(Blog 0009 AndrewHadden.org)
God sent me on a walk, and, on the walk, I thought of the brief and mild account of my story I have put on the web for the general public, versus how I have written letters to leaders in the Church, and a few in government, with much fuller, individually-crafted accounts of my story. Then I thought, the general public needs to know “the rest of the story,” and God endorsed that by saying, “Write it – for them.” What leaders have gotten has included extreme spiritual experiences, and extreme things God has said to me, or had others say to me. Their versions trust them to know the scripture well, and the background for what God meant as he spoke, or have someone available to explain it. And some of these things are things God had warned me not to include in the book of my story that I have written – now published and available on www.Amazon.com, titled “Into the Storm: My Story,” which is intended for everyone, the general public. (Put the full title in quotes to find it there.) But I know a number of things have changed since I was writing that book, and a number of things are about to change that will affect the reception of the extreme things in my more complete story.
I need credentials to do what I am called to do. I need credentials from God, and credentials from the people knowing that those credentials from God have been proven by God himself – and the scripture. And God has made it clear that lives and souls will be lost if people do not believe that I have truly been appointed by God to the roles to which I say I am called. John the Baptist was asked by the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, who he was. And they spoke of roles prophesied in scripture which he could possibly claim he was there to fulfill. They knew he was special, and anointed; they just did not know what role he was called to fulfill. And John the Baptist answered by quoting one of the passages predicting a future prophet and what his message would be. And John rejected some roles the Pharisees suggested which Christ later indicated John indeed did fulfill. Apparently, John did not recognize at the time that he was, or would also be, fulfilling other scriptures.
Likewise, Jesus was questioned as to by what authority he spoke, and he also claimed to fulfill scripture. The Pharisees questioned his authority to speak and at first Jesus set a condition for answering that they refused to meet, but then, after speaking in parables, he made it clear he was the stone mentioned in scripture (Psalm 118:22) that the builders rejected, but which had become the chief cornerstone. Then he declared judgment on them. (See Matthew 21:23-46). Jesus told the woman at the well exactly who he was. After she spoke of the Messiah, called the Christ, Jesus said, "I who speak to you am He” (John 4:26 NKJV).
Claiming one was sent by God, like a prophet, was one way one could claim authority behind their words. Claiming a call from God to be a prophet in a unique supernatural experience like Isaiah was understood and respected by the Jews. Christ made a claim of fulfilling scripture (Isaiah 61:1-2a) in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, and the crowd promptly tried to throw him off a cliff – because, in spite of words and works at which they marveled, they saw him as just a normal man who grew up in their town (see Luke 4:16-29). Christ had said, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house" (Mark 6:4 NKJV). I know the feeling, but am in good company in experiencing it. Christ noted that it is the false prophets that generally find acceptance: “Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets” (Luke 6:26 KJV).
So, the example of scripture for attesting to unusual and extreme callings – like to be a prophet chosen by God to speak for him – was to show in scripture where the role you are claiming is predicted in advance, as well as report what kind of special encounters initiated by God were involved in receiving the calling or callings. John the Baptist’s father had an angelic visitation telling him of his son’s calling and miraculous birth, and he was struck dumb until the birth for doubting it. The announcement of Mary’s calling to bear and raise the Christ child, and his calling, was communicated in an angelic visitation. The writers of the Gospels were careful to document the supernatural encounters and the scriptures both John the Baptist and Christ fulfilled. Christ confirmed the scriptures that John the Baptist fulfilled, and then also indicated those scriptures must be fulfilled again, when he said, "Indeed, Elijah is coming first” (Matthew17:11, Mark 9:12 NKJV) and did it after John had been beheaded. But Christ also indicated Elijah had already come, fulfilled the first time by John the Baptist. That meant there is someone coming in the spirit and power of Elijah before Christ’s second coming, not just before his first coming. This is a multiple fulfillment of prophecy, as Christ indicated can happen when he spoke of the abomination of desolation as future, when it had already been fulfilled once before, and his hearers would have been well aware of it having been when the temple was desecrated less than two hundred years before Christ (by the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanies).
When I was in seminary, I really needed to know what God was calling me to do. My father was a missionary at the time, and I had heard something from God about going overseas, so applying to be a missionary seemed a correct response. Little did I know that God was only showing me a tiny piece of a puzzle that would eventually define my calling – but it served his purposes at the time to get me taught and trained, and minister to some leaders around me. But God had also shown me other things, and said other things, that I needed to understand and take into account. I reached a point where I realized I really needed to know exactly what God was calling me to do.
