Prophetic Declaration for Oregon Dec. 2003 Part 2

USSPN Albany, Oregon #2

December 16, 2003

Dutch Sheets

So it’s amazing to me how the Lord does that. And I had no idea that the Lord was going to talk to us about the things that He is addressing here. In fact, I found it very strange when the Lord began to talk to me and to Chuck about Oregon needing a new prophetic mantle. Because you would think with a place that is prophetic, and you would think for a place that has a reputation of being prophetic and a distributor of the prophetic, you wouldn’t think you would get a word from the Lord that would say, “I want to make them more prophetic.” You’d think you’d find that word for some place that didn’t have much prophetic mantle. I’ve never seen before (stops.)

When I said last night that it was the spirit and power of Elijah that dealt with Jezebel, but it wasn’t – it had to go to another level, the same spirit and power of Elijah but it had to go to another level in Elisha and Jehu to deal with that spirit. Elijah started the process, but Elisha and Jehu finished the process. And so, I understood then. God began to say to me, “There is a new level, there is a new impartation of this mantle that needs to come on this region.” And of course, we’ve been building on that now ever since. It’s a very unique calling, I feel, that is on you. And Chuck raised some good questions today. He said, “Why would you come to a state...” (which I had never thought about this ‘til he mentioned to me) “that’s known for pacifism.” And he said to me there’s a pacifist spirit over this state. Now for God to say “This is the group that I’m going to use to overcome Jezebel!” – that is somewhat humorous, isn’t it?

But think about it! What did Elijah say to Israel in I Kings 18? “How long will you limp or halt between opinions?” They had become a pacifist people. And you know what they said to him when he asked that question? When Elijah asked them, “How long are you going to limp between God and Jezebel, or Baal? How long are you going to do that?” Do you know what they said to him? Anybody know? Nothing. “They answered him not a word,” it says. They’d lost their voice. They’d become so pacifist that they couldn’t even muster up an opinion. And yet within a very short time, God turned that situation. So God can just do that.

When you really think about it, overcoming a principality is not so much (and Chuck mentioned this, too) – it’s not so much screaming at demons. You know, 99% of the warfare that I’m involved in that I know is really warfare, I don’t even address a spirit unless it’s in a person. Most of the warfare that I’m involved in is just decreeing the word of the Lord and the sword of God is released over a region. Because if you think about it, really the key is not the principality, it’s the stronghold that has given place to the principality. So when you really deal with the strongholds in the spirit – Let me just say it this way: A stronghold and a strong man are not one and the same. And you don’t deal with the strong man by dealing with the strong man. You deal with the strong man by dealing with the stronghold that gives place to the strong man. Does that make sense?

So I just said all that to say, much of what involves disarming the enemy in our midst really does have to do at some level, at some point it will have to do with changing mindsets. It will have to do with the way we think. And I have a very unique challenge of me right now. And again, I’ve never done this message in this form before. I’ve been processing all morning. But I feel like one of the things that God would help me do before we finish here over the next 50 minutes or so is to somehow bring the connection and show how changing a mindset is an act of war. Now that’d be a good thing to write down.

And I really don’t know fully how I’m going to do this, but honestly, I don’t usually what I’m going to speak on in these 50-state meetings until I get there. And I just made a covenant with God, “I will not just go pull out something I know. I will listen to You for each state. And if it causes me to get up with a degree of insecurity and have to struggle my way through, I’m going to do it.” That’s a real challenge for me, because my roots are really as a teacher. That’s how I developed in God and that’s the first office I stepped into was just as a teacher and taught in Bible colleges. Man, I’m used to 15 points, 14 Greek words, line upon line, line upon line. I know where I’m going, I know where I’m going to end up. I know where I’ll be 15 minutes into the sermon. I know what illustrations I’m going to use. And for God to get me – and I’m still 5 minutes away from time to stand up and I’m not really sure where I’m going to go – it’s like somebody scraping a blackboard with their nails. It’s just rrrrrggghh!

But the Lord gave me about a year, maybe a year and a half ago, and He was beginning to do this in me, and then the word made it clear. He said, “I’m going to teach you how to preach from the River.” Now that’s not a license or an excuse not to study, for some of you that just like to get up and wing it all the time. But what it is, is for me, it was God bringing me to a place where I had to allow Him to let me become a prophetic teacher, so that’s what I’m going to try to do today. Now help me, Father, to say this clearly and to get these words out with as much clarity and understanding as is possible. Help me to do this in a way that would glorify You the most, and I believe You will help me do that. Amen.

I’m going to talk to you a little bit about breakthrough because you are called to be a people of breakthrough. There is a breaker anointing God wants to bring on you. One of the things I want to say to you is: You can be a prophetic people and not be a forerunner. Now you can’t be a forerunner and not be prophetic. But you can be prophetic and not be a forerunner. You can have an anointing to hear from God and yet you still don’t have that breaker mantle that takes that word then – I alluded to this last night.

