[an Analysis Of The Financial Crisis In The United States] 05 – An Analysis Of The Financial Crisis

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Prophetic Brief Insight and Analysis for the 21st Century An Analysis of the Financial Crisis in the United States - Part 5

CONTENTS PROPHETIC PERSPECTIVE

All prophetic analysis and a correct worldview must begin with God. Our worldview begins with a gaze into another dimension and with receiving and accepting core elements of the nature of God Himself as it relates to making sense of the nature of life here in the mortal realm of Man.

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Among the other fears besetting economic and political leaders there is now worry that the credit crises will cause deflation, this in spite of the fact that inflation rose to 5.6% in July, the highest level since 1991. This increase was largely the result of the surge in commodity prices (oil and food) in the first half of the year, but since July the price of oil has tumbled from a high of $147 / barrel to less than $60. In China, inflation fell from 8.7% in February to 4% last month, a steep decline based primarily in plunging food costs. Unemployment in America rose to 6.5% in October, up from 4.8% a year earlier. The fear of falling prices, increasing unemployment and high leverage could lead to a “debt-deflation” cycle that tightens credit even further, reduces investment and leads to a global economic depression that would take years to recover from. As a church in the U.S. and globally, we must see the events of the earth through the filter of God’s redemptive purposes. Understanding God’s redemptive nature allowed Jeremiah to powerfully and confidently declare God’s goodness in the midst of national devastation, and he was therefore able to mandate that the people go down to Babylon in hope and not fear. God’s purpose was to bring them back, and His thoughts towards them were based in His inherent goodness even while He was enacting judgment upon them for their consistent national disobedience.

Global warming, food shortage, financial meltdown, war and genocide…Crisis is occurring on every continent, and the nations are troubled and perplexed. It is a time for the Church to receive insight from God and to perceive the reality behind the crises. We must correctly perceive what is occurring in the nations as this age rushes towards the point of culmination and climax.

This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king’s share had been harvested and just as the second crop was coming up. When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, "Sovereign LORD, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!” So the LORD relented. "This will not happen,” the LORD said. Amos 7:1-3 (NIV)

In a day of earthquakes and tsunamis that devastate entire regions, and in this time when economic and political crisis grips the earth, we must hear from prophets who have a fresh word from God about His opinion and involvement in the matter. When a powerful Church which has clear prophetic insight lifts its voice in the earth and declares the purposes of God, only a people who are not acquainted with the complex nature of God could charge that this benevolent Creator of all things could never judge or authorize destruction. Amos was such a prophet, and he had insight into the impending famine and economic calamity planned by God for Israel:

When Amos saw the hand of the Lord coming upon the nation to destroy the harvest, he knew it would lead to starvation, famine and ultimately to genocide. Though the rebellious national leadership consistently rejected Amos’ ministry, the prophet cried out for forgiveness on behalf of the people and for a withholding of judgment. The sense of real r e s p o n s i b i l i t y, c a r e a n d h i s h e a r t o f compassion can still be heard in Amos’ voice: “How can Jacob survive? He is so small”. Because of the prophet’s appeal, God “relented”—a word which means to breathe a deep sigh of sorrow or regret, or to have pity and compassion. The heart response of Amos upon the earth was the same as the heart response of God who sits enthroned in the heavens, and together the prophet partnered with God and terrible judgment was averted. Yet the rebellion of the people was great and

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Amos 9:1 (NIV)

"I saw the Lord standing at the altar, and He said: "Strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. Bring them down on the heads of all the people; those who are left I will kill with the sword. Not one will get away, none will escape." Jeroboam’s wicked leadership turned the hearts of the people away from the worship of God towards the worship of golden calves, so God determined to move against the nation once again, this time by fire to both devour the crops and dry up the deep or produce intense drought conditions. Amos once again interceded and God stayed this 2nd judgment (Amos 7:4-6), yet Amaziah rebuked Amos and ordered him to remove himself from Israel and go back to Judah. It was only then that judgment became certain: Now then, hear the word of the LORD. You say, "Do not prophesy against Israel, and stop preaching against the house of Isaac.” "Therefore this is what the LORD says: "'Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be measured and divided up, and you yourself will die in a pagan country. And Israel will certainly go into exile, away from their native land.’” Amos 7:16-17 (NIV)

