A week or so ago I woke up hearing the old hymn “Revive Us Again” being sung by a church congregation in my mind. I had not heard it sung or even thought about it in many, many years. And so I went to the computer and looked it up on YouTube. Memories came trickling, then flooding back.
In the late 1950’s and early 60’s, I played for several small tent revivals in my area of South Carolina. The man who owned the tent invited various pastors and evangelists to come for a few days or a week or so and preach. Posters would go up around town, and when the meetings began the tent was usually full.
Although I didn’t play regularly for church as I did in later years, simply because I could play the piano and already knew most of the old hymns, I was asked to play for those services.
It was a little nerve-wracking and exciting, but I did it.
I don’t remember the people, the speakers or the sermons, but I remember the music. Those wonderful old hymns! “Revive Us Again” was certainly one of them.
This past month several “revivals” have sprung up at colleges in the United States, with thousands of people driving many long hours to attend. They are nothing like those tent revivals, however. These are not orchestrated by a man with a tent – although I see nothing wrong with that if the Lord has inspired it, and I believe he did and still does – these seem to have been orchestrated by God alone. Do an online search for Asbury 2023 and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s one report: Asbury 2023
The reports in the media have been met with enthusiasm by many, and criticism by many others. Are they real? Really real? Personally I believe they are.
While the English word “revival” (and the common concept that word brings to mind) doesn’t appear in the KJV of the Bible, the English word “revive” does. The Hebrew and Greek definitions are simple; basically to restore life.
The events of the past several hundred years (and longer) that various people term “revivals” or “outpourings” of God’s presence, certainly do that. Life — mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and sometimes physically also — has been restored. Many miracles have accompanied revival events over the years, and still do.
Here are several Bible verses to consider:
Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? (Psalm 85:6 KJV)
Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me: thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. (Psalm 138:7)
For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name [is] Holy; I dwell in the high and holy [place], with him also [that is] of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. (Isaiah 57:15)
O LORD, I have heard thy speech, [and] was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy. (Habakkuk 3:2)
Father God has answered those prayers on multiple occasions, as Christian history attests. While teaching on the Principles of Intercessory Prayer several years ago, I did hours of research on historical revivals. I soon discovered, no two have been alike.
Every time such an occurrence takes place, the cultural circumstances beforehand including the condition of the world at large, and the appearance of the events as they happened, have been quite different.
But the results for many of those affected have been remarkable, long-lasting and permanent, whether the people were already Christians or became new believers.
Those people who have appointed themselves to judge the authenticity of 2023 current events should judge the long-term fruit, if they can. Revitalized lives, proven over time.
To read certain online comments these days, you’d wonder if the commenter believes that God himself is uninvolved in the process of these “revivals.” Perhaps He is ignorant and unaware, or maybe he’s just uninterested. How sad.
I believe their concept of the goodness, the bigness, the mercy, grace and forgiveness, the very person of God himself, needs re-thinking.
Host Gene Bailey: Let’s go back, Dutch, to September 11th that week, 2001. What happened?
Dutch Sheets: Well, I was scheduled to go speak at a conference in Boise, Idaho, and as most of the people watching us will remember, everything shut down. The nation was in shock, just fear and dread. It was just a surreal time, and throughout the week we didn’t know really what was happening. The airlines shut down so I could not get to the conference that I was supposed to speak at until Friday. You know that 911 was a Monday.
I didn’t know if it would even take place, but it did, and it’s one of the only times in my life I’ve ever been scheduled to do something as far as speaking and dreaded it. I didn’t want to go. I thought, I have no answers, I don’t know what to say. No one knows what to say right now. And I did not have a word from the Lord.
But I went in obedience and and honoring my commitment, and when I got up to speak that night, I don’t know what I was saying, I don’t remember what I was saying. I don’t think it was all that significant or important, but I had an experience that I’ve only had twice in my life. This was what I would call an open vision.
While I was speaking, with my eyes wide open, I began to see not what was natural, but I began to see things in the spirit. And what took me back so much was that it was with my eyes wide open. I saw as though it were an invisible hand.
This was a large room, 1500 people perhaps. I saw like a hand begin to write on the back wall, the far back wall of the auditorium and it looked like a neon light as it was writing. And it wrote Acts 3:19. I mentioned it a while ago. I knew what the verse said. I was obviously distracted by this. I didn’t stop and tell them what I was seeing yet but I was having trouble speaking because this was so distracting, and I knew it was God.
