What are the courts of heaven?

Question: "What are the courts of heaven?"

Answer: The word court has several uses in English. Among the meanings are “an area where a tennis or basketball game is played”; “a venue where legal cases are presented and a judge presides”; and “a monarch’s assembly of officers and advisors.”

In the New Testament, the word courts is normally used in the legal sense. “The courts are in session and proconsuls are available; let them bring charges against one another” (Acts 19:38). The term is never used in conjunction with heavenly courts.

In the Old Testament, the term courts is used almost exclusively to refer to the temple (or a part of the temple) where God was enthroned: “Solomon your son is the one who will build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him” (1 Chronicles 28:6). In the Psalms we find “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise” (Psalm 100:4). At the time this was written, “entering God’s courts” referred to walking into the physical temple. When most Christians read this verse today, they may picture entering the spiritual presence of God and imagine this happening in “the courts of heaven,” that is, the spiritual realm where God is enthroned.

Still, the term courts of heaven or the court of heaven is never used in Scripture.

Prosperity theology teacher Robert Henderson has lately sparked interest in “the courts of heaven,” using the term in the legal sense. Henderson says that he had known for a long time that he could pray to God as Father and as his Friend; however, he had missed the fact that he could also appeal to God as the Judge. Henderson reasons that, as human judges rule over earthly judicial systems, so God is the Judge in the Court of Heaven.

In an interview with Patricia King, Henderson tells the story of how he prayed for two years for his son Adam, who battled with depression, and nothing was working. He had tried “binding and loosing,” “opening and shutting,” “every formula I had ever heard,” and “everything I knew to do,” but with no breakthrough. Then Henderson supposedly heard the voice of God tell him, “Bring Adam to my courts.” So that is what he did.

Henderson started by saying, “Lord, I bring Adam to your courts.” Then he repented for anything that he thought Adam might have done wrong. Then he repented for some of his own sin in relation to Adam. The whole process took about 15 minutes. A week and a half later, his son called to tell him that he had experienced an amazing breakthrough from his depression a week and a half before. Henderson states, “I suddenly realized that I had done in 15 minutes in the courts of heaven what I had not been able to do in two years on the battlefield of prayer.” From this experience Henderson concluded that the battle has already been won by Christ and that we just need to get “legal access” to the victory. In the courts of heaven, we remove any legal issue that the enemy is using to prevent God from delivering what He has promised to His children.

Henderson has written the following books, further developing his “Courts of Heaven” brand of prosperity theology:

• Operating in the Courts of Heaven: Granting God the Legal Rights to Fulfill His Passion (2016)
• Unlocking Destinies from the Courts of Heaven: Dissolving Curses That Delay and Deny Our Future (2016)
• Accessing the Courts of Heaven: How to Position Yourself for Breakthrough in Prayer (2017)
• Prayers & Declarations That Open the Courts of Heaven (2018)
• Receiving Healing from the Courts of Heaven: Removing Hindrances that Delay or Deny Your Healing (2018)
• Redeeming Your Bloodline: Foundations for Breaking Generational Curses from the Courts of Heaven (2019)
• The Cloud of Witnesses in the Courts of Heaven: Partnering with the Council of Heaven for Personal and Kingdom Breakthrough (2019)
• Issuing Divine Restraining Orders from Courts of Heaven: Restricting and Revoking the Plans of the Enemy (2019, co-authored with Francis Miles)
• Father, Friend, and Judge: Three Dimensions of Prayer That Receive Answers from Heaven (2020)
• Praying for the Prophetic Destiny of the United States and the Presidency of Donald J. Trump from the Courts of Heaven (2020)

Robert Henderson has also held a conference called “Unlocking Wealth in the Courts of Heaven.” A corollary to this is his book The Trading Floors of Heaven: Where Lost Blessings Are Restored and Kingdom Destiny Is Fulfilled (2018, co-authored with Beverly Watkins). This book purports to tell readers how to “receive your New Covenant blessing and inheritance by accessing the trade of Calvary through the Courts of Heaven.”

Henderson’s theology and methodology have many problems.

First, Henderson assumes that, because God is called a judge, He must actually preside over a court system at least somewhat similar to a modern judicial system. Scripture does call God the Judge, but it says nothing of a legal system that operates in heaven, much less this being the key to getting what we want.

Second, Henderson relies upon extra-biblical revelation that he claims to have received. It is amazing that the New Testament never once mentions this critical information about accessing the courts of heaven. For 2,000 years Christians have been praying and struggling with suffering and persecution that, according to Henderson, could have been avoided if they had simply known to apply to God not as their Father or Friend, but as the Judge, and to present their cases in the heavenly judicial system. In an earthly judicial system, requests are regularly denied because the plaintiff did not file the right paperwork in the right way. Are we to believe that the “heavenly judicial system” works in much the same way?

