PRAYER CALL TONIGHT! 9pm EST. Conference call number: (641) 715-3605, access code 552-690. Use *6 to mute/unmute. Invite your friends to join us!
Today is Back to the Future Day. Yes on this day in history—October 21, 1985—Marty McFly and his trusted mentor Doc traveled through time in a souped-up DeLorean to show us all that time can be redeemed.
Because of this “Back to the Future” moment, I’m writing today from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I want to remind Jesus and myself of the restoration of His sacred covenant from these steps! Here on July 4, 2011 a group of spiritual revolutionaries gave to the Lord a Declaration of Covenant, seeking God’s hand in marriage again to this Nation.
The slavery of this hour, through Baal worship, broken through by Heaven’s verdict. Covenant restored. Daniel 7:22 judgement in favor of the saints! Today and tomorrow we’re going to explore this prophetically, beginning today with a dramatic experience I had on the way home from Israel.
Turnaround Era Ahead? Maybe.
Throughout the year we’ve explored how God wants to restore our Nation in a way similar to His restoration in the era of Ronald Reagan. Right now we’re living in days similar to the Carter administration, complete with the marginalization of American influence on the international scene, a new Russian threat, and a severe Iranian crisis.
When Reagan came to power, it seemed like everything turned around almost overnight. Only it wasn’t Reagan that catalyzed the change. Above all it was an extraordinary era where God opened the heavens and ushered in an epoch-changing season of answered prayer, in Jesus’ Name.
We’re going to explore this more tomorrow. But it was during this amazing hour of history that the movie “Back to the Future” captured the imagination of a generation. Time travel. Marty McFly and his Flux Capacitor. Healing the past to redeem your present and restore God’s dream for your future.
Lets begin with a “Back to the Future” story—one you just cannot make up. I shared this message regionally on October 9 at Whole Word Fellowship—literally right after the grounds of the church was struck by lightning! Keep this in mind as you read.
Israel, Netanyahu and Daniel 7:22
Leaving Israel was hard. Jolene and I were somewhere over Greece, flying through clouds. We were ecstatic over recent breakthroughs, and our flight home had come way too soon.
In God’s covenant land, we had just become witnesses to history as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a hard-fought election. To Jolene and me this was much more than a victory in politics—it was actually a verdict from God’s Throne. An initial fulfillment of a global prayer assignment conveying how God is rendering judgment in favor of the saints, granting unprecedented turnarounds in our lives and world.
Nobody thought Netanyahu was going to win. Especially because so much pressure had been applied by the Obama administration against him, in both America and Israel. But as God often does, He showcased His covenant land before the world, and then brought the impossible into reality.
Ten days before, Jolene and I were sent by the Lord to Israel with a prophetic mandate for the election. Actually, we like to refer to this mandate as the “Turnaround Verdict.”
“….Until the Ancient of Days came, and judgement was rendered in favor of the saints, and the time came for the saints to possess the Kingdom” (Daniel 7:22). This verdict “in favor of the saints” is conveyed as catalyzing a miraculous deliverance. And again and again, we ourselves have seen impossible situations turn on a dime as while standing on this ancient Courtroom decision.
Please note that you cannot escape your past. But by His verdict you can actually repair it. You can repair your past to redeem your present, and restore God’s dream for your future!
Back to the Future
Lets return to our flight home from Israel. Keep in mind again we had just experienced a Daniel 7:22 turnaround in the very land prophesied about in this passage.
Like Daniel in exile, I really wanted to make sure my deepened friendship with the God of Israel remained, even when the land itself was far away. I wanted this miracle to continue. But on the plane, I felt too confined to pray and too tired to read. I was agitated and frustrated.
So looking for love in all the wrong places, I reluctantly turned to the airline’s media offerings. I must have started—and stopped—ten movies before settling on a really safe bet.
Back to the Future.
This Hollywood blockbuster came out in 1985, the year I graduated from high school. You know the plot. A young Michael J. Fox is propelled 30 years back in time by souped-up DeLorean, invented by his mad-scientist mentor.
Turns out that 1955 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So he must literally repair the past to redeem his present world—1985—and restore the future to its original intention.
Crazy. And the farther into this crazy move I got, the more I realized God was actually using this Hollywood classic to speak to me.
Because three decades after its release, through the Turnaround Verdict, I had just experienced the very potential conveyed by the movie’s plot. Totally different context, but the same principle. It’s just that in our case, our redemption did not come from DeLorean time machines or flux capacitors or mad scientists. It came from a Lawyer who bridged time and eternity to redeem our lives, repair our past and redefine our world.
Lightning Strike! 7:22
So there I was flying over Europe, pondering the prophetic implications of a movie I never intended to watch. Doc the mad scientist was hanging from the town clock as he tried to repair the power line that would transmit a bolt of lightning to the DeLorean so that it could return…back to the future.