God’s answer was to use scripture to show me my calling, at least the major parts of it. That fits in well with being able to eventually answer leaders who might question me like they questioned John the Baptist, and Jesus, about who they were from the scriptures predicting future prophets or leaders. What God did was let me take the seminary class on the End Times (eschatology) from someone arguably the denomination’s most respected scholar, and do a project to summarize, in a teaching booklet, the major events and figures of the end times and list the text of the scriptures addressing each of them. God got me very familiar with scriptures on the end times.
But God did something else over many years first. He spoke. He spoke rather emphatically, in different ways, by different means. First, he called me in a very quiet and orderly way, with just a sudden knowing that I was called that happened on a Sunday afternoon at home after church. Then God used someone that night to give a word of prophecy down at the altar with a very few people left. They spoke and I knew it was from God and for me. They did not know what we were considering. What was said was, "Fear not to go, I will lead you to a green place. But know this; you will be tried as by fire and refined as gold is refined, but brought forth as gold." Then I just knew God wanted me to go back to the Bible college at which my father was teaching, and which I had grown up around in my high school years. But God left me not really knowing what I was called to do, and not really feeling like I fit the normal categories I knew of, which were pastor, evangelist, or missionary. (Teachers were generally one of those categories first.)
But it did not take God long to speak more emphatically. There was a unique
prophetic experience a few days after sensing a call. I was praying and
suddenly it was as if I had been transported to another place and another time
and I was prophesying, with my eyes closed, rebuking sin in a leader, saying,
“Dare you to stand before the people of God with sin in your heart!” (not
something I would ever have anticipated doing), and someone grabbed my shoulder
from behind to stop me. Then I felt the power of God pass through me, and to
them, and I knew it was not for good. I felt they had been struck down. This
experience was incredibly real and it caused me to fear this experience would
be lived out in the future at some point. I think I told my father about it,
and my wife, but no one else for years. God took many years to sort this
revelation out, but he eventually explained it was symbolic and was about being
defended by God, even with death, if necessary. It also took years for me to
no longer be terrified at the thought of being so near to the judgment of God,
because I feared I would likely be worthy of being judged as well. And I did
not want anyone to be judged, and certainly not in any way because of me.
I already had a degree in management when I went to Bible college. I thought to quickly pick up a degree in Bible, but the Bible college had been going through accreditation, and likely being strictly reviewed, and did not want to take some of my general education credits – making it take longer than it should have. So, then God used the Bible college dean to give what I came see as a word of wisdom from the Lord to get a Master of Arts in Bible from the denominational seminary (which allowed me to get a higher degree in less time than at the Bible college). He also advocated getting the Master of Business Administration I had originally planned as well, which I could get in the same city at the same time. We also had talked about my call and that I did not really know yet what God wanted me to do.
So, I started an MBA program in the fall and started at the seminary in the spring, going to both graduate schools at the same time. I did well in both, but my former wife pushed me out of preparation for ministry after only one semester and pushed me to finish the MBA and work in the business world. I complied and we both ended up working for a large international oil and gas company for five and a half years. But God still tugged at my heart toward some kind of ministry, and to continue preparation for it. Then, after four and a half years there, God suddenly spoke very clearly to, “Sell your house and have it sold by the end of October.” We obeyed and the real estate market started crashing at the end of October, with oil price declines and a big layoff announcement in town, but we had sold and rented, short term. That got our attention and pulled me into seeking God for guidance, more and more, about where he wanted me – but I still did not feel like I fit any normal categories of ministry.
In this time, God brought back the prophetic experience from seven years earlier of rebuking sin in the pulpit and someone being struck down for trying to stop it. It happened as the pastor spoke from Jeremiah chapter 22 and I saw Jeremiah 23 across the page, where the prophet Jeremiah rebukes sin in leaders, and it was so much like that message and experience. I was deeply burdened and rushed to the altar even before the pastor gave an altar call. I knelt at a front pew and said, “Oh God, no!” God replied, “It must be.” I was expressing my horror at God defending me with death. I did not want it to be true. But now he was emphatically stating that it was absolutely necessary.
This began a six-hour experience with God that felt like Isaiah 6 must have felt for Isaiah. That is the chapter where Isaiah tells of his startling prophetic call, where he sees the Lord on his throne and God is wanting someone to go as a messenger for him. Isaiah’s reaction is to cry out, “Woe is me!” because of the terrible uncleanness he felt in the presence of a holy God.
