Altering History’s Trajectory

Years ago, during an early and very formative time in my walk with the Lord, one of the two pastors making the most impact in my spiritual trajectory made an unusual statement concerning His sermons. He noted that he regularly prayed that his message would always be a word from on-high; as he expressed it: that it would be “hot off the wire.” It was a season of change and one electric with what God was doing. So in attending his services, the expectation for his messages was always high. He had certainly reached high in setting his bar. In retrospect I seriously cannot remember when his messages fell short … the impact always being tangible.

The model for what he sought in being an example and for his ministry was solid. It reflects Jesus noting that He always imparted what He heard from the Father. So it has been for the standard I’ve prayerfully sought for the messages I scribe for SIGN.

Despite more than 50 years of walking with the Lord since my late 20s, this last year has been one of the more difficult in my journey of Life with Jesus … largely because of choices I’ve made, first in serving and then in reaching for more of Him. It bears on both who I am, in Him and my assignment, from Him.

Having spent the time needed in preparing our recent Thanksgiving meal, I went to my place of prayer …. and simply allowed the Lord to bring to mind an amazing sequence of matters for which I have been and am deeply grateful. Interesting: there was a consistency in the recall and gratefulness of meaningful relationships.

The Dynamics of Deep Relationships
While some relationships had faded or faltered, it was the ones that had gone deep, touching dimensions beyond the superficialities of life that had come to mind. Simultaneously, at the crux of those relationships was the character and example of my dad … who more than any other person I’ve known, taught me the vital aspects needed in life concerning relationships: honor and integrity.

Parenthetically, when the bar is sufficiently high, the factors of honor and integrity represent reciprocal, intertwined qualities …. ones you first extend to others, then invest in with your thinking and decisions … each serving to maintain key relationships, before they become the benefit and blessing God intended for them as ripples, both within the community and across the generations.

Let me share from my dad’s example. My dad lived to be in his late 80s and went to glory in the late 1990s. Across the generations, he was greatly influenced by his grandfather, who immigrated to the US alone at 16. My great-grandfather’s passionate weekend avocation developed into serving as an itinerant preacher for five rural unchurched communities. My dad served as his assistant.

My dad was a people person, one of those you’d describe as a born leader …. but one characterized that way because he genuinely loved people and people loved him. People came to him to fix things …. he was uniquely trusted …. over the course of his life.

I grew up in a small home-town of roughly 10,000. In spending his career with the town’s main employer, a manufacturer of railroad brake shoes and other iron/steel casting products, my dad worked his way up through the ranks, eventually becoming General Manager. The union was strong in those days …. and the union-head was frequently at our house …. as together, they worked things out …. because, as I noted, my dad was trusted.

Sandwiched into his primary job, while I was in junior high, my dad became a town councilman …. and within a year, with the mayor dying, he was voted to be mayor. He held that position longer than any standing mayor in the town’s history …. in addition to the demands of the job that paid our bills. Unto him that much is given, much is required.

After he died, a trickle-down impact from his life, both generationally and community-wise, have been ones my dad counted as friends becoming my friends …. always available to help if I needed it. My dad had always been there if someone needed help. He altered the course of the lives of many. That is what people remember and the intent of spiritual leadership.

Jesus’ Transfiguration and Higher Dimensions
Then from my Thanksgiving reflections on meaningful relationships, I found myself pondering the dynamic of the time of Jesus’ transfiguration.

In this amazing domain outside the realm of time, Jesus took with Him his innermost circle, Peter and the sons of thunder, John and his brother James (Jacob). These are the brothers who (in Luke 9 in an earlier stage of their spiritual maturity) wanted to call down fire as Elijah did because of the Samaritan’s rejection of Jesus.

There is no question that, misguided though they may have been in their zeal, the intent of this inner circle group had been in upholding Jesus’ honor … not unlike that of Phinehas in Exodus 6, who God lauded and uniquely blessed his generations to follow ,,, for upholding His honor.

Jesus’ response to their suggestion of calling down the fire as Elijah did is significant and revealing … as Elijah was rooting out the source of the misguided power, whereas the Samaritans represented those being seduced and misguided by it. On the other hand, it was why God’s judgment at the rebellion at Korah was so direct and complete … as these were those who were the source of the rebellion.

Across the centuries, it reflects a significant track record of the God-response to those usurping His authority … who attempt to lower the bar …. in opposing those entrusted to raise the bar to alter the course or trajectory of history.

