Wow, I have to skip over a lot of things to focus on what God was teaching me about prophecy as a ministry. So much to skip over! He was teaching me about ministry, the Kingdom, about myself, our future calling but only vaguely, and just so many daily topics!
But I soon had two dreams within a few days of each other where God first said I must not waste any of my time and I need to be diligent to learn his ministry and that people were waiting for me to open things up because I had the keys. Later He gave me a second dream and said it’s like learning to play football, you need to practice, you kick and throw the ball and sometimes it goes out of bounds—but that’s a normal part of play. It’s OK to try out my wings, learn and people are there to help me and not to be afraid of making mistakes.
How different man’s view of prophecy is: Stone ANYONE who makes even a slight, even a perceived mistake! Stone first and investigate later! Why wait to test and judge? STONE THEM NOW!
But also I didn’t know what I didn’t know! He said I could be a prophet, but where are we heading exactly? How do I get there!? What do I have to learn? I wanted to know beforehand. I was flying blind! … But you may say, well, at least I was flying!
We continued having real frustrations with the Filipino church, actually no, not the church, just the pastor whose blockage and insults were increasingly hard to bear. But God spoke, not to leave yet, so I just waited for a clear sign. And I knew God loved the pastor as he had shown me by letting me see him through God’s eyes, and feel God’s love towards him through God’s Spirit, so I was very careful to behave and not speak out how I felt, but I knew we needed to leave.
He was also not really happy with the magazines we were doing, and refused to offer any help with contacts or content even though one was specifically for the Filipino community! One of the older ladies in the group, however, did see the opportunity and asked to advertise in it and thought how it could help her remittance company. But the pastor was not so hot on the idea.
Angel at Adrian’s
I began having many more dreams and started attending a weekly home group with the British engineer, Adrian Bell, who I mentioned before. He lived nearby and was married to a Filipina, Aida. They lived in Mui Wo, by the beach, the town where the ferry to Central was, so I had to anyway go through that town quite often. He was helping two Filipina sisters set up a church right on the beach, and the first time I met him he was just there to tidy the place up, but when I walked in there was a HUGE ANGEL standing in the front by the altar where the sisters, Rose and Gemma, often knelt to pray and cry out to God—it felt like a furnace of fire—but he later said he was simply unaware of it.
But anyway Adrian had been in Hong Kong many years and was a part of the trendy Tree of Life Church and a funny story but one of the first engineers he recruited from England to come work for him in Hong Kong was Mike Tomlinson, who was now the co-head-pastor of the Tree of Life!
Because Adrian lived nearby we began meeting together for prayer or home group quite regularly on weeknights either at my house or at his.
But first, the Filipino church I attended did not like the idea that I was having weekly meetings in my house! They said it was unauthorized and I was rebelling. I lived well over an hour from town, travel subject to infrequent ferry and bus schedules, and two hours or more from the Filipino pastor’s house. We needed more time praying and wanted to reach our neighbors and the accusation made me feel confused and guilty until God spoke to me and clarified my own heart motives to me. The Lord told me this accusation was untrue, I was not being rebellious but I wanted to help people. Also Jesus said (I knew it was him talking) that they even called his servant David a rebel and others who were faithfully serving God, so not to take it to heart.
Funny that God so loved this pastor who he also was calling out the sin in! I kept seeing God do this. For people it’s not like that, it’s all or nothing in a way usually. They love you or hate you but God can love you and still admit when you are acting in sin. I’ve seen it several times now and you think about loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you. Why? Because God loves sinners. Because we are all the same, saved by grace! Because we are all one big family. Wow.
My Daughter saw an Angel in Armor at Adrian’s
Then my daughter began to hear God’s voice even though she was only about 9 and in a prayer meeting at Adrian’s house one week she saw a huge angel wearing the Armor of God! When she saw it her shoes popped off—backwards!! It was holy ground!
