In early December 2006, I was supposed to fly to Long Island, New York, to be the first speaker at the Open Heavens Conference with revivalist Matt Sorger. But God had other plans.
Prior to my flight, I suddenly came down with a flu-type sickness. The conference planners quickly reshuffled the order of the invited speakers, while I took the day to rest and recover at my home in Franklin, Tennessee.
As I lay there in bed that day the Holy Spirit kept telling me, The winds are coming! The winds are coming! I did not understand what He meant, and I could not get any more information than that. All day long as I rested, I heard the same declaration: The winds are coming!
The next day I felt well enough to fly. As the first leg of my flight headed from Nashville to Baltimore, we encountered unusually strong winds. The plane was bouncing around like crazy. The pilot came on the loudspeaker to say that we were hitting winds of 160 knots and that these were the fiercest winds he had ever encountered in flight.
When we finally landed safely in Baltimore—in winds that were still blowing 40 to 60 knots on the ground—the plane was shuddering and shaking. I wondered how I would make my connecting flight, but I soon discovered that it did not matter. Nobody was going anywhere. As it turned out, the entire East Coast was affected by this weather pattern, and all the airports in New England were closed down. That meant I would have to layover in Baltimore for a day. I began to wonder if I would ever make it to this conference at all.
That night, lying awake in my hotel bed, I heard the same words once again: The winds are coming. What? More winds?
By morning the winds had died down enough for us to fly, and I finally made it to Long Island in time to address the closing session of the conference. As I sought the Lord beforehand, I felt that He wanted to give me words of knowledge for people at the beginning of the service (which is not my typical modus operandi). Again I heard,The winds are coming.
The winds are still coming? I thought they had already come and gone.
During the worship portion of the service, I was worshiping our awesome God, enjoying His presence and minding His business with my eyes closed. Suddenly I felt a wind blow across my face. I opened my eyes to see if I could find the air vents. I could not see any vents, so I went back to worshiping. Again I felt a wind blow. In an instant, the atmosphere shifted, and I began to scribble down words of knowledge as fast as the Holy Spirit gave them to me—people's names, cities and diseases. The air was permeated with the spirit of revelation.
Then a third time I felt the wind. This time when I opened my eyes—whoosh—an angel suddenly appeared in front of me, hovering and looking right at me. The angel was carrying a shofar and wearing a glowing white robe with a gold sash that went from the left shoulder to the waist. On the sash I could read the words "Israel Awakening." The angel blew the shofar right in my face and then vanished.
Israel Awakening
I have experienced angelic encounters before, but never before have I been given the name of the angel. Was "Israel Awakening" the name of this angel? Though I did not ask, I believe it was. But whether that was the angel's actual name or not, I do know that the angel had come from the throne of the Ancient of Days to convey a message to His people.
The angel, Israel Awakening, had come like a wind in our day to blow a trumpet and to awaken the Body of Christ in a new way. This particular messenger from heaven had been released to this generation to blow the shofar and to keep blowing it. The winds had come. The winds would continue to come. The atmosphere had shifted. The time for change had come.
The time had come for Israel to be awakened, for the Jewish people worldwide to wake up to the fullness of their identity in the Lord their Maker. A new spirit of adoption seemed to have become available from the Lord Jesus Himself to help prepare the Body of the Messiah to fulfill her call in these last days.
Church Awakening
Simultaneously, the time had come for the Gentile church to awaken to her intercessory mission of compassion, to say "yes" to her calling to stand in the gap for God's purposes in Israel and wherever the Jewish people reside on the globe. I believe the angel named Israel Awakening was the head of a legion of angels that had been released to bring a spiritual awakening to both the Jewish people (regarding God's purposes within Israel) and to the Body of the Messiah, the Church of Jesus Christ (concerning her role of supporting Israel in the end times, when the dispersed of Israel shall be gathered into the Kingdom of God). Centuries ago, the prophet Isaiah said, "The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel says, 'Yet I will gather others to them, besides those who already are gathered to him'" (Is. 56:8).
First God had sent the winds in the natural realm, and then He sent them in the spiritual. Why had the Spirit made such a point of telling me, The winds are coming? Because the angels are winds. "Of the angels He says, 'Who makes His angels winds, and His ministers a flame of fire'" (Hebrews 1:7, NASB). Why had they come? Because they are "ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation" (Heb. 1:14, NASB). The Word of God will interpret the revelation sent from God.
Excerpted from The Coming Israel Awakening. Dr. James W. Goll is the cofounder of Encounters Network, a ministry to the nations. He has written 15 extensive Bible study guides and is the author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Coming Prophetic Revolution and Praying for Israel's Destiny. Goll is a contributing editor toKairos magazine and speaks and ministers around the world.
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