In looking at the big picture, Our Heavenly Father has continued revealing the connections of certain events over time. There are many time cycles orchestrated by Our Heavenly Father but my focus today is a 21 year time cycle beginning in the Fall Feast days of 1992 and how they relate to the 2nd Census and the Covenant at Shechem with Joshua (Yeshua in Hebrew, a type of Christ under the New Covenant).
Without going into great detail, Our Heavenly Father had put it on my heart that we should move to a larger house that would accommodate Pam’s parents. Her dad had become totally disabled. We looked at 200 houses in a northern suburb only to have Our Heavenly Father direct me to Bethany (a western suburb) to look at one house. When I walked into the house, HE said, “This is the house”. I knew it, then Pam knew it. Our Heavenly Father told us the price to pay and the owner accepted it, without negotiation. We closed on the house and took possession unexpectedly early… on the 1st day of Tabernacles in 1992. Back then I had no understanding of Tabernacles at all, I didn’t know it existed.
Fast forward to 1995 when Our Heavenly Father gave me the revelation of Tabernacles, eight years after being given the vision of establishing the Kingdom. HE had placed us in a “financial” wilderness for 18 months and thus I had plenty of time to study Scripture. During that time I met Stephen Jones and others in the Minneapolis area. I attended my first Tabernacles meeting in the fall of 1996 at Moon Plaza in Fridley, MN. The study of the Law began then.
In 1997 while in the midst of a study on Biblical names and their meanings, Our Heavenly Father told me of the prophetic nature of the house HE had us move into in 1992. This is where the Book of Joshua comes in. In Joshua 5, the children of Israel “cut” a covenant in preparation of taking the Promised Land:
8 So it was, when they had finished circumcising all the people, that they stayed in their places in the camp till they were healed. 9 Then the LORD said to Joshua, “This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” Therefore the name of the place is called Gilgal (Rolling) to this day.
10 Now the children of Israel camped in Gilgal, and kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho.
These were the men of the 2nd Census taken in Numbers 26. That Census was to determine inheritance in the Promised Land. They were about to engage in warfare. In 1993, Our Heavenly Father called Stephen Jones to Spiritual Warfare:
In September of 1993 I sent out a “Call to Arms” notice to the mailing list, so that anyone who felt led to participate in the Jubilee prayer campaign could sign up for it. I was also led to ask each one who responded to the call to arms to send a half-shekel silver coin, according to the law found in Exodus 30:12-15,
For the last twenty years, Stephen has led many in “Spiritual Warfare”. A full understanding of the Law has been crucial to the victories.
After the conquests of the Promised Land, Joshua called forth the children of Israel to reaffirm their commitment to Our Heavenly Father. This is known as the Covenant at Shechem:
Joshua 24:1 Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and called for the elders of Israel, for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before God.
He further commanded:
:14 “Now therefore, fear the LORD, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the LORD!… But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”
And the people said: “We will serve the LORD!”
:22 So Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD for yourselves, to serve Him.”
And they said, “We are witnesses!”
:23 “Now therefore,” he said, “put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD God of Israel.”
:24 And the people said to Joshua, “The LORD our God we will serve, and His voice we will obey!”
:25 So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and made for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.
:26 Then Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone, and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.
On that day, the Covenant was decreed (statute) and established as a judgment (ordinance). A large stone under the oak was a witness
Afterward: :28 So Joshua let the people depart, each to his own inheritance.
Their inheritance had been established by the 2nd Census in the Book of Numbers. At the beginning of the conquest of the Promised Land they cut a covenant at Gilgal (Rolling). After the completion of the Warfare, the reaffirmed their covenant at Shechem (Ridge). Maybe that is why Our Heavenly Father selected our house on a street named Rolling Ridge in Bethany where the 2nd Census was initiated, to be completed 20 years to the month of the 1st Census called by Stephen. Who would have thought it!
By the way, when doing some landscaping a few years ago, I was led to put a large stone in the front yard among the oak trees. My grandson called it his “thinking stone”.
I was just following orders, just a coincidence.
