The American church has more than enough critics pointing their fingers at its problems. From feminists to LGBT individuals to racial activists to homeless communities to doctrinal purists to politicians to whomever – all seem to have a bone to pick with the American church.
Here’s my challenge to every critic: are you willing to be a part of the solution? Or do you just want to keep throwing rocks?
You see, change will only happen when critics, like you and me, have a revelation of what the American church should be: the Bride of Christ. If we can just get a small glimpse of what this Bride should look like, we would fall in love with her. Then, we’d do whatever we had to do to bring the Bride into her fulfillment.
My prayer today:
Lord, help us. We believers are being tossed about by every wave of criticism, by the trickery of men, and by deceit, but if You would reveal a glimpse to us of Your Bride without any spots or wrinkles or blemishes, in all her holiness and without fault, we would use our revelations as lighthouses to draw us toward her. (Based on Ephesians 4 and Ephesians 5:27)
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for America.
The main storyline of the Bible from the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation revolves around the nation of Israel and God’s covenant people – the Jews. There are side narratives, allowing Gentiles to be grafted into the main storyline, which believers like me are thankful for. Yet even so, the Apostle Paul warns Gentiles not to think of ourselves as being superior to the Jews, but to be grateful and to fear God. Paul also states that the calling of God on Israel is irrevocable. (China and Israel: My End-Times Teachers)
If we believe we’re in the last days, then we need to start praying and interceding for Israel. As John Wesley wrote: “God does nothing except through prayer.”
My prayer today:
Lord, give us Your love and zeal for Israel and Jerusalem. Help us to open our mouths to defend and to pray for them until Your righteousness and salvation is fulfilled in their midst. (Based on Isaiah 62:1)
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Tuesdays to fast and pray for Israel and Jerusalem.
My new weekly column entitled, “Are Demons Responsible for Inner City Violence,” can be read by clicking here.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can perhaps read it better by using the Chrome browser rather than Safari. Also, you can go to the app store and download a free app called: WND.
In it, my wife Carol and I were attending a church meeting. I sat in the front row of the sanctuary, next to the church’s pastor on my left and Carol to my right. The whole church was waiting on the Holy Spirit, hoping to hear Him speak to the assembly through prophecy.
All of a sudden, my wife spoke in tongues. I waited a moment to see if one of the pastors or another believer would interpret the tongues. Then, I started to interpret her tongues by saying, “The day of the Lord is coming quickly. Are you prepared…”
I continued speaking the interpretation until I felt my wife’s elbow hitting my ribs. My eyes must have been closed because I opened them to look at her, wondering why she had elbowed me. She rolled her eyes and nodded her head toward the sanctuary. Everyone had stood up and left. A few remained at the back of the sanctuary talking with each other.
End of dream.
Many of my dreams are weird, but this one felt so realistic.
When I awakened, I felt hurt because the pastor was one I knew from my past, a person who had respect for my prophetic words. Yet, the pastor and the congregation had paid no attention to my words because the prophecy was about the end-times and challenged them to prepare themselves. They already had everything figured out. They were leaving on the first bus out, as in Pre-Trib rapture.
Then, I knew the Holy Spirit was showing me through this dream that changing the church’s thinking from a Pre-Tribulation rapture belief into one that prepares itself for going through the great tribulation would be an uphill struggle. I had better prepare myself now!
My prayer today:
Lord, I pray the American believers will hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches and will be fair-minded like the Bereans so they search the scriptures to find out whether a Post-Tribulation rapture could possibly be true. (Based on Revelation 2:7 and Acts 17:11)
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for America.
The above almost six-minute video is from Church United and was produced as a tool to stop AB 2943 from becoming law in California. This proposed law would ban helping anyone with unwanted same-sex desires or gender confusion. So far, AB 2943 has passed the California Assembly by a lop-sided vote and will soon be voted upon in the California Senate.
The video shows five men and two women relating their journeys out of their LGBT lifestyles. All of their remarks touched my heart with the challenges they faced. Here are a few words gleaned from their testimonies:
Woman #1: “I heard the Lord say to me in His still small voice, “Choose,” and it wasn’t an easy choice. It was the hardest choice I have ever made…”
Woman #2: “I lived and loved being a lesbian. I felt like I was born that way. It seemed to explain why I was the way I was…A seventeen year-old boy approached me with what he called a word from the Lord. What he said to me was a direct answer to something I had been praying about for years. Getting this answer to my prayer caused me to question whether I knew God. So, I picked up a Bible and began highlighting every passage that described the character of God. I discovered this amazing God that was so beautiful and so excellent. I couldn’t think of withholding myself from Him.
