Afterword

How It Happened

"You will receive a visitation." With these simple words our lives were blasted from one realm into another, although we did not realize it at the time.

My husband and I received this promise at a dinner party a few days before we left the city. Four years before, the Lord had brought us to that large metropolitan area after my husband's retirement from the pastoral ministry. We brought together pastors and intercessors-crossing denominational lines-in a citywide prayer movement.

After the Lord raised up leadership from among the pastors we turned the prayer ministry of the city over to them. At our last citywide gathering with the ministers, they laid hands on us, blessed us, and sent us out to serve the larger body of Christ.

"You will be in a cabin at the season of Hanukkah when you receive this visitation," the dinner guest had continued. He was a friend of ours who had an internationally recognized prophetic ministry. Although we had known him for several years, he had never spoken words from the Lord to us personally.

I had seen angels intermittently while we were in the city and had even seen the Lord several times from a distance, but a visitation was far beyond anything my husband or I had ever experienced. To say the least, we were skeptical.

However, our God is merciful as well as full of surprises.

On the eve of Hanukkah, 1994, in a cabin on a lake in Texas, suddenly, the heavens opened as the Spirit ushered me into the very throne room of God. I saw with such startling clarity that I could not deny what I was seeing. Everything I saw and heard was different from what I had thought: more extraordinary, yet comfortable. It seemed as though I were at home.

I began to visit Heaven on a daily basis. Although at first the visits were tiring, I was careful to journal them. I do not think of these visits as visions, for I believe that what I saw is actually there. John told of such an experience in Revelation 4:1. John reported what he saw and heard when he was summoned to Heaven in the Spirit.

There were visions also. This book begins with a vision. Visions seem to be a pictorial language-visual aids representing truth from God in which one may or may not participate. One example of the visions given to John while he was in Heaven is Revelation 9:17.

When I shared these revelations with my husband, the Lord allowed my husband to experience what I was experiencing by being there.

Then on January 1, 1997, the Lord asked us to compile a book from some of the early revelations and to include an addendum containing scriptural verification and illumination concerning all that was seen and heard. He asked us to complete the entire manuscript in one year.

This book is in response to the Lord's request. My husband and I can truly say that we do not believe this book is our own. We have never served the Lord in any way that has been so completely Him. Everything in this book is true. If there are errors in the way things are described, the errors are entirely our doing.

All those who are born again in Christ Jesus sit with Him, in spirit, in heavenly places. However, He has been gracious to allow some of us to see into that realm, according to His Word in John 1:51.

Moreover, we found that these revelations were not for the two of us alone, as we had first thought, but for the body of Christ, of which we are members.

We, who are bondservants of Christ, bless you in His name.

-Anna Rountree

There is an extensive notes section presented in the book, but not given here.