It has been a harsh winter (2002-3), one of the worst in living memory, causing great economic hardship and sickness to the family, and yet its severity belies a quiet spiritual revolution taking place in my family. A year ago my family went through a terrible upheaval that did not finally end until last autumn (fall) when my fourth wife returned home after a literal and spiritual exile of several months duration. This article is about our ongoing story that follows on from the thashing of the previous year.

For most polygamists this lifestyle, whilst having vague prophetic symbolism in terms of the Marriage Feast of the Lamb (or Mystical Marriage of Messiah as we call it), is basically a very earthly phenomenon. Married couple meets single woman, get on well, husband falls in love with single woman, single woman and married woman form close sisterly relationship, and a polygamous marriage is born. Struggles occur as the carnal nature surfaces and jealousy and other problems are tackled, but after a while a kind of harmony based on both resolution, compromise, and postponment sets in, and the three learn to work together as a team. For most, there is little concept of, or planning for, eternity and the arrangement is seen as life-long which at death will dissolve. The understanding is that in heaven we will be so absorbed with our allegorical marriage to Christ that the kinds of marriage unions we enjoyed down here will have no meaning. There, it is believed by the majority, former wives and husbands will become sisters and brothers in Christ without the kinds of erotic attractions we had in the flesh or deep psychic longings that make a marriage relationship different from that of fraternity.

This ministry's concept of echad marriage disturbs many, making them uncomfortable. For many the cause may be that they genuinely can't 'see' it in the Scruptures and therefore they want to be true to their concscience and what they sincerely believe to be the authentic biblical revelation on the subject. Some are afraid of 'heresy' and perhaps may make connection to some cults who have similar beliefs (but which upon closer inspection reveal themselves to be completely and radically different). For others anything 'new' is by default 'uncomfortable' and they'd rather not have their comfort zones disturbed. Yet others simply may not want the responsibility that devolves upon those who accept this vision of marriage and would rather that things quiety end at death so that they can march into an eternity of leisure, comfort and ease. Who can say why people react to us the way they do? I know one man - a good friend, incidentally - who quite honestly told me that he didn't understand what I was on about. It made no sense to him, and so he was simply content to 'let live' and for us to get on with our lives the way we felt Yahweh was leading us.

There are others, however, who seem to instantly 'gel' to echad marriage, as though it's something they instinctively know to be right and which, in the light of experience, makes perfect sense in the Scriptures. The doctrine or theory isn't just an abstract idea but is visible in a practical as well as a spiritual way. It isn't just a theological hypothesis to them. They just 'know'.

Last summer my fourth wife went through a spiritual and psychic crisis and briefly left home with our son. Though the breakdown was triggered by the events of the previous winter, the roots of her problem had been there from earlier and turned out to be a generational curse which has afflicted almost every member of her family and which has caused demon problems in all of them. This has led to a tragic epidemic of divorce and alcoholism amongst her relatives. (When she finally left for good she also turned to alcohol.) During our separation Yahweh showed me many visions to help me understand the root causes of her problems so that when she eventually came home she was able to have deliverance ministry, beginning the process of inner healing and recovery, which has empowered her to begin ministering to her own family. For those of you reading this who may have come from a Wiccan background, you may be interested to know that her chief adversary was a demoness called Hecate. Cutting a long story short, we discovered that she was actually in direct descent of the high priestess of a pagan goddess cult which existed some 3,000 years ago but which was continued in secret even after the 'Christianisation' of her home country. Upon being delivered from this demoness, she wrote an article on her experience called, The Traps of Hecate and the Salvation of Yah'shua, and has been actively involved in deliverance ministry.

