What we thought impossible in pulling off a national event in this bizarre year, our Lord made possible. We serve a God “who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20). What we imagined would be a disaster trying to negotiate through the Covid 19 madness, turned out to be an advance of the Gospel of the Kingdom to abolish abortion.
Testimonies from all over the world have poured in from this Kingdom effort. Each session live streamed on Facebook or posted on Youtube had thousands of views. This does not tell the whole story, however, of souls impacted. We know churches and households met with guests who were a part of those views. This means the vision, mission, and messages were multiplied in many souls who accessed these sessions.
Folks sent us videos of pastors going out to their local death camps for first time preaching the Gospel at the gates of hell. Different groups in different cities reported a swelling of their ranks from folks impacted by the sessions. Some people who contacted us were broken, contrite, and repenting of their sins of commission and omission amid the American holocaust.
Some were converted from the failed incremental, secular, pro-life regulation of baby murder and have adopted abolition as the only Biblically consistent response to this national abomination, which has brought national calamity upon us. Some took the church packets and magistrate packets and reached all the churches and magistrates in their communities.
One woman from Arizona is determined to get the messages and materials to all the churches in her state. Our seminar devoted to reaching magistrates went out to not only local magistrates, but national magistrates in Washington DC as well. Some of those who accessed the materials are decision and policy makers.
We heard of salvations, babies saved, and more good soldiers of Jesus Christ recruited into the battle for the souls of men, the lives of children, and the future of our broken, wounded land.
#OSA2020 and #defendthefatherless was by far the most unique national event in our history. We pray it will continue to be exceptional even after its conclusion. In some ways, we hope it is just the beginning of its effectiveness. We have a dear brother, Pastor Cali, the author of The Doctrine of Balaam (Highly recommend this book) who has volunteered to edit each session of our national event. The goal is to have two specific videos ten to fifteen minutes long. One is for pastors of churches and the other is to reach magistrates to encourage them to do their duty by treating abortion as a crime (murder) that must be penalized by law.
Pastor Cali will go through each session to pick out the most anointed, powerful truths, and highlights of the national event and condense them to reach pastors and magistrates throughout America. This is where OSA can use some volunteers with this next phase of the national event. We will need folks that will take these videos, once completed, along with our pastor’s letter and church resolution and send them through email to all the churches in each state that participates.
The next Kingdom assignment is to do the same with the magistrates in each state. We want to send them the specific video, along with our magistrate’s letter and other resources to Chiefs of Police, Sheriffs, Legislators, Lt. Governors and Governors. Let me know if you have an interest to help in that regard.
To access all the sessions, go to our website, www.operationsaveamerica.org and press on the first banner. If you find any merit, please pass these sessions on in your sphere of influence. Thanks!
Leaders a Time Like This Demands
This is one of the two messages I delivered at the national event. The other one delivered was the tract sent out in last month’s newsletter called “What is Happening to America?” Apologia Church recently featured this message on one of their platforms and it went out far and wide. Reports of lives impacted for the good have been confirmed. To God be the glory!
“Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore in His name. But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, and I could not” (Jeremiah 20:9).
Using the prophet Jeremiah as an example, let us launch into this message “Leaders a Time Like this Demands!” At times, Jeremiah became depressed and experienced serious dejection in his service to the Lord. He grew disillusioned of the dungeon ministry. Who relishes being lowered into a cesspool of sludge? He knew the source of his trouble was faithfully declaring the Word of the Lord to a nation that did not want to hear it nor take heed to its warnings.
This predicament endured by the weeping prophet inspired the famous verse of God’s Word acting like a fire shut up in his bones. Though he wanted desperately to quit the ministry, God would have none of it. He basically let Jeremiah know that if he refused to open his mouth and warn Israel, God’s Word would burn him to its core. Jeremiah, of course, relented and resumed obedience to the call on his life.
Jeremiah lived out the following quote by an unknown author (at least to me), “To be holiest in evil times, is an indication of the truth of grace. To profess religion when the times favor it, is no great matter. Almost all will court the Gospel Queen when she is hung with jewels. But to own the ways of God when they are decried and maligned, to love a persecuted truth—this evidences a vital principle of goodness.”
God prodded Jeremiah to love a persecuted truth and be faithful to an unpopular message. It was critical to Jeremiah’s future usefulness in God’s Kingdom as it relates to leadership. After Jeremiah renounced his own birth like Job before him and struggled deeply with the strife, contention and curses arrayed against him, The Lord granted him a precious promise, “The Lord said: “Surely it will be well with your remnant; Surely I will cause the enemy to intercede with you (Treat you well) in the time of adversity and in the time of affliction” (Jeremiah 15:11).
In other words, Jeremiah, once I watch over the word you prophesied and cause it to come to pass, your enemies who maligned, scorned, persecuted, and hated you, they will entreat you well in those days. They will eventually connect the dots and look to you to lead them out of the malaise they created by their rebellion and rejection of God.
Saints, to be a leader a time like this demands, it begins with love for a persecuted truth and maintaining the declaration of an unpopular message. Once this is established, there are three other building blocks of Biblical principles that will help to establish true leaders at a time our nation is so bereft of them.
First Principle: God Works through Headship.
We know from Holy Writ that God works through headship. The enemy of our souls knows this reality as well. If you smite the shepherd, the sheep scatter. If a father fails, the family falls apart. If a CEO of a company embezzles funds, shareholders lose their investments. If a pastor runs off with the secretary, his family is left devastated and the local church in shambles. God’s Word declares, “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; But when a wicked man rules, the people groan” (Proverbs 29:2).
