The glory of God manifested in the past will help prepare us for what we should expect in the future. If we have a precedent and can review some of these glorious encounters, then we have a clue as to what to expect in the new move of the future. I would like to share some of these from personal experience for the glory of God.
One outstanding event comes to my memory. I was in a meeting with several hundred people present. The presence of God was so real you could actually see a glory cloud in a heavy blue haze. It brought a spirit of reverence upon all of us.
Signs such as this are needed at times to alert God's people as to what to expect in the next outpouring. It will be supernaturally natural. Yet God has to deal with our unbelief and demonstrate the extraordinary to alert us. Even Moses and Joshua had to demonstrate again the miracles that had been done in Egypt--then the people believed God.
The Bible records how Jesus had authority over the elements. As an example of this, on one occasion, I was flying from Binghamton, New York, to Buffalo when a dense fog settled down on me. I lost sight of the railroad I was following. I did not have any instruments in my plane for that kind of flying. Instinctively I knew I was in immediate danger of crashing into the hillside. In desperation I called upon the Lord. Immediately I burst into unknown tongues and to my amazement the fog dissipated. I turned back to see for sure and there was not a bit of fog anywhere. It was a rebuke of the Spirit through me that took authority over the fog. I landed at the first available airport to collect my composure. A notable miracle had taken place.
More of these kinds of miracles will happen in the future. Please do not think I tell these things to exalt myself. To the contrary, they were humbling experiences.
I saw another outstanding thing happen at close range. An evangelist took a young child who had polio and stood him on top of the pulpit. One leg was deformed and just dangled by his side. I saw that dangling limb grow out instantly to the right length and size. The child was lowered to the floor, and he began to run back and forth. Another mother came running with her child, who had a leg similar to the other child. It was also healed, and the two children were running and playing before hundreds of people.
Miracles produce faith. There was great joy in that meeting, and many souls were saved. This is the purpose of the glory in the last days.
Another time, a newborn baby was brought to me. The mother in her anxiety placed the baby right in my arms. The doctors had taken X-rays showing that the baby lacked intestines and did not have natural passage. Even though the mother was feeding the baby, death by starvation was the predicted outcome. I thought the least I could do was to pray. While praying, all of a sudden the gift of faith came. The baby was miraculously healed, and the actual body parts lacking were created. That child is a mother herself today.
This next story is an awful ordeal that I myself went through. I had just come home from Japan where I was doing missionary work, a sick man indeed. We had been holding many weeks of tent meetings, and I became ill with distress in my stomach. The doctors took X-rays and found the worst kind of cancer. They did not try to persuade me to have an operation, but left the decision to me. What was I to do? I thought of my family, my wife and two children. Any father would like to live. Finally I told the doctors to go ahead and operate.
After four hours on the operating table, they took me to my room. This surgery was my first experience in the hospital. When I awoke and saw the nurse all dressed in white by my bedside, I thought I was already in heaven. She assured me I was not.
I seemed to be perfectly normal except for one thing: I could not keep a single thing in my stomach. I was constantly vomiting, and as a result, losing my strength. On the fourth day of trying to keep food down, they rolled in the glucose bottle, put the needle in my arm, and began to feed me intravenously. The doctor had a pale look on his face and I knew something was terribly wrong.
By then I was in extreme pain. I asked the nurse for a hypo, but she told me, "You have had your last one--no more.
While she was preparing me for the night, I said, "I don't know if I shall make it through the night, but if I do, I want to be a greater soul winner than ever before." I did not remember saying that to her, but she told me the next morning that I had.
I do not remember ever feeling as alone as I did that night after the nurse had gone. I was going through torment with my nerves. Physically, I was going downhill fast. My family was 2,000 miles away and I wondered if I would ever see them again in this life? Many thoughts continued to race through my mind. I even wondered if my life's journey was over, if my ministry was finished.
About two in the morning, "all hell broke loose." I felt I was slipping. I rang for the nurse, but she was the only one on duty in that wing; having many other patients, she could not come right away. All of a sudden, I felt myself leave my body and start to float upward. I knew this was death. I floated up a few feet above my bed toward the corner of the room. I remember feeling so strange as I looked back and saw my own body laying there on the bed.