She said he was so tall he had to tilt his head to fit in the room. His armor was silver and gold. His fingernails were gold. I remember she said she saw words on his armor: his belt said, “Speak The Truth.” His breastplate said, “Righteous,” his shield said, “FAITH” and his sword said, “The Bible.” His face was so bright she couldn’t see it! He wore metal shoes on his feet and on one read ‘J E’ and on the other ‘S U S’ so together it had the name, ‘Jesus.’
She said when she saw him it felt like she too had wings on her feet, and if she jumped up she would never come down.
Adrian later was instrumental in introducing me to missions trips to the Philippines and led me to discover Bohol where we now are based. I am very thankful for his role actually, he may think it was small but it was vital.
God Provided to Print the Magazines
Anyway, by then we had first issues of three magazines ready to print: a comic on angel warfare, a mainstream English and Chinese bi-lingual magazine, and a Filipino language magazine, but had no money to print them. I was in town at a Christian businessmen’s meeting one week and I wasn’t looking for money really but maybe some help with how to run this business successfully and primarily prayer to know God’s way to move forward. One of the men was a Malaysian businessman whose home group we used to go to years ago and he invited me often to this mid-week prayer meeting in town for businessmen. So although I never really felt comfortable I felt led to go this one time and a man I didn’t know was walking by me and suddenly stopped and looked at me. “You need money,” he said, but not so much as a question.
“Um, yes, I’m making magazines and I can’t print them and we’re having a hard time.”
“How much do you need?”
“What? I don’t know.” I made some hasty calculations and said, “Ten thousand US Dollars?”
“God told me you need money and told me to give you whatever you need. Let me give you a check, is that OK?”
He worked for an international Christian television network, TBN I think, and I think he was a director or something. He gave me ten thousand dollars—I wish I had asked for fifty! But just like that God provided for his vision.
Now I didn’t really know how much we needed, but we got three of the four magazines printed, and in the large numbers God asked for. He asked us to print 20,000 copies of the first edition of the comic!—20,000!
The next obstacle however was to distribute them which we were never able to do. We got a lot of resistance at every step of the way, mostly from the established churches and bookstores, and even some underhanded competitive dealing from other ministries, which I won’t talk about. When one Christian publishing office saw our comic about angelic warfare he said it was just too violent and they would not back us. Walking out God commented, “I did not say it was too violent!” I felt it was the right story and would be popular, but I needed some traction.
So I briefly mentioned before that we had been to the Tree of Life Church a few times for seminars and to hear visiting speakers, and once I went to introduce the magazines when we were still making them, but I still didn’t know the people who ran the ministry very well. And then I had this dream.
Tree of Life Church Foundation was Built on Sand
It was October and I had a very detailed prophetic dream about a certain church at a beach and there was a foundation dug deep down into the sand, but actually it was a solid concrete basement and done quite well. I’d say it was a right foundation for that environment. Later when I shared this dream someone said their church was built on a foundation of prayer many years ago. But I think along the way maybe they forgot this key of success.
Anyway what I saw was a problem because the youth were left on the beach at ground level to build the upper structure themselves and were without tools, materials or oversight! They were left to do everything on their own. I recognized a youth leader I had seen once and well, I saw them gathering driftwood to try to build a staircase DOWN to where the leaders were in the basement. That’s not just backwards, it’s dangerous! The leaders were not training or leading the younger members but were somehow cut off from them, separated from them, and not connected or raising them up to be a part of the leadership group.
(This idea will become more clear when I explain the prophetic word on the Church in Pergamum, which is this problem in a nutshell.)
But so I saw the leaders in the basement and there was a huge bag of seashells, about three or four feet tall and maybe two feet wide, and it was a collection of some of the most beautiful rare shells mixed among many common ones and broken corals, etc. They had collected these shells from the beach but they said they had so many of them, and nothing to do with them, that, “Pfff! We give them away like ‘candy!’” They were treated as almost worthless trinkets. Was this in part from their humility? I had rarely seen such beautiful shells which I knew to value very highly!!!
