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Where We Are in Prophecy--Part 5

At the end of November 2007, we drove to Little Rock, Arkansas to spend some time with Pastor Dick King and to talk with some of the people in his church. By this time we had had time to contemplate the  "Little Rock" connection to Matt. 16:18.

To get to the Church, we had to take Exit 153 off Interstate 40. It struck me that John 21:11 was going to be a major theme of the week in our teaching and discussion. It is the story of how Peter was told to cast his net on the right side of the boat and then caught 153 large fish. The Hebrew phrase beni h' elohim ("sons of God") has a numeric value of precisely 153, so this was a story of Peter gathering together the sons of God.

In addition to this, the Greek phrases for "the nets" and "the fishes" each carry a numeric value of 1,224, or 8 x 153.

One of the men from the church felt compelled to come to the meeting to ask a particular question: "Why did Jesus tell the disciples to cast their net on the RIGHT side of the boat in John 21:6?" Each time he asked, I would give some background to the story and then go off on tangents to answer other questions along the way. But he would always bring me back to this original question. Finally, I said to him, "The left side signifies judgment in Scripture; the right side signifies mercy. The disciples were acting out a prophetic role in which the Church, in the long 'night' ahead, would try to bring people into God's 'net' by preaching judgment. It is only when they try preaching a message of mercy that they will be able to gather the sons of God."

On Friday, November 30 we stood and made a prophetic declaration together to confirm and affirm that the Tabernacles Church would be established upon Mercy. Pastor King then reminded the people of his words to the people in the church on the previous Sunday, where he said, "Nothing will be taught in this church unless it is based upon mercy." He spoke these words, not realizing how prophetic they were of what God was doing in the Big Picture.

So November 30, 2007 marked the beginning of something that was yet unclear, other than we knew that God was moving in our generation to establish the third Church--the Tabernacles Church--and that it would be characterized primarily by its message of the mercy of God, rather than judgment. For this reason, I resolved in early December to begin writing about mercy in the divine law. This was the source of my inspiration.

Out of that came the revelation that mercy triumphs over judgment, and the Father showed me that James 2:13 was simply a description of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark contained the tablets of the law and represented the throne of God. But God administered the law from the position of the mercy seat, which was positioned over the box containing the law. Thus, mercy is exalted, or ispositioned over judgment, and this is the meaning of James 2:13.

Earlier this month, as I walked again into the sanctuary in North Little Rock, a framed wall picture caught my eye. It was a quotation of James 2:13--very fitting for a church that is a type of the Tabernacles Church which God is now calling out of the old Pentecostal order.

But now I want to go back in time a few years in order to let you know how God has been preparing us for these momentous times. Some of this I just discovered two days ago while contemplating this present series. Dick King has pastored the Indian Hills Church in North Little Rock for nearly 30 years, so he has a long history in that local body. He told me that in late 1981 the Church was revolutionized by Pentecost. Since it was a Baptist Church, this was the equivalent to a revolution. A number of people could not handle this, and they left the fellowship.

We found it interesting that my own life was revolutionized in late 1981. In fact, events in my life really began on Nov. 30, 1981, which caused me to resign as pastor of a church within a week (Dec. 4). I found it interesting that 26 years later I would be in Little Rock as a Tabernacles Church was being begotten by the Word of Mercy.

Essentially, what God was doing was to take a Baptist Church that was not content with a Passover experience with God, and bring it into the higher level of Pentecost. The purpose of Passover is to bring us to Pentecost, even as the purpose of bringing Israel out of Egypt was to bring them to Mount Sinai for Pentecost.

But Pentecost was not the Promised Land. Pentecost was designed to be the training ground for the Promised Land and for the third great feast of Israel, the feast of Tabernacles. So during those 26 years, God brought to them a number of prophets and teachers from the Charismatic realm to show them glimpses of what God had for them as a body. Prophets told the church in 1989 that they were being given truth "here a little, there a little, line upon line." The church was told that they were being given their inheritance from God, but that they should not leave the Father's presence, nor should they go out and squander their inheritance.

Pastor King gave me transcripts:

"He has so much if you can just hold steady, empty yourself of the rest of your vain tradition, disavow all your own knowledge, and partake of His mind, and you'll be the most powerful people on the earth when that due process is accomplished."

"He saved some of you for the very last, and you'll be the new breed. God says I've saved the best wine for the last, and I've waited to have wine skins that are prepared and conditioned and are consistent with the wine that I'm going to pour out, and this time it won't be wasted. You won't waste your inheritance. You won't waste the wine. You'll really excel for the glory of God."

"God is raising up the prophet and the apostle again to reveal to us to WAIT ON GOD. Now that we get the revelation, once we get it, wait for illumination and understanding and inspiration--and that's what He is speaking through many prophets today."

"When truth comes, it comes in three forms: Revelation, Illumination, and Inspiration. . . We need to wait until we're given inspiration. . . God is giving revelation and understanding, illumination and inspiration to you if you'll wait for it. It could really come speedily. It said He's suddenly going to appear in His sanctuary."

"Those days are coming back, and you've just seen the birthing of something. That's the last thing the Lord wanted me to say. He has closed your womb. Strategically speaking, the womb of the Church has been closed. But thank God He did it for Himself. Now He's going to cause a birth to come forth, a birthing is to come forth that is rather glorious. He closed Hannah's womb. Strategically. He did it Himself. That's what the word of God says. She could have gone around naming it and claiming it until doomsday, and that wouldn't have meant anything. But God closed her womb . . ."

"I'm going to give you a birthing of a new ministry, and I'm going to show you you're really My people. You're not Baptist. You're not Methodist. You're not Presbyterian. You're not Episcopalian or Catholic. You're not Assembly of God or Holiness people. You're the people of the living God. . . You may not have gotten that until tonight, but that would be the very thing that would turn Little Rock upside down, put a prophetic ministry on the map, and it would show the glory of God politically, governmentally, and economically, and every phase and facet of government and everything else. That's what the Lord is shooting for, and He's going to get it!"

God begat this "baby" on Nov. 30, 2007. We felt the first flutters of life on March 7-9. Let us see what might be birthed on August 30, 2008.