A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. Joh 13:34-35
January 21, 2021
Life and Death Visions
People having a traumatic near-death experience, often say they see glimpses of their life pass before your eyes where they relive the good or bad times in a matter of seconds. Have you ever imagined what Jesus must have felt when He prayed before His crucifixion (Lk 22:39)? It is written that His sweat was as great drops of blood. He had vision and could see the past or future before Him and His flesh man did not want to endure the cross He saw. He prayed to the Father: “…O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done (Mt. 26:42).
Traumatic or near death experiences have the power to turn one’s life around when it is realized there will be no further opportunities to enjoy the life expected. Some people, after such an experience, turn their lives around and live a more meaningful existence from that point forward. They decide not to waste life anymore because they learned a valuable lesson.
On January 6, 2021, many of us had such an experience. Some people were actually in the U.S. Capitol and knowingly or unknowingly had a life or death experience. There were people headed toward them, hunting them intent on maiming or killing the legislators. God knew it and He did not allow the mob to find the legislators though some life was still lost among the perpetrators and the protectors. Some of the legislators may have actually experienced trauma while huddling inside waiting for the danger to pass. I don’t take lightly their experience; they were actually there.
For the rest of us who watched in horror from our homes as the mob scaled the walls, swore in profanity and struggled to get in; we were aghast and unable to help as it unfolded before our eyes. I am sure many prayers went up as we watched. We saw the legislators having a traumatic experience and the mob out of control. Did we consider though that we also were having a traumatic experience? What was happening there was happening to every American. This was our experience. This was our Capitol. It was the people’s house. We were being attacked.
It’s About All of Us
We are all casualties of the incident and maybe some of us understand now how detrimental the incident was and perhaps many still do not understand. This was a traumatic experience. We have gone through so much over the past several years…so much anxiety, so much loss of property, so much death. If our life did not pass before us in this situation, it may be because we did not understand the attack was against all of us. We have heard over and over again that our democracy was under attack. It truly has been under attack, both spiritually and physically. We watched the mob scaling of the walls and we were all horrified but we may have mistakenly thought it was a riot that went awry and we escaped. We, of course, denounced it in the harshest terms as we saw the reruns.
It was the next morning I thought in a flash the horror of how terrible it could have been when I heard that the Speaker and Vice President were still in the building during the attack. We had been told during the news broadcast of the incident that they had been removed from the Capitol. The horror of what could have happened hit me as if it actually happened. I recounted it later in the evening while posting a comment to an online article discussing it. It was not until a day or so later that the newscasters began to tell the American people that there was actually a close call and they played recordings of the mob talking about killing the speaker, hanging the Vice President and hunting down the legislators. If they had carried out their mission, they would have decapitated the next leadership of the nation, possibly leaving Trump still in charge of the presidency because of disruption of the certification and election process.
It was a close call upon the legislators and all of us. It did not happen and we are grateful to God for that. The ballots for Joseph R. Biden did become certified and he was inaugurated as the new President of the United States of America within two weeks. He has a robust plan for the recovery and protection of the nation. The majority of the nation looks forward to the success of his efforts over the next four years.
It Was Spiritual
I am not writing to discuss the things you already know. I want to share with you what happened not in the natural, but about the threats in the spirit realm. Many of us need to understand how close we really came to loss of our democracy and more. Loss of American democracy is a horrible picture no American wants to see because we have never had to do without it and we take our everyday liberties for granted.
Those that are Christian or bible readers will be most able to follow what I am about to say. People tend to look at the outer world only but there is a lot of activity going on in the spirit world as well. If you realize that there is a God who created the earth, then you should also realize that there is a devil who opposes God. God is the spiritual Father of the believer, but the devil is an evil spirit who influences people to disrupt our world and destroy the soul. Everything that God owns and has declared His name upon, the devil wants to defile or destroy. As a nation who declared itself to be “One Nation Under God,” we should anticipate the attack of the enemy against us. The nation has indeed had other close calls during world war, civil war, economic distress and disease; but America has always had at its core a strong praying Christian community. We prayed for our nation in public and in private. The last several decades have seen disagreement over core Christian principles and a drop in the spiritual commitment to the gospel truth as believers became more materialistic. We still church like no other nation, but we have fallen into patterns of ritual without much power or spirituality with little word. The churches have gotten bigger but the flame weaker.
It would take time to list all that has occurred over the past 50 years to bring us to the point of the threat we face today but it is obvious the church has weaken. One quick mistake can be identified as the concept of political correctness. That concept erased the line between right and wrong and caused our nation to drop a lot of guards that should have remained to protect our integrity and determination toward excellence. Correctness has nothing to do with politics. Right and wrong is found in God’s word. Those dropped standards allowed behavior previously considered unacceptable. As a result of lowered standards, opinions splintered, confusion set in and people expected less. People were expected to keep their opinions to themselves. We were urged to be a team player and not send out alerts, so wrongs went unchecked. The enemy of our soul and of our nation benefitted from the lowered standards. The standards for our society were established on morality derived from the scriptures, but the minds and conscience of people were being assaulted by compromise and lies
Recently I heard the spirit of God say, the spirit of anti-Christ is organized evil. We have always had an understanding that the anti-Christ was a spirit that was against Christ but this definition gave more clarity. The anti-Christ spirit is an evil spirit that organizes systems into a plot to destroy the influence of Christ upon the earth. This spirit does not preclude the use of religious people. When we understand it is an organized and systemic plan of evil intent set on destruction, then we can see that there were forces behind the scaling of the Capitol walls. Minds were corrupted over time from various sources and turned toward the attack. If the plan had been exercised successfully, it would have decapitated the government; but it goes deeper than that. I believe there is an underlining antichrist spirit using the discord of racial hatred and other controversies to destroy the national unity. Denial of this truth only makes it easier to carry out.