Got it? Good.
As Doc makes his repairs, he sees it’s almost time for the lightning strike and and becomes alarmed. He shouts to his young protege:
“I’ve calculated the distance and wind resistance retroactive from the moment the lightning strikes, AT EXACTLY 7 MINUTES and 22 SECONDS. When this alarm goes off you hit the gas!”
Say what?
Seven minutes and twenty-two seconds. 7:22…the timing for breakthrough, when the lightning strikes to take you back to the future!
Lightning Strike—Confirming 7:22 on 7-22!
Most of you remember last summer’s Glory Procession, with our gathering at Faneuil Hall on 7-22. Gary Beaton, Jolene and me literally presented our case before Heaven’s Court on 7-22, pleading for a Daniel 7:22 judgement in favor of the saints. Followed by Chuck Pierce prophesying and Dutch Sheets presenting his “Appeal to Heaven” message. With America’s original flag, an evergreen tree with the simple words “Appeal to Heaven” above it.
Gary felt that God was going to sovereignly bring down the hammer and confirm that His verdict had been rendered. The next day, we were ministering with the same group in Trenton NJ, the “turning point” of the Revolution. Would you believe that while we were worshipping, lightning struck an evergreen tree! In the Colonial Revival Garden of an original signer of the Declaration of Independence!
God confirmed His verdict with a lightning strike. You just cannot make this stuff up.
That Brings Us to… TODAY!
Here’s something else with the movie. The lightning of God strikes, time stops, and Michael J. Fox returns home from 1955 to 1985 to find that his family life has drastically improved. Mom is beautiful. Dad is a conqueror instead of a victim. The past has been repaired, the present world redeemed, and times ahead look bright.
That’s when Doc reappears. He tells his young protege he’s now going to launch 30 years into their future.
To 2015. October 21, 2015 to be specific.
Here’s my verdict on this issue. It’s turnaround time. You just cannot make this stuff up. We’re about to begin an incredible journey. I’m gonna tell you that this time the turnaround transportation might not be a souped up DeLorean, it might just be a train. A Glory Train. With even greater capacities than a flux capacitor to heal the past, redeem your present, and restore God’s dream for your future!
More on that later. For now, get your flux capacitor going, revv your engines, and see a Holy Ghost lightning strike!
This is absolutely breathtaking! So many dots connecting in such a divine way. Only Yahweh could author a story like this! It just rises up joy and praise in me to worship Him. Thank you, Lord, for this kairos TURNAROUND time!
Reading this made me think of the Hebraic year we are in, 5776–associated with the Hebrew letter vav. I was led to re-read my notes from Glory of Zion’s Rosh Hashanah conference this year and was amazed at the correlation: “Vav connects past with the future. If you add a vav to a future tense it can become past tense and vice versa. God wants to bring those lost opportunities from the past into the future and redeem your past! Also, reach into the future by faith and bring it into NOW, like David’s Tabernacle!” Pretty incredible! By the way, one of the slides in their presentation showed vavs connecting a bunch of railroad cars!
Woo woo – new connections coming!
By the way, here is the original upraised-arm tree that was on Washington’s Appeal to Heaven flag. This silver coin was not minted in 1652 necessarily, but in the times when they needed to mint their own silver to keep trade going, when the king of England tried to create economic difficulty. It was brought to my attention because after your 7-22 meeting, it caught my eye when a time capsule was discovered in Boston. It had been planted by none other than Paul Revere and John Adams. It was not opened until early 2015 (the year the prophetic word given to me in 2008 included, “2015 – Remains to be seen”). What was discovered were some old papers, which attest that it was from Revere and Adams’ time — and some silver coins. The message Adams and Revere saw as important to pay forward to a future generation that might see freedom threatened was the 1652 Pine Tree Shilling. This is a coin the Colonists produced as an alternative currency, silver (redemption) based. I want to give a link that gives a brief history, one that everyone at the time knew well enough that Washington made a statement by flying it on his naval flag. They had dealt with an attempt to shut down trade by utilizing their own coin; now they were dealing with trade routes by utilizing ships. Of course, this tree also had the symbolism of Covenant, because of the Iroquois Confederacy (which Benjamin Franklin made use of as they developed a form of government). Here’s a short history of the coin: http://amhistory.si.edu/coins/printable/coin.cfm?coincode=1_00
And, without promoting the organization that put this up, here is a picture (and partial story) of the original Appeal to Heaven design: http://www.americanlibertyassociation.com/2013/10/22/appeal-to-heaven/. Lift your arms and praise the Lord, and let the trees of the field clap their hands and rejoice. Anyone can search for info on the Iroquois Confederacy and Franklin, if you’re interested in more about that aspect of our history, which linked together those seeking liberty and peace from Europe and those seeking the same among the more-native inhabitants of this land.