A 2001-2002 Encounter With Jesus Spanning 7 Months (Part 1 of 2)
For the sake of historical understanding of what I will attempt to present in this article, I want the reader to know that I was living in Mobile, Alabama at the time of the events described in this article. I spent from the early 70’s up to 1998 in the corporate medical arena and the Lord really blessed my career. By late 1991, I was at the peak of my career success.
Then, without my having much awareness that the Lord was about to invade my life in a very dramatic way, the Lord visited me on the morning of November 16, 1991 and birthed some things in my life that literally changed me into another person.
I’ve been told that hindsight is 20/20 and I agree with that. Looking back now from years later, I believe the Lord was intending to prepare me for a later time of very specific ministry, and He knew that a spiritual foundation was needing to be established that did not exist at that time. I did not see that at the time of the encounter, and neither did any of the leaders or mentors that were in my life, because they lacked what the Lord was trying to accomplish in me as well. It is true that we cannot offer to others what we lack in ourselves. So, no one was standing in front of me with a caution sign when the encounter came and because it was so intense, it ended up re-directing my life towards ministry. So that was the backdrop to all that you are about to read.
I had been living in Mobile, Alabama since May of 1979 and the timeframe of 1991 through 2000 was an exciting and intense time spiritually in that area. A lot was happening across the Gulf Coast region of the United States in terms of the Lord’s visitation of His Presence and revival. As I mentioned above, the intensity of these things really ramped up for me from November 1991 and forward, and this led to a release of ministry on a new level for me personally, especially in the prophetic arena. I experienced a birthing of the prophetic flow in my life and that was according to my definition of the prophetic ministry at that time. The result was that I was eager and excited to launch out and explore what the Lord had brought into being.
1992 through 1994 were years of intensive training and facilitation of ministry in and around Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, FL. There was a real sense of Holy Spirit inspired stirring that was permeating everything at that time. I even had opportunity to coordinate and lead a couple of large conferences in 1993 and 1994, both dealing with prophetic issues in the Lord at that timeframe.
By the Fall of 1995, a team of five of us birthed a ministry that became publicly known as the Mobile School of the Spirit. The Lord really showed up and great grace was experienced in the meetings.
The ministry grew, and it was not long until some well-known speakers began to come and minister at the Mobile SOS on a pretty regular basis. I am intentionally leaving out the names of who those people were, but they were very visible leaders in the prophetic movement during the mid-1990s. Attendance at the meetings grew, and this led to occasional conferences where hundreds, and sometimes into the thousands, would attend.
Alongside of all this amazing activity that was taking place in the Lord, Brownsville Assembly exploded in revival in the Summer of 1995, on June 18th which was Father’s Day. That was only a 45 minute drive to the east of us, and there was a lot of cross-pollination back and forth. Eventually, the spiritual atmosphere reached a point where those gathered together began to feel as though we all would blast off into the third heaven and possibly not return to earth. I don’t mean that literally, but I say that to describe the intensity of emotional feelings we all had at that time.
1996 through 1999 was a very intense season and the ministry peaked in 1999. By midyear 2000, we began to see a shift toward less intensity and as we got over into 2001, there was a change being felt across the region, a very definite slowing of the pace of ministry, and it impacted our ministry and the Brownsville Revival as well.
That was the backdrop to what I really wish to convey to the reader. Now comes the most important part. In November of 2001, I was sitting in my office in my blue recliner one morning, contemplating the really pronounced changes in the normal pattern of events in both our ministry and my personal business endeavors. This was not unusual in itself, but this particular day began a time-frame where God stepped into my daily affairs in a very pronounced and supernatural fashion.
As I was sitting in my chair, suddenly I heard the audible voice of the Lord begin to speak to me. The Lord had chosen to join in a conversation about the very thoughts I was currently thinking.
He said, “Chris, would you be OK if I told you that for a season, we are going to take a trip to the backside of the desert, and in that place, all of what you have come to think of and know as normal will cease. There will be none of the exuberant meetings, none of the normal ministry activity, and no visibility. It will feel to you as if everything has come to a complete stop. But…, what you will have is my manifest Presence.” There was a brief moment of silence at this point and then He came back to me and said, “Chris, if all you have is Me and Me alone…, would I be enough for you?”
As soon as Jesus finished asking this question, I was immediately hit by what felt like a wave of “knowing”. I instantly knew that the appropriate answer was “Yes”, but felt inwardly that I was being required to not answer hastily, but rather, to stop and really give thought to the Lord’s question, Would I be enough for you?
