And the Good News Is …

This is Prophet Russ Walden with Father’s Heart Ministry. For the first time in four years, the Lord has instructed me to speak into the political climate in our country in light of recent developments. (See the video below and transcription afterward).

In 2015 I was sitting in a meeting hosted by Apostle Warren Hunter. As Warren ministered in that meeting, a bubble of God’s presence came down on me as I sat there, and the Father gave me a list of 24 things that would happen in the next 50 years. You can learn more about that if you are interested by going to our website (fathersheartministry.net) or on Amazon to find the book “The Next 50 Years – A Prophetic Perspective. Now I could say much in great detail relating to what God spoke specific to the recent election cycle looking forward, but that is not what I’ve been instructed to do. People are worn out right now with all of this turmoil; the prophets themselves have struggled with things not coming to pass as they perceived, and it is time to ask the question, “where is God in all of this?” Of course, we know that God isn’t on holiday, and as the Father told me years ago, He is involved in anything that people are involved in, even the upheaval and turmoil that has characterized the political and social scene for the last year. In my book, the Lord identified in 2015 what just took place in the transfer of power. He told me in 2015 there was coming for the church what would be known in time as “The Great Disillusionment,” specifically related to the political aspirations of the Christian right. If what has happened politically in this country of late is NOT that – then it is certainly a dress rehearsal for that.

That being said, if God is in the midst of this mess, we know that He is a good God, and He is all about Good News, the good news of the gospel. Thus, in what I’m sharing with you today, you aren’t going to see me use the anointing on my life to promulgate some conspiracy theory, some negative perspective because that’s all about what the enemy is doing, and we don’t have to be distracted by the losing team.

The first thing I want to comment on is why I haven’t spoken publicly about political things in four years. When President Trump won the election, the word of the Lord to me was “let your tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth.” This was exactly what I did, refraining from public comment on political matters until this time. You may be asking why that is? Some have suggested I just wasn’t on the Trump Train or some other partisan motivation they thought I had. That would not be correct. If there is one thing that can be known about me is that I am a man of no opinion. I am a man of no opinion in an ocean of humanity awash with opinion, and the absence of opinion in my life extends as well to partisan political sentiment. Why then was I quiet? I happen to believe that those who identified Pres. Trump as a Cyrus figure according to Isaiah 45:1.

[Isa 45:1 KJV] 1 Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;

Cyrus was a Persian ruler who replaced a Babylonian king. Babylon is portrayed in the Bible not just as an ancient empire but a spiritual infrastructure in human affairs that has influenced society for centuries, right down to today. What does this have to do with the question as to why I haven’t spoken about political issues since Donald Trump, God’s Cyrus for our day, came into office? The reason is that God spoke to me in 1985, according to Zech. 4:6 that I was like Zerubbabel, whose name means “a seed sown in Babylon.” Other prophets might speak into whatever political regime out there, but in this case, at least God reserved my voice to be a prophet in Babylon as it were or when Babylon, the spirit of Babylon is in the place of being a primary opposer to God’s people as it is today. Thus as for this time, a prophet assigned as a prophet in Babylon, I will speak and give you what God has to say through me.

As we move on from the introduction, remember that the title of this message is “and the good news is…” Most conservative voices and Trump supporters would not see much good news in what is happening in Washington DC in recent days – and they would be right. Things look dark. The advances made in the previous administration on behalf and to the advantage of those of faith are being dismantled and rolled back as we speak. But is that all that’s going on? We can look at the negative all day long and see nothing but more negativity but is that the only lens through which we can gaze. Let’s take a moment and read Joel 2:2:

[Joe 2:2 KJV] 2 A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains…

Do you see what this verse is saying? There are two conditions that exist at the same time. There is darkness and gloom, clouds and thick moral, spiritual, political, and social darkness, but there is also the “morning spread on the mountains.” Here is the proverbial glass half full, glass half empty proposition. No matter what is going on out there in the world you have to choose whether to be a “morning spread on the mountains kind of person or a darkness and gloom person. You might think “that’s beside the point, things are really bad, and we can’t be positive about it!” Think about the brutal and horrible days of the early church when believers were being martyred wholesale, yet the Apostle Paul still preached that we would “always triumph” (2 Cor. 2:14); and Peter likewise decreeing “joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8). No matter how dark things look I want to encourage you to camp on the “morning spread on the mountains” side of things lest the gloom, darkness, yea thick darkness swallow you up never to be seen again.

