Kansas and Oklahoma made headlines—and history—recently by becoming the first states in the nation to ban dismemberment abortions, second-trimester abortions in which unborn babies are torn limb from limb while in utero. The living babies may survive for at time during the gruesome procedure and bleed to death as they are being dismembered.

And bills recently approved by lawmakers in Tennessee would require that abortion clinics be licensed as surgical centers and that women wait 48 hours after counseling before undergoing an abortion. Gov. Bill Haslam is expected to sign both bills into law.

As more and more states take steps to protect unborn life, religion and culture expert Dr. Alex McFarland says only when this ‘first right’ is protected are other rights safe.

“The very first God-given right outlined in our Declaration of Independence is the right to life,” McFarland said. “For more than 40 years, the United States has legally denied this right to millions of unborn babies. And by doing so, our nation has also denied these babies every other right Americans enjoy—they have no liberty, no opportunity to pursue happiness. 

“A nation that counts life cheap is not a nation of liberty, opportunity or justice for all, and we deceive ourselves to think differently. When the most defenseless among us are daily slaughtered by the thousands on the altar of choice, we have become a nation not of freedom but of utter depravity.”

McFarland addresses abortion in his book, 10 Issues that Divide Christians, in which he writes:

“If individual human rights (such as the right to life) exist, what is their source? Do our rights come from the government? From the culture surrounding us? America’s founders (and subsequent thinkers such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) pointed out that rights come from God. America was unique in its founding premise that the role of government was not to grant rights but to protect the rights conferred on man by his Maker.

“Freedoms can be protected or infringed upon, but government cannot truly give them or take them; human rights are from God. Certainly the most basic of these is the right to life.”

Those who advocate abortion often deny the personhood of the unborn, but science is not on their side. Before the end of the first trimester of pregnancy—which is before the dismemberment abortions recently banned—the unborn child has every organ system in place, a beating heard, and brain waves, as reported by the National Right to Life.

The website  shares statements by abortion providers and former abortion providers regarding the humanity of the unborn. One abortion provider was quoted as saying, “Of course we know it’s killing, but the state permits killing in certain circumstances.”

Another, describing in sworn testimony dismembering unborn babies, noted that limbs are regularly torn from alive unborn babies: “It’s not unusual at the start of D&E (Dilation and Evacuation) procedures that a limb is acquired first and that that limb is brought through the cervix … prior to disarticulation and prior to anything having been done that would have caused the fetal demise up to that point.”

“The fact that such barbarity is not only legal but celebrated in America should bring us to our knees in repentance,” McFarland said. “Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, actually wrote regarding the injustice of slavery, ‘Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.’  Like Jefferson, I tremble for my country, because God’s justice will not sleep forever. Our nation’s legal holocaust against the unborn has already begun to call down God’s judgement on our nation, and we are foolish to believe we will escape his justice if we continue to slaughter the innocent.”

Pockets of true revival are breaking out across America. Want to know more about the next great move of God? Click here to see Jennifer LeClaire’s new book, featuring Dutch Sheets, Reinhard Bonnke, Jonathan Cahn, Billy Graham and others. 

As a blog author, I am intrigued by what posts strike a nerve and what posts do not. Apparently, (some) people have strong feelings (to use a phrase from my children’s preschool) about Lectio Divina. The concerns I’ve heard are that it opens the door to Satan, it results in a subjective understanding of the Word, it leads to New Age spirituality and so forth.

Some people are very concerned about Bible reading and prayer that involves a time of quiet meditation. As I read their concerns, my perception is that when reading the Bible, in their opinion you should only be reading or speaking prayer, but not sitting or waiting in Scripture quietly. Stopping to sit in Scripture and pausing in prayer to hear from God through the Word are viewed with great suspicion as a time that opens us to deception by Satan. I find that entire concept foreign, and I think it is because of my own theological convictions that I do so.

I’ve been thinking today through doctrines from the Word that give me a framework for sitting with God in prayer and Bible reading with a desire to hear from Him. Here are some theological points to consider:

1. Perseverance of the saints. I believe with the Apostle Paul that He who began the good work in me will continue it (Phil. 1:6). My conviction is that God keeps me, and I am not afraid that Satan will pluck me out of God’s hand (John 10:28). I am definitely not afraid that Satan will pluck me away from God through my own personal Bible reading. God says He’s not going to lose me, and He’s left the Holy Spirit within me as the deposit to ensure that outcome (Eph. 1:14).
2. The value of memorization and meditation on the Word. God’s Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, the psalmist says. The psalmist then commits to hide God’s Word in his heart (Ps. 119:105). How do we hide God’s Word in our hearts? We memorize it by repeating it to ourselves. Repetition of God’s Word is a normative, healthy Christian practice! Now some are concerned with repetition of small portions, like a word or phrase, of Scripture. I don’t see that as the thrust of listening prayer and Bible reading. The particular instructions I suggested and have used for myself focus on a passage around 12 verses, reading through the entire passage repeatedly. While one may zoom in on a particular word or phrase, it is in the context of its place in a larger reading of Scripture.
3. In short, if you are concerned with someone repeating a single word from Scripture in an eastern type trance, fine. But don’t project that onto my post in particular. And in general, I don’t think that’s a fair concern for most modern evangelical discussion around listening Bible reading and prayer. That seems a straw man that is irrelevant to what is actually being discussed—slowing down in Scripture reading to let God speak to us through His Word.
4. An inflated understanding of Satan. Critics seem more worried about Satan than they are confident in the Holy Spirit. I keep thinking of 1 John 4:4, “Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.” We are certainly instructed to be cautious of Satan (for instance Paul’s instructions in Ephesians and Peter’s of Satan walking about as a lion seeking to devour). But those warnings have Satan on the outside, not talking to us from the inside. That’s pretty important! If you are in Christ, you have been SEALED by the Spirit (Eph. 1:13 and 2 Cor. 1:22).  Now people debate what exactly it means to be sealed by the Spirit, but it means something. My conviction is that it means that we are safe in the Spirit—He is the guarantee of Phil. 1:6, that God will not default on His promises to us, and Jesus loses none of those God gives Him. God took both sides of the covenant with Abraham, and He has taken both sides with us. We are safe in Him because HE will not default on His promises to us.

