Randal Cutter-Part 1-Whatever You Bind on Earth A Historical Record of How God Warned About Hurricane Irene. Incontrovertible Evidence That God Still Speaks Today.

Whatever You Bind on Earth

A Historical Record of How God Warned About Hurricane Irene.

Incontrovertible Evidence That God Still Speaks Today.

Randal L. Cutter

ISBN: 0990904717

ISBN-13: 978-0990904717

Distributed by: New Dawn Ministries

9335 W. Sample Road

Coral Springs, FL 33065

www.newdawn.org

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Cover Art: 123rf.com Used by permission.

DEDICATION

To the One who initiated this story, Jesus the Christ;

With appreciation to my incredibly gifted wife, Dawn, And my wonderful children, Alyssa, Linea, and Joshua; And to all my prophetic mentors.

In Remembrance of Bob Jones, a mentor and friend, Who, after Irene, would often approach me and ask, “Have you seen it?” referring to a hurricane or storm that the Lord has shown to him, and over which Bob would challenge us to pray.

CONTENTS

PREFACE.................................................................. 1 INTRODUCTION....................................................... 2 1. PREPARING A TEACHER ....................................... 5 2. PREPARING A PEOPLE........................................ 11 3. NEW DAWN....................................................... 21 4. STORM WARNINGS ........................................... 29 5. ENGAGING THE STORM ..................................... 38 6. VICTORY OVER THE STORM ............................... 48 7. AN IRREVOCABLE CALLING ................................ 59 8. CONCLUSIONS ................................................... 72 APPENDIX ............................................................. 77 ABOUT THE AUTHOR............................................. 83

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To the Members of

New Dawn Community Church, past and present. Thank you for pursuing the Lord with me.

PREFACE

On October 1, 1999, WPTV, the NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, Florida, aired a report on a church in Coral Springs, Florida, which had predicted that a hurricane named Irene would strike southeast Florida by surprise.

That interview, broadcast twelve days before the storm that would become Hurricane Irene had even formed, has become eloquent testimony for the veracity of everything contained in this book.

You can read this book without watching the interview, available at the link below. However, if you watch the video, you will want to continue reading this book.

The video is evidence that God still speaks.

Video Links:

HurricaneIrene.com

YouTube Reference: JVsb6Pk-qm8

INTRODUCTION

Not too long ago, I heard the voice of God in a dream. He said, “I remember Irene. I remember Irene.”

I immediately woke up, and wondered at what I had heard. I knew who Irene was, or rather, I knew what Irene was. She was a hurricane that had hit our area of South Florida in 1999. She was also a major part of my history, and the history of my congregation, New Dawn Community Church.

The Lord had told us about Irene a year before she came to our area. He had told us her name, where she was going to hit, and the area in most danger. He also told us that she would confound forecasters and would hit our area by surprise as a category four storm. If you can imagine what Hurricane Katrina of 2005 would have done to the southern gulf coast if she had hit by surprise, then you understand the absolute catastrophe the Lord had described to us. But there was a bright ray of hope. He also invited us to call area Christians together to pray, and showed us that our prayers

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could reduce the intensity of the storm and release much protection to South Florida.

We accepted his invitation, and called the churches of Broward County, Florida to pray from March to October of 1999. The pastors of Broward County, at least the ones who were here in 1999, remember those events. Even more people remember because a local NBC affiliate heard of our prayer efforts, interviewed me, and broadcast our call to prayer before the storm even formed (you can still see the broadcast at hurricaneirene.com). Much of South Florida’s attention was on Irene months before she made her appearance.

Irene hit us on October 15, 1999, as a category one hurricane. Everything the Lord showed us about Irene was exactly accurate. As he had promised, because we had prayed, the storm’s intensity had diminished. He gave his Church in Broward County a great victory by protecting us from a category four storm. He also gave his Church a great victory by publicly demonstrating that it was possible to hear from God about something like this, and that it was possible to do something about what God was showing us. We had bound on earth what he had bound in heaven.

Since that day, we have grown in our understanding of intercessory authority, and the role God has given his Church to play. God wants his Church to use the authority he has given it to protect lives, to stop or reduce the intensity of natural disasters, and to release blessing on the earth. These are things that we now readily see, but that we didn’t understand when God first issued the invitation.

When the Lord told me that he remembered Irene, I knew that it was time, once again, for me to remember Irene. When the Lord repeats himself, it means that a matter is

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firmly established; and when he remembers something, he wants to do something about it. This book is part of what the Lord wanted to do.

You are holding an invitation in your hands. The facts of the basic story are not in dispute. Over fifty pastors and churches from across the theological spectrum were called as witnesses to what God was doing in 1999. The Lord even marshaled the resources of an NBC affiliate to document the truth of this book. The Lord took such care to document the facts for your sake. He is inviting you to participate in what will become the greatest age of his Church. He is inviting you to make a difference in this world for the age to come. He is inviting you to remember Irene, and to then enter into your destiny as you remember her.

