General

Possibly the most important election of our lifetime will take place three weeks from today. I will be on a long plane flight across the Pacific as the day dawns on America soil–but I will arrive back from Asia in time to watch the returns.

Despite jet lag and fatigue, I will be glued to the set.

I’ve already received the various voter pamphlets that spell out the issues and candidates in this year’s mid-term elections. In one week, our all-mail-in state will send out the ballots that need to be marked. In other states, there will be a combination of absentee ballots and actual polling stations that people will utilize on or before November 2.

The future of America hangs in the balance this first Tuesday of November.

I am boldly asking you to use the influence you possess to get people to pray and vote wisely.

One man clearly trumpeting the need to pray and vote is Mathew Staver. In 1989, Matt became the founder of Liberty Counsel and currently serves as Chairman of the Board.  Liberty Counsel is a litigation, education and policy organization with offices in Orlando, Florida, Lynchburg, Virginia, and hundreds of affiliate attorneys in all fifty states. Liberty Counsel was one of the first religious liberty litigation organizations in the country. In the early 1990s, Matt was one of the first to pioneer a new legal strategy and theory in litigating religious liberty cases, using the First Amendment Free Speech Clause.

I can’t say any better what Matt shares below. There are many movements in America this year that are calling believers to action. However, Liberty Counsel’s thrust really understands the enemy we’re fighting and the need to engage him with both spiritual and natural weapons.

Please pray and vote for godly change in America.

RB
          
From Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel

Dear Friend,

America’s socialists are uniting – more than most of us realize.

The October 2 “One Nation” rally in Washington, DC, was billed as a major event and was attended by representatives from virtually every leftist organization operating in America. Groups like the People’s Organization for Progress, Progressive Democrats of America, Planned Parenthood, and People for the American Way were there.  Many radical union members were PAID to attend.

Although the rally turnout was lower than expected, here is what shocked me:  Members of the Communist Party USA openly carried signs boldly announcing their propaganda.

Even more shocking was the way in which the Communists were embraced and welcomed by the “Progressives” (a nice name for liberal extremists) – while many in the so-called mainstream media conveniently chose not to show their viewers footage of the Communist presence.

The socialization of America is well under way.

The Obama scheme of “Change,” as embraced by his radical socialist cohorts and rammed down the collective throats of grassroots Americans, is designed to do one thing–to reshape America into a socialist nation.

On one day, one vote can change America’s destiny.

Our nation’s future is riding on November’s midterm elections. Many are calling it the single most important election in decades. Concerned Christian and values voters MUST turn out in record numbers for this election! We simply must reverse the momentum of the radical socialists.

That’s why, today, I am announcing the election countdown phase of our “Pray & Vote 2010” campaign that will help restore our nation. Pray & Vote 2010’s goal is to reach FOUR MILLION pro-faith,pro-family, and pro-liberty citizens and fully engage them in this historic election.  We believe that four million committed conservative voters could change the course of the election – and our nation.

Why the Socialists Despise This Effort.

The media and intellectual elites despise it when any mention of God or faith is made in association with an election.They demand a “secular” society and a “secular” debate. So as we boldly announce a “Pray & Vote” campaign that will reach four million citizens, imagine the response we will get from the radical Left.

That’s why I am personally asking you to take a stand with us right now and say, “I Will Pray and I Will Vote!” It takes just moments to take a stand that could literally change the course of our nation.

Pray & Vote 2010 is a multi-media campaign that will use the resources of the Internet as well as television and radio to get the word out from coast to coast. Once you sign up, I’ll need your help to engage your friends, co-workers, and those in your church or community group to join us as well.

Reaching four million people is an attainable goal when thousands of committed citizens utilize their personal spheres of influence, the Internet, and mass media to spread the message.

Here’s how YOU can help:

• ENROLL: By signing your commitment to Pray & Vote, you will be among many, many thousands
  of others who are committed to changing the course of America through prayer and exercising
  their right to vote.
• ENCOURAGE: Ask your peers, family members, and fellow church or civic organization members to
  pray for our nation and for God’s direction for our nation – and to become an informed voter who will cast their ballot on November 2. Encourage them to sign Liberty Counsel’s Pray & Vote commitment.
• ENGAGE: Call your incumbents’ offices – and those challenging them to become a            representative of the people. Learn where candidates stand on issues important to you!             Then, we all must get out and VOTE.

Click here to sign your “Pray & Vote” commitment.

Liberty Counsel has important resources for you. Once you take a stand to “Pray & Vote,” our team will connect you with exclusive resources to equip you as Election Day draws near. For example, you’ll have immediate access to my special message, “What Pastors and Churches May Do.”It is a definitive review of the law governing Christian participation in political activities that has been seen by hundreds of thousands of Americans.

There are also links to access contact information for your senators and representative.

Let’s support leaders who will honor religious freedom, protect families, and venerate life! Make no mistake:  Our national character will be greatly impacted by the 2010 midterm elections. With so much at stake, Liberty Counsel is calling on members and friends to help re-kindle the spiritual fire in our nation through this powerful Pray & Vote initiative.

In the eyes of the elites who rule the media, education and much of our government, your bold declaration that you will Pray & Vote is radical and unacceptable. But to our Founding Fathers, combining prayer with political participation was a sacred duty.

Thank you in advance for your participation in this vital campaign.

God bless you,

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman
Liberty Counsel

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.