Dreams, Visions, and Informed Intercession (Part 4)

Throughout the Bible, we are presented with the idea that there is a purpose for all of us and the given geographical locations in which we live. A few months ago, I had a very vivid dream which shook me to the core.  I was awakened by it and heard the Holy Spirit say, "I sent your forefathers and mothers to this land to preserve My work on this earth that was almost lost by the kings and wars of Europe. These ancient kingdoms warred against one another causing My work to almost cease. So, I re-positioned my people in this land so that My enduring kingdom would prevail.  Just as I took Abraham and his seed out of Ur, I took your ancestors and placed them on the shores of the Chesapeake to preserve the work of My hand - The Glorious Church!" This is the first time that the Holy Spirit ever spoke to me about why he brought my family to America in 1631. It was simply an amazing prophecy.  Historically, everything that God spoke to me in this prophecy can be proven accurately throughout “The Great Wars of Europe” in the 16th and 17th centuries and the founding of America. I also understood that night that America was in trouble.  The United States of America has been largely shaped as a democratic republic through the influence and work of three great men, William Penn, Algernon Sidney, and John Locke. 

Each of these men's writings would later become the basis for our constitutional government.  Most American's today have no clue who these men were and what they fought and died for.  (We will save that for another time).  Let's just say that French philosopher, statesman, and historian Alexis de Tocqueville once said, "Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention, and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things."  From the earliest days of Quakerism, through the First and Second Great Awakenings, nothing shaped the character and national identity more than the Christian faith.  Every historical outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our national history began with intercessors who were moved by God to prayer. Without intercessory prayer, we may not have been able to overcome the deep divisions and conflicts our nation has experienced.  The same holds true today.

Rees Howell was a powerful Welsh intercessor used by God in the 20th century. He took his calling to be an intercessor very seriously.  He believed that no situation was too small or too big. To him, intercessory prayer was meant to be used against every sphere of darkness and decay in his time. During World War II, Hitler engaged The German people into the biggest land-grab in European history. Hitler went to war throughout all of Europe with a tyrannical vision of building an Arian German Empire under his control. Hitler was crushing nation after nation under his seemingly unstoppable war machine. Scores of people were dying, and the fate of the world was hanging in the balance.  When Hitler's focus turned to Britain in 1940, very little stood in his way. Under the black clouds of world war, Rees and the young people under his leadership at The Swansea Bible College of Wales began to contend in intercession for God's intervention to save Europe from the grip of Hitler's power. As a result, many Christian people attributed the defeat of Hitler and the end of the war to the intercessory prayers that were made on Europe's behalf through Rees and the young people who joined him in prayer.  One thing for sure, Rees knew that the battles raging against his nation would naturally require him to take direct responsibility to see that the prayer needs of his and surrounding nations would be answered.   Rees Howell would later write, “Effectual praying must be guided praying…no longer to pray for all kinds of things at his own whim or fancy, but only the prayers that the Holy Ghost gave him.”  In other words, "we are called as intercessors to be led to pray specifically what the Holy Spirit wants us to intercede for instead of just praying for what we desire. This is the reason why prophetic words are useful for intercessors. They can be a guide for prayer.

