Pouring Out His Spirit on All Flesh–A Dream

[From Journal entry, 9-18-2020]

“I will pour my Spirit upon all flesh.” Last night God gave me this word in a dream. As I lay in bed praying, waiting to fall asleep, I asked Him, “Please, Father, will you give me a word from You, a dream from you?”

I went on to sleep, and then this voice found its way into me, and I began to be its vocal cords. And it resounded, and the voice blasted these words: “I will pour My Spirit upon all flesh. UPON ALL FLESH!!” It was hair-raising from neck to lower back. The voice seemed like it was loud enough to rattle the windows.

That is when my wife Linda shook me and said, “Wake up! You are dreaming!” She said that I had bolted upright in bed and was shouting unintelligible words.

And as I woke up, I knew that the voice was not my voice that came through my mouth. I did not originate the voice or the volume. It was not my will or desire that it spoke using my vocal cords.

I got up out of bed. It was 2:00 o’clock in the morning. I stumbled to my desk, turned on the lamp, and penned these very words into my journal. I did not want to forget any of this experience.

I wanted to share it immediately, but I was not ready to make sense of it. It was unsettling and unnerving. It was not the joyous upper room experience. It had a blanket of dread draped over the words. It was ominous and foreboding. I knew that there was much more to it, but I would have to wait on Him to help me understand its profundity.

Consequently, I put the experience on the back burner to let it simmer for a while. Other work kept me busy. I was in the middle of writing my fifth book, The Eleventh Commandment, at the time.  And then the sixth came, The Additions to the Faith, which I have just published online on Immortality Road [The Additions to the Faith | Immortality Road (wordpress.com).

These books have an uncanny connection to the dream. They show us how to grow into “mighty men and women of valor,” to borrow Gideon’s heavenly accolade. These books are primers, teaching us His Law of Harvest and showing us how to grow to be His apostles, prophets, and teachers. They prepare us for the “time of the end,” the great catastrophe, and the cataclysm coming to this earth just before Christ returns.

Making Sense of the Dream

But what does this dream-message mean? “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh.” My first thought was that joyous time at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down and filled the disciples. It was a time of great joy. Peter is quoting the prophet Joel 2:28. We have read it and marveled at the scene of Christ’s disciples receiving power, as found in Acts 2:17: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, sayeth God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. And your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

Peter spoke of the Holy Spirit being received, changing lives, and turning many to Christ through the apostles’ spiritual exploits. It was glorious stuff that we would all like to experience. Speaking in a language that you have never heard before! Having a voice taking over your tongue and vocal cords, witnessing God’s glory to strangers in their own language! “They were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance” (2: 4).

And so, I went to Joel 2:28 to see the words Peter was quoting. “And it shall come to pass afterward, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh…” Wait a minute. Before God pours the Holy Spirit out like that at Pentecost for our day, His word says, “And it shall come to pass afterward…” After what, exactly? It is a moment of putting things in perspective and in context. The passage in Joel that Peter quoted says that things will be happening before the Pentecost experience and the obtaining of 100-fold power through the pouring out of His Spirit.  

In our study of His words, especially prophetic words, we must widen our myopic lenses to see things big-picture, and not be quasi-blind, “unable to see afar off.”

We are keying in on what is to take place before our upper room experience. The Spirit through Joel shows us the state of the earth and its corrupt world system at the time of the end. And then we see a massive divine intervention—different pouring out—this time of His wrath. [To be continued in Part Two] Kenneth Wayne Hancock

“Speaking in Tongues” Is Speaking in Other Real Languages–Not Gibberish

Many long for the true Pentecost experience that the early disciples had.  Rightfully so, for we should.  But many long so much that they are receptive to a counterfeit experience, which is part of the “strong delusion” sent out in these latter days.  But is their “speaking in tongues” the same experience that the early apostles had?

Now I know that this may deeply offend many sincere believers who have been swept away in the tide of glossolalia inundating the globe.  How can it be wrong if so many are doing it, some would ask.  “Few there be to find this way of truth,” Christ said.  So beware of what the “many” are doing.

Studying It Out with an Open Mind

Putting aside pre-conceived ideas and traditions, we must go to the scriptures and see what they say in plain English about the subject.  He will reveal His truth to the thirsty and sincere and will pour out His Spirit to them (Isaiah 44: 3).

In Acts 2, the early apostles did not utter syllables that no one could understand.  No!  They spoke in other actual languages.  In fact, the feast goers present in Jerusalem from “every nation under heaven…heard them speak in his own language” (2: 4-6).  These were “devout men,” who were amazed that the Galilean fishermen were speaking in their language.  To emphasize this fact, fifteen different specific languages are listed (v. 9-11).

Filled with the Spirit

So what happened exactly?  Peter explained that this is what the prophet Joel foresaw.  “I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and daughters shall prophesy” (v. 17).

The apostles were not just longing anymore to have an experience with God.  They were filled with the Holy Spirit, and God was speaking through them.  They were vehicles of His words to those without.  God was speaking miraculously, expressing His truth through them in another language!  That is a miracle because Christ’s disciples could not have spoken any of those languages, for they had never even heard them spoken.

A Practical Miracle

The disciples on the day of Pentecost were not in their own little worship world.  Nor were they exulting in a unintelligible form of religious ecstasy.  God was using them to speak to others in their own language.  It was a practical miracle performed by God through His servants.  God needed to convey His truth–through those who knew it–to others who did not speak the same languages as His servants.

So God literally took over their tongues and miraculously spoke through Peter, James, and John and the others.

One of the “Gifts of the Spirit”

This ability to speak in another person’s language is one of the “gifts of the Spirit” outlined in I Corinthians 12: 10.  “Divers kinds of tongues” are different kinds of languages.  Tongues are languages.

And I must be honest.  I do speak English and Spanish.  But I have never been taken over by the Holy Spirit and had my mouth speak other foreign languages to people.  Wow.  That would be something.  Other gifts of the Spirit I have been blessed to have received (or rather, to have been a channel of that gift): “word of wisdom, word of knowledge, faith”–but not different languages flowing by His Spirit through my mouth.

But someday God will use this gift again.  Someday His sons and daughters will be sent to foreign lands, and He will need to speak to the people there.  And God will speak through His surrendered servants and will pour out through them comforting words about His soon coming kingdom.  And He will comfort them with words in their own language.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock