I recently received an email forwarded to me from a friend. This email was written in response to the election results (P.S. if you’ve been in a cave for the past week, Obama won) and was from Dutch Sheets, who is a big deal in prophetic and apostolic circles these days. The entire email can be easily found if you Google “Dutch Sheets election response.” I have to admit, this email got me pretty incensed, which is hard to do… but let me point out a couple of things that I felt I needed to reassure those who have read his response and those that think that we are in big trouble because of the U.S. election results:
1. A quote: “Was what happened Tuesday God’s will? I am quite confident it was not. “ WHAT?!? This was the eighth and ninth sentences in the email, so I’m thinking they were an important point of his statement. –Let me assure you, God is STILL in control here, folks. Dutch thinks he can diminish God because he is depressed that his big prophetic statements didn’t come to pass… Let me remind Dutch and all of us: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” Romans 13.1
2. Another short quote and paraphrase: “God’s patience and mercy … will change to a degree and judgment will now increase” for those who supported Obama, and therefor, for all of America. “What Can We Expect? [a list of judgments is included in his email!] – Death and Disease (satan… will have greater inroads to this nation) [?!?], – Terrorism, -War (perhaps on our own soil) [and the list goes on…] Because Dutch believes things did not go God’s way, God is mad, and now God will hurt and destroy those He is angry with for not backing Dutch’s candidate. Let me assure you, that God is worried less about the President of the United States than about the lost, the poor, the orphan, and the widow.
3. A quote: “Like many, believing I had many promises and confirmations that God would ‘grace’ us with a pro-life president in this election, I failed to consider strongly enough that all promises-even scripture-are conditional 99.9% of the time.” I’d like to see your scripture references that say that God’s promises are conditional 99.9% of the time. Because they’re not in my Bible. “Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus.” 2 Corinthians 1:20 (TM)
4. Finally, this entire email is predicated on the supposition that the 2008 U.S. presidential election was the culmination of all history. Again, God is bigger than presidents, He’s bigger than elections, and He’s bigger than the United States. (gasp!) God does not cease to work or to bless or to give grace because of the actions of a nation of this world.
All I know is that God IS in control, and he is coming back for a glorious church. And I intend to help clean up the church so that when He returns, he won’t be returning to crumbling facades but instead for radicals who are willing to lay down their lives. Dutch (as those in his “stream”) will watch by the sidelines so they can say “I told you so” at various intervals. But in the end, they’re going to watch from the bleachers while the glorious church, the bride, gets its inheritance.
What will an Obama presidency mean for America? That’s a subject for a later blog…