Man #1: “My parents and I cried for two hours. They told me how much they loved me no matter what. They asked me how they could help. I wanted help wherever I could get it. They found a Christian counselor. I had no promise that I would ever change but I had support from the counselor and my parents that I was loved and I was safe.”
Man #2: “God can restore the years the locusts have eaten. It is absolutely amazing.”
If you have the time, the six-minute video is well-worth watching.
My prayer today:
Lord, help us to be Your hands outreached to the LGBT community and help us to yield to Your loving Spirit to be Your servants to them.
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Tuesdays to fast and pray for LGBT believers.
My new weekly column entitled, “China and Israel: My End-Times Teachers,” can be read by clicking here.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can perhaps read it better by using the Chrome browser rather than Safari. Also, you can go to the app store and download a free app called: WND.
In the early 1990’s, Larry Burkett told a story on his radio program, “Money Matters,” that still sends shivers down my spine. Burkett had attended a local church and heard a Chinese man tell his testimony.
It seems the man was a lieutenant of Mao Zedong when Mao’s communist army defeated Chiang Kai-Shek and took control of China. Mao then set out to cleanse China of all imperialist influences, especially American connections. Missionaries were sent home or killed. Chinese pastors were imprisoned or killed. Christians were killed. Political leaders, people who had visited America or attended schools there were killed. Historians estimate 40,000,000 Chinese were executed by Mao during his various purges.
The man, who told this testimony, was chosen by Mao as one of the leaders in the rural purges. He dispatched his tasks with cruel efficiency. But some Christians focused their prayers on him and he was miraculously saved. So convinced was the man that Christ was the answer for China he decided to return to Peking (Beijing) and tell Mao the good news of Jesus.
Mao was not impressed with his lieutenant’s message and commanded him to renounce his new found faith. The man refused and said, “I cannot deny the experience I’ve had with Jesus.”
Mao brought his wife and children before the man. Soldiers stood behind his family with guns aimed at their heads. Once again, Mao asked the man to renounce his faith. The man fell to his knees and said, “Please do not kill my family, but I cannot deny Jesus.”
His family was executed before his eyes.
Next, his parents, brothers, sisters and their families were brought before the man with soldiers standing behind them with guns at their heads. Mao insisted the man renounce Jesus. The man refused. His entire family was executed before his eyes.
All of his friends and their families were placed in front of him, but still he would not renounce Christ. They were executed.
Then, Mao decided death was too good for the man. He was stripped naked and placed in a cold cell. Once a day, guards were ordered to beat him.
His imprisonment and beatings continued for fifteen years. During that time, the man led 90% of the guards to Christ and the guards even risked their own freedoms by bringing Bibles to him.
When he finally emerged from prison, he walked down a road, heading toward his hometown. As he walked, people in the fields next to the road, fell to their knees and cried out to be saved by Jesus. Yet, the man said nothing because the presence of God was so heavy upon him that he just continued to walk.
Larry Burkett said that when the Chinese man finished his testimony he was asked, “What do you think of our American churches?”
The man gazed at the audience with tears in his eyes. “You American Christians do not know the Jesus I know,” he said.
My prayer today:
Lord, help us Americans to know the Jesus of the Book of Revelation and to not be offended by what He does in the end-times and by what He doesn’t do.
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for America.
Once again, it’s time to hear from our sister in Jerusalem about what she is witnessing there as a believer in Yeshua. Put your prayer shawls on and pray for Israel and Sister J. Now here she is —
May the Lord be glorified.
It is2:30 amand I should be asleep. I need to worktomorrow,Sunday, Jerusalem Day, and I love to write about Jerusalem and Jerusalem Day in particular. But this prayer request is pressing me to write. Perhaps prayer request is the wrong word – it is more of a call to pray!
I told you that this week would possibly be pivotal here and for all of the Middle East and the world. You probably know by now that Israel struck some 70 mostly Iranian bases in Syria this week after 20 missiles from Syria were fired at us. It was a major confrontation. That wasThursday.
