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My journey into the prophetic realm, part 14

After Pastor Thomas received the baptism of the Holy Spirit on January 27, 1986, the Lord spoke to me and said, “You have saved his life.” I understood this in the context of the prayer battle in 1984 where I had seen him die in the warfare on July 9, 1984. Whereas God would not allow me to interfere with the demise of the first pastor, He allowed us to pray for the second.

But then on February 9, 1986 it seemed that everything fell apart, and we had to leave the church once again. As usual, there were two sides to the dispute. On one side, an apostle had appointed Red Thomas as pastor of the church and had put the congregation under him to bring “order” to the church. In that view, we were the rebellious ones who refused to submit to the divine order.

On the other side, the underlying problem was that we did not want to be ruled by man but by God. We saw it in terms of the people in Saul’s day desiring a man to rule them. At the time, we were unaware of the timing issue, where “Saul” ruled until his death in 1993. Hence, one might think that we were in rebellion against God’s order.

Saul thought the same thing about David. But David was not rebelling against God’s order. To remain in Saul’s household would have been certain death. We saw ourselves as avoiding death. David did not want to fight Saul or malign him in any way. Neither did we want to fight Red or malign him. In fact, we all loved him very much.

No doubt the majority of people were required to submit to Saul during Saul’s lifetime—in our case, until May 30, 1993—but after that the requirement changed. Once Saul died, the people were required to submit to David, whom God had called. In practice, it meant that believers were required to submit to Jesus Christ, rather than to the denominational hierarchy.

This has always been a difficult question for those who have been confronted by it. Few have had any real understanding of the story of Saul and how it applies to the denominationalist problem in the church, where popes and church boards require the people to submit to the rule of men. Most believers have no revelation about this, so they remain in the bondage that was passed down to them by their forefathers. But some are awakened and leave the organized church, some through a spirit of rebellion, and others by the leading of the Holy Spirit.

In the end, everyone ought to be led by the Spirit, because the Spirit puts different requirements upon us, according to each person’s calling.

New Paths

We had understood in early January 1986, by the revelation of timing that God had given us in those days, that Red Thomas’ time to die was April 12, 1986. God had said that we saved his life, but we did not know how his reversion would affect the outcome. After all, we were walking on a new path in new territory, and we knew of no early pioneers who had walked this path before us.

On the day after Red’s baptism of the Holy Spirit, we had seen the Space Shuttle Challenger explode shortly after takeoff on January 28. The name Challenger implied a dispute or fight, but this sign was too vague to learn much from it.

On February 21, Bill Jarvis came into my office with a word from God: “Declare the full council of God that He has given you.” He was moving out of town. I never saw him again. Yet I have attempted to fulfill that word in later decades, especially in my writings.

A Near Death Experience

Red Thomas lived on a 100-acre farm outside of Batesville, AR. Besides pastoring the Golden Rule Church, he also worked in town as the head of the Agriculture Department, which, in case of emergency, would have given him dictatorial authority within FEMA.

He always had a large garden that he planted on low ground, and he had set up a gravity-fed system to water the garden from a large pond on higher ground. He had a compressor to start the flow of water, and once it began to flow, he could turn it off, because gravity would keep the water flowing.

On April 12, 1986 Red was attempting to start the pump when it exploded. He was burned very badly on his belly and lost two fingers. He was rushed to the hospital, where the doctor told him that he was very lucky to be alive. The health company I worked for was manufacturing some aloe gel that was designed to heal burns, so he was provided with this gel.

For the next month, he was unable to put on a shirt. Red and his wife, Charlene, came to my office on June 2^nd to pick up more of the aloe gel. He showed me his burns that were healing quickly, thanks to the gel. He then told me that he had decided to retire from his job at the Agriculture Department. When? “August 15.”

I knew immediately that he would retire on July 9, which was the anniversary of the day when he “died” in Operation Clean Sweep. Our intercession for him earlier had saved his life when he nearly died on April 12. Now I saw that his death sentence had been reduced to retirement. Of course, I said nothing to him, as things needed to play out naturally.

On the night of July 8, Red decided to go into town the next day and retire. It was a sudden decision, but it did not take me by surprise.

The Pattern of Saul

In 1 Samuel 15 we read how God had told Saul to bring divine judgment upon the Amalekites for attacking the Israelites as they were leaving Egypt (Exodus 17). God had told Moses to remember this attack, because God had sworn to have war with Amalek from generation to generation (Exodus 17:14-16).

Then God seemed to forget about it until the reign of Saul. By studying chronology, I later came to see that the 18^th year of Saul was the 414^th year from Amalek’s attack in the time of Moses. Essentially God put Amalek on Cursed Time, which was a grace period—the time that they had to repent and thereby find their way into Blessed Time.

Amalek did not repent, however, so after 414 years, God told His agent (Saul) to bring divine judgment upon the Amalekites. 1 Samuel 15:2 says,

² Thus says the Lord of hosts, “I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt.”

Saul defeated the Amalekites and destroyed most of them, but he spared the king (Agag). Now in the divine law a judge—in this case, Saul—does not have the right to forgive sin. Only the victims have that right. If a judge wants to forgive a sin, he himself must pay the restitution or the penalty for that sin.

Hence, when Saul spared Agag, he took Agag’s curse upon himself. When Samuel heard of it, he told Saul that he and his children had been disqualified as king of Israel. Agag asked for mercy, but 1 Samuel 15:33 tells us,

²³ But Samuel said, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.” And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord at Gilgal.

Agag was shown no mercy, because he had not shown mercy to others. Jesus said in Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” The same principle is seen in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 18:33.

Samuel probably took a sword and chopped off Agag's head. This was actually an act of mercy, for when Samuel executed Agag, he reduced Saul’s sentence from Cursed Time to Judged Time (for late obedience). In other words, Saul would still die, but he was given an extension of life. Cursed time is 414 years; Judged Time is 434 years.

I believe that if Samuel had not executed Agag, Saul would have died two years later in the 20^th year of his reign. But as it turned out, he died in his 40^th year, which was 22 years after the Agag incident. He died 434 years after the 12 spies gave their report in Numbers 13 and 14, when the people believed the evil report and refused to enter the Promised Land. Eventually, they did enter the land under Joshua, but they were “late” in that sense.

The point is that Saul finally died 434 years after the people had refused to enter the land. It seems that the Israelites too were on Judged Time for late obedience, and that Saul, the king of Israel, being personally on Judged Time, paid the penalty for Israel and for himself personally.

Pastor Red Thomas was a prophetic picture of Saul as well. We knew this from the beginning of the dispute, and so we had to wrestle with the principles of biblical law to know what to do in that situation. For a short time, it appeared that Red had been able to avoid divine judgment altogether. After all, by being raised from the dead on January 27 through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we had saved his life, as God said.

The problem was that on February 9, 1986 the problem had re-emerged in a modified form, so that when his day of reckoning arrived on April 12, his life was spared.

Pastor Thomas eventually died on February 9, 2008, precisely 22 years later. He had been given the same extension of life that Saul had been given. Our understanding of timing was confirmed through this.