I just returned from spending a week in the very house where Frances Metcalfe and the “Ladies of Gold” ministered to the Lord and experienced an open heaven over 50 years ago! I have written about them before, but if you have missed those posts, this amazing group laid down their public ministries and their lives to minister to God in the Secret Place 4 or 5 nights a week for about 50 years.
At first, they began getting glimpses of the Spirit realm through dreams and visions, words of knowledge, etc. (which Frances Metcalfe called “raptures”). As they ministered to the Lord, He would give them downloads of prophetic songs that were in perfect meter and rhyme. Then, as they continued to faithfully steward these experiences, the Lord began to entrust them with more, and they literally began entering these dimensions in body. They would be translated to heaven (like Enoch, Jesus, Paul the Apostle & John the Revelator) and would come back with different clothes and with jewels from heaven. They would be transrelocated to different geographical places in the earth (like Philip when he ministered to the Ethiopian eunuch) and would lead people to Christ and would share the Gospel with unreached people groups, also coming back with tangible tokens of their journey.
These kinds of encounters might be new to us, but they are the Ancient Paths that God is restoring to His church today (Acts 3:21). And, because of the blood of the Lamb, they are freely available to all believers who are willing to submit to the process of spiritual growth and maturation that allows us to steward these things well.
The entire week, Holy Spirit kept reminding me of an encounter I had in 2016, when, during a time of high praise, a demonic being was displaced and fell right into our midst. I was very surprised, because I had not been focusing on anything of darkness. Our glorious Lord had my full attention. It was an amazing victory and a valuable lesson on the power of praise.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
-Psalm 149:6-9, NKJV
And a two-edged sword in their hand,
To execute vengeance on the nations,
And punishments on the peoples;
To bind their kings with chains,
And their nobles with fetters of iron;
To execute on them the written judgment—
This honor have all His saints.
Praise the Lord!
But I still wasn’t sure why Holy Spirit was reminding me of this over and over. Until… I did a night watch in the very room where that worship and intercession had happened all those years ago. After several hours, I left the keyboard and fell asleep on the floor. At one point, I awoke and gazed at the stone wall where I imagined their supernatural door had been. The Father spoke to me so sweetly, “You don’t need a particular geographical location (even though I do position My sons strategically). You just need to do what the Ladies of Gold did. If you do what they did, you will get what they got. And this can happen anywhere you are.”
The next morning, I was irresistibly drawn to one of Frances Metcalfe’s little booklets called Making His Praise Glorious. In it, I read something I have been teaching for years about the power of praise. THAT was why Holy Spirit reminded me of the experience in 2016! And THAT was how the Ladies of Gold cultivated and maintained an open heaven. They worshipped God the way He desires to be worshipped and the way described in Scripture and by the Hebrew definitions of praise. And it is that praise which He inhabits (literally, sits enthroned upon)!
Yet You are holy, You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.
-Psalm 22:3, NASB
Here is a teaching I did many years ago on this topic. May it ignite us all to create for Him a habitation!
-Virginia