Jeroboam (representing political power) and Amaziah the priest (representing the false church) were deceived by the illusion that they possessed power, and were too blind and darkened in their minds to understand that Amos’ dire warnings were, in actuality, expressions of mercy and that the promised judgments were sure. The only basis for Amos to justly prophesy such dreadful punishment was the fact that he had cried out repeatedly for mercy and God had spared the people. In the end, this prophetic word of judgment was the only correct response to the consistent rejection of the mercies of God which the prophet himself had petitioned God to enact towards the nation. Once the final verdict of judgment had been cast, it became the prophet’s mandate to participate with God in the destruction of the nation. "I saw the Lord standing at the altar, and He said: “Strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. Bring them down on the heads of all the people; those who are left I will kill with the sword. Not one will get away, none will escape.” Amos 9:1 (NIV)

Amos was commanded to assault the core structures in the unseen realm, producing devastation and intense disorder in the natural realm. We are dealing here with the unseen architecture of the nation, a place where the actual power that sustained Israel was either upheld or destroyed.

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We see several key issues in this interaction. 1. A view of God’s redemptive purposes for the earth must undergird all prophetic insight. Amos saw the Lord approaching Israel with judgment on two occasions, the first time with a plague of locusts and the second with wildfire, both of which would destroy the national crop and produce famine. On both occasions, Amos cried out to the Sovereign Lord to stop the judgment, and on both occasions God sighed with regret, and He had pity and compassion and judgment was forestalled. Though the nation had consistently rejected his reforms and his call to repentance, Amos had no personal stake in the judgments. The church must be mature, filled with divine (not human) compassion, and rise to the place of seeing the nations as Amos said of Jacob: “how can he survive, he is so small?” Amos was following in the footsteps of Abraham, who understood that when God came to his tent to reveal his plans for Sodom, that His intention was for a people on the earth who shared His heart for those who faced imminent destruction. When Sodom was judged, it was only after a reluctant God came down to personally check on the reports he had heard, and after a patriarch had sought to redeem the nation through the obedience of a few in negotiations with God. Redemption means that destruction is the last possible alternative. 2. There is an unseen reality behind all natural occurrences. Amos was commanded to assault the core structures in the unseen realm, producing devastation and intense disorder in the natural realm. This is not a natural act against a physical altar or the stone pillars which upheld the roof of the place of false worship. The command to strike the top of the pillars so that the thresholds shake and then the entire formation is brought down on the heads of “all the people” is a metaphor for destruction of the core structures of the nation as judgment. We are dealing here with the unseen architecture of the nation, a place where the actual power that sustained Israel was either upheld or destroyed. This would be

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things like the economy / famine, wisdom removed from political leadership, invasion and occupation by foreign armies, etc. All of these natural occurrences had their origin in an unseen transaction which we are given a view through Amos’ powerful prophetic operations towards the nation. The Lord declared to Israel that I have carried you into exile (Jer 29:14), indicating that he wanted them to clearly understand that the Babylonian invasion was not just a geo-political event but a direct intervention from the Lord. God cannot be doing things in the earth and we remain unaware. 3. The Church must come into a correct understanding of dominion. The problem in defining dominion is based in a carnal view of what power is, which focuses on who has the power to control natural outcomes. Natural, earth-based definitions of power ignore the reality that at the core of every nation and system in the earth is a spiritual reality that can only be moved by an obedient people who are dead to self and connected deeply into the mind and heart of God. When Elijah dealt with Ahab he was not primarily involved in a political process; he was engaged in powerful transactions in the unseen realm that allowed him to close and open the heavens, call down fire from the next dimension, and physically transition into the next realm without seeing death. When a correct and powerful Prophetic dimension is released, it activates princes to fly in the heavens, nations to rise and fall, and the ultimate purposes of God to come into the earth unhindered. Dominion, then, can be correctly described as the ability to act as a catalyst and conduit to the spiritual power that impacts systems in the earth. The prophetic, therefore is an exercise in power sharing.

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