General

The American nation–and the world as a whole–is desperately trying to pull itself up from a debilitating recession, an unending oil spill, and other woes.

Sometimes the way up is down…on our knees.

On July 4, 2010 the second annual Call 2 Fall event will point us the right direction. The greatest need of our time is to fall on our knees, confess our rebellion and sin against a holy and loving God, turn from our self-centered and apathetic ways and rebuild our homes, neighborhoods and societies upon the proven principles of His Word.

I’m excited to again invite you to participate in this year’s Call 2 Fall. This is the second year that Tony Perkins, the head of Family Research Council has called the Body of Christ in America to set aside time on Sunday, July 4, to humble themselves before God by praying on their knees. There’s nothing magical about kneeling. It’s just a good reminder of how sinful we are before a Righteous God and how dependent we are upon Him for renewal in our hearts and reformation and hope in our nation.

July 4 is on Sunday this year. Wouldn’t it be great if millions of believers went to their houses of worship on Saturday night or Sunday morning and fell our their faces to repent of sin and express their utter dependency on God? The remainder of the could be spent with family and friends celebrating our Independence as a nation.

First, repentance and expressing dependence on God.

Second, faith and celebration of our  independence from tyranny.

Right now there are over 275,000 churches and individuals that are committed to be a part of the Call 2 Fall. If you’re not already one of them, go to the Call 2 Fall web-site right now and sign up.

The Call 2 Fall is nothing fancy.  No slick program.  No big production.  Just setting aside a definite time during worship on July 4, 2010 when people get on their knees and faces before the Lord in repentant prayer for God to reshape their lives and renew our land. There are multiplied millions of believers who realize that America is in trouble and that neither Washington nor Wall Street has the answers. We are hoping that at least 40,000 churches will join in a corporate act of humility, repentance, and desperate prayer on our knees before the Lord.

“Call 2 Fall” on our knees will be happening in the many places Christians meet on Sunday, July 4. We realize that the church gathers in worship centers, store-fronts, homes, and various other places all across America.  We are calling believers to kneel at least 3 to 5 minutes before the Lord wherever they may gather that day, Sunday, July 4, 2010. Why that Sunday? Because on the day we celebrate our “Independence,” we should also express our “Dependence” upon the Lord. Throughout this special day, we encourage believers to spend time on their knees in crying out to God to heal our souls and our land.

Why is there a necessity for a Call 2 Fall? First, the Scriptures teach it. The key verse is 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” The first requirement on the path to renewal is to “humble ourselves,” to fall on our knees and faces before the Lord in repentant prayer.  Over and over the Scriptures teach this.  

Second, our history records it.   Our founding fathers sensed the need for a “Call 2 Fall” in view of the monumental struggle we were engaged in with Britain.  The First Continental Congress called for a day of public humiliation, fasting, and prayer throughout the Colonies on July 20th, 1775 just after war broke out. James Warren wrote Samuel Adams: “Three millions of people on their knees at once, supplicating the aid of Heaven, is a striking circumstance, and a very singular one in America . May the blessings of Heaven follow in answer to our prayers…”

In addition, colonial America and the early years of our republic experienced what observers have called Great Awakenings, which began with God’s people humbling themselves in repentant prayer and led to others becoming followers of Christ. 

Third, our nation needs it. Ponder the past decade.  From 9/11 to war to natural disasters to financial and moral collapse, we are witnessing what happens when a nation turns away from God.  In view of the monumental challenges of our times, do we not find ourselves in a similar situation as that of ancient Israel and early America?  Consequently, we are sensing the need to return to simple but powerful truths like:

God is sovereign.  He is holy and He is love. We are sinners.  We are saved from His severity of His wrath toward sin only by the fierceness of His love in Christ. When we drift away in disobedience, we experience His discipline. His judgments are just. The pathway back must begin with:

• A humility and brokenness before the Lord.
• A desperation to find the face of God.
• A heart cry for the mercy of God.
• A desire to turn from our sinful ways.
• A resolve to return to the ways of God.
• This is what the ancient words of Scripture are calling us to do when we speak of a “Call 2 Fall.” 

I finished a Masters thesis in May and it contains another description of a “Call 2 Fall” in 1857 that brought a great revival to America during the Civil War. Here is the brief story:

“One of the most unusual prayer movements of the period was the lay-led “noon prayer meetings” that helped ignite the Great Revival of 1857. The man most credited with this prayer revival was Jeremiah Lanphier, a New York merchant.

