Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance. Psalm 33:12
Dear Fellow Americans!
Is Patriotism Still Alive?
During my childhood, I was a member of a national society known as C.A.R., Children of the American Revolution. This organization, founded in 1895, is the oldest patriotic youth organization in our country. Membership is open to descendants of patriots of the American Revolution. My ancestor was Captain Joshua Hatfield. His portrait hung in a prominent place in our living room.
The C.A.R. had a theme song. The last time I sang it I was eight or nine years old. Last month, I was surprised to find that I remember it, word for word, including the tune. Here are the lyrics: “We’re members of the C.A.R., a great and mighty band. We pledge our might for the cause of right, for home and native land. We love thee, Old Glory, and we ever strive to be most worthy descendants of early ancestry; We love thee, Old Glory, and our hearts are staunch and true. We love each stripe and ev’ry star of our flag, red, white and blue.”
How do most Americans feel about the American flag today? Is love of country taught in our schools? I think about Israel and the recent war in Gaza. Israelis from all over the world returned to their native land to defend it and take up arms. The Israeli flag was the banner under which they
fought. They love their country and are determined to protect its existence, which is threatened today by radical Islamic beliefs and stated objectives.
Some of you may remember the miracle that the Lash household experienced in 2001, when our son Jesse, age twelve, entered a contest that required producing a video of one minute or less on the topic: “What the American Flag Means to Me.” I happened to see an ad for the contest in a tiny section of a Martha Stewart magazine and informed Jesse that, although the contest was for adults, children could enter if an adult sponsored them. Jesse said, “No. I don’t want to enter it.” I said, “Yes, you will enter it. And you will use my parents’ American flag in the video as a way of honoring them.” Long story short, Jesse came up with the idea of “security,” and the American flag being our security blanket. The video was finished on 9/10/01. Jesse and I saw the horrors of 9/11/01 on TV. We re-edited the video on 9/12/01 since our country’s security had been breached! We added “God” to the end of the video. Jesse won $10,000. The check was delivered to our front door on 12/21/01, my 54th birthday. It was made out to me since Jesse was underage. (You can imagine the discussion!)
What about the U.S. today? The truth is: the same evil behind 9/11/01, which poses an existential threat to Israel, poses a threat to our own country. We are also at war, but many people are not aware of this. This war is spiritual and needs to be fought in the spirit. For example, what would cause American college students to burn the American flag in full view of our nation (on TV). Not only antisemitic spirits but anti-God spirits. Lying spirits. Spirits of violence (hamas).
The Church at War
Periodically I go to the beach for twenty-four hours to be alone with God. No TV. No texts. Only emergency calls. Off the grid. I throw out seashell messages, take long walks on the sand, read the Bible, and listen. Really listen. I also ask God what is on His heart. Then I listen some more. In May, just as my time with Him ended, I sensed the Lord saying to me that we need to see Israel as His time clock (not a new idea). The new idea was that as Israel is at war, the Body of Believers is also at war. Not just war on one front. Like Israel, fighting Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in the North, Houthis in Yemen, Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria, and Iran and all its other proxies, the Church is at war on multiple fronts. Believers in Yeshua need to know where they are stationed in the battle. What “front” are we assigned to? The Lord then gave me a list of the fronts (there may be others):
- Abortion (Pro-Life) The Word of God Prayer
- Gender (Marriage/Identity)
- Israel
- Freedom and Values
- Violation of the Innocence of Children
Abba told me to “man my front” and “stay in my lane” and that my front is the Word of God. Teaching it. Defending it. Living it. Studying it. Rightly dividing it. Making it accessible to as many people as possible. His Word is TRUTH. The U.S.A. needs truth. Right before I left the beach, I asked the Lord, “Which front concerns You most?” Guess what He said? “Violation of the innocence of children.” It is taking me a while to process this. But I thought about Adam and Eve in the Garden, when God said, “…Who told you that you were naked…?” (Gen. 3:11). Loss of innocence must have saddened the Lord. It still does. Children today are exposed to evil in many forms because of the internet, sexualization of society in general, challenges to parental authority, and an educational system that has, for the most part, rejected biblical values. Yeshua expressed the heart of the Father in three of the four Gospels when He said, “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea” (Mk 9:42; Matt 18:6; Luke 17:2).
