Dear vigilant watchmen,
THANK YOU to all who prayed through September 11 this year. God has been very gracious to protect us on this day of remembrance. That said please keep “on the wall” especially through Sunday, September 15! The Lord highlighted to Jolene this date to culminate the watch.
So—stay vigilant. Please.
And please include the Crown and Throne gathering in your prayer times. I believe we are being summoned together simply to bear witness to a birth of God’s covenant purposes. The movement belongs to Jesus, for His glory! Jolene and I look forward to visiting with many of you this weekend!
Syria and Civil War
The Al Queda network that targeted our power centers 12 years ago made the news again on 9-11, this time in Syria. Rebel “freedom fighters” overtook an ancient Christian city. They momentarily redirected their guns from Assad’s forces to the village inhabitants, commanding them to convert to Islam or die.
The travesty of Syria’s civil war is that it’s not really about bringing freedom to Syria. True and sincere attempts to reform government have largely been replaced by an ancient civil war within Islam itself. Syria, and to an extent Egypt, have become battlefronts for this ongoing power struggle between Sunni and Shiite extremists. The true victims of these wars are actually the citizens of the nations now being ravaged.
Obama’s Gettysburg
More than a year ago, Sharla Mylar of the Washington House of Prayer shared a vivid dream about “President Obama’s Gettysburg.” Her prophetic insights have come to mind again and again as President Obama ponders “entering the fray” in Syria’s civil war. I’ve shared the full word many times here, but this time I want to simply share the vision, in Sharla’s 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!”
Civil War and a Revolutionary Move of God
Friends, I don’t believe it’s any coincidence that President Obama now seems both distraught and compelled to action due to the recent horrors of Syria’s civil war. Just as the dream conveys, deep sorrow is the only genuine response to a survey of this bloodstained civil war battlefield where the victims are many and the heroes are so few.
Further, I don’t believe it’s coincidence the Lord is compelling us to believe Him for the outbreak of this massive move of Holy Spirit awakening at the very same time. In John 11:11, Jesus defined awakening as “life from the dead.” Ezekiel 37 portrays a massive move of awakening, with the winds of the Spirit bringing multitudes out of their graves and back to life.
Further, we have perceived how this Crown and Throne movement is releasing spiritual revolutionaries, Jesus-empowered “Paul Reveres” who will even shift nations from slavery to freedom. For more than a year I’ve prayed into Sharla’s dream, believing God for just such a move—perhaps even breaking forth during President Obama’s administration!
Lincoln’s Covenant with God
I believe it’s also very significant that God commanded President Obama to “prepare your Gettysburg Address.” What a somber call. The fact that Gettysburg was one of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War conveys the magnitude of what we might potentially face if the war between brothers accelerates in the Mideast… or really even here.
As most of you know, the final sentence of the Gettysburg Address actually conveys the prophetic theme the Lord gave us for 2013. “That this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.
Here’s something you may not know. The tide of both Gettysburg and the Civil War turned dramatically just after President Abraham Lincoln came into covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ! Noted author Stephen Mansfield bears this out in his book “Lincoln’s Battle with God.” Mansfield details a historic conversation recorded by one of Lincoln’s 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).
What was the result? Not only did Gettysburg turn, but the Battle of Vicksburg turned on the same day, and was won by Union soldiers. These two victories determined the entire course of the war.
What day did these battles turn and culminate? It happened to be July 4—the very anniversary of our nation’s birth into freedom.
Can’t make that up.
This is so important to perceive. Covenant with God birthed our nation, and in America’s most desperate hour covenant with God by Abraham Lincoln preserved our Union.
And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that, in 2011, the Lord compelled us to pray before Him at the Lincoln Memorial, asking for a divorce from Baal and a “new birth of freedom” based on restoration of covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ.
On July 4.
Covenant Restoration and American Exceptionalism
Friends, we didn’t even know this story when we prayed. But the Lord did. And He literally entered us into a covenant Abraham Lincoln originally made with Him, for the destiny of our land to somehow be restored and established in this hour! Wild how an earthquake exactly 50 days later confirmed this. But that’s another story.
On the eve of Yom Kippur, what I want to emphasize now is that covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ is foundational to turn the tide of the toughest battles you and I now face. For Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, covenant with Jesus Christ apart from all idolatry shifted the United States into a “new birth of freedom.” And only covenant with Jesus Christ, apart from all idolatry, can win this freedom today.
