The Voice of the Turtledove Rose Provencher I am wooing My beloved to come away with Me. The days of allowing the battle to rage between your flesh and your spirit can no longer be. The flesh must submit, or the battle is lost. Now is the time to hear My voice, for it is clear and strong, and My desire is for you. In the dark days ahead, I will continue to woo you, but it will be increasing difficult to hear if you do not get yourself attuned to hear it. There will be much noise and confusion and if you are not in the spirit; your flesh will want to keep you from hearing. There is an urgency in the spirit, this is a crossroads time. What you decide now will decide your future in Me. You have to learn to make quality decisions based on what is right and good and holy, not based on what you want or think that you need. There is dividing that must be between the flesh and the Spirit, and your spirit must be free at the cost of your flesh. Liberty and freedom are not based on doing what you want to do, but doing on what is right. You are in a season of disciplining your flesh, of becoming intimately acquainted with your spirit, so that in the future when your flesh tries to get control you will see it coming and be prepared. It seems like it would be so much easier not to have flesh to contend with, but I have shown you how. You'll not be freed from it until you leave this life, but you can keep it under your spirit's control. This is a crucial time individually, but also corporately. If you are to get everything that is being given--equipping and impartations--then you have to decide now what has the dominance in your life. If you want to go on into what I have for you, then there can be no more fence-sitting This day and this time is so different because I am preparing a bride for Jesus, and the wedding day approaches, her bridal gown is nearing completion. The culmination of all things is at hand and you must stay strong until the end, or it has all been only a farce played out on the stage of each of your individual lives. All that has been gained will be lost unless you persevere until the end. It has been for that purpose that the age of the church was inserted into My plan. I want a people that will get a hold of what Jesus came for, and follow Me until the end. I want a faithful people like the early saints. I desire the church age would end as it began: in the victory that Jesus came to give each of you. The time has come for you to judge yourselves, to take a careful inventory, to be willing to look into dark places in your hearts and shed the light there too. As this is the time to bring in the unsaved, it is also time for you to bring in the unregenerate parts of your heart into the glorious light of the Gospel. It is not even about what you want anymore; it is about what I want, and it is about My plan being fulfilled in you. It is a choice whether you will go on in your own darkness, unable to see the light for yourselves, or to work to see that light and to become that light and truly bring those in darkness into it. You can not be in darkness yourselves and bring others to the light, you have to be in the light or you bring others to our darkness. It is almost time for this unblemished, spotless, perfect in every way bride to be presented to Jesus. All is in preparation, the wedding day approaches. Can you hear My plea? O come away with Me and stay with Me. Hear the way I hear, and see the way I see and be the way I am. This will be the great love story, Mine for you and yours for Me. Our love will be repeated and repeated throughout eternity, and will always cause wonder in the hearer. For you see now but dimly, but you will see it all and be in awe when you are with Me in eternity and I tell the story from My perspective. rosieproven@yahoo.com Death of the Usurper Church Stephen St. Louis God has ever kept for Himself a remnant who have not bent a knee nor kissed Baal (1 Kings 19:18). We may be looking at that even now. Several months ago, the Lord gave me an insight during worship that I felt compelled to write down. I shared it with my pastor. The jist of it was that God was going to deal harshly with the Usurper Church and her leaders so that His true bride might take her rightful place once more. Whether this will happen before Christ comes back or when He comes back I can´t tell you, nor do I believe it is particularly important. The main focus (and the reason why I gave it to my pastor in the first place) is that we need to make sure we are part of the Bride and not the Usurper. The PROPHECY ITSELF I was in church having listened to an announcement about the money needed for the elevator ($30,000) thinking to myself, "Do we really need it? What else could that money be used for? If they can raise that money that fast to put an elevator in, why can't they do the same to put towards missions or helping those in need in our own community?" As worship started again, I felt this welling up inside that just had to come out so I wrote it all down (hence the desire to have the actual words). It started off with almost a rebuke about not doing those things which the Bible clearly calls us to: looking after the needs of the poor, the lost and the hurting. Then it went into what God was going to do about it. Firstly, he was going to deal harshly with, as I said before, the Usurper, meaning the people that call themselves The Church but are not. He was using words like "expose her