Fire from heaven

By Frances

If it happened in Bible times, it will happen today!

“The year King Uzziah died I saw the Lord! He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the Temple was filled with his glory. Hovering about him were mighty, six- winged seraphs. With two of their wings they covered their faces; with two others they covered their feet, and with two they flew. In a great antiphonal chorus they sang, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is filled with his glory.’

“Such singing it was! It shook the Temple to its foundations, and suddenly the entire sanctuary was filled with smoke.

“Then I said, ‘My doom is sealed, for I am a foul mouthed sinner, a member of a sinful, foul-mouthed race; and I have looked upon the King, the Lord of heaven’s armies.

“Then one of the seraphs flew over to the altar and with a pair of tongs picked out a burning coal. He touched my lips with it and said, ‘Now you are pronounced ‘Not guilty’ because this coal has touched your lips. Your sins are all forgiven.’

“Then I heard the Lord asking, ‘Whom shall I send as a messenger to my people? Who will go?’

“And I said, ‘Lord, I’ll go! Send me” (Isaiah 6:1-8 TLB).

God continually confirms his Word with signs and wonders, and so often he does some of the most unusual things.

Tuesday night, January 29, 1979, was a night we will never forget. It all started as Charles and I read the confession from A Confession A Day Keeps The Devil Away. “Thank you, Father, that angels are in charge of me. I am surrounded by angels at all times who minister to me and protect me, even from accidents. I am accompanied by angels, defended by them and preserved by them because you have ordered them to do so.” (Reference: Psalm 91:11)

We were sitting in the restaurant as I read this, and as soon as I finished, God spoke and said, “TONIGHT THERE WILL BE A VISITATION OF ANGELS IN THE CHURCH!”

I almost fell off of my chair.

I shared this in the morning session, and the organist spoke up and said, “Last night I felt the presence of an angel on the front pew, but I couldn’t see him, and asked God to please let me see him, but he said, ‘Not tonight, but tomorrow night.”

What a confirmation!

The pastor of the church immediately jumped to his feet and said, “I want to share something I’ve never shared before.” Then he shared a story of how he heard the angels sing the night he was saved sixty years before. He was baptized with the Holy Spirit at the same time, but he had never heard the angels sing again, and had asked God the previous week to let him hear the angels once more. Just seven or eight days prior to our being in the church, God let him hear the angels sing again.

More confirmation!

There was a great excitement at the start of the evening meeting, and an awareness of the presence of God in an unusual way. A prophecy came forth from another of the pastors saying that fire would come down from heaven that very night. The excitement mounted!

We worshipped, we taught, we preached the Gospel, and still we saw nothing of the angels God said would be there. We talked on total commitment of our lives and holy living that evening and asked all who wanted to release their lives totally to God and die to self to stand and come forward. The front of the church was filled, the aisles were filled all the way to the back of the church, because God had touched the hearts of the people.

Suddenly I saw an angel appear in the back of the church. He was blowing a trumpet, apparently sounding a call for other angels.

This all happened as the crowd surged forward, and along with them came other angels which had appeared right after the trumpet call. Each angel had one coal of fire held in a small pair of tongs. As they came over the crowd, each angel proceeded to place the coal of fire on the lips of individuals throughout the standing congregation.

As I saw each angel descend to leave the coal, I went to that person and touched their lips and unusual things happened! One of the pastors said he never felt such power in his life, and when I touched his lips he wondered if I had actually hit him in the mouth. He went under the power and while he was on the floor, he reached up to see if his lips were bleeding because he felt such a breath of power!

A young man who received a coal of fire had not received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and as soon as I touched his lips he fell under the power and began to speak in tongues.

Some did not receive coals, and Charles received a word of prophecy. God said that there was a wall or blockage holding some of them back from receiving a special anointing. He said it in great love, not being judgmental, and the message continued that they would be awakened between two and three o’clock in the morning by the Holy Spirit!

And they were! The next night a couple came in with nine packs of cigarettes. She said the presence of God was so real the night before she began to weep because she was afraid she wouldn’t make it to heaven and God said, “I want your cigarettes.” Both she and her husband turned in their cigarettes, completely delivered because of this unusual visitation.

A young man who had stolen a diamond ring, confessed that he had swallowed it when the police examined him, but that it had later been stolen from him, and the convicting power of the Holy Spirit was so strong that he heard God say, “You still owe the jeweler for that ring, even if it was stolen from you.” He said he was going to make a restitution, and people began giving money to help him make the restitution.

At two-thirty in the morning, a woman was awakened and heard one word, “Miriam.” On Wednesday night, we shared the story of Miriam and Aaron talking and gossiping behind Moses’ back, and envying God’s treatment of him, and this woman confessed her envy of someone else in the congregation because of their talents. (Read Numbers, Chapter 12).

However, the most exciting testimony came from the pastor himself. He said, “I didn’t see any angels, I didn’t feel a thing when Frances placed her hands on my lips, but I preached all night long. I preached in my sleep, I preached when I was awake, and folks, you’ve got a brand new pastor.” The anointing on him was tremendous.

