More and more prophetic words talk about impending judgement in North America. In one word by Bob Jones and Rick Joyner, they talk about an increase of these judgements by the end of 1998. Because of the urgency of these times, I have decided to share my experiences of what I saw happen when the Toronto Blessing hit Ontario. I now live in Surrey, BC and lived in Edmonton, Alberta when the outpouring started in December 1993. This is also a part of my testimony that I felt had relevance in the writing of this word. Through my experiences, I believe the Lord has brought me to a place where I am able to help others though this transition by simply making them aware of what is to be expected and what is required. The Lord gave me Romans 13:8-14 this past Friday during our churches Friday morning prayer time. The Lord has given me many words and dreams over the past few years which in themselves felt incomplete and sometimes cryptic. Those words and dreams have however brought me to the place where this word is simply the pieces falling together in a way that is practical.

The return of the Prodigal Son

In the late summer of 1992, I had contacted an old friend that I had not talked to for about a year. We lived about 4 hours apart and I was working for a time about an hour away from where he lived. He lived in the Barrie area, I lived in the Sarnia area and I was working in Toronto. At this point, I had not gone to church for about 1 year and I was disillusioned about churches in general. I was seeking something more, but I didn’t know how to find it. I had accepted the Lord into my life when I was 16, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit when I was 19 and I was 32 at this point. One thing about my experiences was that although my life changed radically from where I was before each experience, I still behaved with deeds of darkness.

My friend had been in a Vineyard church for over a year now and had even tried to get me to go to a Vineyard in our area the year prior. The only thing was that the service we went to, 2 missionaries from Russia were speaking on Adultery. Although I had many sins, adultery was not one of them. Somehow the service didn’t speak to my friends or myself, so I wrote off the Vineyard in our area.

Now when I called him this time around, he told me he was leading a home group and invited me to visit him on the night he would have it. Since I had nothing better to do and I wanted to visit him anyway, I decided to go. I found that the people in his group were open and honest and did not put on masks as I had often found in churches in general. I liked this. I was not really a person that had learned to put on a mask and quite frankly, I hated when anyone else tried to do the same. I saw something there that I wanted.

I invited my friend and his family to visit us once again. He decided that after the disappointment the last time we visited the Vineyard in our area, that we could go to the church I was going to. I hadn’t told him that I had stopped going to church and I didn’t really want to tell him. To cover my tracks, I suggested that we revisit the Vineyard for another try. We did. The message was on something that spoke to my wife. I felt as if I had found home.

For several weeks, I would work and stay during the week about an hour away from my friends and would visit his home group during the week. On weekends, I would go to my new church with my family. I was becoming more and more excited with the Lord. One Sunday, the associate pastor spoke on his secret sin of the past and spoke of the how much impact it had on his life when he came clean. This was a message I needed to hear. During the week I thought to myself that I needed to make an appointment with this pastor and confess my sins. During lunch hour, I was conversing with the Lord and I felt him suggest that I should do my confession with my friend at home group. I agreed.

That night during dinner with my friend, I told him what the Lord suggested and he said that he would arrange a time, near the end of the meeting, for the two of us to go aside so that I could do this. He asked if his brother could be there as well. I did my confession that night and came clean. They prayed over me and I felt clean. You could really tell that this was the Lords divine appointment. For one thing, my job ended in that area the very next day. For another, several years earlier, I was at a David Wilkerson meeting with this very same friend, when an altar call came for those with sexual sins to come forward. I felt the tug to go forward, but was afraid of my friend finding out that I had these problems. Well he found out much more than that on this night. On that night, my friend said that the Prodigal has returned home.

Experiencing the Holy Spirit in a new way

Up to this point, I knew about the gift of tongues, but had almost no exposure to the prophetic. Not that it never happened before this time, but certainly not in any way that I could categorize it. I began to meet people who had the prophetic gifting, including the pastor that gave that inspiring message. My wife and I would receive words from others and we saw the prophetic affect others.

The church had a library of tapes that could be borrowed and I had begun a new job about an hour from home. I would listen to these tapes during the travel and was being well fed, spiritually speaking. There were tapes by John Wimber, Paul Cain, Mike Bickle, Jack Deere and the list goes on. I was learning about church principles like I never had before. It was so good to learn these things and I felt like I was in training. My pastor said that he saw me like a small bird with my mouth constantly open for more food. It was a good description. I remember at home group one time saying that I was praying to the Lord to: "Do what you got to do to get me where you want me to go." I remember my home group leader looking at me with a bit of surprise. She laughed and jokingly said that it was a very dangerous prayer to pray. It didn’t take me long to figure that one out.

There was a conference in Hamilton, Ontario in May 1993 with Paul Cain, Jack Deere, Mahesh Chavda and Mike Bickle. I went to it. It was great! There was a word that Paul Cain had for Dennis Wiedrick about a major change was going to happen to him and his ministry. When he was looking at Dennis, he was looking in the same direction as I was sitting. I had felt only seconds before this word that he was going to give a word to me. My name is Denis and I received this word as well. I didn’t have a ministry, but I did expect major changes to happen. It was during this conference that my wife announced to me that she was indeed pregnant. We felt the Lord tell us that we were to have a son and to name him Joshua Daniel. We did and we did. On the 1^st of July, I moved to Edmonton, Alberta to start a new job.

Be careful where your eyes are

While I was in Sarnia, I had met someone who was prophetic and ministered to those who were in Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. He was an AA member and his sponsor when he joined in 1975 was my brother in law in Montreal. That was where I am from and I found it amazing how small the world was. This man was my mentor on the prophetic. He was so on fire about how the Lord used him that he put everything into helping these people. After I got to know him though, I began to see some things that concerned me. For one thing, I noticed he liked to receive credit for the things he did. One time he took all the credit for something that I had a part in. He liked to hang around those who were needy and although he said he would go to Hamilton with me, he went with someone who was having problems instead. He even forsook time with his wife to help these needy people. He would talk about his supernatural experiences with the Lord a lot.

