13 Minutes

This is a slightly unusual post for me (though not if you truly know me), but this is so big in my heart right now, that I feel the need to share it with you readers of The Refuge City so you can intercede (pray) and prepare your hearts.

This Labor Day, I woke up from a dream early in the morning.  I don't dream a lot, but on occasion I have a significant dream that I believe comes from God.  This was one such dream.

In the dream I was asleep in my bed and was startled awake by a shaking.  I realized that we were having an earthquake.  It only lasted a few seconds and I assumed it was a minor quake with a local epicenter in the Tri-state.  The scene changed to my kitchen table where a few friends of mine were gathered and we were watching the news.  As it turns out, the quake had its epicenter somewhere in the east (in my minds eye, I was thinking eastern Pennsylvania).  The shocking part of the newscast was that the quake had lasted 13 minutes.  Pictures being shown were of entire cities having been leveled.  Then I woke up.

First, let me make this very clear that I am not prophesying that a 13 minute earthquake is about to hit Pennsylvania.  Dreams use a language of imagery that rarely turn out to be of a premonition type nature.  They usually point to something through a very artistic and representative manner.  For instance, earthquakes could represent getting one's attention or a hard season of unsureness about foundations in one's life.  While it could mean an actual quake is coming, even those natural quakes tend to point to a deeper spiritual event.

I immediately sent this dream to several friends of mine that I trust to seek the Lord about what He might be saying to me.  I received two responses that were completely independent of one another and were very near identical.

I share them both here with some more insight that I believe came later as I have been praying about this.  Following these interpretations, I want to give you some encouragement on how to prepare and how to respond as the Church in the Tri-state.

The first interpretation:

"The physical earthquake, though I believe He's saying it will happen, is not as much the issue He's concerned about.  The spiritual earthquake is more on His heart.  We often think of a shaking as a good thing in the church and in the world, as productive things come about from a shaking, but this will be different.  This shaking will bring down the foundations this country was built on...back when it was the 13 original colonies.  The beliefs of freedom, liberty, and God will crumble.  This will strongly effect the spiritual atmosphere in the east, but will also impact us as well.  While the physical earthquake will be very destructive, the spiritual earthquake with be even more so.  In the spiritual shaking, there will be an abundance of husks and chaff that will blow away in the wind and although the true grain will be left, it will be greatly diminished in size. 

Having said all that, I don't want to disregard that fact that there could be an earthquake of significant proportion in the east, but my Spirit is not as uneasy about that as it is to the spiritual fall out of this event."

The second interpretation:

"13 represents the 13 colonies.  The foundation of our country.  People are currently looking to our government to fix the country and their lives.  They depend solely on the government.  Our founding fathers looked to God for guidance our current leaders ignore Him.  Our country's foundation is not our government.  It is God.  God shook what we see as the foundation to the point of destruction.   God is more powerful than the most powerful government in the world.   Thus we felt His power.  He got our attention."

Since having and sharing this dream, the Lord has confirmed for me on several occasions that the number 13 is very important here.  In fact, one morning He sent me three confirmations in the matter of seconds that seemed to me to be saying, "I am serious about this and it is imminent (ready to take place or already underway but yet unnoticed)."   A final interpretive piece I want to add is about the word "minute".  Not only does this word also speak to the imminent nature of this dream, but I believe it refers also to the minutemen of the American Revolution.  These fighting forces, while not seen as a threat or even a reliable army,  made up about 1/3 of the fighting forces during the Revolution.  They were known for being ready to go to combat at a moment's notice and had the nature of being locally based and well acquainted with the fighting terrain.  I believe that the notion the Lord wants us to receive here is that we are to be "prepared" like this fighting force to spring to action without hesitation and part of our preparation is that we have intimate knowledge of the terrain in which the battle's are being fought.  


Along with this dream, the Lord brought to my memory a prophetic experience I had a few years ago in which He expressed that the foundations of the nation (Economy, Government and even the Institutional Church) were going to be shown as untrustworthy; that people would be scrambling from one to another without hope.  It was during this that He spoke very clearly to me, 

"People are putting their hope in the economy and in the things this world has to offer.  They are putting their hope in foundations that are crumbling.  Those who put their hope in the stone that the builders rejected will be the only ones standing in the end.  It (Jesus) does not look like a good corner stone.  It (Jesus) does not look like it will work.  Jesus is the only hope this city has." 

Many of the things we do and say as believers will be seen as foolish in the days ahead, but our hope is built on Jesus Christ and in the end, only those who hope in Him will be standing.

So what is the application here?  What are we to do as minutemen to prepare, and what are we preparing for?

In a nutshell, terra firma (solid ground) is a myth apart from Jesus.  As the trusted foundations of the people around us turn to gelatin, we need to already be standing on the Rock (Jesus).  We should be very familiar with the terrain or nature of Christ; so much so that it is reflected in our very nature.  We are to be those who offer hope that does not disappoint.  We can be ready to do this, but only if we fall on Him now before the shaking happens.  

Finally, I don't believe it was an accident that I had this dream on Labor Day (Labor Day is a celebration of workers and their positive effect on the economy and society as a whole).  Along with the fact that our nation's employment rate is in shambles and this is a major portion of the shaking that is going on, I believe He wants us to remember the following verse of scripture.

"Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief."
-Hebrews 4:11

Let us make every effort to make sure our feet are standing on the Rock or we shall have no rest and we will be sure to fall.

Bless you Tr-state.  Jesus is In You.

Dave Warren