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My journey into the prophetic realm, part 4

Death is the only prerequisite for resurrection, not only in the age to come but also at the present time. Paul tells us in Romans 6:5, 6, 7,

⁵ For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; ⁷ for he who has died is freed [dikaiuo, “justified; rendered righteous”] from sin.

Death is the great justifier, because it identifies us with Christ in His death on the cross. Paul says, “we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death.” There is no justification apart from unity with Christ, and that unity is achieved when we identify with Him in His death on the cross.

It seemed good to God to set me up as an example of this, so that people might understand this principle. So He moved me to Las Cruces, “The Crosses,” to show me how to be crucified. It was a slow and painful death that occurred over a period of a full year. I was then dead for six weeks, or 42 days, before God raised me from the grave.

It is my hope that by telling my story, others will understand their own experiences of death and resurrection. As we will see, my story was also one of intercession, whose first great principle is Identification. When we identify with Christ in His death, we identify with Christ in His resurrection as well.

The Dawn of a New Day

On December 4, 1982 I received a two-inch stack of newsletters and battle reports from the Net of Prayer. Apparently, someone had asked them to send me these reports. I finished reading them about noon the following day, which was precisely one year after my resignation from the church in Las Cruces.

In the reports, Chuck told a story about how Jesus told him that a specific event was to occur on a specific day. The day came and went but the event did not happen. He complained to Jesus about it and was told, “Let it go round a year.” The event happened a year later.

This made a great impression on me, because these reports had come to me one year after my resignation. In fact, it was the first of multiple one-year cycles that I would see in the next few weeks. My death experience did not begin on a single date, and my resurrection experience would not begin on a single date either. God often begins a project on more than one date and finishes it on the same dates in a later year.

But in 1982, after finishing the reports, I wrote to Chuck and asked him to visit me if he were ever to be near me (in Redwood Falls). On December 21, I received the first newsletter, where Chuck mentioned that he would be driving from Washington state to Chicago and expected to arrive in Chicago on December 22. I suddenly realized that most likely he would be driving through Minnesota on December 21, which was “today.”

I prayed, “Lord, please send him my way. I really need to talk to him.”

That evening, the phone rang about 7 pm, and I ran to the phone, knowing that it was Chuck who was calling. I was right. He had stopped near the edge of town at a restaurant. I dropped everything and went to meet him, and we talked for about 2 hours. It was an amazing conversation. It seemed as if we could finish each other’s sentences.

He told me that he had made a wrong turn and had found himself just outside Redwood Falls. When he saw the sign that said, "Redwood Falls 6 miles," he remembered that he had received a letter from Redwood Falls. He found the letter and knew that God had directed him to talk to me.

This was very encouraging to me. It was a “book end” of a one-year cycle from the same day in 1981, when I reached a low point in life. I was totally discouraged on December 21, 1981, but I was greatly encouraged one year later in 1982. In 1981 we began preparing to move from Las Cruces; in 1982 we began preparing to move from Redwood Falls, though we did not yet know where we would go.

My wife’s deadline (end of the year) was approaching, and I came to realize that we would hear from God on December 30, one year after we had left Las Cruces. Sure enough, I received a phone call on December 30 offering me a typesetting job in Batesville, Arkansas. This phone call marked the third one-year cycle in my “resurrection.”

We made arrangements to leave Redwood Falls on January 22, 1983. I had no car at the time, because I had been stripped bare over the previous year. But a ride was provided for us, and we came to Batesville the next day, January 23. A house had been rented for us as well, so we moved in with our suitcases.

Then I flew to El Paso Texas on January 27, to retrieve our household furniture that had been in storage for the past year. I was picked up by a friend who had been part of the fellowship in Las Cruces. Recall that one year earlier, January 27 was the final day of the NOP prayer campaign.

The NOP had also scheduled a 3-day Victory celebration after the prayer campaign, ending on January 30, 1982. A year later, I returned home on the same date, which completed our move to Batesville, AR. This also completed my resurrection cycle. It was the dawn of a new day.