After quite a while I heard, “Take the shoes off of your feet.” I immediately rejected it as just my thought. I rebuked myself, saying to myself, "Yeah sure, now you think you are Moses!" (At the call of Moses, when he saw a bush on fire but not being consumed, God told him to take his shoes off because the ground was holy – due to the manifest presence of God). But the waves of feeling from the Spirit of God suddenly stopped, and I knew it had been God speaking, not my thoughts, and that I better obey. Then the holiness of God flowed in, in a way that made me fall on my face on the floor before God, sensing my uncleanness in a way that felt like Isaiah expressed it in Isaiah 6. My coal off of the altar (used to cleanse Isaiah) was Christ’s blood. I told almost no one of this experience as well.
In this time, God used a spiritual leader I respected a lot to tell me, from the Lord, that I had a special calling but had not yet been shown what that calling was. So, God not really telling me everything was deliberate – but obviously necessary because some of the things he showed me or told me were quite overwhelming and took years to process.
God opened doors for me to go back to seminary. The oil company went through a big financial contraction and paid us well to volunteer to quit, giving us money for seminary. We also had God almost miraculously provide a home we had almost bought before, with remodeling done we knew it needed, and a loan assumption with no credit check and no need for us to have jobs to qualify.
I excelled at seminary and worked hard to quickly complete my Master of Arts degree. At one point, I considered a doctorate but God clearly said, “No, I want you to rely on me.” I had felt being more of a teacher in the pulpit would give me more confidence in spiritual ministry. In seminary, I carried a terribly intense burden for intercessory prayer for the Church at large. And God began to speak to me of his Church and sin in the ministry and the Church.
I had another encounter with God in this time, in a season of much prayer. I was standing in my bedroom and felt God make his presence felt. He asked a vow of me. He asked me, "Are you willing to speak the hard words, words hard to say and hard to hear?" I gave God the vow he asked of me. He has since reminded me of it when he has asked me to deliver some very difficult prophetic words.
As my questions about my call started to come up, God gave me answers I did not expect. I was around people called to specific countries and people groups. I grew jealous that they knew exactly to whom they were sent. I pressed God to tell me to whom I was sent. His answer seemed stern and clear, “I will send you to whom I will send you.” Then, when I pressed God to know my calling, he shocked me with the answer and it greatly increased the conflict within me God said to me, “You’re sent to bring the refiner’s fire to the House of God.”
But God was drawing me into more and more intense prayer. Then one day, very early in the morning as I prayed in my living room, kneeling on my face before God, I suddenly found myself standing before Christ. Somehow, I felt my body was back on the ground in my living room, but I seemed to have one there too. The Apostle Paul, in scripture, had an experience like that, where he did not know if he was in his body or out of it. I was not permitted to see Christ’s face. A cloud covered it. But I saw the wound in his side, with blood flowing out of it, and was commanded to wash in it. Suddenly, I realized I was stripped of my clothes in preparation. I hesitated and Christ spoke, telling me, “If you will not be washed, you cannot be covered.” I eventually understood that as conveying that if I did not allow Christ’s blood to cleanse me, I could not be covered, protected, in spiritual warfare. Christ redeems us with his blood, but he also expects us to be cleansed, and being cleansed is important in standing in the battle that happens all around us with unseen spiritual forces of evil. I dutifully washed in his blood, even washing between my toes just before I found myself back in my living room.
A few days later, God gave me a vision and word about the missionary strategy for China, which did not allow missionaries. God sent me to a top leader to share it and he shared it with the other top leaders and they saw it as from God. It became the missions’ strategy for them and everyone else getting people into China for many years, sending laymen who could also be spiritual shepherds. That helped me know for years that what I heard in this season could not be lightly dismissed.
I also had a vision of myself ministering in a stadium. In the vision, I held out my hand and the Spirit of God fell on people like a wave moving through the crowd. I, however, was overwhelmed, because I had never desired ministry before great crowds.
God’s way of answering me about my call was to direct me to scripture passages, step-by-step. Many of them were about the end times. I began to see that these passages contained things similar to my experiences with God, or things he had said to me, or said to me through others, or how he had characterized me or my ministry.
