VISITATION ON GOOD FRIDAY
Sometime in the early 90’s a friend of mine talked me into a five-day fast. I was reluctant at first, but wound up agreeing. It was a five-day fast which would end at noon on Good Friday. Early Friday morning, God spoke eleven words to me. He began with five, "Do you want to travel?" I felt myself leaving my body.
Years earlier, I had a similar experience, although fear gripped me and it cancelled the encounter completely. I wanted to be sure that I could come back to my body, if I left. This time I was not about to let fear rob me. I just lay there for a moment and then answered, "Yes." You cannot go wrong with God when your answer is yes.
I rose from my body: beginning at my feet, until I was hovering above myself, but not at a standstill. "So the spirit lifted me up, and took me away…" (Ezekiel 3:14). I was slowly moving with God in the direction of the Holy Land. We began to pick up speed until I was traveling with the sensation of incredible speed. When we began to slow down, we were slightly curving to the left as we made our descent.
It was then that I began to read big bold letters written across the land, as on a map__E T H I O P I A. Then off to the right I began to read the word Somalia, but it seemed insignificant to the vision, so I looked straight ahead and said, "What is this big white area?" God didn’t answer that question, but said six more words, "This is the tip of Ethiopia." With that, I was instantly back home in my body and fully awake. I drew a map of what I saw, and went to the Good Friday service.
When I arrived home, my wife and son could hardly wait to show me how accurate the lines of my drawing matched up to a world map. For the next several weeks, that map of "The tip of Ethiopia" appeared on all the major news networks. They were reporting on the events taking place in Somalia, but I knew it was a smoke screen for something of much greater magnitude.
That vision, for lack of a better word, had to do with temple treasure. I believe the Ark of the Covenant was being airlifted by helicopter, out of Ethiopia into Israel, or perhaps remains at what God called, "The tip of Ethiopia."
Prior to that, I fasted alone in Israel on and off for twenty-one days and spent a few nights in a cave on the Mount of Temptation, alone. My hair grew thicker and my eyesight became crystal clear. We are told that understanding comes with age, yet to this day I still do not understand why I seemed to be getting younger on that trip. However, I do know that I had nothing to do with arranging the five-day fast that led to my vision of Ethiopia.
Yesterday, the Lord said, "I am changing the look in your eyes." I thought of it as a spiritual thing but also knew it had to do with a look of being dialed in or focused. Later that night I noticed that God had removed scar tissue that had formed on my eye from about the time of my Ethiopia vision many years ago.
Just last week I decide it was time to have it scraped off. It looked like a jelly fish stuck to my eye and for the last few years several of my friends have said it’s gotten really big and that I should see about having it removed. Last week I finally started calling some eye doctors but became discouraged with all the stuff they put you through with appointments and insurance talk, so I said to a friend," I’m just going to start asking God to remove it."
Now only a few days later it’s gone, completely gone. Today my wife and I could not see any trace of a raised blob. It was flattened out and all you could see was an outline of where it once was. That thing has been there for well over fifteen years and within a week of asking God to remove it, it’s gone! That is no coincidence. But I wonder is it also tied in with the timing of my vision of Ethiopia when God said, "Do you want to travel."
On my birthday, March 7th, a man and woman who I just met a few days earlier took me to lunch for my birthday. The next day they called and said, "We want to invite you to travel with us to Africa for two weeks and we will pay for everything." A few days later they invited both my wife and I to join them on a ministry trip to China, Asia and Laos. "Do you want to travel?" YES!
What is God about to do in Africa?
Pastor Tilson
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