Third, Henderson’s concept of the heavenly courts and how we can use them are firmly rooted in prosperity theology. According to Henderson, wealth and healing are all there for the taking if we only know how to properly apply for them. His theology rests on the idea that God gave Adam, the first man, legal authority over the earth. When Adam sinned, that legal authority was transferred to Satan. Now God is legally barred from taking action on earth unless people take back that authority from Satan and give it to God. Apparently, this is accomplished in the legal setting of a real heavenly courtroom. Thus the subtitle of the original “courts of heaven” book: Operating in the Courts of Heaven: Granting God the Legal Rights to Fulfill His Passion. In this theology, God wants to bless us, but He may be hindered on technical legal grounds.

Fourth, Henderson’s approach to prayer is mechanistic. In the “courts of heaven” paradigm, prayer is about using the right formula or, we might say, filing the right paperwork in the proper jurisdiction. There is no sense of “thy will be done” except that prosperity teachers “know” that God’s will is to bless them with health and wealth. If they are not receiving these in abundance, there must be some technicality that is preventing it. Perhaps a certain formula or technique will be the “trick” to get the blessings flowing. This is, at root, a pagan concept.

In the final analysis, when Jesus taught His disciples to pray by giving them a model prayer, we find nothing about “the courts of heaven” or anything about health and prosperity. We do find an emphasis on God’s Kingdom coming and God’s will being done. The focus of prayer is on aligning our will with God’s. Health and prosperity are summed up in a request for “daily bread,” which is just enough to supply the needs of the day.

https://www.gotquestions.org/courts-of-heaven.html

CORONAVIRUS & THE END TIMES

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman pushes coronavirus conspiracy theory that the US Army ‘brought the epidemic to Wuhan’

Ryan Pickrell, Business Insider 
USMarch 12, 2020


China’s flag is raised during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Jerry Lampe/Reuters

A Chinese government spokesman said on Thursday that the US Army might have “brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” appearing to push a popular conspiracy theory.

Chinese officials have been trying to reshape the narrative about the coronavirus, suggesting that it might have originated outside of China, even though the center of the outbreak was the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

Amid this push, a conspiracy theory that US athletes participating in the Military World Games in Wuhan last fall brought the coronavirus into China has emerged.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

A Chinese government spokesman said on Thursday that the US Army may have “brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” appearing to push a popular coronavirus conspiracy theory in China.

Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called attention to a comment on Wednesday from Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, acknowledging that some Americans who were said to have died from influenza may have actually died from COVID-19.

“When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected?” Zhao wrote on Twitter. “What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US Army that brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”

In a short thread on Twitter – a social media platform that’s inaccessible in China – Zhao demanded to know how many of the millions of infections and thousands of deaths during the latest flu season were actually related to COVID-19.

The coronavirus first appeared in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, and since then, the pandemic has claimed the lives of thousands of people, mostly in China.

As China has faced criticism, Chinese authorities have pushed back, suggesting that the virus may have originated somewhere else. Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a leading Chinese epidemiologist, said in late February that “though the COVID-19 was first discovered in China, it does not mean that it originated from China.”

Zhao stressed the same point in a recent press briefing.

“No conclusion has been reached yet on the origin of the virus,” he told reporters, adding that “what we are experiencing now is a global phenomenon with its source still undetermined.”

One popular coronavirus conspiracy theory that has emerged in China is that American athletes participating in the Military World Games in Wuhan last year may have brought the virus into China. There is, however, no evidence to support this accusation.

The Trump administration has laid the blame firmly at China’s feet. “Unfortunately, rather than using best practices, this outbreak in Wuhan was covered up,” the White House national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, told reporters on Wednesday.

“It probably cost the world community two months to respond,” he added.

Geng Shuang, another Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said O’Brien’s “immoral and irresponsible” comments denigrated China’s efforts to fight the virus.

The Predicted 2020 Global Recession

By Graham Vanbergen
December 1, 2018


There has been much speculation recently in the press about the impending global crash and the inevitable fallout it will cause. The author analyses some of the reasons being given by some of the most well-known economists around the world and has some more bad news for us all. The predicted 2020 global recession might be optimistic.

The predictions are now coming in thick and fast. It appears that there is a foregone conclusion that 2020 is the date that crash 2.0 will wreak havoc once again.

