During a 2 night stay in Edinburgh this week with my husband, I was reminded of another meeting with significant connection to the chinook dream I had at the end of last year. The meeting was at the Full Gospel Church Dundee in October 2018. All 5 of the people in the dream were at that meeting which happened to be the month of the Nazarite fast we were all doing. This Assemblies of God church is our ‘home’ church, the place I grew up in, where my husband and I were married, where we left to join SCF when we moved to Kirriemuir 19 years ago and where God led us back to in 2021. The meeting was the first of a series of monthly Hope nights where speakers were invited to share their testimony. The first guest speaker was international prophet Alan Ross and, having heard him several times before and received a transformative prophetic word from him the year before, I was keen to go along with my mum in the hope he might bring a word for her. My mum, having been in this church through many ups and downs over the decades and remained faithful in the place of prayer, I felt would benefit tremendously from this ministry. It turned out that Alan Ross brought a prophetic word for me, one that I was both encouraged and a little perplexed by.
But I think it’s worth rewinding to the previous year. My pastor and his wife had been at the Elim Leaders conference and were inspired by one speaker in particular, namely James Aladiran of Prayer Storm. He decided to attend one of the Prayer Storm gatherings in Manchester (see here) and it just so happened this annual meeting, on the 20th May 2017, took place just 2 days before the Manchester Arena bombing. As a little aside, I read some very interesting blogposts in the days following the attack about the sexually explicit nature of the concert, the target audience being young girls, and the possibility of this attracting this kind of violence. Although the best of these blogs, Archbishop Cranmer, has been taken down, I did find this podcast that talked about these issues.
Barry Bennett in his second Charis Bible College lesson in his course entitled, Possess the Land, said this, “1 John 2:22 says, ‘Who is a liar but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ. He is Antichrist but denies the Father and the Son.’ I’ve been meditating on this quite a bit lately, but the spirit of Antichrist is a spirit that denies the Father and the Son. The Father, the Son represent truth and so the spirit of Antichrist that comes from the father of lies, the devil, is going to oppose anything that represents truth. Now today, in our world, we have a political system at work right now which is embracing and legalising things that are perversions. We are embracing and legalising sodomy, homosexuality, gay marriage, while simultaneously embracing and protecting Islam and even Sharia law, and yet Sharia law and Islam is diametrically opposed to homosexuality. How can a political environment embrace two diametrically opposed systems? Because both of those systems are against the truth, they are the spirit of Antichrist. So this spirit of Antichrist doesn’t care what participants it will use to oppose truth, even if those two participants hate each other. It is against truth, and will use any willing participant to attack truth, whether it be participants that hate each other. Radical Muslims throw homosexuals off the top of buildings over in the Middle East. And yet both of those groups are being embraced and protected, because what is behind all of this is the father of lies and the spirit of Antichrist whose purpose is to destroy truth. That is why as Christians we have got to stand for truth, we have to understand truth, embrace truth, defend truth and not be moved away from truth. And what happens is that Christians many times don’t even know the truth. They’re born-again, but they have not embraced truth. Romans 12:2, ‘Be ye not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God’. Christians are not allowing their minds to be renewed because they have already been conformed to this world which is built upon lies and so truth is something they struggle with, there are still strongholds of lies in many of our minds, we are not fully persuaded.”
Back to my former pastor’s Prayer Storm visit. He travelled down and back overnight and shared about his visit the next day at church, questioning us about how far we were willing to go, what lengths we were willing to take to meet with God or to catch something of what God is doing in our nation and in the nations. He also shared this song that gripped my heart and ignited fresh fire.
As another aside, shortly after this I was plunged into a season of intense intercession when my uncle was taken very seriously ill shortly after returning from a yoga training retreat on Crete. Thanks be to God his life was spared but the battle for his life resulted in him losing his right arm and shoulder cuff as well as a lot of muscle tissue from his right side leaving him in constant pain. He is remarkably upbeat despite the challenges but understandably there have been significant changes to his life since this illness.
Back to Prayer Storm. In 2018, they did a tour of the nation, it was called The Awakening Tour, and they visited Scotland at St George’s Tron in Glasgow on 5/5/18 (grace, grace, bondage… Zech 4:7… if you like the prophetic significance of numbers like me). The message brought was calling for the Jehu’s to arise to take down Jezebel, which would require a deeper level of consecration in the areas of purity and holiness with the wholehearted pursuit of repentance for every inward toleration of the spirit of Jezebel in our own lives. The Lord has challenged me many times on the anointing of Jehu and how his call was to destroy the whole house of Ahab not just deal with Jezebel.
