ULDAH MINISTRY

No,75　　JANUARY. 2002

【PARADIGN SHIFT】

　 3:16At the end of seven days the word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to a wicked man, 'you will surely die,' and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his flood. But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself.
"Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling-block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin. The righteous things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the righteous man not to sin and he does not sin, he will surely live because he took warnings, and you will have saved yourself." The hand of the LORD was upon me there, and he said to me, "get up and go out to the plain, and there I will speak to you." So I got up and went out to the plain. And the glory of the LORD was standing there, like the glory I had seen by the Kebar River, and I fell face down. Then the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet. He spoke to me and said "Go, shut yourself inside your house. And you, son of man, they will tie with ropes; you will be bound so that you cannot go out among the people. I will make your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth so that you will be silent and unable to rebuke them, though they are a rebellious house. 27But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, "This is what the Sovereign LORD says." Whoever will listen let him listen, and whoever will refuse let him refuse; for they are a rebellious house.

24:25 "And you, son of man, on the day I take away their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes, their heart's desire, and their sons and daughters as well-on that day a fugitive will come to tell you the news. 27At that time your mouth will be opened; you will speak with him and will no longer be silent. So you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the LORD."

33:21In the twelfth year of our exile, in the tenth month on the fifth day, a man who had escaped from Jerusalem came to me and said, "The city has fallen!"
22Now the evening before the man arrived, the hand of the LORD was upon me, and he opened my mouth before the man came to me in the morning. So my mouth was opened and I was no longer silent.
Ezekiel 3:16~27, 24:25~27, 33:21~22

According to Clifford Hill, six weeks prior to the catastrophic event of the twin towers on 11th September this year David Wilkerson was forewarned of an extraordinary event and had consequently cancelled all church activities and itineraries to devote himself to spending time to pray for the U.S.A. with other members of his church. David Wilkerson who has been pastoring the Times Square Church in the heart of Broadway, New York and had been warning the nation to repent and to return to the Lord, to avoid swift and horrible judgments for a number of years since 1973, when the Lord told David about His consuming fire of judgment against sin. He especially warned of sudden destruction falling upon New York.
'New York's publicly owned buildings and structures and utilities are falling apart.' '…there will be panic and despair and anarchy as the city loses the ability to maintain order.' 'No one will want New York real estate ―except at give-away price.' David likened New York, America's pride, to Nineveh, the crown jewel of a mighty empire, Assyria: 'Nineveh, like New York City, was made up of smaller cities or precincts. …Under Jonah's historic preaching Nineveh exhibited a form of repentance -but the repentance was shallow and short-lived. Nineveh soon returned to its wickedness and immorality were exported all over the world, … the prophet Nahum …saw that wicked society -drunk with pleasure, success and prosperity, full of pride, greed and violence, a people at ease while sobbing and shedding blood -and he cried out, "Woe to Nineveh! God is going to bring judgment again!" Nahum's prophecy came forth years after Jonah had been sent to proclaim judgment on the city. God had been "slow to anger" and patient in spite of their wickedness, bloodshed and godlessness. He remembered the short-lived repentance of their fathers under Jonah's preaching. …Nahum's warning to Nineveh is a warning to us (America) also: …America is drunken with lust, drugs, violence, evil sex -and intoxicated with success and prosperity.' …(Nicky Cruz 'A Final Warning', Kingsway Publications).
David Wilkerson claims that in every age the Lord has communicated His warnings to the people in different ways as the Bible testifies (Gen.18:17, Heb.11:7, 1Sam. 3:11, Dan.2:19). He points out that the Old Testament prophets were students of societies and were aware of God's mercy, His Long-suffering endurance and were also able to discern 'the trigger points of God's wrath'(p110), and delivered prophecies of destruction based on sound biblical deductions. David claims that any God-fearing, praying Christian can also prophesy like Daniel did.
Deuteronomy 28 in the Hebrew Bible lists both the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. It says that if Israel turns her back on the Word of God and turns against Him after her covenant relationship with Him the disasters written in it will come upon her. David applies them to present-day America, precisely as prophet Daniel had done to the situations of God's people in his day and had cried out to the Lord in his intercessory prayers, 'Therefore the curses and sworn judgments written in the Law of Moses, the servant of God, have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against you. You have fulfilled the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us great disaster. … Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not turned from our sins and given attention to your truth. The LORD did not hesitate to bring the disaster upon us, for the LORD our God is righteous … '(Da. 9:11~14).
David believes that America which has declared God to be her Lord, has broken her voluntary covenant relationship with Him and he presents a list of twelve signs of curses upon America(p112~115):
1. A curse upon cities Deu. 28:16 2. A curse upon economy Deu. 28:17, Lev. 26:26
3. A curse upon future market Deu. 28:18 4. A curse on foreign negotiations Deu. 28:19~20
5. Plagues of incurable illness Deu. 28:21~22, :27~28, :35
6. Dust bouls and areas of drought Deu. 28:24
7. Insignificant enemies will shame the U.S. Armies. Deu. 28:25~26
8. An epidemic of divorce Deu. 28:30 9. A wave of bankruptcies Deu. 28:31
10. The loss of a generation of youth Deu. 28:32, :41
11. Prosperity of other nations at her expense Deu. 28:43, Hos. 7:9, 8:7
12. America will become a debtor nation -rather than a lender Deu. 28:44

