In the first dream, I was staying in a villa by the ocean. I walked outside to the shore and suddenly saw the ocean rapidly pull back a mighty distance. I thought to myself, "This is going to be an enormous tsunami. I have to warn people!" I suddenly noticed that there were these incredible rock formations that had been under the sea. The landscape looked like a sculpted desert in colors of orange and brown. It went on for miles. I saw people in the distance walking through the formations in fascination. I suddenly remembered that a great tsunami was coming and I ran inside the villa.
I can't remember everything that I began to do; all I know was that I became distracted and busy and forgot about the tsunami again. I seemed to be alone in this villa. When I remembered, I looked up at my window and saw a wall of water looming over the villa. It was too late. I realized that I was going to die and prayed that it would happen quickly. I wondered how painful it would be to not be able to breathe under all that water. Suddenly, I found myself in what looked like a waiting room. There were televisions all around the room and others were watching to see what became of the earth. I asked someone, "How many are left on the earth?" Someone said, "Only twenty now." And then I woke up.
As I lay in my bed, I began to tremble. We are commanded in Scripture not to believe every spirit, not to believe every dream. Over the years, I have become better at discerning when I am being attacked by the enemy and when the Lord is trying to get my attention. I tried to remember the details of the dream. As I prayed to the Lord for discernment, the Scripture from Joel came to my mind as quoted in the Book of Acts:
'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,
That I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters will prophesy,
Your young men shall see visions,
Your old men shall dream dreams,
And on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy.
I will show wonders in Heaven above
And signs in the earth beneath:
Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
The sun shall be turned into darkness,
And the moon into blood,
Before the great and awesome day of the Lord.
And it shall come to pass
That whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
Acts 2:17-21
According to Peter (and the Holy Spirit), the last days had already begun by that day at Pentecost and it continues to this day - ever increasing as we draw closer to the return of Christ. As these verses ran through my mind, my trembling increased and I slid off the bed to my knees, grabbed my prayer shawl, and began to pray. I took the dream personally. Was I too busy to warn others of the coming of Christ? Was the Lord warning me that I would be caught unprepared by a great wave of tribulation because I wasn't paying enough attention?
It troubled me and I continued to pray about it. I shared my dream with a trusted and insightful friend. She told me that I wasn't the only one who had dreamed of a great tsunami. She sent me a Youtube video of another woman who was describing a similar type dream, but this woman had made it to higher ground. I did not.
Youtube is a wonderful way for God's people to share what the Holy Spirit is revealing to us as a body of believers and can unite us - but for every true and sincere video from the Lord, there are hundreds of misleading ones. My friend and I agreed that this particular one was from the Lord and I continued to pray for more insight. I found it interesting that this woman and I both found ourselves in temporary locations. She was in a hotel in her dream and I was in a villa. We have to remember that earth and even our bodies are not our real homes. It makes perfect sense that these things would be represented by a hotel or another temporary dwelling. I've attached two of her videos at the end of this post.
I got busy again. Now when I state that I got busy, that does not mean that I was not being faithful to the Lord. I continued to read my Bible daily, attended church twice a week, and prayed with my family and by myself. I continually sought to walk in holiness the best I could and repented frequently. I do not say this to boast, but to remind us all that we must beware we think we stand, lest we fall. We must remain humble and strive to grow no matter where we are. When I say I got busy, it means that I began to lose my sense of urgency to share the Gospel. I began to forget the small amount of time that we have here and that many, many people are in great danger of being lost forever. I felt safe (which is a good thing), but this made me stumble.
A few weeks later, I had another disturbing dream. This time I was in a house on the marsh. There weren't a lot of properties around and I thought that I was on some type of island like James Island or Johns Island here in South Carolina. I was standing outside and looking toward the water. I suddenly became aware that a great storm was coming, but the water seemed calm and at rest. The sky looked clear. I decided to go into the house and prepare to flee to higher ground. The house seemed dark. As I walked from room to room, I knew that there would be nothing left of my house when the storm was over and that I needed to grab whatever I could. The rooms seemed to be quite messy and I struggled to find anything valuable. I found a homeschooling textbook in the middle of the floor and grabbed it. I decided I had better look out the window to check the weather, but when I looked up toward the window, the shutters slammed shut and blocked my view. There seemed to be a man next to me and I knew he was responsible for closing the shutters, but I didn't feel particularly threatened by him.
