Insights, Prophecies, & Revelations for the Year 5784 (2023-2024) Part 4
If you’ve been keeping up with the posts, you’ll remember that we’re focused in on the book of Amos for 5784 (2023-2024). Receive the word of the Lord for 5784.
We’re dealing with houses and gates.
Thus far, all the parts into the whole of the prophecy for 5784 are building up to the point. And this one is no different. This part connects to the next, which will bring so much enlightenment.
Gates
I’ve been heralding this word around gates in preaching a year ahead to prepare us. One message the Lord gave me was birthed from a vision I had one night during a prayer meeting.
I titled that message: The Clashing of Kingdoms, the War of Thrones.
Gates in the Book of Amos
God used the word gate quite often to speak through Amos to the nations and capital cities of the earth. As a matter of fact, it is used 4x throughout the book of Amos.
In Amos 1:5, gate is translated as bar, which means city gates with the idea of breaking down or breaking through a place of passage. Like when a bar, that protects a door, is broken. Of the 4x, here in Amos 1:5, gate is translated differently.
Amos 5:10, 12, 15 all use gate as we would generally understand gate: entrance, entryway. There is a root word from which the word gate used in those verses comes from, which means to split open in its most common sense.
This would mean where there is an opening made.
It also breaks down into being a gatekeeper, those who watch and guard entryways and that which is split open.
A final thought on gate is to reason or think, which would make sense since judges set at gates to judge. Also, gates are places where justice and righteousness are established by gatekeepers or the contrary.
To reason or think speaks to our thought lives. Our thoughts create strongholds and false realities and comforts. They’re also breeding grounds for demonic terrorists.
So…
Let’s put it together. God broke the protection off and split it open (gate) of a capital city due to unrepentance and an overfilling cup of iniquity. He rebuked those who rebuked righteous gatekeepers from manning the gates (more iniquity) and urged them to reestablish justice and righteousness at the gates.
What’s Going On?
Our gates need to be secured from opposition. Certainly! May I present to you, though, that the opposition came or is coming because we have not properly manned the gates?
It’s due to unrepentant sin on a larger scale than individual. We’re thinking too narrow instead of broader. This is a year of expansion and broadening tent pegs. It’s beyond just you and me.
Yet…it’s not just unrepentant sin, it is the cup of iniquity – the one thing that would revoke the glory of God from setting up camp and remaining in a nation or capital city.
It is the root iniquity of a nation or city – the inversion of gifting, of purpose, of destiny.
It is that which causes the anointing of God to be lifted as it was with king Saul. When His anointing lifted from Saul, he was tormented by a spirit.
Connecting that truth to this revelation around nations and capital cities – when His anointing lifts off of a nation or capital city, gates aren’t secured and there is injustice, terrorism, unrighteousness, and war.
Houses
Amos brought up the terms “house of Joseph”, “remnant of Joseph”, and “house of Israel”.
For years, I wondered what those terms meant and why God would present them to Amos.
The house of Joseph and the remnant of Joseph are interchangeable for Ephraim and Manasseh, Joseph’s two sons, who were like Jacob’s own but technically were not.
It’s quite unique how many angles there are to look at Joseph’s seed:
- Ephraim and Manasseh can be viewed as the unsaid “tribe of Joseph”, which would make it one whole tribe alongside Jacob’s other sons
- Ephraim made up the northern kingdom of Israel, with its capital city being Samaria
- Manasseh, similar to Levi, was dispersed among other tribes, yet always associated with Ephraim similar to Judah and Benjamin always being associated with each other
- Judah and Benjamin made up the southern kingdom of Israel or what is known as Judah, with its capital city being Jerusalem
In Amos 5, God lamented (sings a funeral song) for Israel because they’d abandoned the Lord their God. Later in chapter 5, we see which specific gods they’d begun to idolize which denotes the decline of their single focus on Yahweh: Sikkith or Sakkut (Molech) and Chiun (or Saturn).
Both were pagan deities, one was noted as Israel’s king because of how they worshiped him – Molech. The other was noted as the personification or manifested presence (glory) of their god because of how they worshiped him – the Assyrian-Babylonian version of the Roman god Saturn.
Jewish translation says this was Israel’s apostasy. Apostasy is defection or falling away from the faith.
So, God said to tribes that went to the northern kingdom of Israel, I will remember Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh) for your sake…so all is not lost.
Because God remembered Joseph, Ephraim being the helm of Israel (the northern kingdom) God was showing grace and kindness – the God who keeps covenant to a thousand generations.
Which House Are You In?
While we’re dealing with kingdoms, we are dealing with houses.
Houses:
- The house of God – this consists of all who are in His house, His children
- The enemies’ houses – we’re called to plunder the plunderers this year
- The right house – remember the anointing shifted from the house of Saul to David and as we saw with Israel…the glory of God remained on the house of Joseph (Ephraim or Ephraim and Manasseh)
Another thought regarding houses is lineages and bloodlines.
Ephraim and Manasseh, chiefly Ephraim, represented a lineage that God set apart differently from the other sons of Jacob.
Will you allow God to visit your house (your lineage and bloodline)? Will your house be in order? Will you cleanse and remove the iniquity from your lineage and bloodline (house) so God can use you? Covenant with you? Be gracious to you for the sake of nations and capital cities?
So, What Do We Do?
We repent and we pray. We acknowledge and we turn. We open our eyes to the gaping internal wounds.
I cannot get past the book of James where James’ very beckoning to the Church was: check your internal drivers and motivators. Those things are what’s causing to happen outside, happen.
Remember I stated in a previous portion of the word of the Lord for 5784 is that repentance is at the forefront this year.
How we repent determines how nations will go and also how we’ll identify what is being separated unto God (for Him) and separated apart from God (where He’s drawn a line).
What national iniquities are causing the finger and right arm of God to withstand? What national blessings will cause the hand of God to bring healing to the nations?
What do we need to know that we’re doing that we’re blinded to as a whole (national level) so we can repent – people be forgiven and land be cleansed?
I, personally, have a sense that this isn’t a time for frivolous, vain speech.
Rather, it is a time to hear divine strategies that come from going low like Daniel did, humbling ourselves, and turning away from wickedness. After all, isn’t this the antidote God said He’d use to forgive our sins and heal our land?
God is gracious to us because He is good. But God is also gracious to us when we turn back from iniquity and intercede for what He’s interceding for.
This is our chance to shift things – not because of entitlement but because we worship Him in spirit and in truth and we love Him. We truly long to love Him.
The marker of a transformed life and society is the restoration of the Tabernacle of David and the erasing of the blurred lines between the secular and the sacred – where we worship Him everywhere, every day in spirit and in truth.
He is our magnificent obsession. He is our sole purpose.
No smokes and screens. No conditions. No back and forth, swaying between two kingdoms.
