MINISTRY UPDATE – Fall 2001

 “WAKE UP!” CALL

Before proceeding further, we ask that you pray this simple prayer:  Heavenly Father, I ask in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ to prepare my spirit to receive everything in this newsletter you have for me.  I trust that you will, and I thank you for it.  Amen.

For those of you who have heard of Charisma & Christian Life magazine, the November 2001 issue asked a number of respected Christian leaders what they felt God was telling them about the September 11th events. 

We were greatly appreciative of God for doing so.  (If you haven’t had the chance to read this issue, we’d encourage you about doing so.)

The first question Charisma asked these leaders was:  Some Christians view the Sept. 11th terrorist attack as God’s judgment on the United States.  Do you see it that way?

Pastor Jack Hayford answered this way, and I quote: 

"We need to make it clear that this attack was an act of man, not an act of God.  The error that blames God for everything that happens in this world, or the old idea that suggests, “Well, at least God ‘permitted’ it, so it is his will,” betrays a fundamental fact of Scripture: God’s sovereign will is that human beings have a free will. (Bold emphasis mine)

What a person or group does with that freedom of choice does not reflect His will unless they choose (bold emphasis mine) to come under the government of His will.  So, God has not been passively absent about this occurrence, any more than He has been actively angry.  But He is redemptively present – and He is abundantly ready to move in power, grace and mercy, as well as in providential vengeance."

To not take brother Jack’s statement out of the context of the article - though it has little bearing on the context of this update - I’ll give his answer to a second question: 

Charisma:  How have you been directing people to pray as a result of the events of September 11th?

Pastor Hayford:  "So many believers wonder:  'Is it right to want to see retribution on those who did these things?'  Because the Bible says vengeance belongs to God alone [see Ps.94:1], some mistakenly suppose that this disallows human retribution.  But Romans 1-4 reveals that God wills human government as “His ministers” for executing wrath and judgment upon evil. 

Therefore, knowing that the church has an intercessory role for government [see 1 Tim. 2:1-3], we must pray for success in finding and executing the perpetrators of this recent evil." 

Now I feel to jump back to the first answer Pastor Jack gave, which is the thrust of the remainder of this Update.  Paraphrasing from his comment – God gives you and I the sovereign ability to choose.  In most cases He also gives us the sovereign ability to act on what we have chosen to believe, if we want to act on it with all of our being. 

Let’s move away now from the September 11th events. The thrust of this Newsletter will be devoted primarily to one single topic: BELIEVING.     

Let me quote a few passages of scripture that most of you seasoned saints are very familiar with.  They are Ephesians 1:15-21:  Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. 

As you’ve noticed, I purposely put in bold one word from these scriptures: believe.  God drops a key nugget of revelation about believing in Proverbs 23:7, and I paraphrase:  As a person thinks in their heart, so they are.   

Spiritually speaking: what I solidly believe is how I will trust.  Faith will never move mountains into the sea until there is an established, unwavering, solid belief.     

Seasoned, more mature Christians have learned to be very careful what they say, and especially what they are going to choose to believe without first inquiring of God and His Word -- waiting patiently on His response about what they are going to believe.    

Younger Christians usually pray what they hope for.  Seasoned saints have learned that God mostly only answers prayers according to what we believe, and if they were Holy Spirit inspired.  Herein lies the bottleneck or hindrance of why we many times don’t see our prayers answered the way we expect them to be answered.  We are either ignorant of what God wants us to believe as already revealed to us in His Word, or we pray in presumption before we have asked God to first make it crystal clear what we are to believe Him for in the prayer(s) we are going to pray and trust Him to answer favorably in His own way(s) and timing.    

Collectively, what the universal Church of Jesus Christ around this planet believes is the kind of prayers they will find themselves praying.  If I have chosen to believe that the only thing God wants me to believe about September 11th is that it is solely an act of his Judgment against the collective sins of the citizens of America, then for the most part, God will not find me useful as a prayer warrior to do my part in revealing His manifold wisdom to the powers of darkness in the spirit realm (See Ephesians 3:10), during this time of conflict around the world.    