Furthermore, it is the SPIRIT not Satan that lives within me. While Satan can and does taunt me from the outside, the Bible never talks of him as indwelling us or speaking to us from the inside. Again, the phrasing of being sealed by the Spirit is helpful. A seal locks the letter with the stamp of the king. Seals remove openings that allow contaminants to flow into an object or that allow seepage out of the object. We are sealed in the Spirit. Exposit that and then think of the implications!

Consider also that when Satan approached Eve and later when he approached Jesus, while he did use God’s Words against them, he did it externally. He did not come internally into their psyche, and I would argue strongly that he is unable to do that to any who are in Christ Jesus, sealed by the Spirit. Satan can possess unbelievers from the inside. And he can oppress believers from the outside. But I see no Scripture that warns of a Satan that can speak inside of us once we are in Christ and sealed by the Spirit. The Bible presents a dangerous Satan, but not an omnipresent and omniscient one. That’s God, not Satan. 

If you are in Christ, you do not have Satan and the Spirit inside of you dueling it out. THAT is a bad teaching, and those knowledgeable in theology should know better than to entertain that idea.

I am a big proponent of expository Bible preaching and teaching. I employ it even right now as I think about why an expository understanding of Scripture protects us from fear of a Satanic voice that can lead us astray from Scripture from the inside. Satan may attempt to use someone outside of me misusing Scripture to deceive me, and in that event it is important to understand Scripture objectively to ward off such bad teaching.  

But if we are in Christ and sealed by the Spirit, the Spirit within us is greater than our opponent outside of us. It is in that framework that I can come to God in my Bible reading and confidently listen for Him to speak through His written Word to me.

I hope something there is helpful to you as you think of how to approach your own personal Bible reading and prayer. 

Adapted from Wendy Alsup’s blog, . Wendy has authored three books including By His Wounds You are Healed: How the Message of Ephesians Transforms a Woman’s Identity. She is also a wife, mom and college math teacher who loves ministering to women.

This past Friday night, I tweeted out, “My heart goes out to Bruce Jenner, & when he says, ‘I am a woman,’ I hear him saying, ‘I am deeply confused & hurting.’ Let’s pray for him!” The responses to this tweet were as ugly and profane as anything I have ever seen. Why the extreme and even irrational hostility?

Some of the tweets included these gems:

“(Expletive) you you disgusting saliva gerbil” (to be honest, I’ve never been called that before)

“you cranky scheming mustachio’d clown” (this was also a new one)

“(Expletive) YOU. I don’t have the patience for this nonsense anymore. You are the epitome of everything that’s wrong here.” 

Why such vitriol?

Look again at what I posted.

It was grounded in love, and I simply expressed what I heard in Bruce Jenner’s words, calling for prayer.

Some of the tweets were so profane that to quote them here would be of no use, since almost every word would have to be censored. But there were plenty of others that, while using better language, were just as ugly:

“you are a horrible human being” 

“you’re disgusting”

“And all i hear is a bigoted old man who is scared to even think that a person may be different than him.”

Later in the evening, in response to some comments others had made (there were some who were not as nasty in their tweets), I asked why the trans advocates discredited those who regretted sex-change surgery or who now believed that you cannot change your gender, posting some relevant links as well.

Then on Saturday, I made this comment: “Who said that being a man or a woman is determined by how one feels? Since when are biology & genetics meaningless?”

In response to this, one young man wrote, “YOU’RE LITERALLY SO IGNORANT? Why is your mentality stuck in the 60’s, move forward with time to now this stuff happens.”

How do we deal with such moral madness? How do we even begin to interact with this social insanity that exalts subjective feelings and denies verifiable reality?

As followers of Jesus, we must be gracious and loving towards those who identify as transgender. And as I’ve said many times before, we need to have great compassion on the children who struggle with gender identity issues, continuing to do our best to get to the root causes of these issues with the goal of providing a way for them and their families to find wholeness without the need for lifelong hormones and sex-change surgery.

But the fact is that Bruce Jenner is not a woman, and it is not hateful to say so.

If he were a woman, he would not have been able to father all of his children, nor would he need female hormones to feminize his body.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel like he’s a woman. It simply means he’s not a woman.

Yet today, even to utter those words is to put oneself in the crosshairs of ugly and vile attacks.

Of course, trans people and their allies will remind us of the terrible struggles they endure, of their very high suicide rates, of their being rejected to the point of homelessness as a result of societal stigmas, at times violently assaulted.

