The Revelation of Ahab and Jezebel

My wife and I and family moved to Arkansas in January 1983 just as Governor Clinton was becoming that state’s governor. In May, 1987, just before leaving, the Lord spoke to me, telling me that Governor Clinton was going to become the President of the United States. Since the candidates were just then lining up to run for office, I assumed for the moment that he would announce his candidacy. But instead he decided NOT to run for office then. President Bush, Sr. obtained that office for the next four years, and Clinton won in 1992.

Part of the revelation that I received was that Bill and Hillary Clinton would fulfill the pattern of King Ahab and Jezebel in the Bible. At first, I could see only that this would be a very immoral reign that would lead America into divine judgment. 1 Kings 21:25 says,

25 Surely there was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife incited him.

In the next few years as time passed, I realized that Ahab had also repented, and this had given the nation a reprieve. That is, the judgment had been postponed for a time. 1 Kings 21:29 says,

29 Do you see how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days, but I will bring the evil upon his house in his son’s days.

Ahab did not really repent, but he did humble himself. The prophet had confronted him for killing Naboth in order to steal his vineyard. The king humbled himself, but did not return the property to Naboth’s heirs. The next verse begins the next chapter—1 Kings 2:1, saying,

1 And three years passed without war between Aram [Syria] and Israel.

Then—after three years’ reprieve—the story continues, telling how Ahab was killed in battle with the Syrians, and judgment came upon the land of Israel.

When Clinton was elected President, we began to watch for the day that he would repent. His first term in office came and went, with no sign of repentance. But then came his trouble with Monica Lewinsky, and Clinton’s perjury. When Kenneth Star finally was ready to present his report to the Congress, President Clinton knew that he had no choice but to confess his infidelity on national television. He was very angry, but nonetheless, he humbled himself over national television on August 17, 1998.

Then I realized that the Scripture focused primarily upon King Ahab’s “humbling himself,” rather than upon a true repentance. To repent means to change, not merely to humble one’s self. I could see that President Clinton was forced to humble himself, but it was not really out of a contrite heart. He did so out of a heart of anger.

But a few weeks later, President Clinton appeared before the Congressional Prayer Breakfast in the East Wing of the White House and this time offered the Congressmen a more contrite apology. He even prayed from Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” This psalm was written by King David after his affair with Bathsheba. A prominent news anchorman announced that President Clinton had turned the East Wing of the White House into a confession booth! This Prayer Breakfast occurred on September 11, 1998.

It is doubtful that President Clinton had a sincere heart change in the sense of refraining from his past habits. But God gave our nation a three-year reprieve nonetheless. We continued three years without war.

Then the events of September 11, 2001 thrust America into a war that even today has no end in sight. Even President Bush has stated repeatedly that this “war on terror” will take many, many years. Essentially, he is saying it will be a perpetual war.

Phase One was an invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, the “arch-terrorist.” Phase Two was an invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein and confiscate his weapons of mass destruction (real or imagined). Then came talk about invading Iran or Syria next. Iran decided to play it safe and allow nuclear inspectors into their country. Libya followed suit. Then North Korea. This compliance reduced the immediate danger of future invasions. America seems to have prevailed. But only at the expense of their peaceful reputation in the eyes of the rest of the planet. Other nations no longer love America; they only fear her.

America needs to realize that regardless of the arguments for or against America’s foreign policy decisions, we are following the pattern found in 1 Kings 21 and 22. As with the situation with Ahab, we are seeing the aftermath of Clinton’s presidency, his wickedness as well as his humbling and semi-repentance. Nor can one merely blame Clinton, for it was the people of America who put him in office. In fact, it was the Christians in Arkansas who made him governor of that state and gave him the political base in which to move to the White House. Please don’t tell me it was the non-Christians who supported Clinton. We lived there and we saw it happen.

We moved to Memphis, Tennessee from November 1987 to January 2000, and then moved back to Arkansas. We were there when Governor Clinton ran for President in 1992. In the local public school, the teachers, in their attempt to promote a sense of participation in the democratic process, took polls of the children to see how many would vote for Clinton and how many for Bush. Our children were the only ones who would have voted against Clinton.

