My wilderness journey began in December 1981. After 40 years of wilderness living, I have crossed my own “Jordan” and am about to enter a new phase of ministry.

The pattern was set by the Israelites under Moses long ago. There have been other 40-year cycles throughout history—some being concentrated into just 40 days, such as the time allotted to Nineveh to repent (Jonah 3:4) and Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1, 2). Others have been longer, such as 400 years (Gen. 15:13).

The church itself was given a time of 40 Jubilees, which followed the time of King Saul’s reign of 40 years.

All of these cycles are built upon the number 4, which is the number of the earth (material creation). To understand the prophetic significance of the number 40, one should study all of the available patterns. I did this as early as 1983, near the beginning of my wilderness journey, when God gave me Jonah 3:4, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

Overthrowing Nineveh

At the time, I was soon to experience a 40-day cycle in which I overcame personal opposition. But the word also suggested a 40-year period. At the time, I did not know how “Nineveh” would manifest in our time. As it turns out, the 40-year period (1981-2021) is now Mystery Babylon, which has not repented and is currently being overthrown.

In that context, God is bringing this ministry of the Kingdom to a new level. In a sense, the past 40 years have been a time of preparation. The Israelites were not supposed to build houses in the wilderness but were to dwell in booths (or tents), to signify that they had not yet entered God’s rest.

Receiving Authority in Increments

We have seen this ministry rise to new levels more than once. The rise has been incremental, as God has empowered us first in 1993 after “Saul” died. The biblical rise of the house of David (2 Sam. 3:1) set the pattern for our own rise, which gave us the authority to do much spiritual warfare in the 1990’s.

After 7½ years, David was crowned king over all Israel (2 Sam. 5:3-5). So we too received the next increment of authority on Nov. 30, 2000. This was 7½ years after Saul died on Pentecost, May 30, 1993, which was, in turn, 40 Jubilees from Pentecost in Acts 2.

The authority granted in November 2000 gave us the authority to overthrow the golden calves in 2001 under the ministry of the house of Joseph (Ephraim). However, this work remained unfinished until Nov. 30, 2021, when we completed the Manasseh phase.

Manasseh

We conducted a prayer campaign for the restoration of Manasseh from Nov. 23-30, 2021. The results of this prayer campaign will become more evident in the months and years to come.

Manasseh means “causing to forget.” He was given that name because, as his father said, “God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father’s household” (Gen. 41:51). His name prophesied of the condition of his descendants who would forget their origins. Many of them would even identify as Egyptians and would remain in Egypt when Moses led the rest of the Israelites out of Egypt.

A thousand years later, the Israelites were exiled to Assyria, where they were called by other names and thus lost their Israelite identity. For this reason, they were among the “lost tribes of Israel.”

This time of forgetting ended on Nov. 30, 2021. In my view many things will soon be brought to light, and people will again remember their origins. Isaiah 51:1, 2 says,

¹ Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord; look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. ² Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who gave birth to you in pain; when he was but one I called him, then I blessed him and multiplied him.

The children of the flesh, of course, are not the true seed of Abraham, nor did Sarah give them birth. The prophet’s appeal is made to those who pursue righteousness, which comes only by faith in the promises of God (Rom. 4:21, 22). These are the children of Abraham (Gal.3:7).  Yet to be an inheritor, one must also be born through “Sarah,” the New Covenant and the heavenly Jerusalem (Gal. 4:24-26.)

So Isaiah instructs those having the righteousness of faith, those who have been birthed by the New Covenant, to understand their true origins. We know, of course, that this is a call to seek how to become the children of God, not the children of the flesh.

Most of us have already known this for many years, but if anyone does not yet understand the difference between the two covenants and the two Jerusalems, now is the time to learn it. (See chapter 10 of my book, Paul’s Epistle to the Saints in Rome and see my book, The Two Covenants.)

We must know who we are, and we must know the basis of our claim. How we identify ourselves in the Divine Court will determine our standing in before God and this will determine how the Judge will treat us.

So when we overcome the effects of the Manasseh prophecy, we must remember our Abrahamic roots, not by tracing our genealogy but by imitating Abraham’s faith.

Nov. 30, 2021 was a key date in determining who has remembered the right things. And we now have received revelation that Dec. 20, 2021 is the point where we reached the greatest evil in the world. From there on, we began to reverse course as the Kingdom of Light rises.

The solstice is Dec. 21, where we transition from the darkest day of the year (northern hemisphere) into our return to the light.

Old Prayer Campaigns

From July 7-13, 1984 we engaged in a prayer campaign called Operation Clean Sweep. It was designed primarily to sweep away the barricades to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So the battle culminated over Corpus Christ in the spirit, as it was necessary to establish patterns for the release of the “body of Christ” from its Laodicean captivity.