The Independent: “Next global financial crisis will strike in 2020, warns investment bank JPMorgan – sparked by automated trading systems.”1

Forbes: “2020s Might Be The Worst Decade In U.S. History – triggered by contagion from a global credit crisis.”2

Mark Zandi, a chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that “2020 is a real inflection point.”

The newspapers, magazines and credit agencies are speculating. (Find out more about best credit card after bankruptcy.) But what about those in the know?

Nouriel Roubini,3 a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, a Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House during the Clinton Administration, has also worked for the IMF, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank.

Roubini predicts that the current global expansion will likely continue into next year, but warns that the conditions will be ripe for a global recession in 2020.

He makes the point that global stimulus packages are coming to an end, that inflation is coming, that trade disputes will create a drag on economies and that interest rates are now on an upward trajectory. He is of course right on all points.

Interestingly, Roubini makes comment about how curbing immigration will slow growth because aging populations will be unable to take up the slack. This is an irony that will be lost on the same demographic that voted for populist movements to remove them.

Dow futures tumble 1,000 points as all-out oil price war adds to coronavirus stress

(NBC) – Stock futures tumbled in overnight trading Sunday as investors continued to brace for the economic fallout from the spreading coronavirus, while a shocking all-out oil price war added to the anxiety. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged about 1,078 points, pointed to a more than 1,000-point loss at Monday’s open.

The S&P 500 futures indicated a 4 percent drop at the open. The sharp declines in the futures market signaled more turbulence ahead after a roller-coaster week that saw the S&P 500 swing up or down more than 2.5 percent for four days straight.



Saudi Arabia on Saturday slashed official crude selling prices for April, in a sudden U-turn from previous attempts to support the oil market as the coronavirus hammers global demand. The move came after OPEC talks collapsed Friday, prompting some strategists to see oil prices crater to $20 this year.

“Crude has become a bigger problem for markets than the coronavirus,” Adam Crisafulli, founder of Vital Knowledge, said Sunday. “It will be virtually impossible for the [S&P 500] to sustainably bounce if Brent continues to crater,” he added. READ MORE

Xi Jinping prediction of a cursed year came true

NIKKEI ASIAN REVIEW
KATSUJI NAKAZAWA, Nikkei senior staff writer




Xi's prediction of a cursed year came true
Coronavirus proves black swans fly in years ending in '9'

TOKYO -- As the official name COVID-19 suggests, the coronavirus disease raging across the world originated in 2019.

In China, where superstition commands significant influence, netizens had talked about their fear of 2019 becoming a cursed year because it ended in a "9."

History tells them that major events happen in such years, including the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, war breaking out between China and Vietnam in 1979, and most of all, the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989.

Adherents to this theory are more convinced than ever that the jinx remains in effect.

President Xi Jinping had warned his Chinese Communist Party cadres in late January 2019 to be prepared for unforeseen incidents (black swans) and highly probable but uncontrollable rampages (gray rhinos) in the year to come.

Initially, the U.S.-China trade war and Hong Kong demonstrations were thought to be the big events of this "9" year.

But the biggest disruption would not appear until December. COVID-19 was a black swan that arrived in Wuhan, multiplied and then flew to all parts of China. Eventually, it turned into a gray rhino stomping across national borders to other parts of the world.

It was not until early in the new year that Xi became aware of the true magnitude of the risk posed by the coronavirus. It took until Jan. 20 for him to instruct the government to take effective measures to contain the spread. On Jan. 23, Wuhan, a city of 11 million, was locked down.

By then, it was too late. As many as 5 million Wuhan inhabitants had already left the city for the Lunar New Year holidays. The initial response to contain the black swan failed.

The public became aware of the mysterious illness early on. But while on-the-ground reports made their way to the central government, a blind eye was turned.

As of earlier this week, China had officially recorded more than 2,700 coronavirus deaths. The delayed initial response, a matter of weeks, was fatal.

The World Health Organization has avoided highlighting this major issue and instead chosen to praise Beijing's later measures, such as the Wuhan lockdown.

But it is precisely China's failures in its first steps that Japan, South Korea and other countries need to learn from.

The rampaging virus has begun to disrupt the political calendar. The annual session of the National People's Congress, China's parliament, has now been formally postponed.

"It is an event where 5,000 people gather in Beijing from across the country," one source said. "For it to take place, the number of new infections, at least in Beijing, had to drop to zero," to avoid the nightmare scenario of regional leaders catching the illness in Beijing and taking it back home.

Another official talked about the delay impacting Xi's foreign travel down the road. "It's a real headache," the official said. Chinese and Japanese officials had agreed that Xi would visit Japan around the time "the cherry blossoms bloom."

