My journey into the prophetic realm, part 10

The twelve-week prayer for revival ended on September 15, 1985. A few dozen of our church friends had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, some as late as September 14.

The last day of the cycle was a Sunday, and Chuck had been led to pass out some flyers in a church parking lot, asking people to join us in prayer. An usher asked him to stop. He did realize that he was a spokesman for the church in general, informing us that the church as a whole was saying “NO” to prayer. They were not interested in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, if someone had sat down with him and asked him specifically, “Do you want the Holy Spirit to be poured out?” he probably would have said, “Yes, of course.” Many give mental assent to such questions. But God looks at the heart. The head and the heart do not always agree. Even fewer understand the difference.

We also know that when God has chosen an individual to be the spokesman for the church or for any larger group, that spokesman cannot help but speak the thoughts and intents of the collective heart of those he represents. So to explain such questions to these spokesmen would not matter, because the individual is no longer acting on his own initiative.

When someone becomes a spokesman for others, he is no longer himself, nor are his answers necessarily his own. This is why, so often, nothing makes sense. You cannot attribute a person’s words to the one who is speaking, and what he does is not him doing it. I have seen such things many times, and it can seem quite unreal. But in such cases God exercises His right as the sovereign Creator, intervening and overruling the will of man, in order to reveal the heart of the church or the nation or the demonic opposition.

This is what had occurred on the evening of November 12, 1981 as well. Though I did not know it at the time, it did not take long to discover this principle. It is actually derived from the law of agency, which I explained more thoroughly in my book, Theology of the Logos. Jesus was an agent of the Father, doing nothing on His own initiative (John 8:28).

Likewise, the Holy Spirit is the agent of Christ (John 16:13), and when we are led by the Spirit, we too act as agents. An agent speaks the words of another. To put it in Malachi’s terms, an agent is a messenger in unity with the messager and faithful to the message (Malachi 3:1).

Hurricane Gloria

While all this was happening, the Net of Prayer had established prayer positions to prevent the “beast man” from entering Washington D.C. This “beast man” had been seen in the spirit in the late 1970’s, a man with a “baby face,” but with the heart of a beast. It was important to the Net of Prayer that this man should be prevented from becoming president. So we put a prayer block in front of Washington—that is, we put up a prayer wall in the Atlantic Ocean just off the east coast of Washington D.C.

Hurricane Gloria formed in the Atlantic Ocean on September 22, 1985. The Net of Prayer were unable to maintain many of its prayer positions in the spirit and was forced to abandon most of them, due to “church decision.” (The NOP relocated its prayer position at Oklahoma City.) Recall that the Saul Church was still reigning in those days, because “Saul” did not die until May 30, 1993 (the fortieth Jubilee of the Church since the day of Pentecost in Acts 2).

Until 1993, “Church decision” continued to limit our ability to conduct spiritual warfare. We were acting as “David,” during the days that Saul was pursuing him. We were fighting Saul’s battles, while Saul was still fighting us. This situation would not change until Saul died and David received the authority to make the decisions that set the course of church history. So in those days we still had to submit to the authority of Saul. God always gave us victory in battle, but we could never win the war.

Hurricane Gloria came up along the east coast and on September 27 hit land at Cape Hatteras, NC, heading north toward Washington D.C. Then it hit our prayer wall and bounced out to sea before returning to hit New York City. The news accounts said that it blew down 572 trees in NYC. This was significant to the NOP, which had discerned that this was a “war” number.

That number was not based on biblical usage, but upon revelation for our own purposes. The meanings of many numbers, discerned by Chuck, were more like private codes to discern our own revelation in spiritual warfare.

A few years later I would discern the political significance of Hurricane Gloria. Through our prayer block, we were able to prevent Bill Clinton from running for president in 1988. He would have to wait until 1992 after Hurricane Hugo came in through the back door and struck Washington D.C.

But that is a story for later.

The Downward Spiral Begins

The twelve-week prayer for revival ended September 14 with most of the Golden Rule church members receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Pastor Red Thomas was suddenly the only one in the church who had not received the Holy Spirit. Understand, of course, that all genuine believers have the Holy Spirit on a basic level, just as the Israelites were given the pillar of fire on the first day of their journey (Exodus 13:20, 21, 22).

Pastor Thomas had rejected a Pentecostal level of the Holy Spirit, but not a Passover level. Israel’s wilderness journey shows that there are three feasts, not just one or two, and that these set the pattern for us all today as well.

The pastor must have looked at the new situation, brought upon himself by his own act in bringing John Steer to the church for a week of “revival” meetings. My guess is that he finally capitulated and resigned himself (mentally) to submitting to Pentecost. So he asked us to have the next God’s Squad meeting at his house on the evening of October 12.

As I drove to his house that evening, I had an increasing sense that this meeting would not go well. The foreboding in my spirit was well founded, for the meeting soon degenerated into an argument between Red Thomas and Bob Schuelke about whether or not a person must speak in tongues to be filled with the Spirit. Bob believed that tongues was “the evidence,” while Red did not believe this was so. The meeting ended without fulfilling its purpose.

Perhaps September 14th was a deadline. Perhaps October 12 was too late. Perhaps it was just that the pastor was willing in his head but not in his heart. Or maybe the Holy Spirit was presented to him incorrectly. Whatever the case, the meeting was a disaster. The Holy Spirit did not fall upon that house.

A week later, on October 20, Pastor Thomas tried to resign as pastor of the Golden Rule church. We convinced him to stay. We all loved him very much, and it was his church. He had built that church years earlier. In fact, it had been constructed on land donated by the Masonic Lodge through the influence and generosity of one of the older members of that Lodge. The only stipulation was that the property could not be sold for other purposes and would revert back to the Masonic Lodge if the church ever folded up.

In looking back at the situation, I came to see that this Masonic foundation probably sealed the doom of that church. It is likely that Masonic paraphernalia were embedded in its foundations (with or without the pastor’s knowledge). There was probably a deeper spiritual cause to our situation than we realized at the time.

Hence, if we had let Pastor Thomas resign, we might have avoided the conflict that lay ahead. In that sense, we might say that it was a mistake to convince him to say. But on a deeper level, God had more to teach us through the situation.