Open Heaven

I shared how I had some supernatural experiences with God that some of my friends thought might actually be angelic activity instead of the moving of the Holy Spirit.

Now I confess to you that I didn't have much room for angels in my theology. Why do you need them? God's everywhere, all powerful, knows everything. Why does He need any help? I had the problem of too much theology and not enough Bible. You know, four years of college, major and minor in religion, all my subjects in religion, three years of seminary, Southern Baptist seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. I had my theology down. But even in the theology books they had a section on demons and angels. It was very small. Why? Because we felt the role of those types of beings in our daily lives were very small.

Of course, we all "knew" that we had driven all the demons out of the United States. They all went to Africa and Latin America and Asia and we didn't have any here. Dr. Caboderos (a professor who taught at Princeton, Fuller and International Baptist Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires) told me, "The United States is one of the most demonized countries I've been to. They are just sophisticated demons and you've given them names, psychological names."

I want to talk to you about an "open heaven." What is an open heaven? What is it like? What can we expect in an open heaven? I want to share some things about an open heaven. Let me start by sharing the expeiences that opened me up to understand this.

My first trip to England was in 1995. I was a Baptist guy for fourteen years, then I got involved with Vineyard and I was in the Vineyard for sixteen to eighteen years. I met Omar Cabrerra. I had read John Wimber's notebook about Signs And Wonders And Church Growth and he talked about Omar Cabrerra in there. I'd heard a lot of things about him and he was one of my "heros," someone I"d always wanted to meet. Omar is a famous evangelist that had started almost 300 churches by himself in Argentina. There were several people that I wanted to meet because they were these great men of God that I wanted to talk to and interview, find out and learn from them. And Omar was high on that list.

I had a luncheon with Omar, just myself and my associate. We sat down together at a table in a little town in England. I asked him this question, "What can you tell me that would help me see more happen in the meetings that I'm doing -- more people get healed, more people get saved? Is there something you could tell me that would help me?" He thought for a little bit and he said, "Yes, learn to ask God to send His angels to your meetings." I said, "What?" He said, "Randy, I've never understood you people in the United States. You understand the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and you're becoming open to that, but you really don't understand yet the value of the angelic host in helping you. We've learned to understand that in Latin America better."

He began to tell me, "In these meetings when we have a major breakthrough, I will usually see a bright light over somebody and I know that's where the miracle is getting ready to happen. I'll call them out and say, 'That person is getting ready to have a miracle!'" That bright light is one way he sees the angelic. And the person where the angel is will get get blasted with the power of God. Not only will that person get a miracle or a miraculous healing, but also people all around them seem to get one too. He said, "I watch it in the spirit realm, and it's like all of a sudden an explosion hit and the dust comes." He called it 'collateral blessing.' When a bomb hits, you have collateral damage; he called it 'collateral blessing.' You just have to be sitting close to the person who got the blast from heaven and the anointing will come on you and you will get healed, too! He talked about that in 1995, but I wasn't ready to process it then, so I just put that on the burner. I said, "I don't know what I think about that."

Then I went to New Zealand. An elder of a charismatic church there gave me some books to read. I got home and opened them up. (Bill Johnson says they're some of the best books for helping him to understand revelation.) They're about Branham's life. Even though we know he ended up in error doctrinally, that doesn't discredit how he learned to flow and understand things of God before he got into the error. I was reading those books, and I saw that this angel is a big thing with Branham. It really did help him. I began thinking about that and I didn't really know what to do with it.

Before March of 1994 in the first few weeks of Toronto, I prayed for this 14 year old girl who was reading at the second-grade level when she was in eighth grade. (By the way, she just recently graduated college, and she graduated high school number five in her high school class!) But at the time she couldn't do math at all and she could hardly read because she had really severe dyslexia and so did her best friend. So I prayed for her. I didn't even pray for healing and didn't know she had it. I just prayed for her and she just went down. Before this, when she'd get prayed for, she'd shake and rattle and roll. This time she just fell down and didn't move a muscle for about 45 minutes.

She came awake and she said, "Mom, I felt like I've had surgery. I felt like I was in an operating room. It felt cold. And I saw a vision. An angel came and rewired my head. Get me a book. I want to try to read!" And she could read. She was healed. She went home. Her name was Heather Harvey. Before her mom and dad were pastors, they had been mental health professionals. The associate pastor's daughter was her best friend, and she was dyslexic too. Her parents were mental health professionals.

Heather went home. She did not tell her friend Monica about the vision. All she said was, "Monica, Jesus is going to heal you." She touched Monica. That 14 year-old girl touched her friend and her friend went out. When she got up she said, "I had a vision! I saw an angel come and rewire my head!" She too was healed of dyslexia. Years before, I didn't understand this thing about electricity in the head. I didn't understand a thing about fire. And I know there are gifts of healing in the Holy Spirit, but I believe there's also an angelic role in healing sometimes, too.

Then I prayed for a woman with an inoperable brain tumor. She was 25 years old and had two children. Her doctor said, "Make your will out. There's nothing more we can do. It's metastasized to the breast and into the abdominal area." So there was a double metastasization and the brain tumor is inoperable. I remember she was what I call 'not church broke' yet. She didn't know how to receive. If I'm praying for you, if you know how, you can just receive, quit talking. But she was just chatter-boxing me. She's not a Christian yet, and I'm thinking, "God, she doesn't know how to receive!" And God said, "Don't worry about it. It's on Me. Whatever she's going to do won't stop it!" Then she felt this tremendous electricity go into her head. She said, "My head is electric! I feel electricity all over my head!" And I said, "Well, that's good." And she's said, "You're weird." She wasn't used to anything, and it just kept happening. Well, long story short, she was totally healed of an inoperable brain tumor.

I've seen three women and one man healed of inoperable brain tumors when they have just weeks to live. In all cases, they either felt electricity, an electrical force in their head, or they felt heat. When we were in Brazil, one of my friends, Gary, was praying for a man who was not a Christian. He was an older man and he had an inoperable brain tumor. He was not a believer. Gary began to pray for him. Gary's eyes had been opened so that he can see in the spirit realm, angels of all different sizes, different purposes.

(I'm just telling you what others are seeing; I'm not seeing the way I want to yet. I'm not saying I don't see, I'm just saying I don't see the way I want to yet. I'm changing my language because God says I'm going to see, and I am beginning to see some things.)

Gary says that sometimes angels are fifteen feet tall, sometimes they are six feet tall, sometimes they're two and a half to three feet tall. There was a little one about three feet tall and he was blowing fire into the guy's head. This was still new to Gary at the time and he was thinking, "This is weird." But he said, "Sir, are you feeling anything?" The man answered, "Yes. I feel like my head's on fire." That man got healed and he got saved.