And so, the moment you take issue with transgender activism, you are accused of pouring salt in the wounds, of causing more suicides, of deeply hurting precious, sensitive people.

I truly understand this, and I don’t minimize the pain that many of these individuals have lived with.

I’m simply pointing out that the vicious responses to my tweet point to an irrational hatred and anger more than to a caring disagreement, making clear that this is part of a larger ideological struggle in which those of us who hold to biblical marriage and morality and who celebrate gender distinctions will be vilified by those who reject those values.

Ironically, LGBT advocates constantly criticize us for holding to clear gender distinctions, telling us that we are being bigoted and stereotyped.

“After all,” they argue, “who says that boys should play with footballs and girls with princess dolls? That is so sexist and out of date.”

Yet when a little boy chooses princess dolls over footballs, those same advocates say, “It’s obvious that he is really a she!”

In the same way, when Bruce Jenner tells Diane Sawyer he thinks the way a woman would think, he’s not accused of gender stereotyping. Instead, he’s celebrated for recognizing his real gender. And on and on it goes.

I truly believe that, in the coming years, our society will come back to its senses (but with greater sensitivity to the struggles endured by trans-identified people).

But for now, while walking in love towards all, we must stiffen our spines, stand up for what is right, be fervent in prayer, and continue to speak the truth, knowing that ultimately, truth will triumph.

And let’s remember to pray for God’s very best for Bruce Jenner.

Michael Brown is the author of 25 books, including Can You Be Gay and Christian? and host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show “The Line of Fire.” He is also president of FIRE School of Ministry and director of the Coalition of Conscience.

Hillary Clinton claims to be Christian. Barack Obama claims to be a Christian. And I am claiming to be a brain surgeon! Any takers? 

You see just saying, “I am a brain surgeon,” doesn’t mean I can perform brain surgery. I would need to back it up with a diploma and years of training. In the same way, no American will get elected president claiming, “The Bible is outdated, it’s just a bunch of stories. I am a humanistic socialist at heart!” Sure the left will have no problem with that, but you can’t win without independents. So the candidates claim to be Christian—despite having very unchristian positions.

However in a day where anti-biblical behavior is celebrated, where Bruce Jenner is called a hero (not for winning the decathlon, but for identifying as a woman), it is only a matter of time before politicians began to boldly speak against the Bible.

Hillary Clinton is testing the waters. It is one thing to take anti-biblical positions, but to publicly call Americans to forsake the Bible is too much. Giving an address at the Women in the World Summit last week, she made this statement:

Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice—not just on paper. Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.

It used to be, you were considered compassionate, caring and humble to embrace the values of the Bible. Now you are the enemy … according to Secretary Clinton and President Obama. It is only going to get worse.

Ron Cantor is the director of Messiah’s Mandate International in Israel, a Messianic ministry dedicated to taking the message of Jesus from Israel to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Cantor also travels internationally teaching on the Jewish roots of the New Testament. He serves on the pastoral team of Tiferet Yeshua, a Hebrew-speaking congregation in Tel Aviv. His newest book is Identity Theft. Follow him at @RonSCantor on Twitter.

“But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Matt. 5:44).

Like you, I was sickened, grieved, outraged and angered almost beyond reason when once again I saw Islamic militants marching orange-clad men along the seashore in Libya. Instead of Egyptians, this time they were Ethiopians. And they were all beheaded because they were Christians.

I have felt helpless with my thoughts and emotions in turmoil as though I have been caught up in the funnel of an evil tornado and lost my perspective … my sense of direction. Which way is up? Then I saw the YouTube video that is linked below.

Thank you, dear Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for calming my heart, sharpening the focus of my faith and drawing me to my knees once again … for them.

Anne Graham Lotz is an author and founder of AnGel Ministries.

Many today look around at the rising threat of radical Islam and the weak Western response and wonder if we are repeating the costly mistakes of a bygone era.

There is no doubt we live in perilous times. The clever mass murderers of al-Qaida have now morphed into the sadistic executioners of Islamic State. Iran is exporting its own fierce brand of Islamic militancy, destabilizing and devouring nations across the Middle East, while building a renegade nuclear weapons program to further its expansionist agenda.

Each of these radical Islamist movements see themselves as the vanguard of that final jihadi surge, which will ultimately destroy Israel, spread throughout the world and subjugate humanity to a foretold ‘golden age’ of Islamic rule. Meanwhile, many Western leaders are pressuring the small democratic nation of Israel to sacrifice the heart of its ancient homeland to secure an illusionary peace and pacify these ravenous beasts.

So, is it really 1938 again? Are we seeing an appeasement of great evil like Neville Chamberlain at Munich?

The comparison is not without its merits. In September 1938, the British prime minister was negotiating with Adolf Hitler in hopes of stemming the threat of Nazism and buying “Peace for Our Time!” The price was a strip of land along Germany’s border with the small democratic Czech Republic.

In Prague, an emergency session of the Czech cabinet sat helplessly for hours awaiting word from Munich, with absolutely no say in their own nation’s fate. In the end, Hitler’s appetite for conquest was whetted, not abated. And Chamberlain’s diplomatic mission became an infamous symbol of failed statesmanship.

But lest we pan the British premier too much, we should recall that this was an entire era of failed statesmanship, as Western leaders made decision after decision which signaled the Nazis that the resistance against them was feeble.