The Lord remembers Irene. Now you will, too.

PREPARING A TEACHER

I remember the first time I heard God’s voice. Actually, I should say that I remember the first time that God spoke to me, and I knew it was the Lord who was speaking to me. It wasn’t that his voice was audible. In fact, since I was mowing the lawn at the time, if it had been audible, the Lord would have been competing with the roar of the lawn mower. Instead, the voice that I heard spoke clearly, with an unmistakable resonance and meter into my spirit and my conscious thoughts. The racket of the lawn mower faded away as the sound of eternity permeated my soul.

I had oft dreamed about what it might be like to have the Lord speak to me. I would read the prophets or their histories in the Bible, and I would wonder what it must have been like to have the Creator share his thoughts with them. I assumed that this line of thought would always remain a flight of fancy. I was part of a denomination that had taught me that God doesn’t speak to us anymore apart from the Bible. I was in agreement with this theological perspective, so I certainly wasn’t seeking an encounter with God when he spoke to me. However, I was praying.

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Well, I like to call it praying. It was really more like complaining. I was letting the Lord know some of the injustice that was occurring in my life, and I’m absolutely certain that there was more than a touch of self-pity mixed into my murmuring prayer. My finances were difficult, and I was letting God know that he wasn’t treating his servant that well.

I had graduated from seminary in May of 1987. The denomination to which I belonged sent me to South Florida to work in a church plant under the auspices of their mission board. I quickly found out that South Florida had a much higher cost of living than Wisconsin, my home state. My salary was such that I would have been very hard pressed to make ends meet in Wisconsin. In Broward County, Florida, it was impossible.

When we first arrived in Florida we didn’t realize that we were poor. Dawn, my wife, and I were married in the summer of 1980, and I immediately started a seven year education program in order to become a pastor in our denomination. We were well aware of the fact that we were poor all through college and seminary. We regularly saw the Lord meet our financial needs in amazing, almost miraculous ways throughout the years of education. However, when we came to South Florida, I started to receive a salary as a church planter, and Dawn began to work at a daycare. We felt fabulously rich even though our relatively meager incomes were far less than the average household income in our city.

Our delusion about our financial welfare was shattered when we had our first child in the spring of 1989. Dawn and I had decided that when the Lord granted us children, she would stay home in order to give them the best possible

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launch into their life purposes. So, while Dawn had not been making a great deal of money at the daycare, it had still helped make ends meet. When she was forced to stop working earlier than we expected because of a high-risk pregnancy, we quickly found out that even without the extra costs of a high

risk pregnancy, those ends didn’t meet anymore. By the fall of 1989, I was stressed about our finances. I did some of my best complaining—I called it praying—while mowing the lawn. I was using an old push mower that had been donated by a gracious family from our congregation when they discovered I could not afford a mower. They were not people of means, so they gave what they had. Unfortunately for me, what they had was an old push mower with wobbly wheels that caused the mower to sink into South Florida’s spongy St. Augustine grass. As a result, the lawn mower pushed like a tank. Add Florida’s high humidity and high temperatures to this equation, and you can understand why mowing brought out this Wisconsin boy’s most eloquent financial prayers.

So there I was, one warm day in 1989, having a one-sided conversation with the Lord about how bad things were, and how I needed some major help if things were going to turn around. I remember right where I was on the yard when the Lord spoke to me. I suspect he decided that this one-sided conversation wasn’t going anywhere good, and so he interrupted me. With volume loud enough to silence my prayers and shake my being, he said, “It’s your fault.”

I suspect that most of us have imagined what it would be like to hear the voice of God. We probably fantasize about the holiness of the moment, or the sacred nature of the conversation. We might indulge in considering how that

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moment would change us forever, and how everything would be different after this divine encounter. That is not at all how it seemed to me. I was so absolutely indignant about what the Lord said, that I even forgot that I didn’t believe this type of thing could happen. I wasn’t awed by the encounter; I was aggravated.

I responded to the Lord’s charge at once. I wasn’t going to simply accept what the voice had said. With more than a hint of anger and exasperation I asked, “What do you mean?” I couldn’t imagine how the current state of affairs was my fault. However, his answer cut through my anger, my delusion about my situation, and all of my carefully constructed arguments about why I was the victim in this situation.

His clear, vibrant voice shook my being one more time as he answered, “You are the teacher.”

I learned at that moment, and have become more familiar with it since, that when the Lord speaks to you like this, he also opens up the eyes of your understanding so that you hear everything he is communicating. When Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, we are told that he “opened their minds” (Luke 24:45 NIV). I believe that is exactly what happened when the Lord spoke to me. My mind opened and I understood exactly what he meant. I could instantly see things from his perspective, and I did not like what I saw.