If, on the other hand, I choose to believe that God is revealing something to the universal Church about America in Revelation 12:6 where it is recorded in verses 13-17: Now when the dragon saw that he had been cast to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male Child.  But the woman was given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished for a time and times and half a time, from the presence of the serpent.  So the serpent spewed water out of his mouth like a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away by the flood.  But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.  And the dragon was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. 

Many noted Bible scholars believe that America is not clearly mentioned in the Bible.  They say the “two wings of a great eagle” refers totally to something else (which I won’t get into here).  I think that is dangerous thinking -- dangerous believing, in fact.

What nation can you name that has ever been so tolerant of all beliefs about God and spirituality as has been America that has had the economic and military might that America has, and lets people practice their spiritual beliefs openly and freely as long as they aren’t trying to make everyone else believe the same way that they do?   More specifically, what nation can you name in our times that has provided born again Christians a sanctuary of peace and safety where they can freely worship and believe what they want without repressive governmental oppression and/or outright persecution?  I believe the nation where the eagle is symbolic of its national bird is that nation.  I choose to believe the woman (the Church) was given two wings of a great eagle (America) where she can be nourished (protected from physical assault) until the worldwide reign of Antichrist is fully manifest.  (I leave room for the remote possibility that he will not be able to control all the buying and selling of citizens of America, due to our unified prayers of trust.) It seems to me that as a citizen of America, I would be a fool to believe otherwise, knowing the hate and rage of Satan against born again believers and a nation that allows them to practice their beliefs openly without overt oppression.

Saints (many of you clearly understand already what I’m about to say) – there are only six things that comes to my mind that stands in Satan’s way that keeps him from totally dominating the peoples of planet earth through repressive government(s).  They are:

1) Obviously God’s protection.

2) The military might of America.

3) The financial capability to fund our military to remain the strongest military on Earth.

4) The unity of the citizens of America to stand behind either governmental party in power to protect the freedoms of all faiths that do not engage in physical harm to others in this country or around the world. 

5) Our trust in God by our governmental leaders right on down to every citizen in America that our military might, our financial might, and our unity . . . are not sufficient enough to defeat evil’s intention to mortally cripple this nation … but that we MUST also include and trust the sovereign God to use the might of His powerful, mighty angels to defeat the powers of darkness in the spirit realm as evil forces seek to cripple the foundations that made this nation great to begin with, which were the framers of our Constitution. 

6) Our regular acknowledgement to God and each other that there is nothing more special or sacred to God about America than any other nation, other than the fact that God shed His precious grace and mercy on a group of men and women when this nation was first formed that wrote up a constitution that every citizen would have the right to believe freely what they wanted to believe about God, and worship freely without oppression, and would be protected by the government to actually do so, as long as those beliefs were not doing physical harm to others.   

Christians have fully been aware of how Satan and his evil helpers have assaulted all six of these key foundational building blocks of this nation, especially over the last few years.  If you were Satan, wouldn’t you?  After all, if your heart’s desire was to once again dominate the world, you first must weaken the ONE hindrance keeping you from accomplishing that goal.  Which hindrance is that?  America and what she was founded on when she first came together as a nation, and secondly, her financial strength.   

Dear reader … make no mistake about it: Satan wants you to lose your job.  He wants you to have less money to give less to the work of the Lord.  He wants your business to fail.  He wants your retirement account to drop to zero. He wants you suffering the pain of divorce, more so your children suffering the pain of divorce.  He wants you hurt by the local Church.  He wants you essentially separated from the local Church where you are no longer a threat to Him, where you have no prayer support or comfort in your times of hardship.  He, in fact, wants you so embittered at the local Church that you can become a helpmate of his to attack the credibility of the Church every way he can.  He wants your Church financially crippled.  He wants your Church to close their doors.  He wants you and your children to be tempted to give into crime, when it becomes more and more difficult to meet financial needs.  He wants you to get into debt and be so locked into debt that the pressures of debt literally rob you of every ounce of joy in God that you eventually lose your desire to even want to trust God to see you through your difficult times. 

