Three Witnesses

Of course, the question that immediately confronts us is whether or not the judgments due America can be modified. Dave Wilkerson, if I interpret him correctly, thinks that serious judgment is inevitable, but that through hardships God will purify the remnant of His people. There are two other voices regarding judgment that I want to share with you. The first is that of Kay Arthur. Mrs. Arthur is a mature lady of 74 years, and has one of the best-known teaching ministries in America. In the late 1960’s Kay and her husband Jack were missionaries in Mexico and had to return to the States because of health problems. Kay began a Bible study for young people in their home that grew to include adults and ultimately became Precept Ministries International, with a television audience of 90 million. Her program airs in 30 countries and 900 stations. We could probably say without fear of contradiction that Kay Arthur is America’s premier Bible teacher. She does not identify with the Charismatic movement.

Kay was speaking at a Deeper Still conference in Atlanta on June 27 and 28, 2008. From the moment she came to the platform she was very burdened, hardly able to speak. One of her first statements was “We are in grave danger. After talking a bit about the corruption that grips the country, she went to Ezekiel 14 to point out the distinct judgments that God brings against those who set up idols in their hearts. One of those judgments is famine. Many emails have been circulating to the effect that Kay prophesied that a literal famine was coming to America. That is not correct — Kay herself has publicly responded to these well-meaning but inaccurate statements by noting that she said only that America is setting herself up for famine. However, at another point she stated that America is facing calamity. The whole tone of her presentation was heavy and tearful. Emails about the conference have been widely circulated and seem to be having quite an impact on the believing community in our nation. Kay closed her presentation by exhorting believers to:

1. Break up their fallow ground
2. Mourn
3. Pray
4. Love God’s word
5. Love others as Jesus loves them
6. Introduce people to Jesus
7. Rest in the fact that you have done God’s will.

You can find Kay's actual message, and her response to subsequent misunderstandings here. With her call to obedience, repentance, and deepened commitment Kay seems to be communicating that the coming judgments are modifiable.

The final witness to judgment is from a great African spiritual leader, John Mulinde of Uganda. He is the founder and director of World Trumpet Mission, a revival-oriented ministry located in Kampala, Uganda. Pastor Mulinde is internationally known as a speaker on prayer and revival. He preached a message in June, 2004 in which he summarized his calling to intercede for America, and detailed some of the visions and prophecies God has given him. A transcript of his long message is available here. I would recommend that you download the PDF file, because the message is powerful and worthy of study.

To summarize Pastor Mulinde’s transcript, in 1995 he began to ask the Lord for a word for America. Sometime later he attended a conference in Chicago. Here are his own words:

I went to Chicago and the first night I was there I tried to pray and I couldn’t pray. Next morning, very early before morning I got up, got before the Lord, tried to worship, tried to pray, tried to do everything I normally do to come into the presence of the Lord, and I couldn’t. And I began to cry and I said, Lord, what have I done to close me out? and the Spirit of the Lord spoke to me and said It’s not about you. He said, The city; there are layers and layers and layers of darkness over this city, over the land, and it’s because of that, that you cannot break through. I said, But Lord, what do I do? And He said, Pray through, pray through. I am looking for a man who will stand in the gap for this land that I may not destroy it.

Later he went to Oklahoma and was given a dramatic vision that is too detailed to discuss here, but it graphically spoke of devastating judgment on America:

And the vision disappeared. I came back to myself and I saw that my whole body was trembling, tears were flowing, I was sobbing and I was wondering what was the meaning of this. A voice spoke to me and said I am looking for a man who will stand in the gap on behalf of this land but I have found none….The next day I said But Lord, how can you say there is no man standing in the gap in America. This is where all the great prayer movements come from. This is where all the great preachers have been coming to the nations encouraging us. The books that we read, this is where it all comes from.And the Spirit of the Lord said to me, The cry of sin in the land is louder than the cry of prayer; I am looking for a people that will stand in the gap for this nation, to cry out.

Pastor Mulinde returned to the U. S. on 9-10-01 and immediately began to seek the Lord.

…I was asking the Lord, What is the key to opening up nations that seem so bound, the system is so closed and we seem to be going down, down, down. Where is the hope? The word He gave me was Speak to My people and say this is the call of the hour, whether they will hear or not. Say to them, Thus says the Lord, set yourselves apart for Me that I may work deeply in your lives. I will make you the people I can use to change this land. He said, Anywhere you go there are men and women I have been speaking to, calling them Set yourselves apart for me, and they have been procrastinating, putting it off for one reason or another, excusing themselves for one reason or anotherHe said Tell them the period of grace is running out. Now there are things I can’t even explain theologically but I just want to say them as I hear them. This particular time (June 2004, when the message was recorded) I have not come because of an invitation; I came because of a very direct call. It said to me, Go and call out those who hear My call to be set apart--and what I told you, what I’ve shown you, share and equip.