Really what I’m going to try to do, is I’m going to try to teach you what I declared prophetically last night. Because you can have a mantle to hear and even be a voice, but not yet have that mantle be developed to a point – or maybe it’s not even your calling (as with some people that’s the case) – but not be a point where God has taken it and enabled you to transform it from just a word of direction or insight into a weapon of war. And God is calling this state to be a people who understand how to take the word of the Lord and translate it into a weapon. And to do that, you have to be a forerunner.

Now forerunners do a lot of things, but really, basically they go before to prepare the way for others. I’m a forerunner and I know I’m a forerunner. Now that doesn’t make me better than anybody else. It doesn’t make me in a position of honor any more than anybody else. I know that a part of my calling is to go ahead of others and prepare the way. My calling is to prepare the way for revival in America, and I know that. There will be others much more gifted at building and establishing and doing certain things. But my part is to be a forerunner, to go ahead of others and prepare the way for them. And when you’re doing that, it’s messy. I call it the bulldozer anointing. It’s before you build the house, before you build a road, things get really nasty dirty. You envision a beautiful highway out there, paved and glorious and all the lines are on it and the guardrail’s up and now it’s a beautiful highway. But before it was beautiful, it was ugly. Somebody had to dig and there was mud and rebar and just bulldozers and sometimes dynamite.

And yet when John was prophesied of being a forerunner and having to do that, prepare the way – the Hebrew says ‘build a highway’ is what it is. Get the mountains down, the crooked place straight, the valleys up, prepare a straight path or highway for Him to come. And then what amazes me, you look at his message which was “Repent you bunch of serpents and snakes and ugly people!” That was his message, but the first thing that it said about his ministry in Isaiah was, “Comfort my people.” And then he says, “Comfort them” and He announces, prophesies the ministry of John the Baptist. And I’m thinking Comfort? Why is it comforting? Because of the end result. Because even though it’s going to be little bit messy and a little bit violent and hard in the beginning, the end result is to build a highway then, Isaiah said, so the glory can follow. He says, Then once this is done, then the glory of the Lord will be revealed.

Well, I’m just telling you, I’m just leading up to this sort of as an introduction. You’re called to be a forerunner state. You’re going to have to be willing to go before others. You’re going to have to be willing to be a battering ram in the spirit. And you’re going to have to take some hits.

I was sent on assignment about two or three years ago – I don’t know exactly. The Lord told me to take a prayer journey up into the Northeast. Because I’ve been praying for several years for God to open the Northeast gate, up in the New England area. I knew that all of a sudden God’s focus was on that part of the country and we had to get some breakthrough up in New England before we could do some things in the rest of the country. The way God said it to me, and I don’t know that I would make a pattern out of this, but what He said to me is, “New England is the womb of the nation. And you’ve got to get the womb open, and until you get breakthrough there, you can’t get breakthrough in the rest of the nation.” He didn’t bother to explain it to me past that, but I just knew it was so. And so I began to direct my intercession and some of my journeys and activities toward there and challenge the Body of Christ to pray for the Northeast. And then the Lord began to send me up there for some prayer journeys and ministry time.

And then He came to me at a certain point and He said, “I need you to go and gather a people, a prayer team, and I want you to go up there.” And here’s what He said to me, “It’s time now. There’s been enough repentance, there’s been enough fasting and praying and preparing the way. Now,” He said, “I want you go and I want you to open the Northeast gate. I want you to turn the Northeast. I want you to get breakthrough over the Northeast.”

Those are the words that came to me. Turn it. Open the gate. Breakthrough.

And I said something like this, “Well, Lord, okay, you know. I’ll give it my best shot. We’ll give it our best shot, Lord. We’ll go do our best.” And He said, “I didn’t ask you to give it your best shot. I told you to go open it, and shift it. Turn it and break through.” And I thought, “Well...” And then He said this to me, He said, “When I sent John the Baptist, I didn’t tell him to go down there and John, see what you can do and try to turn this thing and prepare the way, and we’ll see how it works out. We’ll be up here waitin’. And if you can get some of this done, then we’ll send the Messiah on down there and then we’ll know that it’s the fullness of time and things are ready. And so go give it your best shot and if you can turn this thing we’ll get Him on down there.” And He said to me, “I told him to go turn the people and prepare the way. I didn’t tell him to go give it his best shot.” And John didn’t show up saying, “I’m here to see if I can get things turned. I’m here to see if by chance I can be a forerunner and get a little breakthrough. And if I can, maybe the Lamb of God’s here someplace.” He didn’t say that at all. He said, “I’m here to do this. I’m on assignment. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Now the Lord said this to me, “Get rid of your false humility.” Which is really unbelief in disguise. He said, “Get rid of all your false humility because this is not about you. This is not about how good you are, or how strong you are, or how well you can say it, or how well you can pray it. This is all about Me. So get rid of all that and go turn the Northeast and break through.”

