The prophets tell us that this week is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL for the spiritual future of the United Kingdom and the emerging church. They are calling for prayer and action that will show God that Brits are serious about following in His way. And if not, He might take that as a “NO!”
Now, being a natural skeptic, like you, I would usually suspect that behind these prophetic words are some over-enthusastic Americans changing the world by remote control at a caffeine-charged prayer meeting. But the fact is, I have been hearing the same thing for a while and so I give it a lot more cred. So, if you also have a sneaking suspicion that something is in the works in the skies above UK, the take a minute and read this.
Got an email this morning from Johnathon Stuart-Brown:
“Andrew, . . . There have been many prophecies which suggest within days or at most weeks, The UK will go one way or the other depending on prayer, praise, repentence from The Body of Christ. Chuck Pierce predicted the London bombings 40 days in advance when he saw a sword over London and called for 40 days prayer and fasting. He also prophecied in May 2004 that Britain would have to decide by the end of November 2005 which way to go: Double Blessing or Double evil. Others see it as God about to put His thumb Up or down on The UK.”
There are many others on website… http://www.ourchurch.com/view/?pageID=190233
This is just one..
The UK hangs in the balance – what the body does next will determine the Nation’s destiny – Greg Austin – Nov 2005“
So, this being such an urgent matter, I took a butchers at the OurChurch.com website – dang! what an ugly website!!! Plllzzz don’t tell the artsies at betachurch.org. But, hey, the content is good and very timely so put on your darkest sunglasses and take a look yourself. Here are some highlights, starting with Greg Austin because he is a leader in the emerging church as well as a prophetic/prayer movement.
“We are praying much for Britain. I have become aware of a pensive silence in the heavenlies – as though there is an anticipation among both the angelic host and wicked principalities and powers – a still, questioning, “which way will Britain move, which way will she turn?” These beings have no power or authority to move Britain one way or the other – they are waiting on the Body of Christ in Britain to make the decision of direction. It is we, the Body, who hold the power and the authority to determine Britain’s immediate future.
God has placed before us life and death – and we must choose one or the other now – we will choose by either action or inaction, by pressing forward or by simply doing nothing. God is listening. Heaven is waiting. Principalities and powers are waiting. There is release of glory or release of hell on the horizon, and what comes next depends on what the church does next.”
Greg Austin, 21 November 2005, link
BTW, Greg has great insight on the emerging church, which he explains with deep passion and urgency.
“The emerging church cannot be as churches have been, or we will no longer have a reason to exist. Let God lead into the deep, into uncharted waters, into latitudes no one has explored.” Emerging Church 1. You should also read his apologetic for Emerging Church and response to our critics.
There are other prophetic voices who are hearing things about UK and refuse to keep silent. Like Warrior Princess (Lanna Perry) who just posted this one:
“Through this great shaking, and the purification coming to the UK, the Lord is going to release many from within the UK next year. Many will be released and the Lord calling them to walk through the gates of their destinies, They will have been trained by the Spirit alone to hear His voice, and embraced His heart within them.
They will move forth and prepare the highway for those who have fallen behind. They will show them they way of return. Control being removed.
The UK will stand strong from this season onwards more than ever before as a flag to all nations. A mighty move and change will come to the UK by the Spirit of God that will show other nations like never before that they are a holy people, a people ransomed by the Lord.
They will arise and shine, and the Glory of the Lord is about to rest on the UK in a way, the world has never seen, if they embrace this move of God that is on their doorstep.”
Lanna Perry(Warrior Princess), full message on OurChurch.com
So . . . rather than having you say why they might be full of carp . . . What about asking the question . . . “What if they are hearing right? What therefore should we do?
As for me and my family, and I hope, my adopted nation, we will follow the LORD and hope that the nation does the same. This week needs to be a week of prayer for UK and Ireland. I am totally committed to seeing God have his way with UK and am asking God if there are any specific goals or projects that He wants me to be involved in on a higher level. I might blog a little about the scene in UK during the week if i get time so that you can pray with more intel.