I knew what the verse said but I didn’t know what to do with it, so in my mind I just sort of told the Lord or said to myself, as soon as I finish this point I’m going to Acts 3:19, he obviously wants to say something from this passage.
When I had the thought, I will finish this point that I’m sharing now, the sign began to flash, on and off, on and off, on and off blinking. And I knew God was saying, I don’t want you to finish your point, I want you to go there now!
It’s really encouraging when you’re up speaking and you realize God’s not interested in what you’re saying, obviously he had something else he wanted to say.
And I went to the verse and told them what it said. It’s after the lame man had been healed and a crowd gathered, Peter began to preach. This is shortly after Pentecost. He seizes the moment and he says, If you will repent and turn to him, times of refreshing will come from the presence of the Lord.
Times is (the Greek word) kairos, opportune, strategic times, not just general time. Very significant, very strategic. Peter was saying, this is a special moment, this is a very strategic time.
Refreshing is a weak translation, it’s okay, but the word there is anapsyxis, and psyxis which means to blow or breathe, that’s the root word, ana gives it repetition and intensity. So a really good amplified definition of this word is the blowing of the breath again intensely.
Peter said, it’s a strategic time. What happened to us in that Upper Room on the day of Pentecost — he’s not finished, there’s a wind for you too, and if you respond right now as you should, that wind will blow again intensely.
And as I shared this word, just the spirit of God filled this room and the presence was so strong, and duddenly I saw not just the sign flashing on the back wall, I began to see like a movie, it was like the entire back wall of the church became a movie screen, like I was in a movie theater.
And I told the people, I said I’m having a vision and I started narrating what I was seeing. I expected this to last for a minute or two but it lasted for probably 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes, and I just — this was obviously supernatural and different. I’ve never had anything else like this. I just began to narrate what I was seeing for this 40-45 minutes.
You could hear a pin drop in the room. People were just captivated, their eyes closed, listening, and I was relating what I was seeing. And what he showed me was what this revival would look like, this blowing of the breath again intensely. I saw the fire of God coming to America. It wasn’t the fire of judgment, it was the fire of Revival. But what he highlighted and showed me specifically, was this fire coming to the Youth of our nation, the young people. Campuses, college campuses, high school campuses.
The fires of Revival began to burn and he literally showed me campuses where this was happening, and I said I see it on such and such and I named the university and I would talk about what I was seeing. And then I said I see it on this campus and I talked about what I was seeing, and then I realized — this is going to the nation, I don’t want to keep mentioning one or two and people think it’s only that one, because what I saw was this was springing up everywhere and what what I saw was unlike anything I’d ever seen.
I described it at one point in this vision as a violent love, it was coming with such intensity. God said, I am coming to save this generation and nothing is going to stop me.
It was so much passion from God, so much intensity that I turned to the speakers and I turned to those in the room at one point, and I said, nothing is going to stop this. Nothing can stop it.
And so as this broke out, obviously signs and wonders began to take place, and the students would gather into rooms and they would begin to talk about what happened, and it grew in its intensity. And the next thing that was happening was the size of the groups gathering grew, and there were thousands of kids, young people all across America gathering, talking about Jesus. Completely grassroots, completely spontaneous, led by no person, controlled by no person, planned by no person. God just began to hover over these universities.
There would be a room of a thousand of these young people in an auditorium and God would start moving. There was no one in charge, there was no one up preaching. Someone would begin to scream in the back that they were healed of this disease or that disease or their eyes were healed, and over here someone else would do it, and someone else would do it over here, and kids would begin to get saved. They would just — they they didn’t know much, they would just start crying out to Jesus and Jesus was saving them. I saw this moving across the country.
I saw people trying to stop it, some of the administrators in the universities. I saw gatherings of leaders and those in charge, saying we have to get these kids to go back to class, because they didn’t want to go to class.
Sporting events were canceled,classes were canceled, not because the sport events are bad, but because they didn’t want to do anything else. This was so powerful they wanted to get together and talk about what was happening.
And as the administrators would walk into these auditoriums to try and stop them, the power of God would be so strong they would just fall under the power of God and they couldn’t do anything. They couldn’t stop it. And so this just began to take place. I saw mass deliverances. I’ve never seen anything like this – yet.