You can imagine my shock when, during our separation, Yahweh began showing me visions of pagan ceremonies from the distant past. I saw a stonehenge-like structure with various persons dressed up in priestly attire involved in goddess worship and human sacrifice. I saw her ancestor, the high priestess, performing rituals. A prophetess, whom I work closely with in America, was simultaneously having parallel visions and together they complemented each other and enabled me to unravel the mystery. When my wife came home for a visit so that I could be with our son I saw in vision a medallion around her neck with peculiar heiroglyphics. To cut a long story short, I was able to trace this to the pagan cult and to their goddess (demoness) Hecate (though known by them under a different name). When I broke the psychic medalion by the power of the blood of Christ she experienced the first of several releases that led to her complete deliverance.

Though my fourth wife and I always had a wonderful relationship in spite of her inner problems which she was suppressing, it errupted into a spiritual fountain after she was cleared of the demoness and we have had some amazing experiences ever since. It's these that I am principally writing about because they illustrate so clearly the principles I have been trying to explain in my many articles on the subject.

She came to my family under extraordinary circumstances. I knew she would be my wife even when she was still young because Yahweh showed her to me in visions. All I had to do was teach her the Gospel and wait until she was an adult. In those early days I was told that she would be a prophetess in the ministry, a calling she suddenly moved into after her deliverance. I couldn't understand why, previous to her deliverance, she was taking so long to move into this call, because - and in spite of her youth - she always had a profound knowledge and understanding of the Scriptures. I did not realise that there was literally a demon that was preventing this from happening. We are both able to look back with hindsight and see that our problems of last summer were in fact redemptive, and had they not happened, what we enjoy together now would probably not have been. Sometimes, therefore, what we perceive to be disasterous may, in fact, be our Heavenly Father's way of bringing salvation to pass. (After leaving home for good some years later she readmitted the demon and her spiritual state today is seven times worse than it was before her first deliverance.)

My fourth wife and I are moving through and into what I call an 'echad spirit' (2003). We always seem to know what the other is thinking and together work in tandem in solving spiritual problems. One of the most extraordinary phenomena of late is the linked nature of our dreams. Every night now we dream about identical things only we view them from different angles. In the morning we share our prophetic dreams with each other and are always astonished by the results. She interprets my dreams and I interpret hers, and indeed the symbols in (for example) my dreams often interpret the symbols in hers.

We've agreed to share parts of the dreams we each had this morning by way of an illustration, both to underscore what I mean by this prophetic synergism and to explain one of the mysteries of echad plural marriage about which I have written so much. But before I do, let me summarise some important concepts and invite you to read the article I wrote on the septenary if you have not already seen it.

The echad doctrine of plural marriage teaches that marriage is, in a way, foreordained. What this means is that, whilst we have free will to marry whom we want, our 'real' spouses are the only ones that count in eternity, because they were with us before we were born, and shall continue with us in the next life. This means that every man is foreordained to one, two, or more wives. This being so, there is, if you like, a 'space' within his spirit from which his wives were separated at birth and whom he is seeking to find and restore. Similarly, women have a similar 'space' which seeks to be filled - a space which is not only shaped like her foreordained husband but also (on a lower level) by her sister-wives, and in particular those who were in a special echad relationship with her before mortality - her 'twins'.

Just as every believer has a calling within the Body of Christ (Messianic Community) which is unique to him or her, and just as every member of a local church or assembly should have a special call in that local fellowship, so every wife has a 'rôle' or 'calling' within the marriage relationship. Now I am not talking here about domestic rôles but spiritual ones. I, for instance, gel with each of my three current wives in a unique way. At the same time, there is what might be called a 'whole' relationship which encompasses them all (the 'whole marriage' unit) plus a number of sub-relationships. Of the latter there are what we call 'twin sister-wives' who are very much like each other in their overall life-energy, if I can call it that. For instance, though by fourth and third wives are related, and have many similarities because of that, they are nevertheless very different, and both recognise that they aren't 'twins' but fulfil a different rôle both in their relationship to me as well as with respect to the whole marriage. My second, in her turn, is different from both by fourth and third. The three of them are in a special relationship which Yahweh gave a special name ('Karelah') in a prophetic dream to me, a triad or threesome echad unity.

