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Lessons from the Past, Part 3

When the war against the little horn began in 1981, very little of it made sense to me—or even to my main adversary. We were both thinking too carnally, and neither of us had any real experience in spiritual warfare. In fact, he did not believe in the existence of Satan or even demons in general, and so he had little or no chance of understanding such things. And all I knew at the time was a vague insight that “we must be in some kind of spiritual warfare.” I made this comment to Darla after receiving a 45-minute accusatory telephone call on the night that the battle began (Nov. 12, 1981).

It took some time before I learned that men can be spokesmen for evil spirits as well as for the Holy Spirit. Spirit speaks through men regularly, and you can usually tell which type of spirit is talking by the quality of the words. A “devil” is an accuser, called in Revelation 12:10, “the accuser of our brethren.”

On the other hand, the Holy Spirit is the paraclete, the “Comforter” or “Advocate” in a court of law who is there as a “Helper” to assist in your defense. He is our Defense Attorney. He advises us to repent when necessary (John 16:8), for this is the manner in which we may avail ourselves of our legal right to claim the blood of Jesus as having paid for our sin already. Since the debt to sin has been paid, the liability is removed, and the accuser finds himself in a position as a false witness.

The devil is the prosecuting attorney in the Divine Court. His job is to seek out all sin against God and hold men liable until each case has been settled. The devil is normally not the victim himself. Jesus is the Victim. So in a quirky way, the devil is defending Jesus’ rights as an employee of the Divine Court. In Job 2:1, Satan is pictured as a prosecutor who had too much time on his hands. So he obtained permission from God to test Job’s faith and character.

Satan is not an independent contractor. He must obtain permission from God to do his work of accusation and temptation. He has never had sovereign rights to exercise his own will freely, and his rights are even more limited when it comes to tempting men of faith. When God does give Satan the right to test those men of faith, it is to distinguish true faith from false faith, or to expose the genuine from superficial faith, or to cause God’s people to overthrow hidden idols in their hearts so that they might be set free with a deeper relationship with God.

This is the foundational teaching found in the book of Job.

We have all found ourselves in Job’s position one way or another. In the years after 1981, I came to understand what God had done in my life by studying the lessons from Job. God had decided to kick me to the next level and set me free from the bondage of being satisfied with where I was. And so I was driven out of my comfort zone into new territory that I had never seen or experienced. My life was altered forever.

God, in His wisdom, uses carnal men to drive us from the bondage of our own carnality, so that He can give us a fresh revelation. I remember in 1982 how an old song from my earlier childhood returned to me with new meaning:

I’m pressing on the upward way,
New heights I’m gaining every day,
Still praying as I’m onward bound,
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

Meanwhile, my accusers vowed to destroy me, not knowing my heart and not knowing what God was really doing in my life. I had been crucified at Las Cruces, but I would rise again. My enemies were determined that I would never again come back into the work of ministry. But I knew that I was called, and that I would return some day. Meanwhile, I had no choice but to await God’s timing.

The years dragged on, while I worked as a typesetter for various companies, finally ending up as the manager of the graphic arts department for Redbook Florists. At the end of my 12-year training, the Father moved us to Washington state, from which location I was called by God to lead people into spiritual warfare to overthrow Mystery Babylon. I now see this as a continuation of the original prayer campaign against the Broken Cross System, known in Scripture as the little horn.

Every few years, it seemed, we would see a rerun of the original battle against the Broken Cross. The dates were virtually identical, but in each new rerun God raised up different actors to play their roles, depending on what script God gave them. Each time the play was staged, we were given further revelation of the nature of the overall battle. You see, all spiritual warfare occurs in the second heavens, where all time is one. But when this single war is manifested in earth to allow our eyes to see and our ears to hear, we see it spread out over time. Multiple scenes of battle must therefore be overlaid over each other in order to obtain a clearer picture of the heavenly scene.

It is almost like we were given opportunity to fight the same battle over and over again, except that each time we were fighting from a different part of the battlefield. The overall themes of the conflict remained the same, but we could discern different sides of it each time the battle was staged.

Sometimes we were given partial pictures without having to fight full-blown battles. Yet each detail was important for our overall revelation. The one “constant” was that these always began around November 12 and ended January 27, with possible extensions for another 76 days to complete the cleansing period for that year.

In 2012 I began to see this battle emerge once again. This discernment came out of my eight-day green juice fast (Nov. 8-13). I wrote about it here, showing its connection to the first eight miracle-signs of Elisha:

https://gods-kingdom-ministries.net/daily-weblogs/2012/11-2012/elisha-fast/

During that time, we were also monitoring the 52-day cycles of repairing the walls in the New Jerusalem (Nehemiah 6:15). There were two cycles of 52 days that year, the first from July 22 to September 12, and the second from Oct. 8 to Nov. 29.

July 22 (or 7/22) is a prophetic type of the eighth day of Tabernacles (7/22 on the Hebrew calendar).

Oct. 8 was the actual eighth day of Tabernacles in 2012.

So in doing the work of repairing the breaches in the walls of the New Jerusalem, we were given two building cycles. As we learned later, these were designed to establish two particular LAWS that needed repair on the law-wall around Jerusalem. The two laws were: (1) The law of victims rights, and (2) the law of impartial judgment.

On September 12, at the end of the first 52-day cycle, we placed the first law in the wall by prophetic decree. We did this as a group in northern Minnesota. On Nov. 29, at the end of the second 52-day cycle, we placed the second law in the wall. We established this in Dallas, TX, because I was scheduled to speak there at a conference that week end. However, others did a parallel decree again in northern Minnesota on Nov. 29, casting out the bondwoman and the “children of the flesh.”