I suddenly had a profound inward knowing that whatever I answered in response to the Lord’s question was going to be set in motion immediately, with no delay whatsoever! So, for a brief moment I contemplated what a “No” answer would be saying…, “No, Jesus, You would not be enough. I desire ministry more than I desire You”…, but my spirit was screaming out at the very thought of that. I knew that any ministry worth engaging must always start and end with Jesus. So, I said “Yes Lord, You alone would be enough.”
It was a sobering moment because I knew I was accepting terms that were going to have serious implications. After I answered the Lord, there was another moment of silence and then He simply said, “OK”. I heard what sounded like a “Ka-chunk”, similar to the sound of the latch on a large door closing. The intensity of His Presence left and I did not experience another visitation like this again until 7 months later, in June of 2002.
Then, one morning near the end of June 2002, I was sitting in my office in the same blue chair, literally in the same position I was in back in November of 2001, and the Lord again came to me just as suddenly as He had the prior November. Although it had been seven months since the last encounter, He spoke to me as if we were still mid-sentence, still engaged in our last conversation. I suddenly saw a scroll unroll before my eyes and written on it was 2 Peter 3:8, …with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. I suddenly realized that the Lord was still in the same conversation we began in November and had never left. For me, it had felt like seven long months of “earth time.”
Then the Lord said, “Chris, if I had given you all the things you thought you wanted within ministry, they would have frustrated you even more than the aspects of business that you felt were competing for your time and hindering My ministry call on your life, making it difficult for you to walk out what I had called you to do.”
As He was speaking this to me, suddenly…, I was no longer in my office, but found myself physically in an outdoor setting looking straight ahead. It was obvious that I was outside. I could smell the air and feel the ground under my feet, but I could not see anything of importance beyond about 30 feet in any direction. I had that same inner sense of knowing that I experienced in my office in November of 2001, but this time, it was a knowing that there was nothing important to be noticed beyond the 20 foot distance.
As I looked straight ahead, I saw the body of a person standing on two stones that were about 3 feet in diameter, and facing me from about 15 feet in front of me. As I looked at this person’s body, there were several things that immediately stood out to me. First, the stones were separated enough such that the person’s legs were at a 45 degree angle to each other. Next, the person had on generic clothing such that it was not clearly either make or female. I believe this person was representative of both. Also, I could not see above the person’s neck but yet, I knew by revelation that it was not a headless body. It was very much alive and able to think, see, speak, and hear.
As I was contemplating this body standing spread-legged on these two large stones, I also was aware that a Man in a white robe was standing about 10 feet from me and about 30 degrees to my left. He also was looking at this person standing on these rocks.
I again looked at the person in front of me and my attention was drawn to the Rock under the right foot. Immediately and with that same inner knowing, I knew by revelation that this Rock represented Jesus, the true foundation. No sooner did I think this that Jesus, knowing my thoughts, said audibly, “You have seen correctly. I Am the true foundation. Now…, what does the other rock represent?”
As I looked at the rock under the left foot, I felt as if I was overwhelmed with another wave of revelation and I suddenly knew that it represented all the other things that were about Him, but they were not Him.
Again knowing my thoughts, Jesus looked straight at me with a rather piercing look and said, “Yes, you have again seen correctly. Chris, this rock represents THE PROPHETIC… (The capitalized letters represent the point at which the Lord‘s voice became very loud and forceful).
I was momentarily pushed backwards by the forcefulness and volume of His voice, and I felt for a moment that He was angry with me. Then just as suddenly, He lowered the volume of his voice and continued, “It represents full time ministry, it represents a call to the nations, it represents the callings and destinies of My people, it represents all the things other than Me over which My people have become so passionate and consumed.” Then, lowering His voice even more, He said, “Unfortunately, all these things represent the good things about Me which have replaced Me in the hearts of many of My people.”
At this point, Jesus placed his hands on his midsection and began to weep so deeply that he was literally bending over at His waist. It was absolutely heart wrenching to watch! I had never witnessed anything like that before and I was not sure what to do in the moment but just stand there and take it all in. Then as His weeping began to subside, He just looked at the ground and was silent. Then He looked at me again and said, “Now that you understand this, you will understand what I must now do.”