I had been trained in a denomination that still believed that God’s Word was vital. In order to gain entrance to their seminary, you had to have three years of Greek language education and two years of Hebrew language education. The denomination believed that in order to correctly handle the Word of God, you needed to read and understand the grammar of the original Hebrew and Greek since the Holy

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Spirit had chosen to use those languages. They wanted students who were not only comfortable with the Hebrew and Greek languages, but also were capable of having scholarly debate about the nuances of the grammar in each passage of scripture.

I had excelled in these language studies, and prided myself in being able to teach God’s truth from the original languages. I had delved deeply into the Word since my graduation, and had grown greatly in my understanding. But there was one area of study I diligently avoided because it held no interest for me. I chose to ignore any study of what the Bible said about the stewardship of finances.

To be absolutely honest, I hated talking about money in church. I didn’t want to discuss giving, and I certainly didn’t want to discuss my salary. In the two years I had been in South Florida, I had only taught and preached on stewardship topics a couple of times, and understood very little on the topic. I had the tools at hand to do the study, provided by the Lord through the training system I had attended, but I had chosen not to use those tools to study about finances.

When God told me I was the teacher, he was telling me I had a responsibility to dig into the word, understand it, and train my people in the whole counsel of God. If the members of the congregation were not contributing at an appropriate level, or if the salary that they were paying me was inadequate, I could not complain. If I had done my job, if I had sought to thoroughly understand God’s Word on those topics, and imparted that truth to my congregation, then maybe I would have had cause to be upset. As it stood, I was a teacher who was not doing what he had been called to do on this

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particular topic of study. I was guilty as charged; it was my fault.

It didn’t take long after that for me to dive into what the Bible said about finances, and honestly, it did not take long for that teaching to change the congregation and my own personal circumstance. I will keep those details for a future book on God’s supernatural economy. However, I can mention that the giving patterns in my congregation changed so drastically in such a short period of time, that some officials from the denomination asked me to write a study on stewardship for them. Though I never published the study, the fact that I was asked to write it demonstrates the impact that the brief encounter with the Lord unleashed in my life.

As wonderful as this result was, and as fascinating as Biblical finances can be, the Lord had far more in mind than simply helping me understand about finances on that day in 1989. He was beginning the slow, patient process of shaping my character and my heart so that I could hear him better, and so that he could use me more fully. I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, but the Lord really loves South Florida. He also knew something else that I did not know; a catastrophe was headed toward South Florida, and he was preparing me to help stop it.

PREPARING A PEOPLE

I do not understand everything about the Lord’s preparation process; his thoughts really are not our thoughts. Most of our lives we are being prepared for his purposes, but to us it feels like normal life. I went about my job of leading my congregation, never guessing that the Lord was preparing us to release his protection over our area. Since this would not be an easy job, the Lord needed to mold my congregation into a team that he could use. That process did not happen quickly, nor was it pain-free.

After my encounter with the Lord, I added several things to my study agenda. First, as the Lord had directed, I began to study what the Bible had to say about finances. And second, and even more important in the long term, I also began to compare my experience with God to what the Bible taught on that topic. I believed then, as I do now, that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. I knew that the Lord would not contradict the Bible by what he did or by what he said. As I studied the Bible, it was easy to see that what the Lord had said to me did not contradict his written Word. However, I had to make certain that the experience itself was consistent

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with what the Bible said. I had been taught that God no longer spoke to individuals in this fashion. I now needed to determine if the Bible clearly stated that God does not speak to his people as he always had in the past.

My studies lead me to realize that the Bible never says that God will not speak to us as individuals. It clearly teaches that he will never contradict his written word in these communications. And since the Bible is complete, and those who had been called to pen the Holy Writ have long since passed into eternity, these communications would not be new scriptures. They could, however, be words of strength, comfort, encouragement, and personal direction. The Bible is sufficient for our salvation, but his voice is important for personal direction.

I realize that there are many books and theologies that have been written that say that God will not speak to individuals today. I also realize that they do not use clear statements of scripture to make their point. They build a logical argument based upon other biblical truths, or what they believe particular passages mean, and then they deduce that God no longer speaks even though the Bible never says that he has stopped speaking to us. I know one thing for certain; none of these authors or theologians has had the Lord confront them while they were mowing their lawn. A personal encounter with the Almighty tends to knock one’s blinders off.

It is difficult for us to envision things that we have not experienced. God has to knock the scales off of our eyes in order for us to begin to see. The Israelites are not the only ones who can be described with the words, “though seeing, they do not see, though hearing, they do not hear or understand” (Matthew 13:13). We are all chained to our

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experience and find it difficult to see or hear things outside our experience. God has a habit of invading our lives and opening our minds to his possibilities. He has done this throughout history.

