A little more than thirty-five years ago, I was the treasurer of the St. Edmond’s high school athletic boosters’ club and made an error, causing a financial problem in the boosters’ checking account. I prayed and asked the Lord for His help before calling the bank.
I phoned and explained the problem to a bank officer. She quickly told me the error would be handled and the funds restored into the checking account. I was so excited by how easily it worked out.
“Oh Lord, You care about small things, too,” I said aloud after hanging up.
“I care about all things,” said an audible voice.
I jumped off the stool and bowed down on the kitchen’s tile floor. Tears streamed down my face. I shook, wondering what would happen to me because the voice seemed so loud and so holy. I stayed in that position of reverence for several minutes.
This was the only time I have heard the audible voice of God in my thirty-nine years of walking with Him. Yet, I am still amazed at His response to my simple prayer. Maybe God wants to be invited into every part of our lives, even the mundane and the ordinary parts..
Now, I want to contrast the above situation with a recent problem that I had concerning a bad tire on the car I drove for U*B*E*R share rides. The problem nagged at me in the middle of the night. I eventually went downstairs an hour earlier than my usual waking time to seek the presence of the Lord.
“Lord, You are my refuge and my fortress; in You, I trust. So, help me in this situation,” I cried out to the Lord.
After waiting on the Lord, I felt the Holy Spirit speak Jeremiah 12:5 to my heart: “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?”
The Lord rebuked me!
He let me know that if I couldn’t trust Him with my life’s issues in today’s America, how would I be able to trust Him when major calamities hit our nation in the near future. Ouch!
And yet, His rebuke settled my heart. I was freed from my doubts and fears.
“Prayer is not about getting God to agree with our answers for our problems, but it’s about positioning us to stand with God and His answers for our circumstances,” said Tyler Staton, the head of the 24/7 Prayer Movement in America.
How can these two contrasting prayers prepare us for prayers of healing the sick and raising the dead?
Last Friday, one of my first U*B*E*R riders in Fayetteville, Arkansas, was a twenty-two year-old gal from Texas. She mentioned that she was a senior at the University of Arkansas, studying to be an English literature teacher in secondary education.
Our conversation continued until I dropped her off near her place of work in campus town. I headed off to my next pickup who happened to be a journalism major.
Before the young man stepped out of the car at his drop-off site, he said, “One of your riders left a headset here in the backseat.” He handed me the headset.
“That’s great!” I proclaimed, knowing the headset belonged to the young gal because she mentioned how she liked to listen to audio books.
I usually tell riders before they step out of my car to check whether they have their keys, cell phone, wallet or whatever else because if they leave anything behind, my wife will sell it on eBay. They always laugh but they do take the time to check before shutting the door.
Sadly, I had not said anything to the young gal.
That Friday turned out to be busy for me with rides to Northwest Arkansas Airport, Springdale and other surrounding areas. I received no messages from U*B*E*R saying the young gal had contacted the company about her lost headset. But I did take the time to check out the value of the headset which was $159 on Amazon and almost $300 on other sites.
At the end of the day, I felt the Holy Spirit whispering to my heart that I needed to drop off the headset to the gal at her place of work. Yes Lord, I thought. I headed toward her place of work.
Now, to set the scene: it’s Friday afternoon. One day before the big Texas versus Arkansas football rivalry game in Fayetteville. The gal’s place of work is a favorite college bar and grill in the midst of other college watering holes in the middle of campus town. And the University of Arkansas – like most universities – lacks enough parking spots by about 75% on most days.
I drove around the gal’s place of work and, of course, there were no parking spots and traffic everywhere was looking for non-existing parking places. No hope, except for a miracle.
Driving down a one-way street, I prayed: “Lord, You are going to have to open up a parking spot for me or I’m going to have to wait till Monday to return the headset to her.”
Almost instantly, a car up ahead pulled away from the curb. I pulled into the space. Next, I walked three hundred feet to the bar and grill.
The place was packed with people standing in line to be seated. I passed by them and headed toward the bar where an older man was filling a pitcher with draft beer. I explained to him my dilemma of the headset and the waitress whose name I didn’t remember. He looked at me like I was an idiot because of how busy he was and the masses of people standing all around us at the bar.
