EXCERPT FROM
"Sleeping With Your Eyes Open
WARNING DREAMS"

Chapter 7

He Will Tell You Things To Come

John 16:12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. 14 “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. 15 “All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you.

My First Experience of Things to Come
When I was eighteen years old, I had a number of like visions concerning the rock band I was in. I was yet unsaved, but I would envision our band living at a lake cabin and writing and playing music. I saw the cabin on a hill and set back from the lake. I also would see this room in the cabin with a large fireplace and a curved couch in front of it. I didn’t have an answer for why I kept seeing these images and deduced it was a figment of my imagination. These pictures and scenes would come to me spontaneously without my effort or thoughts. Within months after these visions of the cabin, I had a revelation of Jesus Christ and a powerful conversion experience. My brother and my cousin, who were both in the band as well, were also converted.

Soon after that, my brother got married. I went with he and his wife to check out a house for rent. It was a four-season lake-home on Lake Nokomis outside of Paynesville, Minnesota. When we drove up to the house, we found it to be on a hill set about fifty yards beyond the lakeshore. It was a one-story mansion once owned by a rich man. Once inside, we were escorted to the living room where the door opened up to a beautiful high-ceilinged room with a six-foot tall fireplace and a very long and curved couch in front of it. My jaw dropped! I was standing in the exact place in the vision I had received over a year previously. My brother and wife secured the place and rented it for nine months. Our former rock band set up our musical gear in the basement, started up a Christian band, wrote our first gospel songs, and practiced on weekends for the next nine months. Other than the band, I had never told anyone about the visions, as I hadn’t heard of such a phenomena in the church or American Christianity.

Now we ask the question, is it scriptural and of God that we are given insight to actual events that are to occur in the future? Here in John 16 and the chapters around it, Jesus is close to His time to be crucified. He has assembled his disciples together to give them some instruction as to how things will be once he has departed. Jesus is telling what will happen when the Holy Spirit comes. In verse thirteen He calls the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth. It says that when He, the Holy Spirit comes: 1. He will guide us into all truth 2. He will not speak on His own authority 3. He will speak whatever He hears (from Christ in heaven) and, 4. He will tell us things to come.

He said the Holy Spirit will tell us things to come. In other words, He will tell us about things before they happen. He will prophesy to us things to come in the future. Why? I believe, for our benefit, for the sake of His Kingdom, and for the welfare of the church. He does this sometimes to warn us of impending disaster planned by the enemy to kill, steal, and destroy; for us to do something about it; to be warned, to take the warning, do spiritual warfare, and cut off Satan’s plans from coming to pass.

I ask people I teach, “So, what has the Spirit told you recently of the future or future events in your life or events in the world?” Mostly, I get little response. I then tell them that, as a Christian, if you are not hearing of any future things or events through the Holy Spirit, then either: 1. Jesus was lying. 2. The Holy Spirit is not functioning as He is supposed to. 3. We aren’t paying attention and listening to His voice. It doesn’t take but a second to figure out this answer. The purpose of the Lord in speaking to and showing the Holy Spirit things to come, is not for the Spirit’s sake but for our sake. It’s for the Spirit to relay these things to us in order that we may respond in the appropriate manner and be guided into all the truth. But we have uncircumcised ears and eyes, a large lack of paying attention, and unbelief in what the Word of God says.

Daniel 2:28 “But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. Your dream, and the visions of your head upon your bed, were these: 29 “As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed, about what would come to pass after this; and He who reveals secrets has made known to you what will be.

God indeed reveals secrets to all people. In these verses the prophet Daniel is in Babylon and comes to the king to interpret his dream. He explains that the dream is concerning “what will be in the latter days”, “what would come to pass after this”, and that God has revealed, by the dream, “what will be.” Could it be made any clearer that God was telling him of things to come? This was a prophetic dream. In verse 46 of the same chapter, Daniel completes his interpretation of the dream by saying, “The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.” Yes, God desires for us to know things to come. Do we have the ears to hear? Do we believe?

He Speaks Prophetically to Us
Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.

In the Old Testament times the Lord did not do anything unless he first declared it to man through his servants, the prophets. And it is no different today. As I have said, through the Holy Spirit we have “The Prophet” living in us. Matthew 13:11, in the explanation of parable of the Sower, Jesus tells the disciples, “It has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven”. Another name for mysteries is secrets. Amos says that God “reveals his secret”.

I believe that these mysteries are given to the whole body of Christ to know today. They come from heaven in many various ways, and they bring the life abundantly that the Lord came to give us. These mysteries come mostly in languages that can only be interpreted with the help of the Holy Spirit dwelling in those who have ears to hear; to those listening and being attentive, who are able to interpret these mysteries, and to those who are obedient in responding appropriately to what God is saying. That should include all who call themselves Christians. We have more work to do in our lives to come to a place in which we are truly abiding in the words from heaven. How many words from heaven have we let drop to the ground by not paying attention to our dreams alone over the years?

God So Loves the World
In our family alone we received three warnings regarding the impending disasters of September 11, 2001. I have previously mentioned the two dreams and the vision we experienced. I often ask this question: Do you think, in the days leading up to 9/11, the Lord said to himself, “One of the greatest disasters in history is coming to America, and I am not going to warn anyone about it.” I don’t think so. I believe God is love, and He was screaming from heaven the warning to earth on the days and months leading up to that day. He did His part to give us every opportunity to help bring sustained life and salvation from a devastating disaster. He gave us every opportunity to hear from heaven and respond and counter attack this assignment of the enemy to bring heavy destruction and death to so many lives. In the dream classes that I teach, I say that, “If every Christian in this state (that I am teaching in that day) would have been carefully listening to the Lord through their dreams alone, I believe 9/11 never would have happened. By “listening” I mean hearing and responding appropriately to what was heard and interpreted through those dreams.