In response to David Wilkerson’s “An Urgent Message”, I have been searching out some of the things that I believe that the Lord has been telling me lately to see if they compliment his message in any way.

Here are some of the things that I believe that the Lord has been telling me over and over again in the last 6 months or so. As with any message of this sort discernment is in order:

-America has turned a corner and it will never be the same for better or worse. I don’t know exactly what that means for the future of America but it is not the wrath of God but a time of choices. It will be a time of blessing for those who accept what the Lord offers and not so for those who reject his grace.

-The economy of America is going to go through some major upheavals but a ‘Kingdom economy’ will be available to the churches and Christians who respond. Already the lord is beginning to give out incredible inventions to faithful Christians that will change not only America but the whole world. Many Christians who faithfully respond to God’s ‘Kingdom economy’ will find themselves in positions of influence like Joseph and Daniel of old.

-It is a time where God’s justice will be in play. Those who are in tune and help the poor, release the captives, bind-up the broken-hearted, and heal the sick will receive incredible blessing from the Lord on many different levels.

-The American church is called to make major changes and the new wineskins will be demonstrated by key churches across the whole country. Canada also.

-I was looking in the last 7 years for a major revival to dramatically change the American culture and bring it back towards the Lord. Something changed last year and a corner was turned last fall around the time of the Jewish new year. The picture I now see is one in which the culture is going one way and the faithful church is turning away to follow a different path under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This will bring the church under an increasing degree of persecution in the future but also increasing signs & wonders, miracles, healings, and blessings from the Lord.

-Right now the American church is at the crossroads. Some major main-line denominations are already in the process of choosing to continue with the dominant culture away from Biblical Christianity. The evangelical churches are now at that fork in the road. It is a time of choices.

Again, it is a time of choices. Some choices will bring discipline and judgment, others will bring incredible blessing.         

(-Picture of Times Square via Wikipedia)

On Saturday March 7, David Wilkerson put the following warning message on his blog:

AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE – EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath.

<<Read the whole message>>

Response: Do any of you prophetic folks out there have any light at all on this word? This thing has gone all around the world in 24 hours. I have no light on this at all.

One of the hardest things in the prophetic is timing. Is it really time for America to experience God’s wrath? Have we really gone past the point of no return? And what of the Christian community, how is God calling us to respond? I see no hope or guidance in this message at all.

He seems to be saying that the bottom will completely drop out of the economy and that it will be worse than even the great depression–that riots and civil unrest will follow.

Is there any other prophetic folks saying anything like this anywhere? Like I said, I have no light on this and I have a hard time relating to it at all, but I will be in prayer.   

       (picture via Wikipedia)

Another interesting quote about the state of the American church–found it on MinistryToday Online Magazine:

“The biblical New Testament church is vanishing from society today. Anything and everything is acceptable as long as it builds a crowd. Jesus wasn’t as interested in building a crowd as He was in telling the truth. Our responsibility as pastors and leaders is not to give people what they want necessarily but what they need.”

–Bob Pearle, pastor of Fort Worth’s Birchman Baptist Church and president of the Grapevine-based Southern Baptists of Texas, a conservative state convention.

In his latest book, The Vanishing Church, Pearle rails against the growing segment of American churches-particularly nondenominational, seeker-sensitive megachurches-that build their “product” to meet consumer demand based upon churchgoers surveys. “It’s a bankrupt philosophy,” the conservative preacher adds. [star-telegram.com, 2/28/09]

I found this quote today in the MinistryToday magazine. It is right on target with what I posted yesterday:

“We have to recognize that we’ve created the system that we loathe. I don’t think the reason 15 percent serve is because 85 percent are lazy. We’ve created a system that glorifies the clergy and marginalized the laity. We got the outcome we created programs for. We’ve become ‘clergified.’

There’s a three-tiered structure: laypeople, clergy and missionaries. … All religions tend to create a class of people who are above others so 1) they can revel in that and 2) the rest of us can say it’s their job.

