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.

Today's episode is going to be a stretch for some of you. But if you believe Jesus is coming for you at the Rapture, this is an important teaching. It's called Lessons in Levitical Jurisprudence. Today will prepare you for one of your responsibilities in the Kingdom, but sadly, very few Christians today are equipped to do it.

Let me read you a portion of my notes while reviewing the dreams that I had last year, because what I look for in January when I'm rereading every dream from the year before is this: what was important to the Father to show me or teach me that year? Was it different from previous years? Especially given the conclusion that I have come to in my research, which puts the year 2025 as year six in the final seven years of the church age.

This means that from my perspective, according to my analysis, the Rapture is at the end of next year. That belief is front and center in my mind and colors every decision that I make. So, I expect the Lord to be preparing me in 2024 for what is coming next. And sure enough, I did see something so significant, it deserved its own episode.

So, here's what I wrote in my journal: "What I'm seeing is a number of dreams that have to do with applying individual laws in the Torah to what people are going through now and setting aside money to make things right." By way of introduction, those of you who dismiss the Torah as no longer important, who don't think we have anything to learn from our Levitical forefathers who were the priests and Levites charged with carrying the Torah and teaching God's ways, today's teaching will not make sense to you.

Let me say very frankly that if this attitude does not change, your role in the Kingdom will not be a significant one. Jesus said in Matthew 5 that you would be considered least in the Kingdom. You'd get in if you accepted Jesus as the Messiah, but if you continue to close your mind to the Levitical disciplines that will be front and center in the Kingdom, you will not fulfill all the Father had for you.

Now, you may say, "Wait a minute, I don't want that, but I was never trained in anything you're talking about." Very good, I like that. It's honest and it's the truth. Most believers were severed from everything Jewish in the third century. That's why Jesus is coming to take us to where He is to be trained for seven years, to have our minds transformed into a Kingdom mindset, which is not Christian, it's Jewish. So, please listen a few minutes. I want to help straighten out your thinking so you will be ready.

What I noticed last year was the increasing number of mature believers who came to me for counsel because of difficult times they were going through, many of them drained by legal proceedings and trapped in a secular court system. During my weekly Torah studies, the Lord began to show me the biblical roots to specific issues these people were facing, found in the 613 dos and don'ts called the mitzvot, or the individual laws that God gave in the Torah.

This was happening so often that I began to realize the Father was taking me to a new level of coaching and consulting. Today's episode is divided into four sections. First, I will explain what Levitical jurisprudence is and other terminology you need to know. Second, we'll look at why this discipline is critical to learn now. Third, I'll share how I learned to apply this concept to a situation I was facing, and it saved me from what could have been devastating. And finally, I'll leave you with some ways that you can grow in this understanding.

Section one: What do I mean by Levitical jurisprudence? I'm a wordsmith. So, when I see an important concept and I can't find a word or phrase to explain it, I'll create one. Now, the Lord may give me a better word for it as I grow, but right now the term I'm using is Levitical jurisprudence.

The first word, Levitical, has to do with responsibilities of the Levites, those God has invited to live closest to Him. Our Levitical forefathers were taught important spiritual disciplines because their assignment was to carry and guard the ways of the Lord and pass them down. A modern-day Levite needs these same disciplines. They have to go through a lot of refinement and live a consecrated life. He or she is responsive to whatever the Lord needs to minister to His people 24/7.

This is the calling to which I was appointed over 20 years ago. You can learn more about my journey in my book, The Levitical Calling, which you'll find at candacelong.com/books. The prophet Isaiah wrote in the last chapter of his book that at the end of the seven final years, Messiah will examine those who survive the birth pangs. These will be both Jews and Gentiles. And He'll appoint some of them as priests and Levites.

This tells us that Messiah always has a Levitical people. He's looking for His Levites now to be identified and trained because He's coming soon and He needs us to understand our place. If this resonates with you, please get my book. The word Levitical represents a series of ministry disciplines that are precious to God. Not only do you need to know these disciplines, you need to study the Torah upon which the entire governance of the Kingdom is based.

The word jurisprudence is defined as the science of law, a division of it, or a particular body of the law. For example, we use terms such as federal jurisprudence, bankruptcy jurisprudence, etc. So, I put these two terms together and created Levitical jurisprudence to refer to a type of spiritual discipline of righting wrongs in a believer's life, referencing the laws found in the Torah and proposing a just and righteous compensation for the one who was wronged, all the while staying within the existing legal framework of our secular culture.

I believe one of my charges as a Levite is to help formulate a template of Levitical jurisprudence that today's ministry leaders can apply to help others. I would put this discipline alongside intercession, worship, teaching, deliverance, and healing. As an example, once you as a minister have identified a Torah violation in someone's life who's come to you for help, a thorough Levitical examination will strengthen your appeal to the courts of heaven on behalf of that person you are serving as an advocate. This is the life of a modern-day Levite.