Then it happened. The young gal walked up to pick up a drink order.
“Here she is now,” I said to the man.
The gal looked at me and saw the headset I held up for her to see.
“You’ve made my day when you showed up with my headset. Thank you. Thank you,” she said and walked off with the headset in one hand and a drinks tray in the other.
I left and walked back to my car.
How could a seemingly insignificant prayer like asking for a parking place prepare us for prayers of healing the sick and raising the dead?
For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective… (Hebrews 4:12a AMP)
The Bible contains 1,817 predictive prophecies. To date, approximately one half of them have been fulfilled. The remaining ones are expected to be fulfilled during the End-Times. Given God’s omniscience, He will always be 100% accurate.
Now, think about an Isaiah or Daniel or Zechariah or another prophet speaking an End-Times prophecy over 2,000 years ago. The words were spoken and written down for future reference. Yet, these are not just dead words penned on a scroll, but are living, powerful time-bombs awaiting their appointed times to explode forth in fulfilment.
Bless the Lord, you His angels, mighty in strength, who perform His word, obeying the voice of His word. (Psalm 103:20 NASB)
Who makes sure the Bible’s prophecies are fulfilled at the exact time specified by the Lord?
I believe God’s angels are assigned this task. Somehow, these chosen angels can hear the DNA guidelines within the prophetic words and know when the prophecies need to be fulfilled.
In 2 Kings 19:32-34, Isaiah spoke a powerful prophecy to King Hezekiah of Judah that the Assyrians would not come into Jerusalem or even shoot one arrow at the city and that the Assyrian army would retreat back to Assyria.
These are only a few examples of angels carrying out God’s prophetic words.
And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. (2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 NASB)
Now, don’t go thinking that Michael uses a metal sword or a spear to restrain Satan from pushing his Antichrist agenda ahead of time. No, not at all! Michael uses the prophetic words of the Bible as his sword. And he probably tosses in a few, “The Lord rebuke you!” in Satan’s direction every so often.
Okay, I will hang my hat on Michael as the restrainer.
We have no clue what Satan did at first when he and his horde of angels were cast out of God’s third heaven. My guess is that the Devil’s hatred for God and His works caused him to continuously seethe at how God had treated him unfairly. After all, the evil one felt he could have been just like God.
Satan and his horde became a government in exile. They had no authority and no subjects to rule over.
Let’s fast forward to the first man: Adam.
God formed a new kingdom government on earth with His creation of man, giving dominion over all the earth to man, through Adam. God was the King, the King’s angelic spiritual government was set in place in the second heaven, and His flesh and blood ambassador on earth was Adam.
Through Satan’s coup d’état and by default, Adam and all future subjects on earth, were placed under the reign and authority of Satan and his angelic government.
Spiritual warfare has been fought between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness since the Garden of Eden. The King desires to reclaim His subjects under His righteous reign while Satan hopes to continue his government of enslavement, depravity, and sin. The battles still rages today.
For us believers, we are dual subjects while we live on earth, in that, we are royal sons of the King, but still live in a world ruled by Satan. Our dual citizenship poses daily problems for us.
Let’s check out our spiritual adversary: Satan. Scripture gives us a little insight about the evil one and a few other conclusions can be drawn through biblical reasoning.
Scripture doesn’t state when God actually created Satan, but I believe we can deduce that Satan and the other angels were created before the end of the fourth day or Genesis 1:16. (Maybe even as early as the first day.) Why? Because His angels perform God’s word and the angels rejoiced when the foundations of the earth were laid. They may even have been the ones who helped to determine its dimensions.
Where did all of Satan’s fellow demons come from? My answer will seem a little roundabout, but bear with me, okay?
Prophecies in Scripture may have an early and a later fulfillment to them. Usually, the early fulfillment is a partial one whereas the later one is a complete one.
For example, Jesus referred to John the Baptist as the “Elijah who is to come.” His words referred to the prophecy in Malachi 4:5. Yet, John did not fulfill all the words of the Malachi prophecy. We have to wait until the time just before Jesus returns to earth for the complete fulfillment.