By the time God interrupted me in 1989, I had already preached a series of messages that outlined why he no longer speaks to us personally today. I had already constructed my fence around this truth using logical deductions rather than clear statements of scripture. I had built the fence of my theology and smugly locked the gate certain that God did not speak today. That is the way things would have remained if God had not impolitely careened through my fence and knocked a giant hole in it. As I later examined the wreckage in order to determine what had happened, I was able to see how illogical and unsound the whole construct really was. I found that I had built a theology to defend my experience of God’s silence, rather than seeking to change my experience to align with God’s Word. But I could not see that before he did me the favor of crashing through my presuppositions. By his grace he knocked my blinders off in such a radical way that I could not put them back on again.

Of course, this had implications for my continued tenure in the denomination that had nurtured me and that I loved. Within a couple of years, years in which I poured over the Scriptures on this topic, I realized that I could not stay in the denomination. I no longer agreed with them on this basic issue, and if I wanted to teach others what I believed, I had to separate from the denomination. This wasn’t easy; I had grown up in this church body. I had learned to love my fellow pastors and the church leaders. I also deeply loved the people

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that God had brought to my congregation. But I realized I could not stay.

Leaving a Denomination

I didn’t give any thought to taking the congregation with me when I decided it was time to leave. The leaders of our denomination taught us to believe that the people were the denomination’s sheep. I had no thought of challenging this teaching. In fact, this was so much a part of my worldview, that when my congregation had added an associate pastor in 1991, I had specifically looked for someone to whom I could entrust the congregation should my departure become necessary. By the beginning of 1993, I knew that it was time to go.

I quietly began to make preparations to resign my position. Once I had resigned, I planned to move to another city across the United States where a friend of mine lived. I had begun to develop a business plan for a small company so

that I would have an income. My friend and I thought that we could begin a home group, and see if it might eventually become a new church plant. Things were moving along according to plan, until the Lord’s voice interrupted me again.

As with his first interruption, I remember where I was and what I was doing when the Lord intervened. I had just finished a telephone conversation with the man I was going to hire as my sales manager for the new business. We were putting the final touches on the compensations plans, and I ended the phone call feeling that everything was going exceedingly well. I was sitting in my church office, and had just put the phone down on my desk, when the jarring but wondrous voice of the Lord once again changed things. This

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time he only spoke one sentence, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

The first time that the Lord’s voice broke into my conscious world, I had been indignant. This time, as he opened my mind to understand the nuances of his thought, I was humbled. I instantly knew that I had accepted a false premise. I had believed that the people of the congregation were the denomination’s sheep. The Lord showed me that he had used me to call the people into relationship in the congregation. He had nurtured and raised them on my teaching. They were his sheep, but I was the assigned shepherd for this flock. He intervened because I was currently a good shepherd, but if I deserted the sheep, I would no longer be a good shepherd. He intervened so that I would not miss my calling in South Florida, and so that the congregation would not be harmed by my lack of understanding.

I was grateful that the Lord explained things to me before I had made any irreversible commitments. He saved me from making an enormous mistake, but he didn’t save me from some difficult choices. I don’t believe I can adequately convey the difficulty that confronted me after he intervened. I had decided to resign in order to keep the peace in my congregation and in my denomination. I wanted to avoid confrontation. After the Lord spoke to me, I knew my path could only lead to confrontation.

I now knew that I needed to prepare the congregation for a difficult and very public split with the denomination. I had no doubt that this path was filled with accusation, severed relationships, and many other difficulties. But I wanted to be a good shepherd; I shut down my business plans on that very

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day because I needed to give my full attention to this new direction.1

We finally left the denomination in the fall of 1994. That step was every bit as painful and difficult as I had imagined. But the Lord continued to grant us grace through the entire process. I wish that I could say that we left with good feelings on all sides, but that would not be accurate. We did not leave perfectly, and even if we had, the act of severing from a denomination is most always an emotionally ragged affair. But God’s grace was there for my congregation and for the denomination, and he got us through this painful time.

1 Although this sounds that I made the irrevocable decision to leave the denomination in 1993, I actually held out hope that the relationship could be saved. I was in the process of working with the denomination over several other areas of

theology, and I hoped that I could persuade the leaders to take a fresh look at some of scriptures that I believed they had misapplied. I believed that if I could bring new light to

minor issues, and they received it, that there was hope to tackle even more major issues. This hope proved futile, and we began to make preparations to leave in 1994.

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Connecting with MorningStar

By the beginning of 1995, we were a newly independent congregation wondering what God had in store for us. We had a variety of challenges yet to overcome, but we felt a new freedom to follow the Lord’s leading. We were eager to pursue him. We were also eager to connect with some organization or denomination what would provide new relationship, and would help us grow into the things of the Lord.

A friend had introduced me to MorningStar Ministries and Rick Joyner’s teachings prior to our departure from the denomination. I had begun to read The MorningStar Journal and many of Rick’s books, and realized that many of the things that I had learned in my study of the Bible, were truths that Rick also affirmed. As I read Rick’s material, I began to believe that we were working from the same biblical outline, but I recognized that his outline was more detailed than mine. So I began to explore the possibility of a relationship with MorningStar.