Toward the end of his message, Pastor Mulinde states:

The land has come so far away from God. The church has moved goalposts every now and then and most people are praying with genuine hearts and willing hearts — they really want to see God move. But they are unaware that a lot of the attitudes with which they approach God come from the system and come from the land, and understanding of the mind of man. If God were to honor prayer and give revival in His fullness and pour out His Spirit, He would be confirming the wrong attitudes, and wrong notions and values that have been adopted in this land….Because He is a loving God He will not do that. He’s not calling for more prayer, more prayer. God is calling for a people who will step out and say, Lord, I choose your way from the ways of America, I choose your standards from the standards we have laid, I choose to go back and rediscover the will of God according to the Word of God, and this is what God is calling. God is saying to the nation of America, Choose. I can use you in revival, I can use you in judgment. Whichever way, I will fulfill my purposes to the nations. This is the call. Will you consider what it means to be set apart unto the Lord, what it means to break away from the system, what it means to reject the standards of the land, to choose the standards of the Lord? What it means to empty ourselves and die to everything we think we are and to take on the identity that God has called us unto? May God help us.

Revival

A brief review of a great American revival will help us understand the intention of God to work in power in the midst of a financial catastrophe. Many American believers have heard of the Fulton Street Revival, otherwise known as the Layman’s Revival of 1857. Few people are aware that this great nationwide revival, which swept more than one million people into the kingdom, was launched in a time of great economic crisis. In 1856 a severe recession settled on the American economy, and by mid-1857 many banks and businesses had failed. On August 24, the New York branch of a major insurance company failed. Then in mid-September, a large sailing vessel, loaded with 30,000 pounds of gold from the California gold fields, went down in a hurricane. Banks suddenly had a seriously diminished supply of gold with which to pay off customers who wanted to withdraw their assets. A financial panic ensued, and all sectors of the economy were in distress.

Meanwhile, a Dutch Reformed church in lower Manhattan relocated to the north, because families were leaving this part of the city. The remaining population consisted mostly or poor immigrants and laborers, and businessmen who came to their offices in lower Manhattan. The church hired a businessman, Jeremiah Lanphier, to stay with the old property and develop a ministry among the needy in the area. The streets of New York City were crowded with 30,000 unemployed men. For several months Lanphier walked the streets, knocking on doors and sharing the gospel, but results were meager. Finally, exhausted, he decided to start a prayer meeting. He distributed thousands of flyers announcing a prayer meeting during the noon hour of Wednesday, September 23. He sat alone for the first half hour, and then six men came in late. Attendance increased gradually for the first six weeks or so, and then it exploded. Within a few more weeks thousands of businessmen were meeting to pray through the noon hour every day in scores of locations around the city. And the same things began to happen in almost all major cities. At the height of the revival, over 50,000 people were praying daily in New York City alone, and across the country, virtually all businesses in Portland, Oregon were shuttered during the noon hour. One man who traveled by train from Chattanooga to New York said that he encountered one continuous prayer meeting at every stop on his route!

The Civil War broke out less than four years later. It is instructive to note that God used a major financial crisis to provoke a great national revival, and to prepare the nation for the devastating turmoil of the Civil War.

The anger of God, in this life, is almost always corrective. To know that God is angry with you means that His love is reaching out to correct you. God’s anger is an expression of His zeal to bring you into closer relationship with Himself. Read the books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Hosea. God portrays those who have walked away from Him as unfaithful lovers, as shady ladies. He threatens to bring big trouble into their lives, and expresses His outrage at their lewd behavior. God, through his prophets, uses some pretty graphic and earthy language to describe the behavior that is destroying His beloved people. And in each of these books, the bottom line is that God declares He will be reconciled to His unfaithful bride. God’s expressed anger is meant to confront, heal, and restore, not to destroy.

I am personally convinced that major, lifestyle-changing judgments are coming for our country. God will not continue to tolerate the crass materialism and the vaunting arrogance that have characterized our culture, to say nothing of the judicial and legislative endorsement of sexual practices and values that are in direct opposition to Scriptural teaching. God is angry. He is angry with our culture for tolerating and even endorsing those persons and organizations that would deny our children any exposure to Biblical values, branding such exposure as intolerant. ( I would vigorously defend the constitutional right of any person to be an atheist, or to argue for non-Biblical sexual lifestyles. But when the advocates of non-Biblical values seek to criminalize the public statement of Biblical values, we have a clear violation of the constitutional rights of people of faith.) He is angry about our culture’s refusal to give protection to unborn infants. He is angry with the hypocrisy of a culture which prosecutes for murder a parent who kills a one-month old child, but which permits an eight-month old fetus to be brutally killed as part of a legislatively-approved abortion procedure.

But I am persuaded that God is particularly angry with many evangelical believers who have let themselves be conformed to our culture in every way except church attendance. And even their irregular church attendance is really not very counter-cultural, because a large percentage of persons in our culture attend church irregularly. We as people with an evangelical label have so compromised ourselves in our entertainment choices that we have lost the moral authority to do or say anything redemptive. And we are too busy pursing the material idols or our day (a big, new house, a big SUV, and expensive and exciting vacations) that we have almost no time to pray. In our failure to walk as disciples of Jesus, we have sheathed our swords, and permitted the forces of darkness to dominate our nation. (Please understand — it is not wrong to live in a big, new house, drive a big SUV, or take a vacation. But when these goals consume our time, we are guilty of idolatry).

However, because God’s anger is full of redemptive intent, it usually finds expression in corrective judgments. Read II Chronicles 6 for an eloquent discussion of God’s corrective judgments, and God’s earnest desire to restore anyone upon whom His judgments have fallen. Although I am convinced that serious judgments are coming relatively soon, I also believe we have a great opportunity to experience His marvelous provision and manifest presence as we trust in Him.

Your brother,

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