On September 23, 1857, Lanphier climbed creaking stairs to the third story of an old church building on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan and sat down to wait. He’d place a sign on the street below that read “Prayer Meeting from 12 to 1 o’clock—Stop 5, 10, or 20 minutes, or the whole hour as your time admits.” For months few had joined him. This particular week, six people eventually trudged in. The following week twenty had gathered to pray, and the next week—forty.
 
On October 14, 1857 the nation was staggered by the worst financial panic in its history. Banks closed, men were out of work, and families went hungry. In a few short weeks, the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting had taken over the whole building with crowds of more than 3,000.  Within six months, 10,000 businessmen (out of a population of 800,000) were gathering daily in New York City for prayer.
 
The revival of prayer soon jumped the Atlantic Ocean and spread across the United States, impacting most of the major cities in the nation. After a number of years, and continuing during the American Civil War, it is estimated that more than one million people came to Christ including 43,388 Southern Methodists, 135,517 Northern Methodists, and 92,243 Baptists.  This particular prayer movement was mostly led by laymen, not clergy, and certainly formed the backdrop of the large missionary surge that went around the world in the coming decades.”

I personally feel that a major financial downturn or double-dip recession is very likely in the not-so-distant future. Why? Because as Abraham Lincoln so wisely said during those difficult Civil War years:

“We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Those words were uttered by our nation’s greatest president to ask the people of America to fall on their knees in prayer and humiliation on April 30, 1963. God heard their prayers and brought victory and blessing to our nation.

July 4, 2010 is our day–our time. Will you go to your knees in prayer? Will you mobilize your church to participate in national repentance and renewal?

Sometimes the way up is down.

May this Independence Day 2010 become a new beginning of faith and freedom in the United States and all over the world.

                       “If God does not exist then everything is permitted.” –Dostoevsky

I ran across this famous quote in a booklet that I read this week. David Horowitz’s Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model is very helpful in understanding what is happening in America and what is at the heart of the human struggle. It’s easy in our cultural battles to think we are waging a war between left and right, Democrats and Republicans, socialists and patriots, or other competing views.

But that is not the heart of the matter. There is a mission of destruction in the world today that not only gives meaning to the perils of the present hour, but also explains our own personal temptations and failures.

There is a universal monster that is latent in each of us. And there is a being behind that monster.

Before we divulge the source, let’s take a little tour through Horowitz’s booklet which reminded me of the truth. Horowitz is a great authority on this subject. He was once himself a communist radical.

By now it is a well known fact that Barack Obama is a follower of Saul Alinsky, the political radical who was born in Chicago in 1909 and died in California in 1972. We need to look at Saul Alinsky to comprehend the political problems that we’re facing. We also need a better understanding of our current president, Barack Obama, to make sense of his leadership over the past eighteen months.

Alinsky greatly influenced Obama. Let’s begin with our 44th president.

Barack Obama

Obama never met Alinsky personally, but he studied his political ideas and taught Alinsky’s methods. On Barack Obama’s presidential campaign web-site, according to David Horowitz, “one could see a photo of Obama in a classroom teaching students Alinskyan methods. He stands in front of a blackboard on which he has written, ‘Power Analysis and Relationships Built on Self Interest.'” These concepts were at the heart of Alinsky’s view that power was to be “seized” by appealing to man’s selfish nature. Alinsky’s famous book, Rules for Radicals, describes the many ways that communities must be “organized” to incite revolution and bring change.

Until Barack Obama became a legislator in 1996, he worked with ACORN, the largest radical organization in America which was built on the Alinsky model of organizing. The Wall Street Journal says:

“In 1991 Obama took time off from his law firm to run a voter registration drive for Project Vote…The drive registered 135,000 voters and was considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Senate primary. Mr. Obama’s success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became a top trainer  at ACORN’s Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became ACORN’s attorney. In 1996, Mr. Obama filled out a questionaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the Illinois Senate. He put ACORN first (it was not an alphabetical list).”

After Barack Obama became a US Senator, his wife Michelle, told a reporter, “Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.” Horowitz notes that her husband commented: “I take that observation as a compliment.” Following her husband’s speech at the Democratic Convention in August, 2008, Michelle Obama summed up her husband’s vision with these words: “When Barack stood up that day, he spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about the ‘world as it is.’ and the ‘world as it should be.’ And he said that all too often we accept the distance between the two and we settle for the world as it is, even when it doesn’t reflect our values and obligations…We have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be.”

Where did Obama receive his vision? From Saul Alinsky. Alinsky says in Rules for Radicals: “As an organizer I start from the world as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be–it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working within the system.”

Now you know the origin of the phrase “Change You Can Believe In.” Obama received his vision for change from Saul Alinsky. So what did Saul Alinsky believe?