Today's legal system is tremendously corrupt. Many Christians I know find themselves trapped in legal situations where lies and misinformation abound. To respond to this need, I am personally developing a different model of coaching and consulting to offer believers an alternative to handle disputes and legal threats before being sued, or as your next negotiating step if you are sued.

My understanding after walking with the Lord over 50 years is that today's believers now need a counseling team comprised of a lawyer trained in the area of the law that you're dealing with, plus a Levitical consultant who would examine the situation on the spiritual level in order to address the violations in the Torah and make recommendations as to settlement options before having to go to trial.

Section number two: Why is this important? The answer has to do with what the New Testament teaches as the role that believers are to have in the Kingdom. In 2 Peter 2, the apostle writes that we are to be like living stones built into a spiritual house, to be a royal priesthood, and later adds, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people."

This same job description is found in the first chapter of Revelation, where the apostle John writes, "Jesus by His blood has freed us from our sins and made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father." Now, I don't know about you, but I certainly need more training in how to be a priest to the Father in the Kingdom. One thing I do know is that our assigned place will be 100 percent related to our unique gifts and talents.

The third verse I want us to look at is 1 Corinthians 6, starting at verse one: "When one of you has a grievance against a brother, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels?"

The apostle Paul is basically telling us that those that Jesus takes at the Rapture will be personally trained to administer God's justice to the people who are living during the thousand-year Kingdom, both people and angels. That's why we are urged to learn now the discipline of Levitical jurisprudence and begin learning how to help believers who are being caught in today's legal traps.

Now, before telling you how I handled a real-life situation, let me share six insights from my Torah study that expand this concept further. And I'm taking these from my journal notes. Insight number one came from the Torah portion called Mishpatim, which is all about calculating monetary compensation. You see, genuine Levitical examination looks into three areas. Number one: the person's intent, whether the wrong that was committed was intentional or unintentional. Number two involves a confession of wrongdoing. Is the person willing to admit he or she was wrong, or are they blaming someone else? And number three: determine what the offender can afford.

Insight number two: There is no ritual in the Torah that provides for intentional sin. If someone knows the law and commits the sin anyway, the punishment is usually written. Depending on what the sin is, it might be a punishment called kareth, which is often worded as being cut off from the people. Now, this could mean the person is worthy of death right there, or premature death, or barrenness blocking any descendants coming from that bloodline.

But if there is no specific punishment mentioned, the general understanding was that person would receive lashes. Now, these lashes were literal, and I see them as the rod of discipline that the Lord uses to drive a person to teshuvah, which means genuine repentance. I discern, for instance, when something always seems to go wrong in a person's life, there's tragedy after tragedy. These are God's lashes, and they will get increasingly more harsh if the person ignores the warning and doesn't return to the Lord.

This is why Levitical ministers are needed to locate the Torah violations and address them, not only with the blood of Jesus—and that's very critical—but also in accordance with the Torah laws of proper compensation for the wrong committed. This is God's system of justice at work, and He wants us to learn to do it.

Insight number three: Many of the laws in the Torah instruct on how to make restitution for damage done to somebody else. Verses such as "an eye for an eye" were always understood to be guidelines for monetary compensation. They were never to be taken literally. Interestingly, along this line, I had a recent dream that had to do with segregating one-fifth of a person's assets from the other four-fifths.

And that part, the 20 percent, could be used to deal with compensations as a type of guilt or sin offering. We know, for instance, that one-tenth of everything that we own belongs to the Lord. That is the tithe. The other 10 percent is available for other offerings or sacrifices that may be needed to compensate for guilt or wrongdoing. The point of the dream was showing me that the wronged party must be compensated fairly.

This is the role of judges, which is one of the roles believers will also play in the Kingdom. Judges are charged with assessing righteous compensation. The Sanhedrin is the primary judicial branch in God's Kingdom, and it will be comprised of priests, Levites, and other leaders who are strong in judicial deliberations.

Insight number four: In Leviticus 10, Moses and Aaron were "inquiring diligently" about a particular sin offering. And the sages explain that they were debating regarding the proper interpretation of the oral law and how that particular ruling was to be applied. Now, this shows us that even Moses and Aaron had to learn these disciplines. It required deliberation before the Lord to arrive at a righteous judgment.

Insight number five is understanding that Kingdom training for His Levites has accelerated. Now, based on what I'm dreaming and the kinds of issues that people are coming to me with, the Lord has thrown me into a crash course, which confirms to me how close we are to the day of the Lord.