I ran outside to put the textbook in the car. To my great relief, I saw that the water seemed calm and unchanged. When I turned around, though, I was terrified to discover that water had begun to creep up onto the property and puddle onto the only road to higher ground behind me. I began to yell to my husband and children that they needed to get into the car. I heard their voices, but I couldn't see them anywhere. Suddenly, what seemed like dozens of cars pulled up right in front of me and a person I used to teach with many years ago got out of her car and said, "Jennifer, why are you still here?! Don't you know a storm is coming?" I said, "I know, I know! We're leaving now!"
The cars disappeared and I began to feel despair when I realized that the road was now completely covered. I thought I saw a boat-like structure in the distance and waded to it, but when I touched it, it turned to reeds. I got back to the house as soon as I could and grabbed a phone. I started to call the police, but then remembered 911. I felt a great sense of relief, but when I dialed it, I got their voicemail. I left a desperate message and then found myself on the roof of the house surrounded by water.
I saw my children playing dangerously close to the edge of the roof. I saw a woman in the distance I recognized from a former church stranded in the same situation that I was in. I didn't know where my husband was, but it was only then, when it was way too late, that my children suddenly realized that something was wrong. They were younger in the dream and began to bicker in their panic. I grabbed my daughter, Emily, and when I did, she became an infant in my arms. I tried to pray for the Lord to take us quickly, but it was so hard because of all the noise and bickering. Then I woke up.
Once again I found myself trembling in the darkness in the wee hours of the morning. I was scared now. What did this mean? The dream seemed less personal now. It seemed like more of a message than a rebuke, but what was I to do with it? As I lay there, the danger seemed so real, so close, that I expected a river of water to wildly course through my neighborhood at any moment. I cried out to the Lord in my heart, "Lord, PLEASE tell me how to get to higher ground! I know you're warning me, but I don't understand!"
I don't know how to describe what happened, but it has happened before. Although I was fully aware of everything around me, I was also aware of the presence of the Lord standing next to my bed. To someone watching me, I would have climbed off my bed, taken my prayer shawl, and gotten on my knees; but what was happening in my mind was totally different. The Lord gently took me by the arm and pulled me from my bed. He walked me to the foot of it and I knew what He wanted me to do. I removed my prayer shawl from my desk drawer and put it over my head. I felt Him place His hand upon my shoulder and lead me to the floor to my knees. He stated simply, "This is how you get to higher ground." He then bent down next to me. His presence was so real. He felt so close I could practically feel His breath on my neck. He simply whispered gently, but firmly, "Do you hear Me now, Jennifer?" All I could do was nod.
I knew then that although I had been praying and walking with the Lord, He was wanting more from me now. I had not been praying with enough direction, enough passion. I was privileged to receive revelations from Him, but what was I doing with it? How was I to pray now? I began to pray in tongues because I simply didn't know what else to do. I suddenly looked up and saw my husband in the moonlight sleeping and I knew I was praying for him. I heard the Lord tell me He was going to "wake him up" and I knew this meant that a new passion and direction was going to come upon my husband for Jesus. When I asked the Lord if He wanted me to tell my husband what I prayed, He simply stated, "Yes, but I shall be the One who wakes him." I then realized that even though I would tell my husband everything, that that would not be what would awaken him to a revitalized call. It would be something personal between he and the Lord and I had to respect that.
I know that the Lord does not want me to leave my post as a stay at home wife and mother because that would contradict what God's Word commands me to do. I knew that even though I was home, however, I could still make a difference. I have this blog. I have a voice. I could cry in the wilderness in my own little way like John the Baptist. I planned to make an entry on this blog as soon as possible. But then my life got a little crazy. My son had a medical procedure on his toes and couldn't walk for several days, kids got sick, and errands seemed to multiply out of nowhere. Exhausted one night, I fell into bed and grabbed the remote while waiting for my husband to come home from work. I don't watch much television, but a program began about the tsunami that had hit Japan a year ago. Several individuals were being interviewed (with translation) and their personal accounts as well as dramatic footage were played before me on the screen.
Once again I seemed to find myself in an unusual place. I was watching the program, but also became keenly aware of a great analogy the Lord wanted me to see. I saw individuals obliviously driving along as water began to creep up alongside them only to sweep them away in a torrent of water. I saw a man trying to run with what looked like a television set as water outran him down the street. "Why wouldn't he let the thing go?" I wondered. Person after person greatly underestimated the devastation that would come and lingered too long to get to higher ground. In one moving account, a fireman delayed warning people because he just didn't think it was going to get that bad. He blamed himself for the loss of life in his area. Those on higher ground helplessly watched people below become quickly overwhelmed by the surging flood. People were screaming at those below to "Hurry!", but the ones on lower ground simply couldn't see what was coming and lacked the urgency needed to make it. It was only when the water came upon them and it was too late that they realized the seriousness of the danger.
