A Word of Prophecy
Building for the Storms
Storms can be demonic, but they can also represent moves of the Holy Spirit. For example, the Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind (Job 38). Wind often represents the Holy Spirit, and rain sometimes represents teaching (see Deuteronomy 32:2). Hurricanes will uproot trees that do not have deep roots, and can destroy anything that is not well built. Revivals do this too.
When the Lord told us several years ago that He was about to move in Pensacola, He also said that there would be two hurricanes, and both would hit a navy base as a sign of where He was about to move. We wrongly assumed that this meant two different navy bases. Pensacola has a navy base and two hurricanes hit there that year. By the time this occurred, the revival at the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola had already broken out.
Over 20 years ago, the Lord gave me a word that He was going to bless us from the mountains to the sea. We are now establishing a base of operations in the mountains where we have witnessed extraordinary manifestations of the Lord's grace, provision and most of all, His presence. Last year He spoke to me that it was now time to establish a base at the sea. For the last few years, we have taken our staff to a little island on the North Carolina coast with which we have fallen in love.
We were on the island when Hurricane Fran approached it two years ago on a course that was bringing the hurricane directly toward us. The intercessors and many of the children marched around the island at night to pray for its protection from the storm. As the hurricane approached, it suddenly jogged to the east, just by-passing our island, and then it turned back to the west and went up the Cape Fear River.
Hurricane force winds brushed our island, but we did not even lose power and there was little or no damage done to it. The beaches just north of us were devastated, as well as cities and towns all the way to Raleigh, well over a hundred miles inland.
Last year, we were directed to a cottage on our favorite beach that was for sale at an extraordinary value. We purchased it as a place at the ocean where our staff could go to seek the Lord. Then came Hurricane Bonnie. A huge and powerful storm, it was aimed right at our little island.
We prayed for it to go around the island as Fran had done. The storm did turn, but only enough to make our little island "ground zero" for the hurricane to make land fall. Because the greatest damage from hurricanes comes from the sea wall they create, the worse nightmare is for them to come ashore during high tide. Hurricane Bonnie not only came ashore at high tide, but then nearly stopped so that it continued to pound the island with some of its strongest winds through a second high tide. The hurricane also dropped nearly twelve inches of rain.
We had a beach retreat scheduled for our staff to begin the Saturday after Bonnie came ashore on Wednesday.
I did not think there would be much left on the whole island, but even if there was, I figured that it would take weeks to restore power, and probably months to repair the damage so that it could be used. Twice that morning the Lord told me to "watch My miracle." I told my wife and others that this probably meant that we would get a good insurance settlement and be able to build a bigger, better place.
I prepared to cancel the beach retreat, but several people felt that we were to go anyway.
I thought that they were out of their minds, but agreed not to cancel until I had a chance to fly down and check the damage, or we had heard from the real estate company. I was shocked when the realtor informed us that not only had the island survived, but that there really was not any damage and that they had not even lost power through the entire storm!
Only shingles had been blown off some homes, along with some damage to window screens. This was a miracle of biblical proportions! All around us, millions of dollars worth of damage had been caused by this storm, and we should have gotten the worst of it. The authorities said that the storm surge went around both sides of our island, but did not touch it.