A hundred thoughts ran through my mind. When your spirit is out of your body, your thought life continues. Your spirit is the real you, your body is only the house in which you live. I thought of my family and the Lord's work. One thought above all the others kept going through my mind, "Have I done all that I could do for the Master?"
As I answered that question, I knew that my life's work was not done. I remembered unfulfilled prophecy, especially in China, and knew I had more to do. As this became clear to me, I cried out, "No! I refuse to die!" Even though I did not see Heaven, I knew that Jesus was waiting for me and that was a beautiful thought. I knew that the death of a Christian is glorious, but I just did not want to go yet. I found myself descending back into my body--sort of backing into it, like when you back a car into a garage. But the battle was not over. Then the death angel appeared in the door of the hospital room. I don't know why I didn't see him before; I am just relating the story as it happened.
Someone might suggest that all of this was only a dream, but I assure you that I was very much awake. The Bible speaks of the death angel passing through the land of Egypt, killing the firstborn. Death is an enemy, very persistently trying to take us before our time. But the death angel can go no further than God allows. I believe God allowed me to go through this experience to show me the reality of life and death.
The death angel stood in the doorway and said, "I am going to take you." Speaking more emphatically than before, I said, "You are not." I arose on my elbows and quoted, or I should say the Holy Ghost quoted, Psalm 118:17, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord."
The power is in the Word. Immediately after I quoted this scripture, I became as strong as a bull. I then jumped out of the bed and attacked the death angel. Talk about Jacob wrestling an angel! I believe he was wrestling a good angel because he was left with a blessing. This one was a bad angel; as I said, death is an enemy. Around and around we went.
I believe the Lord has a sense of humor and will even use the humorous to help us. While I was wrestling the death angel, I believe the Lord brought a memory to mind from my childhood. When my uncle Alf, who was not a Christian, had a few drinks, he enjoyed getting my cousin and me to wrestle one another. He would watch us, and give a quarter to the winner. Because of my greater strength I was getting all the quarters, until one day my cousin just overwhelmed me. He had discovered a hold called the "half-nelson." Whenever he got me in that hold, I found any move I made just worked against me. From then on my cousin was getting all the money.
I cried out to the Lord, "Just let me get that half-nelson on this death angel." Finally I did, and it seemed to strangle the death angel until he crawled on his hands and knees through the door and disappeared. Following this experience, I understood how Samson got his strength, not only to take down the door of the city gate, but the doorjamb as well!
Standing in the middle of the floor as the mighty conqueror, I was perspiring from head to foot! The incision where they took out half of my stomach was about twelve inches long; bandages bound my entire chest and stomach area. I was so hot that I decided to open the window for air. As it was during the winter, the window had swollen tight and was hard to lift. Can you imagine? I went from being so weak, I could barely turn over in bed, to lifting a window that was very hard to lift. A change like that had to be God!
After raising the window, I jumped into bed and fell fast asleep. I did not wake up until the nurse came in at 7 a.m. She was a tough little nurse, a non-Christian, and had been out drinking at parties. At times her language was not as wholesome as it should have been, although after she had discovered that I was a Christian and a minister, she cleaned up her vocabulary a bit. But in seeing the open window, she slipped into her normal speech and blurted out, "Who in the so-and-so opened that window?"
"I did," I explained.
"Impossible," she said, "you were so weak when I left you, I thought you were going to die in the night."
"I did," I replied to her amazement, and then asked her, "Did you open the window?"
"No," she said. Knowing the feat had to be a miracle, she asked, "Would you mind telling me what happened?"
Can you imagine a sinner girl listening to the story of one dying, coming back from the dead and having a wrestling match with the death angel? Looking at me and then to the window, wonderment covered her face. As she gazed at me, tears came into her eyes and flowed down her cheeks. "Something has been bothering me all night long," she said. "After I left your room last night, I could not get over you saying that if you lived, you wanted to be a greater soul winner. I don't understand how one being so near death can still be concerned about others."
