Ministries
2nd Quarter 2007 (April / May / June)
Lynne Hammond
Dearest Friend and Pray-er,
Just before this year began, a minister I greatly respect delivered a prophetic declaration about 2007. He announced it would be the year of the open door.
I don’t mind telling you, when I heard those words, they absolutely exploded in my spirit because many years ago I discovered just how vital spiritual doors can be. The man who mentored me and my husband in prayer, brother Phil Halverson, taught frequently about them. Even better, he showed us how to pray for them. And we saw the amazing things that can happen when they open.
I’ve never forgotten those days we spent praying with brother Halverson. He was the greatest person of prayer I’ve ever known. In 1985, he went home to be with the Lord while praying on the platform of our church. He departed like Enoch, walking in the Spirit with God. He must have just stepped over from earth to heaven of his own free will because they found no natural cause of death.
Although brother Halverson has been gone for years now, I know he would have been thrilled to hear the prophetic words that have been spoken about this year. He would have rejoiced to hear the Spirit of God say:
"2007 will be known as the year of the open door. My Word states in Revelation 3 that I open doors no man can shut and I shut doors no man can open. There are those of you over the years that have set out with commitment and resolve to do things that I have assigned you to do. And over a period of time, it looked like the Devil just slammed the door in your face. But you hear me now," saith the Lord, "I am opening your door in 2007 and nobody else will be able to close it on you. Don’t quit. Don’t give up. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Don’t give up on this nation. Don’t give up on your church; 2007 is the year of doors opening and held open. Go through them with great faith and stay on the Word. You stay with Me and I’ll stay with you and together we will see victory beyond anything you or anybody else has ever seen before."
WORKING WITH THE WATCHMAN
It doesn’t matter who you are, if you love Jesus and are living for Him, those words are good news! But if you’re a person who is deeply committed to prayer, they’re even more than that. They’re crucial marching orders from our heavenly Commander. Since He uses prayer to open spiritual doors, if we’re going to effectively cooperate with Him in this season, we need to be prepared to pray about the doors He wants to open. We need to know what He has to say about them.
Actually, I never paid much attention to what Jesus said about doors until I first heard brother Halverson teach on the tenth chapter of John. There, Jesus said:
I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, he who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other away (elsewhere, from some other quarter) is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The watchman opens the door for this man, and the sheep listen to his voice and heed it; and he calls his own sheep by name and brings (leads) them out. … So Jesus said again, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, that I Myself am the Door for the sheep. … I am the Door; anyone who enters in through Me will be saved (will live). He will come in and he will go out [freely], and will find pasture. (verses 1-3, 7, 9 AMP)
In that passage, Jesus identifies Himself both as the true Shepherd who comes through the door and as the Door itself. But He refers to Someone else in that passage as well. He talks about the watchman (or the porter as some translations put it) who opens the door.
Who is that watchman?
The Holy Spirit! He is the one who opens the door for Jesus to do what He wants to do on earth. Powerful as He is, however, the Holy Spirit doesn’t do the job alone. He works through God’s people. As we yield to the Holy Spirit and allow Him to pray through us, we become the vehicle through which He moves. He utilizes our prayers to open important spiritual doors.
WHEN GOD OPENS HEARTS
What kind of doors do we help Him open?
First and foremost, the doors to people’s hearts.
Sadly, many believers don’t even realize God can open people’s hearts to the Gospel. They think folks either open or close themselves to it by their own choices. But the Bible clearly indicates that the Holy Spirit Himself can move upon someone and enable them to understand and receive the message of salvation when they otherwise wouldn’t.
That’s what happened in Acts 16 when Paul and Silas went to Philippi. As you may recall, they hadn’t originally intended to preach in that city. They wanted to go to Asia instead. But the Bible says they were “forbidden by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Word [in the province of] Asia” (verse 6 AMP).
