Minutemen of God

We had an extraordinary Noon Hour yesterday. The presence of the Lord was so strong, we thought the building wave of the Awakening might finally be ready to break.

Kathy received a word which witnessed to many hearts present:

My children, I am calling you to be my Minutemen today. You must be prepared to take up your arms at a moment's notice. Like the Minutemen of old, you will be both farmers and warriors. You will be farmers, sowing and reaping the Great Harvest. You will be my soldiers, wielding the weapons of the Spirit. Your ammunition will be my love, and my mercy. I will take some of you into my War Room, into my counsel, and I will show you my battle plans. Others will be called into the Throne Room, for I tell you, the fragrance of this battle will not be gunpowder but the incense of worship. I have stationed watchers to see my signal light. The time for the midnight ride is here. The enemy is entrenched in the land, but the Spirit of the Lord comes in by the sea. The Living Waters of my Spirit will rush upon this land and will overtake the enemy. Be alert, be ready, Minutemen of God! Make ready for battle!"

Towards the end of the hour, Bethany Yeo, the young leader of the Justice House of Prayer in Boston, stirred our hearts with her battle call to prayer. Reminding us of Dutch Sheets' prophecy, she declared that Massachusetts was the spiritual birthplace of the nation. What is birthed here, will be birthed throughout America. And what is allowed to die here, will die everywhere else.

Then she shared the dream of one of her young prayer warriors. In the dream Goliath was coming up a hill that overlooked the city of Boston. Several of his lieutenants were with him. As they reached the top of the hill, the giant chuckled and spread his arm out in a gesture that took in all they surveyed. "This city was supposed to be the wellspring of the Revival. . ." and he just laughed.

The boy woke up then and Bethany said that God had awakened him before the end of the dream, because we can still affect its outcome. We cannot grow weary. We cannot turn away in discouragement or despair. We are soldiers of the Cross, and we will pray, pray, pray as long as it takes! And we will have the victory!

I was stunned. Last Sunday, I'd been led to preach on Goliath, having not thought of him in years.

For each of us, the giant down there in the valley represents our worst fear. Every morning and evening we listen to him taunting us, mocking the army of the Living God, cursing us by his own gods. And he will keep it up, until we go down there and shut him up.

In his inaugural address three months after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt reminded his countrymen that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. That is as true today, as it was in 1942.

At God's prompting, I've had to confront my own worst fear: death. Not a normal or anticipated death, for which I can be prayed up and ready to go home, whenever He calls me. Nor a sudden, accidental death, in which there is brief flash of pain before joining Him.

My greatest fear is a martyr's death deliberately cruel and prolonged, extraordinarily painful, and wholly out of my control. The sort of death some of us might actually have to face in the darkest of the dark times ahead.

Offered the choice of recanting my faith to save myself, I would have to refuse and face the lion, in whatever form it took.

A few years ago, in Kenya on the Masi Mara, I marveled at the world the way God made it, before man messed things up. I bonded with a pride of lions, spending several days just hanging with them. For those unable to go, The Lion King gets it right. The only part about the Circle of Life I wasn't comfortable with was the kill when the lions pull down a wildebeest or a zebra. Being a writer, I identified with the stricken animal.

I asked God about that, and in the Nairobi airport awaiting the flight home, He provided the answer. In an article in a travel magazine, a South African naturalist explained that the moment the predator's claws sink into the prey, the latter goes into complete shock and does not feel a thing that is being done to it. I marveled at God's infinite mercy.

Christians in the Coliseum, about to be forced out into the arena where roaring lions prowled about, seeking whom they might devour, had the same fear. Transparent with one another, they did not hide it, but shared it. They agreed to a signal: whoever went out first, when the lions struck them, if there was no pain they would sing, so their brothers and sisters would know. That was how it was, and that was why the next batch of Christians went out singing, even before the lions reached them.

When I shared that last Sunday, someone pointed out a piece in the Berkshire Eagle that very morning. In his 1857 book, Missionary Travels, Dr. David Livingstone, the renowned Scottish explorer, described what it felt like to be attacked by an African lion, which was eventually scared off by a friend firing a gun. "Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though [I was] quite conscious of all that was happening."

That explained how martyrs could face hideous deaths with such sublimity. William Tyndale, burned at the stake for having translated the Bible into English, preached for four hours, as more and more wood was piled on the fire. Jean Brobeuf, burned at the stake by the Iroquois, praised God and shouted out encouragement to other captives for so long that his awed tormentors ate his heart in the hope of consuming his courage.

For me, the enemy's ultimate intimidation was martyrdom gruesome torture followed by an agonizing death. Because if, God forbid, I am called to go through such an ordeal, His mercy will be instant, total, and eternal. And consider this: any man or woman unafraid of death, cannot be intimidated.

God had a word for us last Sunday:

My children, I have been training you as an army of spiritual warriors who have the quiet confidence to face any giant the other one puts before you. Heed not his taunts. Quail not at the length of his spear or the weight of its tip. Do not think to cover yourself in the world's armor. Though others see you as a stripling, I have already preserved you from the paw of the lion and the bear. When they came for your sheep, I filled you with righteous anger and guided the stone from your sling. You felled them, as you will the giant. Because you know the battle is not yours, but mine. You are the army of the Living God, and you are in close fellowship with me.

-David Manuel