Monthly Archives: February 2011

-Revival is In the Marketplace?

The City Center Mall

                        (Image via Wikipedia)

In the first century at the founding of the church the marketplace was a major point of growth for the church. This came before all of the permanent churches and ecclesiastical structures that would characterize the church 3 or 4 centuries later and beyond.

So much of what went on in the first century church actually happened in the street. The Holy Spirit fell upon 120 folks in the upper room on Pentecost but it wasn’t until they got down into the street below with everyone else that over 3,000 came to Christ that day—the first Christian revival.

In the past 100 years or so we have come to view ‘revival’ as something that happens in a church. Sometimes that has been the case in the past when the culture was such that the majority of everyone in a town would be together in a church on Sunday morning then the spirit would fall and change the entire community. I’m thinking of the Welsh revival or the Great Awakening in America. Those revivals emanated from the church.

However, there have been other revivals like Wesley’s that weren’t allowed in the church as such but happened outside the ordinary ecclesiastical structures and buildings.  Some like Finney’s New York City revival actually took place in the factories and marketplace.

What about today? If the Holy Spirit fell in one of Europe’s great cathedrals today on any given Sunday only a couple of dozen seniors would be touched.

Today if God really wanted to reach out to a whole city or community on any given Sunday he would probably have to visit a football game or mall? Then there are the Chinese Christians who continue to show us how a revival can touch 100 million or so one at a time in a house church and marketplace movement.

What is destined for America? I believe that the revival we are about to embark upon involves the home and the marketplace in a major way like no other revival movement before. More later.             *Top

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-What is Really Behind the Chaos in the Middle East

Ali Khamenei has been the supreme leader of Ir...

           (Ayatollah Khamenei via Wikipedia)

Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, now Algeria and more. What is behind the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa?

The Western media continues to tell us that these folks are all seeking greater freedom but that is a very deceptive and naive view. In reality all of these nations have been in transition for some time with Muslim radical Islamists gaining ground and changing the entire picture of the Middle East.

Western intellectuals continue to talk about Islam as a ‘religion of peace’ that needs to be encouraged to go through some kind of moderate revival or ‘Reformation’ like Christianity went through. So many naively talk about this possibility and totally ignore the fact that Islam is in the midst of a revival all right -a fundamentalist radical revival that is affecting (actually infecting) nearly all Muslims around the world, even those in Western countries including America.

<<Read the whole article on my ANSWERS For The Faith main page>>

Now for what is really behind it all—principalities and powers. There is an unseen battle going on right now in the Heavenlies.  However, the effects of the spiritual battle can be seen also in the natural.

I had an open vision on 9/11/01 during which the Lord told me that the Prince of Islam had exceeded his authority in the attack and that 100 million Muslims were going to be converted to Christ as a ‘first fruits’ and part of a world-wide Christian harvest and revival.

A couple of years later a Muslim leader in Africa was sounding an alarm that according to his figures at the time over 6 million Muslims a year were converting to Christianity in Africa. Since then the persecution of Christians has become rather severe in Muslim areas of Northern Africa.

We have also documented on this blog on a number of occasions that a secret hidden revival was going on in Muslim countries where people were being converted to Christ through dreams, visions, and healings. It has been  substantially a hidden ‘house church’ movement particularly in Iran where as far as we can tell as many as 500,000 Muslims have come to Christ. 

In the mean time the enemy has come back with a vengeance and persecution of the traditional churches in Muslim countries have been on the increase. For example, over 500,000 Iraqi Christians have fled the country since the fall of the Saddam regime. American forces have ironically gone out of their way not to be seen as protectors of the Christian community and it has become open season on the traditional Christians in that country.

In Israel, Palestinian Christians are persecuted by both the Muslims and the Jews. The Palestinian Christian community continues to decrease as they leave the country though there has been some reports of Palestinian Muslims secretly coming to Christ. The same can be said of Lebanon where a generation ago the Christian community was strong but after the last civil war between Christian and Muslim militias the Islamists particularly Hezbollah now have the upper hand and Christians have lost control over their own communities in the Southern part of the country.

Turning to Egypt, the Coptic Christians who have been part of that country since the first century and have lived in peace with the Muslims in the same communities for over a thousand years are now being increasingly subjected to persecution and violence. This from the ‘freedom loving’ folks that our press is writing about.  According to a recent poll 84 percent of the Egyptians favor the death penalty for any Muslim who becomes a Christian. Obviously a spiritual battle is raging in that country.