ugliness" and the image that I had was of a beautiful bride in a veil who is discovered to be ugly and fat and diseased when the veil is lifted. God said He was going to remove the usurper and restore His true bride to her rightful place. Now as for the bit about the usurper's leaders I believe the words used were "fall by the hundreds and by the thousands." I came across another "word" that I'd written down about a month before (dated April 18th 2010). The two go surprisingly hand in hand. Again I was sitting in church during the worship. I believe I had my Bible open to 1 Samuel 5 (either that or the Lord brought that story to mind).This is what He said. "... How much time do you think you have? Repent. Repent of substituting my idea of church for yours. I did not build my church with bricks and stone but with hearts and minds... I am going to crush the idol of mammon like I did Dagon only worse. Those that worship that idol will be crushed beneath it. Those whose hope is in mammon will be devastated by its destruction." The image that I had in my head while I was writing this was of an idol of stone being exploded violently such that only the tiniest pieces remained. It was shattered beyond description or repair. REVIVAL List prophetic@revivalschool.com American Designs in Latin America By Timothy V. Gatto The United States has many fences in Latin America that need mending. You can see by the attention the U.S. is paying to Costa Rica, Colombia and Panama that the government in Washington is keenly aware of this and is responding in the only way it knows how to respond"militarily. This is the only response that America knows. Not that it hasn't worked, since the end of World War II, the United States has been involved in overthrowing a government in every nation in Latin America, some more than once. There has been more than one career spent in American clandestine organizations participating in regime changes from start to finish. By now the United States should have it down to a fine art. In fact, Americans thought that they had the formula for regime change down to a fine science until 2002 when they attempted to overthrow Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, there things went horribly wrong. The people there suddenly decided for themselves that they didn't want any part of the right-wing government about to be forced upon them and marched Chavez back to the Palace and reinstalled him. The Americans tried to put on their best face in the wake of this horrible development. Since that time they have been in a quandary about what to do about Hugo. The worst possible scenario would be if they tried to remove him again and they failed again. This would completely destroy the myth of American invincibility in Latin America. It would reduce the Monroe Doctrine to just another piece of paper. In 2009, when Chavez met Obama for the first time, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stood, walked over to him, and presented him with a copy of "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. The book that Chavez gave to Obama was published in 1971, and details over 500 years of colonization and exploitation of Latin America by European powers and the United States. While the American press downplayed the exchange at the time, it certainly elevated the reputation of Chavez and his willingness to stand up to the Americans, while at the same time Chavez remarked to Obama that he would like to be "Obama's friend". It appears that the American government does not wish to have warm relations with Venezuela. Since that meeting the United States has negotiated to open seven new military bases in Colombia which borders Venezuela. Some will support the newly reformed 4th Fleet, re-activated to patrol the seas around Latin America after being dormant since 1950. This comes as Panama agreed to host two new naval bases and Costa Rica has agreed to the stationing of 7,000 troops, 200 helicopters, and 46 warships in that country under the guise of "drug interdiction". Can we honestly say that we as Americans don't see what is happening here? The nations of Latin America that belong to ALBA are a direct threat to the United States and its hegemony over Latin America. "The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA) is an international cooperation organization based on the idea of social, political, and economic integration between the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is associated with socialist and social democratic governments and is an attempt at regional economic integration based on a vision of social welfare, bartering and mutual economic aid, rather than trade liberalization as with free trade agreements. ALBA nations are in the process of introducing a new regional currency, the SUCRE. It is intended to be the common virtual currency by 2010 and eventually a hard currency. On Tuesday, July 6, 2010, Venezuela and Ecuador conducted the first bilateral trade deal between two ALBA countries using the new trading currency, the Sucre, instead of the US dollar." (Source: Wikipedia) The last time that a U.S. client state tried to trade in anything but dollars was when Saddam Hussein tried to sell its oil for Euro's and we all saw how that worked out for him. This time the United States is using the threat of "Socialism" in Latin America to beat the war drums against the nations that only ask for a chance to choose their own destiny, a destiny that