May the Lord bless and strengthen those of you in His Body who take a stand for the children in this hour of history, especially those who are victims of human trafficking and the Transgender Movement. (It is estimated that at least 40,000 children per year in the U.S. or 109 children per day are sold into sex slavery!)
Freedom and Values
My mailbox is full every day except Sunday with letters from Bible-believing organizations seeking to defend Judeo-Christian values, emphasizing that there are objective moral truths, just as there are mathematical and scientific truths. What are some of these values? Loving God, the Creator of heaven and earth. Honoring one’s parents. Loving one’s neighbor as well as adhering to the other Ten Commandments. There is a divine order and divinely ordained instructions: man and woman, good and evil, the holy and the profane. Finally, human beings have free will. Dennis Prager, in “What are Judeo-Christian values?” (2/26/23) had the following to say, “The ultimate embodiment of Judeo-Christian values has been the United States of America. America’s founders were Christians (some culturally, some doctrinally) who were rooted in the Hebrew Bible. America was founded not to be a replacement of Israel, but a ‘Second Israel.’ Until recently, it was.”
What about freedom? Thomas Jefferson’s final version of the Declaration of Independence included in the proclamation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” That is why we all should vote!
Notice that man’s rights are given to them by God, not government. The word “inalienable” means impossible to take away or give up. The phrase “pursuit of happiness” was taken by Jefferson from John Locke, commonly known as the “father of liberalism.” The Constitution explicitly protects life and liberty, but “happiness” is not mentioned. This is interesting since life and liberty (freedom) are definite biblical values while the pursuit of happiness is not. (The Scriptures would have us pursue God, not happiness.) Pursue love (I Cor. 14:1). Pursue what is good (I Thess. 5:15). Pursue peace (Heb. 12:14). Pursue righteousness (I Tim. 6:11).
Our National Motto is “In God We Trust.” Our money has that phrase engraved on it. When government leaders are sworn in, their final words are, “So help me God.” (This may no longer be the case as it is being fought.) Our Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America includes the phrase “One nation under God …” SO FAR. There are many in the U.S. who want to erase God from America. Lord, help us! We do not want biblical values and basic morality to be a thing of the past! Let me make it clear before I continue that I am not a racist, bigot, homophobe, nor Islamophobe. I am pro-God, pro-Scripture, and pro-Truth.
Right to Life
The right to life is guaranteed in our Constitution. L’Chaim” לחיים (luh-KHYE-eem) means “to Life.” Life in the Bible and in Hebrew thought is a gift of the Creator, God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [חיים נשמת neesh-MAHT khye-EEM]; and man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). God gave life, and only He has the right to take it away.
All Americans have a right to live. Does that include tiny ones in the womb? That is the big debate facing us today, with the topic of abortion appearing almost daily in the media, including my local newspaper. If the fetus inside a woman’s body is a human being, he or she is guaranteed life by our Constitution. The prevailing “Pro-Choice” belief is that the fetus is just part of a woman’s body, not a separate human being. (Most of my neighbors share this fallacious belief and are pro-abortion.) We are in a battle with lying spirits where abortion is concerned.
The Bible makes it clear that the fetus in the womb is a baby, not a conglomerate of cells, a human being created by God. Abortion is a violation of Commandment #6, “You shall not murder.” Consider the powerful pro-life words of Psalm 139:13-16, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.”
When does life begin? That is the real question on the table. At conception? At three months? At six months? Once outside the womb? The Holy Scriptures seem to indicate that life begins at conception. But this is also settled science. Dr. Jerome Lejeune, world-renowned scientist and physician, widely regarded as “the father of modern genetics” said the following: “The fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion…it is plain experimental evidence.” Dr. Lejeune is not the only revered scientist to confirm that life begins at conception. A child’s heart starts beating by twenty-two days and brain waves are detectable shortly thereafter. The “fetus” (Latin for “offspring”) has a human genome—twenty-three pairs of distinctly human chromosomes composed of unique human DNA. It is both alive and human, from the earliest stages of pregnancy. An abortion stops the beating heart of a unique, individual member of the human race. According to the Bible, that means that abortion is murder. A life is lost. (From What to Say When by Shawn D. Carney and Steve Karlen).
