Troubles in the Gulf of Mexico May Not Be A Good Thing!
A famous southern evangelist and I believe an annointed servant of God once saw a vision while he was on top of the Empire State Building, and described it. His vision concerned the coming destruction of the United States. The vision occurred in the 1950's, and so as he describes elements of it, he alludes to weapons and armaments and chemical weapons that seemed to be the big emerging military threats of his time as he speculates about what the specific elements of destruction from his vision might be. You can find a good and thorough description of it at a neat website called ' miraclevalley.net '.
I think the man, A.A.Allen, was most likely an actual annointed servant of God because, as an evangelist, some of the well attested miracles that Jesus performed through this man's ministry as an evangelist are especially amazing - way beyond others that you might normally hear of. Far beyond the fixed back pain or the release from a wheel chair, though those could be very great also. But, perhaps those could be faked, right?
Some of the healings which occurred around this man were tougher to fake. For an instance ( also from miraclevalley.net ):
Once he prayed, near Knoxville Tennessee, for the 4 year old son of a woman from Birmingham, Alabama who had driven far and attended his traveling revival meeting every day of that week without being able to have her son's prayer card be chosen so that he could receive prayer for healing. She was a desperate Christian mom, and her son was very very impaired physically. He was supposed to have had 26 different major birth defects.
The boy had a tongue which hung out upon his chin, and he couldn't talk. He had never talked. His eyes had a whitish colored film over them, so he had never seen. His arms and legs were curled up tightly, and he had never walked. He stayed in a fetal position. His ears did not work right. His male organs were essentially missing. Additionally, he had club feet, which had no toes. I'm not sure how many other things were not working correctly, but as mentioned, the mother claimed that there were 26 things wrong in total with her son.
She managed to get the attention of A.A. Allen's long time ministry partner that night, a man whose name was R.W. Shumbach, and she told him of the situation. She explained that she had driven pretty far, stayed in cheap hotels, eaten at cheap restaraunts, and yet was almost out of money having only $20.00 left. He told her that he would make sure that her young boy got prayed for that very night.
But as it turned out, he didn't have to. Before he had a chance to mention the matter to his evangelism partner, A.A. Allen got onto the stage and began preaching and praying for people. He stopped to take a money donation, and he said it differently than usual. He said he wanted only true donations of complete faith. He said he wanted only full hearted donations.
R.W. Shumbach said that he watched the mother quickly run to the front, and it was a $20.00 bill he saw her drop in the bucket, he wrote. According to what she had told him, that was her gas money home and everything.
Later, having resumed his preaching, A.A. Allen independently stopped speaking at one point to say that he was receiving a vision from the Holy Spirit. It was of a baby boy with a great number of defects, and of a mother that had brought that young boy, now 4 years old, in her car, an old Ford, and that they were there present that night, and God had a healing for them - a very great healing for them.
The excited mother was certain he meant her, and rushed upto the front with her boy, and the crowd got to see the condition that this young boy had so far lived in; they saw his massive deformities. The attendees in the front could have seen the boy well. Mr Allen took the boy and, holding him up, asked God in prayer for the healing this boy needed. And as he had been told by the Holy Spirit only moments before, the Lord was willing.
In front of all people watching that night the boys tongue pulled back into his mouth, his eyes cleared up and became two normal looking little brown eyes that could see. His arms and legs began uncurling with audible snapping noises, and they became straight and normal looking. His ears were restored as was later discovered. He stretched out his young newly formed legs, and a foot and then toes visibly emerged and formed in front of the watching crowd of about 2000 people.
When it was over, after only a moment, the boy was a young, restored 4 year old boy who, when set down onto his feet, ran into his mother's waiting arms, calling out 'Mommie!' as he ran to her.
It was the greatest miracle of healing that R.W. Shumbach had ever seen, but by no means the only one that A.A. Allen had received for someone through God's power. I gather from reading about him that A.A. Allen was probably the real thing - a genuinely annointed man of God in our recent times.
So, given that his connection to God was real, and I believe it must truly have been, it is equally likely that the vision he received truly is from God. The following is a summation of his vision:
Mr Allen was in New York City on evangelism business, holding meetings in Puerto Rican churches. While there he took the opportunity to travel to the top of the Empire State Building. In 1954 it really was a famous building, beautifully made and awesomely tall at 1472 feet. Few things stood as more of a symbol of our national accomplishment to the American mind at that time.
