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Below is Part 2 of Jane Hamon's prophetic word for 2016: "A Year Heaven Partners with Earth in a New Way". To read Part 1 click here.
Leviathan in My Dream
The next scene in my dream (continuing with the Light Horsemen) I saw was that together these four horsemen, with their arms linked, had hit a golf ball on a course (remember, this was a dream). I didn't actually see them hit it...how could four individuals hit a ball together? Why a golf course? The only thing I thought of was the Scripture where Paul says "I have finished my course." As funny as this seems, I do believe the context of the dream was about the Church finishing her course well in this next season.
The golf ball landed a few feet from a giant crocodile. The angelic team was in a stand-off waiting...waiting for something to happen....for the crocodile to move so that they could play the next shot. But the game was delayed because the crocodile refused to move. These four powerful horsemen were stalemated because of the intimidating and dangerous nature of the crocodile. Something needed to happen to change this.
I knew the angels were waiting on the people of God to engage in the battle and appeal to Heaven, which would release them to move forward and deal with resistance. I knew this crocodile represented the spirit of Leviathan, spoken of in Job 41, which is being stirred to resist awakening and revival, to stagnate and stalemate the Church. (Photo via Pixabay)
I feel we will see Leviathan resisting awakening on every hand. Churches will resist awakening, most media will ridicule it, the government will even try to stop it. But God will have those who know how to Appeal to Heaven to bring a momentum shift!
If the reader is unfamiliar with the current Appeal to Heaven movement I encourage you to read Dutch Sheet's book by this title and to research America's first flag. Our first flag was white with a picture of a pine tree in the middle with the words "Appeal to Heaven" at the top. These words were taken from writing by a British philosopher and clergyman, John Locke, who basically said that if you have not received justice in the courts of men, if you are facing impossible odds, when all hope of victory is lost, the only option is to appeal to Heaven.
Dutch Sheets tells the full story of how, through a dream and other revelations God showed him, He wanted to reveal himself as El Olam, the everlasting God who keeps covenant from generation to generation. God is reminding us of previous covenants made for our nation and how He wants us to pull them forward into today. Really, you can see the concept of the Vav, connecting past to present and present to future...Heaven and earth working together to restore covenant over a nation.
The Hebrew word Leviathan actually means "to mourn." The enemy's strategy has been to get the Church into a place of mourning over things that have gone against us and immobilize us with a sense of fatalism or hopelessness. He is called the King of the children of pride. He is arrogant, brings crooked communications, strife and division, prayerlessness, fear, apathy and passivity due to an intimidation factor.
But again, the word for reversal, haphak, is the one used when Scripture says, "I will turn your mourning into dancing...I will turn your sorrow to joy...I will turn the curse to a blessing for you because I love you, says the Lord." We must shake ourselves from grief and mourning and rejoice because God is taking everything meant for our evil and turning it for our good!(Photo by Linda Harris-Iorio "Dance of the Bride" via elijahshopper.com)
Job 41:1 asks, "Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook?" Remember the Vav? It is a hook. Perhaps man cannot defeat Leviathan, but clearly God can.If we will just show up in this spiritual confrontation with Leviathan, being careful to recognize we do not battle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, if we will show up, God will delight in showing off His superior powers to bring about Leviathan's defeat!
One more interesting thing that ties Leviathan in this dream to the current Appeal to Heaven Movement is something shared with me by Dr. Don Lynch, from Freedom House in Jacksonville, FL. He told us that when the Native Americans faced an alligator, clearly a leviathan type, their arrows and spears could not penetrate its hide, so they would cut down a small pine tree (as in the pine tree on the Appeal to Heaven flag). They would sharpen the trunk into a sharp point and remove most of the branches, leaving only a few for a handle. Then when the alligator opened its mouth they would ram the spear clear down its throat, killing it instantly.
I believe we will see Leviathan open its mouth wide this next year...through the political spirit, through the media, even through some in the Church, but that will be the very opportunity to Appeal to Heaven to see a turn around victory. The spear is our Vav that will cause Heaven and earth to connect to see the plans of the enemy defeated!
In my dream, there was actually a big party waiting at the end of the course but the party was delayed because the final holes couldn't continue until something happened by the Church that mobilized the angels. I got the sense this crowd was the great cloud of witnesses yelling, "Come on! Finish it! Finish well!"
I didn't see this in the dream, but knew that the angels were waiting on the Church to rise up and press the battle to the full – willing to sacrifice and work to see things finished, willing to find solutions to difficult societal issues, and willing to bring an Appeal to Heaven and overcome against impossible odds. (Photo by Mike De Lorenzo "Jesus' Return on the White Horse" via elijahshopper.com)
Appeal For Your House and Your Land!
A few verses I have meditated on in regards to how we partner with Heaven in making an appeal:
Job 5:8-11, "But if I were you, I would appeal to God; I would lay my cause before Him. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted. He provides rain for the earth; He sends water on the countryside. The lowly He sets on high, and those who mourn are lifted to safety."
2 Kings 8:3-6, It came to pass, at the end of seven years, that the woman returned from the land of the Philistines; and she went to make an appeal to the king for her house and for her land. Then the king talked with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, saying, "Tell me, please, all the great things Elisha has done." Now it happened, as he was telling the king how he had restored the dead to life, that there was the woman whose son he had restored to life, appealing to the king for her house and for her land. And Gehazi said, "My lord, O king, this is the woman, and this is her son whom Elisha restored to life." And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king appointed a certain officer for her, saying, "Restore all that was hers, and all the proceeds of the field from the day that she left the land until now."
