The following comes from Tony Perkins' weekly email from the Family Research Council Prayer Team:
This past
Friday, the liberal progressive-led House of Representatives passed HR1, the
"For the People Act," the Democratic Party's signature piece of
legislation for 2019. It is the most sweeping, unwise, destructive and I
believe anti-American election "reform bill" ever proposed in
America. I had a hard time writing a Prayer Target about it earlier this week.
From my perspective, it is election anarchy. And if it were ever to become law,
it would be the end of the American Republic.
I answered a
good friend who wrote me about the Prayer Targets by saying, "I couldn't
get my head wrapped around this bizarre, far overreaching, 700-page octopus
with hundreds of tentacles intended to overthrow the election process and with
it, what is left of American liberty." Read the Prayer Targets and the Heritage Foundation article I linked. It outlines
HR1. Make sure to click "READ FULL REPORT" and you
will understand why I thanked God for the three branches of Government and the
two chambers of Congress.
This
construction of government has preserved us, even amid our apathy and spiritual
dullness, more than once, and given us time to wake up and mend our ways. But
if we allow the people who passed this outrageous bill to gain even more power
in 2020, it may be all over (and I do not believe I am exaggerating). We are
facing the greatest divide among the citizens of our country since the Civil
War, even if, so far, it is an ideological and worldview division. If
Christians fail to use their spiritual tools and weapons to win this present
war, by prevailing over this new worldview with a Jesus revolution (Mt 28:18-20) that makes America "One Nation Under
God," again, American freedom will become a thing of the past.
Do not be
deceived. We are still benefitting from the faith of our Founding Fathers, but
we must see a revival of that faith if we are going to pass on to our children
this awesome nation, established by God's grace. Only Christians who are able
to use such spiritual tools and weapons can break through the moral insanity
that has stolen minds. Only free men and women can stave off the darkness and
bring deliverance to the multitudes in spiritual darkness around us and defeat
the leaders of this apostasy, who are in spiritual bondage themselves, and
labor day and night to bring others into their bondage (Jn 8:33-47).
Our Founders
received God-given wisdom to establish three branches of Government and two
houses within the legislative branch. That structural arrangement and the
checks and balances it has produced, has saved us again and again throughout
American history. It protects us today, but only to give us a little time to
repent and do our duty. We are facing nothing less than an outright revolution,
led by moral and spiritual anarchists who have been cooking up revolution on a
slow burner for decades.
They have
successfully hijacked a majority of our cultural institutions and our centers
of influence, with the majority of America's news outlets now controlled by
amoral and immoral liberals (media professionals are overwhelmingly liberal
Democrats -- see MRC & IBD). Big Tech is controlled by liberals, too. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and PayPal routinely manipulate users, overtly and
covertly favoring liberal groups while censoring and restraining conservatives,
and most Americans don't even know it. These internet giants all use the SPLC
(see SPLC Exposed)
to identify those deemed to be "hate groups" and work with the SPLC
to destroy them. Among these groups are some of the most rock solid Christian
organizations and leaders in America. If these organizations in any way oppose the LGBTQ agenda, they are
deemed "hate groups."
The hatred
of the "Progressive Left" toward Christians, Jews, the Bible, the
constraints of the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S. partnership with Israel has
been brewing and heating up over the past several decades, but now this
cauldron of hate is breaching the dams and revealing what is in the hearts of far
too many Americans. Now, Christians are called the "haters" and
"bigots." Christians in leadership are called "intolerant"
and "indecent" and the rest of us are dismissed as
"deplorable" and "irredeemable."
Many of us
turned from the left-leaning secular media years ago, grateful for the
"new media" that provide Christians a venue for free speech. Now,
those who control the internet have found insidious new ways to silence
Christian and conservative thought and speech through "shadow banning"
and outright censorship reminiscent of communist regimes. This could not have
been imagined in America a few years ago. But it is the fruit of two things --
the capacity for evil to grow worse and worse among unbelievers, and the
failure of the church to be salt, light, and leaven in every sector of society,
which God has called us to reach and win with the Gospel (Mt 5:13-16; 13:33; 2 Tim 3:13-14).
In the void,
those who hate the Gospel have grown in strength and numbers, and America has
experienced a rapid, shocking moral and spiritual decline. The psalmist answers
this predicament:
Why do
the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth
set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord,
and against his anointed, saying, "Let us break their bands asunder, and
cast away their cords from us."
He that
sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in
derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore
displeasure (see Ps 2: all).
When the
powers that be attempted to censor the New Testament saints shortly after
Pentecost, the believers huddled and prayed that scripture aloud and the
building in which they were gathered shook with the anointing and power of God
who was with them (Acts 4:18-37). We have that same power today, as we gather
to pray over the direct challenges to the advancement of God's purposes and
kingdom in our nation and world.
- Almighty God, may your people
come together in one accord in making our appeal to you. You are the
Sovereign Lord who sits in the heavens and rules over all. You hear the
threats breathed against your people. You know the trouble planned for us
by those who reject your Son. You see the persecution they have planned
when they have the power to do so. Therefore, we ask with the Apostles and
the early church: "Grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they
may speak thy word." (Acts 4:29)
Tony Perkins (bio) is President of both Family Research Council and the Council for National Policy. A member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, he is an ordained Southern Baptist minister. This is from his periodic Fox News religious column.
Pictures
used by permission from Pixabay.
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