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The rise of the saints, part 22

Having completed writing the weblog series on Deuteronomy, I began a new series a few days later on September 21, 2013. It was a commentary on the Gospel of Luke. Deuteronomy records the death of Moses and the commissioning of Joshua to bring Israel into the Promised Land. So Joshua would have been the next logical study.

However, I was led to do a study on Luke. It occurred to us later that Luke was the 42^nd book of the Bible and that it represented the 42^nd encampment of Israel in their wilderness journey. Israel had 41 camps in the wilderness, and their 42^nd was in the plains of Jericho under the leadership of Joshua. This suggested that we were seeing signs of entering the Promised Land.

Traveling to the Promised Land

In October 2013 I received an invitation from Felipe, a pastor from Mindanao in the Philippines, to teach the word at a pastors’ conference. I was led to accept this invitation the following month. My wife and I left Minneapolis on November 5 and returned November 18.

Mindanao means “Land of Promise,” i.e., the Promised Land.

The new Hebrew year, which had begun on Rosh Hoshana in September 2013, was said to be the year 5774 by their reckoning. The number 74 was written as ayin (70) and dalet (4). Hebrew letters are both word pictures and numbers. Hence, the ayin means an open eye, and dalet means a door. For this reason, some had seen that year (2013-2014) as the year of the Open Door.

This tied into an old revelation from the 1980’s about the Open Door Ministry, a time where I (and others) would minister around the world. So I viewed the Philippine trip in that light.

On October 26 I spent the day at a prophetic meeting of the Minnesota Apostolic Prayer Network with about 70 people, all mature in spiritual things with various gifts and callings. Their theme was “Call to the Wall.” I saw this as Step 3 in the sequence of events regarding the wall. In 2011 we saw Operation Jericho, which cast down the denominational walls. In 2012 we were led to rebuild the walls of the New Jerusalem according to the pattern of Nehemiah. Then in 2013 we saw the Call to the Wall to maintain that which had been built in 2012.

The Pastors’ Conference at Lake Sebu

The revelation of the Call to the Wall helped to prepare us for the trip to the Philippines ten days later, where I was scheduled to teach about a hundred pastors at Lake Sebu on Mindanao on November 13 and 14. Felipe (Philip) had organized this pastors’ conference, and it was customary for the organizers to feed those attending the conference. When I was asked to send funds to feed 100 men, I began to see this in light of the 6^th chapter of John, where Jesus fed the multitude. This caused me to dig deeper into the circumstances of this trip.

The Gospel of John is structured as a Hebrew parallelism (or chiasm) around the eight miracle-signs that Jesus performed to manifest His glory (John 2:11). The 6^th chapter of John gives us the middle signs (number 4 and 5), which are recorded back-to-back, and which form the central climax of signs as a whole. The 4^th sign was where Jesus fed the 5,000, and the 5^th was where He walked on the water.

In my study, I took note that Sebu means “walking on water.” Cebuano is one of the main languages in the Philippines. I found a Filipino website (which has since been taken down) giving this information:

“Cebuano” comes from the root word “Cebu,” the Spanish version of the original name “Sugbo,” which most probably comes from the verb “sugbo,” meaning “to walk on the water.” In the old days, the shores of the Cebu port were shallow, so travelers coming from the sea had to wade in the water to get to dry land.”

Of course, I immediately connected Lake Sebu to the 5^th sign in the Gospel of John, where Jesus walked on the water. I also learned that Lake Sebu was 360 hectares in size, which suggested a complete circuit (360 degrees). Jesus walked on the water in the Sea of Galilee. Galilee means “circuit.” So Lake Sebu prophetically represented the Sea of Galilee.

The 4^th and 5^th signs in the Gospel of John took place over a period of two days, and so our pastors’ conference was also to be held for two days. The two main elements in these signs were feeding the multitude and walking on water during the storm on the Sea of Galilee. It was not hard to see that God had set this up as a prophetic trip. We were to feed the pastors, Lake Sebu (famous for its tilapia) was like the Sea of Galilee—but where was the storm??

The Adventure

This was the first time that my wife had ventured out of the USA, and she considered it to be her “adventure.” Seeing another culture was a real eye-opener for her. For me, of course, it was more like going home, because I spent 9 years of my early life as a missionary kid on Mindanao. Filipino people are quite amazing, so friendly and helpful. My wife quickly fell in love with them.

But she came for an adventure.

