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. In the last two episodes, "When God Speaks in a Dream" and "Principles to Unlock Your Dream," I explained why God chooses to speak in dreams and the Hebraic principles of interpretation that I call the Joseph Dream Key. Not only to unlock my own dreams but to teach others what God may be saying to them in their dreams.

In this episode, I want to get practical by sharing two personal dreams that have shed significant light on my calling and the times that we're living in. I want to demonstrate how I've come to use the Hebraic principles that we saw in Genesis 41: how to break out the dreams and apply the dreams to what we are going through at the time when we dream.

Just to provide a disclaimer here, dreams are metaphorical language, meaning that they mean one thing literally but have parallel meanings. It's like a secret language that God may choose to communicate something important to one of his children so it doesn't get overheard and distorted by the enemy.

My dream interpretation mentor was the late John Paul Jackson, founder of Streams Ministries International. He taught that 85 percent of our dreams have to do with our calling, namely what God put inside of each one of us before we were born. A perfect example is Joseph's dream when he was just 17. He tells it to his brothers in Genesis 37.

Guest (Male): Hear this dream which I have dreamed: we were binding sheaves in the field, and my sheaf arose and stood upright; and your sheaves gathered round it and bowed down to my sheaf.

Candace Long: You know the story. Joseph made the big mistake of sharing his dream with his brothers and they despised him. So much so that they threw him into a pit and sold him as a slave to strangers. But you see, God was at work in this dream, planting an important seed of destiny inside Joseph that he would one day be in a significant leadership position, even over his brothers. God wanted the boy to hold on to that image, knowing the hard time that Joseph would go through.

One thing I want to point out: the reason the brothers hated Joseph so much was because they believed their father Jacob loved Joseph more than them. And now he had the audacity to tell a dream that seemed to indicate that even God loved him best. There is a word of wisdom here. You see, the way God communicates in dreams can come across like he loves the dreamer better than everybody else. But he intends it that way because the dream is between him and the dreamer alone. That intimacy, if it is shared like what Joseph did with his brothers, can easily be misunderstood and cause envy. That's why it's unwise to share a dream with others.

As I share my dreams today, you might think, "Who does she think she is?" Believe me, compared to you, I know I am no one special. But it may sound like it simply because I have learned after 19 years of interpreting dreams that this is the intimate way that God speaks to each of his children. I share the dreams to instruct how to break out your dreams. When I interpret someone else's dream, I use very intimate language from the Father because that is how he would want to communicate to them.

Let me show you what I mean. I'll be using the Joseph Dream Key, using the four steps that Joseph used to interpret Pharaoh's dream. Step one: write out or tell the dream itself. Step two: make note of the words or symbols that you feel the need to break out to find the meaning. Step three: write out what God is saying directly to you as the dreamer based on the vocabulary he used. And step four: give a word of wisdom in how to apply what God has just communicated.

So, here's the first dream I want to share with you. It's called "A in Physics," and I dreamed it in 2006. Step one: tell the dream itself. I was in a classroom and a friend and I were looking at our grades in physics. I was surprised to see that the number 91 was circled in bold red ink at the top of my paper. In other words, I made an A. The professor was advising my friend that her earning power was now much greater since she had also made an A. Overhearing him speak to her, I had the clear sense in the dream that he was also speaking to me.

Step two: break out whatever stands out as needing further instruction. For me, the key to unlocking the meaning of this dream was the meaning of the word physics. I began to ask myself questions, such as "Why would I be getting an A in physics?" Why physics and not English? I mean, science was never my strong suit. So for the next two hours, I explored the meaning of God's metaphorical language to find out everything I could about physics.

What I discovered was that physics is the understanding of the natural laws that God the Creator set in place to govern the universe. These laws never change, like the law of gravity. When they are violated, there is a clear reaction. We jump off a building, we are going to fall straight down, period. The consequence is a certainty, and the law can be trusted to operate 100 percent of the time.

Another tip in breaking out a dream is to write down what you have been going through at the time of the dream. So I asked, why would God be showing me this? Why now? I've also learned that the same spirit who wrote the Bible is the one who speaks in a genuine God-dream, so it's important to ask what he may be emphasizing in his word. I looked back at my journals (this was 2006), and I found that at the time of the dream, what had been on my mind was ancestral iniquity, of all things.

Let me explain. After losing almost everything during the events surrounding 9/11, I continually questioned God as to why he allowed this to happen. You see, 9/11 was not my first financial loss. Over the years, I experienced a string of events and the same pattern emerged. Just when I was on the verge of breakthrough and success, everything would fall apart every time. 9/11 was definitely the worst for me, but this pattern of financial loss stood out to me as a clue that something was wrong somewhere.