Isn’t that interesting? Apparently, there was no open door for them in that area right then. And, as many evangelists have discovered, you can preach till you’re blue in the face but if the hearts of the people aren’t open to the Gospel, it won’t do a bit of good. You’ll just be wasting your time. (Remember that because we’ll see more about that a little later.)
The Lord didn’t want Paul and Silas to waste their time so He gave Paul a vision in the night: “A man from Macedonia stood pleading with him and saying, Come over to Macedonia and help us!” (verse 9 AMP). Confident that they’d received direction from God, they headed immediately for Philippi, which is the chief city of that area. When they arrived, they went down to the riverbank where the Jews went to pray and addressed those who had assembled there. “One of those who listened … was a woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a dealer in fabrics dyed in purple. She was [already] a worshiper of God, and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (verse 14 AMP).
Notice that verse doesn’t say Lydia opened her own heart. It says the Lord opened it! He didn’t stop there, either. He also moved on her to open her home to Paul and Silas. As a result, they ended up staying there and launching a major work of God and Lydia became an open door to the whole city.
I want you to know, the Holy Spirit still works like that today. I’ve seen it proven in a dramatic way just recently through the ministry of a born again evangelist I know who was once a Muslim. The pray-ers at our church pray for him quite frequently. In November of 2006, he got the opportunity to preach in Malawi. Although that country has been closed for many years, the Holy Spirit went before him and opened people’s hearts in staggering numbers. Hundreds of thousands of people were saved in a matter of days. Tens of thousands were baptized in the Holy Spirit in one service.
Ministry is fruitful when the Holy Spirit opens the doors to people’s hearts!
DOORS OF DESTINY
The second kind of door the Holy Spirit opens is the door of revelation. When that door opens, God’s people see things spiritually that they were blind to before. They understand truths that had previously escaped their grasp.
That’s what happened to the apostle John when the Lord revealed to him the future events of the last days. Describing the experience in the book of Revelation, he says, “After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice which I had heard addressing me like [the calling of] a war trumpet said, Come up here, and I will show you what must take place in the future” (Revelation 4:1 AMP).
Years ago, brother Kenneth Hagin prophesied about a time to come when such doors of revelation would be opened to the Church in greater measure. He told us that when we enter those realms of revelation, believers will be strong and they will do exploits. That’s because revelation enables us to operate with greater authority and boldness. It empowers us with the wisdom and confidence we need to finish the work God has called us to do.
Think about what happened to Peter, for example, when he was praying on the rooftop in Acts, chapter 10. God opened a door of revelation to him. He put Peter in a trance and, through a vision, taught him that God was no respecter of persons. He showed Peter that He could cleanse and sanctify a Gentile just as easily as He could cleanse and sanctify a Jew.
If the Holy Spirit hadn’t opened that door of revelation to Peter, he never would have been bold enough to go to Cornelius’ house to preach the Gospel. He would have been afraid to do it! But because God opened a door of revelation for him, he had the courage to go and say to the large group of Gentiles who had assembled there to hear the Word:
You yourselves are aware how it is not lawful or permissible for a Jew to keep company with or to visit or [even] to come near or to speak first to anyone of another nationality, but God has shown and taught me by words that I should not call any human being common or unhallowed or [ceremonially] unclean. Therefore when I was sent for, I came without hesitation or objection or misgivings… (verses 28-29 AMP).
Clearly, Peter was called of God to preach the Gospel to those people. That was a part of his divine destiny. But the Holy Spirit had to open a door of revelation before he could do it.
The same is true for the rest of us. Believers, full-time ministers, government leaders—all of us need doors of revelation to open that will help us fulfill God’s call on our lives. We all need to see things we haven’t yet seen spiritually. We all need to understand things we haven’t yet grasped. So we must consistently pray for those doors to open.
DOORS TO NATIONS
The third kind of door the Holy Spirit can open is what I call a geographical door. He can prepare the way for the Gospel to be preached in specific regions of the world. If you’ve studied much about contemporary world evangelism, you know how important that can be.