Immediately, He walked over in front of the person standing on the rocks and stopped in front of the rock under the left foot. What happened next took place very quickly. Jesus suddenly kicked the rock out from under the left foot of the body of the person and the rock was gone. The body immediately fell to it’s left and did a perfect belly-flop, hitting the ground so hard that it let out a sound as if the life was knocked out of it. Then, it just lay there motionless for what seemed to me a VERY long time.
Let’s stop for just a moment and think about the scene just described. If a person is standing three feet up in the air because of the diameter of these rocks, and they are spread-legged with their body above and between the rocks, they will have equal weight on each foot. Try this and you will see that it is impossible for this not to be so. If one of the rocks suddenly comes out from under one foot, it will be impossible to regain stability and a bad fall will result.
I was really concerned, actually almost distressed for the “body”, because of the fall. Jesus clearly perceived my concern because He looked at me and said, “Just observe…”. That brought peace to me so I stood still and watched.
After what seemed to be a long period of time, the body slowly began to stir and regain its breath. It slowly stood to its feet and I could tell it was closely examining its condition. I saw it hold out its arms and hands and examine the dirt on them and then I saw it look at its soiled clothes, all covered with dirt and debris. As it stood there realizing its condition, it slowly walked over to Jesus and held out its hands and arms to Him, allowing Him to see all the dirt and debris on its clothes. Then it said, “Lord, we are so sorry we have done this to You. We are so sorry…
At this point, the body, having realized its condition, was weeping deeply before the Lord. Then I heard it say, “Lord, please cleanse us of a wrong focus and heal us of our condition. We are so sorry…”
Suddenly, I am back in my office and no longer in the outdoor scene. Again, I hear the Lord’s audible voice, but no longer see anything other than the normal environment of my office.
Jesus said, “In the coming days, My people’s greatest desire will be just to sit at My feet and enjoy sweet fellowship with Me. No longer will they have their passions wrapped around the things they do for Me. I will be their greatest passion. Then, I will say to this one, will you go and deliver this message to this group, and I will say to that one, will you go and help this one on the street who is in great need, and I will say to another, will you go and encourage this one who is My sheep. Because of their passion for Me, they will have no desire to leave their place at My feet, but they will do as I ask out of their great love for me. They will all go and complete their assignments exactly as I instructed. But when they have completed what I told them to do, their greatest desire will be to quickly return to their place, sitting at My feet. Never again will they displace their passion for Me over to those things that they do for Me. I alone will be their passion.”
Then the Lord said, “I am about to give My Body a new revelation of Me”.
With that statement, the encounter ended.
Now, the rest of what you will read here is not a testimony of the encounter, but rather my interpretation of what took place and understandings that have been given to me from the Lord out of the encounter.
Some may wonder why the Lord spoke to me so sternly regarding the prophetic. The prophetic gift is entirely Biblical and is the one gift that we are admonished to most eagerly pursue, even finding these words, “covet to prophesy”, in 1 Corinthians 14:39 (KJV). I am sure that the prophetic was one area where at some point over 1991-2001 timeframe, I had personally engaged some of the very issues in prophetic ministry that the Lord was addressing in this encounter, because I was very deeply immersed in it. The Lord was not dismissing the application of prophetic ministry according to biblical order, as found in 1 Cor. 14:1-4. But He was especially pointing to what we see in Rev 19:10, For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, and I was clearly not understanding that back in 2002, or even after that, …until early 2015.
After the encounter, the Lord came to me later and explained that I was not able to see the head on the Body because He was the Head, but He was not being given His rightful place as the True Head of the church. The headless body was not taking its direction from its Head, because it was disconnected from the Head…, doing things apart from the Lord. According to what the Lord was helping me understand, the Revelation of Jesus Christ would reconnect the true Body to its true Head, Jesus Christ.
It was not long after this encounter, by the Spring of 2003, that it became very clear to my wife and I that our 25-year tenure in Mobile, AL was over and we were being led by the Lord to move our entire family to Franklin, TN. It was quite an endeavor to sell our large home and move a family of seven, with all our stuff and kids in various schools. But we got everything ready, packed and moved, and our feet landed on Franklin soil on September 4th of 2003.
We quickly came to appreciate Franklin because it is a family-friendly community, and I already had prior ministry contacts in the area. After a period of about four months, I began to engage with some of the local ministries and got drawn into what was taking place in the Nashville metro sphere. It was a good time for me and I was embraced by those already established in the area. It did not take long and I was engaging ministry in the Nashville area like I had done in Mobile, AL. The only difference was that Nashville was a considerably larger sphere of ministry.