We don’t understand everything about angels, but how we praise God for the ministering work performed by the angels that night!

We really didn’t know that there was a similar story in the Bible until one day we were reading and discovered the story as quoted above in Isaiah Chapter six.

We still wonder what God meant, but as we look back to the age God talked about in the rest of that chapter when Israel was scattered, and now look at this end generation when the Jews have again become a nation, could this mean that we disciples who are to be used to go tell the world about the cleansing power of God will be the totally committed people whose only desire is to say, “Lord, I’ll go! Send me.”

“Now when the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them DIVIDED TONGUES, AS OF FIRE, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance” (Acts 2:1-4).

Charles:

We had almost completed writing the great book Angels On Assignment, and were in an afternoon service in a church in Wycoff, New Jersey. I was telling the congregation about God stationing the angel with us to protect us from the fiery darts of Satan until Jesus Christ comes back; about many of the exciting visits of Gabriel and the other angels to Pastor Buck, and about some of the messages God sent to us, the Body, by the Angel Gabriel. I was bubbling over with excitement about this when suddenly one whole row of people jumped to their feet and began pointing toward us and shouting, “Look behind you, look behind you! Shafts of light! Shafts of light!” Others began popping up all over the church shouting the same thing and pointing toward us.

We could have kicked ourselves for not immediately looking, but as they were shouting, I felt a force of energy pouring into my body from behind my left shoulder like from a fire hose. It seemed to penetrate my whole body and I have never felt such a powerful presence or flow of the power of God in my life. Frances and I were standing behind a large pulpit side by side when the power of the Holy Spirit came down on us like ten thousand pounds of glory and we both slumped over on the pulpit.

This power felt much like the gravity pull on a plane which speeds in a steep climb upwards, but only in reverse. It was the power of God that pushed us down on the pulpit.

After this visitation ended, we talked to the congregation saying we did not know what this was, but reminded them of some similar visits in the Bible.

For example, in Exodus 3:2-8: “And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed... (8) So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey...“

In this end generation, God is again visiting earth with His angels with the message of deliverance. So much of God’s end-time messages in the book Angels On Assignment relate to His deliverance of His people by the cleansing blood of Jesus. God never ceases to reach His big arms of love out to those who are not serving Him, always wanting them to come to Him and be His children. His love is everlasting and is being poured out so freely in this generation, wanting none to perish!

We also called their attention to Acts 9:3-6: “And as he (Saul) journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’

“So he, trembling and astonished, said, ‘Lord, what do You want me to do? ’And the Lord said to him, ‘Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.

That was one of the most awesome experiences of my life, but we still didn’t know what this special visitation was until we were with Pastor Buck to whom God had sent the angels so many times. I asked Pastor Buck to tell us some of the messages and visits which he had not yet shared with us. He said, “I don’t believe I told you, but Gabriel and Chrioni came to my study one night and said to tell Charles and Frances that they had dropped in on some of their services, but to tell them that they did not appear as they usually do, but appeared AS SHAFTS OF LIGHT!”

Glory to God! Gabriel is the angel who stands nearest to God (Luke 1:19) and this radiation of the presence of God on him was what I felt so strongly that afternoon!

As we have shared what God is doing and will be doing to accomplish those “greater things” Jesus said we would be doing, He has given us confirmations along the way, building our faith to move into new dimensions of His power and glory.

We were sharing this end-time message in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada when I suddenly stopped sharing, and said, “I have never felt the radiating power of God so strong as I do right now except the time when Gabriel stood behind us in New Jersey.”

The next night a young lady who had been saved only about two months came with the people who came to the hotel to take us to the meeting. She was so excited because she wanted to tell us what she saw the night before while we were sharing this story of God’s glory. She said there appeared a large angel, about eight feet high, and he was pacing back and forth behind Frances and me. She said he would walk up behind us and put his hands on both our shoulders, then he would walk some more, and then come to first one of us and then the other and lay his hands on our shoulders. Hallelujah!

She said that as she was watching this big angel, something like a cloud of thin smoke filled the top of the auditorium and she began looking at this cloud when there appeared hundreds of little angels in the cloud. We often see this cloud of glory fill the temple when we are worshipping God and Jesus and during miracle services. Many times we have seen God’s worship angels appear in this cloud of glory just like this young girl described.

We know this was a different angel than the one God stationed with us because when “our” angel is near us we do not feel this radiating power; we are aware of his presence and often Frances sees him physically appear in her spirit vision. Pastor Buck related that this power emanating out of Gabriel and the other angel with him was so strong one time that he started falling down the stairs, but the angels caught him and strength came back into him. He said that when an angel stays on earth for long periods of time, this power fades like the glory of God faded from the face of Moses after he came down from the mountain after having been with God.

We believe this appearance of a heavenly being was another of the many confirmations God is giving that this message of the greater things He wants to do through the Body of Christ is from Him and is for us today.

CHAPTER 18

GOD’S GLORY

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