Pray and ACT

As we have been noting for nearly a year now, a theology known as "Seven Mountains" has been slowly creeping its way into "mainstream" Religious Right activism. 

Beginning with Janet Porter's "May Day for America" prayer rally on the National Mall last year, this Dominionist theology has become increasingly common place in Religious Right events, ranging from the National Day of Prayer events to Jim Garlow's "Pray and Act" 2010 election effort.

As we have explained before, Seven Mountains dominionism seeks to place Christians in control over the seven forces that shape and control our culture: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion.  The reason for this, as Lance Wallnau, the leading advocate for Seven Mountains theology, explained is that Jesus "doesn't come back until He's accomplished the dominion of nations."  And the way "dominion of nations" is accomplished is by having Christians gain control of these "seven mountains" in order to install a "virtual theocracy" overseen by "true apostles" who will fight Satan and his Antichrist agenda.

In the past we have caught people like Porter teaming up with Seven Mountains advocate Cindy Jacobs and praying for God to give Christians control over the media and government mountains. We've even found David Barton sharing the stage with Jacobs.  In fact, later this month both Barton and Garlow will be joining other Seven Mountain Dominionists/Spiritual Warriors for an event called "Government Transformation Summit For Visionary Leaders" [PDF] in Texas.

But Barton has tended to keep his ties to this movement under wraps and we had never heard him explicitly advocate Seven Mountains Dominionism ... until today on his radio program:

Barton: There's five areas that you have to be able to influence and control if you are going to take a culture and that's media, business, government, education, and pulpit.

Now, for twenty years as it turns out - I wasn't even aware of this - way back, Bill Bright from Campus Crusade, when he was still alive, Loren Cunningham, Youth With a Mission, these guys got together back at the same time and really felt like there were seven areas that had to be taken for a culture and these are the seven that they gave: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. Now we've grouped some of those together and throw some together, but they said those are the seven areas you have to have and if you can have those seven areas, you can shape and control whatever takes place in nations, continents, and even the world.

Green: So it's the same idea, saying "look, every single area of the culture you need to be involved in."

Barton: That's right. Christians got to get involved. And there's a Scripture they used that came out of Isiah 2:2 and it says "Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established on the top of the mountains," so this is now called the Seven Mountain Prophecy, there's a book out by that name.

It says the Lord's house is going to be established on top of the mountains and these are the seven mountains. If you're going to establish God's kingdom, you've got to have these seven mountains and again that's family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government.

Now that's what we believed all along is you got to get involved in this stuff. Jesus said "you occupy 'til I come." We don't care when he comes, that's up to him. What we're supposed to do is take the culture in the meantime and you got to get involved in these seven areas.

It was just the other day that Mike Huckabee was saying that all Americans should be forced to listen to Barton's messages - at gunpoint if necessary.  

Is Barton's call to have right-wing Christians take complete control over every aspect of society the message that Huckabee had in mind?

We have been writing a lot about the rise of the Dominionists like Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs within the traditional Religious Right movement and paying close attention to the influence of Seven Mountains theology, which is the idea that Christians are called upon to gain control of the seven key aspects of culture (government, media, business, education, etc...) in order to unleash God's kingdom on Earth and bring about the return of Jesus Christ.

One of the key proponents of this Seven Mountains theology is Lance Wallnau who, thank to Jim Garlow, has become more involved in the political aspects of the Religious Right movement through Garlow's Pray and ACT effort.

Earlier this month Cindy Jacobs and Generals International hosted a three hour webcast that featured Wallnau, as well as New Apostolic Reformation godfather C. Peter Wagner, during which Wallnau laid out how Christians are supposed to gain control over these mountains through both "overt" and "covert" means .... and those little upside-down horseshoe things floating above the 7 mountains on the white board represent the gates of Hell though which same-sex marriage, abortion, and Islam are attacking America:

You go all the way down into the family mountain. Now you've got family and you've got same-sex marriage being fought. What's up with that? Well, it's another one of these hellish blocking of truth here, bringing through the gate a belief system that whatever form of sexuality you're into is legitimately, constitutionally protected.

Well, while you're doing that, through the religious gate here you've got Islam invading the United States. So you've got your homosexual activity, your abortion activity here, Islam coming in, you've got a financial collapse - all of this, to those of us who are Christians, is an apocalyptic confirmation that when you remove God from public discourse, when you don't line up your thinking with kingdom principles, you inevitably hit an iceberg like the Titanic and you go down.