Xi also had his eye on visiting South Korea in the first half of the year. "We now have to think about the serious situation in both Japan and South Korea, which have seen a sharp rise in infections recently."

On Monday, the day that the NPC was postponed, Wuhan was rattled by unprecedented confusion.

At around 11:30 a.m., Wuhan authorities issued a notice informing people that the lockdown would be partially lifted.

The notice was supposed to restore Wuhan's transport links and allow visitors who have been exposed to the risk of infection to finally travel home. People were excited and began preparing to leave.

But around 3 p.m., Wuhan authorities retracted the notice, saying it was invalid.

Locals could do little but vent their frustration on social media; they compared it to an ancient saying that mocks officials for issuing an order in the morning only to change it by the evening.

This decree had an even shorter shelf life.

Social media denizens also wondered what might be happening within the party. Their suspicions, though, were immediately deleted by internet monitoring authorities.

Wuhan authorities gave a bizarre reason for the flip-flop. They said the notice had been issued by a "transport control working group" of a city agency set up to combat the outbreak and that the group did not have permission from unnamed superiors.

Is it possible for such a marginal organization in Wuhan to unlock a lockdown imposed at Xi's behest?

Even in an emergency like today's, this scenario is highly unlikely, considering the party's ironclad rules.

The lifting of the lockdown was retracted because the viral risk remains.

If people start entering and leaving Wuhan, some will certainly make their way to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It is especially important to prevent more infections in Beijing, where the NPC is held every year.

The coronavirus has also caused problems for Chinese diplomacy.

As things stand now, countries that have had the most confirmed cases and even some deaths are those that have recently had good relations with China, including Japan, South Korea, Italy and Iran. These countries receive waves of Chinese tourists.

But the coronavirus scare is having a considerable impact on the way the leaders of these countries run their governments. Public opinion in these countries is turning harsher toward China and their own governments.

This has helped to turn China's headache into a five-alarm migraine.

Tokyo's warm winter is also in on the conspiracy against China. The capital's cherry blossom tress are forecast to hoist their full canopy around March 20, about 10 days earlier than usual. Beijing and Tokyo had been shooting for early April in planning for Xi's Japan visit, but by then the cherry blossom petals will be littering the streets.

As was the case with the National People's Congress, the absence of new infections in Japan, or at least in metro Tokyo, for a certain period will be a prerequisite for Japan to welcome Xi. Time is running out.

Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff writer and editorial writer at Nikkei. He has spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He is the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize for international reporting.

US hospitals are preparing for 96 MILLION coronavirus infections and nearly HALF A MILLION deaths, leaked documents reveal

• Almost half a million (480,000) Americans are expected to die from coronavirus 
• 4.8 million will be hospitalized and 96 million infected
• Figures come from leaked slides from a presentation by Dr. James Lawler, a University of Nebraska Medical Center professor and hosted by AHA
• They show the spread of the deadly disease could be far worse than officials claim, with the crisis 10 times greater than a severe flu season
• The shock figures fly in the face of claims made by President Trump who has maintained on many occasions that the risk to Americans is 'low'
• Lawler estimated people with heart conditions have a one in 10 chance of dying from the disease, compared to less than one in a 100 among healthy individuals 
• Trump signed a spending bill to allocate $8.3 billion to tackle the crisis Friday
• US has around 300 cases and 17 confirmed deaths, after Florida confirmed its first two deaths Friday

By RACHEL SHARP FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 03:20 GMT, 7 March 2020 | UPDATED: 13:00 GMT, 7 March 2020

US hospitals are preparing for 96 million coronavirus infections and nearly half a million deaths from the outbreak, leaked documents have revealed.

The spread of the deadly disease could be far worse than officials claim, with 480,000 Americans expected to die from the virus and 4.8 million hospitalized, according to a presentation hosted by The American Hospital Association (AHA) in February.

This puts the crisis on a level more than 10 times greater than that seen in a severe flu season.

The shock figures fly in the face of claims made by President Trump who has maintained on many occasions that the risk to Americans is 'low'.

Dr. James Lawler, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, presented the harrowing 'best guess' estimates of the extent of the outbreak to hospitals and health professionals as part of the AHA webinar called 'What healthcare leaders need to know: Preparing for the COVID-19' on February 26. 

The slides, obtained by Business Insider, suggest that hospitals need to ramp up preparations now to reduce the death toll around the US. 

At the time of the presentation last week, there were more than 80,000 confirmed cases around the globe.

In the US there were around 60 cases and no deaths.

Fast forward just one week, and the US has around 700 cases and 17 confirmed deaths. 

