“Each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” (1 Corinthians 3:13-15)
The FIRE of the Lord is SO COMPASSIONATELY UPON the Church in America right now. And the heart of our God is for our good, our nobility, and for our blessing. He’s especially bringing His judgment FIRE to MAGA leaders and believers.
Today, who has eyes to see beyond the headlines? Who has the moldable will to yield, celebrate, bring everything in, bow down, surrender, be illuminated, purged and re-empowered by our God’s heavenly FIRE?
Beloved. His heart is for redemption, FOR EVERYONE WHO ENTERS INTO HIS FIRE!
For the last year, the Lord has been speaking to our household from Isaiah 1, telling us that this day was coming. Here are five truths about the FIRE of the LORD from Isaiah 1:27-31
THE FIRE OF THE LORD IS ABOUT REDEMPTION v. 27 Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and her penitents with righteousness. The Lord is moving proactively, by His own sovereign will to REDEEM His covenant people; those who already belong to Him. No one has earned this. It’s His initiative. It’s coming from His zeal to war against the UNRIGHTEOUSNESS that’s threatening His people. He promises to REDEEM our UNRIGHTEOUSNESS with His RIGHTEOUSNESS if we merely come to Him in REPENTANCE. This is the FIRE of His ZEAL TO REDEEM.
THE FIRE OF THE LORD DESTROYS ALL THAT IS IN OPPOSITION TO THE LORD v. 28 The destruction of transgressors and of sinners shall be together, and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed. There is also a DESTRUCTIVE nature to His FIRE. The Word of the Lord promises it will CONSUME those who “FORSAKE THE LORD”, meaning those who refuse to REPENT, who refuse to become PENITENT, and will not let the Lord REDEEM them from UNRIGHTEOUSNESS. We “FORSAKE THE LORD”, when we don’t come to Him for REDEMPTION. He is the God of Redemption. If His people will not let Him REDEEM them, He knows (much like the children of Israel in the desert) the FIRE that’s on the earth will DESTROY them in their TRANSGRESSION and SIN.
THE FIRE OF THE LORD ILLUMINATES AND EXPOSES v. 29 For they shall be ashamed of the terebinth trees which you have desired; and you shall be embarrassed because of the gardens which you have chosen. The FIRE of the Lord is illuminating the foolishness of man’s DESIRES, right now. In the light of the Lord’s FIRE, it’s showing millions and millions of hearts how deceived, foolish, and ultimately, how destructive their hearts’ inclinations really have been. This illumination naturally breeds SHAME and ignominy. But it isn’t a SHAME that shuts one up in condemnation. It’s a SHAME that’s meant to serve as an internal alarm that screams, “run into the shelter of the Lord! Don’t cover yourself with fig leaves in the GARDEN you’ve chosen. Go to the Lord for His covering in the ‘sure mercies of David.'” (Isaiah 55:3). He has no desire for us to experience SHAME any longer than we need. He’s made every provision for our idolatrous hearts, through the lovingkindness of His Son’s own blood. THIS IS IMPORTANT! When the Lord’s FIRE illuminates what you’ve been believing, and what you see causes you to be conscience-stricken regarding where you’ve CHOSEN to put your hope, let even a tinge of SHAME be a sign that the Father is compelling you to be clothed in the righteousness of His Son.
The tinge of shame, or disappointment that you feel when the truth of your champion is being illuminated is actually an internal invitation to come into the Lord’s shelter of cleansing grace while the fire passes through the ranks.
THE FIRE OF THE LORD COMES WITH PERFECT PATIENCE v. 30 For you shall be as a terebinth whose leaf fades, and as a garden that has no water. The TEREBINTH tree is one of the most hearty, resilient, draught-resistant trees in the world. The Lord is saying that those who refuse to come to Him, are like this tree. Although they can “hold out” for long periods of time, they cannot outlast the patience of the Lord. He is saying to them: “If you continue to spurn My invitation, and if we DON’T “reason together” about your adultery, I promise you, you will eventually become like a WITHERING TEREBINTH tree.” The Lord prophesies, He Himself will withhold the life-giving RAIN from the GARDEN where their false beliefs, values and ideologies are being grown.
