The things happening right now in America (2016) are putting the church to the test like never before, specifically the church's view of God's role in the affairs of a nation. And what is surfacing is the faultiness of the overall church's view requiring severe correction. I'm talking here of course of the mainstream prophetic intercessory church, the present end-line church in the overall church restoration. 

 

A Restoration Still Unfolding

Before getting into this, it's important to frame the big picture, which is that as a New Covenant people, we are still a church in restoration. In fact we are coming up on the 500 year mark since the first great act of visible restoration was struck with the Reformation. Nevertheless, the restoration is very slow, covers numerous generations over many centuries and proceeds through clear limited stages, each transcended by the next.

The Reformation was only the first great stage of restoration. It was a beginning but not an end, being followed by several others in the centuries since. But within its time, those alive then could not see that. To them, their restoration was the end. And to those who still worship in Reformation descended churches (such as Presbyterians), the Reformation still is "the end." It is still God's "last word" on the church.  

This is the problem with any generation within any stage in the restoration. It cannot see past its own present stage as the end. And the truth is, we here in the 21st century Prophetic-Intercessory stage are subject to the same limitation of vision. This is of course ironic because as a prophetic people, we are supposed to be noted for our vision. Nevertheless, our stage of the church is just as blind to its own limitations as the stages before it.

 

Transitioning to a New Stage: The End of the “P-I” Church Age

The truth is that we are transitioning into yet another hitherto unknown stage of church restoration. This becomes evident when God works in such a way as to show up the inadequacies of the present end-line stage to deal with what He is doing in the world.

We have to remember that God is and always has been in control of earth history. Whether or not we are able to cope as the church with what is going on is no reflection on whether He has lost control of the planet or not. Rather, if and when the church comes to a point of inability to deal with what is happening, it only signifies that our stage of restoration has come to the end of usefulness in God's developing plan and is about to be transcended. 

This is precisely where the prophetic intercessory church is today (let's call it the "P-I" church for short.) The mainstream P-I church as we have come to know it over the last 30 years, being the remaining frontline work of the Lord, has already passed its prime and is in process of replacement by a stage of restoration exceeding its vision. We are talking about all the major P-I streams as the Vineyard prophetic, the Kansas City (IHOP) prophetic, the Morningstar prophetic, the Christian International prophetic and other similar "prophetic" organisms in the eastern world.

Right now, the leaderships of all these streams have or are coming to an end in their vision's ability to cope with how God is handling development of the global New World Order. Even the leaders are showing signs of dimming stature and meaningful influence. They are worn and tired, not just in appearance, but in what they have to say. It is momentarily evident in all the flailing and hand wringing on one hand (a la Dutch Sheets) and the facade of prophetic puffery and bravado on the other (a la Lance Wallnau) over the current American election. 

The purpose of this article is to look more closely into this limitation on the P-I church for understanding this transition in the face of a precipitously morally declining America.

 

God’s Sovereignty in National Structuring

To understand the limits of the P-I church today to speak to national issues, we have to understand where it came from relative to the reality of God's sovereignty. In the early church restoration, God grounded His people in understanding His sovereignty among nations. God's sovereignty is supremely articulated throughout the scripture especially in reference to nations. He raises and deposes them without consultation.

So in those days, God's sovereignty was the main reference point His restoring people had for interpreting what was happening on their national and international levels.

We have to remember that these people were pioneering nation renovators and builders. That is what they were doing. Building a nation is no small thing. So many of the Reformers held such positions of influence, power and responsibility in renovating nations, particularly in Europe where whole societies were breaking free from the monolithic grip of Catholic tyranny over their culture—all occurring in the space of a few decades, something like the fall of the Iron Curtain.

This was also the age of colonization in the western hemisphere, which is where the United States ever came from. And so because God's sovereignty is so integral to the issues of national establishment and alignment, it was held up as the key compass point for understanding what they were doing—right up to the early founding of America's colonies. 

 

The Limits of Sovereignty Application

However when it comes to the issues of personal faith and relationship with God on the level of individual moral responsibility and intimacy, God's sovereignty only goes so far. His sovereignty is not the explanation for everything that happens and is not the defining litmus test for interpreting life individually or interpersonally.

People from the Reformation era did not understand this. They tried to interpret everything in personal life as well as national life through the grid of sovereignty. It didn't work, and people as sheep died spiritually and naturally under a blanket of fatalism. All evil was attributed to the will of God. All sickness, all calamity, etc. Everything.

 

God Transcends the Reformation

But the restoration had to continue, and God outgrew the faulty limits of Reformation thinking, defying its grid on sovereignty, by the outpouring of His Holy Spirit through the subsequent evangelical and holiness movements. In these further phases of restoration, vision transcended dealing with nations and colonies to the saving of the individual soul and its relationship with God.

Under these movements, the limits of sovereignty were exposed and the emphases on personal response to God's will became primary. Appeal to individual responsibility for surrendering to Christ took front and center stage in all preaching. Personal responsibility for confessing Jesus, for obeying a living indwelling Lord and for believing in God's desire to make changes in life's events and circumstances surfaced to the top.

The fatalistic application of divine sovereignty to every aspect of individual choice became rightly condemned. In course, any remaining idea of God's sovereignty eventually took a very deep back seat in the evangelical-pentecostal bus.