Just two months before Munich, representatives from 32 nations gathered at the Evian conference to consider taking in more endangered Jews from Germany. Hitler openly mocked the gathering’s “deep sympathy for these criminals.” Yet the Dominican Republic stood alone as the only country present willing to accept a large number of Jewish refugees. Nazi observers at the conference reported back to Hitler: “You can do what you like with the Jews, nobody is interested in them.”

The next summer saw the tragic voyage of the St. Louis, a ship packed with 900 German Jewish children who could see the lights of Miami off the bow before being turned away by the Roosevelt administration, only to be returned to the sinking continent of Europe.

That same year of 1939, Britain issued the shameful White Paper strictly limiting the number of Jewish refugees who could enter mandatory Palestine—a decision that consigned millions of Jews to the Nazi gas chambers.

Then there was that one dark night in November 1938, when the world stood by as the Nazis arrested over 30,000 Jews and burned more than 1,000 synagogues on Kristallnacht. By morning the Sudetenland—surrendered to Hitler at Munich just five weeks earlier—had become the first territory in the Nazi grasp to be made judenrein. The Holocaust had begun!

So it was an entire era of failed statesmanship, not just by one but by many world leaders, who misjudged character and misread intentions with catastrophic results. And the reason this collective failure befell the community of nations is because it was an era of great seductions and deceptions on a global scale. Like a two-edged sword, men were fooled by others but they also fooled themselves.

The German people were seduced by a mesmerizing figure who promised to restore Germany’s tattered fortunes, but instead brought the nation to ruin.

Chamberlain seduced himself into thinking Munich was about one small strip of border land, when in fact the whole expanse of Europe was at stake.

At Evian, an American president coolly calculated that 30,000 Jewish immigrants per year was enough, completely oblivious that 55 million souls of all races and creeds would soon perish in the ensuing deluge of war.

An entire world seduced itself into believing that Hitler was merely venting in Mein Kampf, when in fact he meant every word.

All these missteps helped trigger an unprecedented global conflict which ended seven years later with the unimaginable sight of mushroom clouds rising over incinerated Japanese cities.

So we have to be grateful for a leader of sober thinking and steel resolve like Winston Churchill, who rose up just in time to begin confronting the Nazi threat for what it truly was. Shudder the thought that Hitler had gotten to the Bomb first.

Such alert, tenacious statesmanship is sorely needed again today, as the seductions at operation in our time are even more sinister and deceptive. Indeed, the Bible clearly warns of seducing spirits in the last days, such as Paul’s admonition: “But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come… evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:1, 13).

And in a nuclear age, the margin of error for misjudging character and misreading intentions is mercilessly razor thin.

One powerful deception today sees Israel’s surrender of the West Bank as a small sacrifice for the sake of peace in our time, when in fact it would only whet the appetite of global jihad.

Another reasons that mankind has not used atomic weapons against each other for the last 70 years now, enticing us into thinking it will not happen again. The black-and-white footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all those nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll, are so old and grainy they pre-date the digital age. Likewise, the ‘experts’ lull us to sleep by explaining that Iran—as with North Korea—launched its nuclear program merely as a guarantee against regime change, when its true purpose is as a frightening instrument of Islamic conquest.

So the P5+1 nations are quibbling with Tehran over the inspection of centrifuges, when their real burden should be for preventing the incineration of cities.

And like before, world leaders insist the Ayatollahs are only venting when they cry, “Death to Israel! Death to America!” when in fact they mean every word!

David Parsons is the Media Director for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem .

Amid the cross-country race to election 2016, the secular left’s utter disdain for both our Creator Christ and His faithful followers is fast approaching critical mass. Self-styled “progressives”—that is, America’s cultural Marxist agents of ruin—typically disguise their designs on despotism in the flowery and euphemistic language of “reproductive health,” “anti-discrimination” and “multiculturalism.”

We see this Orwellian newspeak at play right now in Washington, D.C., where congressional Republicans endeavor to prevent, if only timorously, two unconstitutional pieces of legislation from taking effect. The first, the District of Columbia’s so-called “Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act,” would force pro-life groups, including churches and para-church organizations, to hire pro-abortion zealots and other godless rabble-rousers with worldviews and socio-political agendas overtly hostile to the express mission of those churches and organizations.

The second, the farcically mislabeled “Human Rights Amendment Act,” would jettison the longstanding “Armstrong Amendment,” which, as notes the Daily Signal, “was enacted by Congress in 1989 to exempt religious schools in D.C. from being forced into violating their beliefs about human sexuality by ‘promoting, encouraging or condoning any homosexual act, lifestyle, orientation or belief.'”

In other words, under this new legislation churches and religious schools will be forced, under penalty of law, to deny the Christian sexual ethic and, instead, promote, encourage and condone homosexual behavior and other pagan sexual immorality.

So much for “human rights.”

Still, while most on the left are careful to mask their totalitarian goals and anti-Christian animus by coating these poison pills in sugar-sweet jargon, on occasion one of these God-denying goose-steppers will let down his guard, drop the euphemistic BS, and vomit forth that acidic bile, unfiltered “progressivism.”

The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Tayler is one such goose-stepper. In an April 19  screed headlined “Marco Rubio’s deranged religion, Ted Cruz’s bizarre faith: Our would-be presidents are God-fearing clowns,” “freethinking” Jeffrey, a paragon of paganism, ably puts the “bigot” in anti-Christian bigotry.