We have seen racial hatred and its devastating affects but we may not have realized that racial hatred could cause us to lose our nation. Hate is a demonic power at its root. At the root of racial supremacy is a demonic hate that is based on a lie. History, anthropology, and biblical scripture dispute the theory that the white community predated black existence or possessed higher intellect than the people originating from African descent which first populated the world. Lifting up the truth defeats the lie. If white America insists on proving what cannot be proven, then it has taken a stand on a foundation of lies. Our nation stepped into a spiritual ensnarement of the evil one based on this lie. The lie took on a life of its own as it grew in power and gave birth to organized hate groups. Fear of losing their power further fueled their hate. This lie was always fatal because it tried to prove the unprovable and it divided the nation into two opposing sides destined for confrontation. All of these actions reveal a spirit of anti-Christ set on destroying the authority of Christ established in people and systems formed in a nation under God. We must know the truth because Jesus promised that truth would set us free.
Our religious leadership in churches is invested with the responsibility to defuel community hatred and bring truth. The religious right became strongly engaged in the political process to encourage the election of a man for president who practiced lying, stroked racial fear and was called a disrupter. They had a desire to upset the current order and usher in their idea of Christendom that would protect their religious status and establish white nationalism. Christianity is a religion that: “…hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth (Act 17:26).” They let the scriptures relating to persecution of Christians cause them great fear, even though their commitment to Christianity compares nowhere near that of Stephen, Peter or Paul. American Christianity has an expectation of a life of comfort, wealth and ongoing relationships with the world. It is inconsistent with the persecution of the Jews who resisted corruption to the point of losing their lives for the cause of a Christian witness. Today’s evangelicals were willing to unite with worldly partners of similar fears to increase their numbers and accomplish their unbiblical goal of maintaining white majority rule. They were willing to establish as president a man who daily set fire to an already blazing flame of racial instability. Their eyes were blinded by greed, racial supremacy and thirst for power. They could not see that their presidential choice revealed the same type spirit as that of the renown Hitler leadership that was set on a destructive course to destroy himself, his nation and the world. Hitler planned to have a nation of racially superior people ‘like himself,” to cleanse the world of people from other ethnic backgrounds he thought inferior, and to set himself up to rule the world. That is the same plan proposed by the president and his supporters. It’s important to understand that racial hate was at the root of Hitler’s acts and that it is the same spirit in the land today. The paradox though is that Americans are very aware of the devastation of Germany’s holocaust. We fought the war, saw the fall of Hitler’s regime and know that his racial animosity was copied from observing America’s racial conflict.
The removal of the past president was the preservation of our nation. We survived four years of Donald Trump that could have been a life-time rule by a tyrant. It was a close call. If your life did not pass before your eyes, it should have because we were dealing with the life and death of a people, a nation and the idea of liberty. We could have lost it all over greed. We can and must do better. The Word of God has prophesied these events and established leaders with this information so that believers would not be caught off guard. Many people may choose to stop their examination of our close call at the examination and penalty placed upon Donald Trump but the fault line goes further than him and deeper in the body of our people.
Morals Guide a Nation
The population of the nation is influenced by biblical doctrine and political views which come through media, educational facilities and churches, etc. Jesus found fault with biblical teaching when He came to Jerusalem to be received by the Jews. The doctrine of good and evil is taught primarily by our churches; and if they get it wrong, our communities will reflect it. It is the responsibility of the church to warn the people of the consequences of living for good or evil. The fear of God and the fear of hell have kept many people on the straight and narrow. The church must renew the pledge to teach truth and to teach how we love and live among all people. Jesus showed us how to live in a community that is inclusive of all people, that loves all people and cares for all people even though it is His family that reigns with Him. America has promised to reflect the equality that is in the mind of God. Jesus illustrated how to minister to all kinds of people to raise them to a higher level.
Our nation can come into unity by taking on the ways of Christ and living in union with Him. Satan tries to unite people around his evil ways, but Jesus has already defeated him and empowered believers. If our churches fail to promote a unity for Christ in our community then our communities may unify in evil as we saw in the insurrection on January 6, 2021. If our leaders are wrong or have a wrong spirit then so will the people. The churches and belief systems that produced the catastrophe of January 6 are still in place and can boil up again at any time. Christians have to realize that wrong doctrine led a lot of seekers in error and begin to help correct fellow believers. We have seen an anti-Christ spirit rise up in our nation and try to lead the nation into white supremacy rule. Our churches were ill prepared to stop it because of pursuing other goals. Believers must refuse to follow false teaching and read the word of God personally and frequently to stay in truth.
Unlike some other nations, Americans have the liberty to read the word and live for Christ. The Holy Spirit helps us to know Christ for ourselves and He will reveal deception. The church has the power of God to fix our societal woes because it has the fullness of Jesus Christ available to it. We can choose to love our neighbor regardless of their behavior or status while praying for their needs as Jesus taught. America can still be a light on the hill and example to other nations if we follow our God. The Holy Spirit’s power was given to the church to supply our needs; and with His help, we have lesser need for restrictive laws, government and medical care. It starts with loving our next door neighbor and witnessing Christ. Regardless of past faults and behavior, Jesus loves us and our neighbor and inquires why can’t we.
Truth and Life Ministries of Christ with Apostle Joyce Reba Payne 