1. Why we wrote this book

Marianne: Writing a book is no easy task especially if you are doing it for the first time. But we had been approached by seminar participants and church leaders to make our material available to a greater audience in a book. I much prefer relating what is on my mind, my thoughts and experiences face to face. And I have had quite a few opportunities to do just that in the past ten years during the many seminars on “Hearing God’s voice” that I have been leading together with my husband Wolly. Wolly’s real name is Wolfgang, but as he has been called Wolly for nearly fifty years now, please just try and get used to the unusual name when reading this book. Wolly is much more used to putting his ideas to paper in a structured way. Therefore I am grateful to him for helping me organize my thoughts and experiences and to narrate them in a way that the central thread of this book may not be lost.

In the past three decades many books about prophecy, hearing God’s voice, listening prayer and dream interpretation have been published, particularly by Christian publishing houses. We have both read the greater part of them and—when they included corresponding approaches—we evaluated them. Some books, however, are less than helpful. They leave burning questions unanswered or increase the uncertainty rather than giving clarity. This book is meant to be a supplement, a guideline for

churches, small groups, leaders’ meetings, study groups and similar settings in which the biblical gift of prophecy has been discovered and is being developed. At the same time, we desire this book to be a practical help for the individual believer who has gained experience in listening prayer. He is now beginning to receive dreams or even visions he believes could be prophetic, i.e. God’s speaking. At our many seminars in churches throughout Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and Norway we have noticed a great openness nearly everywhere for the working of the Holy Spirit, in particular in the areas of divine revelation, for the spiritual gifts of prophecy, words of wisdom and knowledge as well as discernment. However, participant questions frequently reveal a certain degree of helplessness as to how one might better understand or interpret God’s often symbolic or encrypted language and how to apply it. Among the spiritually gifted prophetic people in the churches, the number of those able to interpret prophetic impressions still represents a small minority. We receive impressions, pictures and dreams from many people with the request for interpretation and advice on how to apply them. Therefore we have decided to focus on the areas of interpretation and application and also on answering those questions in great detail that typically come up. Mind you, my husband Wolly has reminded me more than once that ‘speaking is not the same as writing’. Still I have tried to stick to the narrative style I have become used to during my presentations at the seminars, wherever possible. In this way I find it a lot easier to relate my personal Holy Spirit experiences in the natural way they usually happen—quite literally out of the blue. In addition, I will describe dreams and prophetic impressions of other people that we have discussed in one

of our longtime prophetic study groups at home, in the course of a seminar or by a written request to help with the interpretation. Although we have the permission of the people to elaborate their experience, we still want to grant them anonymity. It is my aim to give support by way of offering as many concrete examples as possible. It is not our intention to share or spread spectacular prophecies. We have changed the names of people or places when we deemed it necessary to protect the privacy of the person involved.

Wolly: Marianne and I have always been open to meet new people and we have no difficulty making contacts and developing relationships—particularly in Christian circles. In 1988, we attended a conference with John Wimber, the former leader of the Vineyard movement, in Frankfurt (Germany). One year later in Bonn (Germany) we met the American couple Bob Strain and his wife Bernie, spiritual co-pioneers of the former. When the Strains returned to the U.S.A. in 1990, they continued their association with the Vineyard Christian Fellowship and invited us to visit them and learn about this Church Movement. So, I took a year’s leave from my Judge’s duties and we visited churches all across the country for six weeks to witness spiritual awakening with our own eyes.

In Anaheim, California Bob Strain introduced us to John Wimber. Since our first personal meeting in April 1991 a close friendship has developed which has been deepened by visits to California and meetings in Germany and Switzerland. In Kansas City, Missouri we became friends with Mike and Diane Bickle. And in Anaheim we finally met Jack Deere again, who we had briefly met in 1985 in Freiburg, Marianne’s hometown at the foot of

the Black Forest, when he conducted university studies for one year. For many years these three—John Wimber, Mike Bickle and Jack Deere—were our highly esteemed contacts who helped us correctly understand, further develop and refine the prophetic gift, which especially Marianne had already had for many years. Each of these men was permanently surrounded by a team of prophetically gifted people and the regular exchange with experienced “prophets” were a great personal enrichment from which we have benefited very much. When we speak of “prophets” in this context, we do not mean the prophets of the Old Testament. We rather apply New Testament description for church members with a special prophetic gift given to them by the Holy Spirit. So please keep this definition in mind. When in the course of the book we speak of prophets, simply replace the term “prophet” with “prophetically gifted member of the church”.

Although we did write earlier that this book is meant to be a supplement and guideline, we are well aware that we cannot expect the average reader interested in prophecy to have read a number of books on the subject, attended relevant conferences, workshops and seminars, listened to and watched countless audios and videos and to have discussed the matter with theologians and other experts at great length. These are not prerequisites for reading this book, particularly as it is not meant to be a work of reference.

In order to enable each reader interested in the subject of prophecy to benefit personally from this book, it was inevitable to at least give a brief introduction of the nature and characteristic features of prophetic revelations. There are other books, which deal with the matter in greater detail; and we recommend the ones listed in the literature

references in the annex of this book. Consequently, some things in the first chapters may prove to be a kind of review of existing knowledge for some. However, for most readers these chapters should have many new and helpful, not least of all intriguing things in store. This is what we are hoping for you anyway—and for us, because then all the time and effort have been worthwhile.