The conference itself was purposely scheduled to coincide with that decree to cast out the bondwoman. I had already had insight (during the eight-day juice fast) that we were about to see another rerun of the original battle from 1981. And because one of the speakers at the conference was the inheritor of the ministry that had sought to destroy me in 1981, I was quite certain that trouble was brewing once again.

As it turned out, he preached a clear racist message that directly opposed the law of impartial justice. A few weeks earlier, God had already instructed me to give a message on this law, so I knew that this had been a divine setup. There was no way around it. Normally, I will pick a topic that will not be divisive among the speakers. But this time I had a clear mandate to undo the fleshly teaching of the children of Hagar.

And so the final war was renewed which had begun in 1981 against the Broken Cross system (little horn). Seeing that pattern told me that this was a battle that would last for at least a year and a half. I recalled how my expulsion from the Broken Cross in 1981 and the subsequent one-sided conflict had forced me into the wilderness (the back woods of Wisconsin), where I was forced to seek God’s face in order to survive.

I emerged in early 1983, landing in Batesville, Arkansas on January 23, 1983. That was also the start of the final 76-day cycle of cleansing for that year, though, of course, I was unaware of it at the time. During that time, however, the Father sent me on a long trip to do what I could to reconcile with the main minister that had accused me and was still trying to destroy me. I met with him on March 22, 1983 for two hours, and we parted with a handshake, agreeing (I thought) to “live and let live.”

However, the children of the flesh do not have the ability to reconcile or even to forgive real or perceived offenses. So little was actually accomplished by that meeting, except that I was satisfied that I had done all that I could do. God had instructed me to come only with apologies and with no accusations in return.

Meanwhile, I had also met with a few old friends (some former friends). One man presented me with his written list of demands for me to apologize. Some of the demands were so ridiculous that essentially demanded that I concur with outright lies. I apologized for all that I could. The next evening, he came with a longer list, and I realized that the children of flesh will never be satisfied, because they are incapable of forgiveness. In fact, their intent is not to obtain forgiveness and reconciliation, but to destroy.

Anyway, in 1983 the Lord instructed me to be home by April 9, which, I learned later, was 76 days after my arrival in Batesville, Arkansas (Jan. 23).

So in 2012 I was fully aware that I would be entering into a difficult time of warfare until April of 2014. I did not know then the precise dates of the two 76-day cleansing cycles for 2014, so it was not until last November that the timing became clear. It would reach its end point on Passover, April 15, 2014.

Meanwhile, the year 2013 saw a doctrinal war of words. The main battleground centered on the law of impartiality. In my view God does not show partiality in the law between Israelites and non-Israelites. There is one law that all men are expected to follow, and there are no second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God.

Being an Israelite is not merely a genealogical matter, but also spiritual. Like most words, Israel has more than one meaning and application. Sometimes it refers to specific people who are genetically descended from the Jacob-Israel. But its original meaning, as given to Jacob, testified of a new-found position with God, which he obtained, not by birth but by a second birth, so to speak.

In other words, his natural name was Jacob, but his spiritual name was Israel. Jacob could never inherit the Kingdom. Only Israel could be an inheritor. From time on, each of his descendants—along with all men everywhere—is only a child of the flesh until they achieve that second spiritual birth. All men must wrestle with the angel to obtain this heavenly name.

The opposing doctrine, based on confidence in the flesh, was set forth vigorously by my chief opponent, so I found it necessary to set forth my view in my FFI bulletins for May and June of 2013. They are posted online for all to read and discern. I figured that if both sides presented their views, you could all discern for yourselves which view is the truth.

However, in December, the disagreement took an ugly turn when my opponent decided to publicly attack me personally in order to try to discredit my viewpoint. It seems he ran out of biblical arguments, or perhaps he felt that too few people were being convinced of the position that he has taken. So it seems that he has decided to rerun the original battle of 1981-1983, taking upon himself the fleshly mantle of the original pastor.

I see this as a “book end” of a long battle with the Broken Cross System of the Little Horn. I could not write of this earlier, partly because I had not made the connection yet to the little horn, and partly because I still hoped that this conflict could be resolved amicably. But the window of time passed, and my opponents did not even bother to come to me (as Matthew 18 instructs) to discuss it in the biblical manner. Not once did they contact me to see if they had gotten their “facts” straight. Not once did they follow Paul’s admonition in Galatians 6:1, because these children of the flesh have no intention of restoring anyone in a spirit of gentleness. They are afflicted with the spirit of malice which characterizes the little horn.

The only communication I have received is in the form of accusations and assumptions. So finally, I broke my silence and wrote to one of my accusers, asking if perhaps we could appoint an impartial judge to hear the case. Since he had expressed admiration for Dr. James Bruggeman, I suggested that we appoint him to hear the case. Only then did he admit that he really did not have confidence in James at all, even accusing him as “an accessory after the fact.”

So they have closed all doors to a peaceful resolution.

Throughout the years since 1981, I have awaited the day when I could receive a fair trial in a biblical manner. There was a so-called trial held for me in December of 1981, but I was not invited to my own trial, and indeed I did not hear of it until after the fact. Even our Babylonian government is more righteous than these people in some ways.

It appears that my request for a hearing at this end of the long conflict has also fallen on deaf ears. I am not surprised, of course, because all confidence in fleshly people was destroyed in 1981. I then learned to have no confidence in my own flesh either, for I had to agree with Paul that “in me, that is, in my flesh dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18).

We now find ourselves in the closing days of a long warfare. My participation in this warfare only goes back a few decades, but the battle of the little horn has been waged against the saints of the Most High since the sixth century. We are privileged to be a part of it.