Another example, Jesus answered the disciples’ questions about when things would happen by prophesying in Matthew 24: 4-31. The disciples would have thought Jesus was referring to the destruction of the Temple. Yet, when Roman soldiers destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D., not all of the scriptures were fulfilled. The complete fulfillment will occur during the tribulation.
And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So, the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. (Revelations 12:7-9)
If you read Revelations Chapter 11 and all of Chapter 12, the only conclusion you can reach is that this will happen during the tribulation. But I believe an early fulfillment of this prophecy happened when Satan and a third of God’s angels rebelled against God and were cast out of God’s third heaven. I believe these angels then became Satan’s demonic hierarchy in his kingdom of darkness.
I watched various students crisscrossing the Campanile Esplanade on their way to classes. They looked normal, wearing typical college apparel. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My spiritual eyes then kicked in, and what appeared normal in the natural realm was not so normal in the spiritual one.
Have you ever seen pictures of a flying dinosaur known as a pterodactyl? It has a long, slender head with a mouth of sharp teeth, scaly-like body, web-like wings, and talons for feet. This sort of resembles the creatures I saw, sitting on the shoulders of almost every student walking below me. Each creature was the size of a large crow and had wolf hair on its body and a slender rat’s tail. They constantly whispered into the ears of students while holding a wing over the students’ other ears. The creatures also defecated and vomited on the students so that each person dripped with slop and sewage. It was ghastly and I yearned to warn the students.
“Follow those two over there,” said the angel, pointing toward two guys.
I focused on the two students. They continued talking to each other as they walked into a free speech area where a street evangelist preached the gospel of the kingdom of God. Both stopped and listened. I watched the pterodactyl-like creatures use their beaks to snatch the seeds of the gospel out of the twosome’s hearts with swift surgeon-like precision. The two students walked away after a few minutes, none the better for their experiences.
I wanted to shout and warn everyone. Someone needed to do it. Why not me?
The angel touched my shoulder again with his hand. I turned toward him.
“Now, it’s time for your spiritual ears to be opened.”
He reached up and touched both of my ears with his hands.
Wouldn’t you think it would be quiet in the spiritual realm over the University of California, Berkeley? Well, it is not. There is constant clamor, reverberating throughout the whole atmosphere, most of which comes from the ruling principality. But what really shocked me was the demonic principality’s words mirrored the liberal attitudes on the campus, from the deans down to the professors, and then, to the students. The religious principality constantly spewed out proclamations like:
“All white Americans are racists… All wars are immoral and wrong… Homosexuality is not a sin… Pro-choice is a woman’s right… Same-sex marriage is morally acceptable…Traditional Christianity is irrelevant, mean, hateful, judgmental, and dogmatic…Jesus never said anything about homosexuality…Jesus is the Way which is open to other ways, such as Hare Krishna, Buddha, and Mohammad…God is a God of love and not judgment… Satan and demons are fictional beings, thought up by fundamentalist nuts…The Bible contains no more authority than the Koran, Buddhist sutras, Veda, and other spiritual writings…Creating social justice is the main emphasis of the gospel…Global warming is a Christian stewardship concern…”
I stood there with my mouth open, drool running down my chin.
“Hey, many of these statements I agree with,” I muttered aloud, not realizing I had done so.
“And that’s why you are deceived.”
“Deceived? Me?”
“Yes, you and most liberal Christians who believe such garbage.”
“But, but –”
“Not only are you deceived, but your faith is dead when it agrees with Satan’s agenda. He’s always a liar, even when his words sound like truth. Your faith, in order to have life, must be based on what the Lord has stated in Scripture and is presently saying to His church.”
I kept quiet as his words ripped my theology apart.
He paused for a beat or two.
“Not only is this IOU collection day, but it is your deliverance day,” he said in an authoritative voice. “Your past deception, your dead faith, and your deliverance from all of it will give you an understanding of the spiritual battles taking place on America’s college campuses, beginning with the University of California, Berkeley.”
His eyes locked on mine.
“But how –” I stopped myself. How could I complain when I did not know what I was talking about?
The angel almost grinned.
“Now, you’re starting to learn.”
He pointed down again.
“Look.”