We want to be able to bring kingdom principles and values into every one of those spheres, realizing that the kingdom can move both in the over proclamation of truth and in the covert instruction of principles.

So here's what I'm saying: believers need to start to move into the high places where they're going to come up against the gates of hell. We will, I guarantee you, come up against the gates of hell because when a believer comes into these high places, he comes head into - boom - the principles that are working there. And when you hit a wrong principle, listen to me, when you hit a wrong principle you hit a principality.

And when you hit a principality and you succeed in that conflict, watch what happens, you open up a portal, you open up a pathway so that light can come in. And this is exactly what we need now - we need Heaven to come invade Earth and bring, through portals, new leadership.

And if you are impressed by that presentation, The Oak Initiative is hosting a "Power Communications Seminar" with Wallnau, Rick Joyner, & Jerry Boykin later this month that you can attend for the bargain price of $900.

One of the defining features of the Religious Right is the remarkable redundancy of so many of their efforts.  For instance, as we noted earlier this month, there are at least five different 40 day prayer efforts underway targeting the mid-term elections ... or rather, make that six, as Coral Ridge Ministries is running one as well:

Join your Coral Ridge Ministries family and pray for the sake of this land we love!

September 1 through October 10 launches our brand-new 40 Days of Prayer for America campaign ... calling all concerned Christian citizens to fervent, focused, and committed prayer for America, her leaders, and her future.

Just visit www.CoralRidge.org daily, beginning September 1, to read the prayer for the day and commit this land we love to God in prayer.

Let righteousness reign in America, and let it begin by praying God's Word!

And you'll notice that Coral Ridge is using 2 Chronicles 7:14 as the effort's foundational passage, which is the same passage used by Janet Porter's May Day 2010 Prayer Rally, the Global Day of Prayer, the National Day of Prayer, the FRC's Call 2 Fall event, and the Pray and Act effort.  

So in case you didn't get the message, the key to winning the mid-term elections is for Christians to pray and seek forgiveness so that God will heal our land by tossing the Democrats out of office.

For months now, Jim Garlow has been telling anyone who will listen that they need to read the book "Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem" by Jay W. Richards because it perfectly explains how economic issues should be handled from a biblical perspective.  He even dedicated a segment during the first Pray and Act webcast to promoting the book and its ideas:

If we have 535 people in Washington, DC - House and Senate - who are voting through laws that cause grandchildren and great-grandchildren of yours yet unborn to be saddled with a debt they cannot handle, that is called thievery.

There's a law against stealing: Thou shalt not steal. We have no right to steal from future generations. So the whole economic issue is a biblical issue.

Debt like we have in America is immoral. It is wrong. There should be a screaming up. This could cause a suffocation and a complete destruction of all we hold dear. The taxation is becoming oppressive.

The reason that we have these kind of bad laws passing in our Congress is very simple: what percentage of the people making the laws are attending a church where the Bible is being taught? Let me go further though: if it's a small percentage that are there, let's just pick an arbitrary number - 10%, 15%, 20% - are attending a church where the Bible is being taught, let me ask you a question, how many of them are going to a church where biblical economics is being taught so the person who goes to make the laws has the moral foundation, the biblical background, to be able to vote through the right kind of laws? We have been silent and I believe the spirit of God is stirring something at a deep level.

Garlow brought it up again the second Pray and ACT webcast and preached a sermon on it at his church last weekend:

I preached then, and in four Sunday services, on a topic about which I had never taught: the biblical economic principles related to the current crushing national debt and the oppressive taxation. The Bible has much to say about civil governance (and how peace and tranquilly can be experienced in our communities) and has much more to say about the underpinnings to our national economic situations than I had previously anticipated. If you have the time or interest, you can hear it at http://www.skylinechurch.org/skyline/?page_id=26. And, as I have stated before, I commend Jay Richard’s exceptional book, Money, Greed and God to everyone.

To date, Garlow had pretty much been all alone in recommending the book and its teachings, but that looks like that is about to change as the Family Research Council has announced that they will be hosting an event featuring Richards and his book in December:

Jay Richards is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and a Contributing Editor of The American at the American Enterprise Institute. In recent years he has been a Visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a Research Fellow and Director of Acton Media at the Acton Institute.

