At Rolland and Heidi Baker’s Harvest School of Missions in Pemba, Mozambique, students flock from all over the world to spend two months soaking in God’s presence, helping orphans, and conducting outreaches to the spiritually needy.
A young man from Sydney, Australia, Taylor Martin, spent the early part of July in Pemba, then had to be evacuated to South Africa to complete the school due to terrorist threats in northern Mozambique.
Despite the terror threat, he had remarkable encounters with God, especially when Rolland Baker laid hands on him and prayed. “Sometimes the power of God just hits you like a wave and you can’t move,” Martin recounts. “Five or six times I was sent into hours-long visions of heaven when Rolland touched me.”
“Sometimes I would be shaking for hours. One day I was paralyzed for eight hours on the ground.”
During these supernatural visions he witnessed remarkable things. “I saw the city; I saw streets; I saw the throne; I saw God and his angels and people feasting.”
As he walked in the streets he saw people dancing with angels. “I went to a feast and people were eating all this amazing food like a banquet. There is food in heaven and it’s a real place.”
He met a man at the banquet that seemed to be glowing more than anyone else. “Why do you shine more than others?” Martin asked.
“Those who live close to the throne shine more,” he replied. The man told Martin he had been a prophet on earth.
Then they went to the man’s house on a hill near the throne. “It was like a mansion in an earthly neighborhood,” with furniture and windows.
“The feeling of being there is so overwhelming, the peace, the love, and the joy. You have no earthly mind at all or desire to come back,” he says.
The angels Martin witnessed were about nine-feet tall, dressed in beautiful robes. “When I was in Europe I saw paintings of angels from 500 years ago and that’s what I saw. People must have had visions from 500 years ago because that’s exactly what I saw.”
“The street had gold cobblestones, perfectly clean. There were people, angels, people dancing. Everyone was youthful, glowing, perfect.”
He also saw a beautiful garden with flowers, birds, and “the most perfect grass and trees.”
When Martin began to move toward the throne of God, students at the Harvest School were shocked when his physical body (in Mozambique) began screaming, “The glory! The glory!”
“I was taken to see the throne and it’s above heaven and all this glory and light flows from it. I was taken up to it, but couldn’t get close. I couldn’t deal with it because it was so overwhelming. The glory is so powerful,” he exults.
“It was so bright. I couldn’t hold my face to it, it was so strong. On top of all heaven, light pours out from it and lights the whole city. I know that’s where the Father is.
I think I would have died if I saw it. I felt like I was going to die when I was there.”
Martin did not want to leave heaven. “When I came back I felt my earthly mind take over and I thought no, I don’t want this.” While he had no sense of the passage of time, when he returned to normal consciousness, he felt exhausted.
“In the book of Colossians it says to set your mind on heavenly things. Now I know what that’s like to be in the heavenly realm. That’s how Jesus could go through the pain, because of the joy set before him. There is another realm we should be operating from, but it’s hard because there are so many distractions in our lives,” he observes.
When Martin re-read the book of Revelation he was struck by the similarities to his vision. “I thought, oh my gosh, I saw these things, things exactly like this. It was written 2000 years ago and I saw it. When Paul said he went to the Third Heaven, that’s what it was like.”