April 2004

April 2004

God Uses Dumb Animals to Set Us Straight

This is perhaps the greatest witnessing opportunity Operation Save America has ever had. We are quite a sight to behold as we walk through a city. Children are drawn to the animals and want to touch them. Adults have questions that they want answered. The Lord has given us favor with the police (although police departments in other states are beginning to call us with questions) and we have seen God’s mighty hand of deliverance paving every step of the way.

Our own Brenda Spurlock reports on the "Walk Across America":

I caught up with Flip by cell phone Monday afternoon as he and the team of ten, plus Judgment, the horse and Mercy, the donkey, headed toward San Bernardino. They began the trek across America at San Clemente, CA. They've followed old Route 66 through San Juan Capistrano, Los Angeles, Santa Anita, Azusa, San Dimas and Glendora. As we spoke, Flip explained how he came to be leading a white horse named Judgment over the California highways:

I knew God was calling me into deeper waters. He was asking me, "Do you want to stay and do what is comfortable for you or do you want to move into deeper waters with Me?" When Rusty called me with the thought of carrying a dead baby across America , it was a sermon I knew – Zechariah 9:9. When a king comes into a city riding on a donkey, it is the year of the Lord's favor and mercy. When Jesus returns, however, He'll be riding on a white horse. His robe will be dipped in blood and on His side will be written, "King of Kings and Lord of Lords." When He comes next time there will be no mercy, only the awful prospect of judgment and condemnation. There will be no mercy when a king enters a city riding on a white horse. The message was clear to me. I knew we now had to make it clear, first of all to God's Church, and then to our nation.

Little did I guess that God had, for a long time before, been preparing the way so that we could even attempt such an endeavor. In 1998, while we were in Dallas, Ronda Mackey, who had once been our administrative secretary, had procured an RV to be used as a mobile sonogram unit. Jill Busha, director of the Garland crisis pregnancy center, gave it to us in 2002. We painted it and prepared it, but basically we did nothing with it. I decided to bring it to Charlotte, NC, because we have two pro-life doctors who thought they could get it off the ground. They didn't put it to use either. Then, I decided to sell it and use the money to further the Gospel. We had a number of people interested in buying it, but God wouldn't let me sell it because it was what we needed to house five of us on this trip across America, a trip I knew nothing about at that point.

We then needed a horse trailer. Richard Couron and his wife Becky were among the first families to join the church we started in 1980. We prayed over Richard that he would be able to go into business, and that God would bless this business. The Lord certainly did that. Richard's business did very well. He bought a huge ranch in Athens, Texas, and a horse trailer – the Cadillac of all horse trailers! Becky wondered what in the world he would do with that thing. He used it once in 2000. Though no one realized it at the time, he was buying that horse trailer for our trip across America. He also provided us with a big Dually to pull the trailer.

On the Road with our Animals

We've had some misadventures and learned something about animals along the way. Judgment got hung up in his halter in the trailer. He looked almost dead by the time we discovered him and we were very concerned. When I complained that I hadn't started out with the intention of killing our horse, Graydon Yates responded dryly that this wasn't about my killing the horse. He was reasonably certain, he said, that Judgment was trying to commit suicide "because he found out where you're going."

Mercy, a jenny, wasn't eating or drinking and we couldn't figure out why. We had stopped at a gas station when we heard the most awful ruckus. Mercy had gotten herself hung up when she tried to get to the water. We learned that we had tied her head too high for her to be able to reach the food and water. She calmed down considerably after she had been properly fed and watered.

Gas is $2.27 a gallon in California. I spent $118 the first time I filled the RV in North Carolina. I spent $190 when we got to California. I was dumbstruck. We ran out of diesel fuel in the big Dually at Rancho Mission Viejo, a 25,000-acre ranch. We were invited up to the ranch and spent a couple of days there receiving the kindest treatment you can imagine. They gave us dinner and breakfast the next morning and they helped see that we got fuel and the parts needed to repair a bad exhaust manifold on the RV. So you can see, there has been a ram in every thicket along the way.

God Gets Our Attention

We were having a problem with Mercy. She wouldn't move when going in front of Judgment the horse, and everyone knows that Mercy has to come before Judgment... She was afraid of everything. She would stop at every manhole cover, or anything else for that matter. Rusty (Thomas) tried everything he could think of to get her to walk in front, but she wasn’t going to do it. When we were at the ranch, we had let the animals run loose in the fields. We began to notice something about Mercy. She followed Judgment everywhere he went. They ran and played and rolled together, but Judgment was always in the lead. It was a case of God using dumb animals to speak to even dumber human beings. It was a wonderful lesson for us as we realized that Judgment (the horse) should lead and Mercy (the donkey) should follow.