Sorry I don’t buy it.
Is God up there with a chalk-board counting prayers?
‘Oh thats ok, guys, they got 1.3 million people to pray, I’ll not destroy them after all’.
Almost Jonah-ish.
Well I don’t believe in a God like that.
If people spent a tad more time doing stuff and a tad less time telling other people how their faith is inadequate and therefore that it will be their fault if the spiritual future of the nation is lost – whilst at the same time arranging massive prayer meetings, cheesy interviews, pathetic squeezy messages using flowery language, I might, MIGHT, give them a bit more credit.
Yes we hold the keys to the future – and yes we can make a difference. But that is not going to happen by trying to invoke some kind of mass hysteria.
Thats what I think, take it or leave it.
Thank God for the good old Church of England lectionary which reminded us the first reading from Mark for the new Church year this Advent Sunday that
” But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
I read much of the hype and on balance prefer to leave it to God – and do what he has asked us to do which be ready always.
Sorry to double-post, but there is one other thing I noticed:
Greg says ‘I do not know much about the London bridge, but I sensed very strongly the Lord saying that the water beneath this bridge was very dirty. Murky.’
Well that lets us off because the bridge was bought by an American in 1962 and is currently in Arizona.
I don’t know about the prophets, but I am praying for you here in America. I keep hearing that spiritually the UK is ten years ahead of the states. If this is true then I hope God does an amazing work there soon, because we are spiritually pretty bleak over here.
I don’t know about the prophets, but I am praying for you here in America. I keep hearing that spiritually the UK is ten years ahead of the states. If this is true then I hope God does an amazing work there soon, because we are spiritually pretty bleak over here.
If Nov is the make or break time for the UK… has Americas time been and gone? I dont beleive this 10 years ahead/behind stuff… can’t we just face the facts we are different cultures?
LOL London Bridge! …as for the Thames being murky… no s*** Sherlock!
yes . . all sounds quite humorous. but heres why i give cred to the prayer crowd – these people pray for many hours a day and hang out in the cloud world with God. And I dont pray nearly as much, since i am hanging out in the culture with the strategy/apostolic/practical people. so .. . i try to partner as much as i can with the space cadets because i feel that they are more likely to hear from God FIRST and then alert me to whats going on . . . so i can make wise decisions in the right direction
its the strange dance between apostles and prophets – its a trust thang . .
as far as the water thing is concerned. I have often observed prayer teams ending up at rivers to do sptl warfare – bringing release, healing, kickin demon butt, stopping dark powers that lie dormant in the waters.
i heard that buddhists often go to the waters and chant there to awaken the spirits. So it doesnt surprise me that water and rivers play a role in the spiritual battle over cities.
the spiritual realm is a wildly complex environment and although i may not fully understand those that spiritually navigate it and try to describe it to those on the ground . .. i need to give them a voice because their web sites are the cheesiest in the world and its too painful to go there to read their prophecies . . . and their voice is often drowned out by mega church pastors and best selling authors and slick conference speakers who can tell a good story but no nothing about sleepless nights of prayer and wrestling with God and evicting dark angels from their hold over structures and people and cities.
and if i can be a voice for the voiceless, dammit, i will be, especially if it is an issue of national security.
if the prophets are wrong, and there is no flood in UK right after Christmas (assuming our response does not avert the floods) and nothing happens in the heavenlies this week despite the inpotence and procrastination of the British church . . . then at least i did my job as a watchman and sounded their voice.
that, to me, is something worth looking like an idiot for.
btw – during a day of prayer and spiritual wrestling over prague one day, a girl on our team saw a vision of the waters rising over prague. 2 months later it happened in the physical realm and was broadcast all over the world.
if the prophets (strange bunch they are) are seeing it in England within a 2 month period, I want to know about it
sorry for waffling [even on my own blog] but i just cant dismiss what these people on many continents are hearing and seeing over UK without offering it up and chewing it over wth other people – for action and not just skeptical conversation
but i do appreciate your thoughts and reactions.