Right now, entire nations and groups of nations are locked down so tightly that the Gospel cannot get in. The nation of Tibet is one such nation. It has been closed to the Gospel for so long that many people believe when the door to Tibet opens, Jesus will return.
Another region often referred to as the 10/40 Window has been so bound up by Satan that nobody has been able to preach openly about Jesus there for many years. Recently, however, believers have united in prayer for such nations and now doors are beginning to open. One of those doors is in the nation of Niger—a country that boasts 44 million Muslims and only 10,000 Christians. Frankly, I don’t even know how those 10,000 got saved because no one at all has been allowed in or out of the country for so long. Until last year, the place seemed spiritually impenetrable. But now a new government has come into power that is welcoming people of other faiths. Through that government, the Holy Spirit is unlocking the nation!
All we have to do is read the book of Acts to see how vital geographical doors can be. As we saw earlier, Asia was once so closed to the Gospel that the Holy Spirit actually forbade him to go there!
Later in Paul’s ministry, however, the situation changed. When it did, Paul went to the Asian city of Ephesus—a place famous for worshipping the goddess Diana—and, lo and behold, he found a small group of disciples! Of course, those disciples didn’t know very much because they didn’t have anyone to teach them. They’d only received the baptism of John and they hadn’t even heard of the Holy Spirit. After Paul baptized them in the name of Jesus and laid hands on them to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit:
…He went into the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, persuading and arguing and pleading about the kingdom of God. But when some became more and more stubborn (hardened and unbelieving), discrediting and reviling and speaking evil of the Way [of the Lord] before the congregation, he separated himself from them, taking the disciples with him, and went on holding daily discussions in the lecture room of Tyrannus from about ten o’clock till three. This continued for two years, so that all the inhabitants of [the province of] Asia, Jews as well as Greeks, heard the Word of the Lord… (Acts 19:8-10 AMP).
Now that’s what I call evangelistic success!
What was the secret behind it? Paul told us himself in 1 Corinthians 16:8-9. There, he wrote, “I will remain in Ephesus … until Pentecost, for a wide door of opportunity for effectual [service] has opened to me [there, a great and promising one], and [there are] many adversaries” (AMP).
My, what amazing things can happen in a region when the Holy Spirit opens a door! Not only can the Gospel be freely preached, signs and wonders will accompany it. That’s what happened in Ephesus. Acts 19 tells us that the most spectacular miracles of Paul’s ministry took place in that city. There, in a place once totally dominated by demon spirits, the Holy Spirit opened such a wide door of divine power that “God did unusual and extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or towels or aprons which had touched his skin were carried away and put upon the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them” (verses 11-12 AMP).
RELEASING THE RESERVOIR
Another vital door the Holy Spirit can open through the prayers of God’s people is the door of utterance that allows ministers of the Gospel to fully and freely declare the Word of God. Many believers don’t even realize such a door is necessary. They think if a minister is called of God and if he is properly prepared, he can just preach up a storm anytime he wants to. But that’s not true. It takes help from the Holy Spirit to preach effectively.
Nobody understood that better than the apostle Paul. That’s why He wrote to the churches and said things like:
Pray at all times (on every occasion, in every season) in the Spirit, with all [manner of] prayer and entreaty. To that end keep alert and watch with strong purpose and perseverance, interceding in behalf of all the saints (God’s consecrated people). And [pray] also for me, that [freedom of] utterance may be given me, that I may open my mouth to proclaim boldly the mystery of the good news (Ephesians 6:18-19 AMP).
The word boldly in that last phrase doesn’t just refer to being courageous and without fear. It’s actually translated from a Greek word that refers to a reservoir. Paul chose that word because he knew there was a reservoir of the mystery of the Gospel locked up inside him and if the floodgates weren’t opened, the revelation wouldn’t be released. He also realized that only the Holy Spirit working through the prayers of God’s people had the power to open those gates.
