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The rise of the house of Elisha, part 7

On February 9, 2008 Pastor Red Thomas died as a prophetic type of King Saul. He died precisely 22 years after he was disqualified on the same date in 1986. Saul too died 22 years after he was disqualified in 1 Samuel 15:23 in the story of the Amalekite King Agag.

This event occurred in the 18^th year of Saul’s reign. By refusing to execute King Agag, Saul took upon himself the curse that God had put upon Amalek 414 years earlier in Exodus 17:14-16. After Amalek’s grace period ended without their repentance, God called Saul to carry out the divine sentence (1 Samuel 15:2, 3). As God’s judge, Saul had no authority to spare the Amalekite king, unless he was willing to pay the penalty himself. Such is the law of judges.

Saul thought he was being merciful to Agag, but he did not know the spiritual laws that bound judges. Only victims have the right to forgive sin; judges do not. Saul was the judge, not the victim. Hence, he took upon himself the curse of God and would have died shortly thereafter, had it not been for Samuel, who executed Agag (1 Samuel 15:33).

Samuel’s actions took Saul off Cursed Time and put him on Judged Time (for late obedience). While Cursed Time is a cycle of 414 years, Judged Time is a cycle of 434 years. Hence, Saul died 434 years after the Israelites had refused to enter the Kingdom after the ten spies gave their evil report in Numbers 13:32, 33. The Israelites thus entered the Promised Land late, and Saul died on Judged Time for Israel as a nation.

It could have been worse. Saul might have died on Cursed Time. But because of Samuel’s actions, he lived and ruled another 22 years before dying in battle in his 40^th year (Acts 13:21). His death then coincided with the end of Israel’s Judged Time. Likewise, February 9, the day of his death, was the 40^th day of the year.

Red Thomas, a Type of Saul

The spirit of this biblical story, including the timing, replayed in front of our eyes in the story of Red Thomas. If you wish to refresh your memory of the sad story of Red Thomas, see here:

https://godskingdom.org/blog/2021/03/my-journey-into-the-prophetic-realm-part-12

https://godskingdom.org/blog/2021/03/my-journey-into-the-prophetic-realm-part-13

https://godskingdom.org/blog/2021/03/my-journey-into-the-prophetic-realm-part-14

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.

His death on February 9, 2008 brought this story to a final conclusion. We had to wait 22 years to see how this would end. Yet there was a much bigger picture involved. Because Saul was a Pentecostal (1 Samuel 10:6), he was a prophetic type of the church under the Pentecostal anointing during its reign of 40 Jubilee cycles from 33-1993 A.D. By observing Red Thomas, we were able to see the bigger picture of the church’s disqualification on account of the denominational spirit, where the people rejected the direct rule of God and preferred to be ruled by men (1 Samuel 8:5, 6, 7).

Denominationalism is a deadly disease that has afflicted the church almost from the beginning. Yet few Christians know this, because they do not understand the prophetic significance of the story of King Saul. It was only in the past century, when the modern Pentecostal era began, that a few people saw how the Pentecostal movement was moving toward denominationalism. They issued warnings, but few listened.

Pastor Red Thomas was not an evil man. He was a good man and a good friend. I loved him as a father. We had many good times of fellowship. But God found it needful to reveal to me the meaning of the story of Saul as part of my early training as an overcomer aspiring to go beyond Pentecost into the feast of Tabernacles. So He raised up Red Thomas to play the role of Saul to impress upon me the deadly nature of denominationalism.

Spiritual Warfare March 10-29, 2008

I was asked to speak at a conference in North Little Rock, Arkansas from March 7-9, 2008. The day after the conference we found ourselves in spiritual warfare. It seems that the church was opposing the Elisha ministry that was prophesied in late September of 2007 at Hilo, Hawaii. Even as the church of the Passover Age (from Moses to Christ) opposed the Pentecost church that was to come in Acts 2, so also the Pentecost church has opposed the Tabernacles church.