Moving on from there, let’s take a look at the negative situation and makes some comments on what God has shown me coming from the camp of the enemy. I’m not going to get into detail because you can get that in my book “The Next 50 Years a Prophetic Perspective,” which covers those things in full. The thing you have to focus on is looking past the natural opposition of a political party, the anarchists, and socialist movements that are coming into greater power and influence and remind yourself we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. If you are looking, for instance, at Nancy Pelosi or some other opposer of spiritual values you hold dear – you are being misled and deceived. Pelosi is not the problem. A political party is not the problem. We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood; we are dealing with principalities about powers in high places, and they are dealt with in the PRAYER CLOSET, not the VOTING BOOTH

When I released the word for 2020 in November of 2019, it included the watchword “PRAYER PERIMETER.” I really didn’t sense a strong supportive response from the people when this was said. Prayer was seen as a spiritual discipline that most people struggle with, and the exhortation to pray as never before in Nov. 2019 didn’t resonate as much as it did, for instance, in March of 2020. Let me tell you something, the watchword of PRAYER PERIMETER has not lapsed or faded with time. There is coming on the scene, through the political realm, an opposition against the church in the Western World in a strong way, and the only valid way to see any progress against it begins with prayer. In 2015 the Lord told me that what was coming would result in the church, specifically the Evangelical community and the Catholic Church would be brought together in a prayer initiative such as hadn’t been seen since the early days of Christianity. What would that look like? In the 1990s, there was a man named Larry Lea who single-handedly riveted the focus of the Evangelical world back to prayer through his message and prayer program “Could You Not Tarry One Hour.” Those of you that might remember those days have a feel in small measure as to what God is bringing about in the days, months, and years ahead. As the scope and impact of this Great (political) Disillusionment become keenly felt in the Evangelical and Catholic communities, people are going to pray, and churches and groups are going to prayer on a scale not known since the days that believers were martyred in the Coliseum

What am I referring to when I say something is coming such as this? Am I being alarmist? No. Remember the title of this message – “and the good news is…” But you don’t need to go into the days ahead with your eyes closed. God promises we will not be left ignorant of the enemy’s devices. What is the device the enemy is working to bring online against the church, particularly the church in America? The enemy’s goal (laid out in detail in my book in 2015) is to bring a member of the LGBT community to power in the Oval Office in the next 8 – 12 years. Do you hear what I’m saying? The enemy is doing a thing to bring this nation into bondage at a level difficult to imagine. As an example, let’s remember when Mitt Romney ran for president. God didn’t allow him to win because Daniel chapter 2 tells us that God sets leaders in power and denies leaders power, and thus we can only conclude if Romney didn’t win, God was behind it. To suggest why, here is a verse to consider:

[2Pe 2:19 KJV] 19 While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.

Do you see what this verse is saying? The principle related to who is in the Oval Office is this – whatever spirit they are of – Romney (a Mormon) or an LGBT president that governing spirit becomes the governing spirit of the nation and in either case (Romney in the past, or an LGBT person in the future) the resulting spiritual bondage and chaos would be difficult to exaggerate. This is why God is calling us to lift up and maintain a PRAYER PERIMETER over ourselves, our people, our churches, and our nation. Why? Because PRAYER brings OUTPOURING and RENEWAL, and REVIVAL to the nation. In recent decades well known Christian leaders have said revival is an outmoded concept we don’t need anymore. Take one look at the world scene and the national scene here in the US, and you will comprehend just how wrong they are. How does outpouring come? Always through prayer.

Let me give you a picture. There is a man named Robert Fogel who was a Nobel prize winning economist. He won the Nobel because he identified a pattern in the history of the last 200 years that proved that every time of economic prosperity was preceded by what he called a revival of religion, what we would call an outpouring of God’s Spirit. This is true of the First Great Awakening and it is True of the Second Great Awakening, and the Third Great Awakening that Fogel identified as beginning with the Azusa Street Revival though he himself was not a professing Christian he nonetheless advocated that serious students of history see and understand this pattern. Furthermore, he postulated and demonstrated that every season prayer that produced awakening leading to times of national prosperity and peace – these seasons began in great upheaval (such as the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Culture Wars from the 60s right down to our day). If you would like to have this book it’s a little hard to find but the title is The Future of Egalitarianism and the Fourth Great Awakening by Robert Fogel.

What am I saying? I am saying that if you will wrest your gaze away from the gloom and darkness and take a long look at the morning spread on the mountains right now we are on the cusp of one of the greatest societal shifts of Kingdom Significance in our lifetime. It all begins with prayer. We already have the conflict from Fogel’s pattern, now comes the outpouring leading to Societal Shift into a dominant manifestation of Kingdom Culture – BUT God will not do it alone. He only works in cooperation with His people and we cooperated through prayer. Thus we have the current societal conflict in our streets and halls of government and now God’s people will pray as they have never prayed before, both Evangelicals and Catholics coming together and God is going to answer with a Fourth Great Awakening that a Nobel Prize winning economist identified in the 80s will come and the result will be secularism and the forces of darkness being pushed back a 100 years as a time of spiritual outpouring, enlightenment and prosperity unprecedented in our time is about to take place – if we only will look through the lens of God’s good news and respond in faith filled expectation and prayer.