isn't decided in the corridors of Washington or the corporate boardrooms of the big oil companies. For OpEdNews: Timothy V. Gatto http://liberalpro.blogspot.com Christian TV's All-Time Worst Fundraising Gimmicks J. Lee Grady Let's stop the hypnotism, the guilt manipulation and the high-pressure gimmicks. It's time to reclaim our lost credibility. Normally I'd rather go to the dentist for a root canal than watch a telethon. But while channel surfing a few nights ago I tuned into PBS and discovered that Aretha Franklin, the legendary Queen of Soul, was hosting a fundraiser for the network. Seated at a piano, she was offering a 5-CD collection of classic rhythm and blues hits in exchange for a donation to public television. It was simple. There were no gimmicks, no games and no strings attached in Aretha's offer. If you gave the suggested gift, she explained, PBS would mail you a big slice of American pop culture—including songs by Gladys Knight and the Pips, Smokey Robinson, the Four Tops, Al Green and Aretha herself, singing her classic "Respect." My respect for PBS was still intact when the telethon ended, thanks to this low-key, no-pressure approach to fundraising. I can't say that for some Christian networks, which have shame-lessly extorted money from viewers over the years using heavy-handed guilt manipulation, hypnotic control and bizarre Scripture-twisting. During the PBS telethon I wondered why Christian networks couldn't simply offer music, books or other premiums instead of resorting to the typical arm-twisting and tear-jerking that we've come to expect. We need an overhaul in this area. Somebody needs to lead the way in pioneering a new style of on-air fundraising that doesn't treat people like brainless zombies. Here are five of my least favorite fundraising tactics. I wish all of them could be banned from the airwaves. Gimmick #1: The magic Bible verse. You know the drill. The evangelist quotes Psalm 37:37 and then announces that if you will send $37.37 ("No more, no less!") God will unleash all the blessings of King David upon you. (Hint: The phones seem to ring more frequently when the number seven is included in the Bible reference.) Gimmick #2: The urgent, time-is-running-out plea. Before the preacher asks you to reach for your wallet, dramatic music is piped in. Then "Reverend Cheatem" talks about how the crippled man waited by the pool of Bethesda, hoping that the angel would trouble the waters so he could be healed. "God is troubling the waters right now, my dear friend," the preacher says with his eyes closed. "Go to the phones now, before it is too late. Only those who give in this holy, anointed moment will receive a supernatural blessing in return." Gimmick #3: The memorialized gift. One popular evangelist announced on-air that she needed thousands of dollars to build a prayer room. She promised that those who funded this noble effort would receive recognition with special brass nameplates that would be mounted on the wall of the facility. The implication was that people could buy prayer coverage, sort of like a spiritual insurance policy. (I'm not surprised—since this woman offered her loyal followers the status of "spiritual son" or "spiritual daughter" if they paid a $1,000 annual fee.) Gimmick #4: The debt-breaking anointing. One preacher who specializes in telethons has raised millions by telling audiences that they are just one donation away from eliminating all red ink. All they have to do is give a sacrificial gift (usually four figures) to the TV network in the next few minutes. If they do this, God will wipe out their debts, no questions asked. No lifestyle changes necessary. (This technique was especially popular before the mortgage crisis.) Gimmick #5: The Day of Atonement offering. This particularly odd strategy has been popular in the last couple of years, especially among gullible Christians who believe God blesses anything and everything that has the word "Israel" attached to it. The preacher announces that if you write a check to their network, and wave it in the air before you mail it (preferably while wearing a Jewish prayer shawl), God will forgive your sins, restore your health, bring back your wayward children, provide angelic protection and bless you with more than a dozen other special favors. I still don't know what is more outrageous: That programmers allow such insanity on Christian television, or that gullible Christians fall for it year after year. Hopefully, emerging leaders in the religious broadcasting industry will restore our lost credibility by insisting on integrity, authenticity and good taste. http://www.charismamag.com/index.php/fire-in-my-bones Prepare For Change Claudia Mondesire A storm is brewing and the winds are howling. Prepare for change, My people, prepare like never before. Don't be caught unaware; prepare for change and new developments. The winds that come will stir things up and then blow things away. The time of consecration is now. Cast away all your dead works and old habits that do not please Me. I am the Lord your God--set your face like flint, keep your focus on Me. Begin to love again and bear the fruit of the Spirit. Look past their fault and see their need. Treat them in the same way that I, the Lord, treat you. Remember I am coming for a bride without spot or wrinkle. I want a relationship with you--not religious rituals. I need you to love and worship Me with your whole heart. I will pour out more of My Spirit, but I will not pour it into old wine skins that cannot contain the anointing. I am about to do a new thing in your life. Don't you hear the sound of the wind? Take off the blindfold that the enemy has placed on you. and prepare for the change that I desire to work within you. CMondesire@aol.com