There just below us, was a student resembling a fluorescent light bulb walking across the esplanade. She lit up the whole area around her as she hurried on her way. Unlike the others, she did not have a creature sitting on her shoulder, but instead, one hovered around her head, trying to alight on her, but for some reason, the creature could not land. Deep frustration etched a gully in the creature’s face.
“Listen,” said the angel.
My ears adjusted themselves to only listening to the girl. Her footsteps and the movement of her arms came through loud and clear, but also something else.
“Dee, dee, bah, bah, hooka mah hundae,” she whispered over and over.
She spoke in tongues as she walked along.
“Your message to Christians on college campuses is very simple,” said the angel. “It’s the same one Paul gave to the believers in Ephesus when he said, ‘Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, with all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.” Then he added, “In case you have forgotten, these scriptures are located in Ephesians 6: 17-18.”
The dome of the San Francisco City Hall appeared directly ahead of us. It looked like we would crash into it. But before I could scream aloud, we passed through it and landed in the Supervisors’ meeting chamber on the second floor. A wooden bench somehow telescoped out of the wall, up near the ceiling, which he motioned for us to sit down on it.
The eleven supervisors sat in leather swivel-chairs down below us. Each had a laptop computer on the desk in front of them. They talked and carried on. It was the weekly San Francisco Supervisors’ meeting.
The angel turned toward me. His robe whispered softly as he pivoted around.
“Open your eyes and see,” he said with a quiet power filled with heavenly authority.
I looked down again. This time my spiritual eyes opened.
There I saw grotesque creatures sitting on the right shoulder of each of the eleven supervisors. The chimpanzee-size beings had a mixture of what looked like reptile, dragon, and wolf-like body parts with stubby tails, talons for feet, scale-covered wings, web-like hands, and misshapen faces which protruded into long snouts and were filled with sharp teeth. They resembled dingy, gray gargoyles.
Each creature held its right wing over their assigned supervisors’ eyes. Their right hands were curled into a megaphone shape so they could speak directly into the supervisors’ ears. Their left hands looped behind the supervisors’ heads and covered their left ears.
The creatures never rested. When they were not speaking into ears, they looked up, around and at each other, their heads constantly moved about, their eyes searching to and fro. They seemed to be driven by a deep dread, almost as if a cruel slave master’s power instilled a fear in them about possible future punishments.
What is this? I thought. Why am I here?
“Today is show and tell day, preparing you for your first assignment next week,” said the angel.
“First assignment, next week?”
“Quiet, I’m the teacher. You’re the student. Understand?” he whispered a stinging rebuke at me.
His voice contained no anger and love cushioned the blow, but yet, I felt the power behind the rebuke. I shuddered and nodded.
“Earlier today, you had a vision. In it, you saw yourself being used as a sword by the Lord Jesus against a brass gate. The brass gate you saw was a gate of Hell over this city. It must be attacked so the truth from heaven can be heard in San Francisco. You are His chosen weapon for the undertaking.”
I bit my tongue, but my brain continued to be plugged in. I wondered if His weapons ever suffered pain, especially with the vigorous way the Lord swung the sword against the gate. O Lord, will it hurt? I thought.
He paused a beat before continuing.
“Your spiritual eyes have only been dialed up two notches, but that’s more than enough for you to get an idea of what’s happening in the Supervisors’ meeting room,” he said. “As you can see, demons sit on the supervisors’ shoulders, blocking information that is contrary to Satan’s agenda. At the same time, evil ideas are constantly spoken into the supervisors’ ears.”
He pointed a finger at me.
“Remember: our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the hordes of Satan.”
The creature’s appearance alternated between looking like a beautiful angel dressed in white and that of a gigantic monster version of the dingy, gray gargoyles, sitting on the supervisors’ shoulders. Like the smaller demons, the creature never rested. It caused fear in the hierarchy of demons below it and, at the same time, seemed fearful of its own cruel masters in the ranks above it.
The words I saw, streaming through the ceiling like hologram ticker tapes, emanated from this creature. I saw additional word streams coming out of the creature’s mouth, heading toward Sacramento, Hollywood, Washington, D. C., New York City, newspapers, television networks, movie studios, publishers, corporations, and thousands of other places.
The angel interrupted my thoughts.
“What you are seeing is the spirit of depravity. It is a ruling principality over San Francisco and guards a gate of Hell over the city. This spirit is so powerful that its wickedness is spread throughout the nation.