THE FIRE OF THE LORD IS INESCAPEABLE v. 31 The strong shall be as tinder, and the work of it as a spark; both will burn together, and no one shall quench them. The Lord promises/warns that even the STRONGEST of men will not be able to withstand the illuminating, consuming, heat of His FIRE that’s falling upon us. We should not be deluded into believing that our STRONGEST narratives, prophetic words, ardent work or human emotions will be safe from the Lord’s FIRE. The STRONGEST WILL BURN. NO MAN will be able to QUENCH the Lord’s FIRE. This is meant to engender a healthy, necessary fear of the power of the Lord’s FIRE, that drives EVERYONE into deep, honest conversations with the Lord about the nature of our sinful, and idolatrous ways.
Friends, the SPARKS of what will eventually CONSUME MAGA are flying. Through the heat of scrutiny over our President’s character, his previous life, and a number of theological/ideological schisms within the ranks, the TINDER in this movement is being set ablaze. Much like His Word to Judah through Jeremiah, the Lord is actually calling our family to seek shelter WITHIN THE FLAMES THEMSELVES, so that He can purify our ways, and establish us in the eternal hope found in Isaiah 1.
Again. Should we continue to avoid Him, know that as more and more is exposed, and you feel increasing SHAME over what you’ve been championing, understand that the remorse, the indignity, and the disrepute are all gracious, internal signs that God is summoning you into the eternal security of His FIRE.
Today is a good day to enter into the fire of the Lord, and pray: “Father, redeem me, purify me, and consume me. I want all that I am to be wholly Your’s – with longevity, depth, authentically, and without reservation.”
Proclaim this among the nations: “Prepare for war!” (Joel 3:9)
One of the two greatest crises of the soul is fast approaching our MAGA brothers and sisters in Christ. Faster than I would like to believe. Right now, the topics of Antisemitism, Zionism, the nature of Islam related to the God of Abraham, Replacement theology, etc. are steaming through a plethora of statements, debates, exposes, and teachings from Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Joel Webbon, Glenn Beck, and thousands of evangelical leaders – unlike any time in the history of the American Church. THE controversy of the nations: “WHAT ABOUT ISRAEL?”, is about to reach a boiling point within the ranks of Christian Nationalism.
Here’s the alarm: When Donald Trump finally turns on Israel, MAGA believers will be confronted with the consequences of the decisions and talking points that they’re cultivating now. Will they act in fidelity to the God of the Bible Who is pressing His character through the affairs of this tiny nation? Or will they (once again, as they have with Canada, Mexico, Greenland, the Ukraine, Denmark, Panama, NATO etc.) come up with a defense for Trump’s storylines, and take up this man’s offense against Israel?
It’s coming. As sure as every part of the Bible is true, it’s coming, friends.
What makes this inevitable internal, “anfechtungen” most alarming is this:
1. MAGA has spent nearly every day of the last decade developing spin redactions and apologetics to defend Trump’s outrageous unrighteousness. That’s a LOT of gravity to go against. I believe the devil has purposefully accrued this inertia for the sake of ultimately bending the will of many sincere MAGA Christians re: Israel when all the chips are on the table… in spite of the fact that millions now ardently protest: “But we will never betray you, Israel.” In the day of great threat and temptation, MAGA will walk in the pattern of deception, and have cultivated no integrity of will to stand against this lawless man’s hot displeasure.
2. The second alarm deals with the realty that it is God Himself Who is going to be behind the crux of this confrontation. (See Joel 3 below) MAGA won’t be fighting against political opposition. It will be wrestling with God Himself. It is His penultimate test to the faith of the Bride. “Will you stand with your Bridegroom, and with Israel? Will you believe My promises for Zion are true? Will you even let go of your fascination with an unrighteous leader in order to remain champions of My heart, My expressed plan, and My vision for the redemption of the people of this land, and the nations?”
This is the way the question will be framed: “Will you betray MAGA? Or will you betray Israel?”
It’s coming, beloved. As crazy as it seems that a controversy over this one, small, resilient people-group could embroil the whole earth, it’s coming…
AND, it’s coming to a church near you.
