Super Bowl discernments

Ron Oja dropped by my office late afternoon yesterday, and we had a short time to discuss the meaning of the Super Bowl last Sunday. Ron has many pages of notes containing far more details than I could ever put in a blog, but I want to share what I think is the most important discernment.

It is the fact that the Super Bowl was held in New Orleans this year. Because much of the New Orleans area is located below sea level, it is prophetically associated with Jonah, who had an underwater adventure many years ago. Jonah's calling was to go to Nineveh, the "City of Fish." Throughout the years, other prophetic events, people, and factors have established this "Jonah" connection--at least for us.

Secondly, 2013 itself connects to the year 2003 by the "Hezekiah Factor," which is like a ten-year repeat that we have seen over the years. What happened in 2003? On January 28, 2003 Ariel Sharon's political party (Likud) won elections in Israel. On the 31st, a political cartoon pictured a toaster with a dove in it holding an olive branch. The caption read, "A toast to Ariel Sharon's victory."

In other words, peace was being "toasted."

The next day, the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded as it was landing. Israel's first astronaut was aboard and was killed, along with the others. The shuttle was "toasted" over Palestine, Texas, and we knew that this was a major sign.

The fact that its name was the Columbia connected the incident with Jonah, because both Columbia means "dove" in Latin, while Jonah means "dove" in Hebrew. It was a sign of war, in that the dove of peace was "toasted," but biblically it was also a sign that Jonah had "died" by going into the belly of the whale. We knew then that this was not the end of the story, because Jonah yet had a second calling to fulfill in going to Nineveh.

Perhaps now in 2013 we should watch for signs of Jonah's resurrection from the belly of the whale, so that he can fulfill the second work of Christ. Recall that Jonah is a type of Christ. Jonah first went into the belly of the whale to portray Christ's death, burial, and resurrection (Jonah 1:17; Matt. 12:40). In his second calling, Jonah preached the word to Nineveh, which was a type of the second coming of Christ, wherein the word is preached and the world is converted.

The Columbia crashed at the end of the first 76-day period that year, one of our major watch dates. As you recall, every prophetic year begins shortly after Tabernacles, and it starts out with two cleansing cycles of 76 days each. Ten years ago the prophetic year began November 17, 2002, and the first 76-day cycle ended on February 1, 2003, the day that the Columbia crashed. This made the event important as a pattern setter for that entire year.

It affected me too, as well as this ministry. From 1996-2003 my office had been located in the basement of Moon Plaza in Fridley, MN. Directly above me was a computer company called Networks, Inc. The Lord spoke to Ron one day that I was to be called Stephen Jonas, as I was a type of Jonah in the belly of the whale. The "Net" was above me, and when I came out of the basement, it would signify a "resurrection" and the start of the second work of Christ.

Well, a few months later, my office moved upstairs to a new location. Within a few weeks, Networks, Inc. moved to a nearby town. It seems that their calling was completed once we had been "raised from the dead." We then set up our first web site and began to use "the Net" as fishers of men. I began blogging in late October of 2004.

The point is that ten years ago we were seeing many signs of Jonah. The Super Bowl's location in New Orleans in 2013 suggests a ten-year Hezekiah Factor is emerging. Perhaps the clincher was the news article that came out on the same day as the Super Bowl, February 3, 2013. Someone in the UK found whale vomit on the beach, worth a lot of money if sold to the perfume industry. 

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/whale-vomit-found-beach-could-be-worth-180000

What are the odds of that?

Now let us take this one step farther to relate it to our recent battle with the red dragon. The Hebrew word for dragon is the same as for whale. The KJV translates tanniyn both ways, as you can see from Ezekiel 32:2 and Jeremiah 51:34. This links Jonah's experience to the red dragon battles that we fought from early November to January 27.

Just as the whale swallowed Jonah, so also dragons eat pearls. I have written about the "dragon wars" in chapters 16-21 of The Wars of the Lord. These chapters speak of the three rounds of spiritual warfare we conducted from 1996-1999, relating to Revelation 12. In December of 2012, as we were completing the first phase of the recent prayer battle, I had the insight that the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) was representing the red dragon in the current battle.

After the war had concluded, I heard from some brethren on January 31 who work for a branch of UBS here in America. They wrote (in part):

"We've been standing in the fiery furnace, working diligently as unto the Lord, thanking Him for the provision for our families, all the while crying out to Him to deliver us from captivity and release us to full time work for the Kingdom.... So your recent blogs regarding the battle against and defeat of the red dragon (symbolized by UBS in the earth) caught our attention and resonated with our Spirits. With the blog on his defeat, the Lord gave T this prayer: In the name of Jesus Christ, I release the victory over the red dragon here at UBS. We've prayed this every day since."

The letter continues:

"So, we wanted to ask you if there was anything we might be able to do, right here in the belly of the dragon, to continue to put on display and callt o earth Christ's victory in this."

That description, "in the belly of the dragon," alerted me to the connection between the dragon and Jonah's whale. This connected the prayer battle to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, where Jonah is a major theme.

In conclusion, we should see developments in 2013 about the Open Door Ministry, which is part of the second work of Christ (Jonah) in preaching the word to the nations--and to the church. Nineveh means "City of Fish," and so it depicts the "fish" (church) being in the belly of the whale/dragon. In ancient times, the house of Israel was "swallowed up" by Assyria. (Nineveh was its capital city.) We read in Hosea 8:8, 9, 

⁸ Israel is swallowed up; they are now among the nations like a vessel in which no one delights. ⁹ For they have gone up to Assyria...

These were the ten tribes of the northern house of Israel. When they went to Assyria, they were like a vessel that no one wanted, and no one cared, and everyone forgot. The solution, says the book of Jonah, is not to destroy Nineveh but to convert them by the preaching of the word. That is the purpose of the second work of Christ, the second dove of Leviticus 14:7, as interpreted by the story of Jonah.

Ron tells me that the Super Bowl events in 2013 are a precursor to next year's events, as there is a connection between the two. Recall that the Super Bowl in Houston in 2004 featured Josh Groban, who sang, "You Raise Me Up" in honor of the astronauts who had died in the Columbia disaster a year earlier. That was the first time I heard the song. Hence, it may take a year for this resurrection theme to fully manifest. We will have to watch how events unfold in the coming months.

Also, there are many more details about the Super Bowl and related events, which I could have mentioned here, but too much data would be confusing to most people. I say this to avoid a flurry of emails telling me the rest of the details that I left out of this blog.