The Timing of the Haggai Ministry--Part 1

As I said earlier, I believe that the fulfillment of Haggai's ministry was 2,520 years after he actually prophesied. This comes to the years 2001-2006. For years I wondered how that might be fulfilled. Now that we are past that time, we can look back and see how it actually worked out.

Essentially, it correlated with Revelation 16, where the angel pours out the seven vials (bowls) of wine upon Mystery Babylon. But that is the culmination of a series of other events. To understand it, we have to go back and summarize the bigger picture once again.

The Book of Revelation is actually constructed upon the Hebrew calendar itself. The calendar forms an outline of Bible prophecy. The calendar is based upon a series of sevens, the first of which is the weekly Sabbath, or "rest" day. The next "seven" is the Sabbath YEAR, coming every seven years. The final "seven" is the YEAR OF JUBILEE, which comes after seven Sabbath years.

The Jubilee year itself is the 50th year, or the year following the seventh Sabbath. Yet in order to maintain the "sevens," that Jubilee year is also the first year of the next Sabbath cycle. Thus, "Daniel's 70 weeks" is a period of 490 years and is a 10-Jubilee period.

The Hebrew months were officially announced about every 28 or 29 days when the first crescent moon appeared over the horizon on the evening of the first day of the next month. The priest would then blow the trumpet to signal the evening of the first day of the next month. Thus, each trumpet represents another month that has arrived. The seventh trumpet is, therefore, the beginning of the seventh month, and this day is called the Feast of Trumpets.

In the seventh month--that is, in the seventh trumpet--are the seven days of the Feast of Tabernacles, in which the priest was to pour out seven drink offerings of wine, one each day. These, then, are the seven bowls of wine poured out in the seventh "trumpet" (month) in the seventh "seal" (year or 7th Church).

In the Book of Revelation, there are seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls of wine. The seven seals in this case represents the time of The Seven Churches, which is the title for my book on the subject (posted online). In that book, I show that each Church was prophetic of a time and a condition in Church history from 33-1993 A.D. This is 1,960 years, or 40 Jubilee cycles, running directly parallel to the reign of King Saul, the Pentecostal type.

The seven seals are followed by the seven trumpets, extending from 1993-2000. The seven bowls of wine cover the period from 2000-2006/7, bringing us to the present-day collapse of Mystery Babylon.

As early as Nov. 21, 1993 I had heard a Word from the Lord, in which He spoke of the "Battle of Jericho." He then remarked almost offhandedly, "You have not yet fought that one." Three years later (to the day), we began the Jubilee Prayer Campaign, which we understood to be patterned upon the "Battle of Jericho." The immediate warfare was from Nov. 21-29, 1993. Yet we knew also that this was to be a seven-YEAR warfare that would not end until Nov. 29, 2000.

The underlying reason for holding the prayer campaign from Nov. 21-29, 1993 was that this was the 46th anniversary of the Palestinian Resolution, as it was introduced to the United Nations on Nov. 21, 1947 and passed eight days later on Nov. 29. Prophetically speaking, the Jews were being given opportunity to build their spiritual "temple," patterned after Herod's Temple, which was associated with the number 46 in John 2:20, 21,

" (20) The Jews therefore said, 'It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?' (21) But He was speaking of the temple of His body."

The phrase underlined above has a numeric value of 46 x 276. "Temple" (naos) is used precisely 46 times in the New Testament. The number 276 appears in Acts 27:37 as the number of people on board the ship that was about to be wrecked in that prophetic story of the destruction of the Babylonian system holding "Paul" (overcomers) in captivity. In fact, Acts 27:37 itself has a numeric value of 276 x 11. That number, therefore, is written into the text itself, but is only revealed when one uses each Greek letter as a number (as they did in those days).

And, of course, 276 itself is 6 x 46. The number 276 is built upon the number 46. The Greek word for Adam ("man") is also precisely 46. Since our bodies are a temple, this number 46 speaks specifically of man being a temple, since naos is used precisely 46 times in the New Testament. Yet 46 is also associated with Herod's temple, which had never been glorified by the divine presence. So 46 speaks more specifically of those whose "temples" have not been filled with the Holy Spirit. Such people are patterns of Herod's temple, not of Solomon's temple.

Thus, in our flesh, we are patterned after Herod's temple. Our flesh is defined by chromosomes, which give us our fleshly characteristics, such as skin color, height, eye color, etc. So it is no coincidence that we all have 46 chromosomes to define our fleshly temples. We get 23 from mom and 23 from dad.

"It took forty-six years to build this temple," was inadvertent prophecy. They were speaking of their own temple; Jesus, however, said He would raise up the temple in three days. He was speaking of His body, not only His physical body that was raised from the dead in three days, but also the Body of Christ, the true Temple (Hos. 6:2).

Much more could be said about this, but we should not stray too far from our topic at hand. The point is that the fleshly project contemplated by Zionism is to build a fleshly temple, not only literally but also a nation, that is, a body of people (Israelis). Though it has a religious flavor, it is no less carnal than the people were in Jesus' day. The people in that day were manifestations of Herod's Temple, for they were devoid of the Holy Spirit.

The Israeli state, in one sense, was given 46 years to build their "temple," and then apply for glorification. If it could have been glorified, I believe that event would have taken place at Tabernacles of 1996, which was when they celebrated the 3000th anniversary of King David's coronation. But in spite of celebrating for 18 months, Christ did not come to glorify them as a "temple."

Meanwhile, we were in the midst of conducting the Jubilee Prayer Campaign from 1993-2000. We declared the Jubilee in 1996 on behalf of the overcomers, because we knew that God was going to finish His Temple work in them, rather than in Hagar-Jerusalem.

In essence, these seven years represented the blowing of trumpets around the city of Jericho (Joshua 6:3, 4). It correlates with the seven trumpets of Revelation, although keep in mind that I am not saying that the time of the seven trumpets in the Book of Revelation were fulfilled from 1993-2000. No, not at all. I am merely saying that the STRUCTURE of the book is based upon the calendar, and so also were the events from 1993-2000.

At first, we thought perhaps the year 2000 would see the fall of Babylon. We thought perhaps all seven bowls of wine would be poured out in that single year, and that "Jericho" then might collapse by the year 2001. But in 1999, as we approached Jesus' 2000th birthday, the Word of the Lord came to us, saying that the bowls would take another seven years.

I confess to being a bit disappointed, but I am not the one running the universe. My plans would have been inadequate to the task, to say the least. So we replaced our wishes with His Plan and ministered accordingly. The time of the seven bowls would thus coincide with Haggai's ministry.