Jan 05, 2016

The Laodicea church era ended on May 30, 1993. This was Pentecost of that year, forty Jubilees after the fulfillment of Pentecost in Acts 2:1.

King Saul reigned forty years, having been crowned king on the day of “wheat harvest,” or Pentecost (1 Samuel 12:17). He was a prophetic type of the church in the Pentecostal Age from 33 to 1993 A.D. (40 x 49 years). The time of the seven churches subdivide the years of Saul’s reign on a prophetic level. For this reason, we say that “Saul” died on May 30, 1993.

The question remains, then, what has happened since 1993?

We know that David replaced Saul as king, but his authority came to him incrementally. 2 Samuel 5:4, 5 tells us,

⁴ David was thirty years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years. ⁵ At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty-three years over all Israel and Judah.

We took note of this in 1993, understanding that the overcomers (i.e., the “David” company) had received partial authority and would have to wait for 7½ years to receive full spiritual authority for the Tabernacles age to come. Hence, full authority was granted on November 30, 2000.

How did this take place? What signs confirmed this view? The stories are written in my book, The Wars of the Lord, and they are too long to include here. The important thing is to understand that the transfer of authority from Pentecost to Tabernacles and from the church to the overcomers started in 1993 and completed in 2000.

The Call to Arms

After the initial transfer of authority in May of 1993, the word of the Lord came to me to issue a “call to arms” and to engage in spiritual warfare against Mystery Babylon. Authority is not given just to enjoy a high position. Authority has purpose. In this case the purpose was to take the lead in ending the captivity.

Prior to 1993, the church had been God’s biblical “judge” that was called to bring forth the fruits of the Kingdom. As we have seen, the church failed in its calling, and because it followed Saul’s example of rebellion (1 Samuel 15:23), God eventually put the Laodicea church into captivity to Mystery Babylon. At the end of this captivity, the calling as God’s judge to deliver the church was passed to the overcomers, who were being raised up under the (early) anointing of the feast of Tabernacles for the age to come.

Hence, God raised up an army of spiritual warriors in 1993, who were called to bring Babylon to account before the divine court. As a group, we appealed to the divine court on the grounds that Babylon had reached the end of its divine mandate to rule the world. We asked the Judge to give authority to the overcomers (“the saints of the Most High” in Daniel 7:22, 27).

We called this the Jubilee Prayer Campaign, which was held November 21-29, 1993. During the months of preparation, I thought we would be entering a pitched battle on a spiritual battlefield. However, during the prayer campaign, I realized that this was a court battle. So the revelation of the divine court began to emerge. We came to see that we must first win the court battle in order to receive divine authority to enforce God’s decrees by spiritual warfare on a battlefield.

The Long War

We received a favorable verdict (“grace”) from the Judge. However, we then realized that because Babylon was a walled city, we were purchasing urban property by the blood of Jesus Christ. Hence, the law in Leviticus 25:29, 30 applied,

²⁹ Likewise, if a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, then his redemption right remains valid until a full year from its sale; his right of redemption lasts a full year. ³⁰ But if it is not bought back for him within the space of a full year, then the house passes permanently to its purchaser throughout his generations; it does not revert in the jubilee.

So we understood that we would have to wait a full year (November 29, 1993 to November 29, 1994) before we would be able to do anything with the property we had purchased. This one-year cycle also overlaid with the “twelve months” in Daniel 4:29, between the time of the divine verdict against the king of Babylon and its fulfillment. This was part of the story of the great “tree” of Babylon that was to be defoliated and chopped down (Daniel 4:14, 15).

I explained this further in The Wars of the Lord, chapter 12. So at the end of twelve months, on November 29, 1994, Washington was “de-Foley-ated” when House Speaker Tom Foley resigned from Congress after giving a speech boasting about his accomplishments (Daniel 4:30).

This one-year delay (in regard to redemption rights) meant that the war against Babylon would be phased in over a period of a year from 1993-1994.

Being authorized, and armed with His decree, we engaged in spiritual warfare for the next thirteen years (1993/4-2006/7) to overthrow Mystery Babylon. Even before the start of this warfare, God had revealed that the pattern was based on Joshua’s battle against Jericho, where he marched around the city thirteen times (Joshua 6:3, 4). In our case against Mystery Babylon, we were to “march” around the city for thirteen years.