On Fridaywas the continuation of the Hamas Gaza “days of rage” dubbed “the march of return.”It has gained momentum because of much false news reporting.
TUESDAY 15TH OF MAY(please note that we are some 8-12 hours ahead of North America according to the clock) the call has gone out to Palestinians and their supporters worldwide to come to the borders of Israel and storm them…tear them down.This Fridaysaw some 15,000 rioters at the borders causing fires, even setting their own gas pipe line on fire, along the fence and setting wheat fields in Israel aflame using kites with incendiaries attached into Israel.
I understand that there are gatherings at the borders of Lebanon and possibly Jordan as well. Also within the Hamas-run Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria there is definitely the strong possibility of participation.
The15th of Mayis called by the Palestinians –Nakba Day (catastrophe day). They call it a day of rage that commemorates the birth of the modern State of Israel according to the Gregorian Calendar. Hamas has fanned it into a major day over the past 10 years.
So today, Sunday 13th of May is Jerusalem Day.
Tomorrow, Monday the 14th of May, is the day that the US Embassy is formally opening in Jerusalem.
Tuesday the 15th of Mayis the day set to be “the mother of all days of rage” with the storming of the borders of Israel from all sides and within led by the Gaza Hamas leadership.
Wednesday the 16th of Maybegins the month of the Ramadan fast.
“The burdenof the word of theLordagainst Israel. Thus says theLord, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him:“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem.And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.In that day,” says theLord, “I will strike every horse with confusion, and its rider with madness;…”ZECHARIAH 12:1-3 (of course, great promises follow this section)
There is NO FEAR, and surely without a doubt, we have many promises that HE WILL BE GLORIFIED and that ALL OF ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED. But we also see that many, many things will first happen and many waters will be passed through.
BUT HE HAS TOLD US TO PRAY. AND TO WATCH AND PRAY. Habakkuk prayed without apology“Oh Lord, in wrath remember mercy.”It is time to pray the scriptures on our faces.
PLEASE enter your closets and pray before Him Who hears, those of you who are called as watchmen for the Lord on the walls of Jerusalem. I believe that we are entering that time.
In my take of things, we are a body, but individually all rather little and simple. We are not called to leave the battle to the spiritual giants whoever they are, but to each do our part. It is not up to us to decide how small and insignificant it is. I think of the disciples told to feed the multitude and they said, “Lord! I have NOTHING! Only this small insignificant amount!,” but HE took it…HE blessed it …HE broke it…and it was MORE THAN ENOUGH.
Each of us has our portion. Be it big guns or a piece of bread and a small fish. We can pray…even a little.
As I said, I felt that this call to prayer had to go outnow. I hope that we see no need ultimately. I will now try to sleep. May The Lord be glorified on the borders of Israel and in Jerusalem…and in each of us!
“The reason gays have a problem with the church is that we treat their sin as so much worse than the others. We will excommunicate people for homosexuality but not for divorce. And I do it for divorce. Divorce is a terrible sin in the sight of God…
“It’s also what I said about singleness. This isn’t about sexuality as much as it is about surrendering to the Kingdom and being a person about the Kingdom. Look, if I’m single for the rest of my life, that’s not the biggest thing in my life. It’s not my sexuality or my sexual urges which define who I am.
“I find my identity — are you kidding me? I can actually speak to God. I can be His servant. I’m going to be with Him forever. Where’s my identity found in?
“A lot of these sin issues are secondary. The bottom line – let’s just start here. Whatever issues you are dealing with today…Are you willing to surrender to God? No matter what He says. What if He said in this book [Bible] that Chinese people have to stand on their heads? Just an example, but I will try to stand on my head. He’s God! What if He said Chinese people don’t get to marry? He’s God. I don’t like that but I’m going to surrender to that because I understand the difference between a Creator and a created being. So whatever!
“And before we get to what this book [Bible] actually says, I have to say, ‘Will you surrender? If you disagree with God on an issue, would you still submit to Him?’ I really believe that is the core issue here.
“Then if so, because that’s the type of person I want to be also, let’s look at this book [Bible] together. A lot of following Jesus is about denying yourself and pick up your cross and follow Me. A lot of this is about beating your body and making it your slave. It’s about not doing the things you very much want to do. That’s the core issue.