But a secondary purpose was to seize control of all the money and goods that God’s enemies plan to use against His people.

About six weeks later, August 20 to September 3, 1984, we engaged in another prayer campaign called Ye Shall Go Forth. The name was taken from Mal. 4:2 (KJV). Just before the start of this prayer campaign, I wrote an article saying,

“At the end of the prayer campaign on July 13, during the battle for Corpus Christi, we gathered up some of the spoils of war…including one of the Beast’s treasuries, where he kept much wealth that he had stolen from God’s people. Now this present campaign [Ye Shall Go Forth] is in some ways a continuation from where we left off July 13.”

[The Wars of the Lord, ch. 3, p. 16]

The two prayer campaigns in 1984 should be seen as a single prayer campaign in two parts with a brief interim between them. It ended Sept. 3, 1984 and did not resurface until Sept. 3, 2008, when it resumed 24 years later as if no time had passed.

At any rate, during the course of Ye Shall Go Forth, I was given a vision and a prophetic word on Aug. 31, 1984, which laid the foundations of prophecy for “going forth.” I wrote a report in those days, saying,

“Lord, show me how the battle goes in Africa. I then see a map of Africa. Then a brilliant light set over South Africa. Not an explosion, but more like a light bulb. This light moves up the eastern coast of Africa.

“My Kingdom of light shall be established, and the darkness shall be pushed back, never to reappear again…”

It was one of the early revelations about the Open Door Ministry, where the gospel of the Kingdom was to go forth to all nations. South Africa was evangelized in the early 1900’s by John G. Lake, whose healing ministry was instrumental in establishing the Church among the Africans in South Africa.

It appeared, then, that the light of the gospel was to “be established” AGAIN in South Africa. Somehow this had something to do with “Ye Shall Go Forth.”

On Sept. 14, 1984, I received this word:

“You have opened the heavens around the world in all the key places, and wherever My light shines through to the earth, there shall be Green Pastures… My light shall shine forth, and My Kingdom shall stand forever.”

At the time, of course, we thought it was more imminent than it turned out to be. God had not showed us the 24-year interim yet, nor did we understand that more preparation needed to be done before this Open Door would be opened.

It ended up taking 24 years for this South African vision to move to the next level. Nonetheless, the word above let it be known that the heavens were opened in 1984.

Operation Elijah

On August 17, 2008, we were led to begin Operation Elijah. This proved to be a time of preparation for my trip to South Africa. It culminated on Sept. 3, and the next day, Sept. 4, I flew to South Africa to teach in various towns and cities for three weeks.

While I was in South Africa, the Lehman crisis occurred (Sept. 11, 2008). Although the US government bailed out the banks, the economy faltered and finally bottomed out six months later in March 2009. Our ministry was not affected by this financially, but neither did we have the funds necessary to go through the “Open Door” and take the work to the next level.

I met some key people in South Africa, and I thought that I would return there soon—perhaps the following year. Once again, I discovered that the fulfillment of this prophecy was not imminent. Another 13 years has gone by, as of 2021, and only recently has the door begun to crack open, despite much spiritual opposition (lockdowns).

By this time, I began to have a better understanding of Abraham’s faith. He had to wait many years for the promise of a son to be fulfilled. I had hoped that Abraham would be the exception, but I found myself following his footsteps.

My book, The Wars of the Lord, ends with my report on this trip to South Africa, and the book was published a few months later in early 2009.

The Light Moves North

Meanwhile, as I pondered the vision from 1984, I could not tell where the light from South Africa had moved. The vision of Africa did not delineate national borders. It was more like a geographical map. But when I was there in 2008, I was invited to go from there to Kenya and speak at a conference being held there. I could not go, because I had already committed to speaking at a Tabernacles conference in America the next month.

I discerned that the light was moving north to Kenya. However, only recently did it occur to me that the light moved north “up the eastern coast of Africa.” In other words, it moved north through Mozambique, which is a long, narrow country along the eastern coast.

Recent events in December 2021 now prove that the light of the Kingdom has now reached Mozambique. This is a new development which, frankly, took me by surprise. This is too new to share the details at this time. If it only involved teaching the word, there would be no need for secrecy; but this is Kingdom-building work, which is more inclusive of political and economic aspects of the Kingdom.

The team I work with in building the Kingdom in Africa is working behind the scenes with very high officials who want to eradicate government corruption and replace it with righteous government. That is an enormous task, of course, but we have to start somewhere. Meanwhile, God is giving them the funding to do this work.

This takes us back to the revelation from Operation Clean Sweep in August 1984, where “we gathered some of the spoils of war…including one of the Beast’s treasuries, where he kept much wealth that he had stolen from God’s people.”