This morning my fourth pleasantly surprised herself. She dreamed that there were three of her and that the affinity between the 'three' was fantastic. Upon awakening she knew at once that the other two were sister-wives who had not come who were 'twins' and were of similar age, temprement and build. At the same time she was having this dream, I was dreaming of three beautiful baby girls. The third baby, which was newborn, I was holding in my arms, my heart gushing with joy. The little baby girl opened her mouth and said to me, "Jesus!" I was surprised, and not surprised, and responded by saying, "Jesus?" as I was expecting the Hebrew Name to be used. She replied to me again, "Jesus!" I then said, "Yah'shua!" (the Hebrew form), and she replied, "Yah'shua!"

Now you may not be familiar with prophetic typology so I will explain. Each of the three babies represent my three wives - 2nd, 3rd and 4th (the three 'Karelah's'), the third and youngest one being my fourth. My fourth was brought up as a Christian where the name 'Jesus' was taught. When her family joined our congregation, we also were using the Anglo-Greek 'Jesus'. Later, way after she and I were married, our Order returned to the Hebraic roots of our faith and we started calling the Saviour 'Yah'shua' (or Yeshua in Aramaic). What the dream was showing me was the 'three stages' of her relationship to the Messiah in terms of the Name by which He has been known by her. I was surprised to hear her say 'Jesus' and yet she repeated it. It was I who taught her 'Yah'shua' and hence she repeated what I said.

If the dream has meanings with multiple layers (as I have sometimes experienced) then it is also quite possible that one of her's twins (the second) will come into the family having been raised to know Christ as 'Jesus' and the other (the third) could possibly have a Messianic background knowing Him as either 'Yah'shua' or 'Yeshua' (the two sound very much alike).

Now there was much more to these dreams which I don't propose to go into here - indeed, there were multiple dreams all illustrating the same theme and complementing each other. What was interesting (and exciting) for her was the discovery that she had two twins, making a threesome. She was thrilled to the bone when she realised it and expressed her desire that they should come soon! More than likely these twins will have had similar dreams at around the same time as a testimony to them of their spiritual and marrital home.

I should point out that my third was having her own interesting dreams during the night my fourth and I were dreaming. She was wrestling with a personal purity issue, as it happens, asking to have the beauty of Hochmah ('Wisdom', a name of the Ruach haQodesh/Holy Spirit) and to be free of the womanly obsession to be physically beautiful. Having made that resolution she prayed to be healed of a physical ailment and experienced the Spirit move over her whole body and remove it so that she could sleep!

Yahweh works with us as we work with ourselves. Echad (oneness) in plural marriage is not possible until you have dealt with personal sin-issues and, where necessary, have demons identified and cast out. When that has been done, beautiful things start happening.

My marriage has been going through a revolution these past few months and it has been a joy to experience. I also received a gentle reminder from Yahweh in the third of my dreams to again 'slow down' and understand that He was going to work with my family both internally as well as gathering those who have not come home who were estranged as well as those who have not come at all yet.

The joy of echad polygamy is watching Yahweh do all the work as we take responsibility for sin-issues and obey the commandments. Yahweh is patient and things go no faster than we ourselves are willing to go. Many just sit and wait doing nothing. We have to take the initiative in changing our lives if we ever hope to have the kind of heavenly dynamic echad unity and joy that we are supposed to be reflections of in our marriages. Many will wait for ever, stagnate and spiritually die. Without a doubt, without the courage act, nothing ever happens. As Winston Churchill so astutely pointed out: "Courage is rightly esteemed as the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others".

Please, if you have been procrastinating, for whatever reason, pluck up the courage to make the first tentative steps towards positive change in your life. Christianity is not a passive faith and, as one man told me, "not for whimps". It requires courage. And if our faith requires courage, then so too do our marriages. Whoever you are and wherever you may be, whatever your problems, large are small, know that our Heavenly Father Yahweh loves you and stands ready to help you to the extent that you are willing to stand up and say, "Here am I, O Yahweh. Speak, for thy servant heareth".

Author: SBSK