It rocked my theology, because no no one was speaking. They were just singing maybe a chorus or a song that they knew — they didn’t know a lot, Amazing Grace, perhaps, and the spirit of God would begin to hover in the room and students would begin to be delivered from addictions, bondages, demonic strongholds in their life. No one touching them, no one’s saying this is about to happen.
It was like when Jesus would go into the synagogue and the demons could not stand his presence and they would begin to scream and shout, leave us alone, leave us alone. Well, the presence of God came into these rooms with such intensity that the demons simply could not stay.
I saw these kids being interviewed and they were asked, What is happening, what? Explain this to us? They had no answer. They stopped doing drugs, they stopped some of the perverted or sinful lifestyles that they were involved in. I saw them being interviewed saying, Why did you stop this? Why aren’t you doing these things anymore?
And the student simply said, I don’t know. I just don’t want to do it. I love Jesus. I want to please him. Something in me tells me it’s wrong. I don’t want to do this.
It became a Holiness movement but it was not like any Holiness movement we’ve ever seen in a Revival. No one was preaching it to them. No one was telling them how to live, their hearts were simply changing and they wanted to please him. I saw this go across the nation. It was intense, it was powerful, it was unstoppable. And the other thing I saw was, it was so raw.
These kids, you know it’s not like they changed the way they looked, dressed or acted, they didn’t look like they were going to church, they didn’t change their attire, they just showed up as they were, and God began to move and then they wanted more of him.
And what I saw also was they really didn’t want religion. They really didn’t want our forms. They didn’t want somebody to to preach at them, they wanted to know about Jesus. They wanted a relationship with him, but they didn’t want religious form. They wanted something different.
And they came with their problems, they came with their past, they came with with their — frankly, they came with mates and people that they they shouldn’t have been with, but they wanted this Jesus.
And I found myself looking at all of this, thinking because of the sheer volume, because this was thousands, tens of thousands of young people were being saved around the nation, I found myself thinking, what do we do with this? How do we steward this? It was coming so quickly, how do we teach them?
They want to know God but they don’t want our religion, and they’ve been taught that they can do this they can do that, how do we teach them without trying to put them in a form and a mold that they know nothing about and don’t want? How do we teach them relationship without religion?
And finally as I was watching this, 20-30 minutes into it, just relating what I was seeing, I turned to the leaders on the platform, and I was so serious when I said this, I said, this is going to be incredibly difficult to steward. It will be like the book of Acts. They just had to learn on the fly. It would be like Joshua who was told, you’ve never been this way before, the only way you can do this is to follow the cloud, follow me, follow the ark, because you’ve not been this way before.
And what we’re about to experience, we don’t have a formula for. We don’t have a pattern for thousands upon thousands, tens of thousands, I believe eventually hundreds of thousands and millions of young people in America coming to Jesus. We’re going to need to be ready to take them into his presence and allow Holy Spirit to shape them, allow Holy Spirit to teach them, to show them what he wants, who he is.
And so just to summarize it, I saw incredible power, incredible fire, the fire of Revival. Incredible signs and wonders, incredible passion, love for God, worship, spontaneous out-breakings of Holy Spirit, until the entire nation was on fire with the fires of Revival.
Gene Bailey: Wow. Dutch, those of us that are old enough to have lived through the Jesus movement, it’s like you’re describing that again, except all at a different level, a higher level.
I’m not through making the dark, darker, the Lord said.
Talking with the Lord about the upcoming New Year several nights ago, I asked him the question: “What is going to happen in 2023, Lord? What will you be doing?”
His answer was surprising to me.
WAR.
That is the only word he said. I waited, but there wasn’t any further answer. I thought to myself, well, maybe that was just my imagination. I kept thinking about it, wondering about it.
Finally this morning, I asked him for more. I had in mind writing and posting an article about the coming year, as I have for some years now.
“I’m not through making the dark, darker,” he said. He reminded me of what he’d said about that last year, what I had posted then and re-posted a little while later.
He’s quite serious about it. He is NOT through. WAR is what he said, and WAR is what is coming. Not a physical fighting war, although he didn’t rule that out, but a continuation of the fierce spiritual war that has been going on this year.
I went to the Esther’s Petition blog site on my computer and began reading the original post. Here it is… apparently this is still happening and will continue into the next year. It is not a fun prospect.
“There are still a few slivers of gray and white among the dark places, and I am closing those gaps and making it all dark. Very dark.”