Christianity was started without any of those structures, and ended up like so many false religions do when they create a ministry caste structure. When we see real movements of God take off, they happen when people are free.”

–Lifeway Research director Ed Stetzer [rev.org, 2/09]  

In the last post- “God Will Supply” -Dr. Bill Hamon gives his testimony about how God did supply what they needed. At the beginning he gives a short word for the church in 2009:

“As we continue to press through in 2009, I encourage you to listen to what the Lord is saying to you individually and to the body corporately. This is a year to “Arise and Shine to Align for Reformation.” God began a reforming process in the church in 2008, and He continues to mold and shape us into the vessel that He needs us to be to see His kingdom manifest in the earth.”

I really do believe that the Lord is beginning to remold and reform the American Church. At least the part that is faithful and trying to response to his Holy Spirit. This is a word that keeps coming back to me since the first of the year.

One of the issues that I believe that He wants to deal with is the huge gulf that exists in the American Church between Pastors/Preachers and so-called Laity or regular members. So many Christians have become just spectators in a Sunday morning show put on by professional musicians and professional ministers. This is particularly true in the huge mega churches in America and around the World.

The first Reformation brought the cookie jar down from the top shelf and made the Bible available to all members in their own language, not just the educated clergy.

One of the major issues of this current move I believe is to emphasize the “Priesthood of all Believers”–we are called to become the ‘Kingdom of Priests’ that was foretold in the scriptures–a Kingdom that manifests his presence on the earth:

“He has anointed me all of us-the entire Body of Christ-to preach the Gospel of Jesus and to heal the broken hearts, and to cause the blind to see, to cause the captives to be free, to proclaim the coming of the Lord.”

It is time for the whole church to be taught and trained to go into the world making disciples where we work, healing folks in the malls, providing for the poor, teaching in our homes, and praying for sick and sharing our testimonies in our neighborhoods.

As my old Pastor John Wimber used to say: “Everyone gets to play!”

Many times what we see happening in the natural is a symbol for what is also taking place in the spiritual realm. ‘Change’ was the word that we heard over and over again during the recent election. Now with a major change in presidential administration taking place this week it has become a reality in the natural.

As Barack Obama raised his hand and completed the oath of office for President of the USA, a new historical page was turned. Millions look forward with hope for positive changes for the better, while many others claim that America will never be the same and decline is on the horizon.  One thing for sure, for better or worse the voters chose to go new direction.

In trying to discern what God is now doing in his church in 2009, the word I hear again and again is ‘change’.  Just like we have turned the page in the natural, in the spiritual also a new direction is in front of the church in America. Many have sensed the need for change and movements like the ’emerging’ and ’emergent’ church movements were initiated in response to the perceived need.

For the entire 20th century the American church was part of the American culture. Early in the century the church dominated the culture while in the last 40 years or so the culture changed and began to dominate the church.

Now the American church is at the crossroads and must choose to follow the culture or where the Holy Spirit may lead. Some major denominations (like the Episcopal Church and the UCC) are already in the process of choosing to continue with the dominant culture away from Biblical Christianity. The Evangelical churches are now at that fork in the road.

I believe that churches which are fundamentalist/cessationalist will have a hard time surviving the onslaught of a dominant progressive/secular culture in the future. Meanwhile the Pentecostal/Charismatic churches are destined for major ‘change’–the old ‘wineskins’ will no longer be adequate for the task ahead. –More to come later on possible changes ahead.           

There is only one Lord and that is Jesus Christ and there is only one real church and that is the Church of Jesus Christ. At this point you’re all wondering where I’m going with this and what I’m going to say next?

Every since I started reading Christian blogs and websites three year ago, I have been concerned and distressed about how much time and energy well meaning Christians spend tearing down other sovereign ministries and churches.

I can understand one being convinced about their own church and movement. Yes, there are issues and practices in the church that need to be addressed from time to time. By why is it always necessary to tear down, cast aspersions, innuendoes, gossip about, and violently separate from, and totally demonize other ministries.