He said the same thing to me in DC once. The Lord said the strangest thing to me. (Somebody remind me to come back the problem I had with the people in the Northeast when I went with this. Who’s going to remind me? ...okay, thank you.) I was in DC when God first started teaching me on shifting things and changing the atmosphere and He said, again He says, “Now there’s been enough prayer, and there’s been enough fasting and repentance. Now I’m going to begin to turn some things.”

Because what I realized for me and for a lot of the Church, I just never believed II Chronicles 7:14, I really didn’t ever believe you got to the end of the verse. I just thought you did the first part all the time. You know, “If My people, called by My name humble themselves and pray, seek My face, turn from their wicked ways...” I just thought we do that forever, but we don’t ever really get to the healing of the land part. And how I know I thought that way is because when He started talking to me turning things and beginning to move in the last process, it was like, “Well we can’t do that. Look how bad things are.” And so the Lord said, “You know what? If you do this, I will do that.” So He said, “Now I want you to decree a shift over the nation’s capital and it’ll begin to change things there. (This was in January of 2000.) And then there’ll begin to be a shift in the nation.”

And I was so intimidated by this. I was there for a meeting, and at a certain point I had it on the message already. And I knew what I was going to build this time of prayer and declaration around, the particular message. And I was sitting out there in the worship, and I remember saying very clearly, I remember saying, “Lord, I sure hope we don’t mess this up.” I said, “Lord, don’t let us mess this up.” And here’s what He said to me: “Son, you’d have to try real hard to mess this up!” It’s like, you hear some of these words from the Lord and you go (gestures – laughter). I mess things up real easy sometimes! So He says, “You’d have to try real hard to mess this up!” He said, “In fact, you’d just have to rebel against Me on purpose. Because if you just even give it any effort at all to do what I tell you do and just decree it, I’m going to do this. You just have to say ‘No’ to Me. ‘I’m not going to say it. I’m not going to do this.’ Because if you won’t do anything else, if you just obey Me at whatever level you know how, I’m going to do this.” That was just the most liberating word I’ve ever had!

In Joshua it says he said, “Lord, make the sun stand still!” You know, it wasn’t the sun. The earth needed to stand still, not the sun. It’s not the sun out there spinning that makes it day and night, it’s the earth. It was just like the Lord was saying to the angels, “You know what he wants. Give him more daylight!” Now I’m just trying to talk to you about a mindset, because you have to change the way you think.

So I go up to the Northeast, and I start telling all the people – now I had a black man with me with his black kettle (and some of you know the story: it was a prayer bowl used by his ancestors that were slaves. Now I’d love to tell you the story but I don’t have time. It’s a beautiful story how God put us together and he’s now my spiritual son. In fact I literally adopted him into my family.) And then a native American couple, Jim and Faith Chosa, and we just got the races together, different anointings and giftings and age groups – a synergy in every way we could get it: generationally, calling, gifting, race, everything we could get and joining with the people there locally. Now the Lord said, “Now I want you to believe in what’s been done. I don’t want you to feel like you have to start over. I want you to trust the Body of Christ. I want you to believe in the prayers that have been prayed, the repentance that has taken place. And I want you to go and build on that. Do not feel like you have to start over.” And then He said, “You’re not going up there for reconciliation, even though you have all these races involved. You’re not going up to repent all over again for the sins of the fathers and healing of the land from its defilement, etc. It’s time for breakthrough. I want you to go begin to decree breakthrough and a shift in the spirit.”

And I go up to the people and get the leaders together and the intercessors and I’d say, “Now, we’re to this place and pray – ” because we were going to certain key cities and places up there. I said every time we’d get together with a new group of them, I’d say, “Now, we’re not here to repent. There’s a place for repentance and we’re going to need to keep repenting somewhat in this nation. I know that. We’re not done. It’s not all cleaned up. But we’re here to shift things in the spirit and get some breakthrough. So we’re not here to repent. We’re going to believe that the repentance up to this point that’s happened is enough to get some breakthrough. And I want you to begin to pray breakthrough prayers and change things over this region and shift it.”

And then we’d start praying and they’d go, “Lord, we just repent before You...” and I’d say, “STOP!” I was a little nicer than that, but I’d say, “Excuse me. We’re not here to repent.” Now that sounds weird, doesn’t it? But He said, “You are here to shift it!” And they’d say, “Lord...” And I’d say, “Breakthrough prayers! I need breakthrough prayers!” And it’d take me an hour or two and finally they’d begin to understand the difference. And then I’d say, “We’ve got to move into the heavenlies and break through!” Because that’s where you break through. Now you need to follow me. I’m trying to wade my way through this. I said, “We’ve got to go up into the heavenlies. We’ve got to move into that spirit realm and change something up there! There are strongholds. There’s a prince of the air. There’s activity up there that’s demonic. And there’s been enough that’s happened in the realm of the spirit to change it and we’re here to make the announcement just like John did, ‘I’m here to turn things!’”