God showed me that the phrase “refiner’s fire” appears in the Bible only in Malachi chapter one, and it is associated with one of the passages predicting the call of John the Baptist. Verse one starts, “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: . . .” Verses two and three say:
2 But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth [appears]? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' [launderers’] soap:
3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. (KJV)
In this passage, I remember reading that the Hebrew is ambiguous such that the phrase about, “He is a like a refiner’s fire” and him purifying the sons of Levi – the ministers of God’s house – can be applied to either the messenger (the forerunner), or to Christ, as the Messenger of the covenant.
This passage predicts the coming of John the Baptist, as the forerunner of Christ, but so does the next chapter in saying: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD” (Malachi 4:5). This was only the beginning of God speaking about this calling – he got more and more clear and emphatic as time went along.
I saw in Zechariah three, that Joshua the high priest stood before the Angel of the Lord, taken by most to be the preincarnate Christ, and was stripped of his clothing and cleansed before receiving new garments for his role. He was also referred to using a term God had applied to me. I saw that he and Zerubbabel, the governor, were described as men predictive of two to come, and called the two olive trees (where they got oil from pressing olives), a symbol for those having the anointing to anoint others and have them receive the spiritual power and authority to do the work of God. God, in scripture, used anointing people with oil to symbolize God putting his supernatural enablement upon them.
The reference to “the two olive trees” is also found in Revelation chapter 11 and God had me go there. Those called “the two olive trees” there are the two witnesses. I read the account of them there and God spoke plainly to me about my call. He said, “You will be my witness. Go and fight the Beast” (the Antichrist). I involuntarily screamed in shock and anguish. I raised an objection I thought would exclude me, and God instantly refuted it with scripture. I focused on that passage and that it appears the whole world will hate them and celebrate their deaths. I wanted very badly to dismiss what I was hearing as deception. I tried that for seven years, but then I had to start considering, at long intervals, that it could be true. I tried to interpret what had been said in as small a way as possible, as long as I could.
Finally, decades later, I seriously asked God to either confirm that calling exactly or destroy it (as deception) – and stunning confirmations through ministers came. One minister knew nothing of my call and said that God had given her a vision of the two witnesses and told her I was one of them, twenty minutes earlier in our long conversation. She mentioned it when I obeyed God and started to mention people having revelations comparing me to Moses or Elijah. I told my story to another minister, a pastor, and he said three times, on separate occasions, that he believed I am one of the two witnesses. He also said God had endorsed me to him in ways people would think he was crazy if he told them.
And the whole thing did not easily fit what I had been taught about the end times. I studied the scriptures on the end times, over and over again, for years. Finally, after many years, God began to explain things plainly to me – because he really had called me to be in the middle of the end times until he determines that a witness to the truth is no longer needed on the earth, which will be very near the end.
Only a few years ago did God finally help me see the two witnesses in a better light than what I saw in Revelation 11. He made me focus more on Zechariah chapters three and four, and reminded me that they are also the “two anointed ones” or “sons of oil” and the two olive trees and the two lampstands – channels of God’s anointing for his people for the end times. God explained that, like Moses pronounced God’s judgments on the world’s superpower of his day to set God’s people free from oppression and slavery, these two will be defenders and deliverers of God’s people the world over. He explained that they will be appreciated and honored by God’s people. He also explained that references to “all” in scripture don’t mean “all” the way we speak now, and that the Jews, his audience, understood those references differently and he spoke to them within their culture.
But there are two callings here – to be fulfilled by one person. Many have compared the two witnesses to Moses and Elijah, because the power they wield for God is similar to the power Moses and Elijah wielded. And Moses, and his authority to lead God’s people, were defended by God, not so differently from how God says, in Revelation 11, that the two witnesses will be defended. (See the biblical book of Numbers, and especially chapter 16, for accounts of God defending Moses.) Likewise, two companies of soldiers sent by an evil king that sought to force God’s representative, Elijah, to submit to them, were consumed by fire from Heaven. And the army of the superpower Egypt was supernaturally destroyed in an instant when they thought to pursue those God used Moses to deliver. (So it will be. A time of great deliverance is coming.)
I am one person sent to fulfill two callings. I am called to be one of the two witnesses of Revelation 11, but I am also called to prepare the way of the Lord, Jesus Christ, who is coming again, this time to rule. The other fulfilling the role of one of the two witnesses does not need to be released, and recognized, as soon. I am like Elijah and like John the Baptist, who held this role for the first coming of Christ. There is more of my story to do with this, more special experiences, encounters with God. Let me share a few.