Final Cleansing

Many years later I discovered that I had been in the wilderness for precisely 414 days from my resignation (December 5, 1981) to my arrival in Batesville (January 23, 1983). During my death experience, I had no knowledge of Cursed Time cycles, so there was no way that I could manipulate the events to fit the prophetic time cycles.

Yet from today’s perspective, a 414-day cycle implies a 76-day cycle following it, in order to bring me from the discipline of Cursed Time into the full reinstatement of Blessed Time. (414 plus 76 is 490.) Having arrived in Batesville on January 23, 1983, I was unaware that this was just the start of a 76-day cycle of cleansing before I was ready to function within the context of Blessed Time.

76 days after January 23 was April 9.

After returning to Batesville with our household furniture, I immediately began to pray and fast for a full week to know the will of God for my life. On Day five of the fast, He directed me to go back to Phoenix and Las Cruces and reconcile with those whom God had used to crucify me and give me this new life. I was to apologize for everything that I could—except for their false accusations. To confess to lies would not be in accordance with God’s law.

I asked about the timing for this trip, and the Lord gave me Jonah 3:4, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” This made no sense to me. What did “Nineveh” have to do with it?

I wrote two letters and mailed them at the Post Office on February 10, asking to talk with the pastor in Phoenix and the elders in Las Cruces. When I returned home from mailing these letters, my wife told me that the landlord had called to say that the house we had just rented had been sold. We had one month (until March 9) to move to another house.

Obstacles to Cleansing

I knew that I would not be able to leave on a lengthy trip until my family was settled in another house.

There were other roadblocks which stood in the way of this trip. My mother was near death from cancer, and my trip could easily be interrupted if she were to die, as I would have to make a trip to Minnesota.

Also, having just moved to Batesville, it was not right that I should immediately leave them to travel across the country. They needed to be in agreement and commission me for this trip.

Finally, of course, I would not go on this trip without an invitation from the pastor in Phoenix. I did not have the money to travel 2,000 miles without being able to talk to him. The only revelation I was given at the time was: “Do exactly as he says.”

I then received an urgent phone call, telling me that my mother was in a coma and was not expected to live long. So on February 12, I began driving back to Minnesota, stopping along the way to meet with some new friends. The next morning, I received a phone call telling me that my mother had died. So I continued the journey, arriving the evening of February 13.

She was given two funerals, one in Redwood Falls where she had lived for many years, the second in Moose Lake, where she had spent her childhood. When I returned home, the first obstacle to my reconciliation trip had been resolved.

On February 28 I received a response from the Phoenix pastor, inviting me to come and speak with him on March 20. I did not hear from the Las Cruces elders. I later learned that they expected me to come and did not think they needed to invite me specifically. This caused a temporary misunderstanding, as I will explain later.

The February 28 response made me realize that this was the start of a forty-day countdown, according to the word I was given from Jonah 3:4. I then realized that the Lord will often use Scripture that is taken out of its original context in order to apply it to something unrelated. The point was that I was to watch for a forty-day period of time. In this case, it was the forty days from February 28 to April 9, and I knew that I would have to return home by April 9.

I then met with the local group in Batesville on March 3^rd. They laid hands on me, prayed, and commissioned me to go on this trip, believing it to be God’s will. We found a house on March 6, and we moved there on March 7-9. With all obstacles removed, I began my trip on March 10.

Repeating the Pattern of 1976

In 1976 there were two prophets in the Net of Prayer: Chuck and Cliff. Living in Chicago, they were led to make a 30-day trip, walking to Washington D.C., beginning March 10. Their mission was to give the word of the Lord to President Carter and to return home by plane by April 9.

The way things worked out with me in 1983, I realized that my own trip was to occur on the same 30 days. So it was to be a 30-day trip within a 40-day period, which was the latter part of the 76-day cleansing cycle, all ending on April 9.

It always amazes me how God sets the timing ahead of time, and how He uses many people to reveal the details that we need. Others had set the timing for my arrival in Batesville; others had set the timing of my trip to Phoenix. I was clearly following a prewritten script, and my only concern was to know what that script was telling me, so that I could be in agreement with it.

These observations laid the foundations of my journey into the prophetic realm. There was much to learn about the ways of God. His ways are not our ways, nor are our thoughts His thoughts.