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Deaf ears are being opened

Earlier this week at our Bible Study on the evening of April 11, some others shared before the main teaching session. The flow of revelation seemed to focus upon the fact that God was beginning to open the eyes and ears of the people in ways that we had never seen before.

This reminded me of the revelation that we had received in December of 2009 on our trip back from the Texas conference. In driving from Minnesota to Texas, we planned to stop for the night just south of Kansas City and pick up another passenger (Linda). Another friend (Joe) had suggested that we spend an extra day in the area to visit the IHOP (International House of Prayer) and see the miracles that were occurring at the time.

We told him that we did not have the time to spend an extra day there on the way down, but that we would see if God might direct us in that way on our return trip.

The conference was held Dec. 4-6, and then we spent an extra day in Texas visiting and fellowshipping with friends. On Dec. 8 we drove up to Kansas City. It rained the entire trip as we drove north, because a large weather system was sweeping the midwest. We were far enough south so that we saw only rain, but by the time we arrived in Kansas City, the temperature had dropped to 32 degrees, and there was some slush accumulating on the ground.

By the next morning there was plenty of snow on the ground. Ron Oja was with us, and he called his brother in Des Moines, Iowa (200 miles north of Kansas City) to see what the weather conditions were. He said that Iowa was closed, due to a blizzard. We took this as the Word of the Lord that we should spend an extra day in Kansas City and visit the IHOP.

When the Lord does things like this, we always know that He has something important for us to hear and understand. We discovered at the IHOP that God was focusing primarily on healing people's hearing. Their meetings were lasting all day until 11:00 p.m. virtually every day of the week. There were many young people in attendance, and it seems that their loud music habits had caused many of them to lose part of their hearing.

We walked around the meeting while people were being prayed for, in order to discern the Word of the Lord in all of this. It became very clear then that the Word was that God was beginning to open up the ears and eyes of His people. The Church has lost some of its ability to hear the Word, and God was fine-tuning their ears and eyes.

As I thought about this at the Bible study earlier this week, it occurred to me that the IHOP word had occurred about a year and four months earlier. I counted the days from Dec. 8-9, 2009 to April 11-12, 2011 and discovered that we had reached the 490th day from the IHOP revelation.

In other words, we were now seeing evidence that the word from 490 days earlier was emerging where we could see it. So when it came time for me to share, I started teaching from Exodus 4:11,

¹¹ And the Lord said to him [Moses], "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes him dumb or DEAF, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?"

Gary, a retired military intelligence analyst in the group, immediately caught the connection between the date (4/11) and the Scripture (4:11). All of Jesus' miracles of healing blind eyes and deaf ears are prophetic of the day when "blindness in part" is removed from us. God takes the credit for withholding sight or the ability to hear.

After Israel had been in the wilderness for 40 years, and they were making preparations to cross the Jordan under Joshua, Moses gave a series of 11 speeches that were recorded and compiled in what we know as the Book of Deuteronomy. He told Israel in Deut. 29:4,

⁴ Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear."

Such was the condition of the church in the wilderness under Moses (Acts 7:38). Their 40-year wilderness journey was prophetic also of the Church under Jesus Christ during their 40-Jubilee wilderness wandering. Hence, the Church has also experienced a partial blindness, and for this reason we have seen the same problems manifested in the past 2000 years.

So when we saw what God was doing at the IHOP in 2009, we were encouraged to know that this blindness and deafness was being lifted. The bottom line was that we were to prepare for the day when the Church would be able to hear the Gospel of the Kingdom in a new way. God usually gives us plenty of preparation time. In this case, we received 490 days of preparation until the second reminder on April 11-12 (evening of the 11th).

This occurred at the same time that Japan announced the Level 7 danger level at Fukushima's nuclear facility. They announced it on April 12, but because of the time zone differences, they announced it while we were having our meeting the previous evening.

I am reminded of Daniel 7:9, 10, as the Concordant Version translates it:

⁹ Perceiving am I till thrones were placed, and the Transferrer of Days sits: His clothing is pale as snow, and the hair of His head as immaculate wool; His throne is as flaring flame, its rollers a flashing flame. ¹⁰ Streaming is a flame in front and issuing from before Him; a thousand thousands are irradiating Him, and ten thousand ten thousands are rising before Him. Adjudication sits and the scrolls are opened.

This is an Old Testament picture of the Great White Throne of Revelation 20. In particular it is a picture of the second resurrection. The "Transferrer of Days" sits to judge, because He is seen transferring jurisdiction from the kingdoms of men to the saints of the Most High. Verse 18 says,

¹⁸ Yet the saints of the supremacies ["the Most High"] shall receive the kingdom, and they will safeguard the kingdom unto the eon, even unto the eon of the eons."

Verse 22 says,

"till the Transferrer of Days arrives, and adjudication is granted to the saints of the supremacies, and the stated time is reached, and the kingdom is safeguarded by the saints."

Daniel says in verse 10, "a thousand thousands are irradiating Him." This pictures the saints being irradiated by the glory of God. More than that, it pictures the saints irradiating the very presence of God from within.

Thus, this whole nuclear problem in Japan, "the land of the rising sun," is a prophetic negative of a very positive event that God is bringing to the earth. Even as the danger has risen to "Level 7," so also is God bringing His people to "Level 7" (perfection), so that they can irradiate Him and manifest His presence to the rest of the world.

These quakes, tsunamis, and nuclear incidents are birth pangs to the Age that lies ahead, where the saints of the Most High are given jurisdiction so that they can "safeguard" the earth by the laws of God and the mind of Christ.