Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Ladder Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times that we're living in.

Every January, I spend time going over all the dreams that I had the year before. I've just finished my 2023 review and I want to share some things I thought were noteworthy. So, I'm calling this episode a seer's review of 2023.

Now as I've mentioned before, I'm what's called a seer. Since 2002 when God allowed everything to fall apart in my life, he began speaking to me in prophetic dreams.

My theology 20 years ago had no idea what to do with dreams. You can find out more about this calling in my three-part series, When God Speaks in a Dream, at candacelong.com/podcasts. Or you can download the transcripts plus graphs and charts in the monograph, same title, When God Speaks in a Dream, in my online store.

But for those of you who are dreamers, let me say to you that if you are walking with the Lord and not exposing yourself to defiling people or impure atmospheres, if you are spending time with the Lord praying and studying his word, then I am fairly confident that whatever you are dreaming, the Father is saying something to you. And if you leave that dream unattended to, you have missed a critical conversation with the Father.

I take very seriously Mark 4:24 when Jesus said, "Take heed to what you hear." In other words, pay attention to it. "For the measure that you give will be the measure that you get, and still more will be given you."

Since 2002, I developed a system to keep detailed records of what God shows me in dreams. I try to be diligent in my calling as a chronicler of the times that we are living in. So, I analyze the insights that I'm given. That's my gifting.

Each dream usually requires hours, sometimes weeks, for the full understanding to come forth. I interpret every dream according to Hebraic dream interpretation principles that I've learned over the years and then file the dream by date in that year's dream folder. I have a huge box with folders for every year between 2002 to 2023. And every January, I review the entire folder from the year before to get a broader perspective of what was on God's mind for me that year.

I take note of things that God has repeated over and over throughout the year to make sure I got the message and I did what he was showing me to do. Or sometimes during the review, I'm reminded of things I forgot and then put it on my calendar to do.

You see as a seer, I know that I will stand before the Lord one day and give account of how I dealt with these dreams. Did I do what he showed me to do? Did I give proper warning when I was shown something? Did I instruct properly according to his word as he was making it plain?

Let me share some data that I think you'll find interesting from this review. I'm going to read a little from my journal and pause every now and then to make some comments. And I hope this will be helpful to you dreamers who don't know what to do with your dreams.

In 2023, I had 81 dreams, which is more than usual. Typically, I average about 73 a year. The first thing I do with a dream is write it out by hand just as I saw it. I give the dream a title and write down what kind of dream it is. In other words, I put it in a category that explains its purpose.

God always has a purpose when speaking in a dream. Some common categories for me have to do with my calling or specific direction, whether I'm headed in the right way. Sometimes it's affirmation or confirmation the Lord may give to encourage me in something.

A healing dream is where he's dealing with a particular hurt or situation. Words of knowledge are where he reveals something that I never knew. Words of wisdom, which is a deeper understanding about a biblical principle.

Sometimes a dream can be what I call revelation or inventions or business strategies. There's a category I call self-condition where the dream reflects something I'm going through and need to just flush it out.

A dreamer has to learn whether to share what they see with others. Joseph made the horrible mistake of sharing his dreams with his brothers and they became threatened and they threw him in a pit.

Quite frankly, the majority of time I do not discuss what I see, for usually the Father shows me things to help clarify points of my teaching or reveal a strategy that the enemy is using so I can navigate around it.

There are other times such as the series that I wrote last year called Warnings of a Nephilim Invasion. The dangers I saw over several dreams were so great that I felt the burden to write those podcasts and make them public.

I made special note of dreams that I had several weeks before Israel was attacked. They were very insightful looking back now on what has since transpired in Israel.

Other significant dreams came during the time I was researching and writing the series on The Final Kingdom and the Ancient Snare. It continually amazes me how faithful God is to give insight and direction, because very often something I see in a dream will point me to a passage in the Torah that opens up a perspective I had never seen.

One big observation I made during this dream year review was the increase in warning dreams. Over the years, I began to put the warning dreams in a separate category because I was having more and more of them.

During the first decade from 2002 to 2010, I had 19 warning dreams. And during the second decade from 2011 to 2020, there were 83 warning dreams, which was a 400% increase over the previous decade.

Now that got my attention. In fact, the number one topic the Lord was dealing with in those dreams before 2020 had to do with the present invasion of the Nephilim into our culture. That's why I have dealt so heavily with this topic in Lessons in the Ladder Days. I sensed the leading as a seer to give proper warning and biblical understanding of what we are dealing with.

