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 that we're living in. Today I'm starting a series on transgenderism, which I consider a significant sign of these latter days, if we have ears to hear. The Lord has been pouring out so much biblical perspective on this issue that I have notes all over my desk. And my challenge and my prayer is that I can organize my findings and present them to you in a way that makes sense.

In part one, I'll attempt to refocus our thinking to see this issue through a biblical lens. First, I need to set the proper stage so that we can interpret the metaphorical ways God loves to use when communicating something profound. In this series, we're going to look at what transgenderism is, how it manifests, why it has come about, and why now. What are its implications and how is it a sign of the latter days?

You know, when we come across something in our culture that we instinctively sense is out of order with the way God created things, our tendency is to have a knee-jerk reaction that says, "This is wrong. This is sin. It's demonic, period." And that's all we have to say. But I believe God demands more of us. I remember something that a cultural reformer colleague of mine once said: "If you cannot preach from the newspapers, you have no part in this present reformation."

And I couldn't agree more. We cannot be so buried in our biblical studies that we fail to properly apply the wisdom that comes forth from the Word of God. Many years ago now, I wrote a book about a life-changing revelation God gave me while studying the Torah. It's called The Levitical Calling. One day I'll talk more about it, but let me just mention three of the many Levitical responsibilities by way of introduction because these relate to our topic.

And as I mention them, I will describe them first in the historical and natural, the way God presents them to us in the Torah, and then apply principles to our lives today. Number one: Levites, as you may know, were called by God to be separate from the other tribes, to dwell or live closest to His presence and attend Him 24/7. Now, in the historical sense, all Levites were Jews, but the reverse was not true. All Jews were not Levites.

Now, I hope you can follow me here. These were different callings. The Levites were a smaller group taken from a larger one, and they were set apart by God for a specific purpose, namely, to attend Him. Scripture teaches that this calling still happens today, as you will find in Isaiah 66. God will always have priests and Levites to attend Him differently than His other children. It's not that He loves them more; they simply have a different calling.

So to apply this principle to today, not all Christians have a Levitical calling, but some do. Now, if you're interested in learning whether you have it, you can find my book, The Levitical Calling, at candacelong.com/resources. A second responsibility of a Levite is to explain the Torah to God's people. We find this in the book of Nehemiah, which tells the story of how God called His people to return from exile and rebuild the temple.

Now, most of the people had gotten comfortable in Babylon and wanted to stay. But 1,514 men heard the call to return and rebuild and reform their nation. The Lord chose two people to shepherd this huge assignment: Nehemiah to lead them, and Ezra the priest to teach them the ways of the Lord. I'm skipping over a lot of what they went through, but once they were able to start building, the wall was miraculously finished in 52 days, and then came the time of consecration.

Now, keep in mind these Jewish patriots had nothing to their name. After 70 years of exile, they were broken. But something inside their ancestral DNA woke up and called them to be part of a national reformation, to rebuild the way of life they had before God's judgment fell on them. Now, I hope this is speaking to some of you as it is to me because I believe we have a very narrow window of time now to rebuild our nation.

In this passage, Nehemiah goes on to list the names of 12 Levites who assisted the priest, Ezra, in this consecration. Nehemiah wrote, "They, the Levites, helped the people to understand the Torah while the people remained in their places. And they read from the book, from the Torah, and the Levites gave the sense so that the people understood the reading." Now, I'm starting with this introduction because this is what is needed now in these latter days.

We need the Levites to come forward and make God's Word plain, applicable, and relevant. We need to understand the Torah and how it applies to everything that we are going through. You see, when things come up in our culture that are disruptive and explosive, such as transgenderism, that issue becomes a billboard that parades around waving its banner, seeking attention and waiting to be recognized.

And there are many voices out there writing and speaking op-eds out the wazoo, espousing one theory or another. We don't need a theory and a politically mandated solution. We need instructions and insights from the Torah. And that's the Levite's role. A listener wrote recently and asked me how I study. He has been in ministry for many years and was surprised about how different my writing is from other voices that are out there.

His question was sincere, so I'll try to give you some insight into how I study and how I come up with the topics I choose to deal with. Many years ago, I chose to live a consecrated life. As I was writing my book, The Levitical Calling, I recognized that calling in me with every fiber of my being. So I began to live in a world of quiet. I protect my environment, and I guard who comes in and out of my home and the kinds of things I read or watch or listen to.

I try to be diligent to keep myself undefiled because I take seriously my calling to attend the Lord when He speaks. And then I write what I've heard and produce these teachings. I am a follower of Jesus and I am also Torah observant, as He was. I believe that we honor God when we study all that He gave to guide His people when He revealed Himself on Mount Sinai, not just the words in red ink found in the New Testament.

