The seventh bowl was poured out at Babylon, NY on October 6, 2006. With it, of course, was poured out the water to signify the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that is to occur alongside the downfall of Mystery Babylon.

Once we began this lengthy work, it was clear that we should not expect to see full results until some time after the last bowl was poured out. Since these bowls typified the final “day” marching around Jericho seven times, it was plain to us that the walls of Jericho did not collapse until the final trip had been completed.

Even so, we were able to observe “signs” at every point in the work, as I showed in Part 8. Signs are good markers, if we know how to read sign language, but they are not the actual fulfillment. They merely bear witness to the word as it is spoken.

One of those signs was the release of the film Babel on the same day that we poured out the seventh bowl in Babylon, NY. I could have mentioned other television signs such as the series, Crossing Jordan, which began on Sept. 24, 2001. This began shortly after the Twin Towers disaster and was at the end of the year after the first bowl of wine was poured out.

Crossing Jordan was later followed by Jericho, from Sept. 20, 2006 to March 25, 2008 when it was cancelled. Jericho began about 2 weeks before we poured out the seventh bowl on Babylon, of which Jericho is a type. The series portrays the destruction of America as we know it. If we consider it a symbolic story of economic disaster, then it was both timely and accurate.

Another sign took place in Japan, the “land of the rising sun.” We have long considered Japan to be a sign relating to Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel Peniel in Gen. 32. We read in verse 31,

³¹ Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh.

Back in 1995, when this angel first reappeared to me in North Carolina, identifying himself as Peniel, I did not realize that events in Japan had just set him free to do the job for which he was sent. Peniel is the angel of the feast of Tabernacles, whose job is to bring transfiguration to the overcomers. I wrote about this in chapter 14 of The Wars of the Lord.

The point is that Japan has its place in sign language. Just before pouring out the seventh bowl of wine in Babylon, NY, Japan got a new prime minister named Shinzo Abe. Ron immediately dubbed him “Honest Abe,” of course, relating him to Abraham Lincoln.

Abe was elected Sept. 26, 2006, and we went to Babylon on October 6. From there, we went to the Abraham Lincoln hotel in Reading, PA for our Tabernacles conference (Oct. 13-15). On a mountain top overlooking Reading, PA is a landmark Japanese pagoda, built in 1908 originally to be a luxury hotel.

This strange Japan-Lincoln connection came together in Reading, PA in 2006, precisely 2 Jubilee cycles, or 98 years, after it was built.

Lincoln, of course, is best known for the Emancipation of the slaves. That proclamation was held back until the North had won its first major battle. The Battle of Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862 ended General Lee’s march into northern territory. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation five days later on Sept. 22, 1862.

According to the Wikipedia,

“Although the battle was tactically inconclusive, it had unique significance as enough of a victory to give President Abraham Lincoln the confidence to announce his Emancipation Proclamation, which discouraged the British and French governments from potential plans for recognition of the Confederacy.”

The Abraham Lincoln Hotel, where we met 144 years later for the Feast of Tabernacles, was built next to Antietam Creek. We did not go out looking for signs, but the signs followed us. We had intended to meet in Philadelphia, but no hotels were available, and so Vanita found the Abraham Lincoln Hotel for us in Reading. It was perfect, of course, because it represented the end of Jericho-Babylon and the emancipation of a greater body of slaves to modern Mystery Babylon.

Incidentally, now in 2009 we are nearing the 144^th anniversary of the end of the Civil War (April 9) and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (April 14). Lincoln was shot on Good Friday in 1865. In 2009, Passover falls on April 9. We will be meeting in Manassas, Virginia on April 10-12, 2009 for a conference. Manassas was the site of the first major land battle in the Civil War in 1861.

These events from 144 years ago are not directly related to the present day, but they provide signs for what is going on today. Those signs foreshadow the work of Peniel, the fall of Babylon, and the freeing of the slaves. In short, they are signs that we are coming out of Babylon.

The Mortgage Crisis of 2007

Banking regulations were relaxed in the late 1990’s in order to allow more underprivileged people to buy homes. While the idea may have been well intended at the time, the effect was to issue loans to millions of people who could only afford them as long as the price of homes continued to rise.

In the year 2000 the “dot-com bubble” burst, and America began to slide into recession. This occurred toward the end of President Clinton’s office. President Bush inherited Clinton’s problem and resolved it by inflating the money supply through the Federal Reserve, by tax cuts, and later by spending on the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This tactic did not solve the problem, but it did serve to postpone it until 2007, when the housing bubble burst and all of those risky mortgages proved to be “toxic.”

I find it interesting that Bush was president during our years of pouring out the seven bowls of wine, even as Clinton had been president during the first seven years of the Jubilee Prayer Campaign (1993-2000). Each had their purpose, and they both attempted to push the debt problem into the next presidency so that someone else would have to take the blame.

Well, in my opinion the problem is now too large to push, and too deep to fix. The sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007 caused many to default on their loans. But those loans had been packaged in “bundles” and sold to investors and financial institutions world-wide. They seemed like good investments, because they were rated Triple A by the ratings companies and insured by AIG and other insurance companies that were “too big to fail.”