And this is the reason why I am taking the time in this series to write about Bob Jones' Gulliver Prophecy. The call of the Holy Spirit in this hour is for the Church to awaken, to rise up, and take a firm stand for justice. However, like Gulliver, (who was a slave trader in the book, "Gulliver's Travels") the American Church has gotten tied down and is laying halfway in the dirt as a result of having gotten entangled in America's sin of slavery, segregation, and racism. It is a historic fact, that the White Eurocentric Church led the way, in battling the Native populations to dispossess them of their land and tried to force them into perpetual slavery for their newly formed plantations as cheap labor. It is the Body Of Christ that led the way in tearing Native children from their families and placed them into their colonialized "residential schools" to strip them of their identities and culture. The Church led the way in making African Americans sit in the back of their churches long before they were forced to sit on the back of the bus.  God is not sitting back and just letting all this unjust history get swept away under the rug.  He is calling the Church to unentangle itself and get up and do the right thing. If it doesn't, you can forget about another great outpouring of the Spirit in our time and generation.  The whole Hebrew Bible and New Testament holds people accountable for what they've done and what runs in them - sin, transgression, and iniquity.  Gulliver laying halfway in the dirt speaks to the fact that there is iniquity in the church that must be dealt with. The sins of the American Church have resulted in deep divisions in our nation and as a people, we are being called by the Holy Spirit to repentance, healing, and a place of reconciliation.  The German people are taught to never forget the history and atrocities of World War II. Likewise, the dispossession, genocide of Native people and slavery of Africans brought to the shores of Virginia in 1619 and onward must never be forgotten. This history needs to be exposed, held out in front of the American Church and nation in the same way that the German people always need to be reminded of their history of anti-Semitism. Why?  It is so that it never happens again!

Even though the Body of Christ has been entangled in our national sin of dehumanization, colonialization, and slavery; we have the opportunity to become a people who are repairers of the breach, restorer of paths to dwell in and raise up age-old foundations for future generations (See Isaiah 58:12). Like Guliiver, we are being called to break off the shackles of indifference, the sin of racism, apathy and status quo. We don't need a revival we need an awakening! The Body of Christ needs to wake up! Our current state of affairs will not be changed by an election, political promises, or a government.  It will only be changed by doing the work of the Lord on our knees in prayer. This is why the Gulliver Prophecy is a "Word From the Lord" that is so critical at this time for those called to do the work of intercession on behalf of our nation. This is why it needs it be reviewed, studied and discerned!  It is not about "revival!" This particular call to intercession is a call for a city, a region, and nation. Intercessors must do their work in their assigned areas if our nation is to avert judgement. God knows our broken churches, cities, and nation need prayer! Remember, God brought His Church to America so that His work would prevail from our early national history through to the time of the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit promised in the last days of human history.  

In 2005, Bob Jones said, 

"I saw a great man had fallen to sleep in the past, and his body was laying on his back and he was halfway buried in dirt.  We could call him Gulliver and little people, from little input, had tied him down, and the only reason he was tied down he’d been asleep for a long time, about thirty-eight years, and he was waking up, you could also call him the Body of Christ coming together."  

When reviewing the Gulliver Prophecy again, each of us need to recognize in this prophetic word that not only was Gulliver lying halfway in the dirt, but as Bob Jones says, "We can call him - The Body of Christ."  We know that the Latin root of humility is "humus" or dirt, reminding us that humility and mortality are tied together.  In a nation where arrogance and exceptionalism is held high, God is calling The Body of Christ to understand that He is calling us "from the dirt" or "from a place of humility" to rise up; while letting us know that our mortal fate is tied down by the iniquity of the land.  We need to recognize that as the Body of Christ, we are called to come out of a place of humility, brokenness, and recognize that what runs in the land – also runs in us!  Genesis 2:7 informs us that, "The body was formed by God from the dust of the ground." The Body is referred to throughout scripture as the dwelling place of the human spirit, a tabernacle and even the temple of God (Jn. 2:21; Ro. 12:4-5; I Cor. 6:19-20).  In Job 4:19, this scripture speaks of humanity as, those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust. Genesis 3:19 tells us "...you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The land was one of the most vibrant symbols for the people of ancient Israel. In the land they found both a promise and challenge. For them the land was a physical symbol of Israel's identity, life and a place for the gathering of the hopes, mission and purpose of the covenant people.

Have you ever taken a close look at the ground you walk on?  What does it mean to you? What has it meant to the people in the past who lived and worked on it centuries before you came? This leads to ask what is the condition of the soil?  How we see God, how we see others, and how we see ourselves certainly impacts how we view the land and its use. Recently, I heard a Native American friend of mine say, “The Land was not made for us, we were made for the Land.