I knew that wasn’t all there was to it, and it wasn’t. He continued.
“I’m also making the light, lighter. Brighter. The contrast will become ever more evident around the globe, as those who have preferred the dark are beginning to long for the light.” For Jesus, the Light of the World.
I knew that Father God is not responsible for the darkness and so I waited for more discussion. He went on to explain.
Making dark places darker is making them much more obvious, much more evident. Far more repugnant to those who have loved the darkness… up until now. That love is turning.
A spiritual revival has sprung up in various places around the planet in recent years, growing more widespread; gaining more attention.
It is a precursor of a soon-coming global outpouring of the Holy Spirit with tremendous worship and joy, miraculous signs and wonders, miracle healings, salvations and deliverances. Years-long prayers and intercessions are coming into fruition; patience is paying off.
At the same time persecution and murder of believers is worsening. The battle for the Faith — the faith of believers — is certainly not new. It started with the apostles.
But Christians worldwide, and particularly prayer warriors, have been under many deadly and increasingly vicious attacks in recent days, some insidious or temporary irritations, but some long-lasting disasters.
All are designed to distract from the Word of Truth and from the work of the intercessor. The enemy assumes (rightly so in many cases) that it’s hard to minister to other people when you’re in real distress yourself, physical, mental, emotional, financial, family, or community.
Never mind!
The increasing supernatural darkness can never stop the Light from coming, the overwhelming, engulfing glory of God.
2022 (and 2023!) will be a year of contrasts, challenges, conflicts, and confusion. And a year of confirmations and celebrations.
Talking with the Lord on Saturday, December 3, 2021, as usual I asked him the question:
“What is going on right now, Lord? What are you doing?”
And he began telling me, as he nearly always does.
“Making the dark, darker,” he said.
“There are still a few slivers of gray and white among the dark places, and I am closing those gaps and making it all dark. Very dark.”
I knew that wasn’t all there was to it, and it wasn’t. He continued.
“I’m also making the light, lighter. Brighter. The contrast will become ever more evident around the globe, as those who have preferred the dark are beginning to long for the light.” For Jesus, the Light of the World.
I knew that Father God is not responsible for the darkness and so I waited for more discussion. He went on to explain.
Making dark places darker is making them much more obvious, much more evident. Far more repugnant to those who have loved the darkness… up until now. That love is turning.
A spiritual revival has sprung up in various places around the planet in recent years, growing more widespread; gaining more attention.
It is a precursor of a soon-coming global outpouring of the Holy Spirit with tremendous worship and joy, miraculous signs and wonders, miracle healings, salvations and deliverances. Years-long prayers and intercessions are coming into fruition; patience is paying off.
At the same time persecution and murder of believers is worsening. The battle for the Faith — the faith of believers — is certainly not new. It started with the apostles.
But Christians worldwide, and particularly prayer warriors, have been under many deadly and increasingly vicious attacks in recent days, some insidious or temporary irritations, but some long-lasting disasters.
All are designed to distract from the Word of Truth and from the work of the intercessor. The enemy assumes (rightly so in many cases) that it’s hard to minister to other people when you’re in real distress yourself, physical, mental, emotional, financial, family, or community.
Never mind!
The increasing supernatural darkness can never stop the Light from coming, the overwhelming, engulfing glory of God.
2022 will be a year of contrasts, challenges, conflicts, and confusion. And a year of confirmations and celebrations.
Recently I heard someone say, “We need to dig the wells again.” I thought that meant we need the anointing of God that once flowed freely in the life of the church. Remembering the 1970’s outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Florence, I murmured a quick prayer, “Do it again, Lord, do it again here!” (But the words I’d heard were “We need to…”We need to…”)
At a meeting with several other intercessors this week, the Lord began speaking to us:
“The spiritual wells of the Holy Spirit that were opened here in the 1970’s have become clogged with chunks and rocks and boulders and dirt. Doubt, unbelief, wrong belief and ignorance. Anger, worry, anxiety, frustration, depression, disappointment, even complacency and apathy have been piled on.
“Many distractions and diversions, the ordinary busyness of life have been dumped in until there’s little sign the wells were ever there. It’s time to dig those wells out. You, this small group of you, can begin that process.”