JOEL 3:9-21 9 Proclaim this among the nations: “Prepare for war! Wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let them come up. 10 Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears; let the weak say, ‘I am strong.’ ” 11 Assemble and come, all you nations, and gather together all around. Cause Your mighty ones to go down there, O Lord. 12 “Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. 13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; for the winepress is full, the vats overflow – for their wickedness is great.” 14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. 15 The sun and moon will grow dark, and the stars will diminish their brightness. 16 The Lord also will roar from Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; the heavens and earth will shake; but the Lord will be a shelter for His people, and the strength of the children of Israel. 17 “So you shall know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion My holy mountain. Then Jerusalem shall be holy, and no aliens shall ever pass through her again.” 18 And it will come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drip with new wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water; a fountain shall flow from the house of the Lord and water the Valley of Acacias. 19 “Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom a desolate wilderness, because of violence against the people of Judah, for they have shed innocent blood in their land. 20 But Judah shall abide forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. 21 For I will acquit them of the guilt of bloodshed, whom I had not acquitted; for the Lord dwells in Zion.”
5 years ago, the American church rebelled against the judgments of the Lord in our land. In 2025, the Lord is shouting Isaiah 1 to us, telling us that our stubbornness is making us increasingly hostile towards Him and His end-times purposes on the earth.
“Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity… they have forsaken the Lord, they have turned away backward. Why should you be stricken again? You are blatant in your rebellion.” (Isaiah 1:4-5)
ROUND 1 In 2020, (through COVID, race-riots, and election controversy) the Lord brought numerous judgments to our American way of life. And although the purpose for His judgments was to reward, as well as refine, the American church’s response to these pressure-points was mostly “revolt” and “insurrection”. We did not learn to humble ourselves. We did not come to Him in need, in brokenness and repentance, and “learn righteousness” (which is what Isaiah 26:9 tells us the Lord’s judgments are meant to afford us). Instead we clothed ourselves in layers of conspiracy, concocting self-saving narratives that desensitized our hearts from righteousness, and caused us to “go backwards” (Isaiah 1:4) from the ways of the Lord.
ROUND 2 Two years ago, the Lord exposed hundreds of cases of spiritual and sexual abuse within the western church, bringing His purging fire upon an epidemic of corrupt leadership within His House. This judgment contained a corporate call to Joel 2 repentance unlike anything ever seen in American Christianity. And although Joel 1:2 exhorts “the elders” to lead the people to the place of honest humility, the majority-response of the fathers in the house was to point fingers, write reports, write self-saving rebuttals, hide, wrap ourselves in social media litigation, redact our histories, and rebrand. There was no trumpet set to the mouth. (Joel 2:1) and no concerted thrust to bring our family to the threshing floor of the Lord. It was a massive, and obstinate failure of leadership.
Throughout these many episodes, our family has resoundingly chosen pretense, over being purified. And the pretense we’ve allowed to germinate in our soul has become a petrie-dish of the devil.
ROUND 3 Consequently, in the fall of 2025, the Body of Christ in America finds herself proudly clothed in fig-leaves, instead of adorned with the sure mercies of the Lord – brandishing the counterfeit gospel of “hostile selfism”, that waves sin away without repentance, despises Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and refuses to bear a cross for His preeminent glory.
Our stiff-necked refusal to let the Lord deal with the reality of our perversion and unrighteousness, has left us tremendously defenseless to a delusional spirit. Without coming into the light of His holy gaze, our household has no way of discerning the beguiling trickery of the flesh, and she is left hostage to a ravenous lust for power, and supremacy within our society – spirits that always spell “insurrection” against the ways of Christ.
In the place where true prophets would pierce the spirits of the age, and call the church to surrender to the fear of the Lord, false prophets titillate the people of God with gilded promises designed to entrench them deeper and deeper in self-determined fantasy, and falsehood.
Last November, (2024) the Lord supernaturally visited our house of prayer with the message of Isaiah 1, and told us of a holy fire that was about to visit our land; a judgment from the Lord that would strike the people of God with even more intensity than those in 2020.
Contained within this Word of warning, the also Lord issued a gracious invitation from Isaiah 1:18-19, “Come now, and let us debate your case,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall become as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.”