I have to confess though, that although these things hurt me, I had the same seed in me. After all, I wanted credit, but the real credit belonged to the Lord. I wanted supernatural experiences and had some myself and loved to talk about them. And the others were just waiting to surface too. It was an object lesson for me and the Lord wanted me to learn something from it. It was about loving those who hurt you. About confessing your own weaknesses. And about wanting God for the right reason.

One time, he asked me to make a tape for him with some songs on it, so I did. He suggested that I fill the balance of the tape with any songs I wanted. I remember asking the Lord what to put on it and I put 4 marriage songs on the tape. I remember crying while listening to these songs. One song was by Steeve and Annie Chapman about a pastor who would go out to his flock and one time his wife kissed him goodbye in a way that cause him to turn around and go back to her. One verse was "She’s the one who need’s the shepherd most of all". I didn’t understand at the time what I was doing, but I had told both him and his wife that I felt the Lord had given me the songs. He didn’t witness to it, but several months later, she left him. I was so sad when I found out everything that happened. I learned an important lesson. It was a lesson about looking after what he has charged us with and it was about loving the person of God, not his gifts.

The Toronto Blessing happens

I heard about this outpouring at the Toronto Airport Vineyard a few months after it first started. It was about March 1994. I was living in Edmonton and I was going through a dry time. You see we were trying to sell our house in the Sarnia area and it was still not sold. My wife and I were apart from July 1, 1993 to the end of November. She came to Edmonton to have our son who was born on December 14^th. My wife went back to Sarnia near the end of February because a water pipe froze and broke under our house and once again tried to sell the house. I was so disillusioned by this time and then the Lord decides to pour out his Holy Spirit in Toronto and I’m stuck in Edmonton. Before this experience, I was under the false presumption that everything goes well when you follow the Lord. Guess I believed that trials were a thing of the past.

Around April or May I went back east to visit my family and check out Toronto Airport. The meetings were still small at that time and I was in the 2^nd row from the front. Well I got blessed big time. It was refreshing and once again I began to feel the fathers love. As most do, I spent some "floor time" there.

Back in Edmonton, I would call home as well as friends to get an update of what was happening. I was told about one time my daughter and a few other girls were doing some floor time at Sarnia Vineyard. They were crying and the leader of the meeting explained that they were interceding in the spirit for the lost. My old home group leader said she would go to Toronto and get blasted and refreshed. A couple years later, her unbelieving husband went to Toronto and he gave his life to the Lord. I heard so many positive reports. The only question I had was, "Lord, why did you take me away from this?"

When the Lord shows up, it’s not always bliss

Before December 1993, you could tell the Lord was up to something. He called me back a little over a year prior. There was an increase of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He was bringing up the importance of confession over and over again. I did my confession. I heard others doing the same. It was a time of reckoning. Then the Lord moved. So many were blessed, but that isn’t the whole story.

My prophetic friend I was talking about earlier lost his wife. His ministry that was, wasn’t any longer. I remember one lady talking about struggling with her needs as a woman before and left the church and lived with a man after. Another woman had another woman move in with her and began a lesbian relationship.

These are some of the negative side effects of the Lord showing up. Last fall the Lord answered me as to why he took me away from the Toronto Blessing. He said I would have been one of the casualties. That was quite a shock. After all, didn’t I confess to everything? Well yes, at the time I did. But confession and repentance are two different things. Some of the sins I confessed, I went right back into when I moved to Edmonton. It wasn’t until about two and a half years ago that I had a deeper understanding of God’s Love and counterfeit love. The Holy Spirit used John White to help me with that one.

Sometimes we believe that when the Lord shows up, it will be like watching fireworks in the sky. We think we will be able to watch it at a distance and enjoy its beauty. But when the Lord shows up the fireworks are going off at point blank range. The fire will burn the chaff, if we have any, and it will be much more painful then if we deal with it now. If we are unprepared we may run to get away from the fire, but we will still have been burnt.

I must add one thing at this point. Just because people have been taken out, like the ones I have described here, doesn’t mean that they have been taken out for good. I was a prodigal and now they are, and like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, we must watch and pray for the day of their return.

How does this all tie into Romans 13:8-14

In the last year, the Lord has turned up the heat. He is looking for a people that are willing to both confess and repent of their sin. He is looking for a people that are willing to be humbled when they want so much to "do" when he is asking them to "be" (Luke 10:38-42). He is warning us to get our hearts right so that when he comes, we will not be taken out. He is looking for those who will be harvesters and they need to be clean. They need to settle their accounts. They need to bring to light what they are hiding in darkness. They need to have God’s Love and not the counterfeit one.

I see the same things happening here that were the precursor of the Toronto Blessing. For instance, in our home group for the past several months, it has been said over and over again, that we need to get right with the Lord and confess our sins.

The Lord is going to show up here very soon. Are we ready? Am I ready this time? He is looking for harvesters all over the world. He will touch everywhere when the time is right, but the exhortation and warning must go out first. The exhortation is Romans 13:8-14. The warning is what can happen as described in this article. We need to settle our accounts and we need to do it now. When he shows up, will you or I be caught unprepared? Lets Love each other and help each other and help each other as in Phil 2:3-4 "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." Five years ago, I didn’t understand the importance of all of this, but now I have seen what can happen.

Once he has chosen his harvesters, then the harvest will begin and even that time is getting very close. He is giving us time to get right, but the time is running out. Please, please, please take heed.

Denis

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