I later realized these shells represented the people of the church the leaders were set over, some were normal believers—broken, worn—but many others had special gifts and callings—that’s the ‘special shells’ I knew were very valuable in the dream, but these leaders failed to recognize their worth.
Then two of the leaders began joking about the shells, and they each picked up a shell and joked like the shells were mating with each other, making grunting noises, like naughty unsaved children might do. It was a silly, worldly kind of joking but it was actually quite inappropriate.
But I didn’t rebuke them in anger, although I wanted to for a second because I expected the leaders to be more spiritual, but instead I added, also jokingly, “I’ll pray for you, mate,” in the way you would gently admonish a teenager who had just come out of the world—but this was one of the pastors and a senior staff!—an elder I later found out! I recognized one of the people in the dream by his bald head and the other I recognized from speaking at events but I didn’t know their names or real positions.
Meanwhile the younger workers were still trying to make a staircase to connect the ground level down to the basement and had found a massive weathered beam, maybe one foot or so in thickness and maybe twenty feet long or so, and had decided they were going to use it, just the way they found it, to make the stairs. They had it at ground level and were nailing thick nails into it to try to make it the top of the staircase but it was so unstable it rocked back and forth if you stepped on it and it could easily fall into the basement. You could have tried to use it like a stringer as it is called to carry the weight of the stairs going up from the lower level, it might have worked to do that, but they didn’t know that and were using it like a tread going sideways without any support under it! Completely wrong! And like I said, dangerous!
Other young people found or made similar rough cut wood pieces, but like 2×4’s, but like someone inexperienced had chopped driftwood into 2×4 posts with a hand tool: they were better for firewood than building materials really. But that was all they found for materials at the beach site and without anyone teaching them how to properly build they were determined to use them. It was clear to me that such construction materials were totally unsuitable for a building especially in that environment, also as the beach had just undergone a severe storm or small tsunami, any building materials they use should be very sturdy and be able to withstand termites, ocean water and high winds.
As I woke up I realized what they really needed was a plan!! They needed to train the youth; they needed to do things like make the staircase out of reinforced concrete, just like the foundation. If they knew they had to build it to certain specifications, or with certain materials, then they would search for those things, reject improper materials, and do it right. Otherwise their time and energy would be totally wasted and they would not do anything useful.
There was a second part of the dream about me trying to leave Hong Kong and things not working out if I tried, so I knew in the dream in that part that I needed to stay in Hong Kong to be safe.
So I think I recognized the people in the dream, the bald guy, a pastor and even the youth leader building the staircase; it was the people at the Tree of Life Church.
I didn’t want to cause a commotion but felt it was an important revelation for their core direction and a church that embraced prophecy like them would surely want to know and would appreciate the word.
So I made an appointment to meet with the pastors to share the dream. I don’t remember that first meeting at all, except that it was just with one of the two co-pastors, Henry Greenhurst, the one in the vision actually. He ended up filing that word away under … the sink. Nothing was ever done based on that insight as far as I could see anyway. But that’s not my job either! I gave the word, I gave it carefully, honestly, and so the ball was now in his court.
Prophetess Linda Hartzell
But he did say it was good timing to come that day because there was a speaker, a prophetess, in the afternoon from the US, which was arranged by Linda Ma, a well known business woman, both of whom we may want to meet.
The conference was organized by Linda Ma, but the speaker was Linda Hartzell from the End Time Handmaidens, which was led by Gwen Shaw, a lady who I met years later who used to serve the Lord in China and speaks very good Mandarin! Later we were given a book by the Lord of a man’s 40 Day Heavenly visitation and God asked me to republish it, which was previously re-published by Gwen’s group! But this was still a few years before that.