Did you note what I just said? I came to the Nashville area in 2003 and got involved in exactly what I was doing in Mobile, AL…, AFTER what the Lord had said to me in June of 2002. I was being embraced by folks in the Nashville ministry sphere, but I do not wish to draw attention to them in this testimony, because anything I did that was not aligned with the Lord would be my issue and not theirs. But suffice it to say that what I was doing in ministry was being embraced by leaders in the area and those on the receiving end, as well. And that pattern continued on and off until Summer of 2014.
So what was the problem?
Understanding a bit of my personal history might help. I got saved in the Southern Baptist Church at 7 years of age, but backslid when I went to college because I was still very full of myself. Then the Lord brought me back into relationship with Him in August of 1976, at the age of 27, at which time I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I had a four month period in which to absorb the new revelations that the Holy Spirit was brining into my life and then the Lord led me to Derek Prince’s church in South Florida, to be discipled. I ended up spending 14 years in the Covenant-Discipleship Movement and that is what took me from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Mobile Alabama in 1979.
Except for the few years of my early to mid-twenties when I was backsliding, my entire life was spent in the Church. I knew about Jesus, and I knew all the basic doctrines of the church. As time passed by, especially after 1991, I got trained in the use of the gifts and became especially seasoned in prophetic ministry…, enough to receive invitations to numerous states and ministries to engage in prophetic ministry in their churches, and to train others in prophetic ministry. So I was engaged in prophetic ministry as a primary ministry thrust for 22 years.
Was I lacking in normal Biblical understanding? No, at least not compared to most of those around me! Was I lacking a true functional call by the Lord to ministry? No! The calling was real and has been consistently confirmed by many ever since the Fall of 1991. Was I lacking in integrity or passion or zeal? No! None of these things were the problem.
The problem was that I lacked a true Revelation of Jesus and all the preaching I heard, all the conferences I had attended, and all of my ministry experiences had not established that into my life.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ was lacking in my mentors too, and most of us know that we cannot offer to others what we do not possess themselves. I don’t blame them at all. The revelation of Jesus Christ has largely been lost to most of what calls itself the church, and those who mentored me probably had not been given an understanding of the need for the Revelation of Jesus Christ either, just like I had not.
Even more important for all of us is that without a true Revelation of Jesus Christ, it would mean that there is most likely a lack of understanding of the real Gospel of Jesus Christ, as taught by the Apostle Paul in Galations 1:11-12…, “11 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
Dear reader, please just bear with me here for a moment and do not be offended with what I just said. Allow me to explain what I just said to an additional level of understanding. To illustrate what I said above about the lack of understanding of the true gospel of Jesus Christ, the true Gospel is not about us getting saved and then going and doing good works for God. That is what so many of us have been taught. We will not become one of the Overcomers spoken of in Revelation 3:21 if that is what we embrace. To be an Overcomer means that our sin nature we inherited from Adam, the self-nature, has been overcome. That only happens as we embrace the Cross, which also brings us into the sufferings of Christ, and the process of God for each of us. It is NOT a once and done thing, but rather, an entirely supernatural process administrated by the Holy Spirit.
Our eternal reward is not going to be about what we have done for God. Instead, it will based upon our possession of the inward formation of Christ Himself. That is why we see what we do in Ephesians 4:11-13..., “11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” (This was covered in extensive detail in the Expanded Mission and Purpose Statement on this website)
Verses 11 and 12 speak to the work of the ministry, and verse 13 speaks to the ultimate endpoint that the Lord desires with each of us. The fullness of Christ is an eternal endpoint of preparation that comes at the end of a process to bring us into the reality of John 3:30. We willingly give up our life, the life of our Adamic nature, so that we might have the inward life of Jesus Christ. This is what Paul spoke about in in Galations 2:20 from his own experience.
The watered-down gospel that is so prevalent today would have us believe that we can keep our lives and have our best life now. That is totally contrary to what Jesus taught in Matthew 16:25, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
The real Gospel directly prepares us for fulfillment of the great Eternal Plan and Purpose of the Godhead, which is to carry the full representation of Jesus Christ into all creation. We can see the Eternal Plan and Purpose mentioned in Ephesian 1:11, “also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, which is for us to become a vessel filled to the fullness of Christ Himself.