This is interesting stuff. Having done some stuff with some intensive prayer people I’m not so keen to dismiss stuff. Yet I hear the “revival and prophesy overkill” that has hit some areas of the church over the last few years, and I also have known some prayer nutters to go OTT! Yet its been interesting recently to see some prophetic stuff played out very vividlly at a local level. And encouraging the church to pray and take action can’t be bad thing can it?
The call to prayer should never be ignored – we will stand with you in prayer this week and onwards. Thanks for the ‘heads up’. Duo
There is a ‘London Bridge’ right in the heart of London:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Bridge
Hey Andrew
Thanks for the heads up.
Here down by the river in teesside we’ve really been feeling a bubbling and expectancy in the spirit for what God is doing.
At the end of the day if these guy’s are all wrong they’re still right cos telling people to pray, seek God and his will is always ok by me.
I, like most of you get terribly skeptical about the big prophesy style things and people
but equally I’ve seen them blow open lives and area’s.
The links above are deffinalty interresting and worth discernment, consideration and prayer. The guy’s seem connected and hooked up with the big guy, plus a bit of me really love’s all that flowery language(i like reading rick joyner as if it was lord of the rings). It is a shame a lot of that prophetic stuff comes out of a often narrow selection of the church and I can understand people getting turned off by particular theological and political personal standpoints that sometimes come through and are prophesyied as the Word of the Lord when sometimes you read and go “ah no sounds more like the word of the republican or Pan american”
Saying that just cos they’re not perfect or 100% right doesn’t mean they’re not ever right, isn’t that what discernment is for.
After all God doesn’t give up using us just cos we’re not perfect or 100%. I guess it’s the same with these guy’s and in the end the key is Grace.
THe Grace of God and us having Grace for each other.
So if we’re able to have to have grace on what we struggle to agree with in them and still see God speaking through them and working through them maybe they will learn to have the same Grace for the emerging church and see that although we don’t have it all sorted or are always right God still has a tendancy of using us and working through us. Often inspite of all of us.
BTW. thanks for the great blog I’ve been a addict for about a year now it must be and have found your opinion and voice entertaining insightful and full of guidance through this whole church planting, emerging church emerging culture conversation. Really looking forward to hearing you in the flesh on this years Re:source course.
Matt the big fro
Correction – you are right, there is a London Bridge, but this is not the original (known from the nursery rhyme).
I was being a tad facetious, apologies.
Serious question: Given that these people have clearly made false prophesies in the past, and that the bible takes a rather strong line with those who make such statements, how do we determine which prophesies to listen to?
I understand that we should weigh the words, but how do we actually do that?
good question joe.
i went on their sites but didnt see anything i saw as false
and some of their impressions from prayer times are just that – not exactly prophecy of a biblical proportion
what i often do is outsource it to someone with a good nose for that kind of thing
marc van der woude, for example, at marcs messages. maybe i will ask him now . . .
We need to test and check everything from the apparent raving loony to the clear headed “purpose driven” stratergist – one thought troubles me though, many contemporary prophets seem to modelled on OT principles – as God has poured out His Spirit on all flesh and Christ in us is the hope of Glory, it should NOT be the case that our prophets continue to be on the edge or at the fringes or a bunch of odd loaners – it doesn’t tie up. My area of expertise is youth ministry, but if I exercise that gifting without any acountablity – answerable only to “The Spirit” I head into trouble, if we need ANYTHING to make sure we choose rightly as a nation and as a church we need to rediscover the heart of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 – it is all about unity and about our love for each other. The Church catholic needs to rediscover unity, a passion for prayer and petition (which is where we need to watch and learn from these prophets) and a desire to walk in obedience . . . I am praying we do that.
good on ya for sounding the warning andrew! my prayer is that god’s people everywhere will be convicted to pray, to the glory of god, and that we won’t get bogged down in our own prejudices and cynicism.
Thanks for standing in the gap. Graham prays every day for the peace of Jerusalem because we believe we’re called to do so.