Over this past year, our house of prayer has taken the Lord up on His invitation, prayerfully allowing the Spirit to show us where and how His Words in this chapter apply to the sticky issues in our heart, and our family’s current relationship to the Lord.
In Isaiah 1, the Lord identifies the root essence of the people’s unbending refusal to come to Him in five ways…
1. He calls our stubbornness, a “BETRAYAL and REBELLION” (Isaiah 1:2-4) of the ways of the Lord. And to betray God, is always to fall in league with the enemy of our souls. Under the sway of a spirit of “betrayal”, we increasingly see the “commands of the Lord” (Matthew 28:20 essentials for all authentic disciples) as “optional”. And what becomes “optional” to us, ultimately gets twisted into being perceived as “inconvenient”, and “non-expedient”, until we are found in full disagreement with our King, and the ways of His Kingdom.
2. The Lord calls our stubbornness, a “CORRUPTION” (Isaiah 1:4) of our heart that keeps us from a tender, humble, and nimble responsiveness to the Word of the Lord. Being corrupted from His intimate counsel perverts and distorts our thinking and reasoning about any number of important Kingdom issues in our world. Not only are our views about righteousness corrupted, our relationship to others, and our witness to a curse-riddled world is corrupted, deficient, and lacking both transparent truth-telling, and vulnerable grace-giving.
3. The Lord calls our stubbornness, “SICKNESS” (Isaiah 1:5-6). This is a two-fold condition whereby being racked with a feverish, delusional disease, we don’t come to the Lord to let Him treat the wounds of our relational iniquities, or the sores that are eating away at our flesh. Consequently, our ways, that were meant to be healthy, warm, compassionate, and meek, become deformed, putrid, rigid and cold.
4. The Lord calls our stubbornness, “EVIL” (Isaiah 1:16). What began with “tolerance for the lesser of two evils”, has caused us to become blind and deaf to the evil of our own ways, to the point that, just like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, we manifest a brooding defensiveness of the evil that we’ve allowed to grow up within ourselves.
5. The Lord calls our stubbornness to come to Him, “PROSTITUTION” (Isaiah 1:21). We refuse to come into the tent of the Father, precisely because we are still too busy entertaining other lovers who promise us security, adulation, comfort, and pleasure. We play “fast and loose” with our covenant to God, and His Son, assuming we can remain “married” to Him, while also joining ourselves to other men, movements, parties and ideologies…
Days ago, New Yorkers elected a virulent, antiZionist, Muslim man to become the mayor of America’s largest city. In Mamdani’s rise to power over a true “nerve-center” of our society – the home to our nation’s financial structure, I believe we’re witnessing the fulfillment of another portion of the Isaiah 1 prophecy. Unfortunately, even as many evangelical, orthodox, and Messianic leaders have rightly sounded the alarm about Zohran Mamdani (see *footnote quotes below), the accompanying “call to action” has (once again) been to fester in our hatred, and become more strident in our political opposition.
The Word of God clearly tells us that a big reason cities (ie. New York city) are DEVOURED and OVERTHROWN by STRANGERS (ie. Mr. Mamdani) is because the covenant people of God (ie. evangelical followers of Christ) resist God’s call to repentance, defend their EVIL ways, and refuse to let the Lord purge them of their rebellion, corruption, sickness, and evil prostitution.
“Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the Lord… and their wounds have not been closed or bound up, or soothed with ointment…Therefore, your CITIES are DEVOURED BY STRANGERS in your presence; and they are DESOLATE, as OVERTHROWN BY STRANGERS.” (Isaiah 1:4, 6-7)
Stated clearly: the solution to the threat of radical Islam (as well as other dangers contained in Isaiah 1) isn’t so much dependent upon how the pagans vote in the election booth, as it is upon how the household of God does (or does not do) business with the Father on His threshing-floor.
Beloved. The Lord is saying: “If you will not allow me to break this stubbornness off of you, I promise, this stubbornness WILL break you.”