Now realize that children generally reflect the political views of their parents. Realize also that in our small town (less than 2,000 residents), there were 19 churches. Nearly everyone went to Church, and they all considered themselves to be Christians. That means that in the election, Governor Clinton received nearly every vote in town. Of course, he won Arkansas in the election. Who elected him in Arkansas? He would never have won that state if it had not been for the Christians who voted for him. I thought it was ironic that the first thing Clinton did was to allow homosexuals in the armed forces—and suddenly, no one in town supported him. Until the next election. By that time, they had long forgotten his transgression and happily voted for him again.

Christians are a strange bunch. They can be quite embarrassing.

 

The “911” Call for Grace

When President Clinton apologized at the Congressional Prayer Breakfast on September 11, 1998 for his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky, a friend pointed out that this was Clinton’s 911 call for Grace. In the Bible, every word has a numeric equivalent. In ancient times they did not use numbers like we do. They used their letters as numbers. The Romans used six of their letters as numbers (I = 1; V = 5; X = 10, etc.). The Hebrews and Greeks used ALL of their letters as numbers. The first ten simply represented numbers 1-10. The next ten letters, however, represented 20, 30, 40 . . . to 100. Then the next letters were used to write the higher numbers 200, 300, 400, until they ran out of letters. This is called “gematria.”

Anyway, in the Greek New Testament, the word for Grace is charis. It has a numeric value of 911, as we see here:

Chi      = 600

Alpha = 1

Rho     = 100

Iota      = 10

Sigma   = 200

Total   = 911

Thus, when Clinton repented on 9/11/98, we understood that this was his 911 call for Grace. It was interesting that three years later the news media noticed that the Twin Towers had been attacked on 9/11, the standard emergency telephone call in America. What they did not know is that we had been talking about the events of September 11 being “911” for three years before they had picked up on it.

The Crash of the Concorde in Paris

September 11, 2001 was the 414^th day from July 25, 2000. One of the main time cycles, of course, was the period of 414 days known to us as “cursed time.” (See my book, Secrets of Time for a full explanation of what this means.)

On July 25, 2000 the Concorde passenger jet crashed in Paris, France. On the same day the Middle East peace talks collapsed ever the issue of Jerusalem. These were the peace talks between Palestinian Chairman Yassir Arafat and Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, hosted by President Clinton.

We saw these events as signs of peace (“concord”) being taken from the earth. In other words, it indicated war was imminent. Even as the Concorde tried desperately to take off from the Paris airport before crashing to the ground, so also we saw peace trying desperately to “take off,” but ultimately it crashed to the ground. On the same day, Arafat and Barak went home with nothing in hand.

As we discussed these events and prayed about them, we discerned that we would probably see events unfold either 414 days later or (at the latest) 490 days later. We cannot take the time to explain these time cycles here. They are fully covered in my book, Secrets of Time. In long-term prophecy, these cycles are 414 years and 490 years, but in short-term prophecy, they are 414 days and 490 days.

As it turned out, 414 days later was September 11, 2001, the day the Twin Towers fell. It was the day America was thrust into war in the Middle East. And so the three-year cycle from 9/11/98 and the 414-day cycle from 7/25/00 both ended on the same day—9/11/01.

God Bless America

Never have so many people sung “God Bless America” as in the week following the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. This is good. Even non-Christians are now praying for God’s blessing. Even the New York Stock Exchange reopened on September 17 with this song. What God has done is to bring America to the place where a huge number of Americans—Christians and non-Christians alike—are praying for God’s blessing.

Most do not understand, however, how God blesses people, because they do not understand the biblical definition of “bless.” Acts 3:25 and 26 give us this definition:

25 Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. 26 Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to BLESS you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.

In other words, God has promised to bless all the families of the earth by turning them from their iniquities. The people still think that God’s blessing means that only good things will happen to them and that they will prosper and make a lot of money. Certainly, that is what the people at the New York Stock Exchange were thinking as they sang, “God Bless America.” But that type of blessing is only secondary. Prosperity is ultimately the RESULT of God’s primary blessing—which is to bring America to a place of repentance.

