Visions show SA’s faith will ignite Africa and the world, says writer

Three visions, given to servants of the Lord from vastly different backgrounds, countries and continents foretell of the Holy Spirit igniting flames of faith in South Africa that will spread through the continent and the rest of the world.

Dr Desmond Rose, who is originally from South Africa, but went to the US to study theology and prepare himself for ministry, was motivated to bring to light the three visions in a book entitled Write the Vision.

His reason for drawing attention to the visions dates back to 2009 when, during a 14-day fast, two things of note happened to him.

Reminded of a vision
Firstly, he was reminded of a vision he had been told of soon after becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Rose, who gained a doctorate in Ministry at the Oral Roberts University and has lived in the US for the last 31 years, said that the Holy Spirit brought to his remembrance an account concerning a missionary working in South Africa who had a prophetic vision of a world map hanging on a wall. Below was a candle whose flame ignited the map at the tip of the African continent.

The fire consumed Africa and spread to the rest of the world.

This vision was so fresh in Roses’s mind that he decided to find out the authenticity of it.

Unfortunately, the missionary who had the vision in 1929, Joseph Reinhard Gschwend, was deceased, but Rose found that Gschwend’s grandson, Eugene, managed All Nations Gospel Publishers, the ministry Gschwend had established in Pretoria.

“I made an international phone call, and told Eugene the reason for my call was to verify this vision.

“Eugene not only confirmed that the vision is authentic, but that his grandfather had written a book called, A Burning Candle, giving all the details of this vision,” explained Rose.

A burning candle
Some of the details of the vision follow:

Many years ago I was awakened through a short but very clear dream vision. I could see a map hanging on a wall showing Africa and Europe with adjoining parts of the world. Below the map, near the wall, stood a small table.

There was a burning candle upon the table held in a candlestick, throwing its flickering light onto the large map. Just then, a gentle breeze blew the flame of the candle towards the map causing it to catch alight, at the lowest point of Africa. Flames flew upwards across the African continent, on to Europe as well as to India and other parts of the world.

I awoke and, deeply impressed by this short clear vision, I uttered these words. “This is a revival fire.” Falling on my knees, I prayed. ‘O God it is wonderful that a small burning candle can set a whole continent like Africa on fire. May I be such to Thee! If I cannot be a famous preacher or missionary, may I, Oh Lord, at least be a burning candle, burning for Jesus wherever I may be!’

I realised that a candle that is burning is of more use than the most luxurious lamp that does not burn, even though it is full of oil. It was the fire of cloven tongues that descended upon the 120 disciples on the day of Pentecost that set the church of Christ ablaze and made it to be the “Light of the World.”

May the whole of Africa be set on fire for God with a vision for the salvation of precious souls throughout the world. It is not impossible that God may graciously use South Africa as the starting point of a worldwide revival. Let us pray, and let us be burning candles placed by God, in the right place, maybe the earth’s darkest corners.

Holy Spirit revealed unresolved issue
The second occurrence of note during Rose’s 14-day fast was that the Holy Spirit revealed an issue involving a fellow pastor, which he thought had already been dealt with.

However, after waking up one morning at 3am in pain, he made an appointment with his doctor, who ran some tests, which came back clear.

“I rejoiced, but the pain persisted,” said Rose.

“Andrew Murray says, ‘It may be that there is much in you that prevents the answer. Delay in the answer is a very blessed discipline. It leads to self-searching as to whether we are praying amiss and whether our life is truly in harmony with our prayer’.

“This was the driving force behind me asking, ‘Lord what is preventing my prayers from being answered’?

“I rolled out of bed and onto my knees to pray and seek an answer, because I was prepared to do anything so that He would heal me.

“Immediately, I thought of an unfortunate incident where I committed a wrong against a pastor, even though I had confessed it before and believed it was over.

“Apparently it was not, and the Holy Spirit was not going to let me off the hook either!

Obeying the Holy Spirit’s directions
“The last thing I want is to disobey the Holy Spirit’s directions. I prayed, ‘If this is your leading, and not a trick of the devil, please heal my side’, which was hurting intensely.

“I said to Him that should the pain be gone in the morning, I would go to the pastor and confess my sin and ask forgiveness.

“When I awoke the next morning I had no pain!

“I wasted no time going to the pastor’s church to meet with him.

“I confessed my sin and was reconciled to my brother.”

The pastor prayed for Rose and asked what he had been doing since the two had last spoken.

“I related to him how the Lord had led me over the past 10 years and told him about the fast I had been doing and how the Holy Spirit had led me to find Gschwend’s vision.

“He was amazed to hear the account and told me he knew a Rev Danny Fisher of Immanuel Fellowship Church in Seminole, Oklahoma who had been given a similar vision.

“Not long after our conversation, I phoned Pastor Fisher, related the burning-candle vision to him and mentioned that I had heard he had a similar vision.”

A burning matchstick
Rev Fisher recounted the following to Dr Des over the phone:

In 1991 during the month of October, he travelled to South Africa. He was part of a group from America that went to the Cape Province to minister in a church in Somerset West. The group had just returned to the home of Kobus Swart, where they were staying. The house had an upper level and a lower level or basement where he had his guest bedroom.

Once they all retired for the night, Pastor Fisher not being able to sleep, decided to spend the time in prayer, as he was the only one in the basement, and he would not be a hindrance to those who were sleeping upstairs. After going from room to room he found one that had a beanbag chair in it, and he decided this was the room to pray in since there were no other distractions in it.

In the early hours of the morning, while praying, he suddenly had a vision, seeing a giant open map of the world, suspended in the air. While looking at the map, suddenly a giant hand appeared holding a matchstick, and something caused it to ignite.