Throughout 1980, in defiance of all the seismologists warnings about the impending eruption of Mount St. Helens in southern Washington, one intransigent man named Harry R. Truman mulishly chose to remain in the life that he’d known on the side of the mountain, rather than be evacuated to safety. Inevitably, on the fateful day of May 8, the volcano exploded with the force of 1600 atomic bombs, forever burying Mr. Truman in ash.
This is a parable for the message of Joel, and Isaiah. Unless we push pause on our status quo, humble ourselves, and seek shelter within the mercy and ways of the Lord, our stubbornness will cause us to be swallowed up in the current fire that’s now upon us.
“Those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed… The strong shall be as tinder, and the work of it as a spark; both will burn together, and no one shall quench them.” (Isaiah 1:28, 31)
Is there hope? Absolutely. This short message is a call to true hope in the Word of the Lord. But our delusion has grown deep, pervasive and supernaturally headstrong. We will only live into that Spirit-borne hope as we embrace the place of abasement in the courts of the Holy One.
But we need to come. He will not tolerate a Bride who is filled with rebellion, corruption, sickness, evil and prostitution when He returns.
“Come now, and let us debate your case,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall become as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 1:18-20)
____________________ JSB • November (Edited), 2025
*FOUR NOTES RE: MAMDANI ONE Zhran Mamdani is a long-time member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) which has openly, and often-stated its intent to enact the following extreme anti-Israel policies for the governing of New York City: • Divest City pension funds from Israeli bonds and securities • Withdraw City funds from banks that lend money to Israel or do business in Israel • End City contracts with companies that do business with Israel • Operate City-run grocery stores free from Israeli products • Investigate real estate agents hosting illegal sales of stolen lands in the West Bank • Evict weapons manufacturers and transporters from the NYC Metro Area • Remove non-profit status from charities that raise funds for IDF • Divest CUNY endowment and reinstate wrongly fired professors • Dismantle Eric Adam’s NYC-Israel economic council • End NYPD training with IOF End repression of demonstrators and the SRG • Arrest Netanyahu and active IDF soldiers for war crimes
TWO On October 8, 2023 (one day after the horrific October 7 attacks) Mamdani tweeted the following: “Statement on ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine: I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours. Netanyahu’s declaration of war, the Israeli government’s decision to cut electricity to Gaza, and Knesset members calling for another Nakba will undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering in the days and weeks to come. The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
THREE Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove is the highly respected leader of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City’s Upper East Side. On Shabbat October 18, 2025 he gave what might be the most important sermon in his life. Here are some brief excerpts: “To be clear, unequivocal, and on the record: I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of New York Jewish community. Mamdani’s refusal to condemn inciteful slogans like “globalize the intifada,” his denial of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, and his many long-standing calls to support BDS, make him a danger to the Jewish body politic of New York. Zionism, Israel, Jewish self-determination – these are not political preferences or partisan talking points. They are constituent building blocks and inseparable strands of my Jewish identity. To accept me as a Jew but to ask me to check my concern for the people and State of Israel at the door is as nonsensical a proposition as it is offensive – no different than asking me to reject God, Torah, mitzvot, or any other pillar of my faith. Mamdani’s distinction between accepting Jews and denying a Jewish state is not merely rhetorical sleight of hand or political naivete, though it is, to be clear, both of those things. His doing so is to traffic in the most dangerous of tropes, an anti-Zionist rhetoric that, as we have seen time and again – in Washington, in Colorado, in ways both small and large, online and in person – has given rise to deadly antisemitic violence. This past summer, you may recall, at the Glastonbury Music Festival in England, the crowd erupted into chants of “Death to the IDF.” Where exactly would a Mamdani administration stand should that happen next summer in a concert on Governors Island, or in Central Park? Today, as I have before, I am throwing a flag on the field and calling out a threat to the Jewish people five minutes early rather than risk being five minutes too late.”
FOUR Mamdani is a “stranger” to the covenant promises of the God of the Bible. AND, he is a danger to the Jewish people, New York’s support of the Jewish state, and by extension, the purposes of the Christian’s “King”, Y’shua of Nazareth, as He marshals His return to the earth. The salient question for us is this: “WHY is this man now where he is?” More pointedly, “WHAT IS THERE IN US, that has put him in a place where he may “OVERTHROW” God’s purposes for the city of New York, the Jewish people, and Zion, the throne of Y’shua’s ultimate reign?“
The Babylon of the end of the age is Sodom with all the wealth, and commerce of the nations. It’s the consummate picture of the unfettered, dominant, excess-driven human heart. Babylon will be God’s way of showing all of human history: “See? This is who humanity will continually tend to become, apart from yielding to the reign of My Son.”
