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My journey in the study of God's law, part 4

In the 1970’s, as part of my study of prophecy, certain books made me aware of time cycles that could be applied to current events. Where the book of Daniel spoke of 1,260 years or 1,290 years, these teachers showed how the same cycles applied in cycles of 1,260 days or 1,290 days. One could track key events in modern history and connect events by these time cycles.

Time is Good

This showed that historical events were not random but followed God’s calendar. This made me more aware of the sovereignty of God in a very practical way. I saw that Time was part of God’s creation. Hebrews 1:2 says that Christ was “appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the aionas,” that is, THE AGES.

In other words, He created Time and was therefore its Lord. Mark 2:28 says, “So the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” The Sabbath is part of God’s calendar that divides time into cycles of seven. This provides order in the calendar, which is the measure of history. Like a surveyor who measures land, God is a Time Surveyor who measures each event and relates each to other events by specific time cycles.

To a Greek, time is linear; to a Hebrew, time is circular. Both have an element of truth, though with different perspectives. The start of an age seems to go out until it reaches a conclusion, but those who are observant see time in terms of cause and effect. There is always some event that creates the start of an age and gives it a cause that eventually reaches a culmination point which fulfills the purpose of that age.

This works the same way in shorter cycles, or fractals, because the number of days or years in the cycle also has a biblical meaning.

There are some who say that there is no time and that time is an illusion. They often say the same about physical matter. But that is not a proper way of thinking. The Lord of Time is not the Lord of Nothing or the Lord of Illusion. We do not honor the Creator by calling His creation an illusion. We ought to respect all things that God has created, so that we understand its purpose. To understand its purpose is to know the mind of God and to see that a good God created “very good” things (Genesis 1:31).

The Greeks thought that matter was evil and only spirit was good. They thought that matter was created by the demiurge, a devil-like figure. They thought that the fall of man was due to the mixture of heaven and earth and that man’s good spirit was trapped in an evil body. Hence, their solution was to divorce the two. This ran contrary to the word of God, where a good God created all things, and where the goal of history is to marry heaven and earth.

The notion that time and dirt are illusions is based upon Greek thought. It claims to be spiritual, when, in fact, it is man’s carnal nature attempting to be spiritual by dishonoring the Creator. We ought to adopt the thought patterns of the Hebrew Scriptures and realize that the New Testament sets forth Hebrew thought patterns in Greek language.

The Laws of Time

During the 1980’s, while I was in the Net of Prayer, the leader discerned many time cycles that appeared almost random. These usually worked well, as they were based on revelation of parallel cycles. If it took a specific number of days to complete one cycle, we could draw a parallel to a later cycle having the same number of days. It was complex, however, and most of these cycles could not be linked to Scripture. Hence, these did not teach us biblical laws of time.

However, in 1991 I heard the teaching of Lalo Cadona, who had come to Arkansas on a tour. He opened up some key chronological time cycles hidden in Scripture. He showed the principles of Cursed Time (414), Judged Time (434), and Blessed Time (490).

He had only one example of Cursed Time at his disposal, but nonetheless, it was enough to prove the point. If you study the chronology of Genesis 5, you discover the connection between the curse upon the ground and the end of that age when the flood occurred. We see the cause-and-effect relationship when the end circled back to the beginning. Hence, God said in Genesis 3:17,

¹⁷ … “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.”

When Noah was born, it was said in Genesis 5:29,

²⁹ Now he called his name Noah, saying, “This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.”

The flood came 1,656 years after Adam’s sin, which is 4 x 414 years. Although the sentence of God had been declared at the start of the cycle, the judgment was not executed until the year 1656 from Adam. Why? Because what Lalo called “Cursed Time” is actually a grace period that was designed to give mankind opportunity to repent. The earth was under the curse of God, that is, under “the curse of the law” (Galatians 3:13), unless men were able to find the Grace Solution which alone could set them free from the law’s sentence.

