The Gathering of the Eagles
THE STORY OF MENNO PAULS
PART ONE  :  Chapter Six 
THE SPORTSMAN CAFE
The frequency of the trips away from Vancouver built up through 1977, as did the number of contacts, both in and outside the city. It became very clear as to why I had the occupation I did. As a window cleaner, I could operate ‘undercover' very easily. I wasn't tied to regular hours. I could come and go wherever and whenever I wished.

It literally opened doors for me, since as a window cleaner I had a legitimate reason to be almost anywhere; from the homes of judges, to corporation executives' offices. I could infiltrate, so to speak, every level of society.

One place I could usually be found regularly during this time was in the Sportman's Cafe on Dunsmuir in Vancouver. It's not the same place anymore; new owners, new decor, it's totally different. But I used to go there every morning to have breakfast and generally I'd be there until about ten. Now, that might sound like a long breakfast, but with all the people I saw in that place it's a wonder I got my breakfast at all!

I could write a book just on the contacts I made sitting in that booth near the back. Through most of 1977 the cafe became a clearing house, of sorts.

One morning I was sitting there eating breakfast and reading the paper when all of a sudden I was compelled to look up and check out the door. Right at that moment a woman about twenty-eight years old came in. As I watched her, the command came, "Her". Well, I shrugged it off. You know, you run the gambit of your human emotions and sometimes you wonder if it's just your imagination.

Anyway, I tried to go back to the paper, but it just wasn't working. "Her, you go talk to her."  I was still hearing that command. So I said to myself, okay, I've got nothing to lose.

I walked up to her booth and said, "Excuse me, I've got a feeling about you right now. I can tell you something about your future. I'm not really psychic. I just get this with some people." So she invited me to sit down and tell her.

"You're going to find yourself in a certain valley. You'll be there, and some of your friends will be there with you. You'll be safe from harm there." When I finished the story she had something startling for me.

"Look", she said, "this is really strange. You couldn't really do this to anyone else in this restaurant. Last night I had a dream; in fact, just a few hours ago. In it, I was sitting in my living room in my house just talking with some friends. All of a sudden a ball of light just comes through the wall into the room and hovers right in front of us."

As they were looking at it she said, they all conked out and when they came to, they were in a valley, green grass, mountains, it's all there. Her friends are there. Then she said that a woman came up to her and told her that everything was okay, that her and her husband were looking after things in the valley, that they'd be alright.

She said that she had the distinct impression that the ball of light had something to do with their getting to the mountains. It was like two parts coming together. She had just had the dream. Now, here I was with the rest of it.

One morning, toward the end of 1977, I had quite a conversation with the manager of a shoe store in the area. He'd been coming to the cafe for years to have coffee. I knew him to see him, but I'd never spoken with him before.
I was aware that somewhere down the road I would be speaking with him. But the fellow had an alcohol problem and hadn't been in the right frame of mind. Anyway, this morning he walked into the place and without hesitation walked to my booth, sat down, shaking his head and saying, "I can't believe it. I don't believe it." Then he pointed at me and said, "Last night, in the middle of the night, I had this dream, powerful dream. So powerful that I'm awake and I'm still seeing it."

"I saw all these people in the mountains, and there was a lot of confusion and chaos. And there were all these people and they didn't know what was happening. Like a big revolution had occurred or something, in the cities, and all these people were in the hills."

He said, "I'm there", and then he pointed to me, "and you're there and you knew what was happening. And I don't believe it. I mean, you look just like a window cleaner." I was sitting there in my coveralls. He continued, "Do you know what happened? I helped to calm down all of those people and they settled down and you were helping me."

"Look", I said, "It's true. It will happen and you will help to bring about a sense of order out of all this confusion when everything seems to be disintegrating." I told him. "I was told about you and your involvement in these matters. During a trip into the mountains I was told about you and your role."

Now, at the time I had been told about him and his role he was nowhere near being able to accept the message or deal with any of this. For one thing, he had a drinking problem. Anyway, I told him that now that he was coming to me he was finally ready for the rest of the material to correlate with his dream. So I told him.

At that time he was going through a pretty rough period in his life and was heavy into alcohol. But shortly after this event had transpired, he had sort of the crowning touch to get him straightened around. He almost died. You know, one of those near death experiences, only in this case he had a repeat performance of the dream, but showing him in an even more vital role than he was first shown. Since that occurred he's gone on the wagon, cleaned up his act and got it all together.

Now, back to the restaurant. A few days later I was in there having my breakfast when this old man came in. He'd caught my attention a couple of weeks earlier and I'd found out that he was eighty-two years old. I was wondering if he was one I had to contact. Well, as if to answer the question I was just formulating in my mind, I got, "No, he will be one who leaves. He's one of the people who have laid the ground work, the foundation on which you are building. He's done his work. 

When the event occurs, he won't be lifted into the pockets. He'll be taken to other planes, but he won't have to go through the death experience." This is what I was told about this old man. He'll go in a manner similar to the way Elijah, in the Old Testament, did. He won't die, he'll just leave.

The old man came into the restaurant one day, still early in November of 1977. As he came over to me, he said, "I've got to tell you about this thing I have just seen. It was like a dream vision. It happened last night.." He continued, "I was shown as being on my knees and there was an angel beside me kneeling and in front of us was a powerful light. A really strong light. And there was a lovely feeling coming off of the light."
Then he said he thought the light was Jesus and just kept marveling at how wonderful it was. Then he said, "the angel turned to me and said, ‘you shall not be caught up from the grave'."

This is a literal thing that a great many people believe, those sort of biblical fundamentalists. They believe that those who will die before the rapture are like sleeping souls who are then called from the grave. Then there are these others who will be caught up from their body. Caught up alive, as it were, when the rapture happens, without going through death.

This old man thought that because of his age he would die like everyone else. But he said to me, "I always thought that this would happen after I'd died, that I'd be coming up out of the grave. But now I know differently. It's soon, it's going to happen soon. He said, "I know because I haven't that far to go. And this angel is telling me that I'll be caught up from the body, not from the grave." He said, "and it will happen before I die."

As if to correlate the old man's experience, that very same week I received a letter from a man in the States with whom I'd been corresponding. I'll simply refer to him as an eminent leader of a Foundation for the study of ESP.

I had written to him a couple of months earlier, telling him of my experiences, and I asked him if he thought my experiences were coming from an objective source, or were they something I was conjuring up inside.

His reply came back that same week, the first week of November, and it said that I was right; that there was just too much negativity in the world to prevent what was going to happen. He said he was sure that what I was getting was from an objective source. He related that he'd had visions that were similar to mine. He'd been shown the ‘light that would shine around the world' when the event occurs.

This Foundation leader is an old man as well, and in the letter he related a vision he's had when he was a boy back in 1912. His childhood was spent in peaceful surroundings in both his outside environment and in his home. There didn't seem to be any outside stimulus for the vision that he experienced.

In the dream he saw himself as an older white-haired gentleman and the scene before him was one of horror. As far as he could see, the whole scene around him was of a landscape black and burned with just a few survivors picking around in the rubble. And all the time he felt like a young boy in an old man's body.

He was really shaken by the dream, he cried for days after. He had the dream twice more. Once after World War One and again after World War Two, as if to tell him that the time of the vision was not yet. That it hadn't occurred yet. This man has spent his life as an advocate of positive thinking, but there he was telling me that it had gone too far. That the negativity was too great.

He is now eighty-three years old. He's not too active anymore, but now here he is, a white-haired old gentleman.

Go to: PART ONE : Chapter Seven : CHANGE OF LIFE
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