Prophet Jim Smith
Anyway, about this time another visiting prophet came to Hong Kong to speak and was hosted by that same church. He was Jim Smith from England. Jim was still an active minister in the Anglican church, the Church of England, and he traveled around the world at his own expense to give prophecy to places the Lord called him to: South America, Africa, where he had a missions base and orphanage, and now he was sent with a message for Hong Kong in Asia.
He was a real prophet—no games, no gimmicks—he just traveled the world at his own expense to deliver words to various countries: “Thus saith the Lord…” Simple! He gave me a nice word about my broken heart from many years ago being healed. But he had a hard word about Hong Kong to give as well.
Just Because I’m Near You
But first, he taught a few sessions on Saturday about being a prophet, which I was very eager to attend. During one of the meetings he was teaching about the travail of a prophet, being in Gethsamane in anguish between a Holy God and a Sinful People, which he said was the real role of a prophet, a friend of God.
And during the session his anointing covered me when I got near him and I began to see visions! He wasn’t even praying for me! One vision I was just thinking of a few days ago. It was hills like we have here in Bohol, the Chocolate Hills, and they all MOVED out of the way and opened up a wide grassy plain right down the middle of the valley and then a river sprang up down the middle of the length of the valley as well. It was obstacles moving out of the way, God making a clear, straight path and a river to refresh me along the way. Such a clear vision in picture and in meaning! And I got it just because I was standing near Jim!
Anyway, he prayed for me again and saw a vision of me wearing armor, but it was not God’s armor, it was Satan’s armor! It was a trap, probably unforgiveness and distrust caused by the pain I suffered from my past church in New Hampshire, like it was a hardening of my heart, being defensive maybe. He said it trapped me inside this false armor, but now God was going to put His Armor of Love on me instead and turn everything that Satan had done to me for evil into good. He saw an arrow that pierced my heart and God was removing it, but laying it across my chest as a reminder only.
He said God is going to make Satan pay dearly and will turn this around and bless me many times abundantly for all the things Satan had stolen. Then as he turned away he said, “He will pay dearly for laying a hand on this brother! Satan meant it for harm, but God used it to refine your character, make you sensitive and teach you … a great outpouring.”
One of the things the Lord had just told my wife in her ‘prayer journaling’ was that I was ‘Dynamite.’ I was not sure what that was all about. Later Jim said about our visions, that they’ll all come one after another and so many too. God will make up for lost time, and God confirmed to me that is what He meant by the DYNAMITE. He said, God’s will for my life which was delayed will suddenly manifest one thing on top of another and all that was stolen will just be given back almost all at the same time.
God told me that again, four times over, even many years later: a volcano erupting, a dam bursting, etc. Satan never stopped trying to block and divert God’s provisions and blessings and this just made pressure build up behind the obstacles because God is faithful to his promises, we just have to be faithful not to quit! It was a tsunami wave, a volcano erupting, a dam being burst, a sudden melting of snow on a high mountain causing a flood … God repeated this word to me many times over before it finally came to pass many, many years later!
Everything Before—Was Done in the Flesh
Then I heard God say that everything I did before (in USA) was done IN THE FLESH! That really made me think.
How can you prophesy … in the flesh? And I even saw a few healings and small miracles—but it was all done in the Flesh? How can that be? But that’s clearly what he said. But what then is the Flesh exactly?
I tried to understand and in a way it actually began to make sense. Not that the gifts were wrong, that was all fine—the Spirit was true, the words were real … but basically everything we had to do with was mostly carnal: the interpretations, the application, the power struggles, insecurities, especially how I reacted to failure, loss and obstacles, especially in not walking in faith regarding prophecy when there were delays and confusion—everything on my end was done in the Flesh, in Man’s ways, the carnal mind.
And to explain that better just a little later God clarified and told me the ‘flesh’ is these five things. The Flesh is: the human level understanding, the human level intellect, human level perception, human level motives and human level desires.
Now that makes a lot of sense actually! It’s simply the normal heart and mind of man, the natural heart and mind at work. And I’m glad to know it now! It’s a valuable lesson to people! It’s a valuable lesson to me! And so I try to share it as often as I can!