(The word Philistines means immigrant, but comes from a root word which means to roll in the dust of mourning, to wallow in yourself. There is the word mourning again. We must come out of mourning into joy, for the joy of the Lord will be our strength.)
Isaiah 43:25-26, "I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins. Put Me in remembrance; Let us contend together; State your case, that you may be acquitted."
The Lord is inviting us into His courtroom to put Him in remembrance...of past covenants, of past prophetic words, of past dedications. He invites us to contend with Him and state our case. I believe there is an application of this for every individual, every family, every church and even every nation.
An awakening is upon us! People are being awakened in the world! The Church needs to awaken to go get them!
Presidential Elections
I don't have any real prophetic insight on who the next president will be. But I do want to share something for a point of prayer. In 1999, the Lord showed me George W. Bush would be our next president and that he would be a Cyrus whose had an assignment to overthrow Babylon. Regardless of how you might feel about him or the Iraq war, this was something I heard from the Lord even before 911. That's exactly what he did! He went in and overthrew Babylon. But since that time there has been the ancient Prince of Persia spirit loosed in the earth.
When you look at the geography of the ancient Persian Empire you see that it covers the same nations that are currently embroiled in upheaval in the Middle East and Northern Africa. I believe this Prince of Persia is the spirit behind Haman in the book of Esther, Sanballot and Tobias in Nehemiah, Ahaseurus and Artaxerxes in Ezra, and behind those who put Daniel in the lion's den. I believe this Prince of Persia is a spirit of resistance sent into the earth in times of reformation to lock things up...when God has declared a time of divine unlocking! (Read Ezra 4 to see its effect on the Jews rebuilding the temple.)
A Tipping Point
Around 2005, I was reading in Ezra 4 and I saw that after Cyrus was gone two other kings arose and shut down every bit of progress Judah had made in rebuilding the temple and reclaiming Jerusalem. This shut down of progress lasted 16 years. I felt the Lord say that the same would happen after George Bush left office, as a nation we would go into a season where the Prince of Persia would resist the work of the Church and reformation. I didn't necessarily feel it had to be 16 years. The Church could arise and pray and bring a shift through our appeal to Heaven! (Photo via Wikipedia)
Ahaseurus name means I will cause you to be poor and silent. Artaxerxes means the restrainer. Clearly we can see how these two forces have affected the Church over the past 7 years, not because of who is sitting in the office of president, but because of the response, or lack of response from the Church. Culture has pushed back against Biblical values. President Obama declared America is not a Christian nation. Expression of Biblical values are now called bigoted and even criminalized in some cases.
We have clearly lost ground in the battle for our nation. I believe we may be in the tipping point of prayer right now to determine what the second half of those 16 years will look like for our nation and for the Church. Will we show up so that God will show off?
But the good news is, after these two kings ruled in Ezra 4, there were a succession of Persian kings who restored full authority to all Cyrus had decreed. In Ezra 5 you see the turn around occurs because Zerrubabel (the governor/apostle) and Haggai and Zechariah (the prophets) began to decree. In Ezra 5:17, these leaders sent a letter to the new king, Darius. They asked him to search the royal treasuries to see if a previous decree had been made by Cyrus that superseded the decrees of obstruction by Ahaseurus and Artaxerxes. When the king discovered the previous covenant he restored it then added an even greater authority to it by adding his own decree.
I believe as the Apostles and Prophets (as well as apostolic and prophetic people) come together to decree and create a sound in the earth, they will put the Lord in remembrance regarding previous covenants in our nation where we were dedicated to God and to the expansion of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God, and He will respond from Heaven.(Photo via Pixabay)
I have felt recently that our nation came into covenant with this Prince of Persia when the Iran agreement was signed. This is a covenant that aligns us against Israel, with Islam and this ancient principality and will open us for attack. I believe we need to appeal to Heaven and remind the Lord about the previous covenants so that those dedications and covenants can supersede this ungodly alignment, breaking us free from its curse.
In Ezra 6-7, the people of Judah were given more and more power, money and dominion in the land. Unlimited resources, unlimited authority and unlimited breakthrough were given. Heaven broke the way open for Jerusalem to be restored! The temple was finished (the Church was reformed) and built in double portion dimensions to what had been destroyed and the city was rebuilt. It was one of the most victorious times Judah experienced.
It says in Ezra 6:14-15, "And the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. They finished their building by decree of the God of Israel and by decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes king of Persia; and this house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king."
They build and prospered because of the insight, strategy and power of the spoken prophetic word of the prophets and the righteous decrees of the kings. As they made a prophetic sound in the earth, Heaven answered and brought a finishing anointing for a new time of prosperity for the people of God. Those are the times ahead for the Church!
In closing, I believe one other area God wants to hook (Vav) together is the generations. A quote which really impacted me this year is by Winston Churchill and I will close with this:
Winston Churchill: "One of the signs of a great society is the diligence with which it passes culture from one generation to the next. This culture is the embodiment of everything the people of that society hold dear: its religious faith, its heroes...when one generation no longer esteems its own heritage and fails to pass the torch to its children, it is saying in essence that the very foundational principles and experiences that make the society what it is are no longer valid.
"This leaves that generation without any sense of definition or direction, making them the fulfillment of Karl Marx's dictum, 'A people without a heritage are easily persuaded.' What is required when this happens and the society has lost its way, is for leaders to arise, who have not forgotten the discarded legacy and who love it with all their hearts. They can then become the voice of that lost generation, wooing an errant generation back to the faith of their fathers, back to the ancient foundations and bedrock values..." (Never Give In, The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill, Page 190)
(To read part 1 of Jane Hamon's prophetic word for 2016: "A Year Heaven Partners with Earth in a New Way" click here.)