According to Clifford Hill, David Wilkerson used to be a well known preacher world-wide and both his book and the film, "The Cross and the Switchblade" have reached the height of popularity in the 1970s. However, since he had a vision from the Lord in April 1973, his ministry radically changed and he disappeared from public view. In the vision, he saw the spiritual bankruptcy of the church and the fall of many famous and powerful ministries, along with world-wide economic chaos, breakdown of law, social order, morality and family life. As he changed his messages from preaching about the exciting tales of his own experiences of evangelism in New York's violent inner-city areas, to preaching on "Holiness and Righteousness" and God's imminent judgment and as he started to openly rebuke the selfish, worldly churches, he was rejected by the churches. Clifford comments: "Babylon has entered the church as surely as it has possessed the banks and the western economic system. Church leaders, instead of calling for repentance, have devised theologies to support their worldly teaching and to bring comfort to their rich benefactors. Popular preachers have made fortunes with their 'prosperity gospel.' False prophets and teachers have tickled the ears of multitudes with their neo-occult practices, 'words of knowledge' and 'signs and wonders' that have deceived those who do not know the teachings of Jesus …"(p8). However, he has very lately referred to a paradigm shift of David's ministry, in that people are beginning to return to take heed of his warnings since the September 11 disaster in New York, in other words, after seeing the fulfillment of his prophecies. This paradigm shift on people's spiritual directions reminded me of Ezekiel's passages quoted in the beginning.
Seven years before the first Jerusalem temple built by Solomon was burned and the people of Jerusalem finally lost not only the city but also the kingdom of Judah itself, Ezekiel received the first vision from the Lord in the land of Babylon.He was one of the exiles living in Babylon, 5 years after the second exile. The message was about the prophetic warnings against the unfaithful rebellious nation, Israel. In 593 BCE Ezekiel was summoned to boldly speak to the exiles what the Lord had said, whether they would listen or not listen (i.e., v.27, 'Whoever will listen let him listen, and whoever will refuse let him refuse.'), so that they would know that a prophet had been among them. For these difficult purposes, he had to be well-equipped by the Lord's strength as a watchman and be protected from his own thoughts mingling with the Lord's genuine words. His role as a prophet was to give the people warnings only from the Lord. Inevitably he was forced to remain dumb until the Lord Himself required him to speak His messages. This prevented him from rebuking the rebellious people himself or from any time-consuming and unnecessary arguments with them, until those times when the Lord opened his mouth and he could freely speak.
In 588 when the Lord spoke the very significant message of Jerusalem's fall, He also revealed His plan of releasing Ezekiel from dumbness at the end of his first stage of his prophetic ministry, i.e., time of relaying warnings of judgment to the nation. On that day, a fugitive from Jerusalem would arrive to tell the terrible news of destruction of Jerusalem and the exiles were to know the fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecies(24:25~27). Indeed, in 585 BCE, five months after the fatal day for Jerusalem and Judah, the first man to have escaped from Jerusalem as the first of the third exile of 586 BCE arrived in Babylon and reported the unthinkable events leading up to the total destruction of the temple, the city and the kingdom of Judah. It was exactly the promised time for Ezekiel to be delivered from dumbness and also when his previous prophecies of judgment upon Jerusalem were fulfilled and finally, the genuineness of his prophecies was vindicated, after all the hard times of mocking and sceptism from his country-men that he had had to undergo.
Consequently, people started to come to Ezekiel to enquire of God's words, saying to each other, 'Come and hear the message that has come from the LORD '(33:30). However, the Lord poignantly assessed their hearts as 'My people come to you, as they usually do, and sit before you to listen to your words, but they do not put them into practice. With their mouths they express devotion, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain.' Significantly, the Lord repeated the same phrase twice; 'they hear your words but do not put them into practice' (33:32). Even so, the new stage of Ezekiel's ministry had begun in that he would start delivering message of hope for the restoration of Israel, not with a stern voice but with a pastoral heart.
Due to God's grace and His faithfulness to His covenant with Israel, His ultimate plan of Israel's restoration is still on-going today. The new covenant era when God's law would be written on the heart as Jeremiah had prophesied, has been inaugurated by Jesus' gospel, and salvation has universally been extended further to Gentiles. Isaiah had already foreseen that God's salvation would universally extend to including all the nations rather than just Israel. Only this inner regeneration will be able to bring real peace and prosperity. Israel's history has shown that the strokes of God's wrath are also a purging fire for purification and has taught that salvation can only be accomplished through judgment which might inevitably reduce the nation to a mere handful of remnants. The same principle can be applied to all of Jesus' followers today. As Jeremiah and Ezekiel had explicitly appealed to the nation of Israel the importance of wholeness and purification out of the vices that had corrupted her, so David Wilkerson is standing against the false gospel of materialism, humanism, liberalism, secularism and also against the false gods of lust, prosperity and power, which have regrettably seeped deeply into Christendom.
It is good news that Christians and churches have come to seek the words from the Lord through David, recognising his God-ordained prophetic ministry since the 11th of September because it might be a sign that a new stage of his ministry to raise up a faithful remnant of Jesus' followers, rather than to give harsh warnings of judgment alone, has been inaugurated, in the light of the pattern of Ezekiel's ministry and also Isiah's. As David Wilkerson had for long been prophesying, and also as exemplified in the Hebrew Bible that the cases in which even the wicked nations could be used as God's rod to attack God's people Israel, if the terrorists had been permitted to serve as God's rod to correct and chastise America and consequently, other nations, the only solution against the global scale terrorism lies in repentance and prayer, and not military retaliation at all.