In Mark chapter 4 Jesus said, “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.  And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it.  Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up since it had no depth of soil.  And when the sun rose, it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away.  Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain and other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold.”  And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  Later in the chapter, Jesus explains that the "fruitfulness" of the gospel is determined by the condition of the land.  This suggests to us that, even though the Body Of Christ may be "planted" or "rooted" in the land, the Gospel may or may not prevail in a given area because of the condition of the soil.  Does the history that occurred on the land have an impact on its inhabitants and the future?  Here are a few scriptures to consider: 

• In Genesis 4:10 after Cain had murdered his brother Abel The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.”

• Genesis 16:16; "Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete."

• Jeremiah presents land-loss as pollution and harlotry (See Hosea). “The land is polluted in that it has become impure by covenant breaking and violation of the relation with Yahweh”. Harlotry was the result of Israel ceasing to trust the “Land-Giver” and engaging in alternative ways of securing its own existence.

• Those who were remained in the land after the exile were the ultimately cursed and destroyed (See Dt 28:37).

This is why I believe that Bob's picture of "The Body of Christ" lying halfway in the dirt is an important aspect of this prophecy.  I think it suggests to all of us that our life experiences are influenced and conditioned by our relationship to “a place”.  Ephesian 6:12 says, "We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers and wickedness in high places."

Years ago when I was in Bible College, I had a professor who had served as a missionary in Latin America.  He told us of a city he had gone to preach the Gospel in where he witnessed an unusual occurrence. He told us how the city was situated between two countries. One side of the city was in one country and the other was in another.  As he went into the streets to share the Gospel he found that one side of the city was open and receptive and the other side of the city was unreceptive.  He attributed this to the "iniquity in the land" having not been dealt with which resulted in the people being unreceptive to the Gospel. In my perspective from reading scriptures on “Earth-Care”, the land suffers because of what humans do. Certainly, examples of peoples' deteriorating health in some cities has been tied to past corporate pollution pouring out into our rivers.  Likewise, the Hebrew scripture teaches that what our ancestors have done affects the spiritual condition of a city.  The ground has done nothing to deserve this action; land is not the culprit but the innocent victim.  These are not new scientific notions - they're biblical. Likewise, the Body of Christ, in a given region, can be impacted in a negative way when  proper "intercession" is NOT made in its behalf.

One final aspect I'd like to consider has to do with another perspective as to why “Gulliver may be laying halfway in the dirt." Remember Bob Jones stated that "This is a picture of the current condition of the Body of Christ. It is planted "halfway" into the dirt. Our question should be, "Why is the body laying halfway in the dirt?" Quite often, when things are planted halfway in the dirt, the "roots" of the plant are exposed. One possibility is that The Body of Christ is not committed fully to the land. In our time and generation, most Americans are not tied to the land. We are no longer an agricultural or agrarian society. We are disconnected from the dirt. So we are not committed to the idea of a “place”. We are just committed to our jobs until a better one comes along. We are only committed to our churches until they cease to meet our expectations. We are only committed to our local schools until our kids graduate from them. We don't even know our neighbors. Instead, we carry our communities in our pockets (Cellphones). What did Jesus really mean when He said, "I go to prepare a place for you?" (See John 14:1) Are we committed to that “Place”? Real transformation can never happen within a place we have been called to, without our commitment to it. Another Great Awakening or nationwide revival will not happen until we make that commitment to the place God has assigned us to. We can't be "halfway" committed to it. We must rise up and stand firmly in it! God is calling The Body Of Christ to understand that He is calling us "from the dirt" or "from a place of humility" to rise up and take responsibility to intercede for our "own" communities, cities and nation. In closing we should reflect on these scriptures as we consider what God has spoken through this "Gulliver Prophecy" so far: 

Micah 6:9 

The voice of the LORD will call to the city-- And it is sound wisdom to fear Your name: 

"Hear, O tribe. Who has appointed its time?

