Lessons in the Ladder Days

Candace Long: I'm Candace Long with Lessons in the Latter Days, offering biblical commentary to make sense of the times we're living in. Just this week we watched the devastation caused by the fires in California that everyone described as apocalyptic. When we see something unprecedented in scope and intensity with thousands of lives devastated, that's when we need to look deeper. Today's episode is called God's Message in the California Fires. Watching the aftermath footage of Pacific Palisades, it reminded me of the episode I wrote after the firestorm leveled Maui in 2023.

The two devastations looked eerily the same. What I wrote back then applies today. Quote, "Maui is a foreshadowing for the seven-year birth pangs known by Christians as the tribulation. We're going to be seeing a lot of this the closer we get to the day of the Lord." Revelation 6 says when the great day of their wrath has come, who can stand before it? In Isaiah 66, the prophet describes the day of the Lord this way: "Behold, the Lord will come with fire. His chariots like the storm wind. For by fire will the Lord execute judgment upon all flesh."

The day of the Lord is the biblical time when God pours out his wrath to cleanse the earth of its filth. He cleansed it the first time with water during the flood in Noah's day. Scripture teaches us that he will cleanse it again before the Messianic kingdom, not with water, but with fire. Pacific Palisades is a replay of Maui, which means this is a second warning that we will see more and more areas of our country devastated like a war zone. I need to balance what I'm saying with the other biblical reality that the Lord intimately loves his people, which is why he sends us wake-up calls.

Make no mistake, he is not surprised by this fire. You can try to find somebody to blame for losses and hire lawyers to sue somebody. Stop it. Please hear me. Everything that touches you has to have God's permission. For whatever reason, the behavior and lifestyle did not warrant divine protection in Pacific Palisades. Early on in this series, I did an episode called God's Promise of Border Security. I'll put a link to it in today's notes, but in a nutshell, divine border security around a city, a country, or a neighborhood is what God promises to those who walk with him.

Psalm 34 says, quote, "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him." And Psalm 91, which I pray every day, says, quote, "Because you have made the Lord your refuge, no evil will befall you. No plague nor calamity will come near your dwelling place." So how do we make sense of this? I have found over the years that the Lord gives us clues within the catastrophe itself as to its deeper meaning. So I began to ask: Why California? Why Pacific Palisades? Why now, when it's not fire season?

Before we get into our analysis, I want to say that I'm happy to be back on many of the radio stations who partnered with me early on when I began Lessons in the Latter Days in early 2021. Not many teachers at that time were focused on biblical prophecies of the end of days, but this is an area God specifically called me to study over 35 years ago. When I realized in 2020 that these prophecies are being fulfilled now, my mission, my calling, came to light. I knew then and am even more convinced today that the trigger that begins the 1,000-year period known as the day of the Lord is right around the corner.

I also knew that the majority of Christians and Jews are not ready for what is about to happen. But no one knew who I was or if I had anything of substance to say. I've spent some 50 years as a writer and producer in the arts and business sectors. I have an MBA and have been a business consultant for years, but I came into the news talk and Christian radio media as a virtual unknown. But here's what sets me apart from other teachers. In 2006, the Lord called me to study Judaism and become Torah observant.

So I honor the Sabbath, I celebrate the festivals, and spend every Saturday studying the Torah. It's been here, living a contemplative life responsive to what's on God's heart, that has birthed a series that is being downloaded all over the world. Every episode requires a lot of research. I do not speak off the cuff. Every word is thought through. I take seriously the short time that I have been given to teach. So what is God saying through these fires? Let's look at the timetable first, because in California, wildfire season is typically from June through October.

This fire in January was not just any fire. It stood apart and drew attention to itself. The next insight came January 9th, which is the ninth of Tevet on the Hebrew calendar. I noted it because I was preparing to fast the next day. You see, January 10th, the 10th of Tevet, is a day of fasting in Judaism. Since I try to be Torah observant, I began studying why Jews fast that specific day. The primary resources I'll be referring to come from Messianic Rabbi Michael Washer and Orthodox Israeli Rabbi Alon Anava.

I'll give you links to both of them in the notes to this episode. I looked at my Hebrew calendar and I noticed that the fires began on Tuesday morning, the 7th of January, the 7th of Tevet. That was just seven days after Hanukkah, where we celebrated the miracles that God did for the Jews when the temple priests, known as the Maccabees, fought to take back the temple from the Greeks, then cleanse it and rededicate it back to God. The word Hanukkah means dedication. So Hanukkah is all about rededicating ourselves, our temples, back to God so we can be his light in the world.

