Impartation

In the last lesson, I shared my testimony of a lot of my struggles in my early days. And I shared how God would meet me in them. He would give me encouragement when I was about to give up and revive the dreams He had given me years ago. He would provide (both financially and in other things) for me in supernatural ways. He did that to build my faith, to prepare me for what he had in store for me.

There was one man from Texas who God used a lot in this process. I would never tell him my needs, but God would speak to him and he would send a check for the amount needed that would arrive at a very key time. And this guy from Texas kept on giving me these prophetic words.

One time he called me and told me, "I see it's like a dam and this water breaks and all this water is flooding and it's just like God is going to unleash it suddenly. It's going to happen suddenly, the release of the Spirit through you, and it is just going to wash people away, and it is going to be huge". I was just sitting there, struggling with my little church with hardly anybody. I hung up the phone and turned around and tell my wife, "He's crazy!" He kept giving me these words about greatness, and I would have been delighted just to have a hundred people in my church.

He called me another time and he said, "I saw these lights and God says these lights were all these people and they are thousands of lights and one day you are going to preach to thousands of people and I see all these lights. One time we were in Columbia, and he looked out the window and he said, "that is what I saw. Remember the vision of the lights, well, that is what I saw right there".

God has been using prophecy to encourage me for a long time now. I have to admit there were times when He tried to encourage me, and it didn't work because I didn't have enough faith to believe the prophetic words He gave me. Have you ever done that? Did anybody ever give you a prophetic word and you just couldn't believe him or her because it was too big?

I got another one of those big words just before I left for Toronto. It was Jan 12, 1994 at 10 PM at night. I was to leave on the twentieth to do some services in Toronto. I had been invited because God was doing some neat stuff in my own church. But I was scared that when I go to Toronto, nothing might happen -- even though God had already come at my church and God had already come at the regional meeting of the Vineyard and blasted everybody. I knew that the reason they asked me to come to Toronto was because of what happened in the regional meeting. But I was afraid that it would not happen again. I'd even gone down to see Rodney Howard Brown one more time to have him lay hands on me again, two weeks before I went to Toronto, and the power of God came in my hands. He said "that is the power of God that has come on your hands, go pray for everybody. And I did and the power of God came on everybody and everybody fell out. But after all that, I was still scared that God wouldn't come. But this prophecy changed it.

And the prophecy was this. He started by telling me, "This is the most clear word I have had for you and the second most clear I have ever had." I said, "What is it"? He did not know I was going to Toronto the next day, but he said, "The Lord says, 'Test Me now, test Me now, test Me now! Do not be afraid, I will back you up. I want your eyes to be opened to see My resources for you in the heavenliest even as Elijah prayed for Gehazi's eyes to be opened. And do not become anxious, because when you become anxious you can't hear Me."

That word changed my life. I don't know how to explain it, but all my fear left, all my "I hope God comes" left. And it was replaced with "I am certain God is going to come" through this prophetic word. I don't know how to explain it -- it just did.

I got in the car the next day to go to the airport with the little team I was taking. I said, " we are going on a little Apostolic mission trip to another country and we are going to see more than we have ever seen in our lifetime." And it happened. It was 10 years to the month that John Wimber had prophesized this to me and had seen what was going to happen.

The early days of Toronto were weird and wild, but there was a great deal of glory and power and of God's presence there. People began flocking to Toronto from all over the world to see a touch from God. And God was meeting and touching them and renewing their passion for Him. But at times the people would have unusual responses to God as they were prayed for. Some would laugh, some would cry, some would shake under His power. Many would fall down and spend a long time laying on the carpet as the Spirit of the Lord ministered to them. They would get up changed, with a renewed passion for God and a dedication to serve Him. Many got up healed of emotional issues or delivered from enemy bondages. Some were experiencing dramatic physical healings.

But the publicity that began going around was focused more on the unusual manifestations than on the power of God to change and transform lives.

We got a telephone call from a prophetic lady in the church who was very respected, she was not flaky at all. This came the same day that John Wimber called us. And this lady talked to John Arnott, and said, "I have a word for you and Randy. God says to tell John and Randy I am coming to you gently now so you will not be afraid when I come in My power".

That word really echoed in my mind. Toronto was the gentleness of God displayed so that we wouldn't be afraid when He would come in His power. When I heard that I said, "O God, you are a God of wisdom because Your gentleness is all I can just barely handle!"

That same day, John Wimber called. It was easy for him to cry and I could tell that he was on the verge of tears. He said, "Randy, this is what God showed me about you ten years ago and you are now entering into the prophetic word I gave you."

So when I go around the world and I preach and no matter what I preach -- if I get to preach one sermon and that is all, it will be a sermon on revival and impartation, especially impartation. Everything else is secondary to this call on my life of impartation. I love evangelism. But I know that if God can use me to touch someone in ministry (a pastor, a missionary, a key leader, or somebody that nobody has ever heard of , or someone who is not in ministry yet) , then God can work through those people so much more powerfully than if I just try to do the work on my own. When they get called into ministry and then they go out it is not necessarily the people I lead to the Lord but it's the people who get touched this way and the people they lead to the Lord.

That is the way it worked in the way Azusa Street revival That great Pentecostal revival in Azusa Street didn't have nearly as many people saved as there was in Toronto or in Pensacola, or in Missouri, in Steve Gray's church. I forgot how many or where that was now, but all those meetings had more people saved than in the Pentecostal revival at Azusa Street.

I was trained Baptist, but I tell you that I do not want my training to make me blind to the reality of what God is doing. And the reality is that there has never been a move of God that produced more people coming into the Kingdom of God and more missions than Azusa Street did. And God followed it up with the second greatest ones -- the latter reign movement. Those were real moves of God and the kingdom advanced through them.

People were criticizing Toronto years ago, by taking things out of context and exaggerating them and using sound bites off of somebody screaming and talking about the animal sounds. One of the enemy's plans to fight a move of God is to take the most bizarre thing that ever happened in the meeting and then the enemy of revival will portray it as if it was the norm, even though it is not really characteristic of what usually goes on in the meetings. That type of thing was very rare. But the enemy used those things to put into the hearts of people, and many people who were coming became afraid.

One man in particular became a very outspoken critic of what God was doing in Toronto, a gentleman named Hank Hanigraff. He had a radio show that was on twice a day in my city, seven days a week. At that time, the headquarters of the Missouri Senate Lutheran Denomination were located there, and they had several who would quote Hank Hanigraff and push his book. My kids would hear all of this stuff on the radio and they said, "Dad, that guy is saying some very terrible things about you".

One of the ways I comforted myself during those days was to look at the other people that he has also saying terrible things about - it made me feel that I was in very good company. The other way I would comfort myself was by reminding myself of the promises God had made to me through prophesy. God knew way in advance before this started how there would be some criticism and doubt and disbelief. That did not daunt Him, so I was not going to let it daunt me either.