I have experienced a considerable amount of prophecy in my own life. After my conversion in 1971, I have had, at times, an ability to foresee certain future events accurately, but usually in a very general sense. I could also occasionally look at people and know details about them, such as problems they were having or spiritual callings on their life. I understood this ability to be the biblical gifts of a word of knowledge and prophecy. Though I understood the usefulness of these gifts in ministry to people, I did not have much interest in the biblical prophecies of end-time events. For the next eighteen years, I did not seek visions, revelations, or the knowledge to understand these end times and remained mostly ignorant of many of the popular end-time scenarios taught within the church. I have actually been much more oriented toward church history than seeking to know impending events. After several years in the full-time ministry, I was convicted that I was shallow in my personal relationship with the Lord, and, therefore, in my ministry as well. I felt like a real Martha, busy doing so many things for Him that I never really got to know Him. My lack of intimacy with the Lord caused me to lean more on formulas and procedures than the anointing that is essential to giving life to truth.
In 1980, I determined to leave the ministry until I had recovered the simplicity of devotion to Christ. I was a pilot by profession, so I took a job flying corporate aircraft. This gave me a lot of free time for study and prayer. I found a church where I could sit on the back row and just enjoy the fellowship of the people. I was not involved in ministry for the next seven years. Nor did I receive any prophetic revelation or operate in the gifts of the Spirit during that time. In 1982, I received a specific call to return to the ministry. At the same time, a business opportunity opened. I still felt inadequate and shallow about my ministry. I also had just received the worse personal attack I had ever experienced from the enemy. That attack made me feel even more unprepared for ministry, so I took the business opportunity. Though I did not fall into carnality or what might be considered overt sins, I certainly drifted from the Lord for the next five years as I became consumed with building my business. In 1987, the Lord again called me back into ministry with the word that my commission would be given to another if I did not return at that time. I did not really know what my "commission" was, but I knew I did not want to lose it, so I responded immediately to this call.
I was quite sure I was not supposed to pastor again, but I really did not know what I was going to do. I had not read a single Christian magazine or watched Christian television for more than seven years. I had little knowledge of what was even going on in the church at large. However, I had written There Were Two Trees in the Garden a few years before, and its popularity had brought me some invitations to speak. I called a few pastors I knew and others who had contacted me because of the book and let them know I was available for ministry. A month or so later, I returned home after my first ministry trip in more than seven years, feeling as empty and inadequate as ever—and quite out of step with the churches I had visited. Yet, I was feeling much closer to the Lord; my desire to serve Him in ministry had returned. The next morning I went into my office to catch up on some paper-work and to pray for insight on what I was to do in the ministry. I felt an overwhelming presence of the Lord. Then, after seven years with no prophetic revelation, I had a three-day prophetic experience in which I felt the Lord tried to catch me up on all I had missed. At this time I wrote The Harvest, which was about the present state of the church and impending events.
Since then, I have had other visions and revelations that were published in books like The Final Quest and The Call Some of the revelations came in open visions. These were visible, external visions that were like watching a cinema screen. Others were gentle, internal visions that were like having the "eyes of your heart" opened. I usually relate the word vision to the prophetic event of seeing pictures, either internally or externally. I consider revelation to be the receiving of knowledge or understanding beyond our natural ability to attain.
I now have visions and dreams filled with symbolism that requires interpretation, as do most biblical visions. Some of what is shared in this book did not come in vision form but came as a massive anointing with the gift of the word of knowledge. All of a sudden, I knew many details about future events, as though they had been poured into me. In all of this, I have been trying to determine God's call on my life and His purpose for His church. Understanding that prophecy is still "seeing through a glass darkly," and understanding that we only know "in part" (I Cor. 13:12 KJV), I am aware that what I am sharing must be put together with what others are seeing to be a complete picture. I have tried to share exactly what I have been given to see or understand, but because the canon of Scripture is complete, I do not believe that any prophetic gift today is of the quality of those who wrote Scripture.