Now if you think it’s about you, that’s arrogance. But if you really understand this is not about us and who we are and doing our thing. It’s about hearing the word of the Lord and obeying what He says. That is not arrogance. That is really the ultimate humility when you understand that whatever He says, you’re going to do it.

Now God wants to put something in you here in this place, in this region, in this state, where you begin to understand how to move into the heavenlies and be a forerunner. Where you go just like John did and say, “I’m here to turn things. I’m here to shift something because the Lord Himself is going to follow me with some glory and some miracles and some redemption, some salvation. And I’m going to prepare the way for this. I am a forerunner and I can do this!” Well, can you?

When God starting teaching me this, He said, “You know what, son? I’m going to teach you.” And I’m not trying to get weird with you. I can’t say some of this some places. Maybe some of you’ll think I’m weird. I’m past caring, really. I mean you have to get there sooner or later, right? I don’t much care who thinks I’m crazy. This is very liberating, actually. He said, “I’m going to teach you how to go through, I’m going to teach you how to move into the heavenlies.” I’m not trying to be weird. What He’s saying is, “I’m going to teach you how to move in the spirit realm and not try to do everything from the natural realm.” So the way He got my attention was He said, “I’m going to teach you how to operate in the heavenlies.” And He’s walking me through a process teaching me this. And He took me to Micah 2:13, which is the verse on the Breaker. And I’m saying this because He’s trying to put this mantle on you – a Breaker Anointing to change things up there, to become aggressive in your declaration and your intercession to where you take the word of the Lord and you understand that when you speak it into the atmosphere of the spirit realm, something changes because the eternal word of God goes forth into the heavenlies. And that’s how you turn things.

You don’t turn it by programs and methods (and I’m going to get to that in a minute). But you don’t turn things by even good church activities. You turn things to get breakthrough in the heavenlies. And when you get breakthrough in the heavenlies, everything changes on earth. But you don’t get breakthrough in the heavenlies through doing the foot soldier stuff. You get breakthrough in the heavenlies and then everything the foot soldiers do works better. And the Church by and large doesn’t understand this. We think we can have this method, or this idea, or this program. If we can get good enough with this, this, this and this, we’ll get breakthrough in our community. It does not work that way! You must understand how to get breakthrough in the heavenlies. You must understand how to penetrate and turn things there. And when you get that breakthrough there – just like Daniel did – when you get it there, everything down here starts changing.

Now if you’re going to be a forerunner people and move in this mantle that God’s talking to you about, you must begin to think this way. You must begin to think in the sense of, “I operate in the spirit first.”

So He started taking me to Micah 2:13, “The breaker goes up before them.” And He started saying, “You know there’s something I want to teach you about that verse.” Well, I’ve been speaking on the breaker anointing and teaching on that verse. I looked up every reference in the Old Testament about peraz or perez, where the word breakthrough is used and I had probably 15 different things from 15 or 20 different places in the Old Testament where I’d say these are areas where God wants to get breakthrough. I’m just telling you that to say, I’ve studied the verse so much, read it in so many different translations, “The breaker goes up before them, they pass through the gate with the Lord at their head.” So the Lord says, “There’s something else about this verse I want to show you.” And I said, “Well, you know, I pretty much understand that verse.” You know I don’t say this stuff to Him, but I realized later subconsciously.

He’s drawing me to this verse and I keep being drawn back to it, and I don’t realize really it’s Him at first and I had these thoughts, “Well, I’m going to go read that verse. I know everything about that verse, now.” And I finally realized that the Lord is talking to me and saying, “There’s something there you haven’t seen.” So I began to pore over it again, and it’s like the word just sort of off the page just went whooosh, and it was just the little word “up.” “The breaker goes up before them.” And I realized now, I’d always interpreted it ‘the breaker goes out before them, or ahead of them.’ And the Lord said, “I didn’t say that. I said the breaker goes up.”

Because any time the Lord is trying to talk to us in Scripture about the heavenlies or the spirit realm, He uses the symbolism of ascending, or going up. “God has gone up with a shout,” or “going up into the breaches.” And so I looked up the word and sure enough it meant to ascend and it’s a word that means to rise up or ascend. And the Lord said, “I’m trying to teach you where you get break through. You have to understand how to follow Me into that place where breakthrough occurs, where demons operate, where strongholds exist, where principalities are. You must understand how to receive My strategy and go with spiritual weapons into a spiritual realm and do something spiritual that brings spiritual breakthrough. And then things in the natural will start to line up. But My Church spends 90% of her time trying to do things in the natural, thinking that it will change things. And they wonder why they can’t quite get it done.”