In light of that fact, it’s no wonder that Paul asked for prayer again when he wrote Colossians and said:
Be earnest and unwearied and steadfast in your prayer [life], being [both] alert and intent in [your praying] with thanksgiving. And at the same time pray for us also, that God may open a door to us for the Word (the Gospel), to proclaim the mystery concerning Christ (the Messiah) on account of which I am in prison: that I may proclaim it fully and make it clear [speak boldly and unfold that mystery], as is my duty (Colossians 4:2-4 AMP).
Those verses make one thing perfectly clear: the apostle Paul—who had the greatest revelation of redemption that any man has ever had with the exception of Jesus Himself—needed a door of utterance to preach effectively. And if he needed a door of utterance, then every other minister does too!
That’s why brother Halverson used to pray continually for pastors. He was always asking God to help them speak the rhema of the Spirit. Sometimes he’d even get a piece of paper and while he was praying in tongues, he’d fold it… and unfold it… fold it… and unfold it. I never asked him what he was doing but now I know. He was praying for God to open doors of utterance so the ministers could unfold the mystery of the Gospel to the people.
NO TIME TO SIT BACK
Dear praying friend, think what powerful things can happen in the kingdom of God when the Holy Spirit opens doors! Imagine the wonders we will see as He unlocks the doors of people’s hearts, doors of revelation, geographical doors, and doors of utterance! Isn’t it thrilling that the Spirit is calling this year—2007!—the year of the open door?
Surely we can’t help but rejoice over those words. But as pray-ers, we must remember that God expects us to do more than just rejoice over them and be happy. He wants us to take hold of them by faith and begin to pray over them. He wants us to connect to those words in our hearts and, by yielding to the Holy Spirit, help bring them to pass.
For this is not a time to sit back and allow things to just happen. It’s a time to rise up and take our place in prayer. It’s a time to delve into the realm of the spirit and help bring forth that for which God is calling. It is time for us to help open the doors.
Until I write again, keep persevering in prayer and always remember that—
You are loved by,
Lynne
TODAY'S EUROPE--A GUIDE FOR BELIEVERS by John W. Rood
My wife, Liliane, and I have been missionaries in Europe for the last twenty years. We pioneered Eternal Word Christian Center in Brussels, Belgium in 1990 and pastor the church still today. Brussels is known as the capital of Europe, being the home of the main European Union institutions. During the last two decades, we have been first-hand witnesses of the rise of the European Union.
The European Union headquarters, known for secrecy, has been the focus of much speculation. During my first trip to Brussels in 1982, my contact at the airport greeted me with these words, “Welcome to Brussels, and there is no computer here named The Beast.” During my first visit with a fonctionnaire in the Berlaymont European Commission building I was told, “There is no computer here in the basement. We do not even know what the people across the hall are doing, let alone trying to monitor everyone in the world.”
At first, I had little desire to delve into political issues, especially those of a foreign nature. There is a tendency to put aside items that appear odd to us. But over the years, the Lord placed in my heart the desire to understand and communicate accurately to others concerning the European Union and its place in end-time Bible prophecy. In accepting this mission, I embarked on a journey that has been truly remarkable—one filled with mysteries, intrigue, discoveries, and studies that are resolved only by the Word of God. Thank God for the light of His Word!
EUROPE: THE MYSTERIOUS MISSION FIELD
Europe today is one of the greatest mission fields on earth. Evangelical believers are only one or two percent of the population in most European nations. A pastor in the United States once asked me, “Why would you want to be a missionary in Europe? Isn’t nearly everyone saved?” I was shocked.
Concerned missions leaders speak of a post-Christian Europe, that Christianity is losing ground rapidly. Discussions no longer revolve around, “Is Europe a Christian continent?” but rather, “Is Europe the dark continent?” There are plenty of reasons to come to such conclusions. Yet, it is God’s way to show Himself strong in places known for darkness! Your prayers bring in the light!