Luke 19:41

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it.

Isaiah 66:8

“Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day, or a nation be brought forth in a moment?

Rev. 11:15 

"The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord"

JUST IMAGINE…IN ONE DAY A NATION COULD BECOME BORN AGAIN!

Dreams, Visions, and Informed Intercession (Part 3)

Recently, I met a wonderful man of God, named Andre' Van Zyl, from South Africa that was called to the United States to challenge Christians to pray. As I've gotten to know him I've learned from him that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world who bow 5 times a day, even in public, toward Mecca and pray to Allah. Yet, you can't get Christians to spend one hour of their time in prayer. Muslim prayers follow a very elaborate, formula. This is what their prayers include:  "Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom You have favored, not of those who have incurred your wrath, nor of those who have gone astray.  Shame and misery were stamped upon [the Israelites] and they incurred the wrath of Allah; because they disbelieved Allah’s signs and slew His prophets unjustly; because they were rebels and transgressors. Consider those to whom a portion of the Scriptures was given [i.e., Christians]. They purchase error for themselves and wish to see you go astray."  Don’t you find it interesting that they pray for us and we hardly even think about them? The only thought we are concerned about is securing our borders, yet we seem unconcerned about the principalities and powers that are being unleashed on our nation.   I wonder if God is allowing this religion to prevail and gain ground in our land because American Christians are just too busy to pray!

Andre' Van Zyl points out that the main problem we have in America is that you can hardly get Christians to show up to a prayer meeting for a (“Living God”) and yet 1.6 billion Muslims stop their busy schedules and get on their knees 5 times a day to pray to a God (who is NOT Yahweh) because of their faith and upbringing. Christians all over the world are just too busy to pray and then we wonder why there is no spiritual awakening. Prayer and intercession are a matter of the heart and reflective of our relationship with God.  When our schedules are filled up with important priorities each day and God is not even written in our calendar - we have a problem.  Too many only call out to God in petitions and emergency calls as though He is our “sugar daddy” or a “first responder.”  Then people wonder why God does not answer them when they call on him. Proverbs 1:28 says, "When they cry for help, I will not answer. Though they anxiously search for me, they will not find me."   Why? Because too many of us fail to spend time with the Lord.  What did Jesus mean when He said: "Depart from me I never knew you?" (Matt.7:21-23).  Prayer is the foundation for an intimate relationship with God.  People often wonder why they've never heard God speak, or had a dream, vision or prophecy given to them. It's because they never spend time with the God to whom they claim they are committed; believing their visit to Church once a week is enough. Our Muslim friends are committed to prayer 5 times a day, 7 days a week. They are committed to bathing themselves in the Koran, but we who claim we are in relationship to Jesus, can't even write Him into our schedules because “we don’t have time!”

When I was in Bible College, our college president Owen Carr made a huge statement to those of us who intended to spend our lives in ministry.  He said, "If you read your bible in private, the people in your congregation will read the bible too.  If you commit yourself to a life of prayer and spending time with God, they will too."  Because of his exhortation, I have spent my life devoted to emptying myself of my “self-life” and took the time to spend in quiet moments of prayer with no one looking on.  The unfortunate thing about the Western Contemporary Church is that the show has replaced the importance of prayer meetings. The Holy Spirit and His supernatural presence have been pushed out of the center of all our religious activity. The goal for worship leaders has become the Grammy Awards or the Bill Board charts instead of leading people into an intimate place with the Lord. Don't we understand that prayer is the backbone of the Church? Without prayer and intercession, we cannot and will not experience a major move of God. If leaders don't lead the way, teaching new people the importance of praying and hearing God - then why do they even expect God to honor us with a major move of God? First Things First.  Before you can understand how to discern the voice of the Lord you must position yourself in a quiet place. See Matthew 6:6.