The good news is that God has virtually tricked everyone to pray a simple, but great prayer: “God bless America.” Unwittingly, they are asking God to show them how to repent, so that He will turn us from our iniquities. This is a very good sign, because it is the first step toward the genuine national revival that God has revealed will shortly come to pass.

How Should We React to the events of 911?

After the horror, shock, and grief have had their day, it is normal human nature for these to be replaced by anger, hatred, and the desire for revenge. This is because in our natural pride, we nearly always assume that we ourselves are totally innocent victims and that the perpetrators hate us without cause. We almost never engage in any serious introspection and certainly do not want to find out from the perpetrator what his reasons were in attacking us. It is always them that need to repent—never us.

And yet in the Bible we find that whenever evil happens to a nation or a city, God takes credit for doing it—and He tells us why He did it. It is always because Israel sinned. The Church may not believe this, and non-Christians would think it quite superstitious, but in Amos 3:6 God asks, “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord has not done it?” In other words, if evil happens to a city (like New York), we can either chalk it up to terrorists, or we can go to God and find out why He allowed such a thing to happen. We can either ask what the terrorists did wrong, or what WE did wrong. As long as we continue looking elsewhere for the wrong-doers, we will only sink deeper into the quagmire of unbelief and unrepentance. If we do not repent over the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001, then God will put more pressure upon us later.

Is it not better to repent now rather than later? More to the point, we need to find out where we went wrong, so that we know how to repent. The problem did not begin with President Clinton. It began quite some time ago. Ultimately, it began at or near the beginning of our nation’s founding when we rejected the divine law, thinking we had a better idea. We should have adopted the Bible as our Constitution and legal system—interpreted, of course, through the eyes of Jesus Christ, not through the Talmud or any modern Jewish rabbis.

All the wrong things that America has done stems from our rejection of the Scripture in some way. Our prison system is totally unbiblical, because we have substituted prisons for restitution. The result is ex-convicts, instead of forgiven sinners. And the victims are almost never recompensed for their losses. Our monetary system is based upon usury, which is clearly forbidden in the Bible. The result is a huge national and private debt that is now threatening the stability of the whole world. We refuse to use biblical farming principles, and so our nation’s health is being destroyed. These are just a few of the most basic things that ought to be standard fare in every Church—and yet these things are almost unknown today among Christians.

Another major reason for the attack on September 11, 2001 has been our foreign policy and relationship with the state called Israel. I suggest reading my book, The Struggle for the Birthright, to understand where America has gone wrong in that area. This is the most relevant issue to the attack on the Twin Towers. But it is too large a subject to get into here.

This attack against America has produced a new sense of patriotism. Normally, this is a very good thing. But there is a down side to this as well. It makes Americans more willing to get on the vengeance bandwagon and strike “the enemies of America,” rather than repent of our sins. Carnal people never suspect that they themselves might be the problem. They always assume the other guy is totally at fault. Since both sides always believe themselves to be in the right, the cycle of violence merely increases until everyone is dead. Vengeance with patriotic fervor is not the answer.

When we are attacked, the unbelievers see only the foreign enemy and react patriotically to defend their country. Christians usually react with a mixture of patriotism and righteous indignation against the ungodly who would dare attack our Christian nation. But most Christians have some awareness that our nation has flagrantly departed from God and the principles of the Kingdom of God. An attack, therefore, should come as no surprise.

As Christian overcomers, we put our faith and trust in God to protect us. When attacked, we know that we are to deal with God, not with the “bad guys” directly. If we are attacked, we need to go to God and ask why He allowed this to happen to us, believing that God alone is sovereign and has brought this judgment upon us.

Evil has indeed come to the city of New York. God has certainly used terrorists to issue a wake-up call to America. One cannot merely blame bad men for doing it, as if God were impotent in the affairs of this world. The fact is, God is sovereign and could have prevented it but chose not to do so. God has His reasons. We need to pray to find out those reasons.