(Holy Spirit continued…)
“New wells are being dug, present tense. Where a well never existed before, a new well is springing up — in a living room, a storefront, a back yard, a church building, a workplace, even a school. Young children who were told Bible stories about Jesus now believe them; Jesus is their Savior now. They are beginning to pray for their family and classmates, teachers and other adults. They will pray for the sick and they will be healed.”
As he spoke I began to see these new wells, almost like grass sprouting up here and there. But these weren’t water wells — they were oil wells, each one topped by a flame! I realized that they weren’t just wells of God’s manifest presence, these were wells of his supernatural power. “Fire power,” to ignite his passion in our hearts to see people saved, truly saved. Rescued, healed, and delivered.
His supernatural fire to burn away things in our lives, including some things that aren’t bad in themselves but would hinder God’s plans. (Matthew 3:11-12.)
The message ended with a thought-provoking statement, two assignments, actually:
If you truly desire revival, you have to “re-dig” the old wells, clean out those self-imposed blocks of spiritual debris; and
Dig new wells for the Holy Spirit’s presence to flow through, not allowing preconceived notions and memories of his past work to create blocks to his working now.
How, Lord? How do we do this? Here’s what he answered.
By repentance, prayer and intercession, praise and worship
Listening and obeying the Holy Spirit as he specifically directs our actions, our prayers and decrees
Allowing the gifts of the Holy Spirit to operate in our lives
Teaching the Word, including by “show and tell.” Dealing with Ignorance in the body of Christ, as much as it depends on us; our words, testimonies and examples are powerful
Exercising authority over spirits of compromise, complacency, apathy, deception and distraction in our own lives and in our areas of influence
Repentance and forgiveness aren’t just important, they are essential.
Some of us were here when God’s spirit was poured out in Florence, and some of us are responsible for clogging up those wells.
We took his blessings for granted. We got busy with life, we let distractions and diversions block his presence. Deception too, believing the lie, “That was nice, but this is real life.”
Others of us weren’t even born yet, but that’s no excuse to accept the status quo.
We can take the initiative to repent as did Nehemiah. (Nehemiah 1:5-11.) Ask for forgiveness and extend forgiveness. Ask the Lord what to pray and pray that; what to speak, then speak that.
God delegated his authority to the body of Christ to decree, declare and command what he wants done in the earth. Do we really want to see revival?
Matthew 3:11-12 (NASB) “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Nehemiah 1:5-11 (NASB) “I said, Please, LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps the covenant and faithfulness for those who love Him and keep His commandments: let Your ear now be attentive and Your eyes open, to hear the prayer of Your servant which I am praying before You now, day and night, on behalf of the sons of Israel Your servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which we have committed against You; I and my father’s house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against You and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.” “Remember, please, the word which You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though those of you who have been scattered were in the most remote part of the heavens, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place where I have chosen to have My name dwell.’” “They are Your servants and Your people whom You redeemed by Your great power and by Your strong hand. Please, Lord, may Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and the prayer of Your servants who delight to [fn]revere Your name, and please make Your servant successful today and grant him mercy before this man. Now I was the cupbearer to the king.”
17 August 2017 “What’s going on today, Lord?” I asked. Somewhere in the back of my conscious (finally awake) mind, I could hear How Great Is Our God, being sung. For a few moments I had just stretched and listened – and agreed with – those powerful words, then asked him that question.
“More of the same, accelerated and intensified,” he answered. Suddenly in my mind’s eye I saw fires again, popping up here and there across America.
I’ve seen and written about prophetic fires before: fires of revival. Small pockets of revival, spreading, enlarging and joining, until a conflagration of glorious Holy Spirit fire is burning coast to coast. Burning away dross, chaff, sin, decay, sickness and disease. Leaving wholeness and holiness, God’s creative life and that “more abundantly” in its wake. (John 10:10.)
These current images weren’t like that, though. These were destructive, toxic, evil. Then he reminded me – nothing that ever happens is a surprise to the Lord. He has a plan for believers to respond to every event, and he’s more than willing to tell us how to do that. Respond, not react. Be a thermostat, not a thermometer. How?! Ask him. Then listen!
The following paragraph was included in an email update I received today, reported by an evangelist who has been ministering in the UK:
There were nights where during our preaching, young people would come in off of the streets and walk to the front asking, ‘What must we do to be saved?’ With no altar call or invitation for people to accept Jesus, they were coming to the altar to be born again. The harvest was just that ripe!
