Fear and Faith

Many years ago I was given the Word never to act or react in fear, but always in faith. I have always attempted to conform to that Word, even when speaking of things that would make the average person afraid.

It is for this reason that for many years I refrained from speaking of the rather frightful things that the world's uppermost Babylonian leaders have planned for Christians. I felt that it was more necessary to lay foundations of an understanding of the Kingdom of God than to teach you all about Babylon.

I still feel strongly about this. But once the proper foundations of faith have been laid, at some point it becomes necessary to understand the Kingdom of God by contrasting it with Mystery Babylon. In order to bring theory into practice, one must know the things that need to be changed. People need to see the evil of Babylon and how the Kingdom of God provides the solution to that evil.

Many have tried to use fear or hatred to motivate people to fight Babylon. That is not a proper approach, because it has only served to make people fall into the same rebellious spirit that Jerusalem had in fighting the prophet Jeremiah. It was only by the grace of God that He blinded us to the fact that we were even in a Babylonian-type captivity. He made it a "Mystery" (i.e., hidden, secret), so that we would submit to the divine judgment. By submitting, God was able to impose upon us a wooden yoke, instead of an iron yoke.

Recognizing this, we can thank God for the mercy factor in judgment. Our forefathers in America cast aside His law, even while giving lip service to it, and so God's sentence was to put us into this captivity to Mystery Babylon in 1913-14. If we had known it was coming, the patriots among us would have convinced the people to fight God's judgment, as in the days of Jeremiah and Hananiah. Jeremiah 27 and 28 tells the story of Jeremiah putting a wooden yoke upon his neck, and how Hananiah broke it (28:10). So God told Jeremiah to put an iron yoke upon his neck, prophesying that Jerusalem was now to come under the iron yoke of Deut. 28:48.

We avoided a repeat of the iron yoke, not because we were so righteous, but because we were so blind. That blindness was imposed upon us to give us time to hear His Word and be obedient. Faith comes by hearing (Rom. 10:17). Hearing is evident when there is an obedient response to the Word.

When people are truly obedient from the heart, God can heal their blindness without danger of those people rejecting the divine judgment. They will not join the carnal revolution and take up arms against those whom God has raised up to judge us. Instead, they will work to remove the CAUSES of divine judgment. They will present the Word of the Lord to the people until they repent of their own sin--not the sin of the Babylonians.

1 Chron. 7:14 does NOT say, "If the Babylonians repent . . . then I will heal their land." It says "If MY PEOPLE."

This captivity does not depend upon what the Babylonians do. It will end only when the believers repent (a change of thinking) and come into obedience. The fact that believers are saved, or justified by faith, is not the deciding factor here. The deciding factor is whether or not they fulfill the terms of Pentecost. Pentecost is the feast commemorating the giving of the law at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20.

In Moses' day, all Israel was justified by faith in the blood of the Lamb when they put the blood of the lamb on their door posts and lintel. That was good, and if this was all that was required to get to the Promised Land, they all would have made it. Keeping Passover was an essential first step, but their problem was in refusing to hear/obey at Pentecost under Mount Sinai (Ex. 20:18-21).

By refusing to hear and obey the law, they refused to have the law written on their hearts by the spoken Word. The alternative was to have it written on external tablets under the Old Covenant. But an external law only meant that the Word was being imposed upon them against the will of their carnal minds. Such a method was doomed to failure because "a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

We are in the same situation today. BELIEVERS have refused to obey God's laws, commandments, directions (thinking that justification was sufficient to enter the Kingdom); so we have come into the identical problem today. By not understanding the feast days, believers did not realize that Passover was about justifying faith, while Pentecost was about hearing and obeying--which produces a greater level of faith.

The Hebrew word shema has a double meaning--to hear and to obey. If a man says that he hears, but does not respond to the word with obedience, then he has not really heard at all.

"HEAR [shema] O Israel! the Lord is our God, the Lord is one!"

"Now, then, if you will indeed OBEY [shema] My voice and keep My covenant . . ."

So Pentecost is about OBEDIENCE. We are justified through Passover, but we learn obedience through Pentecost. That is the meaning of being led by the Spirit. The Spirit leads us to do this or that--in other words, to be obedient to whatever God tells us to do. God's purpose is to reveal His mind and character, and when we are obedient, we begin to conform to His mind and will. Whatever God says always comes from His very Being and is a reflection of His will and character. That is the law of God.

Back in the days of Jeremiah, God gave the earth to Babylon and put us all under Babylon's authority (Jer. 27:6). This was done because God's people were in violation of His law. As in the days of Moses, they had refused to hear and obey. They only gave lip service to God in the temple, but in reality, they had put away the law in order to keep their "traditions" (Isaiah 29:13, quoted in Matt. 15:8, 9).

The identical situation has occurred in the Church as well. Church "traditions" replaced the law of God, and anyone who heard a word from God that was different from Church traditions was persecuted, excommunicated, or even burned at the stake. The Protestant churches did not normally burn people at the stake, but they too violated the law (mind) of God at every opportunity. Hence, God put us all into another captivity. We came under the authority of Mystery Babylon in 1913-14 with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, precisely "seven times" (7 x 360 years) after the original Babylon had become an empire (607 B.C.).

The reason for this captivity is the same as before. Those who were justified by faith in the Passover Lamb are the ones who refused to be obedient through true Pentecost. It is ironic that modern Pentecost arrived under Charles Parham on New Year's Day in 1900 and continued with Azusa Street from 1905-1910. At that point the movement denominationalized, white denominations to one side, black denominations to another. Then came the Babylonian captivity.

Coincidence? I doubt it. The Pentecostal movement was God's way of giving us the same opportunity as He gave Israel under Moses. We blew the opportunity, and the Church of Laodicea was born. (See my book, The Seven Churches.)

This captivity began to come to an end in November of 1993 when we were led to launch the Jubilee Prayer Campaign. It was shortly after the 40th Jubilee of the Church (May 30, 1993). That prayer campaign took 13 years to complete (Oct. 7, 2006). We are now seeing God's deliverance from Babylon. Babylon is falling.

When the Babylonians say "ALAS" (Rev. 18:16), it is time for the believers to rejoice (Rev. 18:20). This is not a reason for us to fear, but to rejoice. Assuming, of course, that we have faith.