Secondly, we would do well to understand the reasons of those who attacked us. What would make people willing to give up their own lives in suicide attacks? Why do they feel so strongly about this? Why do they hate us so much? Right or wrong, they all have their reasons. And we should not assume that we are so righteous, even if public relations firms have managed to make us look good in our own eyes. These are the two most relevant questions to ponder.

The Final War Has Begun

September 11, 2001 will be remembered as the day World War Three began. All of America’s government officials are recognizing the terror attack as "An Act of War." It served to unite Americans in support of a war against Afghanistan which we call by the ironic term, “Operation Infinite Justice.” (Does this mean it requires a never-ending war to do “justice”?) A more appropriate term would be “Operation Man’s Vengeance.” We are reacting according to the flesh just like men have always done. We never seem to look to Jesus and ask what He would do. Perhaps it is because both Christians and Jews are looking for an angry Messiah-General who is soon coming to wipe out all their enemies.

The bombing of the World Trade Center has plunged America into war just as surely as Pearl Harbor plunged us into the Second World War. In both cases, the attacks brought America together in patriotic fervor, with the general public demanding that our military go out there and hurt someone. Most do not care if innocent civilians are killed, because, after all, “someone” killed our innocent civilians.

If that is the nature of American patriotism today, it runs counter to basic Christian values. I refuse to join the cycle of violence and vengeance. I know the divine law too well to be trapped in that vicious cycle. All three major religions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity have their advocates of vengeance. In each case, even if their own Scriptures teach the opposite, many of their clergy interpret their Scriptures to mean that vengeance is justice. They say that vengeance is a good thing and even mandatory. The day of reckoning is soon coming, where all three religions will collapse under the weight of their own violent teachings.

Out of the rubble, God will build His Kingdom. He will not “rapture” believers out of the world, but send forth His Holy Spirit to fulfill the third great feast day—the Feast of Tabernacles. This will empower the overcomers to fill the face of the earth with the fruits of the Spirit that will replace the fruits of violence and vengeance. It will be a Kingdom whose foundations are built upon Peace. The bloody character of the old Jerusalem denounced by the prophets will be replaced by the peaceful nature of the New Jerusalem, the “City of Peace.”

“The Day of Slaughter, When the Towers Fall”

Isaiah 30:23-33 tells us that there will be a great revival in the end times, when the Holy Spirit will be poured out upon the earth like the rain. This “rain” will cause the earth to bring forth its increase—that is, it will cause the earth to bring forth the fruits of the Kingdom for which God has been laboring since the beginning. What was seen on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 was only the beginning. There is yet the feast of Tabernacles to be fulfilled, which will make Pentecost look like a mere sprinkling.

There is one sign that stands out in this passage of Isaiah. It is the sign of the coming “rain” of the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 30:23 says,

23 And on every lofty mountain and on every high hill there will be streams running with water on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.

I believe the twin towers falling is the sign that national revival is soon coming. The same chapter warns us, however, that we are to put our trust in God’s protection, rather than “horses” (i.e., armaments). We are told in chapter 30,

1 Woe to the rebellious children, declares the LORD, who execute a plan, but not Mine, and make an alliance, but not of My Spirit, in order to add sin to sin; 2 who proceed down to Egypt, without consulting Me, to take refuge in the safety of Pharaoh, and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt! 3 Therefore the safety of Pharaoh will be your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt, your humiliation.

We are told further in chapter 31,

1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, and rely on horses, and trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong, but they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD! 2 Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster, and does not retract His words, but will arise against the house of evildoers, and against the help of the workers of iniquity. 3 Now the Egyptians are men, and not God, and their horses are flesh and not spirit; so the LORD will stretch out His hand, and he who helps will stumble, and he who is helped will fall, and all of them will come to an end together.

This makes it very clear that the arm of flesh is not the answer. We are to trust in God for our defense. If our defense is breached, it is not because we did not have enough weapons or intelligence. It is because we have violated the divine law and have come under the curses of the law (Lev. 26; Deut. 28). The law itself instructs the kings:

16 Moreover, he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since the LORD has said to you, You shall never again return that way.