To drive home this principle, consider the miraculous intervention, which took place when Paul and Silas were praising God while in stocks in the Macedonian jail. As their prayers and praise reached heaven, God unleashed a major earthquake that rocked the jail. As it was being shaken to its core, all the prisoner’s chains were loosed, and the prison doors flung opened. Obviously, the keeper of the jail was deeply concerned for his life. If any escaped, his death was required. Trembling, he went to Paul and Silas and asked them the most important question of his fleeting life, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved” (Acts 16:30)?
Paul responded, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). Data reveals that when a child comes to true faith, some of the family may follow. If the wife and mother gets saved, some may also follow, but if the father submits to the Lordship of Christ, the majority of the family becomes redeemed. This is the headship principle at work in the real world.
Our nation and much of the church and family is out of divine order and we are spinning out of control. God’s authority follows and rests upon those who take Biblical responsibility and that divine responsibility falls to the male of the species in the home, the church, and our communities. 1 Corinthians 16:13 admonishes men, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.”
The first admonishment is for men to be watchful. This command hearkens back to the “watchmen on the wall” narrative promoted in the Old Testament. Men, husbands, fathers, pastors, and elders, what is coming in and going out of your families and communities? Are men so morally and spiritually compromised, do we know or even care? We must awaken to fulfill our areas of responsibility. We must be vigilant for our adversary the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8).
The second call is for men to “stand fast in the faith.” The Apostle James reminds us, “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8). Men need to make firm commitments to the Lord and lead courageously with His truth to be leaders a time like this demands. The last thing families, churches, and our communities need today are men who vacillate between two opinions and whose lives do not point true north morally and spiritually (1 Kings 18:21).
The third challenge is “quit you like men.” This does not mean when the going gets tough, men should just quit. No, this is Heavenly Father encouraging men to be and act like men, to fulfill their role as men. In the modern vernacular this is God saying, “You the man!”
Lastly, men are called to be strong. God presupposes strength to the male and though this is fighting words today in our feminized nation, God calls women the “weaker vessel” (1 Peter 3:7). In times past, it was this revelation that inspired Christian chivalry that transformed men from predators to protectors. It is all but gone in these sexually confusing days when Americans do not even know the difference between a boy and a girl. God help us.
Second Principle: God Judges and Restores Nations Based upon Leadership
Isaiah 3:8-12 demonstrates that when a nation’s sayings and doings are against the Lord, God brings judgment. What does the nature of that judgment look like in the real world? Mighty men, honorable judges, respectable elders, and true prophets in the land are marginalized and nation’s get turned over to weak, inept, wicked rulers, which culminates with “children will become our oppressors, and women rule over us. O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths” (Isaiah 3:12).
Thinking we are an enlightened, sophisticated and 21st century educated people, little does our nation know that we are descending deeper and deeper into God’s curse. We have exchanged patriarchy for feminism and have suffered all its subsequent evils, abortion, homosexuality, gender confusion, and the breakdown of the family. If our nation does not repent, it will prove to be a harbinger of greater woe to come.
Is there any hope? Just as God judges’ nations based upon leadership, He also restores nations based upon leadership. We see this pattern throughout the book of Judges. Israel would be led astray, go a whoring after other gods, commit idolatry, and come under oppression. At those desperate times, they would cry out to God in repentance and He would answer by raising up judges, champions, and deliverers who would drive out the oppressors, set God’s people free, and restore the land in righteousness. If this is the Biblical pattern, how important is it for our future to consciously and deliberately raise up leaders a time like this demands?
In the book of Judges, there are two key sayings that define much of the historical struggle in Israel. The first one was, “Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.” Israel always had hope that God would rescue them if they acknowledged they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. The other saying that defined the book of Judges was, “There was no king in Israel and everyman did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 17:6). When Israel was defined by that statement, the nation experienced some of the most perverse and horrific brutality in their nation’s turbulent history. Which statement accurately describes America today?
Last Principle: There is a Great Need for Prophetic Reformers
One of the principles and saying that came out of the historic reformation was “Semper Reformanda,” or Always Reforming. The Reformers knew we as God’s people had a tendency towards laziness, forgetfulness, and disobedience to the Lord as we struggled against our sinful nature. The need for reformation would therefore always be a sanctifying challenge set before us.
I find it interesting that it has been over 500 years since the church stopped and took what we thought, believed, and our behavior and held it up to the light of Scripture to see if it passes Biblical muster, especially, in the American Church that has been unduly influenced by our corrupt American culture and government.
This leads to the necessity of prophetic reformers in our day. We need men like the Sons of Issachar who understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do (1 Chronicles 12:32). We need young people who will take the time to honestly access the condition of the family, the church, and their nation and give their lives to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20).
Jesus evaluated His generation, “But to what shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their companions, and saying: We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; We mourned to you, and you did not lament. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, he has a demon. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners! But wisdom is justified by her children” (Matthew 11:16-19).
What was our Lord’s view of His generation?They were responding to God, just not correctly and it cost them dearly. We need prophetic reformers, leaders a time like this demands, who can discern their generation, the sign of the times, and give their lives to take what is and make it what it ought to be according to God’s word, will, and way in Jesus’ name!
| As of this writing, OSA is beginning to plan for our Fall regional event. The location is Sioux Falls, SD. The dates are October 21st-24th, 2020. There will be three rally nights, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings. There will also be three days of street activities that include meeting with magistrates to introduce a bill of abolition. Please mark your calendars and plan on joining with us. Details of host church and lodging will be coming soon. Keep pressing on saints in Jesus’ name! Hope to see you there! IN KING JESUS’ SERVICE, Rusty |
OSA Fall Regional Event:
