The Lord asked me to write . . .
One day the Lord asked me to write a book on how I learned about prophecy and that seemed hard enough, but then his angel came to me and said I should name the book “8 + Splash” …
And because I had kept a very careful record of everything I heard God tell me since I was a new Christian I had plenty of source material—my personal prophecy record by now spans 35 years and me living in three different countries and runs into the thousands of pages! The problem wasn’t the lack of having things to say. In fact I had to cut hundreds of words and visions from this account, first because they were not strictly on how I learned about prophecy but were more just how God was dealing with me on a day-to-day basis or speaking to me on other topics. But also because the volume is just too much to share! So this book is focused on how I learned itself and is certainly not everything God told me over these years!
But then I started to write and got to where things began to get difficult and I just couldn’t write any more. It was too personal and just too painful. I picked it up again later and just started over … but again came to an impasse and had to stop. I did it a third time and a fourth and just could not do what God asked me to do. I tried to be brave and objective but His promises to me were breaking my heart.
It was over 15 years after that when finally—FINALLY—his first real promise to me, the promise he told me when I was only 19 years old, the promise that he had a ‘special woman’ for me … it was finally when this word literally came to pass that everything began to change.
Habbakuk asked God a perplexing question and waited for an answer and in chapter 2:2-3 he said:
2 And the Lord answered me:
“Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so he may run who reads it.
3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
it will surely come; it will not delay. (ESV)
So write the vision, make it plain, wait for his word if it seems slow. It will come to pass and won’t prove false. But how long are you willing to wait for God’s word to come to pass? A month? Six? A year? I sure hope it won’t be longer than that … but I waited on this word, reading it often, thinking about it sometimes daily for nearly 30 years. Proverbs 13:12 knows what it’s talking about saying:
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life. (NKJV)
Hope deferred makes the heart sick but when God’s word finally comes to pass … there is life!
For me when the season of flowers finally came I suddenly saw so many things in a new light and I soon felt the Lord lead me to pick up this manuscript again … and with new life, spiritual healing and renewed strength I seemed to finish it in just a few days … This is a personal story the Lord asked me to share with you and yes, it’s often embarrassing, a few times scary, no, it’s never boring and certainly not predictable—but it is pretty much always supernatural—how could God talking to us and directing our lives be anything other?
But for better or worse, this is how I learned about prophecy.
A literary companion
And many times telling this story I wanted to just stop and explain better about how I understood things right at that moment in time, or what our doctrines were back then, or my own beliefs—but God kept telling me not to do that. It turns out He had a better plan instead!
Now I understand since He also asked me to write a separate book to just talk about what I think which is the book 10 Things on Prophecy where Jesus just asked me to have a fireside chat about the things I’ve learned over 30-plus years regarding prophecy—not making hard and fast rules, not making a list of doctrines but instead just having a casual chat on these oftentimes difficult topics.
So that book, 10 Things, is a companion book to this one, 8 + Splash—they both deal with the same topic—prophecy—but do it from quite different perspectives.
So I suppose while 10 Things is a book sharing WHAT I learned—this book now is sharing HOW I learned it. Both are valuable but in different ways.
And as helpful as 10 Things is where I can just talk directly to share deep insights, conclusions and revelations from when I finally became able to just hear Jesus talk to me for hours a day—this story of my journey shows I certainly did not start out that way! I started out completely clueless, practically deaf and alienated from God in every important way. I bumbled around in darked ignorance, only finally stumbling upon the answers I sought after many years and with a great many tears. But I think sharing these experiences will in fact encourage readers the most.
Yes, Experience is a good teacher, but actually there still is a better one, the Holy Spirit. We learn by our mistakes, only sometimes—it is far easier to learn from God’s imparted wisdom directly without first making the mistakes ourselves! But we can’t always do that and certainly don’t start out there, do we? So I do share my mistakes and my misconceptions, wrong decisions and the hardships I endured all to find those moments of clarity and enlightenment of actually being taught by God directly. I’m not sharing these personal things to glory in my hardships, but to help people learn from them so they won’t have to make the same mistakes I did.
I am trying to be honest with what I went through, how I saw things at the time I endured those hardships, and do not want to present a highly sanitized version of my journey. I think this provides the best lessons for you, and for me, yes, it’s real. It’s honest. We do struggle, prophecy is confusing, and I like to say anyone telling you otherwise is selling something! So I’ve been open and honest with you—please be gentle and forgiving to me!
But “8 … plus … splash”… ?
But just going back to the angel for a moment, he said to name this book “8 + Splash”—but what does that even mean? Is that prophetic code for something?
