Open Heaven

I started to talk about signs and wonders in our last lesson. It helps to build our faith when the Lord shows up in a supernatural way. And these signs also serve as an indicator that we are heading in the right direction and moving closer to our goal.

Do you remember when all the gold dust and gold teeth was going on? I felt left out on the gold teeth phenomena. I read on the internet about that stuff happening to a lot of my friends -- Che Ahn, John Arnott, etc. People said, "Why would God do that?" People would get mad at me. I'd write things about it and they'd get mad at me and write bad things to me, "Why would God do that?" As a sign! You know, if God can make gold and put it in your mouth, He can make a new brain cell and put it in your head. It's just an encouragement to faith.

I was working in Argentina with Omar Cabrerra and Claudio Friedzen. The guy who used to work for Claudio Friedzen told me at one point in the revival in Argentina, so many people were getting gold teeth amongst the poorest of the poor. One guy actually beat his wife up because he thought she had prostituted herself to get money to have her teeth fixed. He wasn't saved, so she got him to come to church and he got a gold tooth and then he repented to God and to his wife. This guy told me, "At one point, we would not allow you to even give a testimony unless you had gotten seven gold teeth because they were so common." Now that's phenomena!

In the place where my team was a few days ago, the kids, the teenagers would worship so profoundly in the night that when they'd get up after being in prayer and worship, their faces would glow with light. Teenagers would have so much oil, supernatural oil on them, that it literally would come into their hair. You know, no girl is going to want that to happen like that in the natural, that kind of oily hair. It's not a natural thing; it's supernatural. The oil would come down and get so strong, it would actually drip off their chins. It would form in their hands.

We were in New Hampshire, one of the most liberal states in the Union. While we were in New Hampshire there was a little girl about ten. In her hands, oil started forming. So we went and got all the pastors in the meeting and lined them up for her to pray for because the oil was a sign. Every pastor that little girl prayed for got knocked out! That next Sunday those pastors had major breakthrough healing in their churches. We had a huge crowd, about 2,000 people. When that little girl prayed for a lot of people, the oil would begin to run dry. When that happened, they would stop and pray for her, and it would form on her hands again. Once the oil was there, she would pray over the pastors again. Signs.

Some friends of mine were with me in Sao Paolo and in another city -- they live in Seattle. As God began to come, there was a guy who gave a word of knowledge. One of the things about going out away from home, is that you'll not try things here that you'll try other places. If you're wrong here, you've got to face everybody next week. If you're wrong out on the road, you'll never see them again. You'll try more things.

Anyway, a guy came up to me on the ministry team and said, "I don't have real teeth. I've got false teeth. But God is going to give gold teeth tonight because my teeth are hurting. I don't have teeth; I've got false teeth!" I said, "Ok. This guy claims God's going to give gold teeth tonight!" And He did. Not only did many people in the meeting get them, a couple on our team got gold teeth. The interesting thing is, not only did they have gold teeth, but we were watching teeth turn from plain old amalgam, turning into gold. We were watching it happen. Some time later we would look back in there again and now they're gold.

I thought I had been left out because that was a year or two after all the gold teeth started happening. I was complaining to God. I said, "Lord, You can do whatever You want. You're sovereign. But I sure feel like I'm left out in this. I'd like to see it too." The phenomena went through, and I never saw one. (This testimony was later, after it started happening.)

Let me share what gave me the faith for it. I was in Brazil, and some people came up to me because I had said, "You know, I missed out on the gold teeth." This guy said, "No, you didn't." I said, "Yes, I did! I didn't see anybody that I prayed for get gold teeth." He said, "A woman in my church, you prayed for her in Toronto and she got fourteen gold teeth!" It was a Foursquare Pentecostal Church. He said, "Revival broke out! On Sunday morning when we came back from Toronto, all we did was have her come up front, have her open her mouth and had the people come by and look in her mouth. That's how revival broke out in our church! The power of God hit and it lasted all afternoon. In the last year our church has quadrupled in size." A quadrupling of the size of the congregation, just because of the manifest presence of God that caught the whole church up into what God could do.

Bill Johnson came to my church and while he was preaching, some feathers appeared. I hardly ever saw any feathers. I was feeling left out on that one too. One time we were in Bill's brother-in-law's church in Massachusetts. This was one of my first times to see one. I was teaching, and Bill was on the front row. As I'm teaching, one of these little silver feathers, really fine, just floats down. I see it. I catch it! I get my billfold out, and put it in my billfold. I want to keep it. I start teaching. The more I teach, the more drunk I'm getting. Then I realized I was getting in trouble. So I took my billfold and handed it to Bill, and got sober. Maybe that was a mistake too, I don't know!

For years, I would teach how I love the Holy Ghost kisses. Maybe for some of you who have heard me in years past, I just loved it when the Holy Spirit would come so close that the top of my head felt like someone took one of those doilies like Mennonite women have put them on top of their heads. It felt like someone put something on top of my head right there and then turned it on with electricity in it! I called those Holy Ghost kisses, until I met a friend of mine who was helping me to understand phenomena.

My friend said, "Randy, that's the angels of the Lord getting close!" I said, "Why can't it be a Holy Ghost kiss?" He said, "Well, it could be, but have you ever felt the angelic?" "No, I don't have much room for the angelic in my theology right now." He said, "Well, there's this Baptist guy in California named Paul Cox. He's really helped me to understand phenomena." My friend lives in Tulsa. He started talking about feeling and seeing. I'm just trying to learn.

Rodney Howard-Browne asked me awhile ago, "What's wrong with your leg?" I said, "It's numb from here all the way up to here!" I told him when it first started happening, I thought I was having words of knowledge. I gave words of knowledge for months about numbness in the right leg. Then I got to thinking that I'm having too much numbness in my right leg when I get up to preach. I started going to the chiropractor, saying "I've got something wrong with my hip or something. I've got a nerve being shut off when I get up to preach. After awhile, often my leg will go numb on my right side."