For three years, I was basically on my face before God after 9/11. "Lord, why has this happened? What do I need to see? Is there some unconfessed sin hidden in my subconscious?" I searched his word for answers year after year and cried, "Lord, I am not leaving your presence until you show me what is wrong." God always answers the cries of his children when we are ready to see the truth and deal with it.

One day, I was visiting an Atlanta church and I was looking around the bookstore. My eyes locked onto a title that grabbed my attention. It had to do with a particular religious sect that I knew about casually but not in depth. I actually bought the book because a friend of mine and her husband had been involved with that belief system and they had gone through very difficult times. In fact, the husband died at a very young age, cutting short the ministry that they had together. So I bought the book and began reading for her, not for myself.

I almost came off the couch while I was reading a chapter called "Understanding Generational Curses." In that chapter was a list of curses that often manifest to family members whose ancestors were involved in this particular sect. This list is taken from Deuteronomy 28. To my surprise, my family and I had experienced almost every curse. Here's the list of what the curses were in the book: mental and emotional problems, repeated or chronic sickness, barrenness, a tendency to miscarry or related female problems, breakdown of marriage, family alienation, premature deaths in the family, and continued financial insufficiency.

I called relatives on my mother's side and my father's side to see if there were anybody in our family who followed this particular practice. Low and behold, I discovered I am a third-generation descendant of this sect on both sides of my family. I had no idea. My goal here is not to denigrate anyone's beliefs. But for me, I needed to know if there were something unknowingly dangerous here that negatively impacted my life.

So I read the book again, for me this time, and discovered that the questionable practice had to do with vows that the members were required to take. God used this book to show me that my ancestors' participation, however innocent in the beginning, in making vows to someone other than Jehovah opened a legal door for the enemy to bring harm into my life. I learned that the word of God states very clearly in Exodus 20...

Guest (Male): You shall not bow down to false gods or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.

Candace Long: This is one of God's laws from the Ten Commandments. The result of all this study is that I repented for the sins of my fathers and from any generational curse that may have come on my life, either knowingly or unknowingly, by my ancestors. Interestingly, this is a very common Jewish practice. It's called identificational repentance, and we see it modeled in Nehemiah 9 and in Daniel 9.

The results for me were dramatic. I began to experience the favor of God as never before. It was palpable, as if an invisible dark cloud that had hung over my head were suddenly removed. My walk with the Lord deepened, the financial curse was broken off, and I began to receive increased revelation from the Lord. I soon began to teach about this new-found revelation through seminars and radio programs on how to break generational curses.

When we are doing something that pleases the Lord, especially if it is a new direction, the Lord always confirms his leading by two or three witnesses, and one of those witnesses can be a prophetic dream such as the one I'm sharing with you now. The fact that in the dream I was getting an A meant that I was being affirmed by an actual grade. It wasn't 100, but 91 showed that I was somehow getting the material: the spiritual laws the Lord established and what happens when we ignore them.

Suddenly, as I was writing down all of these observations, understanding came on me like a flood of light. I felt chills all over my body and tears began to well up. That's when you move to the next step. So Step three is to give the word of the Lord to the dreamer. This is a very important step that many people overlook, but I'm going to show you what it sounds like. I have to write this step from God's perspective to me, as if God were speaking to me using the vocabulary of the dream. As I do this step, typically what happens is the spirit of God downloads other revelation and application I didn't see originally.

So I'm going to read you what I wrote. Again, it's from God to me.

Guest (Male): Candace, in this dream I am affirming that you are on the cusp of understanding the way things work in the spiritual realm. The law, the Torah, is the law: the law of my kingdom. My spiritual laws are just as real, predictable, and certain as are the natural laws that I set up in the earth, such as the law of gravity and other laws that physics encompasses. When my children violate these laws, you can know for a certainty what will happen because it's in my word. My laws never change. They were written for your protection, to keep you walking in my ways.

When those laws are broken, you will see the signs. I am the professor in the dream and graded you high for searching out my ways. To whom much is given, much will be required. The more you understand my ways, the more power you earn to help others.

Candace Long: Step four: give wisdom and application in moving forward. So the wisdom that I received from the dream was that the Lord was commissioning me to teach his laws of generational healing. That inspired me to study more, to learn how to spot the patterns of ancestral iniquity and help others who have no understanding as to why bad things keep happening to them.