In May of 1995, Dawn and I rented a camper, packed up our growing family, and travelled to Fort Mill, South Carolina to experience a MorningStar conference together. I had attended some conferences in 1994 without Dawn, and I wanted to introduce her to this ministry. I was excited about the biblical integrity that the MorningStar leaders displayed, and the clear desire to pursue the Lord with all their might. I wanted Dawn to be as excited as I was about MorningStar. I wanted her to see what I saw in this ministry.

When we arrived, I registered my family and received the introductory packet of materials for the conference. While reading through the material, I discovered a theological glitch

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that I had not expected to discover in MorningStar’s material. I was disturbed by it, but it didn’t diminish my interest in the ministry. I deemed it an obvious enough problem that I suspected the Lord could easily correct it.

In my 1989 encounter with the Lord, he had challenged me to study what the Bible said about finances and giving. After five years of study, and having written a stewardship program, I was pretty confident that I understood some basic principles about giving. One of those basic principles is that God wants people to give to him freely. That means that we must do what we can to stay away from manipulation in order that people can give freely and without compulsion. I had noted a growing trend in Christian ministries to violate this basic principle. Many ministries were beginning to manipulate the people who supported them by giving incentives if they gave a certain amount of money. Some ministries were giving away items; some were giving away elite status. But it all becomes a subtle manipulation intended to get donors to give more money to the ministry. This type of giving is not about freedom. It is about manipulation and compulsion.

When I opened up the packet of MorningStar materials, I saw that MorningStar had now done the same thing. They offered status incentives for those who became financial supporters of the ministry. If you gave a certain amount each year, you could become a silver eagle, and if you gave more, you could become a gold eagle giver. I don’t remember what benefits were offered, or even what other levels there were. I recognized that this was a departure for this ministry, and it grieved me. I really wanted to connect to MorningStar, but I also wanted to connect to a ministry from which I could

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learn. I didn’t want to begin a relationship with disagreement over such a basic issue.

I am relating this story to show how firmly God connected me to MorningStar Ministries and Rick Joyner, not to discredit ministries who use this type of giving procedure. I am sharing what I understand the Bible to say, and how important it is to me. Because when the conference started, God used this very issue to endear my heart to Rick Joyner.

When the conference opened on Thursday morning, and Rick stepped up to speak, the last thing I expected was any discussion of the giving brochure that had bothered me. Yet this is exactly where Rick started. He publicly repented for the brochure, and explained that he had written it while he was jet-lagged and dealing with too much or too little caffeine (I can’t remember which). He clearly repudiated the brochure and explained that it did not reflect God’s heart on the matter.

I sat in the audience awestruck. I had never seen such integrity on display in such a public forum. I was enthralled by the humility Rick displayed as he explained his mistake. At that point, I was hooked. I wanted more of this type of leadership and the life that flowed from it. It was as if God had engineered this whole episode so that I could see into Rick’s heart in a way that would normally have taken years of relationship. In that moment, I was absolutely certain that this was the place for our congregation.

We soon connected with MorningStar through the MorningStar Fellowship of Ministries (MFM), and several years later we became the first MorningStar Fellowship Church (MFC). This connection played a major role when God began to speak to us about an approaching storm. He

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was connecting us so that we had mature guidance when he spoke to us about Satan’s plans for South Florida.

NEW DAWN

Preparing For A New Dawn

MorningStar Ministries became an important part of our growth and development in the years immediately after our departure from our former denomination. MorningStar’s influence in our congregation’s life began in earnest at that conference in May of 1995. God used that conference to initiate a major change in our congregation.

The conference had started on Thursday morning, but because we had young children with us, Dawn and I could not always be in the meetings together. However, on Friday night, Dawn and I were able to attend the session together. Thousands of people were packed into the auditorium on that evening. A highly regarded prophetic minister was scheduled to speak, and the atmosphere was electric with expectation. We were caught up in the excitement, but did not really understand its source. As the night wore on, we began to understand.

Near the end of the meeting, the prophetic minister began to prophesy over some of the people in the audience. He called people out of the audience by name, and gave them

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insight or encouragement from the Lord. We were surprised by how much detail the speaker shared about the lives of these people he did not know. We had seen public ministry of this type before, but never at this level of specific detail. The thousands of us who were gathered in that auditorium knew that the Lord was pouring out something special. It quickly became something even more special for Dawn and I.

As I think back on the moment that the speaker called out our names, I am still a little awed. Thousands of people were attending this conference. We knew no one. Yet the Lord decided to use the prophetic minister to give us an important message. He said, “Randal and Dawn, there is a new dawn.”

