The work of the house of Joseph, part 6

God’s judgment upon the church began in 2002 in the wake of the overall judgment that was initiated by the Twin Towers demolition on September 11, 2001. The specific judgment upon the church was prophesied when we poured out the second bowl of wine into Lake Huron (“the sea”) according to the pattern in Revelation 16:3.

Psalm 29

As I wrote earlier, on each of the seven days of Tabernacles, a psalm was read. Psalm 29 was read on the second day of Tabernacles, when the second bowl of wine was poured out into the funnel on the left side of the altar in the temple.

Psalm 29:2, 3 says,

² Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to His name; worship the Lord in holy array. ³ The voice of the Lord is upon the waters; the God of glory thunders, “The Lord is over many waters.”

The psalm is about the glory of God in His temple and commands us to “worship the Lord in holy array,” that is, clothed properly in fine linen, which is “the righteous acts of the saints” (Revelation 19:8). The priesthood is supposed to be holy, even as He is holy.

Newsweek dated May 6, 2002, put out a magazine stating on its cover, What Would Jesus Do? Beyond the Priest Scandal: Christianity at a Crossroads. One of the articles was entitled, The Gay Dilemma. On page 26 Newsweek wrote:

“The best guess is that between 35 and 50 percent of Roman Catholic priests are homosexual. ‘Hypocrisy is almost too weak a word for what the hierarchy is doing,’ says Mark D. Jordan, a professor of religion at Emory University and a gay Catholic. ‘If there were no homosexuals in the priesthood, we would soon cease to have a functioning church’.”

In Part 2 of the article, under the heading, Celibacy and Marriage, we read on page 29,

“A. W. Sipe, a psychotherapist and former Catholic priest who conducted a 25-year study of celibacy, sexuality, and the clergy, estimates that at any given time 50 percent of priests—no matter what their orientation—are sexually active in some way.”

It is as if Psalm 29 had been written specifically for the Church. If the Church had not lost all knowledge of the feast of Tabernacles throughout the centuries, it may have discovered Psalm 29 and received divine revelation as to its meaning and application.

The problem surfaced in 2002 and was widely reported, but the problem had developed over a period of many centuries. Newsweek reported,

“There is more than a little irony at work here, for the church has an ancient history with homosexuals and with homosexual clergy. John Boswell, the late historian, observed that the church and its religious orders, long offered gay men and women a haven from married life. According to Donald B. Cozzen’s ‘The Changing Face of the Priesthood,’ misconduct has always been with us, too. A second-century Gospel commentary says: ‘Thou shalt not seduce young boys.’ In the middle of the 16^th century, Pope Julius III plucked a 15-year-old boy off the street and made him a cardinal and head of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State’.”

Cozzen’s example was only the smallest tip of the iceberg. Church bishops, who served as church historians, were rightfully horrified at the immorality being practiced openly in the Vatican in the early tenth century during the 18^th Jubilee cycle of the Church. This time period marked the turning point where the Roman church was disqualified from having permanent authority in the earth, even as the biblical King Saul had been disqualified in the 18^th year of his reign.

The eighteenth year of Saul correlates to the eighteenth jubilee cycle of Church history (866-915 A.D.) During this time, the papacy reached its lowest point of morality and decency. Church historians refer to this time period as “the golden age of pornocracy,” a term coined by Liudprand, bishop of Cremona, who lived immediately after this time (920-972). The term was later used by the prominent Catholic Cardinal Baronius in the sixteenth century.

The term Pornocracy can be defined as “Ruled by Fornicators.”

The problem has continued to the present time, but few people take the time to read about church history. In more recent years the Roman Church has succeeded in suppressing news about priestly misconduct, and their influence in police departments and among judges has allowed the Church to avoid prosecution. Nonetheless, much damage was done to countless people.

Through all of this, Psalm 29 stood as a silent witness, admonishing religious leaders and priests that “The Lord is over many waters” and to “worship the Lord in holy array.”

Jesus’ Second Sign

The eight signs in the Gospel of John present Jesus Christ as the solution to the problem. When we poured out the bowls of water along with the wine, we were praying and declaring that the glory of God would be poured out as the solution to the iniquity that was being judged by the bowls of wine.

The second sign in the Gospel of John, which Jesus performed to manifest His glory, took place when He healed the Nobleman’s son. About this sign, John 4:54 says,

⁵⁴ This is again a second sign that Jesus performed when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.