The European Union (EU) continues to be mysterious. The colossal entrance of the EU on the world stage, at times, even baffles its leaders. The EU is the largest unification in history of people, money, resources, and services. It has become a world power.
The people of Europe wonder what the European Union is all about. Most Europeans feel forced into the “European Project” and detached from Brussels. The lack of democracy is a great concern.
The European Union is very complex. The acquis document, signed by a nation when they join the EU, is approximately 90,000 pages long! The Accession Treaty, signed by the ten expansion nations, is 6,000 pages long. Even the “simple” Nice Treaty is 1,000 pages long and the complete EU Constitution is 800 pages long. The Constitution of the United States is only fifteen pages long, including all amendments.
LET US PRAY ACCORDING TO KNOWLEDGE
Christians are also asking questions about the EU. Is today’s European Union the Revived Roman Empire of the book of Daniel? How does the European Union relate to the ten toes made of the iron and clay mixture of Daniel chapter 2? How does the EU relate to the ten horns of Daniel chapter 7 and of Revelation chapters 13 and 17? Is the EU the beginning of a group of nations to be ruled by the Antichrist system?
How are we to pray about the EU? Does it make any difference if we pray or not, if indeed the EU is tied to Bible prophecy? What should be the believer’s attitude toward the EU?
Let us start with the believer’s attitude; it is certain that the believer’s attitude should not be one of ignorance.
To be effective in any endeavor, there is a three-step process. First, get the facts and gain the knowledge of the subject. Second, have a plan to apply that knowledge. And third, take action!
One way to be more effective in our prayer plan is to gain a good understanding of our subject. We have a responsibility to understand. Praying in the Spirit in other tongues is a wonderful way to pray out the plans of God. But we should not neglect gaining knowledge in order to pray better with our understanding. Paul did say, “I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding” (1 Corinthians 14:15 NKJ).
As believers, we should improve our comprehension of the European Union. Of course, it is more comfortable to deal with one’s own national affairs than to confront the intimidation of foreign affairs. Foreign matters are different than our own way of doing things. But with our focus on the move of God into all nations in these last days, it is time to establish our basic knowledge of the European Union. The Holy Spirit will springboard from our knowledge. The knowledge we acquire gives the Holy Spirit the “jumping off point” to work through us. Many souls are at stake!
DANIEL’S FINE EXAMPLE OF END-TIME KNOWLEDGE AND REVELATION
A magnificent example of understanding, combined with revelation, is found in the prophet Daniel. Daniel, the young Hebrew captive brought to Babylon, is the pivotal prophet that received revelation concerning the end times in the Old Testament. The book of Daniel is the Old Testament counterpart to the book of Revelation in the New Testament. It says in Daniel 1:17-20:
As for these four young men, God gave them knowledge and skill in all literature and wisdom; and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. Now at the end of the days, when the king had said that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar. Then the king interviewed them, and among them all none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah; therefore they served before the king. And in all matters of wisdom and understanding about which the king examined them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers who were in all his realm. (NKJ)
Daniel and the other chosen Hebrew captives were found ten times better than the others in training and all the king’s own advisors! Ten times better in what? They were ten times better in their expertise of the Babylonian language and writing, and in the details of Babylonian history and government! With the Lord’s help, Daniel excelled in all of the knowledge of Babylon, though he was in a foreign land and everything initially seemed strange to him. Daniel is a fine example for us.
For as long as I can remember, I have led my boys in a confession as I drive them to school. Each school day they say, “We are super geniuses, what does that mean? Ten times better!” Daniel’s example can help anyone in school. It also applies to those who the Holy Spirit uses through knowledge and revelation in these end times.
Reverend John Rood can be contacted at jwhitneyrood@yahoo.com.
John and Liliane have served the people of Europe for 22 years. Missionary support for the Roods can be designated “John Rood” and sent to Rhema Bible Church Missions, PO Box 50126, Tulsa, OK 74150.