Jezebel was indeed a wicked queen and special judgement was pronounced by God on her both in the Old and New Testaments but her status and position had been given her by the compromising king of Israel, Ahab. And I find it interesting that there is often such a keen awareness, especially in prophetic and charismatic communities, of the destructive work of Jezebel in our churches without any corresponding recognition of the compromising Ahabs, those spiritual leaders willing to make political and worldly alliances, for that was the basis of Ahab and Jezebel’s marriage, who have promoted her and tolerate her perverted teaching. But it is difficult in this day and age, one so far removed from that of the New Testament church, for Christians to see or even recognise that we have been in this Ahab/Jezebel political worldly alliance since the days of Constantine and that it continues today in the form of charity status, churches being run more like businesses supported by the state than spiritual communities supported from within. And yet, according to the third letter of John, these set apart ministers are the ones we’re to support as fellow workers for the truth.
“For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.”
3 John 1:7-8 ESV
And like Israel who yoked themselves to Baal at Peor, and Ahab who yoked himself and Israel to Baal through his marriage to Jezebel, literally ‘Baal is husband to’ in Hebrew, are we yoked to Baal and the Babylonian system through our alliance with the world through charitable status, among many other things, even encouraging church members to sign Gift Aid declarations, formerly known as Deed of Covenant, so we can gain a financial advantage from our government’s purse? As has been written so brilliantly by Dr Kim Tan in his book, Lost Heritage, have we lost the zeal of the Lord and the power of our inheritance, the Gospel, because we’ve sold our birthright to the world and instead become another institution of the world?
“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
James 4:4 ESV
Back to the message James Aladiran brought in Glasgow on Jehu and what God has spoken to me about it since. Jehu was anointed to cut the wickedness in Israel off at the root, Ahab, rather than the fruit, Jezebel. So too God is anointing His Jehu’s and Phinehas’ to deal with the compromise, this yoke of Baal, in the Church, where church leaders have not only tolerated, as abhorrent to God as that is, but actively encouraged, in the case of Sir David Steel and many others, the wickedness in our nation. And abortion is only one of many abominations in our land but it is one that has touched us all covertly as, having legalised abortion, our medical institutions are now so profoundly infiltrated with the use of the products of abortion that Christian’s were debating the morality of the Covid jabs and were unable to come to a consensus on the mind of Christ on the matter. We seem to be at the point now where we no longer know right from wrong, where we’re willing to tolerate evil and call it good. So far removed from the perfect unity of mind and judgement we’re called to (1 Cor 1:10). I’ve even heard it said that we’ll never be of one mind. That’s putting experience above the Word of God. It’s a betrayal of Jesus, His word and His high priestly prayer in John 17.
But there are a couple of further points I want to draw out from Prayer Storm’s visit to Scotland. The timing of this Prayer Storm meeting was, I believe, very significant for the local area of Kirriemuir where I live. A more detailed account I’m going to put in a private blog for those who might find it interesting to read but two significant things happened shortly after this meeting. The first was 33 days later when the body of a man was found in the early hours of the morning at a local RSPB reserve. This turned out to be the brutally murdered body of Steven Donaldson, who had been accosted late the night before in a planned attack and driven to the location where he was murdered and subsequently discovered the next morning. This was, to my knowledge, the worst murder ever recorded in this quiet rural area and it shook the town for many months.
The second significant thing was that exactly one month from the date the victim was accosted, Prayer Storm posted this message about Samson on their YouTube channel.
In this message, James says this, “God cannot give us the influence we are seeking in terms of impact in the world because we are too much like the world… I believe God is wanting to call us out to send us in but many of us are caught up in the system so much that we are trying to be like the system to change the system. But we have to come out of the system… I mean your lifestyle is distinctly different from the system for you to impact the system. We will not carry the grace of God in the way God wants us to carry the grace of God if we think we just have to be like the world to change the world. The people of God who become of the world while in the world lose their authority to change the world. So we will not and cannot afford to become like the world because we’re trying to change the world. We have to be different in lifestyle. It amazes me that today it’s very difficult many times to tell the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. We are listening to the same stuff, we’re watching the same junk, we’re dealing with the same issues. How can you set someone free when you yourself are bound? We talk about the power of the Gospel but we’re salesmen for something we’ve never really experienced. So we just have words but no reality. We think about all this stuff but it’s not coming from a deep place of encounter. That’s why the power is not coming on what you’re doing. So there has to be a realignment of our lives with the order of Heaven. And the order of Heaven is not going to be politically correct. So if we as the Church are very concerned about the world liking us and approving everything we do then, without us knowing it, we’re actually sacrificing and losing our apostolic authority in situations. We will not change the world by conforming to the system. And for many people, we’re being infected by that which we’re called to affect.”
“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.””
2 Corinthians 6:14-18 ESV
“And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.””
Mark 7:5-8 ESV
For Such A Time As This 