The eight signs in John’s Gospel were meant to prophesy about the eight days of the feast of Tabernacles. They are structured as a Hebrew chiasm, or parallelism. The first correlates with the eighth, the second correlates with the seventh, and so on. This parallelism provides us with a two-part lesson while manifesting the glory of God through Christ.

In other words, healing the Nobleman’s son correlates with the raising of Lazarus in John 11. Whereas the Nobleman’s son was “at the point of death” (John 4:47), Lazarus had already been dead four days (John 11:39) when Jesus raised him from the dead. Lazarus’ graveclothes had to be removed (John 11:44) so that he could be cleansed on the eighth day.

If we contrast these graveclothes to the “holy array” of the priests giving glory to God in Psalm 29:2, we can see the prophecy of a cleansed priesthood.

Consecration of the Melchizedek Priesthood

On March 14, 2002 we were led to pray a prayer of Sanctification, or Purification of the Melchizedek Priesthood. Though the Church as a whole was being judged by the bowl of wine, we knew that God was raising up a remnant through whom He would manifest His glory in the earth.

March 14, 2002 was the first day of the first month on the Hebrew calendar that year. It was the day when the priests had gone to Jericho to inspect the field of barley to see if it was ripe. If ripe, they blew the trumpet and proclaimed that this was the month when Passover would be kept. (If the barley was yet unripe, they declared that this was the 13^th month of the previous year and that the Passover would be held a month later.)

Our prayer for the cleansing of the Melchizedek priesthood was patterned after the events in the story of Hezekiah’s Great Passover in 2 Chronicles 29. The king opened the doors of the temple and repaired them (2 Chronicles 29:3). Then he told the priests to consecrate themselves to God. 2 Chronicles 29:17 says,

¹⁷ Now they began the consecration on the first day of the month, and on the eighth day of the month they entered the porch of the Lord. Then they consecrated the house of the Lord in eight days and finished it on the sixteenth day of the first month.

Our Consecration prayer took place on the first day of the Hebrew month. On the eighth day, March 21, 2002, I flew to Dallas, Texas in order to deliver a word at Key Ministries in Euless. This marked the beginning of the pattern of cleansing the house of the Lord for the next eight days until the sixteenth day of the month (March 29).

In Hezekiah’s day the people were unable to observe the Passover on the 14^th and 15^th day of the first month, because the temple was not fully cleansed until the 16^th day. Yet they read in the law (Numbers 9:9-11) that they were allowed to keep the Passover in the second month if they were unable to keep it in the first month.

In the time of Moses, a man had died just before Passover, and his sons had buried him. But touching a dead body required seven days of cleansing. Hence, they were not able to keep the Passover, so God allowed them to keep the feast in the second month.

In our time (2002), we understood that as mortals, we were still touching a dead body on this highest level. The ultimate solution to the problem was to come into immortality. So in a way, we had the same problem as the priests did in the days of Hezekiah, only on a higher level. The solution is found in 2 Chronicles 30:17-20,

¹⁷ For there were many in the assembly who had not consecrated themselves; therefore, the Levites were over the slaughter of the Passover lambs for everyone who was unclean, in order to consecrate them to the Lord. ¹⁸ For a multitude of the people, even many from Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not purified themselves, yet they ate of the Passover otherwise than prescribed. For Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, “May the good Lord pardon ¹⁹ everyone who prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though not according to the purification rules of the sanctuary. ²⁰ So the Lord heard Hezekiah and healed the people.

It is plain that God is more concerned with the condition of men’s hearts than with “the purification rules of the sanctuary.” Though God is lawful, He is not legalistic. True purification does not come by water but by the washing of the word, as Jesus said in John 15:3,

³ You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.

In the days of Hezekiah, the people were cleansed and purified through the word of God in a clear example of the New Covenant application. We, too, recognized that even though we were yet mortal, touching a dead body, we could be cleansed by the New Covenant promise of God. Just as the people in Hezekiah’s day were “healed,” so also were we healed.

This purification prayer reflected the work of Joseph in 2002, even while the Church as a whole was coming under divine judgment. It showed us how the water and wine were being poured out at the same time, each having its effect in different ways.

The main work of Joseph involves the Birthright, which had been given to him (1 Chronicles 5:1, 2). This is a Sonship work, which cannot be done apart from divine purification and cleansing by the word of God. For this reason, God led us to cleanse the Melchizedek Priesthood while the Church as a whole was being brought to judgment for its failure to be arrayed in fine linen and to give glory to God in His temple.