Saul Alinsky

Horowitz says that Alinsky’s “preferred self-description was ‘rebel’ and his entire life was devoted to organizing a revolution in America to destroy a system he regarded as oppressive and unjust. By profession he was a ‘community organizer,’ the same term employed by his most famous disciple, Barack Obama to describe himself.”

Alinsky came of age in the 1930s and was drawn to the world of Chicago gangsters whom he encountered professionally as a sociologist. He was a social intimate with the Al Capone mob family and though his biographer calls him an “anti-anti communist,” he had a fraternal relationship with many communist organizations. He didn’t join them them because he felt they were inflexible and dogmatic–whereas Alinsky was a political relativist. But they both shared the same goal. Alinsky said it this way: “We are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people.”

Horowitz comments, “Power is to be ‘seized’–the word is revealing. The present system will not  allow justice to be realized, so sooner or later immoral, illegal, even violent means are required to achieve it.” Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals to show his fellow rebels the way. Here are the salient points that Horowitz notes in his booklet. According to Saul Alinsky:

• There are “Haves” and “Have Nots.” The “Haves” oppress the “Have Nots” and must be overthrown. Alinsky is clearly Marxian in this concept and greatly admired Vladimir Lenin.
• Everything is relative. There is no God or right and wrong. Alinsky says, “the radical organizer does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing: everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.” Thus being a radical in the service of the masses is a license to do anything that is required to achieve that good.
• Deception is the radical’s most important weapon and it has been a prominent one since the sixties.  Even though you are at war with the system, don’t confront it as an opposing army; join it and undermine it from within.
• This is a war for social justice–a heaven on earth–of social and not personal salvation. The unwavering end of the revolution is a communism of results.

But the most revealing part of Horowitz’ booklet and greatest insight into the heart and mind of Saul Alinsky, comes from Alinsky’s dedicatory page of Rules for Radicals where we find the following words: “Lest we forget, an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins–or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom– Lucifer.”

Lucifer

My jaw almost dropped when I read those words. Alinsky actually praises Satan as the first rebel/radical!  Horowitz comments: “Thus Alinsky begins his text by telling readers exactly what a radical is. He is not a reformer of the system but its would-be destroyer. In his mind the radical is building his own kingdom, which to him is a kingdom on earth. Since a kingdom of heaven built by human beings is a fantasy–an impossible dream–the only radical real world efforts are those which are aimed at subverting the society he lives in. He is a nihilist.”

Horowitz, a Jew, concludes his analysis of Saul Alinsky’s political philosophy with this sober perspective: “Alinsky’s tribute to Satan as the first radical is further instructive because it reminds us that the radical illusion is an ancient one and has not changed through the millennia. Recall how Satan tempted Adam and Eve to destroy their paradise: ‘If you rebel against God’s command then you shall be as gods.’ This is the radical hubris: We can create a new world. Through our political power we can make a new race of men and women who will live in harmony and peace and according to the principles of social justice. We can be as gods.” (Emphasis is his.)

Lucifer was the first rebel/radical. His mission is to destroy. Saul Alinsky admired Satan’s rebellion and sought to duplicate it on earth. Barack Obama is an Alinsky disciple.

You and I

But they are not alone. The Bible tells us that all of us are fallen–rebels against God. Whenever we seek self-interest above the glory of God and his ways, we join in that cosmic rebellion. Dostoevsky was right. When we turn from God–rebellion, destruction and chaos are the result.

Yes, a revolution is taking place in our nation–provoked by rebel/radicals. But guard your own heart. You and I are only one choice away from the same mission of destruction. 

I learned along time ago that unless you can define your enemies you cannot defeat them.

During my basketball playing years, when I brought the ball up-court it was critical to discern whether the opposing team was playing a zone or a man-to-man defense. If they were playing zone, you you immediately set up your zone offense. If it was man-to-man, then a whole different set of plays needed to be run.

For many years I’ve been trying to understand and properly describe the forces that are trying to tear down both the United States and Western World. In the past few years, that understanding has crystallized. I think I now understand more of the enemy and his tactics.

So does Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. In his extremely important new book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine, Newt gives the clearest read yet on what we face as a people.

Newt Gingrich has it right.

Will we “get it” in time to renew our nation?

First, a little history and personal reflection on Newton Leroy Gingrich, history teacher/historian, seven-term US Congressman from Georgia, leader of the Republican Revolution and TIME Person of the Year (1994) and Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995-1999.

Newt is undoubtedly one of the most influential conservative leaders of the past thirty years. He is an expert on US history and has written a number of books  on the subject (fiction and non-fiction). Through his American Solutions organization he has been a prominent idea guy on common sense policies that bring blessing to a free society. He’s probably the brightest and most experienced mind on the Republican side of the ledger.