Hanukkah has become an important part of my spiritual journey with God. So I'm looking at the calendar and I'm seeing these fires start right between two significant times God set aside to meet with his people: Hanukkah and the fast of the 10th of Tevet. Now if you are a Christian listening to me, chances are you know little to nothing about these two events. Don't feel alone, I didn't either for most of my life. But I am passionate now about changing that in myself and becoming more grafted into Israel where Christians need to be rooted, especially before we enter the kingdom.

After all, the kingdom is Jewish; it is not Christian. Now if you are Jewish and listening, did you celebrate Hanukkah? Did you fast on the 10th of Tevet? According to Rabbi Anava, this fast is largely ignored by most Jews. By this time in my research, my spiritual antenna was picking up that God was saying something important, which then drove me to look at why God chose the fire to start there. California has always been the trendsetter for our country. Whatever happens in California eventually spreads to the rest of the nation.

I am a product of the Jesus movement that began there in the late 60s and early 70s. That's where I accepted Jesus as the Messiah for myself. Now you may recognize other movements that started in California: the charismatic movement, the Pentecostal revival called Azusa Street, and the Church of Satan began in San Francisco. California was also the birthplace of psychedelic rock, the sexual revolution, the women's liberation movement, the LGBTQ movement. I could go on, but what we should see here is that if God has a spiritual message for our nation, it makes sense he would broadcast it first in California.

But why Pacific Palisades? The internet revealed this is a neighborhood to the west of LA, about 20 miles, founded in 1921 by a Methodist organization, and would later be sought after by celebrities and other high-profile people seeking privacy. Interestingly, this area became a refuge for many German and Austrian Jews that fled pre-war Germany and later from the Holocaust. It consisted originally of writers, artists, and poets of Jewish ancestry referred to as dissidents, meaning they were free thinkers who didn't want anybody telling them what to do.

So here we have a pocket of creative, influential people exiled from their ancestral home of Israel who settled in Pacific Palisades looking for a place of safety, refuge, privacy, and artistic freedom. My wheels were turning by this time, but before we start coming to conclusions, we need to know what the 10th of Tevet is all about. The Hebrew calendar contains magnificent insights concerning the times that meant something to God in his dealings with Israel, the nation he chose out of all the others to teach the world about him and his ways.

At Mount Sinai, Israel made a covenant agreeing to be that chosen nation. This God is the one Christians claim to follow. I say claim because the majority of Christians have not truly followed his ways since the third century when the Roman Empire forbade the people living in Israel from honoring the Sabbath, from doing circumcision and keeping the kosher laws, and from celebrating the new moon which sets the dates every year for all of God's appointed times. You see, the goal of Hellenism was to do away with everything Jewish.

More and more Gentiles were accepting Jesus as the Messiah, but we were not schooled in Judaism, so this move away from Torah didn't really bother them. The Jews, however, were another story. Over time, most of them were influenced by the Gentiles all around them to become like them. Don't do Hanukkah, let us teach you about Christmas; it's a lot more fun. Christians began to take the New Testament passages out of context, teaching that Jesus did away with the law. Their gospel was basically telling the Jews: We've got the same God as you, but our traditions are not as strict.

Come be like us. You'll be saved and you'll have a lot more fun. Jesus died to get rid of the law. That is a lie. Jesus said, I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. And so we have lived ever since, Christians and Jews both estranged from the fullness of walking in God's ways. The 10th of Tevet is known in Hebrew as Asara B'Tevet. The Hebrew calendar is a memorialized record in God's heart of the times that he set up to meet with his people. The events repeat every year like an automated reminder of family reunions.

Each of these divine appointments, called Moed, are attended by those who desire to remain connected to what I call true Israel, those who choose to remember and worship and renew their covenant with Hashem, and those like me who are followers of Jesus as the Messiah and who are learning to be Torah observant. The primary Moed are Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Bikkurim, counting the Omer, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Hanukkah, and Purim. There are other times on the calendar too.

Days that memorialize awful times in our biblical history, these are days which are given over to the evil one, whom Christians call Satan or the devil. The principle is that when God's people give themselves over to that force, there develops a weakness in the atmosphere on those dates, and horrible things can happen then, such as this fire, unless God's people rise up and do some action to draw closer to him, such as fasting or studying Torah or helping others in need. Now one of those negative time periods is the fast on the 10th of Tevet.

The 10th day of the 10th month. The prophet Jeremiah described the time during the reign of King Zedekiah, who was the last king of Judah before the exile. In Second Kings 25:1, quote, "It came about in the ninth year of his reign on the 10th day of the 10th month—that's the 10th of Tevet—that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came, he and his army, against Jerusalem, camped against it and built a siege wall around it," unquote. So one day all the Jews living in Jerusalem woke up and found the entire Babylonian army encircled around the whole city.