Dawn and I were so taken aback by being addressed; we didn’t know what to do. We asked the people seated near us for help. When they found out that we were the Randal and Dawn who had been called, they told us that we had been told to come to the front of the auditorium. So we walked to the front, and those who were ministering prayed for us and encouraged us.

We did not have much of an idea what the speaker meant by saying that there was a new dawn. We did know that he had referred to Isaiah 60:1-3, but we did not know much else. Isaiah 60:1-3 states,

“Arise, shine, for your light has come,

and the glory of the LORD rises upon

you. See, darkness covers the earth and

thick darkness is over the peoples, but

the LORD rises upon you and his glory

appears over you. Nations will come to

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your light, and kings to the brightness of

your dawn.”

We understood that the new dawn had something to do with Isaiah 60, and that this new dawn would be a marker indicating that Isaiah 60 was coming to pass, but we did not know much else. We knew God had given us direction, we just didn’t know how to read the map yet. We didn’t have to wait very long before the Lord sent someone to help us read it.

We left that conference convinced that we had found our new ministry home, and excited for the future. We certainly did not understand all the things that the Lord was doing, but we knew he was up to something. We felt like we were launching into something new with the Lord.

When we got back to Coral Springs, we soon began to wonder if our launch had been aborted. Within weeks of returning home, our congregation began to go through a sifting. I had been excitedly charging forward following the direction that I believed God’s Spirit was leading. I had assumed that our entire congregation felt the same way. I was wrong.

Several of our leaders began to question our direction and focus. This cost us a great deal of momentum, and eventually a number of families left the congregation. As I look back, I can see that the Lord was clarifying our vision and focus. However, when you are going through it, it is wrenching and disheartening. Since I could still hear the echoes of my 1989

encounter with the Lord, I didn’t whine about it. I knew I needed to take what responsibility I could for any leadership errors, and move on from there. But as a result of this “bump

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in the road,” our congregation lost just enough members to stretch our budget to the breaking point. Our future was not looking good. We did not understand how the Lord was preparing a new dawn.

Just at that difficult juncture, a group of leaders from another congregation in our city approached us and told us that they were considering disbanding their congregation. We had worked with this congregation during the previous years on an effective youth outreach ministry in our city. As a result, we had a good relationship with them. Their pastor had resigned because of moral failure about six months earlier. Since then, the remaining leaders had labored tirelessly to keep things going, but they were being worn ragged.

When they approached us, I felt one of those now familiar nudges from the Lord that led me to do something about the situation. I knew this was a good congregation. They were from a Pentecostal background, but had pursued independence from their denomination because of certain doctrinal disagreements. I knew that we were compatible at many levels, and felt we could work through the areas where we did not mesh that well. So rather than agree that it might be good for them to disband, I broached the topic of a merger. They were pleased by the idea, and quickly warmed to it.

Anyone that has ever done a study of church mergers knows that there is a right way to merge two churches, and there is a wrong way to merge two churches. Those who have done such studies would necessarily have concluded that ours was the wrong way to merge a church. First, this should be a slow and deliberate process. We moved quickly to schedule a “worship together date” for the last Sunday in July, only

Whatever You Bind on Earth

weeks later. Second, surveys and studies should be done to make certain that congregational expectations and leadership styles are merged in the best possible way. Discussions need to center on the many needs of a merged congregation in order to plan for a smooth transition. We did some of this, but we took a couple weeks to discuss things that should have taken a year. While our merger was not the most ill-conceived idea in the history of the modern church, I believe that it should at least receive honorable mention.

It is easy to understand how bad an idea this was in hindsight. We were a people forged through the unifying fire of departing from a denomination. On top of that, our congregation had just gone through the stress of seeing a number of people leave because of doctrinal disagreement. Those who remained were true believers in our mission and purpose, and would not be moved from that path. Of course, the other congregation had also gone through the same unifying fire as they had departed from their denomination, and the public fall of their pastor had unified those who remained around their core values and purpose. We wanted to merge the hardcore survivors from two different ministry streams into something new. What could go wrong?

The answer, of course, is that a lot could go wrong. The recipe for conflict was built into both congregations’ DNA. When you factor in the fact that the leadership of the other congregation was exhausted, that they had been through indescribable emotional turmoil and pain even as they had faithfully carried out their duties, you can’t imagine that a merger would work. Red flags of warning were waving over this merger idea from the very beginning. In retrospect, it is

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hard to imagine how this could have been part of God’s “new dawn.” However, the Lord had some surprises in store.

God Forges A New Dawn

Our congregations met together to worship on the last Sunday of July, 1995. The worship hall was filled with excitement at the possibility of what could happen. People from both congregations came early to see if God was up to something. I don’t think that many us understood just how audacious we were being, but that was probably a good thing.

We came together on that Sunday not quite knowing what to expect. We had called it a “worship date,” but we had no clear plan on how to determine if this date should become a marriage. We didn’t appreciate just how much the divine matchmaker was working behind the scenes, and how obvious he was about to make things.