He has written many academic articles, books, and popular essays on a wide variety of subjects. His most recent book is Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem.

I had resisted reading this because for a long time it seemed that only Garlow was recommending it, but now that it looks like it might be becoming a playbook for the movement, I guess I'll have to actually take a look at it.

On Friday I posted clips from a conference call hosted early last week by Jim Garlow, Chairman of Newt Gingrich's Renewing American Leadership, and organizer of the Pray and Act campaign, which featured the likes of Chuck Colson, Lou Engle, Maggie Gallagher, and Harry Jackson all discussing the importance of the Pray and Act effort heading into the mid-term elections.

Last night, these same leaders once again join Garlow, this time for a live webcast from Washington DC that also featured Walter Hoyle, Chuck Stetson, James Robison, Samuel Rodriquez, Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, Lance Wallnau, Tony Perkins, and Richard Land. 

The event itself had just a few handfuls of people in attendance, but it was broadcast by GodTV and I spent my Sunday evening watching it so I could bring you the highlights.

Most of event was standard Religious Right fare, with leaders discussing the paramount importance of fighting abortion and saving marriage as people like Colson marveled at that we are now celebrating homosexuality which, just a few decades ago, was "shameful and embarrassing":

Thirty years ago now, I was running the 1972 presidential political campaign and we were accused, those of you who remember the history of the Nixon era, we were accused of lots of dirty tricks. And one of them was that I had planted gays in the campaign of the President's opponent, Senator George McGovern. I didn't, but I was accused of it because that would have been a dirty trick.

Today, we're celebrating what just 35 years ago was considered something shameful and embarrassing. We're not only celebrating it, we're taking an institution which has been the foundation building block of society and civilized societies going back as far in history as we can go back - a man and a woman joined together as God says as one flesh - and we're saying we want to re-define that.

I don't know about you guys, but you'll never hear me say "gay marriage" again because there is no such thing. There can't be gay marriage. Marriage is a man and a woman. The fact of the matter is you can't have anything called gay marriage. From now on to me it's "so-called gay marriage" or its "civil union" or whatever you want to call it, but it's not marriage.

And then, of course, there was Lou Engle just being Lou Engle as he got revved up about how fasting and prayer can finally reverse the forty year rebellion set off in 1969 with the release of "the Stonewall homosexual movement":

I feel like this is a defining moment in American history. I feel like we're in a moment when epochs have got to turn. In the Scriptures you see the power of the forty day fast to change spiritual eras.

Moses fasted forty days and the law of God was released into the Earth.

Elijah fasted forty days at a time when they had legalized child sacrifice and homosexual and heterosexual prostitution in the days of Ahab and Jezebel. But it was in that darkest hour that God raised up its greatest prophetic movement as well.

God is not done with America. and when that spell of Jezebel ruled over the land, promoting sexual immorality all over the place, God releases a forty day fast through Elijah. With the spell of Jezebel and the discouragement of those who were reformers, God breaks that thing with a forty day fast and releases a whole new era with a movement to release the next religious leaders, spiritual leaders, and political leaders as God ripped through that land and purged Baal worship at that time.

God's the same yesterday, today, and forever. I believe we're at the end of the forty year rebellion of the Sixties. 1969: the Stonewall homosexual movement was released. 69: Woodstock. Forty years from that point, I dare to believe that if they church will take this time seriously in fasting and prayer, we can actually begin to fulfill what a generation has failed in for forty years. 

In the very first post I wrote about Pray and Act, I noted how 7 Mountains Dominionism was at the heart of the organization's agenda and pointed to a clip of the leading 7 Mountains advocate, Lance Wallnau, explaining how Christians must take control of these specific areas in order to lay the groundwork for the return of Christ.

In case that wasn't clear enough, last night Garlow actually included Wallnau in the webcast and Wallnau made the case that Christians are in a war for control of these 7 Mountains and the object of this war is permanent occupation:

While we've been trying to preach, secular forces have been educating America. We didn't lose the homosexual argument over night. Twenty-five years, from Chuck Colson's testimony 'til now, tells me that it wasn't because of something we did, it's because of something we failed to do: we didn't influence media and arts. When you've got media and arts, you've got a pulpit going twenty-four hours a day educating your children on values. We didn't educate ourselves regarding the judiciary and so political appointments were made - and we always focus on politicians, we got ga ga at election time, forgetting politicians are the spoil of a different battle; it's the battle of influence.

We have superior weapons, a superior message, and superior power. When it comes to being able to move forward in this, we've got evidence all over the place of how transformation can happen, but it starts with this: clarity is power.

If Christians don't understand that power isn't just in us in the church, there is an authority that is in government, there is an authority in arts and media, there's an authority in family - I look at those as seven spheres where God has to raise up champions.

Napoleon's maxim is "the object of war is victory." You know what we do, we get so dumb - we're supposed to be wise as a serpent and as harmless as doves but we end up being as dumb as a doorknob in lacking the shrewdness we need. When we have elections, when we have victories, short-term victories, we go back and celebrate it like that's it. Well, here's what Napoleon says about warfare: the object of war is victory, but the objective of victory is occupation. We don't win until we occupy high places.

The way that governments and nations are formed is that minorities of people occupy strategic places of influence and they leverage that influence through leverage within networks that are closely, tightly knit together. The church has to become a Kingdom Force, leveraging its influence within greater spheres than just evangelism and then linking shields together. I believe, with prayer and fasting, we will see a freshly invigorated move of God in the United States.

Finally, I want to highlight something that Garlow has been pushing for some time now, which is to intimately link "biblical economics" to the social issues that normally motivate the Religious Right.  Garlow is impassioned about the book "Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem" by Jay W. Richards and has been telling anyone who will listen to buy multiple copies of the book for themselves and their friends.  So it was no surprise that Garlow brought the subject up during the webcast:

If we have 535 people in Washington, DC - House and Senate - who are voting through laws that cause grandchildren and great-grandchildren of yours yet unborn to be saddled with a debt they cannot handle, that is called thievery.

There's a law against stealing: Thou shalt not steal. We have no right to steal from future generations. So the whole economic issue is a biblical issue.

Debt like we have in America is immoral. It is wrong. There should be a screaming up. This could cause a suffocation and a complete destruction of all we hold dear. The taxation is becoming oppressive.

The reason that we have these kind of bad laws passing in our Congress is very simple: what percentage of the people making the laws are attending a church where the Bible is being taught? Let me go further though: if it's a small percentage that are there, let's just pick an arbitrary number - 10%, 15%, 20% - are attending a church where the Bible is being taught, let me ask you a question, how many of them are going to a church where biblical economics is being taught so the person who goes to make the laws has the moral foundation, the biblical background, to be able to vote through the right kind of laws? We have been silent and I believe the spirit of God is stirring something at a deep level.

Finally, to get a sense of just how Garlow sees the interconnection between economic and social issues, he explains how legal abortion is causing today's unemployment problems:

When I find people who don't morally get it on the issue of abortion, I appeal that way you just appealed. When you consider when abortion started, how many years have passed, the people who were originally killed now would have been having children who were up to the age fifteen. So we have lost massive numbers of people [and] when I'm with unemployed people who believe in abortion, I say "one of the reasons you're unemployed is because there are no houses being bought, there are not cars being purchased, there are no schools being built for people who've been killed. You don't have a job today, in part, because of the massive slaughter of humanity."

People don't understand, it's an economic issue. There's a reason God said be fruitful and multiply. He was serious about that.

Jim Garlow was invited on to CBN this morning to pitch his Pray and ACT effort, where he warned that "our nation is in serious trouble" and that we may have "a short window of time to see this nation to turn and return to a spiritual renewal it once knew."  As such, it is imperative that people pray and fast heading into the election so that God will supernaturally touch America and save it from destruction:

Pray and ACT leaders will be gathering in Washington, DC this Sunday for an event that will be webcast and carried on GodTV.

Last year, Lou Engle announced that he was no longer willing to be "silenced" by the political restrictions placed upon his organization The Call by its 501c3 status and so he starting a 501c4 arm that would be known as The Call to Action.

But that was pretty much the last we ever heard about The Call to Action ... at least until today when it resurfaced with a new name - The Call to Conscience - and a new video featuring Mike Huckabee and the voice of Jim Garlow:

At the moment, the website consists only of statement from Engle blasting the Prop 8 ruling, but as we noted yesterday, Garlow, Huckabee and Engle are all deeply involved in the "Pray and ACT" effort aimed at getting conservative Christians to vote "in all elections only for candidates who affirm the sanctity of life in all stages and conditions, the integrity of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and religious liberty and respect for conscience."