And so He’s talking to me about this, and He’s teaching me about it – what I said last night – I’m trying to teach you how to change the atmosphere. And so He’s walking me through it. Chuck and I were in Oklahoma, and I’m sitting there and the Lord is talking to me about all this and I was getting ready to get up and speak and Chuck begin to prophesy. And he’s prophesying, “I’m going to put an open door...” I don’t remember what he said, but it was an open door, okay? And I picture this door – I’m just thinking about what he said – I picture this door opening. And the Lord says, “There you go again!” And here’s what He said to me: He said, “The door isn’t here [gestures in front], the door is here! [gestures above] I’m trying to teach you how to move through the door of the spirit.” And while I’m thinking this, and I’ve just heard the Lord say, and He did say, “There you go again!” I’m listening to that, and I just hear Him say, “It’s not here [front], it’s here! [above]” And Chuck says, “Well okay! Let’s bring Dutch up here.” And then he stops and says, “Wait a minute. There’s one more verse I need to share: Revelation 4:1, ‘I looked and behold a door standing open in heaven, and a voice saying, “Come up here and I’ll show you things.” And I sat there and I thought, “Lord, I’m going to get this sooner or later.”

Boy, I’m trying to be really careful. I don’t think I’m going to get all this finished, which is really awful because if I don’t share this, you may never be all God wants you to be [laughs]. I can’t imagine He could ever do it through anybody else [laughs heartily]. Lord, help us!

Let me read a couple different things to you. This is kind of the process He walked me through. I think there’s something so... I talked about myself so much last night and today because there’s something on this state and region that is so similar I feel to what God is doing in my life. You’re forerunners. God wants to bring you into a breaker anointing to know how to shift things, turn things in the spirit, to become a weapon of God, and a part of it is very governmental. And every time I think what He wants to do, I see these parallels in my life. Let me read some verses and we’re just going to stay on this ‘heavenlies’ thing, because that’s where you get breakthrough.

I’m going to read some verses from Ephesians, and then I’ll go to Matthew 16. That’s probably where we’ll have to stop. I was meditating then through this process. I was meditating on verses that talk about ‘the heavenlies,’ the realm of the spirit around us. I went to Ephesians. There are 5 (there are actually 9 references that use the word) words that actually are translated ‘heavenlies.’ And I did something unusual. I read these 5 verses verbatim – or whatever the word is [that means] straight without anything – consecutively (thank you). I don’t know why I was struggling with that. Sometimes I get so caught up in the heavenlies I can’t think of earthly words. Some of you less spiritual people, you help me if I can’t think of the word... [laughs] No, that’s not true. You’re very bright and very spiritual, I know.

I read them consecutively and I wanted to read them for you. I’m not going to give you the references up front because I don’t want you to be distracted by trying to flip the pages and find them. What you’re going to hear is, it’s going to sound like these 5 verses were just written consecutively. What I began to realize is in this book of Ephesians is, one of the things he’s trying to do is he’s teaching us how to operate in a realm that most of us, we don’t think about and understand how to do it. And he’d talk about one thing about that realm, and then he’d give some comments. And then he’d come to another statement and give some comments, and another statement. But here they go. I’ll hold up my fingers and show you each one as I get to them so you’ll know when I’m moving from verse to verse, but I tell you, it sounds like they’re just written consecutively. Here we go:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, which He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

He said, “We’ve been blessed with everything we need to operate there, and I sent Jesus in that realm in the highest place of authority, and I put you there with Him so that I could manifest My wisdom through the Church to that realm and here’s what you’re going to overcome in that realm.” By the way those verses, for those of you that want to write them down quickly: in Ephesians are 1:3, 1:20, 2:6, 3:10 and 6:12. You know, I’m in a hurry. Y’all just need to write a little faster!

Then I was reading Matthew 16 and I came across an interesting discovery. In Matthew 16 is when Peter made his wonderful declaration when Jesus said, “Who do people say I am?” He said, “You’re the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus answered (verse 17),

“Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who’s in heaven. And I say to you that you are Peter. Upon this rock I will build My church and the gates of hell won’t overpower it. I give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Now I’m going to tell you, the way I’ve always read that verse, the last verse there about binding and loosing, “what you bind on earth must have already been bound, or will be bound – some translations do it differently – in heaven.” And I’ve always pictured earth and the third heaven where the Throne is, where God sits. But that’s not what the passage says at all. I was reading a literal translation, and the Greek scholar that I was reading says this, “A more accurate translation of verse 19 (I checked this out, by the way. This is accurate.) from the Greek is, ‘and I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of the heavens’ – or the heavenlies. ‘And whatever thou shalt bind on the earth shall be as having been bound in the heavens’ – or heavenlies. ‘And what you loose on earth will have been loosed in the heavens.’”

He’s saying, “You on earth are going to do something that’s going to change things in the spirit realm over the earth.” You see, nothing needs to get bound in Heaven, the third heaven where God lives. And He’s already made His decrees about it. He’s talking about a kingdom warfare against the powers of darkness and the powers of light. He’s saying, “I’m going to give you keys to the kingdom of the heavenlies, and you’re going to have My authority and you’re going to bind, you’re going to forbid, you’re going to declare things are no longer lawful. You’re going to say, ‘This must stop!’ And it’s going to do something in the heavenlies. I’m going to manifest My wisdom there to the rulers and the authorities.” Not in Heaven. He’s already been kicked out of Heaven.