In early 1997, God sent me to a different church and, before the sermon – at the end of worship, God said, “Listen, I am going to speak to you.” Then the pastor unveiled art on the life and ministry of John the Baptist. It was an altarpiece that opened up and had more art on the inner panels, with scenes representative of his ministry. An art professor in the church had done it as part of a collection on the prophets in earning his doctorate.
At one point, we were in a large church and God gave us a special revival, with much manifestation of the presence, power, and love of God. One night, I was overcome by the power of God upon me to where I could no longer stand and went down on the floor between the pews, praying in the Holy Spirit for hours. It got late into the night and they wanted to get me up and help me out, and I tried, but God had a different plan. Finally, they agreed to lock me in the church after they got me to a front pew in trying to get me out. But when the person locking me in, alone in the church, thought to cut through the sanctuary, God would not allow it. He fell to the floor with a thud, temporarily paralyzed as soon as he started to step into the sanctuary. He later told of how for half an hour he could not even move his thumbs, which had fallen crossed, in front of his face. Then God wanted me to get up and walk to the center of the altar area, though I doubted I could do it. I walked teetering to that place and fell again on my face before God. Then I heard the sound of a rushing mighty wind rushing around me and in and out of my mouth and lungs – like the disciples heard in the upper room on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two. I was then left there until early morning until my wife could come get me. Then God made me stay home for several days working on a sermon for my denomination’s headquarters that exposed serious sin and brought more to the altar than someone there thirty years said they had ever seen – but there was a long wait to preach it.
Shortly after the above, in the fall of 1998, God sent me to pray with a minister from another continent, in the city to go to seminary. He asked permission to pray as he felt led, prophetically. He opened his Bible and prayed a scripture into me, without indicating what it was. Then God told me to open his Bible and read Isaiah 61:1-2a: “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD . . ..” He then said it was what he had just prayed into me. He then told me God had given him a vision of me on a mountaintop with a scepter in my hand and went on and on about the great authority God wanted to give me, not like he gave others. But then he felt to caution me strongly that God wanted me to agree to go through what he wanted me to go through to receive it, and not to answer lightly, to consider the cost. I felt I had already been through 20 years of pain in my call and I could not see throwing that away, so I agreed. Then I started going through more pain, emotional pain, than I thought possible in this life and the causes of that pain – slander and its fruit – have continued for more than 20 years, though I have gotten much, much stronger. This man also warned, “Satan will do everything in his power to keep you from standing up in this calling.” That also has come to pass.
In about 2005, I had a major word from God about the Elijah/John the Baptist calling. I had been in the prayer room for two hours before coming into the Sunday morning service and entering into worship. I was used to prophesying to the congregation there and feeling the anointing and hearing God’s voice very clearly to do so, but this was different. This was like an audible voice in that it was like being talked to in a clear voice and it was directional – it felt like it was from above and behind me. But because of what was said, I immediately assumed it could not be God, that God would not say this to me. I was respectful, but I replied, “God, if this is you, give me an exact confirmation.” I thought it had to be Satan trying to pump my pride and I never expected a confirmation to come. I dismissed the word. I did not want to accept it. What was said was, “Elijah! I’m going to give you the Elijah anointing to call down fire on the enemies of the Lord.” That night, after the evening service, I sat at the altar talking to a prophetic man in his thirties that I knew and respected, and, all the sudden, he said, “I see you, like Elijah on the mountain, calling down fire on the King’s men.” He went on to explain that he saw, in an eyes-open vision, the scene like one would expect to see the scene from the Bible represented, but I was in the place of Elijah. My reaction to him was, “Can I just run out in the dark and cry or scream?” I was shocked and overwhelmed. I had never expected God to confirm what had been said to me. God spoke many times comparing me to Elijah (and quite a few times comparing me to John the Baptist) over the years, but this one shook me and was told to very few for years.
Now you know much of the rest of my story, the story I have told to leaders in the Church. Not all received it. I do not fault them. It took me many years to receive all these things from God, myself. But when God endorses it to them, and they disobey him, God sees it differently. Sin that costs souls God judges more severely in ministers. In time, God will prove out the truth of these things. There will be signs. Unfortunately, God has indicated that the first sign will be judgments, deaths, to defend his messages by defending his messenger, against the slander Satan sent to keep anyone from hearing. And it was slander spread by the casual sin of the Church in judging unscripturally, and harshly, and gossiping the lies far and wide, with no concern for the sin involved in doing so. God makes it clear he does this because of the millions of lives and souls that will be lost if he does not judge to defend me and his messages through me. But he weeps over it, as do I.