Let me take a moment and get on my soapbox!  There is an argument that some very well-known "Religious Leaders" have made to me.  I asked them; “Why are you pushing the Holy Spirit and expression of spiritual gifts out of their services?  The response was: “(1) We don't want to offend the people we are trying to reach.  (2) Look at the size of the crowds we are gaining, as a result of our Church formula.”  Can I just point out that Muslims are not worried if their faith expressions offend others? In fact, Christian Churches are now inviting bold Muslims into their services and asking them to lead their congregations into Islamic calls to prayer in the name of inter-faith ministry. Secondly, hasn't Jesus made clear through his own ministry, signs and wonders, and teaching that some people will get offended? In Matthew 24:10 Jesus clearly stated, "Many shall be offended."  Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, "The religion of Jesus Christ never was, nor ever can be, the religion of this present evil world. He has chosen a people out of the world who believe it, but the world itself has always hated it. Did not our Lord tell us (John 14:17), concerning the Spirit of Truth, that the world cannot receive Him because it sees Him not, neither knows Him? Whenever you find a religion which unites itself with pomp, show, and worldly power, if there is any truth in it at all, it has, at any rate, deteriorated from the standard of its purity and is not according to the mind of Christ. But there are some who are so fond of everything that is fashionable—everything that is great and famous—that, if the Lord Jesus Christ is despised and rejected of men, they despise and reject Him too." I understand that we need to not become stumbling blocks in our witness to the unchurched but the unchurched cannot come to Christ without the work of the Holy Spirit.  So to relegate the Holy Spirit out of our services, is to ensure that intimacy with God is not a priority.  Why is it that so many contemporary church worships teams are standing in front of a people who don't even sing along them anymore? For those who do not know their theater history: Did you know that theater arts began in the Church? As a result, huge crowds started attending the shows and neglected to engage in worship? Please understand this is not an argument against the use of arts in our corporate and private expressions of worship, but the arts should never take priority over teaching people how to pray in the Spirit, sing in the Spirit, becoming intimate with God and listening for His voice.  John 16:13 speaks to the importance of having the Holy Spirit present in both individual and corporate experiences - "When Holy Spirit comes, He will guide you into all truth. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears, and He will declare to you what is to come."  The job of church leadership is to disciple people into an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ so they can, in turn, hear God for themselves and learn how to hear, discern, and engage themselves in informed intercession. It is interesting that the first disciples did not ask Jesus to teach them to preach after the Sermon on the Mount. We have no record in the Bible that they asked him to teach them to work miracles after the feeding of the 5,000 or the raising of Lazarus. When we look at all four gospels, prayer is the one thing the disciples asked Jesus to teach them. I wonder why. Perhaps it is because they knew, and we need to be reminded, that all of Jesus' teaching and preaching and healing came from one source—his life of prayer. And if this is true, surely we should join in this same request, "Lord, teach us to pray...." (Luke 11:1-2).

"Prayer is a universal human desire and experience. 

Every culture in the world has some form of prayer.

 As a Christian, I believe this is because God created us, 

and we naturally desire a relationship with God."

James 5:16 states, "The effectual prayer of a righteous person avails much."  Revivalist, Charles G. Finney in his classic work, “Prevailing Prayer" wrote, "Prayer is an essential link in the chain of causes that lead to a revival; as much so as truth is. Some have zealously used truth to convert men and laid very little stress on prayer. They have preached, and talked, and distributed tracts with great zeal, and then wondered that they had so little success. And the reason was, that they forgot to use the other branch of the means, effectual prayer. They overlooked the fact, that truth by itself will never produce the effect, without the Spirit of God, and that Spirit is given in answer to earnest prayer."  Any student of revival who has examined major outpourings of the Spirit, which resulted in thousands coming to Christ, will learn that every major move of God began when ordinary people prayed.  Simply stated, prayer is communication with God. It is two-way communication—speaking and listening. Prayer can involve spoken words, inward thoughts or sighs too deep for words. It is an act of love that draws us closer to God.  Biblically speaking, prayer is relationship. Adam and Eve enjoyed a close relationship with God, walking and talking with God in the garden (Genesis 1—2). The Old Testament prophets and priests were people of prayer. Prayer is central to Jesus' life and mission. The same is true for the apostles and the early Church.