We can see the outworking of our preparation to come into the fullness of Christ in what Paul writes in Romans 8:19. The reason that there is a great and intense longing on the part of the whole of creation (I.e. the spiritual beings in the rest of all creation) is because they have been waiting for a VERY LONG TIME to gain the revelation of Jesus Christ for themselves, and they know that will finally come through the Bride, because the true Bride will have Christ fully dwelling within her in all fullness. Therefore, Christ will reveal Himself to the beings in all creation from within His Bride.
From that, we can see WHY true believers must embrace the process of internal transformation because keeping their current life is not optional IF they are going to be filled with the life of Christ instead.
And by the way, the Bride is one and the same as the Overcomers, which is the same as the True Body of Christ, as seen in Ephesians 1:22-23...,
“22 And He put all things in subjection under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”
OK, now back to some further discussion of my testimony.
I could understand if some of you got the impression that possibly I was not really saved, maybe I had been slow to learn, was not in love with the Lord, or was even involved in ministry for the wrong reasons. I can tell you with 100% certainty that none of those things were true. I wanted the Lord so badly in the mid-90’s that I offered him my very successful and lucrative medical career of 20+ years in exchange for His plan for me. I routinely asked Him to pull out all the stops and do whatever it would take for Him to put me right where He wanted me. And I knew that kind of prayer would subject me to whatever level of severity the Lord would choose! I used to pray that He would prepare me to serve Him and that I be made ready by Him, ready at the right time, the right place, and lacking nothing to accomplish all He had called me to do.
Apparently, I engaged the Lord, ministry, etc., well enough that somebody out there thought I was on the right path, because from 1991 to 2014, I was ordained three times by three well-recognized ministries.
But I STILL lacked a true revelation of Christ.
Then in another encounter in July of 2014, the Lord began to speak to me about Matt. 7:22-23 and that it had to do with Christians, not the lost. He told me that most of the Church was on track to miss the Bridal relationship with Him. He also began to speak to me about the real Gospel of Jesus Christ, and He said it was not the one I had been taught. In a moment of one afternoon, He totally smashed my 38 years of experience as a “Christian.”
By early 2015, the Lord began a process of “divine disruption” in me, in which He began removing my long-established understandings of the Gospel, and He began replacing the old with brand new understandings. It brought about such change that it was like all things being made new within. The Bible now reads differently than before. And ALL the scriptures point to Christ!
But best of all, it has introduced me to the beginnings of the real Life that Christ promised. Unlike what I experienced before this season, His real Life does not leak out of us like the “life” that comes from the momentary mountain-top experiences in ministry and experiences from prior years.
This new understanding of the Gospel is the same one that was given to the Apostle Paul in his third-heaven revelation. It has been life-changing to me and I expect a single-focus on Christ to be my direction and purpose from now on. And yes, I do still embrace the prophetic ministry and always will. But I see it much more now in the context of Revelation 19:10, being about the testimony of Jesus Christ and His purposes, and far less about the purposes of people. That is because those who are truly saved have one ultimate purpose and it is only found "in Christ". And that ultimate purpose is exactly the same for each and every person alive. It is to BECOME something, not to go DO something. It is to become the representation of Jesus Christ by replacing our Adamic nature life with His life. This is what John was talking about in John 3:30 where we read, And if we truly understand what Christ is offering us, we would invite the Lord to do WHATEVER it takes to see us fully come into His purpose in us of becoming His representation.
May we finally come to a place to where our primary purpose is to see that the Lord gets what he wants, instead of us being so focused about getting what we want. And the truth about this is that if the Lord does get what He always wanted in us by us being in Him, we will get more than we are currently able to comprehend because it is something greater than what we understood, and it will last throughout all eternity.
But most important of all, I now am gaining a growing understanding of what Jesus told me in June of 2002 when he said that “I am about to give My Body a new revelation of Me.” The revelation of Christ (Jesus Christ supernaturally revealing Himself to us…) is the single most important thing we will ever gain in this life, and if we gain it, it will begin the process in earnest to bring us into His life. There is no greater attainment or reward in all creation than to be filled with Him to all the fullness of His life, and to carry Him within us throughout all eternity.
The Lord is now involved in a recovery effort to reach those who know about Him, and bring them to a place of truly knowing Him in the inward place, in face to face relationship.
My prayer is that you not just be one who knows about Christ, but that you be one who comes to know Him in all His fullness, that you take your place as a member of His Bride (as defined in Rev 3:21), and that you are given a place as one of His Royal Ambassadors in full representation of Him throughout the ages to come.