So the Lord has walked me through this journey saying, “Your primary calling and mission in life, Sheets, is to be a forerunner. I want you to move, I want you to live and operate in the heavenlies and change things there.” Listen to me. This is why when I come into a region like this, I know I’m on an assignment from God. It is not about me. It has nothing to do with me. It’s not how smart I am, gifted I am. It’s not about how wonderful or how bad I am. It’s about a calling on my life and the word of the Lord operating through me. And wherever He sends me, and whatever He tells me to do, listen: I can do it! Because it’s not about me. It’s not my abilities, not my strength. It’s not my anything.

Now mindsets have to change for this to happen. That’s why the Lord said, “There you go again!” Because my paradigm so had to change. Because my concept – I didn’t realize it, most of us don’t – my concept of building the Church is building the Church here [gestures in front]. My concept was never, change it there [gestures above] and this [gestures in front] will change. My mind was, you know, we just get a good enough idea here, we could fix this. If we could get a good enough strategy, we could take a city. Now I tried all of Silvoso’s stuff and all these guys’ teaching and I’d think, you know, we did everything they said and it still didn’t work. Now, I’m not knocking those guys. There’s a point at which you do what they teach. But there’s also a point at which you can do what they teach until you’re blue in the face and until you do some other things first, it ain’t going to work. It just won’t work. They’re friends of mine. Please don’t take that negatively. These guys are brilliant strategists, but you have to do something else first.

So when Jesus (now I’m going to stay here in Matthew 16 for a few minutes) said, “I’ll build My church and the gates of hell, or the strategies of hell, won’t prevail against it.” Then He started talking about the heavenlies. Because that’s where these strategies are, of hell aren’t there. They’re here. And we’ve got to follow the breaker up there and break through these things. He’s trying to mantle you to do this.

He says, “I’m going to build My church.” Excuse me, but we don’t have the foggiest what He was talking about. Because we’ve got 2000 years of history where we throw that term around church and we just think it’s a bunch of people gathered together, or it’s the building. It’s the first time it’s been used in this context. And He wasn’t talking about a nice little gathering of people. We define it ‘called out ones,’ you know. “Build my church…” We’re going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and that’s the building of the church. Let me tell you the way this word was used in the day that Jesus used it. These disciples probably looked at Him and went, “What? You’re going to do what?” Because there wasn’t any concept of a church, in a spiritual sense. You know what a ‘church’ was, an ‘ecclesia,’ when Jesus used the term for the first time there? Here’s the Greek usage of the word: a called out group of legislative ones who rule and legislate governmentally. It’s a congress, if you will. It’s a legislature. He said, “I’m going to build My legislature. My ones who are going to rule for Me governmentally.”

Now this is how the Romans used it: a military task force sent into a new land to make it look like Rome. Rome, when they captured a place, they would take a group in there, and the whole responsibility of that group of Romans that was sent there was to change that culture, take away the culture of the people living there, and begin to make them think, act, look like Romans so that they would lose their identity over a period of time and through that loss of identity there would be no more potential for a rebellion. They would begin to think, “I’m a Roman.” And they’d live like Romans, they would think like Romans, act like Romans, dress like Romans. Take all their stuff away from them.

And so Jesus pulls these concepts out, and He looks at the disciples and He says, “You know what? I’m going to build My legislative body on earth. And they’re going to rule for Me. And their assignment is to bring the culture of Heaven to the culture of earth. And they’re going to do it because I’m going to give them keys of authority, and they’re going to legislate in the heavens. And they’re going to say, ‘This is unlawful.’” Did you know ‘bind and loose,’ deo and luo are both legal courtroom terms? They are first and foremost judicial terms. You declare something to be lawful, or legally binding, or no longer legally binding – it’s loosed from that – and so you void a contract. He said, “I am calling out my legislative ones. They’re going to transform things here and make it look like a different culture. They’re going to change the whole society they live in. And they’re going to do it because I’m going to give them keys into the spirit realm and they’re going to bind or declare, ‘For this is no longer lawful! You are no longer going to operate in this region and do this!’ And this over here, ‘I loose this region from this control.’ Sheets, go to the Northeast; it’s time to turn the Northeast. Open the gate. Go to DC and shift it.” Why? “Because you’re My ecclesia.” You’re not supposed to think and operate primarily here [gestures in front]. You’re supposed to operate there [gestures above]. That’s where breakthroughs happen. That’s where the gates are. Go up, follow the breaker through the gate. Now let me show you what we do.

Now He says, “Blessed are you, Simon, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you.” He uses the word for revelation, apokalupto. “You didn’t get this from a human perspective. The Father unveiled something to you.” And He says, “By the way, that’s how I’m going to build My church. And that’s why you’re blessed – because you receive revelation.” That’s what the verse says. “Blessed are you because you received revelation. And I’m going to build My church on revelation.”