In reference to the 2016 presidential candidates who call themselves Christian, Tayler bemoans that these “God-fearing clowns and faith-mongering nitwits [are] groveling before Evangelicals.” He further protests Christians’ “nattering on about their belief in the Almighty and their certainty that if we just looked, we could find answers to many of our ills in the Good Book.”

Right, it’s called the gospel, Jeffrey. It’s the only hope that either you or any of us has.

“There will almost certainly be no (declared) atheist or even agnostic among the candidates,” he laments. “This is scandalous, given the electorate’s gradual, relentless ditching of religion.”

Gradual? That’s a gaping understatement when one considers that even today over 80 percent of Americans identify as Christian with the vast majority of those who don’t nevertheless acknowledging the transcendent reality of a Creator God. Every man, woman and child understands through both general revelation and human reason that this unfathomably intricate, staggeringly fine-tuned universe didn’t create and fine-tune itself. It’s a tiny minority of angry, self-deluded materialists like Jeffrey Tayler who deny this self-evident truth. Scandalous? Hardly.

Continues Tayler: “With the dapper Florida Sen. Marco Rubio we move into the more disturbing category of Republicans we might charitably diagnose as ‘faith-deranged’—in other words, as likely to do fine among the unwashed ‘crazies’ in the red-state primaries, but whose religious beliefs would (or should) render them unfit for civilized company anywhere else.”

Sound familiar? Such hubristic elitism is so 1939. It was similarly “faith-deranged,” “unwashed crazies” in Germany who, at that time, were numerically branded “unfit for civilized company.” Shall we Christians be fitted with yellow crosses, Herr Tayler?

Our Darwinian disbeliever then distills the timeless Christian faith to “far-fetched fiction and foolish figments” before launching into a tirade against the left’s favorite candidate to hate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, while, likewise, knifing twixt the shoulder blades, the richly diverse, 100 thousand-plus student body at Liberty University.

“Cruz pandered fulsomely to the faith-deranged by choosing to announce at Liberty University, that bastion of darkness located in Lynchburg, Virginia. Once administered by the late Jerry Falwell, Liberty promises a ‘World Class Christian education’ and boasts that it has been ‘training champions for Christ since 1971′—grounds enough, in my view, to revoke the institution’s charter and subject it to immediate quarantine until sanity breaks out.”

Are you getting this? Tayler’s not joking about revoking Liberty’s accreditation and otherwise consigning all faithful Christians to a constructive encampment beyond the margins of functional society. That’s their end-game. That’s the way their boxcars roll.

Neither do our papist friends escape unscathed. Tayler smears the Catholic Church as a “fanatical homophobic cult,” while blaspheming his own Creator. He inquires in litmus of some obscure atheist candidate, “[I]f you are indeed an atheist, will you come out of the closet about it? Will you utter that vilest of stock phrases ‘God bless America!’ to close speeches, thereby lending undue credence to the nonsense notion that an invisible tyrant rules us from on high?”

“Atheists can dream,” he pines. “They can dream of a candidate (and future president) who will, one day, say ‘I do not believe in God. I do not believe in a hereafter.'”

And why not? Russia had its Stalin and China its Mao. Who needs an “invisible tyrant” when we can elect one at the ballot box?

Or didn’t we already do that.

Matt Barber is founder and editor-in chief of . He is an author, columnist, cultural analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. Having retired as an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight from the ring to the culture war. (Follow Matt on Twitter: @jmattbarber).

I asked the Lord to wake me when He wanted to speak to me and for five nights in a row at 3 a.m., He answered that prayer. The following are five prophetic words the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart. I pray they touch yours.

Day 1: The Lord spoke early this morning about the future of the American church. I saw a person walk to the edge of a cliff overlooking a huge valley. The Man of God started shouting to the masses and they got up and started moving toward him. Thousands!

The Lord said complacency was leaving and people were ready to move forward. The America church has tried to advice thought programs and worldly structure, but have produced an Ishmael, but now Isaac is on his way! There is a Move of God coming to the church an Awakening!

Day 2: The Lord woke me early this morning … I felt my bed shake so I jumped up! The Lord spoke very strongly and boldly saying, “Will you answer this call or should I call another?” I said, “I will answer your call.”

The Lord said there is a greater shaking coming to America then anyone can imagine. I’m calling the leaders now. They will be the ones of intercession. The broken ones. They have been preparing for years. The current success the American church thinks she has, will have to be repented for. The American church has produced a Ishmael now its time for Isaac. I’ve never felt God so strong, my friends! We are about to see repentance in our churches from leaders who have taken the focus off God. I encourage everyone to fast and pray. Get ready!

Day 3: The Lord says He is making an offensive response to every demonic attack on America. The Lord is putting His armies in place. This will be a wave, and yes, even greater waves are coming of the responsive attacks from heaven. God wants his people and land back!

Day 4: The Lord woke me at 3 a.m. this morning speaking very strongly about this hour in the church. The Lord said, “I need my watchmen to be alert and ready at all hours!” When the Spirit wakes you get up and pray, don’t pray in bed or roll over. This is the time God needs us to be seeking Him. Everything is silent with no hindrances at this time of Day. Whenever God wants your time, give it to Him. Don’t be sleeping when you should be seeking!