Assignments Changing the Trajectory of History
That’s what I believe the exchange between Jesus, Elijah and Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration was about. Each had been entrusted by God with initiatives serving to alter the most significant trajectory in the course of history.

So it is for the season that lies before us. It is a season for raising the bar. It is a season that goes beyond being just unprecedented and against the grain of the thinking that might have been targeted by Jesus’ denouncements of those lowering of the bar and missing the mark … due to the distractions of the precepts of men. Once again, at the core of grasping the significance of what lies ahead are these often subtle issues of integrity and honor.

There came a time in the conquest of the promised land that on one hand was unprecedented, but on the other hand, centuries prior, God had prophesied to Abram (Gen 15:16) at the time He sealed their covenant. God’s reference was in dealing with the unresolved ripples resulting from the iniquity of the Amorites (Gen 6 and Gen 12) … the corruption and evil released from the beings who were the result of the blended offspring of the cosmic (angelic) beings and humans. So, the physical and spiritual quest … and elevation of the bar that lay before Joshua was nothing less than to alter the trajectory of history. With it was Joshua’s authority in reshaping God’s cosmic order of things.
“Then Joshua spoke to Adonai on the day Adonai gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel and said in the eyes of Israel: ‘Sun, stand still over Gibeon, Moon, over the Aijalon Valley!’ So the sun stood still and the moon stopped until the nation took vengeance on its enemies. So the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hurry down for about a full day. There was no day like that before it or after it, when Adonai listened to the voice of a man and Adonai fought for Israel.” (TLV) Joshua 10:12-14

Yet at the subtle core of this history-altering event were the issues of honor and integrity; of upholding the Israelites’ covenant with the Gibeonites. Joshua 10 tells of the five kings of the Amorites who made war against the Gibeonites. The Gibeonites, who were in covenant with Israel, sent word to Joshua appealing to him to come to their rescue. In seeking the Lord, the Lord told Joshua not to fear these hybrid Amorite beings; that not one of them would be able to stand before Israel.

Scripture tells us that as the Lord threw the Amorites into a panic, that Israel struck them with a great blow. In the course of the events that followed, the five kings of the Amorites became separated from their armies, then were captured by Israel. Joshua made an example of them before the men of war of Israel, admonishing these leaders to be strong and of good courage with the expectation of this example being what the Lord would do when they fearlessly faced their enemies.

When God Arises with Course-Altering Assignments
So, together with my reflections of a host of my own meaningful relationships, has been an intense time of pondering the question of what it was in the lives of both Enoch and Elijah that caused God to translate them into eternity without experiencing death. There is no question that the mix of deep relationships, the trajectory-adjustments needed in history and the higher dimensions from God’s perspective … combined into an intensity from God with the authority for course-altering assignments.

In the book of Job (32), it gives a glimpse into the intensity of this spiritual dimension of this God-granted authority with encounters such as Joshua faced with the Amorites: “He gathers the lightning in His hand and commands it to strike the target.” These were not isolated happen-stances, but consistently reflect cooperative participation of God’s people in fearlessly facing the deadliness of the evil arrayed against them.

The glimpse from Job coincides with the glimpse we get from Jesus’ transfiguration (Matt 17) where one of the translations (tPt) notes that His appearance was altered so that His clothing became like lightning. Not unlike how scripture describes the countenance of the angel (like lightning) at the empty tomb in Matthew 28, it bears on the potent power and authority of God imparted, that has been so dramatic in times of such convergences.

Prior to Jesus’ transfiguration, which took place at Caesarea Philippi (according to scripture at the base of Mount Herman, not Mount Tabor, a non-scriptural conclusion not made until the Third Century), that Jesus responded to Peter’s revelation of His identity as God’s son with the words that: “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

I would suggest that Jesus’ words to Peter were prophetically tied to the convergence of events amassing in this hour … as we embrace the reality of who He is in approaching the final countdown of this cosmic drama precipitated by God’s responses of restoring His order to the result of the rebellions noted in Genesis 3, 6 and 12.

Glimpses of such convergences beyond the veil have brought me closer to understanding and better grasping what it was concerning Enoch and Elijah … each at the spiritual vortex of having tapped this power and authority …. whose life-assignments resulted in faceoffs with death … to the extent that they each later bypassed death in God taking them into eternity. So it will be as Jesus explained the sequence before us as being “just as it was during the days of Noah.”