“Two guys walking in, holding hands. That’s not the first thing I’d address. I really think we jump to that too quickly, rather than saying, ‘At the core of your being, do you believe in a Creator and if He is your Creator, would you surrender to whatever He asks for you to do? Maybe I’m wrong on this thing. Let’s study together and then you tell me.
“From my personal understanding of this book [Bible], it [homosexuality] appears to be a sin to me. But if you study it and your best personal conclusion is that it is not. Help me understand that from scripture and not from reasoning. Because we all reason and we all fight for the things we want.” (See full video here.)
My prayer today:
Lord, help American Christians to follow Your example of reasoning together with LGBT believers, allowing You to be Lord and us to be Your flawed disciples. (Based on Isaiah 1:18)
What do you think and has the Lord spoken to you today?
Join with me on Tuesdays to fast and pray for LGBT believers.
I know that it is perhaps too soon since my last letter, but I did want to share what I have seen and heard while it is yet fresh in my heart. May you be encouraged and blessed and may THE LORD alone be glorified and edified!
“for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it”. MATTHEW 13:17
I suspected that Israel turning 70 would be dramatic even though I am always amazed when I walk around Jerusalem. The city is a clear example of The Lord’s ability and faithfulness to fulfill His own promises.
The grieving that I began to describe in the letter that I sent you on Remembrance Day, seemed deeper this year. How was that possible? It is terribly deep EVERY year. As I watched films and saw photos of soldiers and families, it hit me afresh that not one picture was taken on foreign soil but all HERE…in our neighborhoods, around the corner and down the block in this very tiny country…because these, our sons and daughters, husbands and wives really are defending the land that is in front of their houses, our houses. I
It is all so personal and all so in your face ALL the time. There are no faceless people, even though the population of the country is approaching 9 million. They are daily on the train with me. Many are soldiers whom I laugh with and pray for and whose packs I trip over as it is strewn in the aisle. I tell a sleepy soldier to mind his bullets as they are slipping out, or another that his phone is ringing.
But then it happened: the crowds gravitated back to Har Herzl (Mount Herzl). Streams flowing into rivers and then becoming an ocean of people. I watched and then turned on the television. I like to watch the ceremony (“tekes” in Hebrew). It is truly like having a finger on the pulse of a patient. It is only in Hebrew and I can understand much of it, and so it means a lot to me.
Always it seems as though it is IMPOSSIBLE to go in a hair’s breadth from deep and real mourning into rejoicing, but now I have come to expect that they will pull it off, AGAIN. Nevertheless, I lift up a prayer because there is the heart and morale of this people who still do not know Him at stake.
And this is the 70th year!
The Biblical significance of the numbers do not go unnoticed here. Seventy is perfection, completeness, I could go on and on. Most of you know, and this country knows, and seems to me to be looking up with expectation. Everyone is excited. Everyone over 70 remembers…
The ceremonies are opened and the prayers are spoken and embraced. The trumpet sounds its minor notes and moves to the major ones and the flag is raised. The eyes look upward. The ceremonies are intermingled with song, prayer, poems, speeches and a theatrical show in lights and dance. This years was spectacular. The story of our people from the beginning.
How in the world did they do this: turn the stage into Mt. Sinai one minute and a flood of the words of all of the prophets in Hebrew in the next? Drones flew over adding displays to the sky.
But it is NOT the ceremony – dramatic and emotional though it was – that I want to describe to and share with you. Not the speeches that moved the heart and inspired and brought tears again and again: Not the memories that reminded us that THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE, BUT IT IS!
Let me share with you a few things that turned my head.
I am moved by our national anthem, HaTikvah. I waited for it at the end of the ceremonies and there in my living room alone when it began I stood to my feet to sing http://www.hebrewsongs.com/?song=hatikva . When it ended, I turned off the television to go out into the streets and I STILL heard HaTikvah being sung loudly.
I checked the TV and radio and they were off. So I went out onto my merepesset and there across, the street and spilling over into the street and all around, hundreds of people stood straight and tall singing with one voice raised spontaneously. “Eretz zion, vey Yerushaleyem…”
It was one of those defining those moments! A moment of deep deep transported emotion, transported into the full knowing that INDEED GOD IS DOING THIS.