I was convinced. "I've got to write that blog entry!" I went to church this past Wednesday night and one of my prayers was that the Lord would use our church members as His laborers and make appointments for us to share the Gospel. Early the next morning I had another dream.
This time I was in a skyscraper in what looked like New York City. I looked out the window and saw that it was beginning to rain. As I looked out the window, I wondered how bad it was going to get. "Is this going to be the bad one?" I thought of my children and knew they were somewhere in the large building, but I didn't think they were in danger at that point.
I don't remember what I started doing, but once again I got busy. It seemed like only a few minutes later that I looked out the window again. The rain was getting harder and cars were driving with their windshield wipers frantically whipping across their windshields. I tried to discern if it was bad enough to leave, but I was so high up, it was hard to tell. I left the window again. I can't remember what I was doing between my visits to the window. All I know was that it seemed to be brief periods of time when I would check the level of danger. The next time I looked out the window, I could no longer see cars on the road. My view zoomed in closer to where the road used to be and the water was filthy. I saw a toilet paper roll floating on the top of the water and thought to myself, "Uh oh, the sewage system is overcome. The city is too flooded for us to get out now." Although I was high up in the building, I did not feel safe. I knew the foundation could not hold up if the water got much higher. I grabbed the phone and tried to call my mom. When she answered, I told her to call 911. As I looked out the window, I saw what I feared would happen. Another skyscraper in the distance began to collapse into the water. Before I could finish speaking to my mother, I felt the building I was in begin to go down. I thought of my children as I fell through the floors. Suddenly, I felt great power come upon me. I thought of superman as I began to fly with great strength upward through the floors of the building. I remembered the people in the first building I saw go down. I knew that they were under an unbelievable amount of rubble and water. Even with superpowers, I felt that it would be futile to rescue any of them. Then I remembered my children. They too, were under a great deal of rubble and water, but because they were my children, I was willing to try. Then I woke up. I thought about how people who were strangers to me, were very possibly children to God; and that He wanted to rescue them no matter how much rubble they were under - no matter how futile it seemed. In a crisis, individuals call on the ones they've always called on: their mothers, 911, even friends. Joel states in the Scripture I wrote above, that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you don't learn to cry out to Him now, you won't think to do it in a state of panic either.
It was five o'clock in the morning and I was paralyzed with indecision. After this dream, I didn't know whether to wake up my husband to pray with me or to get on the computer and begin typing this blog. I began to pray. What was I waiting for? I knew what all this meant now. For me, I could see that my hesitation to warn others would eventually leave me feeling like that fireman who hesitated to shout the warning. As soon as I sat down to the computer to type, my husband woke up. I shared my dream with him. I told him I was in disobedience and that the Lord was still being very gentle with me, but that I really didn't want any more of these dreams and that I was going to have to make time to be faithful to cry out in the wilderness even if I had to do it at five in the morning. My wonderful husband prayed with me - and I love how he always so thoughtfully pauses before he begins to speak to the Lord on my behalf. He then encouraged me to write this and suggested that I write in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed and while I wait for him. So here I am. The kids are in bed and FINALLY - I get to share the message. What is the message?
GET TO HIGHER GROUND NOW. By the time it looks bad, it will be too late. Higher ground does not mean that you necessarily need to move to the mountains. It means that you need to get on your knees now and pray. Pray like your life depends on it and continue to pray that way. If you are not saved and in an obedient relationship with Jesus Christ, you will surely go to hell when you die. If you are saved and are wasting time, you will be ashamed in His presence for being a poor steward and for being responsible for the eternal lives of others you made excuses not to warn in time. If you don't know if you are saved, you'd better find out. Where are your kids spiritually? Your spouse? Pray for their salvation and growth now. Are you training them or are they on their own? Pray for unity. You must know the Word of God in order to be able to discern between true and false teaching. You can't know the Word of God if you don't read it for yourself. False teaching is everywhere. God has a plan for you and you need to know what it is. Expect to be tempted with busyness. Resist it. PLEASE SEEK HIM AND JOIN YOUR VOICE WITH MINE. The Youtube videos my friend sent me are below. I do not know this person, but I was taken aback by the similarity of our dreams and leadings.
But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Matthew 24:38-39
~Jennifer
