URGENT PRAYER REQUEST

Terry writes this prayer request for Kerry, her husband:

"Hubby is for open heart surgery tomorrow...PLEASE PRAY that our lives will speak Jesus, not like the world and that we would have opportunity to share HIS truth with whom-so-ever-may..."

Note: One of our Tonasket members, Gordon, called me two days ago, and we had an anointing service with oil, prayer, and an appeal to God to honor His Word given in James 5 a few days ago with Kerry and Terry after their own church elders refused to honor this request on their behalf. Kerry has had heart problems for at least three years now. Three years ago, he was clinically "dead" for 15 minutes, before they applied the paddles, and brought back a heart with an artery blocked down to 30% capacity.

During that time down, Kerry had a vision of himself, and of Jesus Christ in garments shining like the weave and wick of a gas camp lantern. Jesus spoke to him, and Kerry was sent back to earth to complete his life's work. This work has included speaking out of the dreams and visions God has continued to give Kerry and his wife, Terry, which point them to the details of the Old Testament sanctuary tent of the time of Moses, and details in symbolic form the very key truths that Seventh-day Adventists have known from our founding as a people.

Specifically, the dream symbols involve the cleansing power that can only come through an entire acceptance of the Ten Commandment Law of God, and the blood of Jesus, including the seventh day Saturday Sabbath of the Bible, and this in the context of the preaching of the eternal gospel. As I know of the truths to which these visions Kerry has received signify, helping he and his wife understand them and know their significance is not difficult.

During the first year after his initial heart attack, Kerry repeatedly attempted to share what he was experiencing with his congregation, but was told by its leadership that he was being led by a spirit other than that from God. His requests that he be shown his error from the Bible proved to no avail. He and his wife have stepped back from direct involvement in the congregation that a portion of their six children's families attend after being increasingly shunned by the leaders and members alike. They are in an isolated position, both socially, geographically (they moved far up into our local "Valley of Refuge", and have been living off the grid, preparing for the coming crisis that every one of the 42 congregations I have visited so far in our district area affirms is imminent), and spiritually.

Two of their own congregations leaders were summoned to do the anointing, but have refused this service to one of their own, on unbiblical grounds, until Kerry and his wife should repent of the spirit that has been giving them the dreams of Bible truths their own group has not yet understood, or accepted, but which are vital for God's people living in the end times. When this occurred, through Gordon, an Adventist friend to the couple, I was summoned to assist.

When we had heard of the moving of God's Spirit in their lives, I told Kerry, "The passage in James 5 says to "Pray for one another". Would you be willing to pray for me, even before I pray for you?" He agreed, and I remembered that my wife Judi had requested prayers that her own illness be lifted sufficiently for her to be able to sing and play her worship and praises to God again among His people. I asked Kerry to anoint me with oil on Judi's behalf to that end. When he had done so, he placed hands on both of my shoulders and prayed that if his life must be taken in exchange, to grant my wife her request.

Then I anointed him with oil, the Spirit moving me to inscribe the shape of the two tablets of the Ten Commandment Law, which had been clearly featured in the dreams and visions he has received, on his forehead, along with the shape of the cross. We had already discussed these twin marks of God's true end time people, as they appear in Revelation 12:17:

"And the dragon (Satan) was enraged with the woman (God's true people in all ages), and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring (God's end time believers) who (here come the two marks, so watch closely...) KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD, and HOLD TO THE TESTIMONY OF JESUS."

That's from the New American Standard Bible, which I happen to have on the desk beside me, with the () marks enclosing the Biblical interpretation of the symbols involved.

We are in the time when God is sealing His people for what lies just ahead, through His Spirit. His people have two marks:

1. They keep God's Ten Commandment Law (Exodus 20:3-17)

2. They trust in Jesus' blood alone to pay for their past violations of that Law, and to give them power needed through His Spirit to fully comply with every detail of its teachings.

The symbols traced in oil on Kerry's brow signify his acceptance of these very things, which includes an acceptance of the seventh-day Saturday Sabbath of the Bible, which is in the heart of God's eternal law, and is reaffirmed repeatedly in the New Testament writings through both precept of Jesus and His apostles, and in explicit teaching.

The group to which Kerry and Terry belong is a fervent and devout Christian denomination, who have an ongoing desire to be freed from all sin, and to come into God's presence. This occurs, of course, through the sanctuary, in Bible times, and especially now, as Jesus completes the final acts of His ministry in the heavenly sanctuary before returning to earth for His Bride, the Church. When I visited among them a number of months ago, their congregation had just completed an entire series of meetings seeking to draw nearer to God. Yet the pastor told the congregation, "We must still press on to come nearer to God!" He was correct. Something was missing in his own religious experience and what he did not possess, he could not pass on to his people.

"There is one portion of the Ten Commandment Law that was symbolized as the cleansing blue flame in your vision that your church stands in violation of every time they meet to worship," I told Kerry. "That is the fourth commandment, which specifies the seventh day Saturday Sabbath as the day set aside by the Creator Himself to meet with Him in worship. Sunday, based on mere human tradition, arising from the Papacy of Rome, as signified by the Little Horn power on the head of the dragon of Daniel 7, is the authority behind the shift of day. And each of us is a servant of the master we choose to obey: Either the god of the Vatican, a mere human authority contrary to the Law of God, or the God of the Bible, as He expresses Himself in the Ten Commandments and in the rest of the teachings of the Bible."

"I never thought I would observe the seventh-day Sabbath," Kerry informed me, as he saw the significance of both the Scriptures themselves, and also their application to the specifics of the dreams/visions he had been given, which so aroused the opposition of an increasingly spiritually-abusive church leadership. Others of his congregation told him they believed some of the things he had said and done were correct, but that they feared to acknowledge this openly, as they would be shunned, too.

At present in two congregations of this very closed group, four marriages have been broken up by the leadership of the congregations attempts to insert themselves in decisions rightfully left between husbands and wives. These couples love each other, but are divorced and living apart, wishing to reunite, but have the men unwilling to allow the church leaders to dictate the inner workings and decisions they hold rightfully belong to a man and his wife, not to a pastor and another man's wife.

Please be praying not only for Kerry and Terry, but also these four other couples. None have remarried. All wish to return to their spouses. But the women involved fear being lost forever if they accept their own husbands' authority within their home above the intrusive authority of their local spiritual leaders. This is the larger healing that needs to occur. Please pray for an even larger anointing so that this currently unresolved open wound may be healed, and these marriages restored, as God intends.