Worldwide, more than 100,000 people have now been infected.

The leaked slides also reveal the significant risks to older people and those with pre-existing health conditions if they catch coronavirus.  

People aged 80 and over have a 14.8% chance of dying if they contract the infection, the slides revealed.

The risk declines with youth, though those aged 70-79 and 60-69 are still placed at a significant risk, with 8% and 3.6% mortality rates respectively.

Netanyahu Wins Election After Rabbi Predicts He will be Israel’s Last Prime Minister before Messiah

Although he may not have enough support to form a government, which would send Israel into the fourth round of elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party got the most seats in Monday’s election edging his rival, Benny Gantz 36- 33.

Sephardic spiritual leaders of the century who passed away in 2006 at the age of 106, met with Netanyahu in 1997 during his first term as prime minister. Rabbi Kaduri whispered a long message into the politician’s ear. Rabbi Shmuel Shmueli, a follower of Rabbi Kaduri, revealed that Kaduri had always maintained that Netanyahu would serve a very long time and after his term in office, the Messiah would arrive. Before his death, Kaduri had said that he expected the Jewish Messiah, to arrive soon and that he had met him a year earlier.

In 2018, Breaking Israel News reported the opinion of Rabbi Levi Sudri, noted the many parallels between the current prime minister and Jonathan, the son of Biblical King Saul. Sudri suggested that Netanyahu is serving the function of Moshiach ben Yosef (Messiah from the house of Joseph) the first half of the two-stage Messianic process.

Moshiach ben Yosef is a practical, mundane process that includes the ingathering of the exiles and building up of the Land of Israel. The second stage, Moshiach Ben David (Messiah from the house of David) is a miraculous process that includes the reestablishment of the Davidic Dynasty and the completion of the Third Temple.

Rabbi Sudri explained that as the reincarnation of Jonathan and the manifestation of Moshiach ben Yosef, Netanyahu is paving the way for the more transcendent Moshiach ben David who will immediately follow.

“It is very clear that we see in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he is fulfilling his destiny as Moshiach ben Yosef, that is to say, the reincarnation of Jonathan,” Rabbi Sudri told Breaking Israel News at the time. “The name ‘Netanyahu’ (נתניהו) is composed of the same letters as the name, “Jonathan (יהונתן).”

This sentiment was repeated by Rabbi Moshe Ben Tov, known for his ability to perceive the past and present of people by gazing at the mezuzah on their door. After attaching a mezuzah in the prime minister’s office, Rabbi Ben Tov made a remarkable statement to the prime minister.

“It is very important that your love of Israel continue until the Moshiach comes because you are going stay in office and are going to meet him,” Rabbi Ben Tov said to Netanyahu. “You are the one who will give him the keys to this office.”

Below is the Lubavitcher Rebbe instructing a young Netanyahu to expedite the coming of the Messiah.

Breaking Israel News

Breaking Israel News offers a fresh and biblical perspective on the latest news from Israel and the Middle East. Our bias is not liberal nor conservative—just biblical.

New York Emergency Room Doctor: There Will Be “Thousands” Of Confirmed Cases In The U.S. “By Next Week”

Michael Snyder



Dr. Matt McCarthy, a staff physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, just went on national television and warned that there will be “thousands” of confirmed coronavirus cases inside the United States “by next week”. I certainly hope that he is completely wrong, but obviously, he has a better vantage point for observing the progression of this outbreak than any of us do.

As an emergency room doctor in New York, he is dealing with potential COVID-19 cases every single day. And as you will see below, he says that he has had to “plead to test people” and that it is a “national scandal” that more people have not been tested.

As I discussed in a previous article, up until just a few days ago the CDC has had extremely restrictive guidelines for who should be tested for the virus.  Only those that have visited China recently and those that have had close contact with a known victim were supposed to be tested.  Obviously this allowed a lot of potential victims to fall through the cracks, and now we have a major outbreak in the Seattle area.

Why couldn’t we have been able to test anyone that wanted to be tested from the very beginning?  In South Korea, they have already “built drive-thru coronavirus screening locations”… Health officials in South Korea tested 10,000 people for the coronavirus on Friday alone. This week, they built drive-thru coronavirus screening locations, giving hundreds of patients an assessment of their health in just 10 minutes.

The US announced its first coronavirus case on the same day South Korea did. But six weeks later, less than 500 potentially infected Americans have gotten tests, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The agency’s official test count — which had previously been updated daily — was stripped from the CDC site on Sunday, though US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar told ABC the same day that the US had tested 3,600 people. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t do at least as well as South Korea.