In the early 1980s, God used the prophet Bob Jones to give a word to Mike Bickle in Kansas City. The word was a directive one: if some "forerunners" would unite to pray for ten years--morning, noon, and night--God would cause something new to break forth on the global scene for the body of Christ. So Mike and company prayed. I was involved with many of those prayer gatherings. For ten years--morning, noon, and night--forerunner prayer went up.
At the end of those ten years, in early 1994, something new definitely broke out, and it's still breaking out in the body of Christ. It goes by various names: "The Renewal," "The Refreshing," "The Father's Blessing," and more. It involves the presence of God manifested in ways that people had never before experienced on such a scale. All over the world, God began to show up when groups of people were worshiping Him in the Spirit, releasing signs and wonders and all sorts of amazing experiences. The incense of the prayers of the saints had gone up and up, and finally it was time for God's power to come down. (After all, "What goes up must come down.")
In the springtime of that same year, I was in Indianapolis, Indiana, ministering at a gathering called "City of Destiny." While I was there, I was sleeping in a second-floor bedroom of a house. Suddenly, I was awakened by the sound of a trumpet, although it was more of a shofar sound, and by the voice of the Lord coming through an angel.
I sat up in bed, wide-awake. The room was thick with the manifest presence of God. The very atmosphere conveyed the sense of destiny. (When angels cross over from the eternal realm to the temporal one and bring with them the manifest presence of God, there can be different "flavors" to the way the presence feels. This time God's presence felt like destiny.) This sense of God's presence and this sense of destiny lasted for maybe twenty minutes, while I just sat there in the bed, not saying a word. Then, at the end of my bed, I saw an angel.
I don't know how tall this angel was, because the angel wasn't in the appearance of a man. This angel looked more like a "typical" angel, if there is such a thing, covered with glowing, feathery, satiny, radiant white garments. Its wings were held to its sides, and they were enormous. I couldn't say a word. I didn't want to say a word. I was speechless because of the incredible radiant presence in the room and the fear of the Lord and the tangible sense of destiny. I don't know what kind of angel this was, but I know it was some kind of a covering angel or covering cherub, maybe even an archangel—some kind that has authority over other angels. I could tell that much by what happened next.
The angel opened up its wings. I don't know how many wings it had, at least two. Then a hand like a man's hand proceeded out from under the wings. It reminded me of scriptural descriptions of the seraphim. In the angels' hand was a green measuring cup, an incredibly green measuring cup. I associate the color green as the color of the Levites, the priests, who are the ones who intercede. And green could also be interpreted to mean new life.
In this cup was fresh oil. And then for the next twenty minutes, I watched this angel dispatch scores of other angels, hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. They were just taking off as fast as they could--swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! They were being released to go out over the whole world. These angels carried bottles of fresh oil, and they carried bottles of new wine. I was amazed.
Over in the corner of the room, I saw a large bottle of oil perhaps eighteen inches tall. The bottle was labeled "Crisco." For a split second, I allowed my unspiritual thoughts to rise up and wonder, "Oh, why does the prophetic always have to be so parabolic?" Then, immediately, I understood the meaning. "Oh, of course! It's Crisco. Cris—Jesus Christ." The Greek word is Christos, which means "the Anointed One." "And the 'co'—the anointing is not being released for one person, but for a company." I understood it—fresh oil was being released through the messengers of Jesus Christ to the company of the body of Christ.
As these angels were going out, swoosh, swoosh, all over the earth, I understood the word that had been spoken aloud at the first sound of the trumpet-shofar. The word I heard was, "It's time to begin!" It was time to begin a new outpouring. it was time to cross a new threshold in church history. We had the Jesus movement thirty years before, and now it was time to begin something new.
It's true that something new has been happening in the dozen or so years since then. Something definite did begin then, and angels were (and are) a vital part of it—in response to the Spirit-inspired, fervent prayers of the people of God.