End-Time Places of Safety

Are You Ready? Part 11

We continue and conclude our serialisation of the booklet Are You Ready?  In the last instalment, we turned our attention to the last of the three parables Jesus taught in Matthew 25: that of the sheep and the goats, and, in particular, to the prospect of increasing discrimination and persecution for both the Jews and the Church. We continue this theme below.

Fighting Back – Going Underground

The Special Air Service (S.A.S.) is an elite unit of special forces within the British Army. It was founded in 1941 to undertake a number of roles including underground reconnaissance, counterterrorism, direct action, and hostage rescue. Members of the S.A.S. are highly trained individuals who appear to be utterly fearless and therefore are feared by their enemies. One of the reasons they can operate to this standard is that they are a totally set apart group, inwardly and outwardly committed to the tasks they are called to undertake. 

The role of the S.A.S. is something very akin to that seen within the early church. In the book of Acts, we read of the severe persecution of the believers by Paul prior to his encounter with Jesus. Persecution did not end with Paul’s conversion; it increased to such an extent that all the apostles were either imprisoned, martyred or both, and this level of suffering and oppression continued until the so-called ‘conversion’ of Constantine the Great around 313AD.

God used the foundation laid by this underground body of believers to be the plumb line for the whole fabric of society ...

In the British Isles, the early Celtic church was only ever a small segment within a much larger society, but it was an incredibly important and significant one. In the 2nd-4th centuries it was an underground hidden movement that was so powerfully ablaze with the Spirit of God, it impacted and changed whole communities. Despite persecution, the Roman ruling powers of the day were incapable of extinguishing the glowing flame that led to the transformation of society at the time. Eventually God used the foundation laid by this underground body of believers to be the plumb line for the whole fabric of society: our Judeo-Christian heritage, morality, and values. 

For almost 130 years (1532 - 1660) England experienced extreme religious persecution: Protestants persecuted Catholics, then Catholics turned the tables and hunted down Protestants, with this reversal happening not once but several times. I understand that around 1650, the first minister of one Baptist Church in Bristol was tarred, feathered then tied to a cart before being dragged to a place where he was hung, drawn, and quartered! It was not for nothing that the early Baptists – many of whom endured severe persecution and martyrdom – were called ‘Radical Believers.’ They knew and were secure in the love of their covenant-keeping God and He knew them. Just like the modern S.A.S. they were not afraid to work underground and take great risks for their mission.

The life story of John Bunyan tells us they were an underground church, meeting in homes, barns and outside spaces; they provided safe houses and refuges, but above all they remained resolute in their faith. They preached the word, baptised converts (in mill ponds and streams) and taught new believers to obey God over and above anything or anyone else. As someone trained as a Baptist minister, I have often prayed that God would put their steadfast resolve and D.N.A. into me.

Rebuilding cannot wait

Could it be that God is offering us the exact same opportunity: to be a real power force of influence for His kingdom in the reshaping and rebuilding of society through the storm, not just after it has subsided? Is this what the end-time movement might actually look like? 

The challenges of this season need us to become believing communities that provide stability, support, security, and refuge throughout the period of the ‘storm’, however long that might be. 

The truth is that rebuilding cannot wait; it must begin NOW, within a people who are willing to be wholly abandoned to Him and His purposes: those who are fearless and willing to open their mouths and not be silent in the fight for righteousness and justice; who are willing to open their homes to feed, clothe and hide strangers; who will use their God-given resources to rescue, support and provide for those in need and to visit those imprisoned for taking their stand. The challenges of this season need us to become believing communities that provide stability, support, security, and refuge throughout the period of the ‘storm’, however long that might be. 

In the natural, it is way too late to begin preparing a lifeboat when the storm is already approaching. As it is in the natural, so it must also be in the spiritual: the ‘lifeboat’ needed to shelter and provide for the persecuted Jews and Gentile believers needs to be prepared, equipped and resourced in advance. Especially now, whilst we still have finance, food and material resources available. 

Places of Refuge and the Hidden Network

One of the great privileges I have had since 2010, is that as I have travelled around the British Isles sharing on all of the above, I have realised that, largely, God has already been sowing the seed of the need for places of refuge – a hidden network – into people’s hearts. 

Not everyone has known what to do with the challenge and God has certainly used my sharing to awaken many or give context to the seed He had sown already. Little by little, there has been the emergence of an underground network that literally goes from Land’s End to Shetland and beyond. This is not something the hand of man (or woman) has done, it is entirely a sovereign work of God. So, whilst it is a network of sorts, at this moment in time it is not mapped or has any sense of cohesion and there is no strategic co-ordination between those involved at this time. 

