11-19: GETTYSBURG, OBAMA AND A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM

ROB STEARNS ON CALL WEDNESDAY! Abby Abildness & Jamie Fit Joining! 9-10 pm EST. Conference call number: 805-399-1200 access code 552-690. Use *6 to mute/unmute. Invite your friends to join us!

Revolution 2013 begins Thursday! More info at http://revolutiongathering.com 

ONE HUNDRED FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY, President Abraham Lincoln walked the somber battlefields of Gettysburg. Two words were then added to the final draft of his brief address to consecrate the cemetery. Lincoln closed his address as follows:

“That this nation under God shall have new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

The two words inserted by this great Civil War president were simply “under God.” Surveying the battlefield where brother fought brother, with scattered bones of soldiers still on the soil, he realized that only God could put this broken nation back together. In his extraordinary message, Lincoln extends the biblical imagery of personal salvation to the depth of healing needed to redeem our divided land. That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…

In campaigns and in both inaugurations, President Obama has constantly sought identification with Abraham Lincoln. It is therefore extraordinary to me that our nation’s first black president decided not to honor Lincoln’s message on this sacred anniversary by following Lincoln’s footsteps to the battlefield. Further, in a documentary, Obama had the audacity to leave out President Lincoln’s two most important words. Under God.

Obama’s Gettysburg Address
This brings to mind a prophetic experience my prophetic friend Sharla Mylar had a few years ago. in her own words:

“In my vision, President Obama was standing at the Gettysburg battlefield in front of the white wall that has on it an inscription of the Gettysburg Address. He seemed overcome with sorrow, as though he knew that whatever words he spoke would not bring the dead in fresh graves on the battlefield back to life. 

The President chose his words with hesitation and grief (I don’t know what he said), and as he finished the graves started opening up. Men in revolutionary war-era clothing and hats stood up from the graves, holding out Bibles in their right hands as though they were preaching. 

Then I “woke up” or came out of the vision and heard the following words: Mr. President, prepare your Gettysburg Address!”

It is remarkable that Sharla saw revolutionary war soldiers coming out of graves as President Obama was summoned before God to prepare his Gettysburg Address. The 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address is only two days before our Revolution conference. I’m not really sure what this is all about, but the Lord is clearly poised to speak.

Pray for thunder.

President Obama turned down Gettysburg today, but has he missed his summons with God? Perhaps. But I’ve personally found the Lord of hosts is pretty much impossible to evade. Ready or not, his moment of truth will no doubt come.

As for us, one thing I know. The throne of our Nation still belongs to God. And therefore our nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. I’d like to close this posting with an excerpt about Lincoln from our new book Crown and Throne. First excerpt here—this is only appropriate.

Gettysburg: Lincoln’s Covenant with God (pp 162-3)
Let’s return to the battlefield. On July 4, 1863, exactly 87 years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence that birthed our nation, Union soldiers won the excruciating battle and turned the tide of the whole Civil War. A similar game-changing battle was won in Vicksburg, MS on the same date.

By his own declaration, President Lincoln engaged in the Civil War not to bring freedom to slaves, but to save the Union. Though he embarked on his presidency virtually an atheist, through the trials of this war he not only came to know Jesus Christ, but emerged as perhaps the most prophetic of all presidents before or since. His writings bear an unmistakable anointing, similar to Moses and Martin Luther King, who completed the great task Lincoln began.

Lincoln’s own words reveal how he covenanted with God for our nation. Our nation’s 16th president shared the following with one of his army generals:

“Oppressed by the gravity of our affairs, I went into my room one day and locked the door and got down on my knees before Almighty God and prayed to Him mightily for victory at Gettysburg… And I then and there made a solemn vow to Almighty God that if He would stand by our boys at Gettysburg, I would stand by Him. And He did, and I will. And after that, I don’t know how it was and I can’t explain it, but soon a sweet comfort crept into my soul that things would go all right at Gettysburg…” (Lincoln’s Battle with God, Mansfield, p. 169).

Covenant with God birthed our nation, and in America’s most desperate hour, covenant with God by Abraham Lincoln preserved our Union. Can you see how God will fight for you as you align with Him!

To emphasize this point, the turning point of the whole Civil War came just after Lincoln came into this vow with his God—on July 4.

Can’t make that up.

Can you see how Lincoln’s own covenant was perpetuated as we stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial 148 years later, on July 4, 2011, presenting the Lord with a Declaration of Covenant and asking Him to grant us a “new birth of freedom!” I had no idea of this covenant until reading Stephen Mansfield’s book “Lincoln’s Battle with God,” which was published in November 2012. I purchased this book on July 3, 2013 to culminate this chapter… on July 4.

The Lord always remembers the covenants of His friends. He vows to perpetuate His covenant generationally as His sons and daughters align with Him! (Crown & Throne, pp. 162-3).