 

The Pendulum Swings

Eventually, the view of God's individual dealings and the personal responsibility involved for all consequences in life reached a zenith in the Faith Movement of the last half century. Absent almost any sense of God's sovereignty by this time, the church became extremely tunnel focused on God's meeting of every self-centered personal need and desire through a confession of faith authored, not by God, but by the believer himself.

The phrase was coined, "write your own ticket with God." The believer became not only responsible to believe, but also for the failure of its manifestation. Any sense of God's superseding will was ignored or even denied. At the same time, every possible opposition was psychologically denied and otherwise blamed purely on the devil.

It could never be "God's will" for anyone to have to suffer under any evil whatsoever, not poverty, not sickness, not adversity--ever. "God is good, all the time." All focus was on manifest personal blessing, blessing, blessing.

Are you getting this picture? For what we saw in the Faith movement capping off over 200 years of individual emphasis was a complete pendulum swing away from what we saw regarding divine sovereignty in the Reformation—from over-embrace to total denial.

 

Faith and the P-I Church

But why is this important for what we are bringing forth today about the P-I Church? 

It's important because the P-I Church is directly descended from the vision that authored the Faith Movement. Everything we attribute today to the mainstream prophetic movement is rooted in the perspective of God that came to zenith in the Faith Movement. (Numerous churches in our own region here in New England shifted from being 1980s "faith" churches to becoming 1990s "prophetic" churches.)

All prophecy in this movement was and largely remains focused on personal prophecy. And together with this is the major emphasis on personal responsibility for the confessing of prophecy, for declaring personal prophetic destiny and for being positioned for the fulfilment of that prophecy.

All opposition to prophecy is generally classed as opposition by "the enemy" and has been subject to the same denial regarding failed fulfilments. Refusal to question. Refusal to test. Confess the best and ignore the rest. Hardly does a prophetic leader in the P-I stream ever publicly admit to a failed prophecy.  

 

Personal Prophecy about National Elections?

But that's only part of the point. The rest of the point is that the P-I Church is now up against national and international waters way beyond the venue of personal matters, waters that can only be rightly negotiated based in an understanding and embrace of the sovereignty of God over the nations as was understood and engaged in the Reformation.

Please really meditate on this and drink it in. Because it is this complete spiritual ill-equippedness and unpreparedness for national and international class engagement based in personal faith theology that we are now witnessing through the prophetic angst over the demise of the American dream.

We are witnessing the opposite failure to that of the Reformation, signaling God's need and intent to supersede our stage now. Just as the Reformation mind was unable to see past sovereignty to God's ministry in the inner man, so the P-I Church is just as unable to see past individual responsibility to God's sovereignty in dealing with national class situations.

God's dealings with nations are fully scripted and pre-determined. They have been written out in full for us by the prophets, and especially for our times in the Book of Revelation. Nebuchadnezzar’s statue still stands, and we know where it is going. National prophetic churches cannot "write your own ticket" with God to pre-empt or overturn His purposes in raising up and tearing down nations in their appointed times. 

God raises up and deposes kings according to His pleasure and purpose. God raises up oppressors and evil men according to those purposes. God issues forth His judgments in the lands of the earth. None of this fits inside the bounds of personal faith and personal prophetic thinking based on it. Therefore the complete inadequacy of the P-I stream to convey God's mind and join to His purposes regarding America is now being exposed.

All the prophetic faith confession / declarations in the world by all the prophets and intercessors of a land cannot change God's sovereign decrees as already written for us of old. They cannot stop the global New World Order or the fall of all the national orders that has already been set in heaven. 

 

The P-I Stream: A Church in Denial

Without the ability to embrace God's sovereignty in international affairs, all faith confession expressed by the P-I church amounts to denial. Hence our title today, faith minus sovereignty equals denial.  

Denial is the opposite pendulum error to the fatalism that occurred out of the Reformation. Exerting rain dance prophesying, blaming the devil on what is happening in the nation and otherwise pretending that personal-prophecy class declarations over national issues are God's decrees amounts to pure denial of spiritual reality at this level of engagement.  

"Babylon" (the New World Order) is coming, "Jerusalem" (name your country) will fall, and the P-I leaders among the nations will not stop what has been decreed. 

 

Next Stage Restoration in the Wings

Which leads to our conclusion. The conclusion is that the P-I church has reached the end of its usefulness in this stage of God's plan for church restoration. It cannot handle the mind of God at the national and international level. It is too immature.

God is now ready to bring forth a yet further demonstration of His mind through the next generation of pioneering believers to take us to that class of encounter. These will be pioneers of a Daniel class who were “carried off to Babylon” despite what all the culture prophets had declared leading up to the captivity.

There will be a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among the P-I remainder as the persecutions increase rather than abate. (Prophets like Kim Clement will no longer be found in public, but will as Micaiah foretold, be hiding in an inner room. {I Ki. 22:25})

Nevertheless, deliverance will still come. The prophesied revival will come. But it won’t be on the terms the P-I Church ever projected. The new Daniels sobered up by and in new alignment with God’s sovereignty over the captivity will be empowered mightily to hear the true decree of emancipation when it is ready.

The believing will be different. The praying will be different. The declaring will be different. God's sovereignty will be fully acknowledged and honored. And the full context for the church's final deliverance from the world system will be understood and embraced.  

No more feverish exhortations over Christian voting choices. No more prophetic bravado and facade. 

 

Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, Rhode Island

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

10/16

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