Is God Judging America? It's time to ask the question...

This was from my friend William's Facebok note.

Hi Family & Friends,
I trust that everyone is having an amazing summer and getting in some good vacation time! I'm going to be very bold about something that has been troubling me for a while now. I haven't felt released to talk about this publically until now. I am becoming very concerned with the church's focus on the "Judgments of God" as of late. Quite honestly I feel inadequate to talk about this because of how young I am compared to many elders and leaders in the body that preach heavy on the judgments of God. The bible says that "the Lords judgments are like the great deep; who can search them out?" (Ps. 36) Any statements that I am making are not the full picture of my views. I do not plan to validate this with any strong theological statements in this letter.(In my next one I will) But I want to simply share some thoughts about the nature of Jesus and my personal Journey. So to clarify, when I speak of the judgment of God in this letter I speak of it in the understanding that God causes certain natural disasters(earthquakes, tornado's, hurricanes, etc) to rebuke a nation or region for it's gross sin.

Why does the Church embrace Judgment?
Now all across this country I meet intercessors, prophets & teachers who proclaim the goodness and the mercy of the Lord but then feel obligated to speak declare His anger, justice, and wrath as well. It's almost as if God is being portrayed as a confused creature with two heads. One speaking Mercy and one speaking Judgment. They think that the Father is Angry, Jesus is interceding, and the Spirit is stuck in the middle. But God is not confused, WE ARE! The enemy has massive plans to bring about destruction as we move closer to the end of this age and there will be a great temptation to fall into fear and panic. But God is not the author of fear or panic and though the nations will be in an uproar God is not the cause of the terrible evil that is and will continue to happen.

IHOP Controversy
Recently IHOP has been put into a controversy because a ministry out of San Jose California put on their website a prophetic word that claimed that certain "IHOP Prophets" came to San Jose and prophesied that destruction of San Francisco among other things. This "prophecy" has spread across the Internet and has caused much fear and concern. Not only was this word false but it named certain leaders from IHOP and other ministries that supposedly confirmed this revelation as truth. These men and women had nothing to do with this. If you have received this prophecy in your email I encourage you to delete it.

Is California going to fall off into the Ocean?
There are prophecies that continue to come forth concerning judgment toward California. The new one that has just hit the Internet(from a well known prophetic woman in the nations) claims that angels of Judgment are standing over San Fransisco and there is NOTHING that can be done to stop the devastation coming. It also claims that L.A. will receive partial judgment and the Christians in these regions will be preserved though. This is right in line with the same people that proclaim that God sent 9/11 to teach America a lesson or that Hurricane Katrina was sent by God because of the sin of sexual immorality in New Orleans.

But How can this be True?
Preachers and religious leaders have promoted this teaching but how can this be true? What makes San Francisco any different from Las Vegas? What makes New Orleans any less sinful than LA? What makes America more prone to receive Judgment than Europe? For surely if America is receiving Judgment than why not Europe or other nations that have allowed just as much if not MORE darkness in their nation? This doesn't sound like Justice. But thank God we dont' receive what we deserve!

The Role of an Intercessor
Even when Abraham pleaded with God to not send judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah he knew that it wasn't His heart to send disaster while there were righteous people in the city. Why would God ask a simple human being his opinion of this huge decision unless He was trying to clue him in on His very desire for good. The prophet Joel while speaking of the nature of God declares that "He RELENTS over disaster". This isn't something He does some of the time. It's who He is ALL the time. There is no conflict with His nature. He doesn't do things that aren't apart of who He is. He doesn't give you what He doesn't have. If God is good, full of light, and has no darkness with him at all then He doesn't give you disease, pain, or calamity. This is where Intercessors come into play. Our job is not to try and dish out judgment onto the world or to convict them of sin. But to release the things of Heaven. His Mercy, Love, Grace, & Peace. To show humanity a better way. If we are confused on whether it's His desire to release goodness than we will be limited in the way we present the Kingdom to the world around us.

The True Nature of the Father
Some people believe that God is releasing disaster on the earth but I want to humbly suggest to you that this is NOT part of the nature or the heart of God! In fact I don't even believe that He allowed it because for someone to allow something would also mean that they were also responsible for the very thing that they allowed to happen. I do not plan to validate this with any strong theological statements in this letter. But I want to simply share some thoughts about the nature of Jesus and my personal Journey(My next newsletter will deal theologically with the the subject of "Mercy triumphing Judgment")

A Biblical Picture of God

- God is Love & Light and in Him there is NO darkness at all!

- God is Good, Merciful, Gracious, and Abounding in Love

- The Devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy.

- But Jesus came to bring us Life forevermore.

- We know that God the Father is seen in His Son.

- Christ bears the exact image and nature of the Father. Whatever you see in Jesus is the very heart of God. He is God!

- Any Old Testament revelation of God that is NOT seen in Jesus cannot be attributed to God.

- Jesus perfectly and clearly displayed the heart of the Father on Earth.

- Jesus did NOT impart sickness to people; He healed them.

- Jesus who knew no sin became sin by dying on a cross, pouring out His soul to death, and taking away our punishment.

- The wrath and fire of God burned hotly against His people since the fall of Adam.

- But Jesus appeased the wrath of God by being the propitiation of all sin. Not just the sins of Christians.

- Jesus declared in the book of John that He did not come to "judge" the world but to "save" the world.

- The Son brought an end to human suffering and never tried to explain why it was there or who allowed it in.

- Did you ever recall Jesus blessing a storm that was coming or better yet send it to a nearby town to teach them a lesson?


My Personal Journey
Over the last five months I have been going through a personal reformation in the way that I see God. It's been the best of times in one regard. My ministry is exploding like never before and it's been the worse times because I've never felt more fear, uncertainty, and discouragement in my own qualification to be doing what I do for a living. I know it's been joked by certain family members that I travel all across the country and don't have a job! (I hope your reading Janet! *smile*) But truth be told I experience more pain, frustration, and downright torment over the very issue of my qualification to be in full time ministry.
I moved to Kansas City to minister to the Lord as a full time intercessor in the House of Prayer(IHOP-KC) and over this time I've slowly begun to branch out and accept invitations to go and minister across the country. Whether it's a national "Call" event with Lou Engle & Mike Bickle or it's a "onething" conference with Dwayne Roberts my heart has condemned me on every side. In late January I had a prophetic encounter in which I wrestled with a demonic principality that rested over a certain city in the U.S. that we were ministering in. I received little sleep and couldn't wait to leave that place. During the encounter I was told that that the demonic stronghold that I was coming against was the "spirit of religion".
Before and after this event I had been struggling with hopelessness and discouragement and walked around anticipating that something bad was going to happen to me. I feared the heavy handed anger of the Lord toward my fallen nature and my sketchy past. Though I couldn't articulate this at the time it's what I felt. After a prophetic friend sat me down and showed me the warfare that had been surrounding my life I began to cry out to the Lord for a breakthrough. It was around that time that I received a prophetic word from a guy that God was going to begin to reveal his mercy to me in a new way. Quite honestly I was offended with him and thought to myself that I already have that revelation and knew all that I needed to know about it. But I was completely wrong. over the last 5 months there has been nothing that has rung clearer in my life than the reality of the Mercy of God over my life and this nation. All of my life up until this point I believed in the Judgment of God that is ready to smite me over my sin. .
I can't explain what exactly happen but one moment the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said "You like to believe a judgment theology because you still deal with me as an angry taskmaster!" I woke up one morning and something shifted in my heart. I no longer believed that Judgment was coming to America. I no longer hoped for mercy but expected Judgment. I began to live my life not out of fear but out of Love and Mercy and the fruit has been good.

My Stance!
I do not embrace a theology that does not promote Life, Love, Forgiveness, and Restoration. God Loves San Francisco, Los Angeles, and all of California. He desires that all come to repentance. His Mercy has NOT run out nor are the bowels of wrath tipping over onto this state. This idea is unbiblical. I find it kind of odd that most of the doomsday prophecies are coming from people that do NOT live in California. How is it that God is speaking so much to people about judgment concerning a state they don't even live in? Why isn't God speaking to the church leadership of California about this? There are many righteous men and women all across this state. And I think we owe it to them to stop speaking negative judgmental words over this land.