“The reason the spirit switches back and forth between appearances is it is creating confusion by this maneuver in the minds of people, whereby good is called evil and evil good.”
“I had a vision that showed a black river flowing out of America’s inner cities, filled with black apostles and prophets. Their moralcharacters were at a level never before witnessed in America.
“No longer would believers have to gaze back at John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, D. L. Moody, Billy Graham or whomever for examples of godly men because these black apostles and prophets would raise the bar of godliness to a level approaching the character of Jesus… This is the generation of men that America has been longing to see. (Excerpt from Chapter 13 of A Black River)
God is never late, but He sure misses lots of opportunities to be early. This is especially true for Black Americans who have suffered through four hundred years of oppression and discrimination while chasing the American dream. The years have all merged themselves together into long days of weary hopelessness.
But now at last, hope arises. The same God who looked upon Israel’s captivity in Egypt, is looking down on the Black Americans living in our nation’s inner cities and is preparing to act.
How? What? Why?
A Black River is one of the most important books published in 2021, especially for those believers hungering for revival.
Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad. (Proverbs 12:25 NKJ)
The foundation for anxiety and depression is fear.
Now, most Christians don’t have to be reminded that it’s wrong to be fearful because we have heard it over and over again. Yet, in our brokenness and our frailty, we fall short of trusting the Lord in all of our circumstances.
The “what if this happens or that happens, then what” scenarios continue to play over and over in our minds and drown out our trust in the Lord. Right?
The Apostle Paul underlined our struggles when he wrote:
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24)
Many of us have memorized Romans 8:1, but how can we really walk in the truth of not allowing condemnation to derail our lives?
Yes, the Bible exhorts us to pray and study the word. But let’s be honest, this advice fails to move most of us, which brings us back to Paul’s question: “who will deliver us?”
If we’re thinking the answer is going to a church on Sunday, sitting in a pew with 300, 600, 1000 or 8000 other believers, listening to a sermon-lecture and a few prayers, and returning week after week for more of the same, then why aren’t we all delivered from our fear, anxiety and depression as yet?
The meetings are small in size and open to all. Everyone is allowed to share what’s on his heart. Success stories – even small successes – are celebrated as victories. There are intense discussions. Each member is paired up with a mentor who helps them through any struggles.
HELLO!
Well, my brothers and sisters, let’s summarize. When you meet together, one will sing, another will teach, another will tell some special revelation God has given, one will speak in tongues, and another will interpret what is said. But everything that is done must strengthen all of you. (1 Corinthians 14:26 NLT)
Alcoholic Anonymous modeled its meetings after the early home churches. And it works!
Thus, I believe the only way for us to overcome our fear, anxiety and depression is to have small home groups (or home churches) with open formats, allowing the Holy Spirit to move in our midst. Members can pray and use their spiritual gifts to help set others free.
The reason I use a bold font to emphasize “with open formats” is that many churches have home groups, but have rigid formats that they follow. This won’t work!
Why is this so important?
I believe America is about to enter into a period of extreme tribulation and confusion that has never been experienced before in our nation’s history. The number of people who suffer from fear, anxiety and depression will multiply off the charts almost over night.
Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame. (Genesis 2:25)
So far still so good.
The Bible doesn’t exactly say how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden before the fall occurred in Genesis Chapter 3, but we are told that Adam was 130 years old when Seth was born. This third child was born after Cain had killed Abel.
My guess is that Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden for approximately one hundred years without disobeying God’s one command to them –
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
Maybe Adam and Eve walked by the forbidden tree once a day for one hundred years. That would be 36,500 times. If Adam and Eve were like me, they’d be at least curious about how the forbidden fruit tasted. And 36,500 times of not eating or touching the fruit probably primed them for the serpent’s temptation when he said,
“You won’t die! God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5)
Eve listened to the serpent and then ate the forbidden fruit and gave some to Adam who also ate it.
What happened next?
At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees. Then the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” (Genesis 3:7-8)
Adam and Eve’s disobedience released two stumbling blocks upon mankind which help to foster fear, anxiety and depression: hiding from God and fear. We are still struggling with these issues today.
Larry Who 