"Nurse," I replied, "that is the whole ball game. That is why I am preaching and why the most important thing in life is being prepared for the next world." With that I said, "Miss Mahon, you stand there; I am going to pray for you, and you are going to get saved." Having already told her the plan of salvation, she was ready. When I finished praying, she was beautifully saved. She became a committed Christian.
I feel I should tell of another story that was a similar miracle. In Matthew 10:8 Jesus commanded the disciples to raise the dead. It is one thing to be raised from the dead; it's quite another to be put in the spot of either raising someone from the dead or having to take back the very words you just spoke from the pulpit!
I was preaching the last service of a convention in Toronto, Canada. My text was from Mark 16:17, "And these signs shall follow them that believe." I read Jesus' commission to the twelve apostles and said, "We can even raise the dead."
No sooner had the words left my mouth, than a man sitting on a pew to my right suffered a heart attack and fell over dead! The moment before, all the people present had been "amening" me and shouting, now a stunned silence had fallen over the entire crowd. You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone became very still. Here is where faith needs to operate.
Looking back on it, the situation seems funny to me, but it was not funny then. There we were in the midst of all that faith and power, but still in our natural minds, no one thought to raise the man from the dead. Personally, I was dumbfounded. The pastor was totally shocked.
A registered nurse happened to be in the service that night. She had come straight from work in order to make the service on time, and was still wearing her uniform and badge. She rushed to where the dead man was slumped over in the pew, and using every technique she could, she was unable to find a pulse. The man's heart had stopped beating. Turning to the crowd, she said, "He has had heart failure and is dead."
Time rolled by in the quietness, I suppose about ten minutes. All of us were afraid of brain damage. A doctor had been phoned, but how do you get a doctor quickly on a Sunday night? Everyone was just sitting there waiting. By this time the pastor, another brother and I were at the dead man's side. The nurse was still there with us.
Suddenly the Spirit of the Lord came upon us, and we spoke out loudly, commanding the spirit of life to come back into the man in the name of Jesus. Then like a jack-in-the-box, he popped up out of the pew. His eyes opened and he was alive! The quietness was broken with shouts, handkerchiefs waving and hand clapping. All had seen faith demonstrated. I will never forget that meeting.
After the service, I wanted to check with the nurse to confirm the miracle personally, but I had to leave as I was riding with friends. However, years later I was weathered in with my plane in the north Eskimo land due to a tremendous blizzard. Being grounded at the airport, I decided to visit some of the patients at the hospital. Who do you think the head nurse was? The very nurse that had witnessed the man die in Toronto. I hastened to ask her if the man in Toronto had really been dead.
"Yes," she said, "I ought to know. He was my uncle and a member of the board in that church."
God leaves no doubt in anyone's mind when He moves in His sovereignty. Not only did God raise me from the dead, but I also had a part in God raising that man back to life. To God be all the glory.
I felt I had to write these stories that I know to be true. These testimonies give us an inkling about what to expect in the tidal wave that is coming upon the true Church of Jesus Christ. There will be many more things that will happen, creative things, like Jesus multiplying food. We may see manna again provided supernaturally. The maimed will be healed, arms and legs will be grown on bodies, and blind eyes will be made to see. We may even see things like Philip being caught up and transported miles through the air.
I feel a prophetic spirit upon me, and I will venture to step out on the faith limb and declare that these things or similar will happen. The seventh wave will affect every level of the Church--its spirituality, its authority and its power. The ministries of the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers will be brought into focus. The Body of Christ will know a unity never experienced before.
Jesus said, "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one" (II Cor. 17:22). This will come only to them that seek His face and know Him as Lord. He will present unto Himself a glorious Church not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without blemish.
How can we predict all that will happen in the tidal wave of glory to come? How can we know any more than the apostles knew when they were told by Jesus to tarry in Jerusalem? They did not know they would hear wind, see cloven tongues of fire, or that they would speak in other tongues. So we do not know exactly what will take place, but we do know it will be greater in every way. Nothing of the past will be omitted, but all of the other waves of glory will form this seventh great tidal wave.