Standing in a Heavenly Council
And, oh, I really want to share this.
The next day on Sunday Prophet Jim was upstairs praying before the service when he was going to share a word from God for the whole city. I was standing near him and as he was quietly praying I had a vision of the Lord’s hand and he was holding a crown on top of a circle of pillars. It was Hong Kong, and it was as a crown in his hand. So beautiful.
I didn’t know it until he started to preach his message during the service but that was the exact word God gave him to share!
His prophetic word for Hong Kong was that the city was … a royal diadem in the Lord’s hand! Wow! A diadem is a crown! He had the verse, “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” Part of Jim’s message was a prophecy for Hong Kong about it fulfilling its destiny! That’s what I just saw in a vision when I was upstairs standing next to him before the service!
Anyway while he was still preparing, I figured I’d back him up by laying hands on his shoulder and praying for strength for him, as you do. He was tall and I was ready to reach up to his shoulder but when I got near him—I saw it!! Oh no! He was already standing in a heavenly council.
Only I was suddenly there too; I was seeing where he was getting his instruction and direction from and he was actually IN heaven. I mean his body was standing right here in the office next to me—but somehow his spirit was in a heavenly place at the same time. I saw myself standing in a corridor a little ways behind him in an area that was a little less illuminated, like I was down an access corridor, hidden from full view of the council which he was openly conversing with—I saw several circular tiers of chambers each like an arched alcove made from ancient arched stonework which rose up in layered stories extending in rows one on top of the other right up, out of my sight!
Then I suddenly realized that some of these counselors could see me and knew who I was and I wanted to hide! And surprisingly mostly they were not angels! It was people—glorified prophets, saints of renown and elders in heaven—I knew there were a few angles up above too but mostly it was human ministers in the cloud of witnesses who have now gone on to glory before us who were giving him counsel. They were still active in ministering to the people living on the Earth! I had no understanding this was even a thing!
And like I said when I realized they could actually see me I wanted to run and hide—but not Jim! Jim was just standing right out there in the middle of the circular chamber conversing freely with all these holy beings to hear their advice and to prepare his message. He certainly didn’t need my feeble prayer to ‘back him up.’
I was beyond stunned! The verse in Jeremiah 23 asking about those prophets who have been in God’s council suddenly became literal—absolutely real. God has a council chamber and Jim could go into it and be a part of the heavenly council meeting and was there right now getting their wisdom to do his ministry here on Earth! I never even imagined such a thing could be so!
But have you ever read in Hebrews 12: ‘… that we have now come to Mount Zion … and to the assembly of the firstborn … to angels but also to the spirits of righteous men made perfect …’ Not that we are headed there someday but that we have come to it (and them) already!
Seeing that council was beyond astounding—SHOCKING. I have no words to describe my feelings about seeing that! And just who was this guy anyway! Jim! Just a regular, quiet, humble lay-minister in the Anglican church in London who had a minor role. He had an orphanage in Africa too, but he was just a very humble man … but one serving as a real prophet of the Lord. That just astounded me! Amen!
You Don’t Even Know Him!!—Submit Under Him
About this time we went to a Sunday evening service at the Tree of Life and I saw the other pastor, Mike Tomlinson, who I was not yet familiar with. He was thin, gray haired, had facial hair, and I mistook him for someone from a different church who I met a few years prior who had a weird spirit I didn’t like or trust. Just as I looked at him and I said, “Oh, I don’t like that guy!”—that very SECOND! the Lord nearly shouted at me and said, “YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW HIM or what he went through!”
Oh sorry, Lord!! I really mistook him for someone else. I should not be so quick to judge! And God didn’t like my attitude.
Only a few weeks later the Lord asked me to “submit under him,” under Mike Tomlinson that is, and finally leave the Filipino church. We finally got God’s direction—we were joining the Tree of Life Church! Yay!
