Watch the video, or read the transcript below.

Hello, this is Rick Ridings coming to you with a prayer update from Jerusalem. It’s Tuesday the 18th of March, and a lot has happened in the last day or two.

There was a major bombing of the Houthi Jidhadist leaders who have oppressed their people so horribly in Yemen and tried to shut off international shipping and come against Israel.

Several major leaders have been targeted and taken out in the last day or two. The Iranian ship intended to help protect their nuclear program has been sunk. Also five major Hamas leaders were taken out in Gaza yesterday.

So, there’s something beginning to shift, and it seems like it’s the beginning of perhaps more major warfare in this region concerning the Iranian regime and its proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Yemen.

Hezbollah is a bit distracted right now, fighting with the new forces in Syria. But Hamas and the Houthis and the Iranian regime, and in the areas of Judea and Samaria, it’s still very focused on trying to come against Israel and basically to destroy Israel.

Vision of the Octopus in Dubai

And I want to share with you today a very amazing thing that happened to us in Dubai. We had leaders from all over the Middle East from houses of prayer, many of them secret places, even places like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt coming together to worship, to pray, to hear the Lord together.

And as we came together, we felt the Lord speaking to us very clearly through a vision that a house of prayer leader, an Arab lady named Ra had about two years ago, and she shared this in Dubai. And we felt it applies right now.

Her vision was of an octopus. And the octopus spirit had many, many tentacles reaching out. But, as you know with an octopus, if you cut off a tentacle, it just grows back. And that’s what has happened over many years now.

Hamas would be cut off, and then it would grow back. Hezbollah would be cut off, and it would grow back. The Iranian regime would be weakened, and then it would grow back stronger again. These things would keep happening.

And so in this vision, she saw that the sword of the Lord came to the head of this octopus spirit. She felt it was even above Iran. And it was a demonic spirit of jihad, warfare, death, destruction that would basically try to bring about a premature World War III.

But she felt in this vision that the Lord himself came with a sword — and he punctured the head of that octopus. And then she saw that the tentacles began to wither. They began to dry up. They began to back off.

Habakkuk 3:12-14 The Lord Destroying the Head

And so we have been praying for that. There are scriptures from Habakkuk 3:12–13 that talk about the Lord arising and the Lord smashing the head of evil. And we believe this is why so many things are happening right now: that this is really the sword of the Lord coming against the head of this evil.

This gathering in Dubai finished just as we went into Purim on the 13th of March. And the verse she had in Habakkuk 3:13 talks about the Lord himself coming and smashing and dealing with the head of wickedness, stripping him from head to toe.

So I encourage you to look up those scriptures in the book of Habakkuk 3 — especially verses 12, 13, 14 — but the whole chapter is very relevant to pray over Israel and over the Middle East at this time.

Elam and Jeremiah 49

So we thank you for your prayers. We continue to proclaim, according to Jeremiah 49, over Elam and that evil spirit being hung on his own gallows. We just celebrated that all weekend here in Israel with this Festival of Purim.

And we’re continuing to proclaim, according to Jeremiah 49, that God himself will break the bow of Elam, which we believe represents the Iranian regime, that He will deal with their leaders strongly, and that He himself will set his throne in Elam in such a way that there is a great victory of the Lord over what Satan had meant to bring forth there.

So let’s continue to pray in this very strategic time. Again: Jeremiah 49 about Elam, Habakkuk 3 about the leader — the head — of a land of wickedness. And let’s believe the Lord that something very strong and decisive will happen soon — that will cause a withering of these various tentacles of the octopus.

Never again will they just be cut off to grow back even stronger, but that the head of the octopus is dealt with. These tentacles will one by one shrivel and shrink back — which seems to indicate still a process. But let’s hold in for the full uprooting, not just the pruning or the cutting off of the terrorist regime in Iran and its proxies like Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah.

The Lord is Arising

He who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps. The God who intervened at a moment when it looked like all the Jewish people would be killed under Haman, by that Amalekite spirit, He reversed the curse.

And God allowed them to rewrite the decrees of destruction decreed against the Jewish people. And He’s doing the same now through his intercessors — to reverse the decrees that would destroy his people, his Jewish people, and would oppress the peoples of places like Lebanon and Gaza and Iran.

This jihadist spirit — this evil octopus of destruction — the Lord himself is arising. And let’s stand together for the fullness of His work.

Lord, we just say: Your kingdom come, your will be done in Israel and in the Middle East as it is in heaven.

Goodbye from Jerusalem. Shalom, shalom.