Why can’t issues be civilly addressed among fellow brothers and sisters?  Christians are exposing more dirty laundry on the world-wide web than they are bearing positive testimonies of the Lord Jesus Christ. Millions of unbelievers come across this junk on the Net everyday—what a shame and what a lost opportunity!

Here’s today’s devotional from Charisma Online that got me started thinking about this. Written by Graham Kendrick who has written some of my all time favorite worship songs:

Divisions in Church

Today’s message is from Graham Kendrick.

Satan’s power is vested in division. His initial power base came because he succeeded in dividing creature from Creator through sin. Within a generation, motivated by jealousy, brother had murdered brother. Before long, nation was slaughtering nation. In the crucifixion of Jesus every dividing wall of hostility was broken down. It remains for us to step over the rubble, embrace one another and celebrate what He has achieved.

Interestingly, of all the songs in the Book of Revelation, not one is a solo. The twenty-four elders sing and cast down their crowns before His feet, the united voices of countless angels resound, every living creature in heaven and earth and under the earth and all that is in them are joined in one song. In every case multitudes of peoples or angels unite in the same song with absolute unity, with one voice.

Though we can’t imagine the sounds of heaven, we can begin here on earth to offer worship in cooperation with other believers because God is building believers together into a spiritual house of worship. (See 1 Peter 2:5.) We do not wait for heaven. We take hold of heaven’s kingdom now and bring it into the earth. We do not sit waiting for perfected Christians to show up with whom to be united. Rather we seek those whose eyes are also fixed adoringly upon Jesus, and we agree to march together in celebration that in Him every dividing wall has been broken down. And as we do, we find ourselves moving like an army, shoulder to shoulder, our feet and hearts in step with one another and with heaven’s battalions.

TODAY’S PRAYER:

Lord, break the divisions that exist between Christians in my city. Let us praise You with one mighty voice in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

J. Lee Grady recalls an interesting event from the past this week in his Fire in My  Bones article for March 7, 2008.

Apparently in 1999, Kenneth Hagin Sr. called many of the leaders of the prosperity movement’ together to read some of them the riot act. He warned them that some were distorting his teachings but more importantly distorting the Bible. He was hoping to bring correction to the movement he had founded before he passed on.

Here are some of the points he was addressing that was also covered in his last book-  The Midas Touch:

1. Financial prosperity is not a sign of God’s blessing. Hagin wrote: “If wealth alone were a sign of spirituality, then drug traffickers and crime bosses would be spiritual giants. Material wealth can be connected to the blessings of God or it can be totally disconnected from the blessings of God.”

2. People should never give in order to get. Hagin was critical of those who “try to make the offering plate some kind of heavenly vending machine.” He denounced those who link giving to getting, especially those who give cars to get new cars or who give suits to get new suits. He wrote: “There is no spiritual formula to sow a Ford and reap a Mercedes.”

3. It is not biblical to “name your seed” in an offering. Hagin was horrified by this practice, which was popularized in faith conferences during the 1980s. Faith preachers sometimes tell donors that when they give in an offering they should claim a specific benefit to get a blessing in return. Hagin rejected this idea and said that focusing on what you are going to receive “corrupts the very attitude of our giving nature.”

4. The “hundredfold return” is not a biblical concept. Hagin did the math and figured out that if this bizarre notion were true, “we would have Christians walking around with not billions or trillions of dollars, but quadrillions of dollars!” He rejected the popular teaching that a believer should claim a specific monetary payback rate.

5. Preachers who claim to have a “debt-breaking” anointing should not be trusted. Hagin was perplexed by ministers who promise “supernatural debt cancellation” to those who give in certain offerings. He wrote in The Midas Touch: “There is not one bit of Scripture I know about that validates such a practice. I’m afraid it is simply a scheme to raise money for the preacher, and ultimately it can turn out to be dangerous and destructive for all involved.”

The movement started out with a sound observation made by Hagin that “God was not glorified by poverty and that preachers do not have to be poor.”  However, some of the excesses and greed within the movement bothered even ‘Dad Hagin’ before he died in 2003. Unfortunately his warning went largely unheeded.