I want to remind you that we will have our Wednesday Corporate Prayer Call December 14, and then Thursday and Friday we will not have our Corporate Prayer Calls to allow our team to prepare for next week’s critical Hanukkah Gathering of the Eagles, December 19-21, 2022. 4:30-7:00 PM PT.

The purpose of our Hanukkah Gathering is to both thwart and unravel that which the enemy plans to accomplish by the year’s end.

Our Gatherings are typically on the Jewish Feasts because they represent critical events in the history of the nation of Israel wherein God miraculously intervened and set them apart from the heathen nations.

Hanukkah is also known as the Festival of Lights which occurred after Judah Maccabee defeated Antiochus IV. The Jews restored the Second Temple during which time they found only a small jar—a day’s worth—of the special oil used to light the Menorah. It would be eight days before another batch could be prepared and brought to the Temple. In faith, they lit the Menorah and the Menorah miraculously lasted for eight days until the prepared oil arrived at the Temple.

For most, this is where the story starts and ends.

We, however, are intercessors so we look deeper to find the root of the issues and repent accordingly. In short, the reason bad stuff is happening. Human trafficking for example, is rooted in compromise and greed. We repent for bloodletting, compromise, greed and then expand out from there to address the fruit of that sin. The fruit of the sin of human trafficking ranges from a violation of our personal rights to terrorist attacks occurring in our nation.

Looking deeper into Hanukkah we know that it is the celebration of the victory gained through the Maccabean Revolt. However, at its root, the Maccabean Revolt was the result of compromise that occurred in the people of God. There were those who knew the pursuit of Torah and the service of God was of the upmost priority. Their lives were to be an extension of their hunger and thirst for Him. (Deuteronomy 6:1-19) However, there were others who felt a little acceptance of Greek practices would not hurt anyone. Of course, the decay did not come about overnight, it took years to penetrate the roots.

A little history: the Jewish people, whom God set apart, finally returned to Jerusalem after the 70-Year Captivity. Cyrus also granted them permission to rebuild the Temple. While they remained a territory of the Persians, God moved upon Cyrus to release them to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. (See Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Daniel 9, and Zechariah. There is a great deal of information, so please forgive this brief summation.) Over the next century they endured various Persian leaders until Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire. Jerusalem being part of that empire fell to the Greeks who at the time, granted them the freedom to pursuit their God providing they paid tribute.

While under the instability of various Persian leaders, the people pursued God knowing He was their only stabilizing force. The people celebrated the great freedoms provided them under Alexander however, over time, their pursuit of Torah (the Word) diminished, and once again they embraced the ways of the world.

The Greek culture infiltrated Jerusalem to such a degree that a substantial portion of the community embraced the ideals of Greek thought and external pursuits and abandoned those of their Jewish heritage. These were Hellenists. A lengthy battle, one would even consider this a civil war, between the Hellenistic and traditional Jews ensued.

Compromise within the community expanded and the protective covering that Psalms 91 affords those who remain sheltered under His wing, lifted, and left them exposed, and the enemy took full advantage of the situation

Things continued to decline until, just over a century later, Antiochus IV entered the Temple, erected a statue of Zeus, and sacrificed a pig. The defiling of the House of God was complete.

The people were heartbroken.

God, in His mercy, stirred up a revolution in the heart of a country priest named Mattathias along with his sons. They became known as the Maccabees. The Maccabean Revolt ensued, but it was two decades before they saw the final victory, the Temple cleansed and restored, and the Menorah filled with a single day’s worth of oil. God, the Giver of Light, maintained that oil for eight days until additional oil arrived. Hence, the name “Festival of Lights”!

The Ark of the Covenant contains Torah—the Word. The Menorah with the oil represents the Spirit of Stimulation and the resulting Revelation of God through His Word. (Consider John 1:1-5) Together, they anchor us, they provide the plumbline, they are the stabilizing force within the child of God. They reveal the depths of Who He is, how He delivered us from the darkness, called us out of this world and into His light, and then launched us into His Kingdom here on this earth.

To have the oil enter the Menorah and begin to burn after such devastation must have felt like a true victory. However, to have the Light continue to burn, must have brought forth a revelation of God unlike anything that generation had experienced.

The light of the Menorah filling the Temple once again was indeed a miracle given the state of Jerusalem. However, the miracle of Hanukkah demonstrates the fruit of the Maccabean Revolt. With each passing day the Menorah shone brightly. For eight days, God was revealing His pleasure, His Word, His will, and His ways to the people of a war-torn city. He was also reminding them of the cost of turning away from His Word and the powerful way in which He welcomes back His children.

As an intercessor I ask the Lord: what is the root that led to the Maccabean Revolt? Compromise. The answer was surprisingly simple yet in practice, become deeply complex. Compromise, when it comes to a child of God, is an acceptance and embracing of the world instead of the pursuit of God. If the people had stayed united as the people of God, pursuing Torah (the Word) as they are commanded, and remembered that they are to be an extension of Him in the earth (Deuteronomy 6:1-19, Matthew 22:37-40) the enemy would not have been successful in dividing them as a people and ultimately, defiling the House of God.

We as a people, must learn from the mistakes of the past, whether they be our mistakes or the generations before us, God placed in His Word the history of the Israelites to teach us His will and His ways. Not every Bible contains the heroic account of the Maccabean Revolution, but we will apply the lessons gleaned from this account today. Through it, we learn how God rectifies situations when He can find those who are willing to answer the call.

Today, we are in a battle for more than our nation, we are in a battle for the Light that shines in the earth through His people. The enemy will always try to extinguish the Light of the Lord, it is his nature, and we cannot expect anything less of him. He does this by stirring up war, famine, plagues, and the like. We have availed ourselves to the “stirring” through compromise. It is time we changed that pattern and became part of the solution.

What is the solution? Repentance. Again, surprisingly simple answer yet in practice, deeply complex.

Through our repentance, we uproot the complexities of compromise in our nation and pave the way for His Light to shine once again. When His Glory falls (this is the coming Revival or Third Great Awakening we have talked about so much) it will spread across the earth in ways you cannot imagine. It will be like the burning of the Menorah, revealing God, His Word, His will, and His ways in the earth! People we see Him and fall on their face before Him, this generation the enemy is fighting so hard to destroy, will turn and serve God. They will receive healing from the trauma of the enemy’s machinations through the Word of God resulting in an insatiable hunger and thirst for Him! It will be unlike anything we have seen in our lifetime!

We, His people, His intercessors, are coming together during the Festival of Lights to seek His face on behalf of the nations. We will thwart the plans of the Elite to overtake the earth with darkness, and we will indeed unravel their plans. Then, we will release His Kingdom and His Light here on the earth. We know we are asking a great deal of you to set aside these three nights normally spent preparing for the holidays, yet we also trust in you, to heed the call of the Spirit and respond to His beckoning in this critical hour.

We will meet Monday-Wednesday, December 19-21, 4:30-7:00 PM PT.

Blessings & love,
Ricci Johnson-Wilson