For They Shall be Called Children of God Jennifer Kottler In Sunday school many many years ago, I learned the Beatitudes. And I think that my very favorite one has always been, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." I wasn't exactly sure what it really meant to be a "peacemaker" other than that I shouldn't start fights on the playground, and while I think I might know better now, it's not easy. Peace is not just the absence of conflict. Jesus was talking about the Hebrew understanding of peace as "shalom," which means health and wholeness and reconciliation in our hearts and in our communities. It is not just the absence of conflict, but also the presence of well-being and compassion. Blessed are you who bring about shalom -- for you will be called children of God. It's no small feat to be a peacemaker, but I would venture that, for those of us who call ourselves Christians, there is no higher calling. I've been thinking about this calling a great deal in terms of my Christian response to the controversy swirling around the proposal to build Cordoba House two blocks from Ground Zero. What does it mean for Christians to be peacemakers in this midst of this controversy? What would that look like? Unfortunately, many of my Christian brothers and sisters who are opposing this construction, or the construction of other mosques or community centers in communities across the country, have not had much exposure to Islam or Muslims. Too many people's only conscious experience with Muslims is 9/11. And so their response comes from a place of anger and pain when they consider the thought of the construction of this building or any building that represents that faith. And while I think that is unfortunate and misdirected, it is understandable. But even so, how does Christ call us to be peacemakers in this context? For American Muslims who are not extremists, who are devoutly observant and who want to be able to practice their faith in peace, backlash of this kind is similarly painful. It's not just people saying, "You can build your community center, but not here." In too many places now, "not here" has become "not anywhere." Protests have broken out in communities across the country where Muslim community centers and religious buildings have been proposed for construction. (The controversy surrounding Cordoba House is not an isolated incident.) There has been a serious case of NIMBY ("Not In My Back Yard") syndrome in many places throughout the U.S. since 9/11. Even those who agree that Muslims have the constitutional right to build houses of worship and community centers want them built "somewhere else." Again, how is Christ calling us to be peacemakers in the midst of this? As someone who has Muslim friends with a devout faith, I want people to understand that it is not the religion, but a perversion of that religion that fueled terrorists on 9/11. But I know that for many it is difficult to distinguish between the two. The only Muslims that we usually hear about on the news are those who are terrorists, but they do not represent the Muslim faith, any more than Timothy McVeigh represents Christianity. However, I do believe that intentional interaction can lead to mutual understanding if both parties are willing to be in a true dialogue with one another. My friend Eboo Patel founded the Interfaith Youth Core on the principle that through service and cooperation, youth of diverse faiths will form relationships that allow for understanding and appreciation of religious difference. I have other friends who have spent their entire careers in Christian ministry striving to achieve interfaith understanding, responding to Christ's call to be a peacemaker. This is difficult work, and its ability to come to fruition has been tested -- never more so than in the past nine years. The issue of whether or where to build the Cordoba House is not as black and white as the media would like it to make it out to be. Questions of whether this building should be allowed to be built are not the same as whether or not it should be built there, or where it should be built. With all my heart, I know that as an American I will stand up for religious freedom and freedom of assembly for people of all faiths, and so in my mind there is no question. The people of good will who desire to build Cordoba House should be able to build it. But I also understand the deep-seated pain and grief that many Americans feel about 9/11, emotions that unfortunately turn into anger toward Muslims. And that anger is particularly acute on this issue because of the close proximity of the proposed construction site to Ground Zero. And yet, we are called to be peacemakers. Paul Tillich said that religions are beliefs that deal with "ultimate concerns." And while the pain of 9/11 is very real for so many, it should never become a religion in the sense Tillich describes. And at some level, we as a nation must move beyond our pain to healing and reconciliation. And I think that reconciliation and healing must come from being willing to open our hearts and our minds to our Muslim neighbors. It is my prayer that Christians all over this country would