SID: In other words, if you knew where they were, you could get your prayers answered, you could accomplish everything the Bible says you’re supposed to, but you have to know where it is. So what did you see?
JAMES: I saw that covering, and I prayed to the Lord to break the power of the enemy to cover the open portals. And it was then that I came to understand that these were portals for prayer. And as soon as I asked the Lord and I stood with him to rebuke them, all the dark clouds went away. All the portals were suddenly open. Now these are not little tiny little openings. They’re huge. And immediately, the prayers of the people were going through.
Now, the Lord told me that he was showing it to me that way, but actually the prayers were never stopped. It’s a delusion that the enemy has to try to bring doubt into our lives, to make us afraid and think, “Well, heaven’s closed. My prayers are not being heard.” And I hear that from people all the time, “The Lord is not hearing my prayers.” Yes, he is. He’s hearing your prayers. And even if you’re seeing the dark cloud, that’s something that’s dark within us. And what we need to do is to rebuke that, to get rid of that so that we can see it and we have the confidence to know our prayers are getting through to the Lord.
SID: You wrote an entire book on spiritual preparation. And if I was God, I would have picked a Colonel to do a manual on how to survive in the last days. Give me a couple of the steps. I happen to really like this step called, let go of excessive baggage.
JAMES: Well, that one also began with a vision. That’s a surprise, right? But anyway, I was walking on this really beautiful road up a mountain, and it was, the road was going around the mountain so you’re constantly getting closer and closer to the top. It was smooth, it was easy, which is a little unusual, but that’s what I was experiencing. And I suddenly came to a barrier, and the barrier blocked the whole road. And there was a sign there that said, to proceed, leave all unnecessary baggage behind. And I saw several bags there that other people are left behind. So I dropped everything I had, it opened, and I moved up. And so I began to pray for understanding about those bags. What is it that we really need to drop? And the Lord showed me that there’s some spiritual baggage that we need to get rid of.
You know, it’s hard enough to carry physical stuff, but if you’re also weighed down by spiritual things, and the Lord was saying that one of the things we need to get rid of is all unresolved sin. He’s already created a process to do that. All we have to do is repent and ask Jesus to forgive us and to come into our hearts again. He also said get rid of all the doctrines of man. Get back to my doctrine, but unload all that baggage, stuff that you learned all through your life that’s just really not biblical.
He said, get rid of false guilt. Now, false guilt is when we feel guilty about something we had absolutely no control over. That’s false guilt. You’re not guilty for what you couldn’t do or couldn’t have control over. But a lot of people carry that baggage, and we see it across the country now. We’re being told to feel guilty about things that happened in the past that we had no control over. We weren’t even alive when some of these things happened.