The divine law itself defines “returning to Egypt” in terms of multiplying horses. The horse was the army tank of the day. Those who multiplied horses were building their cavalry. They depended upon armaments, rather than upon God, for God said that if we obeyed His law, He would give us peace. Leviticus 26:3 and 6 tell us,

3 If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, so as to carry them out. . . 6 I shall also grant peace in the land, so that you may lie down with no one making you tremble.

This, then, is Isaiah’s advice to President Bush. If he is a Christian, as he himself claims, then let him act as if there is a God who actually is sovereign and knows what He is doing. Let the President put his trust in Jesus Christ. If he had done this, the world would have admired America, even as we received tremendous world sympathy after the fall of the Twin Towers. But we squandered that with our policy of vengeance and war, and now the whole world is against us except for the Israelis, whose violent policies we are imitating.

If trouble comes, it is because he has forsaken the divine law. The problem is not external enemies; the problem is our own disobedience. The solution is not to put our trust in horses (tanks); the solution is to put our trust in God and begin to be obedient to Him. The real problem, though, is that he has been taught the Bible by many lawless teachers. It is doubtful, then, that he has even read the divine law, or if he has read it, he has dismissed it as being discarded by Jesus. Isaiah 30:3 says that this war response will bring us into “shame” and “humiliation.”

Though we have seemed to win the battle of Afghanistan the battle of Iraq, do not expect to win this war in the long run, so long as we remain proud of our national defense and our superpower status. One of the curses for disobedience to the law is found in Deuteronomy 28:25,

25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them, but you shall flee seven ways before them, and you shall be an example of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

We should have dealt with God before we made any attempt to deal with Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, or any other perceived enemy. Yet we have relied upon our own arm of flesh for so long that God is going to show us how useless it is. As long as we have fleshly means to protect us, God will allow us to use them. Yet He will cause those efforts to fail. When our own fleshly efforts have failed, we will then turn to God as the last resort.

The Fall of Babylon

Revelation 18 speaks of Babylon as a sensuous woman with whom all the kings of the earth have committed fornication. This is symbolic language, of course, for the seduction of wealth and power by which the kings of the earth have been seduced and put into bondage.

8 For this reason in one day her plagues will come, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for the Lord God who judges her is strong. 9 And the kings of the earth, who committed acts of immorality and lived sensuously with her, will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning, 10 standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come. 11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargoes any more; 12 cargoes of gold and silver and precious stones and pearls and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet, and every kind of citron wood and every article of ivory and every article made from very costly wood and bronze and iron and marble, C and cinnamon and spice and incense and perfume and frankincense and wine and olive oil and fine flour and wheat and cattle and sheep, and cargoes of horses and chariots and slaves and human lives.

The list of Babylon’s merchandise goes from the most valued to the least valued. It begins with “cargoes of gold and silver” and ends with “slaves and human lives.” This “Babylon” is, of course, more than just a city. It is an entire world system of religion, politics, and economics based on the twin towers of greed and fear.

Greed causes the stock market to rise. Fear causes it to fall.

Greed is the motive behind most of the large Christian ministries who spend more time tricking people into parting with their money than they do in teaching the Word of God. Fear of God’s “wrath” is their other great motivator.

Babylon was symbolized by a tower in Genesis 11:4 when it was first built. It is again symbolized by a tower in modern times. That is why there are “twin towers.” It speaks of two towers of Babylon. The old city was a physical city; the modern “mystery” Babylon is a system, a way of life that covers the whole earth. Both have been built upon the principle of rebellion against God. Even as ancient Babylon was the antithesis of Jerusalem, so also is Mystery Babylon the antithesis of the New Jerusalem.

The destruction and burning of the twin towers in New York City is an outward sign of a spiritual war between two cities in which Babylon is the ultimate loser. God destroyed the work of the first tower of Babel by causing confusion to come upon them. But this second work of rebellion God intends to destroy and cast into the sea like a great burning mountain. Revelation 18:21 says,

21 And a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, Thus will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence, and will not be found any longer.

God’s purpose in this is not simply to destroy, but to replace it with the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the New Jerusalem, built upon the divine law. How He accomplishes this and according to what time frame we leave to His wisdom.The New Testament Greek word, kurios