From 2021 to 2023 in this decade, I had 48 warning dreams, which is a 400% increase in the average number of dreams per year over the previous decade.

There is clearly danger ahead. And when I examined the 22 years more closely, there were several noticeable spikes in warnings. The first spike I noticed was in 2013 under President Obama. Another warning spike came during the first three years of President Trump. And another spike more recently in the first three years under President Biden. So, if I'm looking at my graph, since 2013 the dangers ahead have been increasing no matter who is president.

Today we're going to have a little dream interpretation exercise. It's one of my favorite topics to teach on and I'm going to share three dreams that stood out in 2023. And I think these might relate to those of you who are looking for what God has for you to be busy doing before he comes for us.

The first dream I called Hole in the Floor. Now you always take note of where you are in a dream and what you are doing. Are you an observer? In other words, are you being shown something? Are you a participant, part of the action? Or is something being done to you?

In this dream, I seemed to be in a home that I'm living in, although I don't recognize it as my home. But for some reason, I have settled into living in just a couple of rooms rather than the whole house. Suddenly I notice there's a hole in the floor and a crew comes in to do some repairs. And they're bringing in all of these antiques I never even knew existed that they discovered hidden in other rooms. And the home is becoming lovely except they put an Oriental rug over the hole in the floor rather than repairing it. And that would not leave my mind. And that was the dream.

Now you may be thinking this dream is nothing special, but just wait. I want to show you the insights the Lord can bring from a dream. First, he will always exaggerate your feelings about the things he wants you to notice. For me, there were three things that stood out.

Number one, I wasn't living fully in the whole house. I had settled into just a few rooms. Number two, there were beautiful antique treasures inside this house that had been hidden for years. And number three, I was obsessed with this hole in the floor that was covered up by an Oriental rug and I knew I had to deal with it.

So, where do you start in breaking out a dream? I have found dreams to be the beginning of a conversation that Holy Spirit is initiating. Dreams are God's language. They're pictures. They are metaphorical. And that's how Jesus taught in parables with layers of meaning.

So, a God dream always has a biblical root. This is the language of Holy Spirit. He's inviting you to the dining room table to be fed. So first, you write down your observations, asking him to guide you into its meaning. Let me share seven observations I wrote down about this dream.

First, I took note of my role in the dream because 85% of your dreams have to do with your calling. Now I've learned over the years that God uses individualized vocabulary. In other words, he uses words or concepts that mean something to you.

A lot of my dreams happen to deal with floors and foundations because I know that I am a Merarite, which is one of the three Levitical families. Merarites in biblical days were assigned the tent pegs and materials such as boards and planks that were part of the foundational structure of the tabernacle.

In present-day understanding, Merarites are marketplace or business people who are gifted in setting up foundational elements for whatever God is building on earth. Now if you want to learn more about the Levitical calling, I refer you to my book by that name, which you'll find on my website at candacelong.com.

Observation number two: God was pointing his finger at a beautiful home being restored with antique treasures that had long been forgotten. Now maybe you're getting a sense by now that this isn't my home depicted in the dream. Maybe it is God's house.

Number three observation: I was prompted to look up the word floor in Strong's Concordance. Where is it used in the Bible? My search led me to 2 Chronicles 34:11, which tells us about young Josiah who became King of Judah and how God used him. Here's an abbreviated portion.

"The King's officials delivered the money that had been brought into the house of God, which the Levites who kept the doors had collected. They delivered it to the workmen who had oversight of the Lord's house, who gave it to repair and restore the temple. To the carpenters and builders to buy quarried stone and timbers for binders and beams for pilings, and to floor the buildings which the kings of Judah had let go to ruin."

Now observation number four was my aha moment when the Lord began to reveal understanding. The word floor in this passage was not a noun. It was a verb. It was something that needed to be done in God's house because there was a hole in it. And the Levites had oversight over it.

Now as you may recall from this portion of scripture, while they were repairing the temple with all of its rooms, they brought out antique treasures from many generations that were buried in the rubble. And one of those treasures, as you recall, was the book of the law, the Torah. And when they brought it to the King and read it to him, that's when revival came to Jerusalem.

Observation number five: Now as I was writing these thoughts, insight and understanding flooded my spirit. God pointed my attention once again to the floor. That is my assignment: help repair the foundational flooring of his house. That is a Levite's role and having walked out the Levitical calling for almost 20 years, I knew what God was saying to me.