Goliath, too, was too big to fail. But few took into account the God factor.

The timing of this mortgage crisis makes me believe that we are seeing the collapse of Mystery Babylon, and that when we come to the other side of this financial crisis, we will see a whole new nation and even a whole new world.

Knowing the plan of God and understanding the signs of the times gives us a higher perspective of current events. Knowing God’s perspective gives us hope in the midst of calamity as we are dragged through the knothole from one age to another.

The Weeping Merchants of Babylon

The year 2007 saw the progression from a mortgage crisis to a credit crisis. Credit markets froze up, and it became difficult to get loans. Then the credit crisis turned into a full-blown banking crisis in September 2008. The dominos are falling, about one per year.

Watch for the Trade War Crisis at some point. Already world shipping is down about 94%, according to the Baltic Dry Index, and ships sit idle in harbors around the world. Trade has always been about each nation competing to export more than they import. America’s decades-long trade deficit has finally caught up with us, and the day of reckoning was greatly hastened after the GATT and NAFTA and other trade treaties were signed.

The golden goose has finally been killed. Americans can no longer afford to buy anything—even cheap foreign goods. Our trade deficit was our long-term “economic stimulus package” to the world, and everyone expected it would last forever. But it proved to be unsustainable.

Revelation 18:11-18 says,

¹¹ And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargoes any more. . . ¹⁵ The merchants of these things, who became rich from her, will stand at a distance because of the fear of her torment, weeping and mourning, ¹⁶ saying, “Woe, woe, the great city . . . ¹⁷ for in one hour such a great wealth has been laid waste!” And every shipmaster and every passenger and sailor, and as many as make their living by the sea, stood at a distance, ¹⁸ and were crying out, as they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, “What city is like the great city?”

In the past 18 months about 40% of the world’s wealth has disappeared. That amounts to many trillions of dollars. World trade has been frozen, because credit is frozen, and because most trade requires credit for international transactions.

The same passage in Revelation 18 speaks twice of “the great city.” Or, to spell it correctly, “the great Citi.” This is what people know today as CITIBANK.

The Fall of “The Great Citi”

For many years we suspected that Oct. 31, 2007 would prove to be significant, because it was 490 years (or 70 “weeks”) after Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Church door at Wittenburg. That act sparked the Protestant Reformation, and the primary issue was the love of money (“indulgences”).

In the wake of the mortgage crisis that surfaced in the summer of 2007, a stock analyst named Merdith Whitney wrote an article dated Oct. 31, 2007, which drew attention to a huge problem with Citibank. More than anything, this was the spark that brought the banking crisis, not that she caused the problem, but that she exposed the fraud.

Keep in mind that her name, Whitney (“white island”), is derived from the same word as Wittenburg (“white mountain”). According to Wikipedia,

“She wrote a particularly pessimistic, but accurate report on Citigroup, on Oct. 31, 2007, which got her attention from many Wall Street analysts and news media… Her extremely bearish view on banks landed her on the cover of the August 18, 2008 issue of Fortune Magazine. Even before the problems in September that befell Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, she is quoted as saying, ‘It feels like I’m at the epicenter of the biggest financial crisis in history’.”

A month later, the Nov. 26, 2007 issue of Business Week ran an article, The Analyst Who Rocked Citi.

“She argued that cutting the dividend or selling assets was the only quick way to raise cash. She predicts that ‘in six to 18 months, Citi will look nothing like it does now. Citi’s position is precarious, and I don’t use that word lightly,’ she says.

“The report hit the stock market with the force of a freight train slamming into a brick wall.

Citi declined to comment on Whitney’s analysis. It maintains, however, that it can rebuild its capital ratio by the middle of 2008 without a dividend cut or massive asset sales.”

Nice try, Citi. But an old quote comes to mind from Confucius (or someone like him), “liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Let us see what the state of that great Citi was a year later. The Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, reported on Citi on Nov. 21, 2008 in an article entitled, As Stock Plummets, Citi on the Brink. It starts out by reporting,

“This time last year, Citigroup Inc. was valued at about $180 billion. As of Friday morning, its market capitalization stood at $20 billion—and its once-proud share price had shriveled to $3.75, a 16-year low.

A few months ago it received $300 billion worth of government bailouts and guarantees on the bad loans in its portfolio. In other words, the government essentially insured $300 billion worth of toxic mortgages held by Citibank alone. The result? Citi’s stock value continued to plummet. Investors knew that $300 billion was not nearly enough to save Citibank.

I do not think that Citi’s name is coincidental, or the fact that it has become the biggest bank in America. It was founded in 1812 as the First National City Bank of New York the same year that Meyer Amschel Rothschild died. Perhaps there is a connection between Citibank and the inventor of modern banking.

Summarizing the Big Picture

The year 1986 was the 120^th Jubilee from Adam. But this year came during the reign of prophetic “Saul,” that is, the Age of Pentecost. Hence, the Church under Pentecost had the authority to declare the Jubilee at that time.

Knowing this, God raised up the Net of Prayer in 1981 and gave it a five-year mission to call the Church to prayer and if they would respond to this call, God would reveal to them what to do. They failed to respond, and the revelation of the 120^th Jubilee remained hidden.