2014 is a year of contrasts. Political chaos, record-setting weather events, economic disasters, tragedies of many kinds, horrible religious persecution — and spreading revival. That short paragraph above could describe what is happening in many nations right now. “Here, Lord!” is my prayer! “Here, in Florence, South Carolina, United States of America! Here.”
This week I have been re-watching some Bay of the Holy Spirit revival videos. In this one from February 2011, Nathan Morris is at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, preaching about revival and the fire of the Holy Spirit, praying for students and others.
As I watch, I realize that many American Christians are spiritual cowards (including some in my own church). They claim they want revival. But what they really want is a nice, tidy, respectable, pretty meeting. They don’t really want revival God’s way.
The other day I asked the Lord what he was doing across America in all these revivals – I had watched several services from different places that had been broadcast live or recorded on video.
These services are different in many ways but there is one distinctive similarity. They are all ministering the “fire of God” to people. This is not just the baptism of the Holy Spirit, this is the “and with fire” that John the Baptist spoke of.
The Lord answered, quite matter of factly.
“I’m making kindling.”
I instantly visualized a fireplace with a fire being built. Kindling is needed to get a good fire started. Here in my area we used to use what is called fat lighterd – pine wood full of resin, gathered and saved especially to start fires.
This wood is split into small lengths because it only takes a small amount. It burns fast and hot. Kindling will get the other wood hot enough to catch on fire and start burning also.
On top of the kindling will be larger lengths, small logs perhaps, that have been “seasoned.” That is, dried out over a period of months. This wood burns slow and long, making a good steady source of heat.
Going on with the conversation, I asked the Lord to explain.
He is using a number of evangelists today to spread the fire of God across the United States, indeed across the world.
Most of those the fire of God falls on become the kindling of God, because they burn so hot they will start the long-lasting fires that he desires for our nation and world.
Fires that will burn up the chaff, the dross, everything that is not God in our lives. Fires that burn out the sin. The strongholds. Fires that purify. That will mark the tangible, visible kingdom of God on earth.
The larger logs are those faithful people of God who have been praying for so long for God to move again in America. They have lain in the cold fireplace for a long time, but soon they will begin to burn again, and burn steady and long.
So, Lord, I asked, what starts the kindling to burning?
Firebrands, he said. Firebrands are like a “spark” that starts the fire. These are the longest burning of them all, torches that are so fuel-soaked they can carry fire from place to place without it going out.
Evangelists are firebrands. Some of those the fire of God falls on today will become evangelists, not just kindling but firebrands.
I was processing all that when the Lord went on to say, “Fire falls on the altar.”
Suddenly I saw the altar of God in the Tabernacle of Moses. Fire fell on the altar, but there had to be a sacrifice on the altar for the fire to fall on. That fire consumed the sacrifice. No flesh remained. No sin.
So it wasn’t a fireplace I had been seeing in my mind, I realized. It was the altar of God.
I asked God this morning – How long will this last, Lord? The revival that is going on around the world right now…
He showed me a huge door coming down slowly, like one of the locks of the Panama canal.
Not much longer, he said.
Revival is happening around the world in many nations, thousands are being healed, delivered, with creative miracles, signs and wonders demonstrating the power of God.
The blind see, the deaf hear, the paralyzed walk. On every continent, God is moving in power. Spiritually hungry multitudes are coming to Christ when they realize God is real, he is powerful, and he loves them.
And at the same time, people are dying by the thousands in disaster after disaster, chaos, destruction, war. Floods, fire, typhoons, earthquakes, new diseases. It’s growing very dark in the world.
I thought about the subdivision on the west coast where houses started sinking into the ground several months ago.
If that had happened when people were asleep, they could have been swallowed up without ever knowing they were in danger. If they weren’t believers, they would be eternally lost.
I went online and searched for death tolls just this year so far. It is incredible how many are dying in disasters. I finally quit recording the numbers.
So many don’t see the danger coming. Who is warning them?
Is the American church asleep? Sick, weak, tired, self-absorbed with their own problems? They come to church sick, they go out sick. They can’t seem to help themselves. How can they help anyone else?
Although I didn’t play regularly for church as I did in later years, simply because I could play the piano and already knew most of the old hymns, I was asked to play for those services.
I’m not through making the dark, darker, the Lord said. 
Talking with the Lord on Saturday, December 3, 2021, as usual I asked him the question:
Esther's Petition 