Enoch and Elijah prevailed, as will the remnant in the season emerging … completing what Jesus referenced with the gates of hell not prevailing against the Church advancing against them, with the same authority and power that stopped the sun and moon in place and later brought fire from heaven. In doing so, each faced death without compromise of either honor or integrity. It is the authority to alter the trajectory of history to complete the restoration … reset and aligned as well by the three penetrating the realm of time on the Mount of Transfiguration.

This issue of honor and integrity …. or the lack of it, was and is significant. It is seen in the ungodly response of the sons of Jacob when Shechem wanted to marry their sister Dinah. Their handling of the situation prostituted both their honor and integrity as God’s people. The result not only lost God’s protection with the people of the land, but brought judgment that precipitated God sending Joseph ahead into Egypt in order to alter the course that their short-sighted actions had undermined. Honor and integrity are not optional to this amassing cosmic drama.

The issue of honor and integrity is uniquely connected to the issue of Truth. Life as God has designed it and Truth are irretrievably entwined together … in their basis for relationships … from enduring friendships to the makeup of community to the very foundations of culture. Jesus made it plain that He came in order that we might have Life and to have it abundantly. While we have sought a closer glimpse into this trans-generational divine goal of altering history’s trajectory, with a minute shift, that focus might have been “altering the trajectory of Life.”

Ahab’s leadership over Israel was grossly swayed by the influences he invited into his inner-circle, first in small ways, but over time in increasingly greater ways in which he compromised Truth and the basis of Life God intended for His people. A modern-day parallel to this blinding process is that of the progressive development of Nazi mind-control from their early days in the 30s until they took off the gloves. Once that happened, scholars have pointed to the Nazi strategy of the Big Lie, which simply was to promulgate policy so preposterous that people were afraid not to believe it.

So it was in the days of Elijah in his confrontation with the prophets of Baal and Asherah. Despite the hidden 7000 that Elijah was not aware of, people were so deceived that not unlike the time in German history, even church leaders acquiesced to Hitler’s vile, evil goals.

To the point, there is an operational dimension that carries a foundational premise of being a steward of the destinies of God that rests on maintaining our roles as being reflectors of God’s image with the honor and integrity with which, without compromise, we resolutely conduct our assignments.

Then in returning to the thread of thought I was following concerning gratefulness …. and with it, relationships of depth; was the correlation of those relationships with not just the assignment, which we each possess, but with the extent to which that assignment has altered the course …. in the lives sent our way to engage with … and then, if the “reach” that in any way parallels that of Elijah and Enoch, that it may in some way change the trajectory of history. Indeed, the times are becoming increasingly unprecedented, yet with the models we have been given, so should it be with the reach and the priorities with which we align with Him.
“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the heavens will tremble. But the LORD will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.” Joel 3:14-16

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Morris Ruddick has been a forerunner of the Joseph-calling and God’s economy message, being an international voice for the higher dimensions of spiritual game-changers and intercessors since the mid-90s. As founder of Global Initiatives Foundation, the Strategic Intercession Global Network [SIGN] and designer of the God’s Economy Entrepreneurial Equippers Program and the Jewish Business Secrets YouTube series, Mr. Ruddick’s messages equip leaders and economic community builders with strategy where God’s light is dim in diverse regions around the globe.

He is author of “The Joseph-Daniel Calling;” “Gods Economy, Israel and the Nations;” “The Heart of a King;” “Something More;” “Righteous Power in a Corrupt World;” “Leadership by Anointing;” and “Mantle of Fire,” which address the mobilization of business and governmental leaders with destinies to impact their communities. They are available in print and e-versions from www.Amazon.com, www.apple.com/ibooks and www.BarnesandNoble.com.

Global Initiatives Foundation (www.strategic-initiatives.org) is a tax-exempt 501 (c) 3 non-profit whose efforts mobilize economic community builders imparting influence and the blessings of God. Checks on US banks should be made out to Global Initiatives and mailed to 3838 South Wabash Street, Denver CO 80237 or by credit card at https://strategic-initiatives.org/donate/

Since early 1996, the Strategic Intercession Global Network (SIGN) has mobilized prophetic intercessors and leaders committed to targeting strategic-level issues impacting the Body on a global basis. For more information go to https://strategic-initiatives.org

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