What does a person do with that sort of knowledge? I confess I was afraid to do much. After all, who was I? I had been just recently released from prison. Who would believe that I was receiving visions from God? What right did I have to prophesy? Who would want to hear a warning message of impending death and disaster? So I said little about the visions until that New Year’s Eve in 1999.

On the eve of the millennium, after I had spoken of the vision, including the horrific vision of a future Los Angeles earthquake, an elderly, highly accurate, well-known prophet approached me and said, “Jim, you have declared thirty-one prophetic events—and you are right on.”

I did not know how many specific events which I had spoken about, but when I counted them out, they numbered thirty-one.

“But on one point,” the prophet continued, “I have some insight for you. The Japanese earthquake will come first. When you see that, get ready. The next big event will be the California earthquake.”

At this writing, that enormous Los Angeles earthquake has not yet happened. As much as it grieves me to say so, I am convinced that it will.

One of the prophets with an incredible track record is now saying, “I used to encourage people to pray about leaving the West Coast. Now I tell them to pray about whether they should stay.”

In my visions I saw churches going bankrupt, their properties being fore¬closed on and repossessed by banks. Keep in mind this was during the boom time of America’s megachurches. Many churches were arrogantly competing for airtime on television networks, and some boasted that Christians would soon dominate the seats of government authority as well. Yet, I saw churches being repossessed by the hundreds.

Many scoffed at my words, purporting it was ludicrous to propose that forward-thinking congregations that supposedly enjoyed God’s favor and prosperity could possibly be forced to close their doors. But in 2012 the beautiful campus of the Crystal Cathedral built by my dear friend Robert Schuller in Anaheim, California, fell to Chapter 11 bankruptcy and was later sold. Numerous lesser-known facilities have gone belly-up as well. While I was finishing this book, word came to me that a wonderful congregation was packing their church because a bank was foreclosing on their massive building that seated thousands of people in Branson, Missouri.