Babylon is the spirit that refuses restraint; the natural spirit that lies within every one of us. Babylon is a mirror to our own uncrucified soul when we have all the wealth, all the power, all the freedom, and all the unifying potential to do, create, say, conspire, and believe anything we want. Babylon is the unsurrendered rich, young ruler on demonic steroids.
There’s never been a generation on the earth that’s fit this category more than us.
If this IS the hour of Jesus’ return, Bible believers need to spend much less time wondering “Who is the antiChrist?” – and MUCH MORE TIME inquiring of the Lord: “How are we (how am I) operating in the spirit of Babylon?”
Instead, the Church (who claims to be experiencing great revival) is found blindly, and with seared consciences, trumpeting the dominion of Babylon.
The difference between the court prophets in Jeremiah’s day, and the court prophets in our own day is that in Jeremiah’s day, the court prophets saw Babylon as the looming threat to Judah, and the covenant people of God. The court prophets in our day make no distinction between Babylon and the Kingdom of our God and King – and patently refuse to stand up to a Babylon who even claims to have the power to “save God” Himself – while they heartily defend and take part in her excesses.
Friends. This is about SO MUCH MORE than politics. It’s an MRI into what’s at work within our souls. Where are the people of God who will come to the Lord in an hour of propaganda, and lavish abundance and ask, “Holy Spirit, show us our ‘whoredom’!”??
Instead of Protesting “NO KINGS” This Past Saturday, Our Little House of Prayer Came Before Our King In Prayer and Exaltation. Here’s 10 Things Our King Accomplished During These 3 Hours…
1. Our King amplified His glory and power in the hearts of 100,000 neighbors that we prayed for w/in our 100 mile radius. (One of my favorite times from yesterday was declaring 100 distinct, beautiful qualities about Jesus from the Bible into the atmosphere over our region.)
2. Our King humbled us under a contrite spirit of repentance, and the fear of the Lord, re: His judgments that are upon the earth – and upon all of us.
3. Our Lord filled us with increased zeal to bring ALL of our ways into obedience to His reign. AND He gave us increased power to do so.
4. Our King struck a blow against the rampant principality of rebellion and lawlessness in our hearts, in our relationships, and in our land.
5. Our King filled our hearts with increased tender loyalty to Him and His transcendent ways.
6. Our King manifest His tender mercies toward 100,000 individuals in our region: white, native, brown, young, old, believers, unbelievers, antifa, MAGA, and non-political
7. Our King gave many of us an increased vision of the eternal Kingdom power of prayer that He longs to extend through His Bride, in this age, and the next.
8. Our King fell upon us with a glorious love that fostered deep, humble, first-commandment love, unity.
9. We heard our King tell us that He likes us.
10. Our King prepared our hearts with a grace to bear our cross, and remain fiercely loyal to His heart through the intensity that’s mounting in our nation.
BONUS 11. Our King fortified a crystal clear resolve to take every thought captive against a tyrannical, antiChrist spirit that seeks to prostitute American evangelicalism.
FINDING THE TRANSCENDENT WAY OF JESUS Beloved family. Stay true to the gospel of the Kingdom! Stay true to our King! Stay true to the cross!
Right now, heaven is searching for transcendent and unadulterated voices that will speak the truth of God to both the lost in the world, and the deluded in the Church.
It’s instructive to recognize that the voice of Christ – and the way of God – is almost never a singular, polarized antithesis to the way of godlessness. It is nearly always also a bur under the saddle of carnal, religious idolatry. History is packed with relevant examples:
A. In Exodus, there was the way of the Egyptians, the way of the Children of Israel, and then the way of God through Moses and Joshua. YHWH opposed the religious/idolatrous way of the Children of Israel (Exodus 32) as resoundingly as He did the paganism of the people of Egypt.
