This is a vision I saw in May 2005.

I saw four angels holding each corner of the oblong frame I had originally seen over Inverness and the Moray Firth area before we moved here. This time it was like a mesh frame and onto it was falling all sorts from the heavenly places – black bits of junk but also what looked like snow, which was able to pass through the mesh and was falling gently all over Inverness. It seemed to me that the angels holding the frame were creating an “open heaven” over Inverness because the mesh was holding back demonic influence and the Presence of God (the snow) was able to fall on the city. I also knew that the snow was icing sugar – the sweet Presence of our tender God.

On the frame were resting jars of oil, each with a name on them in a script I couldn’t read. But I knew that these were for individuals in the churches, and that the names described their real identities in the Father’s and Jesus’ eyes. I asked Father if he had enough angels to take these to people … and He laughed! Pouring this oil over each person would change their minds as to who they really were in the Lord’s eyes. This oil of the intimate knowledge of the beauty of God, and a true realisation of the beauty of who they really were in the His eyes, would see them through every night of His strategic delay. They had become wise because they had cultivated loving intimacy with Him through paying the price of the oil to the “merchant” – God Himself! The cost was time, a person’s own agenda and his or her life itself.

Then I saw three old-fashioned rigged ships coming along the Moray Firth and into Inverness harbour. They tied up and I was on the harbour looking at them. I knew that if anyone went on the ships, they would experience God deeply in the way each represented Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Father was saying to me with such tender love, “You are welcome any time.”

As I was looking at the ships, I remembered the Christmas carol “I saw three ships come sailing in, on Christmas Day in the morning.” I thought: “He is promising that He will visit Inverness with His Presence, and it will be just like that first gift on Christmas Day, in quietness and humility and tenderness and love.”

As I looked at Inverness under the white snow of His Presence, it was quite silent, as though all the people were asleep early on Christmas Day. “This is Sleeping Beauty”, I thought, “and Jesus is coming to kiss her awake. He loves her so much and cares so much that she’s been bewitched and is in a deep sleep unaware of her destiny and the blessings He wants for her. The power of His love is going to awaken His Sleeping Beauty to His Presence and majesty and her destiny.”

“Sleeping Beauty is asleep underneath the canopy of my Presence. She is slumbering, dreaming sweet dreams. Yet these dreams are just that – dreams! The reality is coming, however – the reality of my tender, fathering love, my passionate bridegroom embrace. I am coming to kiss my people – those who know me already and those who don’t. Awaken, awaken my Children to the glorious freedom that is yours! Awaken, awaken my Bride to my wooing love! Awake, awaken my Temple to the Holy Spirit’s infilling of the Glory of my Presence! Awaken and discover the day of the Visitation of my Love. Come and let fresh revelation upon fresh revelation of my love flow from your innermost being out to a thirsty world. Allow my sweet Presence to cling to you. The ships are sailing in! It’s Christmas Day! – a time for new birth, a time for gifts given and received, a time for joyful celebration. I want to give my awakened Beauty a sense of wonder and awe and new beginnings. I want to give you many jars of oil so that you may be a wise Virgin awaiting my final return. This is a time of rehearsal for my final return. Wake up, wake up to my love, my Beloved!”

There is a Visitation of the Lord coming, when Inverness will awake. Meanwhile, the jars of oil on the open heaven can be ours if we ask. We can accept His invitations to know Him better. To become more intimate with the Lord is to become those wise virgins who learn to be the Lord’s partners in all He wants to do when His Presence comes. The power of His love is going to awaken Inverness and we will be there with Him, giving His love away to Inverness, as we keep our jars full in His Presence.

Matthew 25, Revelation 22:17