Insight number six: I can't help but wonder if the 20 percent segmentation of assets relates to the number of Jews that left at the Exodus. 20 percent is God's amount. He sifted all of the Jews that were alive at the Exodus, and only 20 percent agreed to leave the comforts of Egypt and receive the Torah. It's this precious few whom God taught how to legislate divine justice.

If we are going in the Rapture, I believe this puts us in the 20 percent of the 80 percent who call themselves Christians but who may be left behind. The Levitical calling is not easy. If I'm correct in my assessment, like our forefathers, we need to be willing to accept, carry, and bear the yoke of the Kingdom, the yoke of the Torah, and the yoke of Messiah, which He tells us is light. Now, this involves learning the foundations of God's justice system.

Section number three: How I applied these things in my life. Now, time doesn't permit going into all the details, but early on in 2021, when I was developing Lessons in the Latter Days, I was approached by a national consultant whom I'll call George. And George offered to take my show to a national level. His credentials were solid. He had helped many big names expand their media presence when they were starting out.

He wanted me to sign a contract whereby he would contact all of the radio stations, negotiate the prices, place my media buys, and receive a standard commission as his fee. I would still have to come up with the money, of course. In exchange, I would receive a list of all of his contacts for potential sponsors, a list of stations that he works with, and would be relieved of all of the administrative part of this work so I could concentrate on writing and producing, which is where my gifts lie.

I prayed about it, rather casually I admit, and I signed the contract. George sent me everything he promised and wouldn't do anything until I had the money together to buy airtime on the radio. I knew almost immediately after I signed that I had made a horrible mistake. I was gripped with conviction. I couldn't believe I had entrusted a complete stranger with an aggressive hard-sell personality to boot with the entire image of my show.

His would be the voice to the station reps, not mine. The Lord began the verbal lashes: "Do you want him to be the face and voice of Audeo Media?" which is my company. I spent weeks in turmoil. I couldn't sleep. It didn't seem honorable to write him and say, "My bad, I made a mistake, I'm breaking the contract." No, he had done his part and could have screwed me royally by demanding a percentage of everything I would ever spend airing my show on radio. And he would be absolutely just in demanding that.

I knew enough of the Torah to know I was wrong. I confessed my sin to the Lord. I had entrusted somebody else to do the part that I was insecure doing. And I asked the Lord to lead me in an honorable way to deal with this. I ended up hiring an attorney who specialized in intellectual property and contract negotiations. That cost me $2,000 just to have the lawyer look over the contracts and communications between me and George.

Now, once I confessed my wrong to the Lord, He graciously began to instruct me what to include in a memorandum of understanding to dissolve our contract. I did most of the work drafting that document and ran each draft by my attorney to make sure it complied with our laws. Now, keep in mind by this time George had done absolutely nothing on my behalf. But I felt I owed him something to compensate for my wrongdoing.

My goal and prayer was to part ways in a civil manner and maintain professionalism throughout the process. I never wanted to be in a situation where we would each feel cheated and end up bad-mouthing each other, which is where so many people go wrong. That is not the standard of business integrity I want to be known by. My offer took a long time to draft.

I ultimately offered to pay him a generous settlement, which required absolutely no work from him. All he had to do to receive this money was do three things. Number one: allow our contract to be dissolved. Number two: agree that each of us could go our separate ways. And number three: agree to refer to each other in public honorably going forward. I have never been more relieved than when he graciously accepted my offer.

The Lord honored me because I admitted my wrong both to the Lord and to George. And I learned an invaluable lesson in Levitical jurisprudence. I hope I've given you some things to think about today. Your place in the Kingdom is very precious to the Father. He wants you there with Him, and He's called me to prepare you for that transition.

I will not be on the radio much longer because I can't afford the thousands of dollars every week this ministry requires. Two final thoughts I want to leave you with. Number one: There is coming a severe spiritual drought. I advise you to gather what you need from teachers you trust to prepare you for the Rapture. It's going to be a rocky road from now until then.

At candacelong.com, you'll find books, monographs, and instructional videos, and podcasts are always free. But I would ask that when you come to my website, make a donation and help me finish what I began. Let me know that my work has mattered to you. There's a donate button on my website and in the notes to every episode.

We have a limited window to align properly with our Jewish roots. I encourage you to purchase my book, The Levitical Calling. I have copies of it in my office that you'll receive a lot quicker than online ordering, and it will help me financially. Just email me info@candacelong.com and put "I want your book" in the subject line. I'll contact you with the details.

To share this episode with others, go to candacelong.com/podcasts and look for this episode, Lessons in Levitical Jurisprudence. Thank you for being with me today. I'm Candace Long, and you've been listening to Lessons in the Latter Days. God bless.