The Lord helped things along by bringing a prophetic minister to our meeting that day. We had not met the man before this, and he did not know us. He was from the western United States, and had received his training from some notable prophetic ministries there. He had come to our city for business, and just happened to come to our meeting on that Sunday morning. He was a veteran of prophetic ministry who understood congregational life and protocol. When he came into our meeting, and the worship started, the Lord began to speak to him about his purposes for us. He quickly wrote everything down on several pieces of paper, and handed the papers to one of our leaders before the praise songs had ended. He was making certain that it would be apparent to everyone that what he had written was not influenced by anything said or discussed in the meeting.

Whatever You Bind on Earth

Since I would be the pastor of a merged congregation, I was scheduled to speak that morning. I shared a bit about what God had been doing at my congregation. As part of the message, I told everyone about the May conference, and how we were checking to see if this merger was the “new dawn” that God had promised. I shared Isaiah 60, and painted a vision of a congregation formed by God as a sign that his purposes in Isaiah 60 were being fulfilled.

At the conclusion of my message, the prophetic minister excitedly asked one of our leaders if he could speak to me. That leader brought him to me and introduced him. They briefly explained about the notes that he had written during the praise songs, and told me I would want to see what was in the notes. When I saw some of the things, I asked the prophetic minister to read the notes to the congregation. He shared several things, but one thing he had written that day deserves special mention. He read from his paper, “The new dawn is here. Isaiah 60—Arise shine for thy light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen in this place.”

We had our new dawn. While the idea to merge the two congregations did not appear the smartest thing to do, God sealed it in such a profound way that we could not deny his hand. New Dawn Community Church came into existence three weekends later, on the third Sunday of August, 1995.

Even with such a prophetic start, we still experienced the normal bumps and bruises that are common to such mergers, but the fact that God had so obviously confirmed our merger helped us immensely. We were launching into our new dawn.

The prophetic minister said many things on that Sunday morning he was with us. One thing he said did not mean much to us then, but it certainly makes sense now. He said,

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“The Lord said that you are going to take this area by storm.” With those words, the Lord foreshadowed a bit of our calling and purpose as we entered into his new dawn.

God had prepared a teacher. Now he brought a new congregation into existence in order to carry out his purposes. The Lord was forming a team that he would use to preserve many lives. We didn’t know any of this yet, but he really was going to use us to take the area by storm.

STORM WARNINGS

For the next three years after New Dawn was formed, the Lord molded us into a team. He took the members of two very different congregations and melded us together so that we could have common vision. This did not happen without the normal stress and tension of congregational life, but it did happen.

We were approaching our third anniversary as a congregation when the Lord once again intervened in a way that changed everything. This time, he not only changed how we viewed ourselves, but also how we used our authority on the earth. We knew he had given his Church the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, but like most Christians, we didn’t understand the vast authority he intended to give us through those keys. So he began to teach us.

This storm odyssey began with a dream. Those of us who are familiar with the Bible realize that dreams are one of the Lord’s favorite forms of communications. That doesn’t mean that every dream is from the Lord. In fact, many dreams simply process the stresses of the day. Even so, the Lord still uses this form of revelation to communicate to his people.

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Since dreams are often metaphors, they need to be interpreted. Both Joseph and Daniel needed to interpret dreams for other people. In the same way, God’s people who have the spiritual gift of interpretation are able to help interpret the dreams of those who receive them today. Because we were convinced that God still speaks through dreams, we worked diligently to understand them. In those first three years after we formed New Dawn, God developed the gift of interpretation in our midst, so that we would be prepared to take our area by storm.

The Dreams

During the early morning hours of August 11, 1998, I had a vivid dream. It was so vivid that I can clearly remember it today. In the dream, Dawn and I were standing outside of our home. As I looked around, I saw that the sky was filled with gray storm clouds. I knew that the clouds were from an approaching hurricane. We had to decide whether to close and lock our hurricane shutters or not. I had a strong conviction that this hurricane was not going to hit, even though the forecasters insisted that it would. In the end, I closed the shutters out of prudence rather than conviction. I didn’t believe that this storm was going to hit us. However, I was convinced that there really was a hurricane coming to the Fort Lauderdale area.

When I awoke from the dream, I strongly suspected that the dream had not been symbolic. I was certain that the dream was about two literal hurricanes. The first hurricane would appear such a threat that the weather forecasters would advise us to prepare for it. However, this first storm would

Whatever You Bind on Earth

not hit our area. But there was another storm coming that would hit our area.

I was so disturbed by the vividness of this dream, that I didn’t attempt to fall back to sleep. Instead I got up to seek the Lord about the dream. As I sought him, he gave me confirmation that the dream was about literal hurricanes. Since that was all the information I had, and it wasn’t much, I asked the Lord to provide more information. I knew that if this were important, he would certainly show us more.