Day 5: This morning the Lord spoke a very strong word to my spirit about the revivalists in the land. Many are falling away from the fight and giving up their calling. Like Elijah the powerful mouthpiece for God, when things got hard he complained and quit. So God raised up Elisha! Never watch someone else answer the call GOD placed on your life. 

Stay in the fight, get back in and never give up! America needs the revivalist to stand up, stand out and be counted on! I felt the Lord say, “I’m about to do something so powerful in the land and I need and want my revivalists to be ready!” 

Pockets of true revival are breaking out across America. Want to know more about the next great move of God? Click here to see Jennifer LeClaire’s new book, featuring Dutch Sheets, Reinhard Bonnke, Jonathan Cahn, Billy Graham and others. 

Joe Joe Dawson is the president of Burn Texarkana Revival center and House of Prayer. Pastor Dawson also serves as staff evangelist for First Assembly of God in Texarkana, Texas, where he also is now the Tribe College/young adult pastor. Burn Texarkana has one revival/awakening service a month at First Assembly and also has Burn on the Road meetings in neighboring cites monthly. There are four Burn Texarkana prayer meetings each week! Joe is married to the love of his life, Autumn, and together they have three kids: Malachi, Judah and Ezra.

Almost 20 years ago, the journal First Things published an article by a famous German theologian named Wolfhart Pannenberg titled “How to Think About Secularism.” In the article, Pannenberg outlined the nature of secularism and how it threatened the church, also explaining how the church should not respond to the challenge.

Looking back, it’s clear that many of our pastors and leaders have done the opposite of what he counseled, and we are paying the price for it today.

Pannenberg himself was orthodox in some of his beliefs and unorthodox in others, but I’m focusing here on his observations about secularism rather than his overall theology.

Tracing today’s Western secularism back to the 17th century, he wrote, “A public climate of secularism undermines the confidence of Christians in the truth of what they believe.”

So, it is not just a matter of Christians becoming worldly and materialistic. Instead, the secular climate undermines our confidence in the truthfulness of the gospel.

At the same time, Pannenberg writes, “In a secular milieu, even an elementary knowledge of Christianity, ‘its history, teachings, sacred texts, and formative figures’ [quoting Peter L. Berger] dwindles. It is no longer a matter of rejecting Christian teachings; large numbers of people have not the vaguest knowledge of what those teachings are.”

This is exactly what we see today in America and Europe, where a large percentage of the population is completely ignorant of the fundamentals of the faith. Is it any wonder, then, that we find ourselves in such a moral and spiritual tailspin?

But this is only the beginning. As Pannenberg notes, “The more widespread the ignorance of Christianity, the greater the prejudice against Christianity,” and when people do search for spiritual truth, they seek out alternative religions instead.

Is this not an accurate description of our nation today, with widespread ignorance of the gospel leading to an increasing hostility to the gospel, and with the assumption that true spirituality must be found in another faith (or outside of any particular faith)?

Truth itself is under attack, as Pannenberg wrote with almost prophetic accuracy: “In the view of many, including many Christians, Christian doctrines are merely opinions that may or may not be affirmed according to individual preference, or depending on whether they speak to personally felt needs. … Missionary proclamation was once understood as bringing the truth to others, and was therefore both legitimate and extremely important. For many today, the missionary enterprise is a matter of imposing our personal preferences and culturally conditioned prejudices upon others, and is therefore not only illegitimate but morally offensive.”

“How dare you impose your religion on us,” shouts the world to us incessantly.

That’s why the “destruction of [the very idea of truth] is key to legitimating a secularist culture, since the idea of truth touches on secularism’s greatest vulnerability.”

How then should we respond to the crisis of secularism? What did Pannenberg counsel? Read these words carefully, and then ask yourself if we have followed his counsel or if we have done the exact opposite:

“The absolutely worst way to respond to the challenge of secularism is to adapt to secular standards in language, thought, and way of life. If members of a secularist society turn to religion at all, they do so because they are looking for something other than what that culture already provides. It is counterproductive to offer them religion in a secular mode that is carefully trimmed in order not to offend their secular sensibilities.”

He has hit the bull’s eye with his analysis. But there’s more: “What people look for in religion is a plausible alternative, or at least a complement, to life in a secularist society. Religion that is ‘more of the same’ is not likely to be very interesting.”

To be clear, Pannenberg stressed that he was not arguing for “dead traditionalism,” noting that, “The old-fashioned ways of doing things in the churches may include elements that are insufferably boring and empty of meaning.”

Rather, “Christianity proposed as an alternative or complement to life in a secularist society must be both vibrant and plausible. Above all, it must be substantively different and propose a difference in how people live.”

In other words, we must show the world something radically different. We must call the lost into something radically different. We must live lives that are truly different, characterized by the radical, wonderful nature of the gospel and the radical, wonderful new life we experience in Jesus.

Unfortunately, when we try to accommodate our message and method to the secular society, and “when the offending edges are removed, people are invited to suspect that the clergy do not really believe anything so very distinctive.”

Why should people listen to us if our message and lives are just like theirs? If we are just like the world, what are we calling the world to? We hurt and bleed like everyone else, and we deal with the same problems everyone deals with, but our message really does bring transformation.

That means that, “The plausible and persuasive presentation of Christian distinctives is not a matter of marketing. It is a matter of what the churches owe to people in our secularist societies: the proclamation of the risen Christ, the joyful evidence of new life in Christ, of life that overcomes death.”

