Monday, March 23, 2009

Veil of the Holy Spirit Part I

Some people in the United States cannot believe what is happening to their nation. They cannot understand how a narcissist who was politically unknown three years ago is now President of the United States. Since Barack Obama was elected president Americans have lost about $3 trillion in wealth and the stock market has declined about 30%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was 9,625.28 on November 4, 2008 on March 4, 2009 it was at 6,647.49. Americans have lost their jobs, big corporations and small businesses are struggling and credit has evaporated. Major American financial and manufacturing behemoths are on the brink of bankruptcy. America, the great industrial super power that powered the Allies to victory in World War II seems to be a mere shadow of its former self.

American confidence is low and people are worried. Americans search for rational answers for why all this has happened to them. Some say it was greed, lack or regulation, George Bush, bad management etc. I believe there is a deeper answer, a spiritual answer and a warning from God. Some people worry because they cannot find the United States mentioned in “Last Days” in the Bible.

I do not know what could cause America’s demise. However, I do know that no matter what Americans or others predict it will be something out of the blue, something no one can predict like Pearl Harbor and 9/11. When the Holy Spirit is removed no human being can predict what will happen. However, some of us can be Watchmen as the Bible directs.

People praying around the world can restrain satanic evil. Praying places a holy veil of the Holy Spirit over the U.S. and other parts of the world. God restrains absolute evil on earth so that the Gospel can be brought to all the nations, so that his prophecy can be fulfilled and so that people globally have an opportunity to gain eternal salvation.

It is not an accident that the United States of America has been blessed with abundance. A menorah is on our one-dollar bill and a Jew helped finance our revolution. Our nation’s blessing has come directly from God. However, America has forgotten God, just as ancient Israel and Judah did. When a nation turns from God, God lifts the Holy Spirit’s cloak of protection and allows evil to attack it. This is Biblical truth and the scriptures clearly state it. It was only after lengthy and enormous tragedy enveloped God’s chosen people that a remnant decided to turn back to God.

After 9/11 the Lord restrained Islamic terrorists and prevented further attacks upon our nation. The Bible teaches us that when a righteous leader is in charge the Lord is merciful to that nation. America is in desperate need of a righteous leader.

I firmly believe that if our citizens insist upon tearing Christianity away from America and our leaders do not support the Israel then God will pull the Holy Spirit’s protection from our nation. A historical example comes to mind. The Holy Spirit gave Great Britain Wesley as God’s instrument for a great revival to occur in Great Britain and thus saved Great Britain from the ravages of a French style revolution. Winston Churchill and some Christian scholars wrote that if it wasn’t for Wesley Great Britain might have succumbed to the forces of the French Revolution.

As a child I was fascinated with current events. I had a knack for remembering minute details about countries and their leaders and sometimes I would know how certain events would play out. For example, one time a friend came to visit our house in approximately around 1962. She told me that her brother had enlisted in the military. I told her, your brother is going to some place that most Americans have never heard of, it is in Southeast Asia and it is called Vietnam. The friend sat there looking at me not knowing what to say. Sure enough, her brother went to South Vietnam. Through the grace of God he came back safely. Since I have become a born again Christian I have considered myself a Watchman for the Lord. The Lord sent me a dream in February 2009. In the dream the Lord showed me that if the U.S. leaders and Israeli leaders persist in dividing Jerusalem then he would deeply divide the U.S. and destroy those Israeli politicians. The disaster that has befallen Ariel Sharon came to my mind. Then I saw something akin to a fierce dark, electrical storm in my dream. I could not ascertain if this storm was a devastating weather event or something like “desert storm” when the U.S. went to war in Iraq in 2003. However, its magnitude frightened me. I rarely remember my dreams and this is the first vivid dream I have had in perhaps 25 years. I think in the dream the Lord is warning America and Israeli politicians not to divide Israel and Jerusalem and he is also telling us that we are in need of another “Great Awakening.” There are specific and clear references in the Bible to Israel and Jerusalem. Some are listed below:

Jerusalem's Enemies to Be Destroyed

1 A prophecy: The word of the LORD concerning Israel.
The LORD, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the spirit in human beings, declares: 2 "I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. 3 On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves. 4 On that day I will strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness," declares the LORD. "I will keep a watchful eye over the house of Judah, but I will blind all the horses of the nations. 5 Then the clans of Judah will say in their hearts, 'The people of Jerusalem are strong, because the LORD Almighty is their God.'
6 "On that day I will make the clans of Judah like a firepot in a woodpile, like a flaming torch among sheaves. They will consume right and left all the surrounding peoples, but Jerusalem will remain intact in her place.
7 "The LORD will save the dwellings of Judah first, so that the honor of the house of David and of Jerusalem's inhabitants may not be greater than that of Judah. 8 On that day the LORD will shield those who live in Jerusalem, so that the feeblest among them will be like David, and the house of David will be like God, like the angel of the LORD going before them. 9 On that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem. Zechariah 12:1-9

God’s Covenant with the Jewish People10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit [a] of grace and supplication. They will look on [b] me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son. 11 On that day the weeping in Jerusalem will be great, like the weeping of Hadad Rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 The land will mourn, each clan by itself, with their wives by themselves: the clan of the house of David and their wives, the clan of the house of Nathan and their wives, 13 the clan of the house of Levi and their wives, the clan of Shimei and their wives, 14 and all the rest of the clans and their wives. Zechariah 12:10-14
Footnotes:
a. Zechariah 12:10 Or the Spirit

Historically, I have observed a direct linkage between world events and the removal of the Holy Spirit from nations and people.

Over the centuries the Romanov Czars launched pogrom after pogrom against their Jewish citizens. During the pogrom from 1881 to 1882 the Jews underwent a horrible persecution and the Jewish population was decimated. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed. This is when the great Jewish exodus began and Jews fled westward into other parts of Europe and to the United States. Russia and the Romanovs received several warning judgments.

Russia was humiliated and exhausted by the Crimean war. Then the revolutionary left and the anarchists arose in Russia. Czar Alexander II, “The Liberator” a reformist, came to power in 1855. He was determined to curb the landed aristocracy and bring Russia into the modern era. At times he ruled liberally like a constitutional monarch. In 1861 he freed the serfs. He also reformed the military, built railroads and reformed the penal, civil and criminal code. He survived assassination attempts in 1866, twice in 1879 and 1880. He planned to introduce parliamentary democracy in the Russian parliament (Diet). Unfortunately for Russia and the world he was assassinated on 13 March 1881 and his grand plans for Russia died with him.

A consequence of the assassination was anti-Jewish pogroms and legislation, despite the fact only one Jew was involved in the assassination conspiracy. Over 200 Jews were beaten to death in these pogroms.

From 1904 to In 1905 Russia and Japan fought each other and the Russian navy was obliterated and the Russian army defeated. The defeat increased Russian popular dissatisfaction with the inefficient and corrupt Czarist government and proved a major cause of the Russian Revolution of 1905

When the anarchist movement began in Russia a variety of radical groups sprang up including the atheistic Bolsheviks led by Lenin. These groups sought to overthrow the czar. In August 1914 the Great World War began and the mood in Moscow was jubilant. Many Russians thought the war would be short and over by Christmas. Some people thought Russian honor would be restored after Russia’s disastrous defeat and humiliation at the hands of the Japanese. At first the Russian armies were successful and on the battlefield they held their own against Germany, Austria and their allies. By 1917 however Russian was feeling the sting of war, defeatism and war weariness took hold and the war began to sour for the Russians. The 300-year-old Romanov dynasty was overthrown and the Russian noble class plunged into oblivion.

There is a clear linkage between the treatment of the Jews and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. Whether a nation is blessed or cursed depends on how the nation’s people treat the Jews. Solzhenitsyn said all the ills of Russia can be blamed on the fact that Russia forgot about God. I would add that Czar Nicholas II and the other Czars forgot about God’s chosen people and brought disaster upon himself, his dynasty, his family and his nation.

Ironically, the great migration of the Jews out of Russia was a great blessing to the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Jews came to America and America was blessed and prospered. In the 1880s during the Russian pogrom the United States began to boom and America began its rise as a world industrial power.

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