Anne Elmer. Transported by the Lion of Judah. Elijah List, 2003.

This little book was recommended by friend. It is worth the relatively small amount of time to take to read it. The author’s focus is a series of visions she had of Jesus showing her various places around the world.

The format of Transported by the Lion of Judah reminded me of the framework of Pilgrim’s Progress. The reader may recall that John Bunyan, its author, said the story came from a dream he had while he was in prison. (Bunyan spent over twelve years in prison for his faith.)

Here the author tells us that she was laid up in the hospital with a gall bladder infection for three weeks with few visitors and a roommate who was sleeping or unconscious much of the time. On a number of occasions the Lord appeared to her since she was virtually alone most of the time.

Most of the time Jesus appeared to her as a lion, hence the title. He took her to a few places where miracles were taking place. Whenever she saw miracles, she would see spirals in the air. She said these resembled DNA—that the Lord was creating new things “out of the air” by the power of his word.

Once she was told to pray for the woman she was sharing her hospital room with. The woman told her that she saw her son with her while they were praying. At the time, her son was in another part of the country. She must have seen Jesus, too.

Shortly before the woman died, she was talking to some relatives who were not physically present. The author assumes that the woman was hallucinating. While that might have been the case, after reading Death is But a Dream, I might re-think that hypothesis. The woman may have been preparing to die and resolving some things in her heart. One of the things that that Lord was concerned about was that woman’s relationship with Him.

As mentioned before, the real focus of the visions is what the Lord showed her around the world. Besides the miracle services, she observed various other Christian meetings and gatherings as well as two gatherings of other religions.

One other striking thing in her visions was that most of the Christian believers she saw were faceless. A common emphasis about current and future revivals is that they will be nameless and faceless. The age of the Christian superstars, whether Billy Graham or Mother Teresa, is past. The few faces that had discernible features were motivated by pride. They wanted to have themselves noticed. The lion had his own way of taking care of them. They soon lost whatever position that they had.

There was a twenty-four hour a day underground church in a non-Christian country. Seekers and worshipers would enter one way and exit another.

Twice the lion roared. Once was in a church in a Buddhist-majority country where a group of believers were worshiping in what had once been a Buddhist building.

In another country, he took her to a Buddhist shrine with an enormous idol. Obviously, no one there was worshiping Jesus, but He said that He had the right to be there. Over the years Christian visitors and tourists had prayed for the people there and He would be answering their prayers. Recently, I received a prayer request asking for millions of souls from the same region. It was hard to imagine, but we see here that prayer does make a difference. It helps “break up the fallow ground” for God’s salvation to come. (See Hosea 10:12) Perhaps we should be praying for billions!

The author also noted a church, perhaps symbolically in a frozen and wintry setting, where the people were worshiping and were happy to be there. However, they were not aware of the Lord’s presence. They were enjoying one another’s company and the activity of the service, but they had not yet reached the point where they were seeking his presence. Still, Jesus was confident that they would be seeking Him later on and the church there would prosper.

There was a good deal more, but overall it gave the impression—if there were any doubt—that God knows what is going on in the world and who really has a heart after Him, to use the biblical terminology (See Acts 13:22 cf. I Samuel 13:14). It is also a reminder of how important prayer is and how important it is to cultivate a personal relationship with Jesus.

I am familiar with the Elijah List. It is an email record of supernatural stories from around the world. I was not aware that it has a publishing arm, but the people who put the Elijah List together have a challenging job to discern what it real. I would suggest to readers who are skeptical of the supernatural element (people in the West are culturally materialists) that they would read Transported by the Lion of Judah as they would Pilgrim’s Progress. Yes, it is a story of supernatural activity, but it is at the very least an intense teaching allegory that gives us insight into the spiritual realm. For anyone of any persuasion, it emphasizes the truth of the Scripture that

Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed…(Revelation 5:5 NKJV)

Or, as C. S. Lewis put it, “Aslan is not a tame lion.”