[Pastor Rick Joyner]
Angelo
“There is still someone you must meet before you return to the battle,” He said as we walked. As we did, I continued to be astonished by how much more glorious He had become than even a few minutes before.
“Every time you see Me with the eyes of your heart, your mind is renewed a little bit more,” He proceeded to say. “One day you will be able to abide in My presence continually. When you do that, all you have learned by My Spirit will be readily available to you, and I will be available to you.”
I could hear and understand everything He said, but I was so captured by His glory that I just had to ask Him, “Lord, why are you so much more glorious now than when You first appeared to me as Wisdom?”
“I have never changed, but you have. You are changed as you behold My glory with an unveiled face. The experiences you have had are removing the veils from your face so that you can see Me more clearly. Yet nothing removes them as quickly as when you behold My love.”
He then stopped, and I turned to look at those on the thrones next to us. We were still in the place where the highest kings were sitting. Then I recognized a man who was close by.
“Sir, I know you from somewhere, but I simply cannot remember where.”
“You once saw me in a vision,” he replied.
I immediately remembered, and was shocked! “So you were a real person?”
“Yes,” he replied.
I remembered the day when, as a young Christian, I had become frustrated with some issues in my life. I went out into the middle of a battlefield park near my apartment and determined that I would wait until the Lord spoke to me. As I sat reading my Bible, I was caught up into a vision, one of the first ones I ever had. In the vision I saw a man who was zealously serving the Lord. He was continually witnessing to people, teaching the Bible, and visiting the sick to pray for them. He was very zealous for the Lord, and had a genuine love for people. Then I saw another man, named Angelo, who was obviously a tramp or a homeless person. When a small kitten wandered into his path, he started to kick it but restrained himself, though he still shoved it out of the way rather harshly with his foot. Then the Lord asked me which of these men pleased Him the most.
“The first,” I said without hesitating.
“No, the second,” He responded, and began to tell me their stories.
He shared that the first man had been raised in a wonderful family, which had always known the Lord. He grew up in a thriving church and then attended one of the best Bible colleges in the country. He had been given one hundred portions of His love, but he was using only seventy-five.
The second man had been born deaf. He was abused and kept in a dark, cold attic until he was found by the authorities when he was eight years old. He had then been shifted from one institution to another, where the abuse continued. Finally, he was turned out on the streets. The Lord had only given him three portions of His love to help him overcome all of this, but he had mustered every bit of it to fight the rage in his heart and keep from hurting the kitten.
I now looked at that man, a king sitting on a throne far more glorious than Solomon could have even imagined. Hosts of angels were arrayed about him, waiting to do his bidding. I turned to the Lord in awe. I still could not believe he was real, much less one of the great kings.
“Lord, please tell me the rest of His story,” I begged.
“Of course, that is why we are here. Angelo was so faithful with the little I had given to him that I gave him three more portion of My love. He used all of that to quit stealing. He almost starved, but he refused to take anything that was not his. He bought his food with what he could make collecting bottles, and occasionally he found someone who would let him do yard work.
‘Angelo could not hear but he had learned to read, so I sent him a gospel tract. As he read it, the Spirit opened his heart, and he gave his life to Me. I again doubled the portions of My love to Him, and he faithfully used all of them. He wanted to share Me with others, but he could not speak. Even though he lived in such poverty, he started spending over half of everything he made on gospel tracts to give out on street corners.”
“How many did he lead to you?” I asked, thinking that it must have been multitudes for him to be sitting with the kings.
“One,” the Lord answered. “In order to encourage him, I let him lead a dying alcoholic to Me. It encouraged him so much that he would have stood on that corner for many more years just to bring another soul to repentance. But all of heaven was entreating to bring him here quickly, and I, too, wanted him to receive his reward.”
A Different Kind of Martyr " [Pastor Rick Joyner, The Final Quest]