Now for a major example of demonic activity in the natural. Iran’s supreme leader Grand Ayatollah Khamenei is telling his leaders that the hidden ‘12th Imam’ is now appearing to him continually and giving him marching orders. Just this week Iran’s President Ahmadinejad told European leaders and later a major Iranian crowd of supporters that the hidden ‘12th Imam’ was behind all of the current chaos in the Middle East and that it was the beginning of the rise of Islam into one dominant Islamist World power under the leadership of the promised Muslim Mahdi –the Shiite ‘12th Imam’:

  "The final move has begun. We are in the middle of a world revolution managed by this dear (12th Imam). A great awakening is unfolding. One can witness the hand of Imam in managing it."

Wow. Obviously it is time for all of us to pray for the Middle East and for Christian revival and harvest to continue especially in Muslim lands. This is particularly a good time for all Christian intercessors to rise up and be heard and come against the plans of the enemy.            *Top

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-South OC: Contemporary Revival Characteristics

The Starbucks store at 1912 Pike Place. This i...

                         (Image via Wikipedia)

There are a number of characteristics that continue to come to the surface in South Orange Co. California when we pray about and talk about revival.

Most around here are convinced that we are on the verge if not the beginning of another move of God here but one which is radically different than the ‘Jesus People’ move in our past.

What is similar is a whole new generation of young people with radical dedication to Jesus beginning to rise up in our schools.

What is different is the forum of revival.

Whereas the move in the 70’s revolved around Bible study groups, the development of alternative contemporary worship, End-Times Pre-Trib eschatology, and the beaches and surf of Southern California. Today it’s at Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and the Irvine Spectrum. Bringing healing and letting a new generation find out that they have a Father who really does know who they are and actually cares about them.

This time it isn’t about a thousand bare-foot hippies trying to cram into a small church in Costa Mesa nor really about all of the ‘mega’ Calvary Chapels and Vineyards which followed in its wake. Nor is it centered in a church building at all where folks fly in from all around the world to get a touch like Toronto and Florida.

God the Father is pursuing people where they live, work, and shop.  Right now this is a ‘hidden’ marketplace revival. However at some point I believe that it is going to touch every facet of life and culture in South OC.

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-We Really Need to be Praying for This Guy

Thousands listen to President Barack Obama's r...

          (National Prayer Breakfast via Wikipedia)

Here’s President Obama at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. this morning:

"These past two years they have deepened my faith." …

"My Christian faith then has been a sustaining force for me over these last few years, all the more so when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time. We are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us, but whether we’re being true to our conscience and true to our God."

He then quoted Scripture: "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you, as well.’"

Also according to the article by Elizabeth Tenety the President shared the following:

Shared that he prays "that I might walk closer with God and make that walk my first and most important task."

Called Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) "a brother in Christ."

Characterized his father as "nonreligious" and his mother as spiritual, but not religious.

"I came to know Jesus Christ for myself," while working with faith leaders as a community organizer.

Every morning and night, the president said, "I wait on the Lord," asking for strength and forgiveness.

On the prayers of a father: "As I travel across the country, folks often ask me, what is it that I pray for? And like most of you, my prayers sometimes are general: Lord, give me the strength to meet the challenges of my office. Sometimes they’re specific: Lord, give me patience as I watch Malia go to her first dance, where there will be boys. Lord, have that skirt get longer as she travels to that dance."

We also learn in this article that Florida Pastor Joel Hunter and Potter’s House T.D. Jakes have served as spiritual advisers to the President.

Response: We really need to be praying for this guy. After all Paul was inspired to tell the early Christians to pray for the Roman leaders how much more should we be praying for a fellow Christian even if we don’t agree with his politics- and I disagree personally with almost everything he has done and stood for in the last two years.

Nevertheless, as I have prayed for the President and his family I have become far more sympathetic for the position he is in and have strangely begun to like him personally even though I still disagree with him at nearly every turn.

We live in dangerous times and we really do need the Lord to bless our leaders considering all of the chaotic things that they are facing economically and in the World.

Here are two prophetical messages that include something about the President Obama and a coming governmental/Constitutional crisis in America. Both suggest that we need to be praying for our leaders and be careful about be too negative and uncharitable towards the President:

-2011 Prophetic Perspectives 

-A Prophetic Word for 2011

*Top

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