make a concerted effort to get to know the Muslims in their communities, or to learn about Islam's tenets and beliefs. Now, don't think for a minute that I am asking anyone to give up his or her faith or what that faith teaches. But maybe I am asking us all to remember and respond to Christ's call to be peacemakers, bridge-builders, shalom-bringers in communities that are not experiencing God's vision of shalom. Above all else, as Christians we are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And while loving our neighbors doesn't necessarily mean that we have to agree with them, it does mean that we need to seek to understand them, and acknowledge their pain. Unfortunately, on this issue, there is more than enough pain to go around. -- Rev. Jennifer Kottler is the Director of Policy and Advocacy at Sojourners. A long-time advocate for justice, Jennifer has served in advocacy ministry for more than eight years through her work at Protestants for the Common Good (Chicago, IL), the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, and the Chicago Jobs Council. Hearts and Minds
How the Rich Conduct Class Warfare Cenk Uygur First, let me get this out of the way - I have no problems with the rich. I plan on being rich. I'm an American. I believe. We all believe we can get to the top and enjoy the spoils of wealth. We are Americans. That's never been the issue. And in my lifetime the poor or middle class have never come close to declaring anything other than envy for the rich. But there is a class war going on. It's being conducted by the rich on the middle class in this country. Again, let's be clear. It's not by all of the rich or even most of the rich. There are great philanthropists among the rich. In fact, over 40 billionaires just pledged to give away half of their money to charity. Bill Gates earned his money, is giving it away and has no interest on declaring war on the middle class. I'll even give you the classic line - some of my best friends are rich. So, this isn't about some ridiculous stereotypes or populist demagoguery. This is about stone cold facts. Some of the wealthiest people in this country have been systematically trying to reduce their own taxes and make sure their companies are not regulated by the government. This makes sense. They want to make more money. But in the process, they have bought our politicians, corrupted our system and ultimately given us enormous income inequality. This income inequality doesn't seem just, but that isn't my main issue. The real problem is the results of that inequality. It leads to speculative bubbles, crashes, recessions and depressions. It leads to the middle class losing their pensions, having stagnant wages for the last thirty years and lacking opportunity to move up the chain. It kills our economy and ultimately it kills the American Dream. Here are some numbers on the rich versus the middle class that demonstrate what I'm talking about: Class Warfare - Top 1% vs You (video) All of the money went to the top. Do you know that between 1979 to 2007 income for the bottom fifth of the country went up by just 16%, but for the top 1% income it went up a staggering 281%? The rich got much richer. This is not an accident. People like the Walton family and the Koch brothers have been doing this for a long time. The Waltons don't want to pay estate taxes for understandable reasons because they plan to inherit and pass on billions of dollars. It is cost efficient for them to buy our politicians for a couple of thousand dollars in campaign donations. The Koch brothers hate taxes and regulation of their businesses. If you want to know how they have hijacked our system you should read this brilliant article by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker. Meanwhile, you know what happened to the poverty rate - it went skyrocketing up. Now, one in seven Americans lives in poverty. That's 45 million people. Last year, we had the highest increase in poverty since the government started keeping these numbers in 1959. The poor are growing, the middle class is shrinking and the rich are getting even richer. This is how you build a Third World country. So, the next time you hear about class warfare, understand which direction it's going in. Some of the wealthiest people in this country pulled the wool over your eyes and picked your pockets. I don't have anything against the rich and I understand their motivation. But the rest of us are crazy to keep letting it happen. At some point, you have to fight back. Not with pitchforks, but at the very least with your votes. Now that you know the game that's being played, it's incumbent on you to make sure you join the battle. Help us save this country and rebuild our once great middle class. For OpEdNews: Cenk Uygur - Writer Shaking Laura Barnwell The time of shaking has come, but fear not, neither be dismayed, for I am with you through all things and in all things. These things must happen in order for Me to pour out My Spirit, to shine brightly in the greatest darkness in the world. Set Your heart on Me, and you will not be shaken, but will see and be part of My signs and wonders. The deaf will hear, the blind will see, the backslider will return, and the lost shall be saved. laura_barnwell@yahoo.com
September 27th, 2010
Sojourners SojoMail@sojo.net
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/how-the-rich-conduct-clas_b_717378.html
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