In the flood waters

Today was another glorious Noon hour -- another foretaste of the Awakening. I know I keep saying that, but if you think it's exaggeration, ask any of the 50 who were there today. Even better, come next week!

The best part, of course, was God's Presence, which was with us from the beginning. We did not have to invite Him. We did not have to plead for Him to come. When we got there, He was already so there (as our young members might put it) that we even laughed about it.

And as last week, there was a sense of expectation, of imminence. Which He encouraged.

Prepare to shout for joy.

Prepare to shout in exultation.

For the glory of the Lord will be here,

Sooner than you imagine.

Shouting and praising and weeping,

Come to me,

For I am coming to you

With more glory than you have ever seen.

After the hour was over, and the benediction was spoken (by first-time visitor Reggie who came all the way from Maine), hardly anyone left. We just wanted to linger in His Presence. I began to wonder if maybe the first preliminary wave of the Revival had already come ashore. He did seem to indicate that in a word to Kathy, one of our regulars, who sent it to me earlier in the week:

I woke up with the words: I am commandeering my churches. It is a matter of conscience. . . . At that point I came fully awake, ad He continued to give this word to me: The wave I have sent is a wave in which to soak. What I have started, only I can complete. Some will walk away at this time. . . . Just as when I told my followers: you must eat of my flesh, to have life in you. The teaching was too strange, too difficult to understand. Many walked away. But those I had chosen, remained. They knew that there was no other way.

There is no other way today, than the one I have chosen. If you will be humble and reject your understanding, you will receive my understanding. The waters of this first wave are flood waters that will tap into the wellsprings of salvation. Waters from deep ancient wells beneath your feet will rise to the surface. At first, there will be an oozing, and then, a gushing. Do not strike my rock again, in impatience. The gushing will come!

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For those who would like to be on intimate terms with God, able to hear Him speak to you in your own heart, the next Hearing His Voice workshop will be on Saturday, the 28^th , from 10:00 till 3:00, in the little chapel at Tremont Temple. While He may not call you to be a prophet, He is calling you to hear Him, as His prophets do. These are prophetic times, for a prophetic people. If He would have you join us, you know who would not have you there, so. . . . beware of sudden obstructions, and take a moment now to send me an email.

-David Manuel

Master Surgeon

Last Wednesday, we had another wonderful Noon Hour. And each week, as the hour progresses, His Presence grows stronger. Now at the end of the hour, we are beginning to experience miracles, and each week one or two come into the fullness of the Holy Spirit. If you think that's speaking evangelistically, ask anyone who's been recently. Better yet, come and see for yourself.

Several of us are now receiving words of encouragement from the Lord.

My faithful watchers on the wall, Your hearts continue to please me. You have been patient, when strongly tempted to impatience or indifference. You have been steadfast in your love for me, whether in season or out, convenient or inconvenient, in stormy weather or sunny climes.

You have received my love, and you have freely given my love. Know that you have delighted my heart, and for this reason, what I am about to do in Boston will be centered here and a few other places. You are my foundation stones, well placed and well laid, and on your love will I build my Awakening.

That word was confirmed by Lois, a first-time visitor from another prayer fellowship, who declared we do not have much time, and we must prepare our hearts for the first layer of the Joel 2 Anointing. We also had five visitors from a prayer fellowship that meets on Mondays. We hold them up in prayer each Wednesday, just as we do the Revere men's prayer group that meets at Noon on Wednesdays, and as they do us. In fact, praying for one another's prayer groups, attending one another's events, spreading the word of each other's initiatives all of this is part of God's new pattern (and so different from what has happened in the past).

And it's happening everywhere. Bob Weiner's wife Rose says that they, too, are experiencing miracles. She's asked me to come pray with them this Sunday evening in the Longfellow Room of the Charles Hotel at 7:00 an invitation I extend to all of you. And Tatsuo, a Japanese-American evangelist on the West Coast called a moment ago, to say that God is starting to do the same things there that He is doing here. He knows this, because he shares these updates with his prayer groups there, where God is striking the same chords.

More grist for the mill: last week Rose sent me a prophecy from Hope Reeder in North Carolina, that pretty much confirms everything that God has told a number of us He's about to do in New England. Many of you have already seen and passed along that prophecy, but in case you haven't seen it, it's attached.

One thing is becoming increasingly apparent: God expects all of us who love Him, to hear Him in our hearts with the same confidence and clarity that His prophets do. Regarding that, a number of you have asked when there will be another Hearing His Voice workshop at Tremont Temple. I'm happy to announce that the next one will be on April 28th, a week from this coming Saturday, from 10:00 until 3:00 in the little chapel. If you're interested, drop me an email.

Many of you have asked about Alex. In meeting with him recently, his surgeon could not have been less optimistic. And yet, the Master Surgeon, who met with him this morning, could be more encouraging! Here is what He told Alex: I know that you are not anxious about the status of your healing (a gift from heaven), but my grace has strengthened you to yield more fully to my gift of faith, as expressed in the now.

As I said to Martha just before I raised Lazarus from the dead, I now say to you, my son, regarding your full restoration of health: "Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God? "It shall come to pass, my son, that the word I spoke to you recently has come to pass: This disease has not been given to you for your demise, but for the sharing forth of my glory." (John 11)

-David Manuel

Minutemen of God

We had an extraordinary Noon Hour yesterday. The presence of the Lord was so strong, we thought the building wave of the Awakening might finally be ready to break.