There was a telescope there, and after some other gentleman quit using it, Mr. Allen walked over and put in his own coin. That's when he heard a voice which he recognized as being from the Lord. It said:
"The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him. Herein thou hast done foolishly. Therefore, from henceforth, thou shalt have wars."
That is when his strange vision started.
As he bent and looked through the telescope, he was confused to see that it was not New York that he looked upon, but North America. He was looking northward at North America from south of the Gulf of Mexico, and from such a prominent viewing point that he could see way up to the North, where he saw Alaska and Canada, as well as seeing the lower 48 states of America and it's cities, and the Gulf of Mexico all in front of him. And for some reason, the Statue of Liberty was not standing in New York City, where the statue ought to have been, but in the Gulf of Mexico, standing partly submerged in the water there. He later said that it was as if he was looking down at a map, laid out on a table.
Then, as he watched, a hand reached down from above and took away the Statue of Liberty's torch, and replaced it with a cup, filled with some liquid. And inside the cup, in the liquid, there was also a sword, with the blade sticking outward. A very bright light shone from it's sharpened edge, and Mr. Allen, in his vision, knew this to be the most dangerous of swords, representing a very great threat to the whole world.
Then a voice spoke:
"Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Drink ye and be drunken, spue and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I shall send."
Mr. Allen recognized this as Jeremiah 20:7
The Statue of Liberty resisted, crying out that she would not drink!
But the same voice said to her:
"Ye shall certainly drink." This Mr. Allen recognized as Jeremiah 25:28
The powerful hand from above took the cup in her hand and forced her to drink from it - forced her to drink the whole thing, even the dregs. Mr. Allen saw that the sword which had been in the cup was gone, and he knew in his vision that this meant that the wars were on their way.
The voice said: "Should you be utterly unpunished? You shall not be unpunished, for I will call a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith the Lord of Hosts."
Mr. Allen then saw that the statue began to weave and stagger and be drunk, and that she lost her balance there in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and fell into the water. She struggled and fought to rise back to her feet, but was very drunk. Mr. Allen ached to help her. He saw her struggling valiently against the affects of what she had drank from the cup.
But the voice said:
"You shall drink and be drunken, and spue and fall, and rise no more because of the sword that I shall send among you."
The Statue remained standing, but barely, and Mr. Allen feared that if she fell again, she would probable drown.
Next, as the Statue of Liberty struggled to remain on her feet there in the Gulf of Mexico, Mr. Allen saw yet another terrible thing.
Far to the North West, just north beyond Alaska, Mr. Allen saw a terrible black cloud begin to rise. As it rose, he began to see that it looked like a skull, and that there were light spots where it's eyes ought to be, and then as it rose more, a skeletal mouth. It looked like a black skull, and as it continued to rise he saw its neck, then its shoulders and arms. It rose until he could see it from its head to its waist.
He could see that all of it's attention was focused not on Canada at that moment, but the US, and it leaned forward from its waist and brought its head closer to the US. Then, like cigarette smoke. a white cloud of mist or smoke came from its mouth and nostrils and blew upon New York and the East coast - it was a deadly smoke. And then it turned and blew this smoke upon Seattle and the West coast down to San Francisco and Los Angeles. It then blew it upon the center of the country, on St. Louis and Kansas City, then down to New Orleans. Finally, it blew it out into the gulf, and directly upon the struggling Statue of Liberty.
Already drunk and staggering, the burning smoke entered her lungs, and she began to cough horribly, trying with all her strength to rid herself of the searing pain in her lungs. She coughed and coughed, but could not get a breath.
Then Mr. Allen heard these scriptural verses from Isaiah Chapter 24:
"Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest. As with the servant, so with the master, as with the buyer, so with the seller, as with the lender, so with the borrower, as with the taker of usery, so with the giver of usery to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the Lord has spoken this word. The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the haughty people of the earth do languish, the earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men are left."
As Mr. Allen watched, the Statue of Liberty lost her struggle with the white smoke, and fell face down, strangling and drunk into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and she became still there in the water, and for a moment there was only the sound of the waves crashing against her still, half submerged floating form. She was dead, and Mr. Allen said he felt tears come to his eyes.
