While I was in prayer one day, I heard the Lord say in my spirit,“I am a voice calling in the wilderness.” I understood this to mean that God was meeting His people in the wilderness so that He could develop an intimate relationship with them that would result in the possession of their promised land. The wilderness is the way of the flesh, bondage, negativity, doubt, deception, fear and failure…the place God often meets His people…right where they are living! The promised land is the way of the Spirit…freedom, faith, relationship, revelation, and the abundant life…a place where God’s people begin to experience and live in the things they believe about their faith in Him.
The Lord was leading those who had been wounded through the trials of life’s circumstances inflicted by the enemy to meet with Him. Many of His people felt so defeated that they had begun to give up on their relationship with God! The daily grind of the day-to-day tribulations were slowly wearing down these saints, keeping them from seeking after Him with all their heart, soul, strength, and mind. The purpose of God meeting His people in the wilderness was to turn the trials meant for their harm into their good! The Lord did not want to punish or make life difficult for the saints, but He wanted to draw them into a closer relationship with Him in order to increase their desire to wait on Holy Spirit. Then they could learn to overcome through a relationship based on the revelation of Christ’s accomplishments rather than by their own strengths and abilities.
There is“a voice of one who cries: Prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord [clear away the obstacles]; make straight and smooth in the desert a highway for our God!”1
MY PANORAMIC VISION
This declaration was followed by a panoramic vision, as if I were looking from an airplane window. A bright and glowing light illuminated the picture that I saw. Everything in the vision had the appearance of being white and yet was transparent. I could see in the spirit through every object that would have been made of solid matter in the natural, thus impossible to see through in the flesh. I then saw an opening in the heavens between the clouds. Out of the opening appeared two very large arms with hands that wore thin white gloves. One hand was grasping a bow while the other hand was pulling an arrow back against the tension of the string in order to release it high into the heavens.
When I looked to see where the arrow was going, I was surprised to see hundreds, maybe even thousands, of arrows that had already been launched into the heavens. Once an arrow was launched it would multiply into many arrows of differing sizes. Some had peaked in the air so that they were beginning to plummet toward the earth. All the while, there were still different groupings of arrows preparing to hit at different times. Some were not far from hitting the surface of the earth, while others were much higher up, and some were still preparing to peak in the air before they plummeted back to the earth. All the while, arrows were continually being launched one after the other.
At first i