Why would God allow Nebuchadnezzar to do that against his people? Rabbi Washer writes, quote, "Israel had committed innumerable sins and their acts mounted up to heaven. God was patient for 430 years from the time of the judges to when Solomon built the temple. He sent them hundreds of prophets, but they would not listen. God was patient for another 400 years. They still wouldn't listen. So God used Babylon as a hammer, as a rod of correction to discipline his people. On this day, the siege that was promised arrived at the gates," unquote.

Jeremiah was a lone voice. All the other prophets said everything is going to be fine, nothing bad is happening. And quite frankly, many times I feel like Jeremiah because of what I see: the same signs of siege around our borders and cities. The biblical signs tell me we are a nation under judgment and headed for destruction if we do not do serious Teshuvah, that's repentance. It is the siege when the border of a piece of land is surrounded by a dangerous force, whether it is drones or a swarm of immigrants or a natural disaster like a fire.

The siege is always a warning sign of impending disaster. Rabbi Anava observed there were other times when nations besieged Jerusalem and they didn't make a fast out of it, so he studied to find out why the 10th of Tevet was different. He said, quote, "That day on the 10th of Tevet, our sages tell us in the Midrash that the heavenly court gathered together and said, okay, let's see what they're going to do. If they repent and do Teshuvah, the siege will be removed. If they don't, let's see what will happen on Tisha B'Av, which is the 9th of Av," unquote.

The 9th of Av was the day Moses came down the mountain with the two tablets in his hands and found the people having an orgy, celebrating a golden calf. This event almost wiped out the nation. So this day became another day of fasting to purge ourselves of anything that takes the place of God in our hearts. After the Babylonian siege, each year after that on the 10th of Tevet, the heavenly court reconvened to see whether the Jews continued their own ways or returned to God's. They did not do Teshuvah, and three and a half years later, the Babylonians broke through the walls and destroyed the temple.

They took the Jews into exile. So the 9th of Av is a national day of mourning because they lost the temple. What's hard to believe is the same thing happened some 650 years later when the Roman Empire ruled and mounted its own siege against Israel. When? On the 10th of Tevet. No signs of repentance, so the Roman army finally breached the walls of Jerusalem and destroyed the second temple on the 9th of Av, exactly three and a half years later in 70 AD. The pattern repeated itself exactly.

So here we are today witnessing what is considered to be a community of Jews under siege on the 10th of Tevet, and everything is destroyed by fire, which is an act of God. Pacific Palisades, I believe, is a metaphorical picture that represents the flood of Jews who fled to the United States looking for refuge. You think the Lord wouldn't move heaven and earth to send a message to those whose ancestors were exiled and who are precious to him? Rabbi Anava spent all last summer in the United States trying to speak to as many Jews as he could.

He said, quote, "Jews have no idea what is coming. We are in judgment right before the birth pangs. Hashem is saying, I'm going to tear down every foundation you think you have in this world. We need to do Teshuvah and return to Hashem," unquote. He then went on to plead with his people to move back home to Israel while there was still time. I believe Anava fulfills the prophecy in Malachi 4, coming to us in the spirit of Elijah, preparing the Jewish people for the birth pangs. He sees this timetable as eminent.

Hearing him for me has been confirmation, for my research has pointed me to this same time period, which I believe is less than three years away. Now with the California fire happening on the 10th of Tevet, this means the heavenly courts are in session, and they're watching to see if Christians and Jews will return to the God of Israel as our only refuge. The purpose of the fast is to purge our souls from the sins that led to the destruction of both temples. According to Rabbi Anava, the first temple was destroyed by three cardinal sins: idol worship, bloodshed, and forbidden relations.

These include adultery, incest, homosexuality, and pedophilia. These sins were prevalent then, as they are now, and accepted as normal. God won't have it. The second temple was destroyed for a sin known as Sinat Chinam, which means hating somebody for no reason. The reason this sin is so grievous to God is that it is not an overt act; it is deep in the heart. Only God knows when you're nice to somebody on the surface, but deep down you can't stand him or her. Maybe they have more money than you or got a promotion and you're going nowhere in business.

So this hatred and jealousy gets rooted as a poison and creates a separation in the heavens and deep sadness in the father. The truly happy person is one who is content with our lot, happy with our portion, and happy with the portion God gives to others. As Hebrews 13 says, keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. I believe God sent this fire to his people and is saying through it, come home. Return to me. Only when I am your refuge will you find peace.

For my Christian brothers and sisters, the fire is for us as well. The Lord is burning up every false foundation that we have embraced. In our hearts we may love the Lord, but we are not connected well to the Jewish vine. The Lord is calling us to learn his ways. The heavenly court is watching. To share this episode with others, go to my website at candacelong.com and click on this episode, God's Message in the California Fires. In the description notes, I put all the links to the resources I used so you can study on your own. I want to thank you for being with me and I hope you join me again next time for Lessons in the Latter Days. God bless.