Kathy received a word which witnessed to many hearts present:

My children, I am calling you to be my Minutemen today. You must be prepared to take up your arms at a moment's notice. Like the Minutemen of old, you will be both farmers and warriors. You will be farmers, sowing and reaping the Great Harvest. You will be my soldiers, wielding the weapons of the Spirit. Your ammunition will be my love, and my mercy. I will take some of you into my War Room, into my counsel, and I will show you my battle plans. Others will be called into the Throne Room, for I tell you, the fragrance of this battle will not be gunpowder but the incense of worship. I have stationed watchers to see my signal light. The time for the midnight ride is here. The enemy is entrenched in the land, but the Spirit of the Lord comes in by the sea. The Living Waters of my Spirit will rush upon this land and will overtake the enemy. Be alert, be ready, Minutemen of God! Make ready for battle!"

Towards the end of the hour, Bethany Yeo, the young leader of the Justice House of Prayer in Boston, stirred our hearts with her battle call to prayer. Reminding us of Dutch Sheets' prophecy, she declared that Massachusetts was the spiritual birthplace of the nation. What is birthed here, will be birthed throughout America. And what is allowed to die here, will die everywhere else.

Then she shared the dream of one of her young prayer warriors. In the dream Goliath was coming up a hill that overlooked the city of Boston. Several of his lieutenants were with him. As they reached the top of the hill, the giant chuckled and spread his arm out in a gesture that took in all they surveyed. "This city was supposed to be the wellspring of the Revival. . ." and he just laughed.

The boy woke up then and Bethany said that God had awakened him before the end of the dream, because we can still affect its outcome. We cannot grow weary. We cannot turn away in discouragement or despair. We are soldiers of the Cross, and we will pray, pray, pray as long as it takes! And we will have the victory!

I was stunned. Last Sunday, I'd been led to preach on Goliath, having not thought of him in years.

For each of us, the giant down there in the valley represents our worst fear. Every morning and evening we listen to him taunting us, mocking the army of the Living God, cursing us by his own gods. And he will keep it up, until we go down there and shut him up.

In his inaugural address three months after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt reminded his countrymen that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. That is as true today, as it was in 1942.

At God's prompting, I've had to confront my own worst fear: death. Not a normal or anticipated death, for which I can be prayed up and ready to go home, whenever He calls me. Nor a sudden, accidental death, in which there is brief flash of pain before joining Him.

My greatest fear is a martyr's death deliberately cruel and prolonged, extraordinarily painful, and wholly out of my control. The sort of death some of us might actually have to face in the darkest of the dark times ahead.

Offered the choice of recanting my faith to save myself, I would have to refuse and face the lion, in whatever form it took.

A few years ago, in Kenya on the Masi Mara, I marveled at the world the way God made it, before man messed things up. I bonded with a pride of lions, spending several days just hanging with them. For those unable to go, The Lion King gets it right. The only part about the Circle of Life I wasn't comfortable with was the kill when the lions pull down a wildebeest or a zebra. Being a writer, I identified with the stricken animal.

I asked God about that, and in the Nairobi airport awaiting the flight home, He provided the answer. In an article in a travel magazine, a South African naturalist explained that the moment the predator's claws sink into the prey, the latter goes into complete shock and does not feel a thing that is being done to it. I marveled at God's infinite mercy.

Christians in the Coliseum, about to be forced out into the arena where roaring lions prowled about, seeking whom they might devour, had the same fear. Transparent with one another, they did not hide it, but shared it. They agreed to a signal: whoever went out first, when the lions struck them, if there was no pain they would sing, so their brothers and sisters would know. That was how it was, and that was why the next batch of Christians went out singing, even before the lions reached them.

When I shared that last Sunday, someone pointed out a piece in the Berkshire Eagle that very morning. In his 1857 book, Missionary Travels, Dr. David Livingstone, the renowned Scottish explorer, described what it felt like to be attacked by an African lion, which was eventually scared off by a friend firing a gun. "Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though [I was] quite conscious of all that was happening."

That explained how martyrs could face hideous deaths with such sublimity. William Tyndale, burned at the stake for having translated the Bible into English, preached for four hours, as more and more wood was piled on the fire. Jean Brobeuf, burned at the stake by the Iroquois, praised God and shouted out encouragement to other captives for so long that his awed tormentors ate his heart in the hope of consuming his courage.

For me, the enemy's ultimate intimidation was martyrdom gruesome torture followed by an agonizing death. Because if, God forbid, I am called to go through such an ordeal, His mercy will be instant, total, and eternal. And consider this: any man or woman unafraid of death, cannot be intimidated.

God had a word for us last Sunday:

My children, I have been training you as an army of spiritual warriors who have the quiet confidence to face any giant the other one puts before you. Heed not his taunts. Quail not at the length of his spear or the weight of its tip. Do not think to cover yourself in the world's armor. Though others see you as a stripling, I have already preserved you from the paw of the lion and the bear. When they came for your sheep, I filled you with righteous anger and guided the stone from your sling. You felled them, as you will the giant. Because you know the battle is not yours, but mine. You are the army of the Living God, and you are in close fellowship with me.

-David Manuel