But in 1985 God revealed that He was separating the barley company (overcomers) from the wheat (church under Pentecost), so that the overcomers would not be held liable for the failure of the Church under Pentecost. God then began to engineer events on a ten-year delayed cycle, which (in 1994) was revealed as the Hezekiah Factor.

In practice, this meant that God would establish what He called “the New Net of Prayer” in 1991, ten years after 1981. Through them, he would issue a call, not to the Church in general, but to the overcomers among them. The overcomers responded, though most of them, of course, did not even know of the existence of the NNOP. That did not matter, because God knows the hearts of His people, and at any rate there was no sign-up sheet to join this NNOP. It is purely a heavenly “organization” of whom Jesus is the Head. That is why I do not use its name as the name of my own personal ministry.

On May 30, 1993 we reached the end of King Saul’s reign. This was Pentecost Sunday of 1993, precisely 40 Jubilees after the Spirit was given in Acts 2. King Saul “died,” and his successor, David, the “barley” overcomers, were given partial authority for the next 7½ years. This followed the pattern of King David ruling over one tribe, as seen in 2 Sam. 5:5.

Six months later, in November of 1993, we were led to begin a “Jericho march,” called the Jubilee Prayer Campaign. It was to go for 7 years, even as Israel had marched around Jericho for 7 days blowing the “Jubilee” (yobel translated “ram’s horns” in Joshua 6:4, 5, 6, 8, 13).

The purpose of this prayer campaign was to appeal to the Divine Court on behalf of the overcomers. Both Saul and Babylon had failed in their authority/responsibility to bring righteousness into the earth (i.e., establish the Kingdom). Their allotted time had ended, each on its own level, and the time had come to transfer the mandate to those who truly would bring in the Kingdom of God (Dan. 7:22, 27).

We believe that the overcomers’ case was won in court, and so, like the Israelites of old, they were authorized to conquer “Canaan,” beginning with “Jericho.” Hence, we went into spiritual warfare.

At the feast of Tabernacles, Oct. 20, 2000, the revelation was given that “David” had been crowned king of all Israel—that is, the overcomers had been given the full authority it needed to finish the work ahead.

In the pattern of King David, the first order of business was to conquer Jerusalem and establish it as the Capital City. For us it meant overthrowing the old Jerusalem and replacing it with the New Jerusalem (and new authority).

This was done from Nov. 28-30, 2000 at a special meeting in Wisconsin, where a group had gathered to hear and proclaim the Word of the Lord. So we reached the end of the seven-year warfare on Nov. 29, 2000, and the following day we reached the end of the 7½ year transition from Saul to David.

Under this full authority, we began the work of pouring out the seven bowls of water and wine from 2000-2006. In effect, it was Phase 2 of the Jericho march, corresponding to the 7 trips around the city on the seventh day.

It was a long prayer campaign, 13 years in all, and it corresponded to the 13 trips that Israel made around Jericho in the days of Joshua.

We reached the end of the battle on Oct. 7, 2006 when we poured out the final bowls of water and wine in the city of Babylon, New York. We knew positively that the financial system—Babylon’s life blood, the Euphrates River—would begin to collapse within the year. We had seen this pattern in each of the seven bowls poured out since October of 2000.

And so it was no surprise that in the summer months of 2007 the sub-prime mortgage crisis surfaced. This affected the housing market, which uncovered more problems with the credit system, which in turn began to collapse the banking system in 2008.

America, that great consumer nation, ran out of credit and could no longer purchase the huge amounts of imports that the rest of the world was sending to us. Americans began to save their money instead of spend it. Shipping dropped 94%, while Toyotas piled up at the dock in Long Beach, California. The auto industry crashed, and our trade deficit declined.

We are now on the brink of a trade war, as talk of “protectionism” scares the pants off world leaders. “Free trade” is becoming an empty phrase, because it only works if people actually buy foreign goods being marketed. No legislation can force Americans to buy if they have no money and are overloaded with debt.

The timing of all this did not take us by surprise, because I have been watching these developments since 1981. I knew very little in those days, of course, but with the revelation of timing in April 1991 (Secrets of Time), and the New Net of Prayer established (May 28, 1991), we embarked upon this new path of Kingdom work.

Running parallel to the warfare against Babylon was the positive work. We declared the Jubilee on the Day of Atonement, Sept. 23, 1996, ten years late (from 1986), by the Hezekiah Factor. Thus, the overcomers were able to do what the Church had left undone in 1986, because we received the revelation in 1994 that the Church might have received in 1984, if it had responded to the call to prayer.

Receiving the full authority in the year 2000 allowed us to pour out water along with wine for the next 7 years. This expressed the heart-desire of the overcomers to see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, even while Babylon was falling. The Holy Spirit is necessary to replace Babylon with the Kingdom of God.

And so finally, an old prophecy of the Open Door Ministry (i.e., “Elijah”) began to emerge in 2007. It is a combination Moses-Elijah ministry (law and prophets). We are now poised to see its beginning, we think, in 2009.