We’ll pray with you for England from Australia and Africa where we happen to be at the moment.
I’m sorry if I sound cynical about this… I guess I am… for two reasons… 1st, the number of times I have herard people say… now is a time of decision… God is about to move in power… this is the generation … etc etc … after a while cynicism becomes the natural reaction – so if the decision goes the wrong way is that it with the UK as far as God is concerned? see Toronto blessing… decade of Evagelism etc. … 2nd, One also gets a bit sick of pronouncements issuing from the US… Sometimes it can feel a bit patronising. Also Andrew you start your post declaring these voices as THE prophets! surely they are SOME prophets? You could probably find just as many prophecying whatever you want.d
As for prayer… many people are praying daily and eanestly for God’s Kingdom in the UK (with or without these “words” and I welcome all the prayer we can get… no more or less than any and every nation needs!
Im sure if God is ordaining Britain to lead his Church, FANTASTIC, then I am sure that his will will prevail.
Outsourcing prophetic discernment to me? This is a mixed blessing, Andrew. 😉
But I could say a few things. First of all: like most people I get my daily share of so-called prophecies by e-mail, and I delete more than 90 percent because it’s wishful thinking, vague spiritualistic talk or self-promotion. BUT, we cannot afford to throw away the baby with the bathwater under London Bridge. Cynicism doesn’t help and can even harden our hearts for the real stuff. So let’s be principally open and exercise discernment.
no – outsourcing the 6-hour prayer time each day – God understands.
thanks Marc. appreciate your wise dutch words.
Sorry, hadn’t finished my thoughts yet as I had to run for my bus. So let me pick up on where I left.
Secondly, when God seems to be saying similar things around the same time to mature prophetic people, independent from each other, then I would at least read it carefully and pray into it, because apparently He’s asking for our attention.
You asked whether the prophetic impressions about the UK match with what we discerned at the Connect Europe gathering in Berlin. Only to some extent I would say. On the day you posted this (28 Nov) God reminded me in my prayer time about several specific parts from Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (a German composer who lived in England): “He will come like a refiner’s fire”, “Who can stand when He appeareth?” and “And He shall purify the sons of Levi”. It seems to me that there surely is a purification process going on, as a preparation for a deeper move of God.
Not sure if this is limited to the UK, as I experience it more as a Europe-wide thing. In the reformational transition from ‘church as we know it’ to ‘church as a grassroots movement’; from false mediation structures to Christ in the centre, etc. God is asking for more radical obedience (holiness = being set apart for God and his purposes) than what we’re perhaps accustomed to. The criterium is not a ‘good program’ or ‘good initiative’, but whether we really heard from God. There are godly seasons of catalysation, and it’s important not to miss these. I sense we are in such a season.
Waters and rivers play a role in the spiritual realm related to cities and nations: yes.
It’s interesting at least that everytime we had a Europe-wide gathering of prophets and those who work towards reformation and new expressions of the Body, we encountered extreme weather circumstances. The floodings in Prague and Dresden that you refer to happened at the time of our first Connect meeting in that area, in Herrnhut (birthplace of the Moravian prayer, missions and community movement led by Zinzendorf.
Last Summer when we met in Prague to press into the spiritual inheritance of Jan Hus, there were heavy floodings around Lake Constance, the place where Hus was killed. The intercessors praying there a few months earlier were led by God to take careful note of the water level in the lake. After they prayed about the killing of the early reformation, it was exactly 3,33 meters and God spoke: “Watch this season, as I’m in control of the water levels in Europe”.
Last weekend we had another Connect meeting, this time in Germany in which we also looked into the ‘organic church fathers’ from this nation, and there has been extreme snowfall in the area of Munster, the city where the Anabaptists were killed.
So although I don’t know specifically about the UK, and tend to be cautious with some of the impressions on this website, I would certainly pray into these words (ask God to show you what you need to know) and be alert to move with God in whatever way He is leading us.
dude . . . that was great. much thanks. see you in Zurich next week!