But then, a new thing happened. Sirens, very loud sirens began to blow everywhere, and he saw people all over the USA running in a panicked state from one place to another. But most of them ran only a short ways through the choking smoke before falling down dead. An extremely small number of people made it to shelters. The dead were numerous everywhere.
But then, the situation worsened: Mr. Allen saw military missles which leapt like fish from the ocean - from the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf, and they arced upwards and then began to descend upon many parts of the USA. He saw other missles leap upwards from the USA to intercept these missles from the sea, but nearly all failed to do so. And then there were gigantic explosions everywhere, almost simultaneously, which Mr. Allen likened to nuclear explosions, such as he had seen on a film.
He could feel the intense heat in his vision, and there was much fire - a giant ball of fire. There was intense and wide spread damage all over the United States. America was destroyed. He heard silence all over the nation for a moment. The silence of death.
But then he heard the most joyous and happy singing he had ever heard. He turned, and there was a great mountain, and he knew it, in his vision, to be the mountain of the Lord. And there was a cleft in the mountain, and the voices came from there. Mr. Allen knew that those were the voices of the saints of God, who had been saved from all over the earth from this terrible destruction. They were protected by the hand of God until this 'storm' should pass, protected by the God they had commited their lives to.
And that ends his vision.
Mr. Allen went on to explain how it was obvious to him that America was a nation that had turned from God. He listed the cinema, the books people were reading, diseases, smoking tobacco and exporting it to all parts of the world, the decrease in virginity among young girls getting married, and pastors who were preaching a corrupted version of who and what God was as just a few examples of our moral deterioration. And that was in the 1950's that he wrote. We are long past those days, which we now regard as a time of national purity compared to our present days.
As I said, his words are given in a lot more detail if you go to the miraclevalley.net website.
But, how interesting is it that, in this man's 1950's vision, the Statue of Liberty is struggling for her life out in the Gulf of Mexico? I mean, here we are having endured Hurricane Katrina, the destruction of a significant portion of New Orleans, and next the big oil spill fiasco from the BP drilling rig. And that's made us struggle financially and ecologically, right? So you have to wonder what might still be coming, don't you?
There is a hand reaching out to every man and every woman from the God who made us. God has tried to get us to be good, and obedient. We weren't. He gave us rules to follow (Moses). Man wouldn't. He gave us the sacrifice, in human flesh, of Jesus, whose earthly body held the spirit and soul of God's only Son. But, here we are today, able to choose eternal life through Jesus, and yet so many people are living wicked or partially wicked because it gratifies our flesh or our ego - for a short time. And then one day we die. And then we are judged. And if it is found that we spurned Jesus and his teachings, we go to hell. We go to eternal damnation....key word: eternal. We were given self determination - the ability to choose right and wrong. That way, we are not God's slaves, we are his friends and servants and children if we choose...but not his slaves. But if we use our self determination to choose those things that God hates, and spurn His son Jesus, our rightful given King, we are assured that we will be judged worthy of eternal damnation.
Choose God, confess your sins, get baptized, then try hard to live as you read that you ought to in the Gospels and the letters to the churches, and in the book of Acts. Read the Gospels, read acts and the Letters to the Churches. Actually read them a few times.
Love your neighbor with your time, attention, effort, and prayers. Honor God in all ways that you can think of. Don't seek worldly greatness - it's too brief, and is at odds with God's plan for us. We're here to be servants, not kings. There already is a king: Jesus. Salvation is offered to man; salvation is offered to you personally. But you do have to choose it and live it. We all have to give God our love and obedience.
This evangelist, A.A. Allen, was found slumped over the back of an easy chair in a hotel room one day, dead from a heart attack. Death comes to all, just about. But, that evangelist is in an eternity, an afterlife, that we are all heading towards. Is he in a good one, or a bad one? Will you be in a good one or a bad one? You can have a very great deal to do with which eternity you will have, so long as you breathe God's good air down here on earth. But once you die, that's it. The story has been all written, the evidence is all in the evidence locker concerning your case, and you will go to your judgement. We all will. So, choose wisely while you can. You are not a lost soul if you are reading this. Why make the biggest of all possible mistakes?