Book Release - The Cross to the Crown, A Spiritual Purification Journey on God’s Divine Appointments

We are entering into some very interesting times as we approach the Feast of Trumpets this Sunday night. I wanted to give this broadcast to introduce the book we just released today, called The Cross to the Crown: A Spiritual Purification Journey on God's Divine Appointments. We are going to get into the table of contents, but first I want to share some background on the book and why it was written.

We are entering into the end of not only the civil year on God's calendar, but also the end of the seven-year cycle called the Shemitah cycle. God is on a seven-day week cycle, a seven-year cycle, and then we have the seventh Millennium, which is the Day of the Lord. We are entering into some very transitional times as believers, and I wanted to share that tonight is actually Elul 25 at sundown — when creation began on day one. Day six of creation is the Feast of Trumpets, when Adam was formed, when mankind was formed. So be sure to thank the Creator for creating the world and creating you and me to live in it.

The book is a year-long journey on God's calendar through his Divine Appointments. It is a free ebook available on my website at faithfulperformance.com. You can also email me at [email protected] and I will email you the book directly. It is approximately 430 pages and over 200,000 words, so it is a lot of information. But it is really about what we do with that information — applying it to our prayer life, to meditation, and really getting into understanding these things with the Lord. He will manifest purification through you as you do.

I wanted to give a little background on my personal journey. I was born again on November 2, 2014, and at that time I was at an all-time low. The first thing God told me to do was take the focus off myself and put it on the Lord. The title of the book comes from analyzing Yeshua's own cross to the crown — he literally went to the cross for all of our sins and is now crowned at the right hand of the Father. The spiritual concept is that we have to die to ourselves, and that is very tough. But I know what this journey has done in my life and in the lives of my family and friends who have been on it, and that is why I felt provoked by the Lord to write it.

The book began on Shavuot — Pentecost — when the Holy Spirit woke me up at about three or four in the morning, and the first line came: "Freedom is never easy." That is the first line of the book. From that point forward it just started, and I knew I had gotten myself into something I had to finish. It has been an interesting summer with a lot of warfare, but God had his way. I have written two other books in the past on prophecy — one on the Book of Daniel and one on Jeremiah — but I never thought I would write another book because of my schedule. God had other plans.

The book is organized around twelve prerequisites that I believe are the foundational keys to understanding everything else. After the prerequisites, the main devotional series consists of twenty-seven weeks through the twenty-two Hebrew letters plus five final forms. Let me go through each of the prerequisites.

The first prerequisite is being set apart. We have a set-apart God who has set-apart ways, with a set-apart Spirit, for set-apart believers. Once we understand that concept, we understand he wants us to be set apart — and in the church today, you have to be set apart. Getting on his calendar, understanding the Sabbath, the feast days, and the new moon festivals — these are all his appointed times where he wants to meet with you and me.

The second prerequisite is covenant theology and the Kingdom of Israel. This is one of the major foundational issues we have to understand to have our eschatology right. God has not yet fulfilled the Abrahamic Covenant or the Davidic Covenant. He fulfilled the New Covenant through Yeshua, but literally we will not be living in the New Covenant until the Millennial Kingdom, when the Jewish people accept him as a nation. That is why Messiah is called in Matthew 1 the Seed of David, the Seed of Abraham — he is pointing you back to the covenants. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:26-29 that if you are a seed of Christ, you are a Seed of Abraham and an heir according to the promise. We are grafted into the Abrahamic inheritance.

The third prerequisite is Elohim's calendar. We all have to live by the Gregorian calendar for our schedules and work, but spiritually we need to be on God's calendar. In Genesis 1:14, the word for "seasons" is moed, which means a Divine appointment. When you go to Leviticus 23 where the feast days are listed, the word for feast is also moed — the exact same word. God is telling you that his feast days and his calendar are Divine appointments where he intersects with mankind at his first and second coming events.

The fourth prerequisite is Elohim's Divine Appointments — the feast days of the Lord. They coincide together with the calendar. It was the first thing God got me on after I was born again — the calendar — and then the Divine appointments followed. It was a paradigm shift like you would not believe. I am still amazed that this is not taught in the body of Christ. His second coming events are going to be on these feast days in the fall — the Feast of Trumpets, Yom Kippur, and the Feast of Tabernacles.

