Based in Birmingham, UK, the author, Bob Dunnett, is an ordained minister, and was formerly vice-Principal of the Birmingham Bible Institute and a leader of Prayer for Revival, a national prayer/teaching network in the UK. He continues to be involved teaching and prophetic ministry.

This is his testimony to the growth of a prophetic burden and a prophetic word for the nation, and out of which the pamphlets or talks have been born.

You can download an MP3 of this testimony by right-clicking here and select 'Save file as'.  Alternatively, you can press play below.

In the mid 90s I was led to begin an in depth study of the Old Testament prophets. By the autumn of the year 2000 those studies ceased to be simply studies, and became the vehicle of a strong prophetic burden. That burden burst out of the pages of Amos. It happened like this. I was due to lead and speak at a prayer meeting for the nation, and I had been led to the passage in Amos 4 in which God rebuked the Israelites for not heading the warning judgements that he had sent on the land of Israel. I intended that we should pray into that passage, but at the very outset of the meeting, before anything else could happen, one of our number who had an authenticated ministry of prophecy simply threw himself on the floor and beat the ground with his hand, exclaiming, “You have not listened! You have not listened”. He did this several times, and then sat down, without adding anything more. He had no idea that I had chosen the Amos passage about the Israelites not listening. But it powerfully confirmed the relevance of the passage and made the meeting very alive in prayer. This was the start of a stream of further revelation that came in the immediate days that followed.

I saw clearly that Amos’ mission to his generation was not to add further warning shots, but to make it plain that the time of warning shots had finished. His crucial word from God for his nation was, “I will spare them no longer”. His generation had crossed a line and a final judgement would unfold. This judgement would be catastrophic – nothing less than destruction and exile. There was no way back from this apart from widespread national acknowledgement of God and his ways and a repentant acceptance of them.

The real revelation for me, however, was that I knew instantly that our own nation stood at exactly that same point: “I will spare them no longer” was a word that had now been spoken over our own nation. What faced us now was not just warning shots but a cataclysm. I saw also that it took some 25 years for that word of Amos to be fulfilled and that they were 25 years of degenerating decline in all ways before the blow fell. Those 25 years or so became a desperately real pointer to where we would go as a nation in the next two decades or so. It was not simply the case that Amos had lessons for our generation. It was much deeper than that. It was much rather that he stood over our generation and spoke directly to it in the very manner he had spoken to his own. The Amos word was directly and comprehensively for us. We stood precisely where the Israelites had stood, both in our sin and in the prospect of a devastating cataclysm that would judge that sin. We had entered a period of some two decades in our national life which would end in national catastrophe, political, social and economic.

The year 2001 brought confirmation of this. After some months of fasting the Lydia fellowship called a meeting for leaders of prayer networks across the country. I was asked to speak and I knew I could only speak one thing – the Amos message. That request came in January 2001. When the meeting took place, in the Spring of that year, we were in the midst of a very severe foot and mouth epidemic, and fires were raging all around, burning thousands of animals (somewhat needlessly it appears in the event). There could not have been a clearer marker or visual token of the validity of the message. Later in the year I was due to speak at another prayer conference which remarkably took place a mere two or three days after 9/11. Once again the Amos word seemed indelibly marked by that appalling event.

Concurrently with this I was given a word by a colleague with a prophetic gift at a Pray for Revival Conference in Swanwick. It was to the effect that I was being called back to the Father’s study and in which there was writing table. Nothing more was said than that. What happened over the following years, however, was that I was pressed into more reading in the prophets and into unpacking all the ramifications of that Amos word: had the church lost its way on the issue of judgement; was it neglecting a crucial aspect of the gospel in this respect. What about judgement and natural disasters?; what could we expect in the next two decades?; what should our response be?; etc. The outcome was a series of pamphlets and the personal prophecy of back into the study was fulfilled in a way I could not have foreseen.

One further confirmation became evident. In the 1960s I had become deeply aware of two issues which were crucial for the nation. One was the fact and the need for revival through the Holy Spirit, and the other was that God judges nations for their sins. I sought to work on both fronts, but had no release in spirit for the issue of judgement. Conversely I had every release in spirit to study, work and pray for revival. This I did until 2000. At that point a remarkable change took place. Without losing any of my belief in the need of revival, I found myself immensely released on the whole issue of judgement, not merely released but impelled. I found that in the same way I had been burdened and worked for nearly forty years on revival, I was now doing the same for the issue of judgement. This has been a startling and crystal clear change in heart concern: it can only be of the Spirit. It could only mean that the issue of judgement was about to become much bigger in the nation.

I am writing this in the spring of 2009. I can scarcely believe that it is almost ten years, one whole decade, since the word of Amos originally came, yet it is as strong as ever.  One does not have to be “doom watcher”, nor does it take much observation, to recognize what a slippery slope, in every respect, those last ten years have been in the nation. If unfolding events provide any confirmation of the prophetic, those years have given us all that we need!

Close scrutiny of the Prophets have, however, left me with a deep sense of the hope they bring, even in the midst of a stark message of judgement. This hope is found in their insistence on the ultimate restoration of the nations and of Israel. It is a hope which rests on a revelation of the incomparable majesty of God and of the work of his Messiah Son. These truths are essential food for dark days.