The hand holding the burning match made its way down to the southernmost tip of South Africa and set it ablaze. The fire spread up the African continent consuming it in its entirety and at the same time spread to all the continents around the world.

Starting in South Africa
“While listening to Pastor Fisher I sensed that the Lord of the Harvest is about to do something wonderful in the world starting in my home country, South Africa. I was amazed that the Holy Spirit would use a sin that I had committed as a catalyst to bring glory to the Name of the Lord by finding out about this vision,” said Rose.

“Truly, what the enemy had meant for destruction, God took and turned to His glory.

“We serve an awesome God, and just to think that had I refused to go and confess my sin and be reconciled to my brother in Christ, I would not have received the second confirmation of Gschwend’s vision.

“After I had spoken to Pastor Fisher I sensed a prompting of the Holy Spirit to do a Google search on the Internet for any similar visions. I punched in keywords to get the search started and found, on the first page, the site of a fellow South African’s ministry, Rev TA Ralekholela.

“On his website page I found a small paragraph of a vision this evangelist had seen. This vision told of a fire starting on the southern tip of Africa and spreading over the continent and then into the uttermost parts of the world.

“I was ecstatic as this was the third confirmation of the same vision.

“A very good friend of mine in South Africa, Dr Johan Combrinck, President of Africa Network Evangelism Task (AFnet) Ministries, confirmed the third vision in reporting Rev Ralekholela as being a man of God and one of “the most prominent evangelists in South Africa today”.

In 1986, Rev Ralekholela was holding meetings in Mitchell Plains near Cape Town. He was staying in Sea Point at the time when one night, at midnight, the Holy Spirit gave him a vision of what God was going to do in Africa and the world in the end-times.

God’s ring of fire
From his home in Missouri, Rose had an international telephone interview with Rev Ralekholela who related the vision the Holy Spirit gave him that night:

I was in Cape Town ministering at Mitchell Plains and staying in Sea Point. I had been preparing for the meeting, and it was about midnight when the Holy Spirit gave me a vision.

I saw fire starting in Sea Point and spreading through the whole of Africa until it was covered with fire. And the Lord spoke to me at that moment and said, “There is going to be a visitation of God in South Africa, but not just for South Africa, but for the whole of Africa.”

And again I saw in the vision the fire come down on the bottom of the map of Africa then going up in the direction of the east, in the direction of Kenya, then covering the western part, then going up to Nigeria, Ghana, and suddenly that fire was covering the whole continent of Africa. Once again I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ”Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

In the vision I saw the fire coming like drops, drops, that is, like sparks, and then it came up until the whole continent was under fire. Again the Lord said, “This is the end-time revival that is coming in your continent.”

As you can see on my logo the ring I have put there. I saw the ring surrounding this continent, and then as I prayed to the Lord, the Lord said to me, “This ring symbolises that I will cover the whole continent with fire. Not only Africa, but this fire is going to touch the whole world.”

The ring showed me what the Lord had started is going to be completed. The whole continent will be surrounded by the fire of the Holy Spirit, the fire of the gospel of Jesus Christ will spread from where it started to the rest of the world.”

The essence of the visions
Rose said that the visions the Holy Spirit gave the three men of God vary little from each other — the essence of the visions speak of one thing, “Harvest!”

He believes the visions of the three men tell of more than “revival fires” coming to Africa and the rest of the world — they reveal an awakening!

“What is about to happen is bigger than anything we have experienced in the Church age. It is a visitation of God,” said Rose.

He quoted Jeremiah 5:24 Let us now fear the Lord our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season; he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

Rose contends the “former rain” was the powerful infilling the disciples received from the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, which empowered them to accomplish the Great Commission Jesus had given them.

However, he said that the Church has failed miserably at winning the lost to Christ over the past several centuries.

The fullness is still to come
“During these past two centuries we have witnessed the latter rain being poured out sporadically, but the fullness has not yet come.

“God says through the prophet Amos, I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away. I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another. One field had rain; another had none and dried up. (Amos 4:7)

“The Holy Spirit is about to pour out the ‘latter rain’ that will put the ‘Holy Spirit fire’ back into His people as they work under His direction in this latter day visitation.

“The Latter Rain The Glory of this latter house will be greater than the former . . .” (Haggai 2:9a).

“Joel says that this rain will be poured out on ALL flesh.

“Zechariah says, Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain; so the Lord shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field (Zechariah 10:1).

“When Zechariah speaks of ‘bright clouds’ he is speaking of lightning and thunderstorms and he says we are to ask (pray) the Lord for this outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon us in these last days and believe that He will do it and trust Him to do it!

“Zechariah says this latter rain will touch each individual person in the world when it is poured out,” said Rose.

South Africans encouraged to prepare
He encourages South Africans to prepare for this coming move of God by being vigilant and focusing on the following:

• Pray for the latter rain to fall (Zechariah 10:1; James 5:18; Jeremiah 5:24);
• Pray the Lord of the Harvest to raise up workers (Matthew 9:35-38; Luke 10:2);
• Live a holy life (2 Corinthians 7:1);
• Learn to endure (Hebrews 10:35-37);
• Be patient as you wait (James 5:7,8);
• Be sanctified by God (1 Thessalonians 5:23);
• Be diligent (Hebrews 11:6);
• Be a faithful disciple (1 Timothy 6:14).

“Be constantly in contact with the Lord of the Harvest, and He will direct your path. Waiting on the Lord is the right thing to do. Live your lives as if Jesus is coming today and be His witness,” said Rose.

You can download his book, Write the Vision in English or Afrikaans free of charge from http://drdes.org/WriteTheVisionDrDes.php