Earlier this week I was marveling at how different groups just keep announcing redundant pre-election efforts, so that there are now at least four separate groups launching prayer efforts heading into the mid-term elections: Pray and ACT, Cindy Jacobs and Generals International, the National Religious Broadcasters, and the Southern Baptist Convention.

But you know what was missing?  An election-targeted prayer effort that is being orchestrated by a university.  But fortunately, the University of Mobile has stepped in to fill that void:

A Christian university in Alabama is calling people to join together in prayer for a nationwide spiritual and cultural transformation as the mid-term elections approach.

The University of Mobile recently founded the Center for Leadership Development (CLD) to help leaders fulfill their responsibility to God as American citizens. Director Dr. Joe Savage tells OneNewsNow the first action the group is taking is launching The twelve23 Prayer Movement for America. The initiative is based on John 12:23, which says, "The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."

"Beginning October 1 through November 2, each day at 12:23 we're asking Christians to simply humble themselves and pray -- just for a moment," Savage explains. "Can you imagine if Christians across this land, at restaurants across this country, if people would stop for a moment and bow their heads and pray right there at the 12:23 hour?"

The twelve23 website makes the connection to the elections quite clear:

Beginning October 1, 2010 and concluding Tuesday, November 2, 2010, we are asking Christians around the world to pray for the United States and their own faithfulness every day at 12:23 p.m. and/or 12:23 a.m.

America’s mid-term elections are Tuesday, November 2, 2010. On this day, millions of Americans will exercise their constitutional freedom by voting for the candidate of their choice. This is a wonderful privilege! Knowing this is an extremely important election and knowing that our nation needs God more than ever, we invite you to commit to praying and to get others committed to participating as well!

And the accompanying twelve23 Contract lays out exactly how the godless liberals have been destroying this country:

Godless arrogance, at large among political leadership, has resulted in continued disintegration of effective and healthy state and national policies. Decline of religious instruction in homes and churches has led to clouded understanding of God and the embracing of Christian and pagan thought with equal standing.

A liberal political philosophy, historically weak in the face of evil, continues its influence at a time when we most desperately need protection from evil from within and beyond our borders.

Concepts of responsibility to God, responsibility to others, and self-sacrifice are lost in a national sea of greed and self-entitlement.

We believe these conditions constitute a spiritual and cultural attack upon the health and welfare of our nation.

Pray and ACT is calling for 40 days for prayer and fasting heading into the 2010 mid-term elections and so is Cindy Jacobs ... and now the National Religious Broadcasters is getting in on the act as well, announcing its own pre-election 40-day prayer effort:

In response to the unprecedented spiritual and moral decline in our nation, the NRB Executive Committee is issuing a call to God’s people to devote ourselves to 40 days of earnest, soul-searching prayer, beginning September 1, 2010 and ending October 10, 2010. The theme verse is 2 Chronicles 7:14, "If my people.” We must seek God for the revival of our souls and the life of our nation.

NRB is requesting that you join us in calling upon God's people to commit to these 40 days of prayer. God will hear our prayers and heal our land only after we humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways.

Specifically, we are asking:

• Stations to air 30- and/60-second PSA’s, encouraging Christians to take part in the “If My People” prayer initiative. To assist you, previously recorded PSA’s are available here.
• Ministries to include the NRB call to prayer in their September programming. This would remind and encourage audiences to participate beginning September 1 for 40 days.

As Peter said, judgment begins with the house of God. Now is the time when we must be transparent before the Lord to let Him change us, so that through the power of the Holy Spirit we might change the world.

And if 2 Chronicles 7:14 sounds familiar, that is because it has become the passage around which just about every Religious Right events has been organized including Janet Porter's May Day 2010 Prayer Rally, the Global Day of Prayer, the National Day of Prayer, and the FRC's Call 2 Fall event.  In fact, even the fast at the center of Pray and ACT mission is explicitly linked to this passage:

The fast will begin at 7:14am (based on 2 Chronicles 7:14), on Sept 20 and end at 7:14am, Oct 30, 2010. Although many will follow only a liquid diet, persons can fast as God directs them during this 40 day span.

Ever since President Obama was elected, 2 Chronicles 7:14 has become the verse around which the Religious Right has mobilized ... and that should give you a pretty good understanding of their mindset at the moment:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.