B. In Joshua 5, the Captain of the Lord’s armies declared He was not for the descendants of the Children of Israel, nor for the people of Jericho. He was looking for those who would “be on the Lord’s side”. It was a transcendent moment that moved Joshua (the man who would not leave the tent of meeting in Exodus 33) so profoundly that he fell at the feet of the Captain in holy worship.
C. In Daniel 3, there was the way of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, there was the way of the faithless children of Judah, and then there was the transcendent way of Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego, who would not bow to the kingdom image that all the rest of the Babylonians, including captive Judah were bowing to.
D. In Jesus’ day, there was the way of the pagan Romans, and then the way of the Pharisees, and the crippled people of Judea. Jesus walked in a transcendent way above the rampant false gods of the Hellenistic world, and the false, religious zealotry of the Jews – calling all to repentance.
“Now after John was taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15)
E. Across the ages, kingdoms have risen in opposition to oppressive religion (ie. the Russian revolution, the populist movement in South Africa etc.), and kingdoms have risen up against virulent godlessness (the crusades, and many of the South American regime changes in the 60’s, and 70’s). In the VAST MAJORITY OF THE CASES the kingdoms that have risen against the ruling political power were NOT the way of Christ. (The Marxists weren’t the way of Christ replacing the religious elite in Russia. Pinochet wasn’t bringing the Kingdom of heaven to Chile. And Mandela wasn’t bringing the way of Christ to the people of South Africa.) There remained a transcendent way above, wedged and salted into the kingdoms that were in polar apposition to each other.
F. In the 1930’s, the Nazi’s rose to power promising to inoculate Germany from the godless ideology of communism that was sweeping the nations in eastern Europe. No one today believes Naziism was the way of Jesus. Nor would any Bible believer assert that the way of Stalin and Lenin were the government of heaven on earth. Faithful disciples of Jesus, the “ELECT” if you will, were borne and forged within the midst of the “trouble” (thlipsis – “tribulation”) of the intense cultural pressures that existed between these polarized ideologies. And so you had the Corey and Betsy TenBooms living for Jesus in spite of the Nazi opposition, and you had the Ivan (Vanya) Moiseyevs, living faithfully for Jesus under the thumb of communist Russia. BOTH LIVED FAITHFULLY FOR JESUS even though their secular cultural ideologies fought wars against the other…
It’s not so difficult to see the parallel today in America. There’s been a decades-long thrust of godless humanism that’s become virulent and oppressive throughout our culture, and now a strident, authoritarian nationalism that has taken aim at the evils of “the left”, and “the woke”. We dare (and it is a risk) to learn the long lesson of history – especially our own “people of God” history and realize that the Lord is most always NOT on one side or the other of these warring, political factions. His way is transcendent. His way is pure. His way is nailed to a cross to the glory of the One Who will one day rule ALL the nations.
Friends. Moses, Joshua, Jeremiah, Daniel, the John the Baptist, the disciples, Augustine, Luther, Wesley, and Bonhoeffer, all found the transcendent way of the “ELECT” of God. And it behooves the American Church to find it in our tumultuous hour as well.
“My Word is like a fire that purges dross… (Jeremiah 23:29); Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? (Isaiah 33:14) The strong will be like tinder, and his work like a spark. They will both burn together, and no one will quench the fire. (Isaiah 1:31)”
For the last 9 months, the Lord has been speaking to our House of Prayer in Arizona from the book of Jeremiah, and Isaiah chapter 1, about the approaching “fire of the Lord”. The hour is here. The Church in America (pastors, evangelists, apostles, teachers, prophets, young and old, women and men, Jew and gentile and black and native and… all who claim to be “in Christ”) is entering the forge of the Lord, with all of heaven, and the nation watching.
Some of us will come out of the furnace with spirits that are burnished bright; shining with His likeness. Millions of other believers will be radicalized by contraKingdom rhetoric; enflamed with nothing more than a raging self-seeking ethic that the Word of God warns us against.
Religious zealotry always looks promising to the flesh. But it is never what moves the Church from one age to the next. Consider the zealots of Jesus’ day. They subscribed to a very orthodox theology of God, and the scriptures. But their spirits, such as they were, were unprofitable for the Kingdom work that the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit were bringing to earth.
