Shortly after the end of the Dragon Wars, we were led on Nov. 11, 1999 into warfare against Wormwood, the Prince of Rosh. This Hebrew word rosh has no linguistic connection to Russia, because the name Rus means “dew.” It has nothing to do with the Hebrew word rosh, which means “head,” and can also refer to the poppy plant. Nonetheless, because the words sound alike, we find that the Prince of Rosh occupied Russia.

This particular “prince” (or principality) had ruled Russia until April 26, 1986 when he was deposed. The major sign of his overthrow in those days was the meltdown of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, which means “Wormwood.” That event was the result of a prayer campaign as well, which we fought in the Net of Prayer for most of the month leading up to that disaster.

It is hard to avoid disasters when these spirits fall to the earth. I wish I knew a way to have them land more softly. The consequence of Wormwood's fall in 1986 was the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problem is that Wormwood then entered America and began to turn us into a police state similar to what he had done in the Soviet Union. Wormwood entered America through Hurricane Hugo, which struck Charleston, SC on Sept. 22, 1989.

Wormwood has an interesting track record in the past century. I showed in my book, Wormwood and the Laws of Dung, that the biblical “wormwood” is not the herb called wormwood today. The Hebrew word translated wormwood is lahanaw, which means opium. It is closely associated with rosh, which is mistranslated “gall” and should read “poppy,” that is, the poppy plant, from which opium is derived. Rosh literally means “head” and has a number of applications, including the “head” of the poppy plant.

Opium is described by Jeremiah, who treats it as giving men a false sense of health and security. Jer. 8:10, 11 says,

¹⁰ . . . from the prophet even to the priest everyone practices deceit. ¹¹ And they heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ but there is no peace.

In Jer. 8:13-15 we read,

¹³ And the Lord said, Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice nor walked according to it, ¹⁴ but have walked after the stubbornness of their heart and after the Baals, as their fathers taught them, ¹⁵ Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I will feed them, this people, with wormwood [lahanaw] and give them juice of poppies [rosh] to drink.

The “juice of poppies” contains opium, which masks the symptoms but does not heal the disease. Even so, the traditions of men being taught by the prophets and priests in Jeremiah’s time were external forms of temple religion, which Karl Marx correctly observed to be “the opiate of the people.”

In Jer. 8:22 the prophet speaks of the “balm of Gilead,” which is balsam, an essential oil that was derived from the balsam tree in Gilead. It had great healing powers and symbolized God's healing power. However, the priests were not prescribing a genuine relationship with God, nor were they teaching true obedience to His law. So God speaks through Jeremiah,

²² Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of My people been restored?

On the other hand, even from the days of Moses, the people preferred the poppies from Sodom and Gomorrah mentioned in Deut. 32:32,

³² For their vine is from the vine of Sodom, and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of poppies [rosh], their clusters, bitter.

Because the people refused the spiritual balsam, God said He would feed them spiritually with wormwood by giving them the juice of the poppy plant.

Because the Church refused to heed the prayer call from 1981-1986, God did not reveal to them the great Jubilee of 1986, so they did not know that they ought to have declared the Jubilee at that time. But one of the final spiritual battles in the Net of Prayer (prior to October of 1986) was the overthrow of Wormwood in April 1986. This was a major victory and should have been very helpful in the world situation, for it was the single most important factor in the demise of the Soviet Union.

However, the Church failed in its calling, and so Wormwood was able to gain access to America through Hurricane Hugo on September 22, 1989. Once inside, Wormwood began to exact its revenge by turning us into a replica of the old Soviet Union. The Twin Towers Disaster on September 11, 2001 was its crowning achievement, for it greatly speeded up our advancement into a police state in the name of “security.”

To understand Hurricane Hugo's role in American prophetic history, one must go back a few years to Hurricane Gloria, which struck New York City on September 26, 1985. Two months before Gloria made landfall, on July 26, I had a vision where I saw it coming to hit Washington D.C., and I knew that this had to do with the next presidential election. Some entity was attempting to take over Washington D.C. Having been forewarned, about 30 of us in Arkansas prayed to put up a “prayer block” to keep the hurricane from hitting D.C. Thus, when Gloria came, it headed straight for D.C. and then at the last minute veered out to sea. It ended up hitting New York instead of D.C.

Ultimately, we came to see that this prayer block prevented Governor Clinton from running for president the following year. It became clear then that the “baby-faced” problem-president seen in the Net of Prayer as early as the late 1970's was Gov. Clinton. You can see his “baby face” in his pictures from that era.

After succeeding in putting up the prayer block in 1985, of course, I came into disobedience and went into Cursed Time from Sept. 2, 1986 to Jan. 27, 1990 and was unable to deal with the second hurricane in 1989. In fact, I was actually heading for South Carolina when Hurricane Hugo struck, but I could not arrive until the day after it had hit. The Lord prevented me from doing anything about it, and yet God used that trip to begin the process of removing me from the Net of Prayer. I resigned a few weeks later on Oct. 16.

Hurricane Hugo struck Washington D.C. through the back door. It came in through Charleston, SC and hit D.C. from the south and east. So we saw the meaning of this in the following election in 1992, when Gov. Clinton came in through the back door with only 43% the vote, due to a third-party “spoiler,” Ross Perot.

So Hugo brought Wormwood into America on Sept. 22, 1989. After the Dragon Wars ended in 1999, we were led into spiritual warfare on Nov. 11, 1999 to cast down Wormwood. November 11, 1918 was the day World War I ended in 1918. It was called Armistice Day until after World War II, when it became known as Veteran's Day. It is often celebrated with POPPIES, commemo-rating Flanders Field in Belgium. But poppies are also the prime symbol of Wormwood, Prince of Rosh.

It is perhaps also significant that the American president from 1989-1993 was George H. W. Bush, who is known as “Poppy.” This indicates that his spiritual and political power came from Wormwood.

The bottom line is that we are winning the spiritual war. It always takes time for a spiritual event to emerge as an earthly event, but there is no way to prevent its occurrence once it has been established. We have seen a steady progress of hard-fought victories over the years. There is light at the end of the tunnel.