And then you go down just a few verses, and He says, “Since we’re moving in revelation, you guys can handle this now because you know who I am. Let me explain to you what’s going to happen. You know, they’re going to kill me, I’m going to die, I’m going to raise again, don’t worry about it.” And Peter says, “I rebuke You ... Lord.” He uses epitimao, he uses the strongest word for rebuke you can get. He uses the very same word for rebuking an evil spirit. He wasn’t just saying to Jesus, “Jesus, let me correct You here and show You the way more clearly. You’re probably tired, and You’re not thinking clearly, and let me just adjust You’re thinking a little bit.” He rebuked Him. It’s very important to understand. He says, “No!” And Jesus says, you know, now He’s saying, “There’s some things I can deal with you guys gently and I can be real patient with you, but there’s some times when I can’t. Now you’ve crossed a line and being influenced by an evil spirit and I have no choice but to do this. ‘Get behind Me, satan!’”

Then He makes an interesting statement. He says, “You are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” ‘Setting your mind’ there is a very interesting word. It’s not the normal word for ‘mind.’ It’s not the word nus from noeo ‘to know or perceive or think thoughts from the mind.’ This is a different word entirely. It’s phroneo and if you look up the word, you’ll find that the definition embodies the entire concept of the soul. Because it means the thoughts of the mind, yes, but also the emotions and the will. And so it’s important that it’s used here, and I’m going to build on this for about 5 minutes here. But He says, “Peter, you moved right out of spirit and you moved into soul.” Now don’t miss that.

Because there’s been something over this region. Even though you’re somewhat prophetic – now I’m not talking about this house or this people, because I’m sure some of you don’t, but I’m saying this state, that which is in the heavenlies over you. There’s been something there. There’s this ability to hear and move in the realm of the spirit, but at the same time, the people hear just as easily from demons. And the reason is, because our tendencies as humans, even when we get to a place where we can be somewhat prophetic and hear revelation, we still shift so easily right back into soul.

And He says, “Peter, you moved right out of the spirit and you moved into the soul.” And when you move into the realm of the soul, now you’re moving in an area where it might be your own revelation. It could be something from your past, but it could just as easily be demons. That’s where they operate. And if you don’t get it under control, eventually when you start trying to influence by the power of the soul, (and we do it in the church all the time, we don’t know it), we really move into witchcraft. Manipulation and control by intellect and emotion, and it’s a form of witchcraft! I’m telling you, it is. And it opens the door to demons to come in and begin to influence us and there’s a whole lot more demonic influence in the church than we realize.

And Jesus went on to explain this a little farther after He rebuked him. He said, “You’re not setting your interests on God’s. You’re not setting your soul on God’s interests, but on man’s.” And then He began to talk about (and we don’t always connect these things, but we need to) in the same context, he went on to say, “You know what?” I’m just going to read it to you. He said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” And then He says, “What does a man prophet if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” The word ‘life’ there in the verse I read, used twice, (“whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”) the word ‘life’ there is psuche, the word ‘soul.’ Every time you hear Jesus talking about us laying down our life, or Him laying down His life, (now I need to do this quickly, so you better be really thinking with me), Jesus never one time, ever, when He said He was going to lay down His life and we need to lay our life down too for Him, He never, ever uses the word for physical life, bios, and He never, ever used the word zoe, the eternal life of God in Him. Never one time, ever, did He use them. He always used the word for soul, psuche.

If it translates it literally, it would say, “You know what?” He’s carrying on the same thinking. He would say, “You know what? That’s the whole point, Peter. You’ve got to be willing to lay down your soul to find your soul.” Why? Because, what did Adam do? Adam exalted his soul above the spirit. He moved into a realm of knowledge. He’s no longer motivated by the spirit; he’s motivated by the soul. And so Jesus comes along and He says, “You know what? I came to undo what Adam did. I came to lay down my – ” don’t translate it ‘life’! You can look it up later if you want. I know this is accurate. I’ve studied it. I have a ten-hour teaching on it. He says, “I came to lay down my soul. I came down to lay down what Adam exalted.” There’s one verse where you’ll find the word ‘life’ three times in John’s gospel and two of them are psuche and one’s zoe. I don’t know why the translators do this to us. You think it’s the same three words. It’s not the same word. He says in that verse, “If you want zoe, you’ve got to lay down psuche.”

Is this going over your heads? Am I doing it too quick? I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. I mean, am I doing it too fast?

So He’s saying to Peter, “Peter, the weakness here..” And I just need to cut to the chase and summarize. “The weakness is, you move in and out of the spirit. And one time you’re moving and you get revelation, the unveiling, and you know how, and I can talk to you about moving into the heavenlies and dealing with the gates of hell there, binding and loosing. And the next thing you know, you shift right out of the spirit and you move right back into the soul. And you can’t get any breakthrough there. In fact, demons come in, and they give you strategy, and they confuse you, and they bring deception. And you’ve got to lay your soul down so you can walk in the spirit and let the life, the zoe of your spirit bubble up through your psuche.