This historical parallel is essential to note. We live in an hour when many zealous individuals also verbalize classic, theological orthodoxy, and yet refuse to live under the reign of Jesus’ authority – marginalizing the blessings and warnings of the Sermon on the Mount, avoiding our daily (Luke 9:23) cross, and hence devoid of the Spirit’s baptismal fire. Consequently, the church elevates political power as an expedient end to prayer power, cultural dominion over humility before the Lord, and the temptation to live with a hostile, even violent spirit, rather than to learn the way of meekness.
Heaven has no use for a “Church” who has no use for the Son’s Sermon on the Mount. The Spirit will simply not release anointing upon a Church who isn’t walking crucified to “Christ”.
Heaven has no use for a Church who has no use for the Son’s Sermon on the Mount.
No. Classic, theological orthodoxy cannot be the sole, nor primary distinguishing characteristic of what constitutes “fidelity to the Lord” in this hour.
Nonetheless, it is a brusk, unbowed, militant, theological orthodoxy which is being spun, embraced and now normalized within our evangelical family in this hour.
It’s incumbent upon pastors and leaders to discern this deceitful perversion of Jesus’ Kingdom. It is a false way, that though it be filled with emotional, populist appeal, lacks the essential element that makes for Kingdom success: the crucified life. It is for this reason that the Lord is bringing His fire into our midst. His “burnings” are intended to purge the self-saving spirit from His Bride, while simultaneously beautifying the Christ-reliant, Christ-exalting resurrection spirit within His Bride.
This separation of the way of self, from the way of Christ, is a compulsory work of the Spirit. And it is the fire of the Lord that forges this element within the character of the Bride; refined, spotless, and pure – prepared to be presented to the Son. And it is for this work that the fire of the Lord is upon the “ecclesia” right now, in the fall of 2025.
Will we come to the Lord’s threshing floor and allow His fire to remove the endemic selfism from our ways, and spirits? Or will we “rise up” in the religious zeal of our own self-determined flesh in order to champion a crossless, politically empowered morality?
Every evangelical leader in America ought to be attuned to the intent of the Spirit right now, so as to help the people of God to…
A. Understand the nature of the cultural and internal conflict that’s upon them,
B. Understand the glorious nature of what the Lord wants to produce through the forge (ala. vibrant Christlikeness)
C. Understand how to help the people wholly submit to the purging/purifying work of the Spirit through this season.
A vow (not even a very popular, emotional vow) will not save the Church right now. Only finding His Presence, and bowing low before His unapproachable majesty will align us with our King. We can either be stirred to fervent determination (which will exit us from the forge of the Lord – a whole “other” story… [See Isaiah 1:28]), or we can stay in the fire, trust His heart for us, and submit ourSELVES to the deep, cleansing work of His fire. The Lord will ONLY bring resurrection power to one of these two places. Not the other. NOT the other.
Beloved. We don’t want a Christianity that has no resurrection power upon it. Only a cross will get us there. Not a sword. (Even if we do call it “the sword of the Lord”. It is not.)
We want bonafide New Testament Christianity. Not age-old, intertestamental religious zealotry. It’s vital that we learn to distinguish between the two.
Rising up in militant, nationalist opposition to their enemies brought neither Judah, nor Israel into revival. It brought them into exile.
Rising up in militant, nationalist opposition to their enemies brought neither Judah, nor Israel into revival. It brought them into exile.
The only way into the revival that the Lord has in store for His people is through the Christ-forging fire that the Lord is bringing upon His people.
Truth-be-told, the New Testament scriptures are clear: though He be enormously patient and compelling, should the covenant people of God steadfastly spurn the purging work of the Father, they can expect to be purged from the Father.
In real fear and trembling, I pray that more than a very small remnant will see the forge that’s upon us, and avail ourselves of it.
“The sinners in Zion are afraid; fear seizes those clothed in falsehood: ‘Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?’ He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, he who despises the gain of oppressions, He will dwell on high; His place of defense will be the fortress of rocks.” (Isaiah 33:14-16)
SPIRIT WORD & CROSS 