And you might roll your eyes at that statement, thinking it is just fleshly emotion, if you did not KNOW The Word and He Who gave The Word and made the promises, but I know that I am speaking to people who have also read and been quickened by The Holy Spirit to KNOW that GOD IS FULFILLING HIS WORD. GOD IS BRINGING HIS PEOPLE BACK TO REVEAL HIMSELF for the last days HAVE been written about and…well…here we are!
At work yesterday, each patient shared about their day and their wonder at it all. I asked people and heard many stories. Twice I was in for a personal shock. Tova told me that she was a baby in 1948 when her family arrived from Romania. They went to Jerusalem which was shortly besieged by Arab armies, and there was no food.
She told me about being a small child in war and starvation and then she said, “I am sure that we would have starved to death except for these things: care packages. They kept us alive.”
I began to shake. Do you know how the stirring of a childhood memory can cause you to shake? Perhaps it just touches something so tender but there I was shaking. “Tova, I was born in NYC in 1946 and brought home EVERY DAY from the time that I was in kindergarten. We would pack those care packages with our own hands. I brought around a can to my neighbors and said, ‘Pennies for Israel!’ And yes Tova, I DO know about those boxes. My young heart really DID care as we packed them!”
We stared at each other and hugged with tears. What a strangely intense moment.
A little later I was sharing that experience with Binyamin and Sylvia. They are in their 80s and 90s and seemed like typical New Yorkers to me so it never occurred to me that perhaps they had immigrated first to the US as children. But they had, from the war. And it startled me when Binyamin started recounting the awful times that this world has seen and referred to the great depression.
I had always heard about it from my parents who grew up in it and were greatly impacted by it, but it always seemed to me as if the war overshadowed even that. Suddenly Binyamin explained something I never understood before. “You know, there was NO FOOD in THE WORLD! Do you realize that we lost our 6 million, but 42 million people died in the war. The earth was scorched. There was no one to farm the land that wasn’t burned and there were no farmers. The animals had no food and died. The factories were burned and gone. THERE WAS NO FOOD EXCEPT IN AMERICA!”
Growing up in America, if I had learned about that I didn’t understand it fully. It never hit me, but it DID hit me that moment as I watched him describe the world wide hunger and starvation after the war. And again I shook. “THANK YOU LORD FOR OUR DAILY BREAD.”
I have one more vivid experience to share before sending this and running off into a way too busy day:
We, once again, joined our kehila (congregation) at the home of dear brother and sister who live in the hills above Modi’en to share barbeque (‘mangel’ in Hebrew) fellowship, song, and testimony. As we left, one of the young soldiers asked for a ride back to Latrune where he was meeting other believing soldiers. Happily we took him and as we stopped at the bus stop in Latrune to let him off, a young woman at the bus stop, tanned and sporting a huge backpack, ran up and asked if we were going to Jerusalem and if she could have a ride. As the door swung open to let her in, a second young woman with several backpacks ran up and asked the same question. This one in accented English, so we took her as well.
As we asked each one about themselves and how their celebration had been, the second one took over. She did not speak Hebrew as she was a 19-year old German tourist from Berlin who did not know WHY she came to Israel. “Probably for the weather.”
My husband asked her if this had been her first Passover and she burst out, “Oh YES! Do you KNOW that they don’t eat bread for a whole week? I have never heard of such a thing! It was awful! AND they have this thing called Shabbat when the buses do not run. Amazing!”
I asked her, “Have you ever read the Bible? All of these things are written about in there.”
She laughed, “Oh no! I have never even seen one but I will likely read one now, after the Quran, of course! They have some interesting stories I hear…”
We did not have much time, but I admit to being shocked that this German girl from Berlin knew nothing about the Jews. I thought that the Holocaust was taught extensively in Germany and assumed that the basics of who the Jews were would also be understood. And this young woman had never even SEEN a Bible…
HOW QUICKLY I FORGOT MY OWN IGNORANCE! How can I be truly thankful until I remember how MUCH GOD HAS TAUGHT ME AND the way that HE has lead me in my ignorance.
AND YET HE CONTINUES TO LEADS. (IF we will let Him). You, me, this nation and yours. May we glorify HIM and may this, our 70th year be the year of revelation and of revival.
Larry Who 
Are Demons Responsible for Inner City Violence?
My new weekly column entitled, “Are Demons Responsible for Inner City Violence,” can be read by clicking here.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can perhaps read it better by using the Chrome browser rather than Safari. Also, you can go to the app store and download a free app called: WND.
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