Each level of the church believes that it is the true church that cannot and will not be replaced. But there is a progression of church history which God Himself has established. The temple priests in Jesus’ day represented the opposition of the Passover church. In recent years the Pentecost church has opposed the Tabernacles church according to the pattern of King Saul who opposed the coming of David.

Nonetheless, in each case, there were some who repented and were able to change their allegiance to the old order. These were able to move on into the next move of God. However, it seems that the majority always remain stuck in the old order. In the case of the Pentecost church, many people build houses (denominations) in the wilderness and then find it difficult or impossible to leave their house when the pillar of cloud moves.

On the night of March 10, 2008 our car (a Pacifica) was stolen from the garage and some other items were taken from the upstairs part of the house while our boys were sleeping downstairs.

The car was later abandoned and found by the police on March 28, and I was able to redeem it from the impound lot the next day. The time that the Pacifica (“peaceful”) was gone actually defined the beginning and end of the warfare.

The cost was $301, which is a number signifying redemption. I wrote about this number in my book, The Laws of the Second Coming, chapter 1, pages 3, 4.

Astronomers tell us that in the late afternoon of Passover, Friday, April 3, 33 A.D., while Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were hurrying to bury the body of Jesus, there was also a lunar eclipse. The eclipse began in Europe at 3:01 p.m. when Jesus died, and it was already eclipsed when the moon rose over Jerusalem at 5:10 p.m. that evening.

It is impossible to have a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse on the same day, because the sun and the moon must be in opposite positions in the sky for these two kinds of eclipses. Yet on this great day in history, God marked the time for all to see by a spectacular miracle. In Bonnie Gaunt's book, The Bible’s Awesome Number Code, page 55, we read:

“It was on a lonely hill outside the walls of Jerusalem that this Heavenly One, who came to earth to be born, to suffer, and to die as a man, hung on a cruel cross that afternoon. The hill was called Calvary. Its Greek name was Kranion, whose numeric value is 301.

“At 3:01 in the afternoon, as he looked heavenward and said, 'It is finished,' the moon began to eclipse. It was at 3:01 Greenwich Time that the eclipse began. God makes no mistakes with His timing, nor does He rely on coincidences. The word 'moon' in the New Testament is Selene, and its Gematria is 301. Yes, He who had formed the moon and put it into its orbit around the earth, now had given up His human life at 3:01, on a hill called Calvary (301) precisely when the moon (301) began to eclipse. It was the exact hour when the priests were killing the lambs for Passover. ‘Lambs’ [in Hebrew] has a numeric value of 301.”

For those unfamiliar with numeric values (gematria), the Hebrew and Greek letters served as their numbers as well as letters. Hence, each letter carries a numeric value, and one can add up the value of each letter to obtain the numeric value of any word or sentence in the Bible. In this manner, Bonnie Gaunt shows mathematically the precision of God in timing the first minute of His death (3:01 p.m.) in accordance with an eclipse of the moon (301) on a hill called Calvary, whose numeric value is 301. His death coincided with the Passover “lambs” (301) that were being killed at that same moment.

Christ’s great work of redemption on the cross was revealed by this number 301. So when our Pacifica had to be redeemed by $301, I could not complain about it. This redemption of the Pacifica ended the warfare and brought about Peace.

March 30 was the end of the second 76-day cleansing cycle of that Prophetic Year, which had begun on October 31, 2007. This, in turn, was the 490^th anniversary of the day Martin Luther posted his “95 Theses” on the church door at Wittenberg in 1517, sparking the Protestant Reformation.

Though peace had been re-established, the warfare cost us more than just $301. On March 25 Robert Burgess died in his sleep in Togo, a country in West Africa where he had been ministering. Robert was the founder of our Bible School, and his untimely death was a major setback—although it all worked together for good in the end. The setback allowed me time to write many Bible commentaries that strengthened the curriculum.

So the loss was not $301 but the director of the Bible School. His death cost us TIME. Even so, we have learned over a period of many years that God plans for all such delays and works it out for good (Romans 8:28). So we have had a saying: God delays many things so that they happen at the appointed time.