Satan is working every angle he knows to work to cripple the foundational strengths of this nation.  He hated America from the moment it came together as a nation.  He tried to rip America apart due to racism and slavery issues that resulted in the Civil War.  He tried to rip America apart in the wars that have followed – especially World War II.   He’s tried to keep the God of our Bible out of our schools, out of our textbooks, out of our congress.  Currently he’s trying to convince us that other religions should have equal exposure in America, so we can “understand them better to be more tolerant of other faiths.”

He will never stop seeking to cripple America until she becomes either so weak, or so proud that God can’t stand it anymore, or so deceived that she doesn’t know who or what enemy to even fight anymore.  All Satan has to do is get God in a state of mind where He no longer cares to protect and bless America like He has in the past.  Satan was successful in helping God change His mind about God’s continuing to bless and protect the Jews in the Old Testament time and time again.  America is no more special to God than any other nation or group of people.  America’s only assurance that God will continue to bless and protect America is adhering to the clear principles established in our constitution, and the Body of Christ actively working in cooperation with Him.  If we allow the courts and the judges to “redefine” what our Constitution meant when the framers signed it, to try to make it “mean” something different now … that’s all it really takes for God to remove his desire to continue to bless and protect America.  Why else has Satan worked so hard through the courts to try to alter the purity of intent of our Constitution? 

And how BEST can Satan stop God’s holy angels from battling back the hordes of evil trying to accomplish all of these things?  Your and my belief  life.   Because what we believe is ultimately how we will pray.  How we pray is how we will act and vote (or not act or vote at all, Satan always hopes).  What we believe … not what we hope for … is how we will “pray without ceasing” for this nation  (1 Tim. 5:17).

What I believe is where my trust in God lies.  What I believe is my launching pad for faith.  The stronger my faith in God is, the more threatening my prayer life is to Satan.  The more prayers I see answered, the stronger my faith grows. 

I no more believe the fate of America lies in the hands of the governmental party in power any more than the moon is square.  I no more believe that America has been financially as prosperous as it has been because of the mere wisdom of men or good fortune.   I no more believe our military cannot become a second or third-rate military power than water is wet.  I believe I’m sufficiently in tune with God on this issue to hear Him clearly say:  The future fate of the strength and freedoms of America always has, and always will … rest mostly in the heart’s of My believers, the Church.  Because out of the depths of our being is what we choose to believe.

If enough of God’s believers don’t believe our prayers matter a hill of beans to God, then Satan has accomplished one of his primary purposes in us.  If enough of God’s people have the belief that Satan has no say whatsoever in the future fate of America, and neither does the prayers and the trust of Christian believers, then Satan has accomplished another primary purpose of his in us. 

God is asking … I’ll go one step further … I believe God is pleading with Christians around the world to increase their prayers and trust that God will keep America the nation of the free and the prosperous and the humble, otherwise the powers of evil will cripple America through one of the most effective yet illusive weapons Satan has at his disposal: fear.

Terrorism is designed to accomplish primarily one thing: bring terror to a person or a nation of people.  The fruit of terror is fear.  People giving place to fear will cause them to diminish in faith toward God.  Fear will cause a person to pray less to God, and rationalized prayer is essentially useless in the overall scheme of things.  Here is something else fear can accomplish.  It can cause our government to compromise right and wrong.  It can cause our government to align themselves with peoples and nations for quick-fix solutions that will only bring about devastating long-range problems.   

Fear will literarily stop the power of God from being manifest through the universal Body of Believers, the Church, if given enough place to do its evil work.  How so?  Because God’s highest will for the human race is the right to believe what we choose to believe.  If the Church collectively believes we have won this battle against evil so we don’t have to pray as much as we did right after the September 11th attack, we are giving place to deceptive thinking.  Remember – Satan’s war against America didn’t start on September 11, 2001.  It started the moment men and women of God began to pray to Him for wisdom and direction to write a Constitution that God would inspire and endorse.  That war will continue until Satan is locked up forever and ever, and not one second less. 