I'm one of many who has been given eyes to see a breach, a gap, a weakness in the foundational material of God's house, which has fallen into disrepair and neglect. Observation number six: This great work was done by a team of workers, chosen and assigned to rebuild God's house. That is the primary oversight of the Levites.

And if you think we don't need Levites today, you are mistaken. God has chosen certain ones to become skilled overseers and managers of money directed toward the rebuilding of his house on earth as it is in heaven. This has been the overall mission since 2021 of Lessons in the Ladder Days. And there are many of you called also to this rebuilding effort. We each have one place and in this dream, the Father was reminding me of mine.

Observation number seven: I was reminded of Matthew 13:52 during the time when Jesus was teaching many parables about the kingdom. And he said to his disciples, "Have you understood all this?" Meaning what God is saying by all the parables. "Have you understood the lessons here?" And they said yes. And he said to them, "Therefore, every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

This is the unique calling of scribes. Those who record and memorialize the treasures of wisdom and understanding from God's house in his kingdom. Now some of this wisdom is antique and used to be known, and some of the treasures are new. New revelation and understanding which God has graciously uncovered and brought out for such a time as this.

So God used this dream to show me in both the Old Testament and the New, several things. First, it confirmed my calling in what I have known in my heart about my assignment, which is that I am a scribe, a chronicler for the sixth generation called to strengthen God's people by bringing out the Torah and its ancient treasures that have been buried for many generations.

Secondly, the dream contained a word of knowledge in showing me that money has already been collected for this work. So the Father was assuring me that he has the money set aside for what I am to do. I'm not to worry about it. And number three, he was encouraging me that one of the gifts he has given me is the eyes to see the structural weaknesses that need to be repaired in his house because that's what he's put on my heart to do.

The second dream I want to share with you is called Graded Land Development. In the dream, I was in an outdoor vehicle with a team of people and we were being driven by someone to show us this monstrous land development project that he was in charge of. Mile after mile in every direction. No people, no cities. The land was graded like a foundational stage of a building project that was about to begin.

Now before going to bed, you always need to have context of what you were going through before sleeping. I was pondering a conversation that I had with an influential community leader who was interested in the work that I was doing. He wanted to read my series called Jewish Roots and check out my instructional videos. So that was on my mind.

Now the word that stood out to me in the dream was that this land had been completely graded. So when God highlights a word or a concept, you dig deeper. I looked up land grading on the internet and it says, land grading is reshaping the earth and soil so that the land is more stable and leveled than before and ready to build according to the architect's plans.

In the dream, I was being shown along with others how vast this development is. The ground after everything that didn't belong had been torn down and hauled off, and the earth was level and smoothed out. Now does anything from scripture come to mind?

My mind went to Isaiah 40. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight in the desert. A highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill shall be made low and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

Now my role in the dream was that I was being shown a massive undertaking and I seemed to be part of the demolition crew the Lord assigned to this kingdom building operation. My calling has to deal with tearing down false foundations and man-made traditions. God has to tear down and destroy and haul off those things that do not belong in order for us to build his kingdom purposes in the land. And I was in awe of the vastness of this project and it showed me that the glory of the Lord is ready to be revealed, which gave me the sense of how close we are to the day of the Lord.

A third dream I will mention before closing is called Planning Retreat. I am with a small group on a retreat in a small cabin. My role was coaching a few of them to think in terms of mobilizing leaders and bringing their needs before God.

Now before going to bed, I had been thinking about the new online course I'm teaching to train others for their role in these days. This dream showed me how close we are. For if you examine Jesus's last seven days on earth, the very day when he pulled away from the masses to concentrate on the few people who chose to learn from him, that time period was two days away from dying and leaving this earth in bodily form.

So this dream gave me the sense that the Lord is transitioning us from thinking in terms of crowds of people to small groups. He's gathering his end-time troops to give them their kingdom assignments.

In closing, I want to encourage you to make time for your personal retreat. Get off by yourself with the Father and ask him to show you your assignment. If something in this teaching spoke to you, reach out to me on my contact page at candacelong.com and tell me what you're looking for. I will direct you to specific resources I believe can help you understand the gifts he put inside of you before you were born and how you can learn to identify what he's asking of you now as we prepare to enter his kingdom.

The Lord knows who are his, and he has assignments to use your gifts at their fullest. I'm Candace Long. I want to thank you for listening. I hope you join me again next time for Lessons in the Ladder Days. God bless.