To: An evangelist

Re: Open Visions

You were talking about open visions. They have already been happening a bit here at Bethany Church in Wyckoff, NJ. I thought you would like to hear two stories that happened in 1997.

The first vision was not mine. I was at a Friday night session of the Tri-State Believers Network at Bethany Church. Early in the worship I saw a young man who was 12 at the time. As he was up front worshiping, the Lord impressed upon me to pray for him, even though I did not discern anything wrong -- in fact he seemed to be in excellent spiritual shape. About 10 P.M., as some people were going back to the lobby, I ran across him. I shared my burden for prayer and he replied, "Thank you for praying for me, that was so nice of you; now I will tell you the vision the Lord gave me: I saw an eagle come upon our church; he was so big that he made it shake. Then he landed on the roof and flew up to a big hill and put the church there. He said he was going to take our church to a higher level. Then I saw Jesus on a horse; it was a VERY large white horse. He rode down the aisles gathering people together in His arms." Being somewhat dazed by this revelation, I staggered around for a few minutes and then settled into a bench. I remembered a theological conference I had attended at Princeton U. the week before at which various academics presented papers. All the right people were there, incl. feminist Elaine Pagels and faculty from Princeton U., Princeton Seminary, Yale, Harvard, Penn, Japan, Korea, etc. I guess I had been surprised I didn't hear more off-the-wall commentary by this group; they had a few cogent things to say.

But then as I sat in the bench I heard the Lord laugh like a Santa Claus, "Ho, ho, ho; Look what I can do. I just used a child to blow away all those PhDs."

Ho, ho, ho! Then I laughed for the next 15 minutes. It was the only time I had Holy laughter. I am more likely to cry at a renewal meeting [but that is the subject of another letter.] Ho, ho; He gave more wisdom to a 12 year old than to professionals! ...Does the Lord sit in the Heavens and laugh?...

The second vision I had myself. It was in the summer of 1997 on the Friday before the Eagles Wings East Coast Conference. I was at Bethany for the service, but did not feel much of an anointing. It looked to be a very dry night, but at about 11:30 P.M. I felt the comfort of the Holy Spirit. The band included several of the old youth group through which the Bethany renewal had begun, including two young men who were sporting long hair and sandals (until they went to ORU in the fall and had to cut all the hair off.) As the band continued to play, as I worshiped, I had some vague thoughts relating to Jesus and his depiction in long hair and sandals. Then, near midnight, I was no longer seeing the first young man play the lead guitar, but saw Jesus flanked by disciples.

It was a young Jesus walking in the flesh in Palestine, and as soon as I could realize what I was seeing, I said, Aagh! and looked down. It was too much to stare at; too awesome to be seeing Jesus like this. Not even a glorified Jesus, with a bright light for a face, just WHO He was on earth! After a few minutes, I looked up and saw again only the guitarist. I was able to watch this without being overwhelmed, but in a few minutes he again became as if transparent and somewhat behind him was, as if tunneling through 2000 years of time, Jesus with his friends. Again the sight was too much; I was not worthy to see it for long and I looked down again. For the next hour and a half, the ramifications of these two brief moments of vision continued to unfold, and I wrote down what I could in that time. Here I will only briefly describe the most powerful revelation: Jesus was so free! This gave Him so much power. It was as if He could draw the very elements of nature, very finite elements of air toward himself if He wanted. I have never seen a human being, no matter how saintly, so free. The scripture, "the god of this world comes, and he has nothing in me," came so much to life. No one had ANYTHING in Him, not even close, he was so free. Strangely, I had never had the above thoughts, nor do I remember reading them anywhere -- this revelation came quite by surprise, but has made more and more sense in the last year and a half.

Seeing the countenance of Jesus first hand changed my life light years faster than any words of description could do. Having a "personal relationship" with Jesus is no longer a slogan or a concept but a very operational reality now. Strange as it may seem, this was not the end. On the next night, Saturday, I was in Philadelphia for the youth night of the East Coast conference. My godson and I were in the gym of Deliverance Evangelistic Church with about 700 other people. After about 45 minutes, I noticed a person standing in the front near the wall. This person had an eerie resemblance to the Jesus of the vision, including exactly the same hair down to the curl on the ends. This was a real person, not a vision [and he did not look as free], but I do not remember ever seeing this person before. Lord,You are playing with me! What in the world?? Then, another 45 minutes later, I saw someone praying for my godson, with a half-crouch as a paramedic might do to someone he was treating. When I got a look, it was this same person in the image of Jesus! Out of 700 people! More miracles occurred that night, to my count 5 in all, and more the subsequent days of the conference, but that is another story. Such are the ways the Almighty plays with a professor of Statistics when He wants to get his attention.

When there is much intercession and a great anointing, reality experiences a change just as space curves in relativistic regimes.

Ari