God likes to make things impossible before doing it anyway. He has a fine flare for the dramatic. This gives Him glory, as it shows that He can do what men cannot. So also, just as the world system is collapsing financially, God is working to supply all that is needed to do His work.

We would expect that, of course, for God provides for whatever He has ordained. Our job is to discern what He has ordained and let Him provide what is needed to accomplish it fully.

China’s “Lehman Moment”

Evergrande is by far the largest real estate developing company in China. It has begun to have debt problems in the past year or more, which has now culminated in its default and bankruptcy in December 2021.

Evergrande’s debt is estimated at $305 billion. This is 5 times the debt load of Lehman Brothers, which collapsed in 2008 with a default of about $60 billion. Lehman’s collapse froze the financial system and nearly took down the entire world economy.

What will Evergrande’s collapse do? Right now, the case is in the courts, and if the company is forced to liquidate its assets to pay off the creditors, it will be a real disaster. When all of the derivatives, worth trillions, begin to unwind as a result, the pain will be even worse.

Essentially, we could be seeing the start of the economic collapse of China. If so, economic collapses always negatively affect politics and the military.

This is probably setting up the world for some serious turmoil in 2022, because there are hundreds of banks, corporations, and pension funds that have invested in Evergrande bonds. Most of these will never be paid. It is likely that Chinese investors will be paid first, and that there will be no money left over to pay foreign creditors.

In view of all this, we must keep in mind that Babylon’s fall is an answer to prayer. The tribulation of our time is being directed at Babylon on account of its refusal to submit to the Divine Court ruling which transferred the authority to the saints of the Most High in October 2017. The collapse of Evergrande appears to be God’s way of enforcing His Divine Court ruling. We will have to watch this closely to see the fallout from this bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, we should always walk by faith, never in fear, knowing that this divine judgment is not directed at us but at the Babylonian rulers of this world. Those who know the divine plan and know His will can rest in the midst of the storm.

Recall that when Peter walked on the water to meet Christ in the prophetic type of His second coming, he did just fine until he took His eyes off Jesus. “But seeing the wind, he became frightened” (Matt. 14:30), and then he began to sink.

It is not that Peter was an unbeliever, but that he thought the wind had put him in danger. In other words, he thought the wind (tribulation) was directed at him. There will be many Christians like him, but if we know the meaning of that story, we have a better chance of avoiding his situation.

Seeing the problem—the wind and the waves—is easy. Seeing Christ in the problem is much harder. Faith is not something that people have instantly. Faith grows by one’s personal experience, especially when one has experienced deliverance in the past.

The Earth is Being Shaken

Most Christians only know a small portion of God’s plan for the earth. They are bound to be shaken according to their level of ignorance, but even the shaking itself has a good purpose and outcome. Heb. 12:26-29 says,

²⁶ And His voice shook the earth then [at Sinai], but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” ²⁷ This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. ²⁸ Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; ²⁹ for our God is a consuming fire.

While the earth shakes, we are called to build. But we can build only if we are not among those being shaken. Those whose faith is strong and rooted in the New Covenant will not be shaken with others.

I recall a time in late January of 1995 when God led three of us to the top of Capital Hill overlooking Seattle, where we were to “read John 17 and see what I do.” We read this at 7pm, finishing at 7:05. We then decided to take a walk and see what God would do. Then suddenly we saw people running out of the buildings.

We asked what was going on, and they told us, “An earthquake! Didn’t you feel it?” Well, no, we did not.

Through this experience, God showed us that when He shakes the earth, in fulfillment of His word, we will not be affected negatively. We are assured of divine protection. We were reminded of Moses’ prayer in Psalm 91:5-10,

⁵ You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day; ⁶ of the pestilence [covid] that stalks in darkness, or of the destruction that lays waste at noon… ⁸ You will only look on with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, ⁹ for you have made the Lord, my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place. ¹⁰ No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent.

The time to know and believe this is before the shaking occurs. Once the shaking starts, it is too late to avoid fear. If you start building faith during the shaking, you will be able to avoid fear the next time you are shaken, but that is of little help in the present shaking.

Faith that is Tested

The key is to know God’s presence and to know that He is with you, leading and guiding you daily. Fear comes to those who are still unsure of God’s presence. This is why He often hides Himself. It is so that you can see the level of your own faith.

God does not test our faith in order that He might know your level of faith. He already knows. He tests our faith so that WE may know. If we react as the Israelites did in Ex. 17:7, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” then our faith needs an upgrade. We read in 1 Peter 1:7,

⁷ so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Faith that is untested is too weak to stand in the midst of the shaking that is coming. So rejoice that your faith has indeed been tested. You may need it soon.