So part of my personal mandate is to insert biblical commentary into what we are going through. That's what Lessons in the Latter Days is all about. And number three, the final responsibility of the Levite I want to mention here is that they were the ones chosen to carry the Ark of the Covenant wherever God was on the move. Now, this too is a picture or a tavnit that is applicable today.

Levites are entrusted to carry those things that are most precious to God out into the world. I was visualizing this concept and meditating on it the other day, and the prayer that came out of my mouth was in the form of a question. I asked, "Lord, who is carrying your Torah into this present generation?" Now, when the words came out of my mouth, tears welled up in my eyes because I often feel so humbled by the revelation He is giving me.

Now, the rest of the conversation with the Father is personal, but I hope that this part helps you understand why I write what I do. The bottom line is I have dedicated my life to study the Torah and let God speak to me through it relative to what is happening. The reason we are in crisis, I believe, is because we have lost our Torah foundation. Since Jesus is Torah in the flesh, if we want to know Him better and be prepared for His coming, we had best be studying Torah.

As to what I write about, I don't go out looking for titillating topics to get listeners. I listen to what's on God's heart, what He's impressing on me, what He points my attention to. And when the revelation comes and then He sheds light on why we are suffering as a society or as families, then that topic gets on my radar. And that's how it happened with transgenderism, which I now see as a very important sign of the latter days.

The trigger for this episode was a recent visit to a store, and one of the workers came up and asked how they could help me. Now, I'm using the wrong pronoun on purpose. I'm using the word "they" because I could not tell you who I was talking with. In my mind, I was asking, "Is this a young woman or a man? A man trying to be a woman, or a woman trying to look like a man?" This person was not a "he" or a "she." It was a "they."

Now, I'm going to refer to this person as a "her" because that was my first dominant impression, a girl hiding inside what appeared to be masculine. Hours went by and I couldn't get this image out of my mind, which is often one of my body tells that God is saying something. But it often takes me a while to really get what He's saying. I asked, "Lord, what happened to that little girl? What made her want to hide that part of herself? What is going on in our culture where we are seeing these people more and more?

Why is this happening now? Is the timetable significant? Where are You in all of this? I know You created each of us for a specific purpose, that's what Your word teaches. And You made us from the very beginning male and female. The Torah is very biologically definitive. There's no confusion about that. You are not the author of confusion. So where did things start to go wrong?"

It took me a while to process the significance of what I believe is happening. But in a nutshell and as my working premise, I believe that the increase in the number of people who identify as transgender is a sign of the end times. I also believe the trans population is carrying a very important message to prepare us for the kingdom, if we have ears to hear it. Now, God can sometimes appear in unsettling ways.

When John the Baptist came on the scene, he did not look like other religious leaders. We know from Luke 1 that he was a Nazirite from birth. He was also filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb. Numbers 6 in the Torah explains that a Nazirite makes a special vow to separate himself to the Lord. In the Old Testament, we see that Samson was a Nazirite from the womb, and his assignment by God was to begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

In the case of John the Baptist, this Nazirite's assignment was to have a pure mind and body filled with the Holy Spirit to lead the Israelites to repentance and announce that the kingdom of God was at hand, which meant it was coming right away. So when John began preaching, his appearance was troubling. He made his home in the wilderness, his teachings were harsh, his tone and his words unsettling. He was so hard to take that the king beheaded him.

Now, please hear me. I am not endorsing transgenderism and putting trans people in the same category with John the Baptist. I'm simply noting a parallel, that God sometimes delivers a message in a way that is culturally repulsive to the majority of people. Now, there is no chapter in the Bible on how to deal with transgenderism, so we have to examine this issue from different angles. Let me share some observations for your consideration, using the study method that I have been taught to do in Judaism.

I'm going to examine things in the natural and keep my ears open to hear what God is saying metaphorically through the picture. Now, we're going to look at two issues. Number one: What do trans people feel like? How do they express what's going on inside them? Are there biblical principles that shed light on this condition? And number two: Are there cultural forces at play that might be influencing the growth of the transgender population?

Can we find biblical examples to apply? My answer is a resounding yes to both issues. So let's dig in. Issue number one: What do trans people experience? Now, you won't find the word "transgender" in Strong's Concordance, but the internet applies the term to people who desire to express their gender as different from the sex they were given at birth. If a woman gives birth to a little boy and the parents name him Paul, and Paul grows up never thinking of himself as a boy, but rather a girl, something is clearly amiss here.