Eight I used to say is the number of renewal; the next number after the perfect cycle of seven is completed. So ‘8’ is also the first number in the new season, the new series, a new start maybe? And ‘splash’ is a similar word to the Hebrew word for ‘to prophesy’ I am told, which is Nabi and means something like to ‘bubble up’ and so to ‘declare.’
So … ‘A New Bubble?’ … Or, ‘Springs of the New Season?’ … I certainly can’t name a book simply ‘8 + Splash’ can I?
Well, during an intense purification season I had seen my house in heaven—I’ve seen two of my houses in fact, one of them was large and very public and filled with so many boisterous voices—I was alone and isolated at that time in my life and so I was confused about just who all those people in it were!?—so I just turned away when I saw it! It actually resembled a large English velvet crown in shape, it was a few stories tall and was royal purple! (MY color!) It seemed to be near ‘town’ and so I call that my Royal Crown House. But the other house I saw was isolated and in an ideal state of solitude.
And when I first saw this house it was with my spiritual eyes!—it was not a hazy vision or like imagination but was more clear, more vibrant and more real than the earthly reality we live in!—I was literally seeing into heaven itself!—And what I saw was a White Dome set on large classical pillars on the steep slope of a heavily forested mountainside ridge. But yes, I was somehow seeing this by looking into the eternal heavenly reality directly! Astonishing!
And I was looking at this scene from about a mile away and from up in the air and the forest was a continuous blanket or lush carpet of vibrant green trees that covered the mountain range and stretched beyond my vision in all directions. This was truly an isolated mountain refuge for me. So this is what stood out so strongly: first, the GREEN of the trees; second, the WHITE of the marble-like dome on top of classical-order pillars—oh, and when I saw it I saw a third attribute that in physical sight you cannot see, but in spiritual sight I knew instantly upon seeing it: I “saw” that “it belonged to me.”
The next week it stirred within my heart so strongly; this was already my home. MY home! Shouldn’t I then be allowed go back and visit it again? I thought so! So the next week in prayer I set my heart to go back to visit my house intentionally—not the public Royal Crown House but my private marble-domed forest house of solitude. And as soon as I sat down in prayer to do this, I was back there. But this time instead of seeing it from afar, I was right in the garden in the back yard. There was a small river that flowed through my garden. I didn’t know it at the time but it was a rivulet from the River of Life and from this spiring of living water revelation from God was flowing into my life. That’s anyway how I understand it today.
At first I still usually felt timid going there, like I was an interloper, an uninvited guest—but the Lord kept telling me to come back again and visit it more often, as often I wanted to, and often when I needed to. It really is already my property and has some connection to who I am eternally!
And I remember once when I was in such deep distress and I went back again and there in the garden a table was set up that was in the shape of an eye—not like an oval, but more like an eye—and sitting across from me on that side sat the Father! His face was radiant WHITE and obscure from the Glory that shone from his face. He sat there on that side of the table, and I sat here on this side and we had, well, a father-to-son talk about the difficulties I was having.
So wanting to force some kind of interpretation on this strange title, 8 + Splash, I tried to tie it into the vision or visitation of my heavenly house of solitude. I focused on ‘the river in the garden’ since that was close to how you could read “splash” but I waited for the Lord to approve of my interpretation but he seemed not to like my take on things. I waited for either confirmation or a better explanation of his symbolism but after five years … seven years … ten years … well over twelve years and finally I just gave in and did literally what the angel said to do.
So “8 + Splash” it is!
Now I’m beginning to like it! It’s confusing! Provocative. Memorable! And Prophecy by rights should be all three. Prophecy is God talking to us and he is communicating Divine Thoughts to earthly people—and we understand in part and prophesy in part—so prophecy is usually confusing, at least in part! And especially at first!
But that’s also where we all do begin!
We only see things at first dimly, from our human, earthly perspective. Later we learn and get more spiritual understanding and start to have a more ‘intermediate’ handle on things. But if you keep pressing in still you can find the rarefied air where God will actually become your teacher. This is the real treasure to me that I found which I didn’t even know I was looking for! When this became my new normal I finally learned God’s perspective on prophecy and so many other things—and that turned everything the right way round.
But like I said, we don’t start out there! Only as we mature do we find in order to finally embrace God’s proper heavenly wisdom we will have to un-train ourselves from the earthly wisdom of man that we unfortunately picked up along the way—the ways of Man, the understanding of God but as earthly Man sees him, and “knowing Christ according to the flesh”—this has to be recognized for what it is and purposefully abandoned because it is an obstacle to our spiritual growth—but yes it is also where we all do seem to start!
So it was with me! And so to tell you my own story of how I learned about prophecy let’s go back and start at the very beginning—a very good pace to start!