“I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live”
(Deut. 30:19).
Gender/Marriage
Those of you called to take a strong, biblical stand on this front have a huge battle on your hands. The Bible says in Genesis 5:2, “He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created.” זחר (zah-KAHR, male) נקבה (neh-kay-BAH, female). Two sexes. Men are men and women are women. Not too long ago, this truth would not have been debated. It was self-evident. It was God’s definition. Reject God; reject His definitions. Female athletes in the U.S. today are having their sports stolen from them by men declaring themselves to be women. High school girls are afraid to have men in their locker rooms. Redefining gender engenders confusion and fear.
Once gender is defined according to man’s corrupt ideas, so is marriage, an institution created by the God of the Bible. Three times in the Holy Scriptures we find God’s definition of marriage: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24: Moses; Mk 10:5-8: Yeshua; Eph. 5:31: Paul). One man and one woman. This relationship produces offspring, according to the will of God. Only one combination can do this. When marriage is redefined, a spiritual picture of great importance is erased—a godly marriage being a picture of Messiah and His bride (Christ and the Church). The devil does not want the world to see the joyful portrait that the Father was painting even as His Son died on the Tree of Sacrifice. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Prov. 14:12).
What Spirits Do We War Against?
According to the Bible, our real enemies are not people, but spirits: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).
When we take a stand for Israel and the Jewish people, we are wrestling with an antisemitic spirit that has been bent on annihilating the Jews since the proclamation of God in Genesis 3:15 that one day the Seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. That man-child (Messiah) would come from Israel. He is also coming back to Israel. Prominent today is a spirit in Iran, the “Prince of Persia,” the same one that sought to exterminate all Jews as recorded in the Book of Esther. That evil spirit, coming out of modern-day Iran (Persia), is the spirit of radical Islam, determined to usher in a Muslim Caliphate, void of all “infidels” (Jews, Christians, and anyone else who does not accept their radical theology).
Dr. Michael Brown, in his book Jezebel’s War with America makes some very thought-provoking comments about a spirit operating in our country today. Who is Jezebel? She was the most wicked woman in the Bible, an idol-worshipping seductress who had her enemies assassinated, who emasculated her husband, and who was famous for witchcraft and sexual immorality. Jezebel is mentioned in the Book of I Kings (chapters 16-21) and II Kings (chapters 9-10) in the Tanakh, and Revelation in the New Covenant (Rev. 2:20). What does the Jezebel spirit do today in America? It manipulates. It seeks control. (There is even a modern radical feminist website named Jezebel.com.) This evil spirit seduces and deceives. It has led millions in America into idolatry (see Rom. 1:21-25, 28-32). Dr. Brown describes the U.S. today as filled with lust, corruption, and consumed with greed. “We bow to the gods of carnal entertainment, of fanatical obsession with sports, of fleshly fashion and empty intellectual pride. Atheism is a growing religion in our midst. Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined each month.”
Concerning the War on Gender Distinctions: Dr. Brown explains how the spirit of Jezebel seeks to destroy the God-ordained roles for males and females, thereby destroying the very foundations of our society. (Order his book. I can only touch briefly on the crucial topics.)
PRAY! Many of you reading this letter, perhaps most, are called to man your post of Prayer and Intercession. Take a stand in public for the truth on all levels but press into battle in the heavenlies, in the secret place, as good soldiers in the army of the Lord. (Ps. 144:1; II Tim. 2:3-4) “…The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much” (James 5:16).
This is the hour to SPEAK THE TRUTH IN LOVE while pushing back on the enemy’s dark agendas with grace, courage, and respect. Pray that light exposes and defeats darkness. Repent for our part in allowing the darkness to engulf our country. Pray for truth to be revealed to all those who perish for lack of knowledge and are held captive by the devil. Pray for a move of God’s Spirit in the United States of America, turning us back to God and giving Him the honor that He deserves. The Lord says to you, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (I Jn. 4:4).
May God bless—and save—America. Love,
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