The fifth prerequisite is the Sabbath. It is the first feast listed in Leviticus 23 — before Passover, before any of the others, he establishes the Sabbath. The literal Sabbath is from Friday night to Saturday night. It was changed by Constantine and inherited through the Roman Catholic Church and then through every Western denomination. I go through in the book exactly how that happened, and also how in the Holy Bible it never changed. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He rested on the seventh day and sanctified it. Yeshua did not change it — it says he rose on the first day of the week, which confirms Saturday is the seventh day. Paul never changed it either; he went into synagogue on the Sabbath throughout his ministry.

The sixth prerequisite is the New Moon Festival. This is perhaps the lost feast of God's calendar — even in Judaism it has been somewhat set aside. Yet when you read about King David, he honored the New Moon Festival greatly. Scripture says we will be celebrating the New Moon in the Millennial Kingdom and forever in eternity. Isaiah 66:23 says, "From one new moon to another, all flesh will come and worship before me." Ezekiel 46:1 says the inner court will only be open two times a month — the New Moon Festival and the Sabbath. Those are the only two festivals mentioned as continuing into eternity. That is how important this lost festival is.

The seventh prerequisite is Elohim's Aleph-Bet — his Hebrew letters. Most people know them as the Hebrew alphabet, but these are his letters that he gave to the Jewish people to give to us. The main devotional series of the book is built on these twenty-two letters, with five additional final forms, totaling twenty-seven weeks of devotional material. The Holy Spirit will show you tremendous things through the shape of each letter, its numerical value, and its ordinal position. A perfect example: the letter Tsadi has two forms. The first form shows a man bent over — humble, in repentance. The final form is standing straight up. Just like James says, humble yourselves and God will lift you up in due time. That is the letter itself showing you the principle. These letters will transform your life into a tsadiq — a righteous one.

The eighth prerequisite is Elohim's Stars. Psalm 19:1 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God." These are God's constellations. Regrettably mankind has polluted them with horoscopes, but we are going to turn them back to the Lord. Each month has its anointing through the constellation associated with it, and they tell a story — the gospel circuit — pointing to Messiah's first and second coming events. There is a critical distinction between biblical astronomy, where we receive the anointing God has ordained, and pagan astrology, where people look at the stars for self-focused prediction.

The ninth prerequisite is the twelve tribes of Israel. Each month has a tribe appointed to it, and the correlation is in the scriptures — it is not arbitrary. When we go through those things in our prayer life and meditate on the tribes, there is tremendous anointing and purification available. Each month of the year carries both a tribe and a constellation.

The tenth prerequisite is the Courts of Heaven — praying the word of God. I cannot overstate how much this has done for my life, my family, and my friends. It is a template — not the only way to pray, just a template I have seen work — organized around how God's court system in heaven operates. Just as Moses saw the Tabernacle in heaven and built one on earth, there is a court system in heaven: a Supreme Judge, a prosecutor who is Satan, and a mediator who is Yeshua, our attorney. The template takes scriptures and organizes them in the pattern of that court session, from praise to petition to repentance to receiving the verdict.

When you first go through this, be prepared: he is going to identify things you need to repent of. That is the whole point of purification — he is going to show you through the Holy Spirit whatever you need to refine, correct, and repent of. It might not be comfortable at first. But the Lord corrects those he loves, and once we repent and plead the blood of the Lamb, he moves from righteous Judge to loving Father and gives us our righteous rendered verdicts. Wanda shared a testimony tonight: "I'm not the same — I feel so free under an open Heaven." That is what this template does. It opens up heavenly portals for instructions, strategies, correction, dreams, visions, and words from other believers. By the mouth of two or three witnesses a matter is established — use two or three scriptures over whatever petition you have, and I guarantee you bondage will break.

The eleventh prerequisite is the Shemitah year and cycle. This is one of my favorite chapters. The seven-year cycle affects not only Israel but the entire world — we can trace it through Babylon, Persia, and in modern history through the United States, Britain, Germany, and Japan in World War I and World War II. The last seven years of the age — Daniel's 70th week — is itself a Shemitah cycle. It will begin and end on the Feast of Trumpets, not on July 4th or New Year's Eve. That is how God works his cycles.

The twelfth and final prerequisite leads directly into the devotional series: the Courts of Heaven prayer template in full. This is where we practice all of the prerequisites together — being set apart, understanding the covenants, getting on his calendar, honoring the Sabbath and new moon, meditating on the Hebrew letters, receiving from his constellations, walking in your tribal anointing, and bringing all of it into the courts of petition.

I want to make a few disclosures about how the book is organized. The twelve months of the year and their associated tribes, letters, and constellations are ordained by God — those anointings are from his word. The specific weeks I assigned to each Hebrew letter for the devotional series are not anointed by God that way; I organized them so we spend roughly two weeks with each letter. Let the Holy Spirit lead you in how you engage with each letter. Spend time with the shape, the number, the geometry — he will give you personal revelation that goes far beyond what any written commentary can convey.

One additional disclosure: there are three chapters I still had to finish when we released the book. I did not include Hanukkah, Purim, or the Counting of the Omer — the fifty-day Divine appointment between Passover and Shavuot. I will write and release those before Hanukkah as a second download. I just wanted to get the main body of the book out before the Feast of Trumpets.

Several people asked about the schedule for the upcoming videos. We will do the prerequisites on Friday night and Saturday night at 8 p.m. Eastern, half each night. Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern we celebrate the Feast of Trumpets together. Monday before sundown — around 6 p.m. Eastern — we will do a Courts of Heaven prayer session on Zoom for anyone who wants to participate. It will be about forty-five minutes to an hour. I already see six or seven of you in the comments wanting to do that, so we will set up the Zoom link and I will share it Friday night.

For those new to this: the book is free. Go to faithfulperformance.com — you will see the cover right on the front page. Go through the checkout process and it will download automatically at no charge. Or email me at [email protected] and I will email you the ebook directly. If you have any typos to report, please show grace — the last chapter was finished just yesterday and the whole book was written in roughly three months between Shavuot and now.

I want to say clearly that these things are for Jew and Gentile alike. His word is for all believers who love him and want to keep his commandments. When we get to the Millennial Kingdom, there will not be a Jewish way to worship and a Gentile way to worship — there will be one way. Exodus 12:49 says there is one Torah, one law for the citizen and the stranger. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we were once strangers and aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel, but by the blood of the Lamb we are now grafted in. Romans 11 confirms that. We are seeds of Abraham by being seeds of Christ, and the Millennial Kingdom is going to be one hundred percent Jewish — the throne of David in Jerusalem, with Yeshua reigning on it. So why not start worshiping that way now?

A viewer asked tonight about the Jubilee year. Pastor Mark Biltz addressed this just this past Sabbath, calculating fifty-year Jubilee cycles all the way back to Adam, and the math does fall on this coming Yom Kippur. The Jubilee starts on Yom Kippur, not on the Feast of Trumpets — Leviticus 25 confirms this. The reason is that the eschatology behind it matches: Yeshua returns on the Feast of Trumpets, wars for ten days, and then comes on Yom Kippur as described in Revelation 19, with all the saints, which would be the Jubilee. He started his ministry on a Jubilee year and I believe he will end it on one as well. If this is indeed a Jubilee year, that makes this season of purification and petition even more critical.

Another viewer asked about the Torah — whether it is bondage. I have to say clearly that Torah is not bondage. King David calls it liberty and freedom in Psalm 119. The two greatest commandments that Yeshua gave — love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself — fulfill the Torah. If you are doing those things in love, you are not going to commit adultery, not going to commit murder, not going to disrespect your parents, not going to have idols. Torah is God's righteous sovereign ways for all of us to be good people. It is boundary lines. We have to look at it not as law but as love — God's ways. Revelation 22 at the very end of the Bible says, "Blessed are those who do the commandments, that they may enter the gates and receive the tree of life." Ponder that. Yes, Yeshua has cleansed us and his blood covers all — but he still wants us to be good children, obedient and intimate with him.

Several people mentioned the Apocrypha tonight. I do have a copy and I love it. The Book of Enoch is great, the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Jasher or Yasher — these books correlate perfectly to Daniel, to Revelation, and to the biblical calendar. Enoch does a particularly excellent job explaining the calendar with the sun and the moon. I would encourage everyone to get a copy.

I also want to mention that I have a music project nearly complete. Four songs are already on YouTube. The fifth song, called "The Desire of My Heart," is currently being mixed and mastered and should be released around Yom Kippur. I hope those songs bring you inspiration and anointing as you journey through the feast days.

I cannot tell you how excited I am for this coming year on God's calendar. We are entering the end of one Shemitah cycle and the beginning of a new seven years. I believe these next seven years will be highly prophetic and transitional for the Middle East and for the world, pointing toward Messiah's second coming events. Whatever you have been going through — whatever bondage, whatever petition you have brought before the Lord — I believe this is the season to step into something new. From the cross to the crown. From the old into the new. By his stripes we are healed — let us receive it, let us step into it.

Until Friday night at eight o'clock Eastern, may God bless you, may he keep you, may his face shine upon you and give you his grace, may he lift up his countenance upon you and your family, and give you all his everlasting Shalom. Much love to you all. Stay blessed, and we will see you Friday night.