Saints, Satan is doing everything he can to wear you and I down physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  He works night and day to try to steal your joy.  He works relentlessly without ever taking a break and bombarding you and I with thoughts of hopelessness and despair.  He bombards our prayer life, our devotion life, our serving life, our work life, our family life, and our recreation life.  At the core of all of these things he never ceases to attack us in, he’s constantly trying to affect our belief system.  Because he knows what we choose to believe is moving closer to letting God have His will made manifest on this planet and in our own individual lives, or seeing less of His will being manifest. 

Reader, what you choose to believe, and what many others collectively choose to believe … is what God honors and what He responds to in the spirit realm where angels of good and evil fight for the affairs of mankind.  God has entrusted you and I, His followers and believers, with a responsibility He has not assigned his holy angels: praying for the fate of America and backing those prayers with faith without ceasing.  Jesus asked this question that might also have been a statement of fact in its own right.  “Will I find faith when I return?" (See Luke 18:8).  The faith He is speaking of is directly linked to prayer in Luke 18:1: Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart … 

God did NOT record in Ephesians 3:10 that He was going to reveal his manifold wisdom to the evil powers of darkness in spiritual places through his holy angels.  He clearly has stated He would reveal it through His Church -- you and I.  As the Church responds to God in Holy Spirit led prayer and trust, the angels of God do God’s bidding on our behalf for God’s glory. When the Church does not do Her part, the angels are hindered from doing their part, even if they want to.  It doesn’t hinge on God: it doesn’t hinge on His angels: it doesn’t hinge on Satan and his helpers: it hinges on you and I, individual members of his Church, the Body of Christ.  The fate of America hinges on the unity of purpose of the believers around the world fighting for a country to worship freely in without oppression or persecution, where her financial wealth can continue to aid in taking the Gospel of the Kingdom to the four corners of the earth. 

I believe a sobering wake-up call by the events of September 11th and following has been given us.  I believe the Holy Spirit is trying to scream loud in our hearts, “Church!  Wake up.  You can no longer afford to take your chances that the Father is somehow “obligated” to continue to bless and protect America like in the past without the Body of Christ being willing to fight for the freedoms and blessings they enjoy.”

We can no longer assume we are such a blessed and protected nation that we are immune from evil ripping us apart at the seams and making us a second-rate nation, or worse.  We are not to get paranoid and fearful about it but we are to move into an offensive posture of intensified prayer and trust from here on out.  The government is to do their part.  The military is to do their part.  Wall street is to do their part.  Business leaders are to do their part.  A responsible media are to do their part. Civic groups and volunteers are to do their part.  Teachers are to do their part. Neighbors practicing The Golden Rule are to do their part.  And lastly, yet MOST IMPORTANTLY … the army of God is to do their part.  Tops on their part is:

1) Believe correctly about America

2) Pray without ceasing, [in other words on a consistent, persistent basis]

3) Back up those unceasing prayers with trust.  (If our trust has died, then fasting needs to be considered to gain it back).

4) Be willing to serve in governmental positions and take godly stands.    

Saints, it has been easy for us to just somehow “assume” that God has obligated Himself to keep America the nation of the free, the blessed, and the protected. Eschatologists (Bible scholars dealing with the future) mostly agree that God has stayed essentially silent about the fate of America.  I choose to believe the reason He has done so is to reveal to the Church at large that He has given us more responsibility to advance His Kingdom than what many of us want to measure up to.  Most of us in America just want the Rapture to happen and leave it at that.  Well, saints, what if the Rapture comes after more suffering than what anyone of us care to think about in America and around the world?  Wouldn’t we be better off staying on the offensive and offer more prayers and trust to God than what might be needed?  I would think God would like more than enough prayers and trust going up for this nation and other nations.  That would be a wonderful “problem” for Him to have.  I think He can handle that “problem” real easy.  