When we arrived in Manila on November 6, we spent the night at a hotel and then took a taxi to the airport for the flight to Davao, the second largest city, located in the southern part of Mindanao. We were able to board the last flight out of Manila about 9:30 pm on November 7, just before the airport was closed to prepare for Super-typhoon Yolanda, which was the most powerful Category 5 typhoon ever recorded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Haiyan

My wife got her adventure, and my question (“Where is the storm?”) was answered. Jesus walked on the water in the midst of the storm; we flew over the storm. When Jesus got into the boat with the disciples, the boat was immediately at Capernaum, “Covering of the Comforter,” which was His ministry headquarters. We crossed the water (“Jordan”) on dry land, as it were, because, thankfully, the inside of the plane remained dry as we flew from Manila (Luzon) to Davao (Mindanao, the Promised Land).

Yolanda was also known (to the Chinese) as Typhoon Haiyan. The eye of the storm came ashore at 4:40 a.m. on November 8 at Tacloban, a city southeast of Manila. Our flight literally took us over the storm as it came ashore. Felipe was supposed to meet us at the airport in Davao, but he had been told that all flights out of Manila had been canceled. So we had to take a taxi to the Waterfront Hotel, where we had a reservation. (Felipe’s daughter was getting married the next day at this hotel, so we were able to attend the wedding.)

The Chinese name for this Super-typhoon was Haiyan, named for a species of bird that we call a Petrel. This is a bird that hovers over the water and seems to be walking on water. Hence, it is known as a Petrel, named for Peter, who walked on the water during the storm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrel

Though Peter’s adventure was omitted in John 6, we find it recorded in Matthew 14:28, 29,

²⁸ Peter said to Him, “Lord if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” ²⁹ And He said, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

It seems that Peter too wanted an adventure. So the Petrel bird was named after Peter, so that we might see Typhoon Haiyan/Petrel as a sign of Jesus and Peter walking on the water.

The following weekend Felipe drove us to Lake Sebu, where we taught (and fed) the pastors who came to the conference.

The Ninth Sign of Elisha

When Jesus fed the 5,000 in John 6:10, 11, 12, He was following a precedent that had been set by Elisha in 2 Kings 4:42-44,

⁴² Now a man came from Baal-shalishah and brought the man of God bread of the first fruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. And he said, “Give them to the people that they may eat.” ⁴³ His attendant said, “What, will I set this before a hundred men?” But he said, “Give them to the people that they may eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left over’.” ⁴⁴ So he set it before them, and they ate and had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.

When Felipe asked me to send funds to feed a hundred men, I immediately connected it to the story of Elisha as well as the story of Jesus in John 6. Just as Elisha had leftovers, so also did Jesus gather 12 baskets of food left over (John 6:12, 13).

Recall that the 8^th sign of Elisha was seen on July 9-15, 2010. We cast barley meal into the headwaters of the Mississippi River (July 9), resulting in the capping of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico 144 hours later on July 15. So when we fed 100 men at Lake Sebu on November 13, 14, 2013, this was the sign of provision that God gave us at the start of the Year of the Open Door.

Of course, it was just a beginning, but yet it was also the promise of God that the wilderness manna would cease and that we would begin to eat of the fruits of the Kingdom. Joshua 5:12 says,

¹² The manna ceased on the day after they had eaten some of the produce of the land, so that the sons of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate some of the yield of the land of Canaan during that year.

From that day forward, we have never lacked the funds to do that which God has set before us. The problem—if we can call it that—is that the Open Door Ministry has yet to reach the level that we anticipate in the future. In a sense, we had crossed the Jordan into the Land of Promise (“Mindanao”), but we still had years of spiritual warfare ahead of us.

In the days of Joshua, the Israelites fought the Canaanites for 5 years, and in their first Sabbath year they divided up the land among the tribes. It is as if God had set aside a full Sabbath cycle in which to do spiritual warfare, corresponding to our own situation (2013/2014 to 2020/2021). As the end of this time approached, the Babylonian rulers locked down the world in the attempt to prevent the saints from rising and to prevent the Kingdom from emerging.

But nothing can stop the Kingdom of God from rising, nor can the saints of the Most High be locked down forever. God allows such things for a season for His own purposes, but the plan of God is irresistible, as Pharaoh himself discovered (Romans 9:19). Though we may not have a full understanding of His plan, we have faith that God is sovereign and knows what He is doing.