Our authority was still partial for the first seven years, but it was sufficient to begin the work. However, to finish such a work would require full authority, which came on November 30, 2000. Once the overcomers were given full authority, they were able to complete the overthrow of Babylon. The final decree against Babylon came on the first day of Tabernacles, October 7, 2006. A group of about thirty of us gathered in Babylon, New York to bear witness to this decree.

We then held a conference in Reading, Pennsylvania the following week, where I explained to the people that we expected to see the economic system of Babylon collapse within a year. This collapse, of course, began in the summer of 2007 with the subprime mortgage crisis, which then collapsed the big banks in September of 2008.

The Final Transfer of Authority

The transfer of authority from the church to the overcomers began with the death of “Saul” in 1993 and ended fully after 7½ years on November 30, 2000. As I said earlier, it required full authority to complete the work of setting the world free from the rule of Mystery Babylon. But this work of overthrowing Babylon was not completed until the end of 2014, at which time the beast systems of Babylon reached the end of their divine mandate to rule the earth.

Only then did we see the fulfillment of Daniel 7:22, where “judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the Highest One, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom.” As I explained in greater detail in my books on Daniel, Babylon’s mandate was for a set period of “seven times” (7 x 360 years). This would have ended in 1914 at the end of the Philadelphia church era, except that the third “beast” (Grecian empire) had been deprived of its final century of rule from 163-63 B.C. after Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the temple in Jerusalem.

Hence, that missing century had to be added to the end of the time allotted to these “beast” nations. This means that the time of the beasts of Babylon did not end until 2014.

So there were actually two or three transfers of authority in recent years. The first was a partial transfer of authority from the church to the overcomers (or from Pentecost to Tabernacles) in 1993. The second was the completion of this transfer in 2000, according to the pattern of King David, who was crowned king over all Israel after 7½ years. These two transfers of authority made it possible for the overcomers to take the authority away from Mystery Babylon in order to set the whole world free.

The precise date for this final transfer of authority occurred on the eight day of Tabernacles, October 16, 2014. However, we were then reminded of the law of redemption rights, and realized that once again we would have to be patient until the end of 2015. Even so, we knew that the timing of God is perfect, because it took 21 years for this process to be completed (1993/94 to 2014/15). It correlated with Daniel’s 21-day fast (Daniel 10:2) during the spiritual warfare that was being done in his time.

This time of court cases and warfare are now finished, setting us up for the events of 2016, the Year of the Wind. We believe that 2016 will see the wind of God begin to blow against the economic debt-money system that Babylon established. God has raised up “the kings from the east” (Revelation 16:12) to overthrow Babylon, even as He raised up King Cyrus of Persia and King Darius of Media in the days of Daniel. We now have new “kings” coming from China and Russia. God has raised them up as His servants (Isaiah 44:28, 45:1) to execute His decrees and set us free from Mystery Babylon.

While most of the church misunderstands the divine purpose for these “kings,” history shows that these modern “kings” are fulfilling the same role and purpose that Cyrus and Darius fulfilled in the overthrow of the original city of Babylon. Cyrus was literally called a “messiah” in Isaiah 45:1, and Darius reorganized the kingdom into 120 “satraps” (or provinces). He also put Daniel in charge as the kingdom’s top commissioner (Daniel 6:2, 3).

Hence, we see that God has answered the prayers of the overcomers by raising up China and Russia as His agents to overthrow the old Babylonian order. Those who believe that God has indeed given a favorable ruling to the overcomers will have faith to know that God is not using China and Russia to destroy us, but to set us free. In fact, this is the outworking of our Jubilee Prayer Campaign. It is to give the world a Jubilee, cancel all debts, and set them free during the Tabernacles Age that will last a thousand years.

Those who identify with Mystery Babylon may have reason to fear, because they have attached themselves to the world’s system. The church’s misunderstanding of prophecy tends to generate fear in the church as well. Certainly, the rulers of Babylon are fearful, for they know that their time is short, and yet most of them refuse to repent. But those who identify with the Kingdom of God have reason to rejoice. In Luke 21:28, after prophesying about the end of the age, Jesus says to His followers,

²⁸ But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.

I conclude, then, with a word from Christ that was given to me through a friend in 1982 during the difficult time at the start of my second life: “Walk always in faith, never in fear.”

This is part 36 of a series titled "Studies in the Book of Revelation." To view all parts, click the link below.

Studies in the Book of Revelation