Newt also has some flaws. He has been married three times. He first married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher. The young couple decided to divorce after Gingrich told her of an extra-marital affair while she was recovering from cancer surgery. In 1981, Newt wed Marianne Ginther until 2000 when they divorced and he married Callista Bisek, with whom he’d had an affair during his second marriage. Ironically, this particular liaison started during the Congressional investigation of Bill Clinton’s perjury relating to his affair with 23-year-old intern, Monica Lewinsky–of which Gingrich was highly critical.

This man with strong “family values” hasn’t always walked the walked.

During his time in Congress and as Speaker of the House, he was also prone to some cockiness in his leadership style which got him in trouble with the mainstream media who disliked both his approach and positions. Due to his moral and temperamental outbursts, the press was able to marginalize Newt Gingrich’s influence, which led to his resignation from Congress.

He has been re-habbing his reputation ever since–and possibly undergoing a rebirth of faith and character that is evidenced in his books and documentaries. In Nine Days That Changed the World  he describes how Pope John Paul’s Christian faith was used to ignite a a fire for God in Poland which eventually brought down the Iron Curtain. In his two works called Re-Discovering God in America, Newt makes a strong case for our Christian origins and encourages us to come home.

Maybe Newt Gingrich has personally found his way back to faith and virtue. If so, his story might be similar to Thomas Jefferson’s who was probably a Deist when he was young (and cut out portions of the Bible), but seemed to grow in personal faith toward the end of his life.

At any rate, I believe that Newt Gingrich is a leader to be reckoned with in 2010 and clearly understands the enemies that America faces. They are named in the subtitle of his new book:

“Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine”

1. Stopping

Newt realizes that we are careening in a wrong direction as a nation that must be stopped in its tracks. He offers many valuable suggestions as to how to change direction. The current moral, economic, and diplomatic malaise must be halted by an enlightened and re-energized American electorate.

2. Obama’s

Gingrich understands that Barack Obama is not your normal American or American president. He is a radical progressive–a type of revolutionary–with an internationalist bent. He has a different view of God, the world, and America’s history and destiny than most past presidents and the majority of Americans today. He overly apologizes for American’s weaknesses and doesn’t appreciate our Christian underpinnings, freedoms, and exceptionalism.

3. Secular

Newt Gingrich is is the first prominent political leader to articulate the battle of worldviews currently taking place in America and the Western World. It is first a fight between Christian faith and secular religion–and secondly, with radical Islam.  The Christian-secular tussle has been raging throughout America’s history, but has intensified since the 1960s when secularism became established in the government schools and atheists emboldened their stance against America’s traditional Christian faith.

Newt is prophetically correct when he says that the current administration wants to destroy any last vestiges of Christian mores and influences in our culture. The battle over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” taking place today in Congress and pushed by the Obama Administration is one of many fronts where our current leaders are trying to force secular values down the throats of a majority Christian nation. Newt believes we need to fight back and re-discover God in America. This is a welcome call to historic Christian revival and reformation.

4. Socialist

Newt also understands what most American’s are now seeing: That those currently leading our nation are socialists who want America to become a European-style social democracy. They are expanding the reach of government at a break-neck pace, taking over control of many private industries (car companies, and some banks and financial institutions are the latest acquisitions), and want to tax and spend our nation into a dependent welfare state. It was reported today that the private sector of the American economy now accounts for only 42% of economic activity. That’s a frightening statistic to an historically free people. For socialists, it’s an encouraging sign that they are bringing “change” to America–from free enterprise to socialism.

5. Machine  

Gingrich is also right on in describing the political style of the current administration as being an off-shoot of the notorious Chicago political apparatus. In fact most of its main players–including Barack Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod–are products of the Chicago political establishment. They play hardball (national health care), give out bribes (Rep. Joe Sestak), and don’t tolerate criticism and dissent well (Fox News). They are a well-oiled and financed machine that can be ruthless in achieving their goals.

Newt Gingrich could have added one more word to his profound sub-title–the word:

6. Conspiracy.

No, I don’t mean any type of human conspiracy. The only conspiracy I believe in is the demonic one (Ephesians 6:12) that is operating in the world today, warring against Christ and the advance of His kingdom. It is ultimately the satanic world that is trying to erase Christianity from the public square and exalt the worship of man in the from of humanism, secularism, or world government. It is the powers of darkness who are behind the destruction of free enterprise and expression while trying to impoverish America and the world.

We need to vote out these revolutionaries–but we also need to pray out the forces that empower them.

Newt Gingrich’s new book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular Socialist Machine, calls the American people to return to God, faith, freedom and hope.

Now that message has a ring we can certainly believe in.