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The rise of the house of David, part 1

In the beginning, God established a three-fold plan to establish His Kingdom. While many Christians in the past two centuries have divided time into so-called “Dispensations,” I find it more useful to divide time according to His anointings that follow the pattern of His feast days. The feast days, after all, give us the basic outline of all Bible prophecy.

The Passover Age took us from Moses to Christ, where both the starting date and the conclusion of the Age fell on Passover. Under the Passover anointing, the church in the wilderness saw many miracles, signs and wonders, healing, and glory.

The Pentecost Age began on the fiftieth day after Jesus’ resurrection when the Spirit came down upon the 120 disciples in the Upper Room. During that 50-day interim, the common practice of the people was to count an omer of barley grains. They divided the grains into 50 piles and counted one pile each day for 50 days.

The Hebrew word omer is spelled ayin, mem, resh. The meaning is eye, water, head. In counting the barley grains, they prophesied that they were watching for water on the head. Few would have known that they were prophesying of the countdown toward the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon their heads, which was designed to increase their anointing in the Pentecost Age.

Saul was a prominent Old Testament type of the Pentecost Age, he himself experiencing the baptism of the Spirit as a sign of his authority (1 Samuel 10:6, 7). His 40-year reign typified the Church’s 40-Jubilee reign in the Age of Pentecost. Saul’s reign was limited because of his disobedience and rebellion against the word of God (1 Samuel 15:23); so also was the church’s Pentecostal reign limited to 40 Jubilees (1,960 years).

Saul was then replaced by David. The Pentecost church is being replaced by the Tabernacles church with the greatest anointing—the fulness of the Spirit.

The Tabernacles Age is the thousand-year reign of Christ, typed by King David in contrast to Saul. Even as we saw a 50-day transition from the Passover Age to the Pentecost Age, so also are we seeing a transition into the Tabernacles Age. This transition may prove to be 40 years (1993-2033), as this would also take us to the end of the 121^st Jubilee from Adam (2035-2036).

Even as the people counted the omer of barley in the interim leading to the Pentecost Age, so also has God given us a spiritual work during our own interim to prepare our hearts for the Age to come. We need not count barley grains today, but God is indeed numbering the barley company (overcomers). There are 144 barley grains in a cubit.

The Branch Davidians

The Pentecost Age came to an end on May 30, 1993. This was exactly 40 Jubilees since the Spirit had been poured out in Acts 2. It also marked the end of Saul’s 40-year reign and the beginning of the transition from Saul to David.

As the end of the Pentecost Age drew near, the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX were raided by the ATF and FBI on February 28, 1993. The siege lasted precisely 50 days, ending in a holocaust on April 19, 1993.

On the surface, this raid was a great injustice and entirely unnecessary. Many people were killed, including women and children. Four ATF men were also killed by others in their own unit, no doubt to silence them. They had been President Clinton’s bodyguards and knew too much about his criminal behavior.

Yet when we look at the event from a higher perspective, we see how God was preparing the way for the rise of the house of David. The Branch Davidians were led by Vernon Howell, who had taken for himself the name David Koresh. He thought of himself as the Christ in His second coming. The name David identified him with King David; the name Koresh was Hebrew for Cyrus. He was, in essence, a false Christ and a false Cyrus.

Some who truly believed in David Koresh thought that he would soon be raised from the dead, giving various timelines for this to occur. However, this did not happen. Their hope turned to despair and their faith was shattered. His failure to be raised from the dead proved that he was not who he said he was.

Nonetheless, he played a role in the history of the Kingdom. We see this in the timing of this incident, as it occurred just before the death of “Saul” on the 42^nd day after the death of David Koresh. (April 19 to May 30 was 42 days inclusive.) The number 42 means “arrival.” The Israelites under Moses had 41 camps in the wilderness, and then they arrived in the Promised Land. Their 42^nd camp was in the plains of Jericho. (See Numbers, chapter 33.)

My conclusion is that the Branch Davidians represented a false or counterfeit version of the house of David. Their attempt to represent David in the Tabernacles Age came to an end on April 19, 1993. They were tried by fire and failed the test. God was calling out a new body of people, known only to Himself, to represent the house of David.

I believe in my heart that this ministry (among others) was called to be part of David’s household. Subsequent events and revelation, I think, prove this quite conclusively. But that is for others to decide, since I may be biased.

The Memorial Day Conference

My wife and I were led to attend a conference in Nashville, TN on the weekend of May 28-30, 1993. Having received the revelation that this was the climax of the Pentecostal Age, we had been led to fast for the ten days from May 20-29. We were not to fast on Pentecost, because that was a day of celebration for the house of David.

When we went to Nashville, we assumed that this conference had been timed to coincide with Pentecost. However, when we arrived, we discovered that they only saw May 30 as Memorial Day. While it was indeed to be a memorable day, they had no understanding of the times and seasons, nor were they memorializing any prophetic events on God’s calendar.

I was somewhat astonished at this. Surely someone should have received some revelation, since this was the climax of the Pentecost Age. We ourselves had come to present ourselves to God as the first fruits of wheat harvest. We had come to dedicate our hearts to God according to the instruction in Exodus 34:18-23,

¹⁸ You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread… ²² You shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks [i.e., Pentecost], that is, the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering [Tabernacles] at the turn of the year. ²³ Three times a year all your males are to appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel.

God needs no food to sustain Him, but He does require us to give Him our heart. David was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14).

Leviticus 23:16, 17 says,

¹⁶ You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath; then you shall present a new grain offering to the Lord. ¹⁷ You shall bring in from your dwelling places two loaves of bread for a wave offering, made of two-tenths of an ephah; they shall be of a fine flour, baked with leaven as first fruits to the Lord.

So the two of us went to the meeting room in Nashville at 9:00 a.m. to present our hearts to God as first fruits of the wheat harvest. No one else was there, except for a janitor who was cleaning the front of the meeting room. We asked God to accept the “grain offering” of our hearts.

In fulfilling the Pentecostal requirements in this way, we knew that we were eligible for the feast of Tabernacles that was yet to come. Others did not need to qualify in the same way, of course. This was our particular revelation. The important principle is to see that one cannot experience Tabernacles without first qualifying through Passover and Pentecost.

God then began to speak to me about a prayer campaign that was soon to come.