We began to see the message much clearer. It is a message that we have preached for years: Many have asked if God will judge America. They have asked if we have gone too far to avoid God’s terrible and final judgment. Let’s face it. We have mercilessly killed over 45 million little baby boys and girls. We have thrown God out of school, banished Him from the schoolyard, ripped His Ten Commandments from the walls of our schools and society. Murder has become the solution for everything. Perversion of every sort is running rampant. We have called what is evil good and what is good evil and we do not even know how to blush. We have shaken our fist in the face of Almighty God, expecting the offended Deity to bless us in the midst of our dismissing Him. Billy Graham said it well, "If God does not judge America, He is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah ."

God has already judged America and is presently judging her now, desiring that we return to Him. He has given us warning after warning through prophetic utterance, signs, and judgments. God’s heart for America is most perfectly expressed in His words to the Church in Laodicea: "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with Me." Rev 3:19-20.

The lesson is this: We are under the judgment of God now! We are not to evacuate this cultural crisis and wait for the final judgment. What God is looking for are those who will rightly stand upon His Word and wield the "Sword of the Spirit" so that we might repent and find His glorious mercy. Our society has been liberally dishing out unconditional mercy to everyone. In our seeker-friendly evangelism, we extend mercy before judgment is allowed to do its work. Mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13) because judgment now is no longer the last word, but mercy can never be dispensed apart from judgment.

God's love is unconditional for everybody, for the homosexual as much as for the greatest saint on the mission field. But God's mercy is contingent upon repentance. "He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy." (Proverbs 28:13)

Past Voices that Thundered This Truth

America was birthed as a "city set on a hill," whose foundations were built upon the precepts of God’s Word. Our Pilgrim forefathers and our Founding Fathers certainly believed this to be true. America, therefore, has a responsibility to Almighty God and to the world to let His light shine forth to the utter ends of the earth. We have failed in our responsibility. God is lovingly calling us to return to Him and fulfill our purpose as a nation.

His judgments upon our land are signs that we must repent and call upon His Name (2 Chronicles 7:14). For those who doubt that God would judge America, we need only look upon the prevalent writings, sermons, and speeches of Civil War days.

"Every master of slaves is a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven upon a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this … Providence punishes national sins with national calamities." George Mason

"On many a defeated field there was a voice louder than the thundering of a cannon. It was the voice of God, crying, ‘Let my people go.’ We were all very slow in realizing it was God’s voice, but after many humiliating defeats the nation came to believe it a great and solemn command. Great multitudes begged and prayed that I might answer God’s voice by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, and I did it, believing we never should be successful in the great struggle unless the God of Battles has been on our side." Abraham Lincoln

We are in the throes of God’s judgment now! Marriage is being redefined by the courts of our land. Mayors in states all across America are now openly attempting to do the same. Divorce, abortion, homosexuality, false religions, ad nauseam, have left us morally and spiritually bankrupt. Blood is coursing down the corridors of our schools, workplaces, and streets. Murder has become the solution for everything. We are being terrorized by enemies from within and false religions from without. There is no solution in sight. We are under the remedial judgments of God Himself and are at a crossroads in this nation.

So what will it be America? Will we continue down this spiraling path toward utter degradation? Will we continue to "legalize" that which is immoral so that we feel good about ourselves in our sin? Will we put forth a nother godless million-dollar program that will never touch the cancer of violence destroying us as a nation? Or, will we have the courage to call on the Great Physician Himself, and ask Him to perform the surgery that will completely remove the cancer forever? Will we repent, stop the shedding of innocent blood, and find the healing this nation so desperately needs?

National Event – Columbus , Ohio – July 17-24, 2004

The Second American Revolution to restore our Christian heritage has begun. The trumpet has sounded. God is calling His Church to the battle. In the day of Elijah, God called His people to Mount Carmel. Elijah stood before the people and proclaimed, "If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal is God, follow him." 1 Kings 18:21.

We will be proclaiming from this day forward that Jesus Christ is Lord. It is to Him alone that we owe our allegiance. We have allowed our Christian heritage to be stolen from us by false prophets. The very foundations of our faith are being removed from our children and our nation:

Engle vs. Vitale (removed prayer from school)

Abington vs. Schemp (removed the Bible from school)

Roe vs. Wade (decriminalized abortion)

Stone vs. Graham (removed Ten Commandments from school)

Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (declared that man can determine his own reality)

Lawrence vs. Texas (declared that homosexuality is a constitutional right)

Jesus proclaimed His Kingdom by saying, Repent and believe the good news! Mark 1:15. We will be coming with our faces low to the ground, believing that Jesus can restore our land, and believing the Ohio State motto which says: "With God all things are possible."

God is calling His people to take a stand. He is calling pastors, churches, families, youth groups, and ministries to come out of the closet and allow the theology of the church house to become biography in the streets of Columbus, Ohio. As the prophet Elijah called down fire from heaven, we will be calling down the fire of God’s Spirit to turn us back to Him with all of our heart!

The power of God took a few failing, fearful disciples and used them to stir the uttermost parts of the earth! Are we willing to take up the cross and sacrifice our complacency? It all depends on our obedience to Christ and action to His Word.

Keep storming the gates - Flip