or else you wouldn't have been granted such a spectacular gift.

With the fireworks comes more fireworks later.

So be careful what you ask for.

But I would say, if you know it's good to be a prayer warrior in this play, you know, most of the time when people get dreams and visions, they get them in prayer many times or they get them as a result of prayer, and that means, if you'll ask the Lord, most of the time it.

Just it means that you need to pray it out.

You're getting granted a certain piece of God's knowledge and pray it out and process the plan of God in prayer.

We're all fit together and we all have a part to play.

I've had people say, yeah, I believe I need to write a, write a book.

Well, no, you don't need to write a book.

Who's going to buy it?

You know why don't you pray a while?

Is that the reason you think you've got this vision?

Is it so you could write a book?

Listen, frankly, I've seen a lot of books that just didn't need to be written.

It's just wasting paper.

I mean, if you don't know how to you know put a sentence structure together, you don't know how to edit something, you don't know how to make it exciting to read, you don't know how to you know I mean it.

It takes what most people don't have.

You know, I've heard preachers say, oh, everybody ought to write a book.

I just don't.

I don't agree.

I think there ought to be a reason to write a book.

There ought to be.

You ought to have an audience that you're going to reach with your book.

And I wrote a book.

Nobody bought it, nobody cared.

Well, pastor, well, I was obedient.

I did what I felt like I should do.

I went to the national booksellers deal.

I stayed there three days.

I glad us and I wore ourselves, outstanding on our feet for three solid days in Denver, colorado.

Man, I don't ever want to go back to Denver.

Thank you very much.

Ain't no food there?

Get me back, to get me back to where I can eat some fajitas.

Man, I tell you, there ain't no fried shrimp in Denver, forget it.

There's no, no Cajun food there.

Gruel porridge, no, I'm just kidding.

If you're from Denver, I'm sorry, I apologize right now.

No, I, you know.

I just believe we ought to obey God, but the best thing to do is process your dreams and prayer.

If you're not in the full-time ministry, I mean, you know, we, we, we have in our prayer meetings.

People see things all the time.

It's just part of of this church is uh, you can listen.

God has called this church to rule and reign and so it takes everybody joining in and just be part of the big, be part of the part of the puzzle piece rather than try to figure out what you as an individual are going to have to offer.

Um, talking about, uh, the night visions I've got, I just feel, led to to share this one.

We had a couple that we met in a trip that we took to Israel and we they were just pastors from I won't say where, but they were just great people and we went to see them.

I preached in their church for four day meeting and stayed in their home with them.

They just had a delightful family.

You got to know their daughter and they were great people, or great people and so they had given up their church and had decided to help another ministry by pastoring a church.

The ministry they were gonna be involved with was we're not pastors, they were traveling and so they were gonna pastor the church in the home city of this ministry.

They were close to that couple, we knew them as well and we actually helped them get their visa.

We vouched for them and helped them fill out the paperwork and wrote letters to help them get their visa, and they were here for a while and I'd heard a few things that they were struggling and things just didn't work out very well.

But I didn't know any details.

They're just mature and they're not gonna cry on my shoulder.

And so he called me and he said we just really want to come see y'all.

Well, I said, well, come on.

And now we don't, we're not the kind glad.

This and I, I mean we like to be hospitable, but we're, you know, we're just past.

I mean I'm sorry, I can't have people come and see me.

I mean I don't even my brother anymore stays in a hotel.

I mean we just, you know, it's not that we don't have the room, it's just hard for us to do what we do and entertain and do all of that and so, but we this was a number of years ago, and so I come on.

And so the three of them are husband, wife and daughter came and they got here on a Saturday afternoon and next day, sunday, you know, right, I'm going to be up there.

And back in those days I'd, you know, I sang, I led worship by.

You know, takes a lot of energy.

So we sat in the living room, we were just talking, chatting with them and shooting the breeze, and I'm thinking the whole time why are they here?

Why did they come?

I know they've got something or they wouldn't have driven all the way here from another state.

And you know, and suddenly she starts crying the wife.

She just busts out crying, I mean weeping racks.

I'm so sorry, I didn't intend to do this.

Just I said it's all right, you just cried out.

We'll talk about it in a minute when you get your composure.

And so and he was kind of reluctant, he didn't want to talk about anybody.

I said, look, you don't, you can't, we're not talking about anybody.

You're hurting, you're hurting.

Why are you hurting?

What's hurting?

And so they told me the story of what they had been brought into.

They were given no authority.

Here they are the pastors, but they weren't the pastors.

Here they were supposed to feed the sheep, but they couldn't feed them.

What they.

You know, it was always interruption, it was always it was frustrating.

And then they were, they were kind of dishonored and they were told things that just that were ridiculous.

And I know I just hear in one side of the story there's always two sides.

So I was very non-committal.

I said, well, we're going to pray tomorrow in church.

I just believe in the corporate anointing, and so I just wanted to keep it, as as a pastor, I can't afford to get involved too deeply in warfare with people that I don't have a great big connection with.

We had some connection in the past, but nothing right now.

And this is potentially, you know, holding on to 220 volt live wire, you know, and so.

But that night I had a dream, and in the dream, these two people that they were working with, and then that too.

So those, they're four and me, so five people in this room.

Now, this room didn't look like a church.

It looked, I don't know, it looked kind of like a barracks or something.

It was kind of a grubby looking place.

It was dark, it was dingy, I don't know, I can't describe the looks.

It had a screen door going outside, one of those old timey screen doors with a spring on it.

Anybody, did you have one of those in your house?

I had a.

I had a screen door with a spring on it, right, he, he, he, he.

You know so.

And so we're, we're in this room, and my eyes went to the woman, the wife of the other ministry that was abusing this couple, and I looked at her and she had on a, a black dress.

That was a choke, choked her around the neck, just real, real, right up here underneath her, you know, as high as it could go, and all the way to the floor and she had a black hair with a bun on the back, and her face was white, like painted white, with dark eyes, and but I recognized who she was because it was the.

It was that minister couple that had invited to become pastor of their church, and they gave up a thriving church, by the way and the young couple that took that church over stabbed them in the back and refused to support their ministry.

They, they, were supposed to support their ministry, and so I had met them before, and so they'd had a lot of betrayal, anyway.

So in the dream I'm looking at Jezebel, and so in the dream, I began to rebuke Jezebel, I began to rebuke the devil, I broke the power of the devil over this couple and those two went running out that screen door, busted through that screen door and ran out in the street and I woke up.

So so what did I do the next morning?

I got out here and I ran the devil off, I took my sword out, I cut the bondage off of them.

I mean, I set them free, praise God.

They went home singing and they eventually moved back to their home.

Originally, they, they, couldn't get their church back, and but it it took.

It took something out of her and I was able to get her free.

But she went to heaven about three years later to answer killed her, and I'm just so sad for that couple because they got sucked into a demonic power.

Oh, I tell you, we need the covering that we were talking about this morning.

If they'd have just stayed closer to me, I think I could have helped them, but they, you know, they didn't ask Are you getting anything out of this?

Yeah, so you know.

Don't worry, don't look for these manifestations winding this up.

Don't look for manifestations like this, but know how to receive them as they come.

Always pray and ask God.

Why did you show me this?

Don't presume, don't ask soon.

Just be humble, be ready to for God to use you in these last days, because all of these things are a sign that Jesus is coming soon.

Come on, lift your hands, receive the word of God tonight.

Praise God.