This is why ... You’re going to have to connect the dots and teach on this later. This is why Chuck, the Lord led him to talk about mindsets. Jezebel operates through mindsets. How long will you halt between what? Opinions! There’s been an infection that is coming through the way you think. It’s all through your soul, your emotions. And you’ve got to get out of that realm and get into the realm of the spirit. And that’s why repentance is so important. That’s why... [groan] I wish I had another hour!

Because ‘repentance’ doesn’t mean turn and go the other way. ‘Repentance’ means ‘a change of thinking.’ The word is metanoia. Noeo, noos means to know or perceive or think; meta after. You have a new knowledge now that causes you to think differently after the fact. It results in a change of direction. So repentance – John the Baptist comes along and says, “Get a new mindset! I’m a forerunner. We’re going to break through in the heavenlies and prepare the way! How will we do it? We’re going to think differently! We’re going to break out of this realm of soul and emotions and intellect, and we’re going to move into the realm of the spirit.”

I have this deep-seated fear in me that I tried to cover too much and missed a few connecting points. Did you get this? Hallelujah. Because I worked real hard. Let’s pray it. Stand with me if you will. I’ve got two or three minutes.

Lord, You came to adjust some things in the spirit over Oregon. I’m believing that exactly what Chuck said is true, Lord. We’re not transformed through information. We’re transformed through revelation. Lord, Your word is what changes the atmosphere. And so I’m just believing that through the declaration of Your word, Your prophetic anointing, something has shifted over Oregon. And the people can now be mantled with this new anointing to not only be prophetic in the sense of seeing and hearing clearly, and being a voice in that sense into the earth. But now, a forerunning mantle will be upon them. And a breaker anointing would be on them as they understand how to take that word, move into the heavenlies, and begin to make manifest Your wisdom, Your power, Your plan, Your purpose there. That there would be an ability to bind and to loose, to legislate, and to bring the culture of heaven to earth as we understand how to follow You up into the heavenlies, the Breaker, follow You there, pass through that gate, and begin to do business there. And the gates of hell won’t prevail against us as we do this.

I decree over Oregon right now, there is a change in thinking. There is a remnant of the church, the prophetic people in Oregon that are going to think like forerunners. They’re going to begin to think like those who shift things, turn things, break through. They’re going to understand how to break through in the spirit. They’re going to know the power of words spoken by the Spirit of God. They’re going to understand how when the word of the Lord is decreed, something changes. And they’re going to understand how to begin to get strategy in the spirit so that things can change on earth – not change things here through programs and methods and hope that somehow it shifts the heavenlies.

So Lord, I pray now for that breaker anointing to come upon them. I pray that mantle be completed of the forerunner anointing on Oregon. I pray that the prophetic office will take its full place here. And I pray that through this, Lord, the power of exalted soul will be broken, and they will become a people that move by the Spirit. And as they move by the Spirit, there will no longer be a pacifism, even in the Church. There will no longer be a halting between two opinions. There will be a bold determination because they know they’ve heard from Heaven. And there will be a new ability to discern between soul and spirit (Hebrews 4), and understand how to take the sword to the soul.

I’m going to tell you one thing quickly. I don’t have time to go into it. After Hebrews 4:12, the sword of the Spirit that does this and that, the very next verse says all things are naked and open with Him. The word there ‘naked and open’ is trachelizo from the word ‘throat or trach.’ It means literally to seize a sacrifice on the altar and slit its throat, or it’s a battlefield term of a soldier taking another person, bending back the neck and slitting the throat. He’s saying, “Now I want to take the sword of My Spirit, the word of God, and I want it to cut the soul and crucify that exalted soul so you can hear the Spirit.” That’s the 60-second version of a two-hour teaching. It is the dealing of the soul.

So I pray, Lord, that this people would be a people of the Spirit with a sharp sword to penetrate the heavens. And I pray that You would show them how to discern that which is soul and that which is spirit so that when they do begin to speak, there’s not a mixture. Now Lord, when they get to that point, and I prophesy this over the people of this state, life and death will be in the power of the tongue. And they will decree and thing and it will be established. Their words will be spirit and life.

I bless you in the Name of the Lord. I bless you as the people of God. I bless you with the blessing of Heaven. I speak peace over you. I speak revelation into your life. I speak wholeness and soundness, transformation. I speak over your families that they will live and not die. That you will be blessed. That your family will be strong. I speak over you that infirmities are being broken off of your life, and generational strongholds and weaknesses are being broken off of you. I speak a release of the grace of God over you, the mercy and the favor of the Lord. I speak the blessings of the Covenant, that you’re the head and not the tail. I speak over you that you are pursued by goodness and mercy all the days of your life. I speak over you revelation from Heaven. And I speak over you a fresh mantling of the Holy Ghost of God in Jesus’ Name. Thank You, Father. Amen. Amen.