Generational healing has been a large part of my teaching. The dream pointed the way to my next steps. I have written two books on this topic, The Levitical Calling and Letters to Aliyah: A Personal Journey of Generational Healing. You can find both of these on my website under resources at candacelong.com.

The second dream I want to share with you happened in 2016, and I call it "Kata Kaio." So here's the dream itself. In the dream, I am with three singers: two men and another woman. I cannot see their faces. We are warming up and singing a strange word over and over. And I follow along because I have a musical ear, but I have no idea what I am singing. It sounds like "Kata Kaio" with the last syllable drawn out. "Kata Kaio." For some reason, I'm having trouble singing because this snoring sound from my nose to my mouth keeps coming up, and I am alarmed that I can't sing well.

Step two: list the words to break out. First of all, I was a professional singer for years, so the fact I couldn't sing well was rather alarming. You always want to write down what you're feeling inside a dream. The second thing I felt was confusion because I had no idea about this word "Kata Kaio." I have learned over the years that faceless people in dreams are typically angels or the Holy Spirit because they do not draw attention to themselves but to God. So basically, here I am with three angels singing a strange word.

One gift that I do have is a good ear (I'm a composer), so I wrote out the word "Kata Kaio" phonetically. I concluded it must have something to do with the Bible. That's Holy Spirit's language, remember? But it didn't sound like Hebrew. So I turned to the Greek section of Strong's Concordance and I went down the entire section of words that began with a K, hoping to find something that made sense. Low and behold, I found the word. It was spelled a little differently than the way I spelled it, but it was pronounced the exact same way: "Kata Kaio," with the accent on the last syllable, just like I heard it.

My heart was racing with excitement. What on earth does it mean? The word means to burn down to the ground and totally consume. It is the word that John the Baptist used in Matthew 3 when he said...

Guest (Male): He who is coming will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Candace Long: That word burn is "Kata Kaio." It is what Jesus does to the chaff: the useless part of the wheat that needs to be broken off the head of the grain. I studied eight other verses in the New Testament using this word, such as Matthew 13 when Jesus said...

Guest (Male): Let both weeds and grain grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, "Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned (Kata Kaio), but gather the wheat into my barn."

Candace Long: So God was giving me insight into the time that we're living in. Step three: what was God's word to me?

Guest (Male): Candace, you are one of the voices that I'm using to call for this division of the chaff and the wheat. You could hear that your sound was not as pure as it needed to be. Shake off the slumbering spirit that is in the world, the spirit that denies that this time is fast approaching. The granary is the safe place where the pure seed will be stored for a time. But his angels are now at work binding the chaff together in bundles: into their ungodly ideologies and inner vows, worshiping the gods of this world. These are two parallel actions that are going on: the worthless chaff being bound together, and the wheat that is being separated from them and kept safe. The song is calling forth the consuming fire, and the angels are being summoned to their respective assignments to bind the chaff together. This binding may involve people you know and love. But the time has come to separate the wheat from the decoys, the religious spirits, the false teachers that are hanging on to the wheat.

Candace Long: Step four: what was my exhortation? Through this dream, the Lord affirmed the direction that I was moving into by investing in this audio series, in teaching and producing online training resource materials to prepare others as much as I can because the time is short. I happen to be one that he is calling to prepare the way and provide biblical commentary for what we are experiencing.

I began this series, Lessons in the Latter Days, to share some of the things that I have seen concerning these times. If you'd like to refer this program to others, you can find it on my podcast page under resources at candacelong.com. If you click on this episode, "Two Dreams That Showed Me My Calling," in the description, you'll find resources that will provide more information about topics that I referenced here.

I teach what I've found to be true and unchanging in his word. Never to put anyone else down or cast judgment on another's beliefs. God knows when we're ready to learn something and knows when we need clarification. But in 50 years of walking with him, I have found him to be 100 percent faithful to confirm his word and bless when we walk according to his ways.

I encourage you to be especially sensitive to any signs you see that you or your family are being continually blocked. Our ancestors meant well, but if there is physical evidence that patterns of negative things keep happening to you or your family over and over, it may well be that you too need to do some generational healing. I have resources on my website just for that purpose, and you'll find them at candacelong.com under resources. His plans for you are for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

I want to thank you for joining me today. In future episodes, I'll be addressing other key signs that we are seeing that show that the end of days is just around the corner. Without biblical commentary, we can easily be deceived and panic. But that is never God's way for his children. I'm Candace Long. I hope you'll join me again next time for Lessons in the Latter Days. God bless.