We read in Genesis 6:7, 8,

⁷ The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” ⁸ But Noah found favor [khane, “grace,” KJV] in the eyes of the Lord.

The principle of grace is one of the major topics of the New Testament. It is not the opposite of law but is rather the opposite of the curse of the law. The law curses sinners, but it is not the curse itself. The law is the nature of God; sin is the violation of God’s law (1 John 3:4) and sinners fall short of His glory (Romans 3:23). We obtain grace by faith in the promises of God (Romans 4:21).

Lalo’s knowledge of Bible chronology was limited, and because he erred in two key places, his chronological charts did not reveal more examples of Cursed Time. I studied with him at his home in Alturas, CA for a full week in April of 1991, learning all that he could teach, and filling an entire notebook with his teachings. I then returned and began to study chronology at the library of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, AR. I read two shelves of books there, and within six weeks I found all of the missing pieces of history necessary to draw up my own chart of Bible chronology. This was later published in Secrets of Time in Prophecy (1992), which was later expanded and renamed, Secrets of Time (1996).

With a more accurate Bible chronology to work with, I began to see many more examples of Cursed Time, which had been impossible to see with Lalo’s faulty chronology.

Coming into Blessed Time

Lalo taught me the meaning of the number 76, which is the factor that must be added to Cursed Time (414) in order to bring us into Blessed Time (490). The number 76 is about cleansing and has to do with the biblical laws of cleansing and purification. When I went back to my personal records, I discovered that I had been in Cursed Time twice in the past, and each time it ended with the 76 factor.

The first 414-day cycle began when I resigned from the church in Las Cruces on December 5, 1981. It ended when I arrived in Batesville, AR on January 23, 1983. I then entered a 76-day cycle of cleansing, wherein I was required to reconcile with those who had brought about my “wilderness” experience. I had to go on a long trip to speak to them in person, and I had to be back by April 9, 1983. This was 76 days after arriving in Batesville.

The second Cursed Time cycle began when I failed to leave the Net of Prayer on September 2, 1986. This began 3 x 414 days of discipline and correction under Cursed Time, during which time I had to move to Memphis, TN to find work. Memphis was a type of Egypt to me. It was a difficult time, but God was with me the entire time. He showed me more miracles of provision in Memphis than I had ever experienced in my life. It was never so clear that the purpose of the judgment of the law is to discipline and correct us as God’s children.

This time of disciple ended the day we moved out of Memphis on January 27, 1990. We moved to Rt. 2, Box 76, Leachville, AR. There was the 76 factor once again. This time it did not appear as a count of days but as my address. In other words, I remained in the cleansing cycle for as long as I remained at that house. We did not move to Seattle until late October 1993.

Once the 76 factor had been completed, then I could say that I had fully moved from Cursed Time to Blessed Time. Only then was I in a position to enter my calling, and the first thing was to do the Jubilee Prayer Campaign (November 1993).

I have observed that Cursed Time usually has to do with refusing the calling that God has for us, or with taking upon one’s self the responsibility of a calling that is not ours. No one is put on Cursed Time for ordinary sin, except that we are all born under the sentence of the law on account of Adam’s sin, which put the whole earth on Cursed Time.

In my case, in 1981 I was trying to be a pastor in Las Cruces, when, in fact, I was a teacher, not a pastor. I had known since I was 12 years old that I was not called to be a pastor, but I had long forgotten this in 1981. So I was put on Cursed Time for 414 days in order to align with my true calling. In 1982 I had many offers to pastor churches, but I refused them all.

The second time I entered Cursed Time (1986-1990) was because I had remained in the Net of Prayer beyond my time. I was to be part of it for just five years, but then I refused to leave when God said to “call the new Net of Prayer to prayer.” This put me on a longer Cursed Time cycle to teach me again to do my calling and not try to fulfill other people’s callings.

These were hard lessons, but necessary to discipline me to follow God’s leading and not the leading of my flesh.