And while stating that, “Authentic Christian teaching appropriates all that is valid in the secularist culture,” Pannenberg emphasizes that it does so while taking hold of and proclaiming the very truths that the secularist society neglects or even disdains.

Sadly, so many of our American pastors have gone in the opposite direction, and as things have declined in our churches, they have reaffirmed their error rather than corrected it.

In short, they followed a worldly philosophy of accommodation (which is very different than wise, Spirit-led, cultural sensitivity), but rather than this bringing a wave of renewal, salvation and discipleship, it brought more spiritual decline in the form of superficiality and compromise.

Then, as these leaders continued to survey the spiritual landscape, looking at the defection of so many young people from the church and the increasing hostility towards Christianity in our society, rather than recognizing that the real problem was lack of deep commitment to the radical claims of Jesus, they watered down the message even more, removing even more of the offensive edges, lowering the requirements and emphasizing what is trending more than what is truthful.

Now, the floodgates of apostasy have opened wide, and yet so many leaders still do not recognize what has happened, continuing to put the blame in the wrong place.

Yes, by all means, let us be sensitive and compassionate in our outreach to the lost, and let us with humility give ourselves to bless this dying world, living as servants rather than as those who are “holier than thou.”

But let us not accommodate the gospel to secularism. Instead, let us show how totally different and other the gospel is, how dramatically transformative new life in Jesus is, and how it is absolutely worth it to know Him and follow Him to the point that we joyfully swim against the tide of a very worldly world, having exactly what this society so desperately needs.

Then, empowered by the Spirit as we proclaim the truth and live the truth, we will change the world rather than the world changing us.

Michael Brown is the author of 25 books, including Can You Be Gay and Christian? and host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show “The Line of Fire.” He is also president of FIRE School of Ministry and director of the Coalition of Conscience.

When Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn’s book The Harbinger hit the New York Times best-seller list the week it released in print, I believe the sleeping giant called the church started waking up.

A prophetic warning to the American masses about God’s impending judgment on the nation, The Harbinger connects undeniable dots between what has happened in the United States since the terrorist attacks in 2001—including a housing market bust and banking industry collapse that led to a $700 billion government bailout to prop up financial institutions and auto manufacturers—and Israel’s fate after it turned away from Jehovah God. Although written as a fictional narrative, the book details how nine signs hidden in recent events reveal God’s progressive judgment on America.

Here’s the message in a nutshell: Cahn believes the Holy Spirit showed him that events such as 9/11, the collapse of Wall Street and the Great Recession occurred because God lifted some of His hedge of protection from around America. He is certain God is trying to get our attention. He is convinced that God is warning the nation to turn back to Him and used nine harbingers, or prophetic signs, to shake us up and wake us up.

The Harbinger may anger some; it may scare others. It caused some to fall to their knees in repentance, and it caused others to cry out in intercession. The release of The Harbinger was what you could call a “kairos moment”—a supreme moment in time when God sent a prophet with a “you need to hear this and repent” message to America. Notice I say “to America”—not just to the church in America. Cahn’s message about an ancient mystery that holds the secret to America’s future transcended the Christian market to become a mainstream phenomenon that, at the time of this writing, is still on the New York Times best-seller list nearly three years later.

The book—and the clear proof of God’s discipline on our nation—changed my theology. Until 2012 I did not believe God sent judgments on nations in the New Testament age. I reasoned that if God were going to judge any nation, He would start with places like the Netherlands, with cities like Amsterdam and its infamous Red Light District that hosts all manner of immorality. But the founders of the Netherlands didn’t make and break a covenant with God.

I believe America as a nation is reaping what we’ve sown. I believe that where there is unfettered sin, there is ultimately death (Rom. 6:23). And although some rightly argue that many nations are more sinful and anti-God than the United States, consider this: to whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48). As a world power, the United States has done much good. But our nation’s Christian foundations are shaking. The seven major influencers of our society—the economy, government, family, spirituality, education, media and arts—are shaping an idolatrous New Age culture.

I submit to you that our nation is in natural and spiritual crisis, and it will take a divine intervention to avert disaster. Although “man” can’t solve the problems in our nation, electing leaders who will guide the United States using biblical principles rather than those who defy biblical principles in the name of change speaks volumes to heaven. Politicians can’t fix what’s broken, but politicians who pray to the one who can will receive His wisdom to right the ship.

If we don’t make a drastic shift in this nation, I believe there’s no way to escape God’s judgment. Billy Graham’s late wife, Ruth, once said, “If God doesn’t judge America He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” Again, I never wanted to believe that. But now I do. I can see it. God has removed some of our hedge of protection because He loves us and hopes we’ll wake up.