By 1998, we had lived in South Florida for over a decade. Even though the Miami area just to our south had witnessed Hurricane Andrew’s ferocity back in 1992, we still didn’t view hurricanes as much of a threat. We just did not see many of them. Of course, that would change during the next decade as storms such as Charlie, Ivan, Jeanne, Dennis, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma taught us a newfound respect. But back in 1998, the Lord not only had to send us a warning about a hurricane, he had to educate us about why this warning was important.

He continued that education on August 20th, 1998, just nine days after I had asked him for more insight into what he was telling us about hurricanes. On that day, a tropical storm named Bonnie formed in the Atlantic Ocean. Also on that day, the Lord gave Dawn a dream about the two hurricanes that he had shown to me. She didn’t realize that she had dreamed about two hurricanes. She thought she had dreamed about her two sisters.

Dawn’s two sisters are Bonnie and Irene. Both of Dawn’s sisters live in the Midwest. Dawn dreamed that her sister Bonnie was going to come for a visit. However, at the last minute she could not come. Instead, Dawn’s sister Irene came to visit by surprise.

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There was a bit more to the dream than this, but I’ve captured the pertinent points. As Dawn told me the dream, I understood parts of what it meant. I knew that a storm named Bonnie had just developed in the Atlantic. The National Hurricane Center had begun providing alerts, and the news stations were urging Floridians to pay close attention to this storm. Based upon Dawn’s dream, I concluded that it might appear that tropical storm Bonnie wanted to visit, but that it would not. I did not have a lot of time to do further interpretation, since I was in North Carolina at a conference when she told me the dream. I simply told her to tell the congregation that Bonnie might threaten South Florida, but it would not hit us.

We didn’t realize the significance of this bit of information until several days later. By then, tropical storm Bonnie had become a hurricane, and had swelled to monstrous proportions. As it began to meander close to Florida, South Florida’s population began to get nervous. Because of Dawn’s dream, we were able to encourage our congregation and tell them that we did not believe this storm would hit us. Of course, we also encouraged them to be prepared in case we misunderstood the meaning of the dream. When Bonnie turned away from us, we rejoiced that we had understood the dream correctly, and we took one step closer to understanding what God was saying to us about the storm that would hit.

Since Hurricane Bonnie had looked like she wanted to come for a visit, but she had not, we realized that we needed to understand the rest of Dawn’s dream. Was there an Irene in our near future?

Whatever You Bind on Earth

The National Hurricane Center posts the list of future hurricane names on its web page. I didn’t realize this at first, but as I began to research the rest of Dawn’s dream, I found that list of names. As I looked through the names scheduled for 1998 storms, I was relieved to see that there was no Irene. I didn’t quite know what the rest of Dawn’s dream might mean, but I realized it did not mean that we would see a storm named Irene in 1998.

As I left the list of 1998 storm names, I noticed that there was also a list for 1999. When I checked this list, I was less than happy to find out that there was an Irene in the list for 1999. Based upon my understanding of the two dreams so far, I was almost certain that there would be a Hurricane Irene in 1999. I also knew that it would visit our area unexpectedly, since Dawn’s sister of the same name had visited unexpectedly in her dream.

Since God was directing my attention to it a year in advance, I knew we had time to gather more information. Even though I believed that I had found a significant piece of information, and even though I believed that the Lord might be warning us that a hurricane named Irene could be hitting us by surprise in 1999, I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t believe I had enough information to do much about it. Both dreams had spoken in a way that let me know that a first storm would miss, and a second storm would hit. Dawn’s dream had given me a name, and the National Hurricane Center directed me to the year for that second storm. But I needed a lot more than this in order to do something about it. So I began to ask the Lord to give us more information, and without telling my congregation why, I asked them to forward any dreams that might have to do with storms. I was hoping that the Lord

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would speak to some of our congregation members in order to give us more clarity. He met that hope beyond all my expectations.

The Lord began to pour out many dreams to the members of our congregation. On October 2, 1998, a twelve year-old member of our congregation had an amazing dream. She did not know that we were seeking information about storms, but when she told her mother the dream, her mother forwarded it to me.

In the dream, the young lady and a friend were walking along a road in Deerfield Beach, a small city in the northeast corner of Broward County about ten miles to the northeast of our city. As she and her friend were walking, they surveyed the damage that a hurricane had done to that area. They saw many houses that were torn apart. Everywhere they walked

they saw extreme damage. As they passed a hotel near the ocean, they saw beds and other things from the hotel in the street and on the beach. The damage was overwhelming.

When they walked back to the friend’s home, she noted that it was painted yellow, a strange detail since her friend’s home was not yellow in waki

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Randal Cutter-Part 1-Whatever You Bind on Earth A Historical Record of How God Warned About Hurricane Irene. Incontrovertible Evidence That God Still Speaks Today.

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