This nation was motivated by our highest leaders to pray for them and this nation shortly after September 11th.  Let’s you and I determine in our hearts that every day can be another September 11 from here on out … and find ourselves increasing our prayers and trust … until our time is done here on earth -- what do you say?  Scripture assures us evil is not going away before Christ’s return.  It is going to persistently keep pushing forward, and we must not let it gain huge advances.  God wants with all His being for you and I to do our part in exposing and holding back evil.   

Satan needs to cripple America to usher in worldwide dominion.  He’s working from without, and he’s working from within.  He’s using blinded, self-serving politicians for his purposes.  He’s using blinded Christians who don’t even know how to hear God in which way to vote … let alone vote period.  His tricks are sophisticated and crafty.  All Satan has to do is get us believing enough deception, and his plan for America grows closer and closer to fruition.

I realize some reading this newsletter will call me a fear-monger, or simply being “too extreme.”  I realize I’ll be labeled as giving the devil far too much glory for giving him more power than what he actually has.  I’ve weighed these accusations and more, yet I believe God wants me to try to help warn Christians that we cannot passively sit back and wait for the rapture as our freedoms fall to our right and left in this nation.  We must take action, and that action must primarily be on our knees in united prayer and trust.

America has been a blessed and protected nation for much of her existence as a nation, but God warned us in 2 Timothy 3:1 that perilous times were going to come.  He did not say America would be exempt from them, nor any other nation or group of people. 

I believe the greatest perversion of a heavenly truth has seeped into the minds of far too many Christians in America. Here is commonly accepted FACT: “God is sovereignly in control of the affairs of mankind.” 

Here’s the perversion of the above fact:  Because God is sovereignly in control over the affairs of mankind, including Satan, there is nothing I can do or anyone else can do to change or alter what is going to happen in the affairs of mankind on this planet, which includes America. 

There is not a doubt in my mind that God is sovereignly in control of the affairs of mankind, and it is enforced by the prayers and involvement of God’s people. With the cooperation of His Church, The Body of Christ, America can remain a nation of the free as He wills for her to be so.  Without her cooperation of intensified, focused, persistent and trusting prayers, and the involvement of born again Christians in the political arena, America becomes more vulnerable to losing her freedoms and the peace, prosperity and safety she has enjoyed.   

What I believe I clearly hear God saying to His Church is “Pray for America without ceasing from this moment forward, and don’t quit praying until Jesus returns for those who eagerly await His return for them.”

As this is being written, ominous storm clouds are gathering in the Middle East.  Attention in the media weighing the pros and cons of engaging in military conflict to bring down or weaken the leadership of certain anti-American figures is being mentioned more and more.  If, in fact, we end up engaging in active military conflict in nations other than Afghanistan, it will involve placing the lives of our young men and women in deadly peril.  It is imperative that we pray for our Nation’s leaders regularly, because the decisions they make about this war on “terrorism” will affect every one of our lives, one way or another, whether we like it or not, not only in America … but around the world.   

Before closing, I want to mention one other thing.  Specifically, I believe God wants us to be praying about the financial state of our economy.  Jobs are at stake.  Incomes are dropping.  Giving to the work of ministry has dropped off greatly because people have less to give.  We all know the potential abuses of financial prosperity, but the abuse of financial lack can be even more crippling.  The less God’s people have to give, the less missionaries and outreaches receive around the world.

We do thank you for your prayers and sacrificial giving on behalf of Precious Testimonies, and we trust that God has used this Newsletter to minister to you in some special way.  If it has, feel free to let us know.  If it hasn’t, please feel free to let us know that as well.   God bless you as you continue to stand for what is right according to God’s Word!

Norm Rasmussen
DIRECTOR

NOTE FROM EDITOR: If you are questioning in your heart what this Christian life is all about and would like to know more about being reconciled to God, please click here to learn how you can do that.  Thank you and God bless you!