A Third Great Awakening

On April 21, 2007, the Lord woke me up at midnight with a prophetic word that I didn’t fully understand. Mind you, this was before the housing bubble burst, before the banks and financial institutions started to fail, before the U.S. government bailout, before President Obama was elected, before the Great Recession that rippled through the world and eventually saw economies completely fail, before the Ebola scare, and before ISIS emerged as a credible threat on American soil. Before we—or at least before I—understood our desperate need for a great awakening, the Holy Spirit spoke these words to me:

There is a great awakening coming to this nation, for I have heard your cries and I long to heal your land. I am a covenant God, and I will not forget the covenant I made with your Founding Forefathers. Yes, there will be a shaking, but the foundations will not crack and they will not crumble. Only those things which can be shaken will be shaken that the sin in the land may be laid bare. Repentance. I require repentance from My people who have through the generations allowed the enemy to take ground in this nation. I require repentance for the abortions and for the prayerlessness. I require repentance for the apathy and for the idolatry. You shall have no other gods before Me. I am indeed the God of America. Yes, there is a great awakening coming to this nation. I am the author of it, and I will bring it to pass. Just turn from your wicked ways and humble yourselves. Stand in the gap and make up the hedge. I am the Lord, and I am a warrior. I will not leave or forsake this country. I will fight through you and with you to regain what has been lost. Be encouraged now, because as you go forth boldly with My Word and My Spirit, there will be the sound of truth, and it will prevail in the land. Speak boldly and clearly, and watch as the mighty men arise to take their positions on the wall and in the churches and in the marketplaces, for I am raising up deliverers and reformers in this generation who will not shrink back at the challenge that is coming in the days ahead.

Yes, it will grow darker before My light shines brightly from this nation again. But the light has not been extinguished and will not be extinguished. The time to rise up is now. I am calling you to war. I am calling you to repentance. I am calling you to My side. I am the captain of the hosts. I am calling you to victory. I am calling you to destiny. Will you answer?

It’s Time to Wake Up

There is hope for America. I believe the remnant is rising. But it has certainly gotten darker in this nation, and again, I fear God’s judgment may fall harder if we continue to stand by in silence while abortion, same-sex marriage, and other sin rages in our land.

The church—the “sleeping giant”—needs to wake up. If the church were being the church, we wouldn’t have so many problems in our nation. Of course, these problems didn’t start just four years ago. There has been an increasingly rapid decline in morality in this nation since prayer was removed from schools in 1962.

Abortion was legalized in 1973. Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage in 2004. And plenty of wickedness has taken place in between and since.

Meanwhile, the church looks, thinks, and acts too much like the world. Christians are having abortions. Christians are committing adultery. Christians are fornicating. Christians are getting divorced. Lord, help us!

At the same time, the Sermon on the Mount speaks to giving to the needy, prayer and fasting. I can’t prove it with hard numbers, but it’s likely that most Christians aren’t giving to the poor. It’s probable that most Christians aren’t praying for our nation. And I’m quite sure most Christians aren’t fasting. We really aren’t serving as salt and light. And that’s ultimately why our society is becoming more tasteless and continues to grow darker.

Adding insult to this injurious lifestyle, some Christians declare that prayer rallies and solemn assemblies don’t make a difference.

I believe the greatest sin of the church is prayerlessness. Far too many are busy feeding their souls on worldly entertainment to meet God at the altar.

There Is Hope

The shaking is undeniable and our nation is in crisis. It has grown darker since the Lord spoke that prophetic word to me in 2007. It will continue growing darker until we turn back to God as a nation. The good news is that when we do, we’ll see a great awakening, and many souls will come into the kingdom. There will be a great harvest. I’m blowing the trumpet. I’m sounding the alarm. There is hope for America, and that hope lies in the body of Christ rising up to do as Jesus commanded: “Occupy till I come” (Luke 19:13, KJV).

Of course, we have to wake up first. It would be easy to dismiss Cahn’s revelation about America’s future, which is based on a pattern found in Isaiah 9:10 after God temporarily lifted the hedge of protection around Israel and an enemy struck the land. Yet the It’s Time to Wake Up message of The Harbinger has resonated with millions of Americans—and even found its way into the hands of government officials.

In 2012 Cahn’s publisher, Charisma House, sent a copy of the book to every member of Congress so they could hear what God is saying to the nation. I believe we’re living in the last days when, like the apostle Paul said, “Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, slanderers, unrestrained, fierce, despisers of those who are good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power. Turn away from such people” (2 Tim. 3:2-5, MEV).

I believe we’re living at the end of the age when, as Jesus said: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. … For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, epidemics, and earthquakes in various places. … Because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:5-14).

I believe time is short for America to repent before we see stronger manifestations of God’s discipline on this nation, but at the same time I have never been more hopeful. I believe that we are on a cusp of a Third Great Awakening. And I believe the Lord is using The Harbinger to sound an alarm that will wake up the mighty men and women, the reformers and deliverers who will stand in the gap and make up the hedge.

But God is not just using The Harbinger. He’s also using prophetic voices such as Dutch Sheets with his “Appeal to Heaven” message, Billy Graham with his “My Hope” initiative, Reinhard Bonnke with his trumpet call that “all America shall be saved,” and many others.

So let this be a wake-up to the realities our nation is facing, but let it also fill you with hope, and let that hope give substance to your faith to pray and take action as you agree with God’s plan for America to wake up in this hour.

Jennifer LeClaire is the news editor of Charisma. She is also director of the Awakening House of Prayer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and author of several books, including The Next Great Move of God: An Appeal to Heaven for Spiritual Awakening and Mornings With the Holy Spirit. You can visit her website at .

Bishop Harry Jackson tells how government officials shut down their ‘Appeal to Heaven’ meeting at .

A resource on this topic:

Prophet and author Jennifer LeClaire calls the church to arise in this dark yet hopeful hour in her latest book, The Next Great Move of God: An Appeal to Heaven for Spiritual Awakening (Charisma House). You can find this book wherever Christian books are sold or at or .