So, before we go on in explaining how to interpret dreams and informed intercession, I wanted to point out that all spiritual discernment involving dreams, visions, and informed intercession must begin with a commitment to being intimate with God, knowing His voice and opening ourselves up to the intimacy that comes from being in a "Spirit of Prayer." There is a difference between praying prayers and developing a "Spirit of Prayer."  Praying is usually known as a time when people raise their concerns to God. Conscious of your human weakness, and trusting in God’s power, goodness, and fidelity, we can cultivate an awareness of God's presence throughout our day. Because prayer is primarily a living relationship with the Living God, it is spiritual and mysterious. Through prayer, we experience the presence of God; we are nourished and strengthened in ways we cannot always explain or express. Prayer is oxygen for the soul; we cannot live without it. The “Spirit of Prayer” — or habitual prayer — can result in a lasting and sympathetic awareness of God’s pres­ence in our everyday routines of life. John Wesley, Methodism's founder, defined prayer as "lifting the heart to God." He taught that everyone could pray because a sincere desire is an authentic prayer. And, he went so far as to assert, "God does nothing apart from believing prayer." Too many people today keep looking for someone to give them a prophecy or assurance of a better life or future forecast of blessing, instead of taking a time to listen to God for themselves. God hasn't called us to base our lives on prophecies. He called us to base our lives on being intimate with Him. Quite frankly, too many people rely on the professional clergy to tell them what God thinks about them, has for them or how God has designed them to succeed in life - instead of learning to know God's voice for themselves. This results in, many people wondering why their prophecies fail and then they want to blame those who exercise the gift of prophecy. Prophecy fails because intimacy with God is not a part of our daily lives. It's summed up in James 4:3 this way, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."  Our motivation for prayer should be to build an intimate relationship with Jesus. The only “prophetic call” that really should catch our attention is a call that draws us closer to Him.  It is the task of Christians everywhere to pray.  I Thessalonians 5:17 exhorts us to "pray without ceasing." He wants us to walk in a garden with Him just as Adam and Eve first did.  This is the purpose of Jesus coming - to restore our relationship with Him.

When Bob Jones gave his Gulliver Prophecy in 2005, (See Part 1 & 2 in this series) the yearning of his message was based on; "God why has the work of your Spirit ceased?"  It's a cry for any of us who been privileged to witness a major revival, awakening, or move of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church.  The reason the prophecy should be of importance to the Body of Christ should be seen in the fact, that Gulliver is tied down to the ground, held captive because of the sin in the land and by people who have “little input” (those who have little relationship with God). For those who want to know and discern what this prophecy is calling us to do; it is to begin praying for the Church to be awakened, unentangled and to arise so that it can bring about the transformation of people and cities. Unless the Body of Christ is awakened from its’ sleep, there will be no great awakening.  Only by each of us cultivating a "Spirit of Prayer" in our own individual daily lives, are we going to see God's people rise up and accomplish the mission they have been given to do in their cities?  Every city has its own unique calling.  This is the foundational base of Bob Jones' word.  The only question that still remains in my mind is; "Will we, the Body of Christ, be provoked enough to pray when we see that 1.6 billion Muslims pray fervently each day?”  What I mean is; “Will we ever be provoked enough to seek out every opportunity to make time to pray for a great awakening and revival?  What will cause us to be “broken enough” to want to do what Jesus has called us to do?” Even the disciples fell asleep as Jesus was struggling in prayer over his impending crucifixion.  What does the Body of Christ need, to be awakened and set free from the things that hold us down? Until then it will be business as usual if that is all the corporate Body of Christ and its leadership want.