 This is not something the hand of man (or woman) has done, it is entirely a sovereign work of God.

In our Prayer House, with the prospect of providing refuge for an open-ended period of time to people who might be fleeing persecution, in fear of their lives and perhaps in a climate where we are no longer able to use our cars – meaning people would largely be journeying by foot as well as hungry, in need of a change of clothes and with all manner of various emotional, physical and practical needs – we sought and bought various essentials. What we were led to store might well differ from what you are led to store. A list of the items we felt led to store along with numerous other useful files, can be found here on the Survive and Thrive section of the Issachar People website.

We also did the following:

• We learned how to use and maintain Victorian and Edwardian tools (i.e. items that do not need electricity or battery power).
• We considered what might be safe ways of communicating with one another when it will be unsafe to use mobile phones, the internet and all manner of social media which could not only betray ourselves but also, unwittingly, betray a brother or sister in the Lord.
• We plotted safe routes between our own place of refuge and our nearest known neighbours. We walked these routes and plotted overnight stopovers. We also ensured the routes ended at least one mile away from any known place of refuge, so that in the event of the network being breached or someone being betrayed or followed, they would not actually be able to lead the authorities directly to the safe house.

Think: What is your reaction to the thought of being persecuted? How might this shape your concept of preparedness? What might ‘Are you ready?’ mean for you in this context? Consider Noah: what does the Ark represent to you? Have you ever thought of your home as a refuge and/or storehouse? Who might that be for? In what ways might practical preparations differ from spiritual ones? If you already have a storehouse, are you paying more attention to one aspect than the other? Why might it not be wise to use the internet, smart phones and social media at that time? Think beyond yourself to your social network too… What might be the implications for them if you use social media?

What might be safe ways of communicating with one another when it will be unsafe to use mobile phones, the internet and all manner of social media?

Joseph Storehouses

This final section of the book, which is about our national lack of food security, has previously been published in full in Prophecy Today. (Read Part 1 here, and follow through to subsequent articles.)

A vision God is enacting

Having received the original revelation for much of the content of this booklet on Lundy in 2005,and, in subsequent years with my husband, Nick Szkiler and our core group, in trying and testing the practicalities we were shown and wondering how it could all possibly be worked out in practice, I well remember an occasion when I sat on the floor of the prayer house with a map of the U.K. in front of me. 

On this map I had tentatively plotted the places of refuge I was already aware of in the North of England. There were huge geographical gaps between each one, gaps that would take three or four days for the fittest of people to walk by the light of the full moon. This made me question what would happen to the children, elderly, sick and pregnant. I asked the Lord to show me how these isolated places might become a workable network. He gave me a waking vision – and you can tell how long ago it was because it involved acetates! 

As I looked at the map and saw the refuges I was already aware of plotted, suddenly it was as if an angel came and placed an acetate showing the locations of another completely different network of believers over the top. I could immediately see that there were more dots on the map. This happened again and again – seven times in all – until, eventually, I could see what God was showing me: He already has it in hand! His Sovereign network would emerge when it was the right time. A good number of refuges and safe houses are already prepared, to the extent that there are many established around the British Isles – and they are just the ones I’m aware of – but there are still many yet to be created. 

The challenge of that is to obediently do what He tells us to do and do it with open hearts and hands that come from hearts that are wholly laid down to Him.

Many have been carrying this message for years, whilst it is still new to others. So, the network is still growing and developing. At this point in time those seven different networks I was shown in the vision may not yet even know each other or, if they do, not yet readily work together. Only when that happens will we be able to trust one another in the type of context we foresee. Perhaps this is one reason why Issachar People has been brought into being for this period of history. We are, after all, an organic network of God’s people, brought together by His Spirit to work and serve His end-time purposes for Israel and our own nation. The challenge of that is to obediently do what He tells us to do and do it with open hearts and hands that come from hearts that are wholly laid down to Him.

So, for the vision to come to its fulfilment, it is our sincere hope that in time God will join us with other like-minded, servant-hearted believers, those who understand the times and season in which we are living and know what we, the Church of Jesus Messiah, should do. The network will need those who also support the Jewish people and God’s end-time purposes for Israel, as well as understand that the discrimination that we face now as Christians will inevitably increase to become real persecution. For we may well also need this underground network ourselves. 

Only when we come together with no agenda other than His agenda will we see God’s kingdom begin to come, His will being done and the end-time move that is on His heart come to pass, not just across the four nations of the British Isles, but across the face of the earth.

(Image by Gianni Crestani from Pixabay)