Within Paul's internal life, he becomes anxious and unsettled because everyone around him expects him to act a certain way, talk a certain way, have the same affinity for sports and science and hunting and all things that most boys like. So his whole inner life is turned upside down because he is perceived in a way that does not align with his experiential inner being. And so there is a silent scream going on 24/7. Paul feels trapped inside of another person's reality.

He has no way to express this to his family, so he stuffs all the feelings and fears of being rejected and tries to live with it. Now, I want to point out something very key to this part of the discussion. In and of itself, as I've just described, in God's eyes, there is no sin here. Rather, there is a symptom of internal gender confusion and unrest, which to a Levite's eyes or a minister's eyes, needs attending to.

God is merciful and desires healing and freedom from that unrest. Now, if the unrest goes unattended and it begins to express itself in fornication or adultery or homosexuality, that's something else altogether. The Torah is very clear on those behaviors; they are sin. But let's just focus a few minutes on the experience of feeling gender confusion. I am proposing that there are many reasons that could stir up this type of unrest in a young person.

And in this episode, I have time to highlight one of them. Reason number one: The trans person likely has a God-given gifting. Now, I would wager a bet to say that the majority of trans people are extremely gifted and creative. As I've mentioned many times in my teaching, creatives are wired to detect spirit. I am one. I have lived this reality all my life. Creatives are wired differently.

We are like an antenna that picks up spiritual data broadcasting in the atmosphere. Most creatives are deeply spiritual. We may be out to lunch theologically, but we are quick to recognize when something supernatural is at work. If we do not know Jesus and learn to recognize His voice, creatives can be very open to New Age teachings and other religions. That was where I really got off track before I was born again in the late 60s.

Now, living in these latter days, we are in a spiritually tumultuous environment. There are new and different spirits out there now, end-time spirits that we don't even have names for yet, and they are multiplying. They are seeking an open door in someone to manifest their nature through. And that's what the biblical concept of defilement is all about. If your workplace environment, for instance, is filled with people who are angry and combative all the time, these are spirits controlling or influencing them.

Spirits of anger, spirits of contention, spirits of division. They have names and they can latch onto gifted people easily because we pick them up. If we have no solid biblical foundation within ourselves, we can begin manifesting what they represent or channeling them, to use a more common term. When we learn to walk maturely in the Lord, however, as it says in Hebrews 5, we learn by experience to distinguish what is of God and what isn't.

And that's why God gave us this sensitive gifting in the first place, to pick up spirits, discern if they are unclean spirits, and if so, cast them out. That's how Jesus lived 24/7. So what spirits have surfaced now that are manifesting as transgenderism? I want to propose to you that we're seeing a growing category of an unclean spirit called the spirit of gender confusion. That's its name.

We know this is a spirit because God is not the author or originator of confusion. That is not His nature. This spirit, the spirit of gender confusion, happens to be in high demand right now. It is welcomed, invited, and valued by the kingdom that is forming before our eyes, the New World Order, the final kingdom that the prophet Daniel said would be in power right before the day of the Lord.

Let me share with you part of the manifesto for this New World Order. I write about it in depth in the monograph called Return of the Nephilim, which I encourage you to read if you'd like to know more about it. These manifesto goals were originally published in 1979 in the Global 2000 report, written by Cyrus Vance and commissioned by the Club of Rome. After some 40 years of in-depth research into the inner workings of the elite, Dr. John Coleman exposed this manifesto in his classic book, The Committee of 300.

And he outlined what the elite are working toward to create their plan for a perfect totalitarian society. What they want is to lower birth rates and manage the population of a world under their total control. They want to outlaw marriage and make the children wards of the state, promote free sex, self-abortions, pedophilia, and homosexuality as a way of life since no children are born from these unions. They will promote pornography and recreational drugs.

Now, you get the picture. Their utopia is diametrically opposed to God's ways. Now, as the people of the world bow down to the world's wealthy elite, the influence of the elite grows and so does the power of the spirits that are aligned with their kingdom. That's what a spiritual principality is that we read about in Ephesians 6, a high order of spirits controlled by a prince, the prince of darkness. In closing this episode, I'm going to make an unusual statement.

If it were not for the trans community broadcasting their message, no matter how troubling that message is, we would be ignorant of the name of the spirit that is attacking our children. To learn more, you can find this episode and the entire series at candacelong.com/podcast. Go to my online store and look for the 24-page monograph called Transgenderism. It includes important graphics and pictures that make this topic come alive.

It also gives you links to all of my resources. I want to thank you for taking the time to be with me today. Jesus said in Mark 4, "Take heed to what you hear." That means pay attention to it, even if the message is a troubling one. God always gives warning and instruction to those who seek and to those who have ears to hear. I hope you join me again next time for Lessons in the Latter Days. God bless.