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The Battle of Gideon Today--Part 1

The story of Gideon is related in Judges 6-8. Israel had rebelled against God's rule for the fourth time, thinking that God did not have the right to be their King and tell them how to live their lives (i.e., establish laws). Sound familiar? That is astonishingly similar to what has happened in America.

Newsweek recently featured the story of America as a Post-Christian nation. They were about a century late, of course, because God brought us into captivity in 1914 for being a hypocritical Christian nation. What Newsweek really means is that America's hypocritical religious community has now lost its final hold on the reins of power and that the majority of the people have been secularized completely.

Anyway, when the people repented, God called Gideon to deliver the nation from their fourth captivity under the wooden yoke. But before doing so, he sent a prophet to give them a history lesson, telling them that God had redeemed them from Egypt. God therefore claimed to be their God and King by right of redemption.

In chapter 6 God called Gideon to deliver Israel. In chapter 7 Gideon issued the call to arms and whittled the 32,000 volunteers down to a mere 300. The Midianites got wind of the conspiracy to kick them out, and so they got help from the Amalekites and "all the sons of the east" (7:12). It was a huge army against just 300.

Then one of the soldiers of Midian had a dream that a loaf of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian and overthrew the tent. The soldier interpreted this to mean that Gideon was going to win the battle. Here we see Gideon being portrayed as barley, which is, of course, a biblical symbol of the overcomers. (See my book, The Barley Overcomers.)

In 1981 the Net of Prayer issued its first "call to arms" based upon this Scripture. They were composed of about 300 people nationwide, and so formed a pattern of Gideon's army. However, the church in general did not respond to the call to prayer, because the Pentecostal Age had not yet finished its course. King Saul was still alive until May 30, 1993, the end of the 40 Jubilees of that Age.

After May 30, 1993, however, God raised up a new Gideon's army, prophetically called "the New Net of Prayer," to do what the original Net of Prayer was unable to do from 1981-1986. Because it was raised up after the death of prophetic "Saul," the timing itself showed that it was patterned by the life of David. David's authority came in two stages. The first 7 years and 6 months was a time of real but limited authority (2 Sam. 5:5), where he ruled just one tribe. Afterward, he received the full authority over all Israel.

So also was it with us. The first 7 years and 6 months, from May 30, 1993 to Nov. 30, 2000, we had just enough authority to begin the Jubilee Prayer Campaign against prophetic "Jericho" or "Babylon." After Nov. 30, 2000, the warfare shifted into a higher gear, and the year 2001 became the scene of a major battleground.

I have no doubt that God could have led us to do all of this without any revelation of timing, but an understanding of timing was as helpful to us as the fleece was to Gideon. The witness of timing confirmed to us a sense of history. Even as God had raised up Mystery Babylon in 1913-14 precisely 2,520 years after the original Babylon had established itself as an empire (607 B.C.), so also were we being raised up as a new Gideon's army to engage in spiritual warfare to set the world free from the modern captivity.

That spiritual work was completed on October 7, 2006 with the final decree in Babylon, NY, and now we are engaged in a more positive work of healing the waters of Jericho, according to an Elisha pattern in the second chapter of 2 Kings.

Yet world events are still reflecting the results of the Jubilee Prayer Campaign to overthrow Babylon. In this we are still seeing the basic patterns of Gideon being fulfilled as well. The Kingdom of God, represented by Gideon, claims that Jesus Christ has redeemed us and therefore has the divine right to rule America and to establish the law of the land. In fact, as Creator, He claims ownership of the entire earth, and hence all things will be put under His feet.

The armies arrayed against us are strong in their carnal weapons, their unlimited financing, and their huge army consisting of those who prefer man's laws to God's law. The battle for the mind is not much different today from what it was in biblical times, and the reason for captivity is still the same. God put it this way in explaining the situation to the prophet in 1 Sam. 8:7, "they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them."

There is at least one difference, however. In Samuel's day the people were discontented because God had brought them into six captivities whenever they put away His law. He seemed overly strict in their eyes. Out of their 300 years in Canaan from Joshua to Saul, 111 of those years had been spent in captivity. When they were set free from their last captivity to the Philistines (after 40 years), they decided that an earthly king would be better, and that a man-king would help them avoid captivity. That is how they got Saul, a man just like them, who rebelled against God and His law.

This situation established the pattern for the Church many years later. The "Saul" Church did precisely what King Saul had done, rebelling against God and refusing to be obedient (1 Sam. 15:23). After 1260 years of this, the people became discontented with the rule of the "Saul" Church, and this time the demand was to replace him with others. The hypocritical religious rule of Saul was to be replaced by outright secular rule in what was called Democracy, Socialism, or Communism.

This shift took place in the late 1700's and is marked particularly by the French Revolution (1789-1794). And here is where the religious "beast from the sea" (Rev. 13:1-10) began to be replaced by the secular/economic "beast from the earth" (Rev. 13:11-18). These two beasts represent two phases of what Daniel called "the little horn," which was called to make war on the saints and to overcome them UNTIL . . . (Dan. 7:21; Rev. 13:7).

In Daniel's overview of prophetic history, the prophet did not see the detail that John saw later. John divides up Daniel's "little horn" into these two phases, and anyone acquainted with history can see how this has been fulfilled.

We are now coming to the end of the reign of this second beast, and its financial empire is now crumbling in preparation for its final overthrow. Its anti-Christian sentiment is revealed by the memos of Homeland Security, and its cruelty is revealed at Guantanamo.

But in the midst of this, there is GOOD NEWS. Jericho-Babylon has been overthrown. We won the battle. We have seen victory ahead of time. Secondly, we had a very significant revelation on May 10, 2009 that we had reached the bottom of the time of being overcome by this beast in its "war with the saints." The tables have now turned, and the overcomers will now begin to overcome this beast, according to Rev. 12:10, 11,

" ¹⁰ Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come. . . ¹¹ And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death."

The fact of victory was secured at the cross. The overcomers' victory occurred on Oct. 7, 2006. We are now seeing these facts emerge. God is doing this in the same manner as in the days of Gideon. Judges 7:22 says, "And when they blew 300 trumpets, the Lord set the sword of one against another even throughout the whole army."

Aha!