Shalom, to you my Friend and Co-Minister in the Great Commission...
As we have begun the year 2021, it is warranted that we take a moment to fathom the year we've just experienced: 2020. In the autumn of 2019, while in prayer, I had a deep sense that 2020 would be a year of shaking and that I had to write the book I had held off from writing for 8 years, The Harbinger II - the sequel to The Harbinger. One of the details of the biblical template of national judgment in The Harbinger concerned a mystery that pointed to the year 2020 as a year of great shakings. In fact, it was a year ago, in the January, issue of Sapphires that I spoke of that template and the potential of 2020 being a year of dramatic events.
It could have hardly been more dramatic. Within three months of its beginning, America was struck by a plague that brought its daily life and functioning to a standstill - as nothing in the nation's history had ever done before. We are still living in the shadow of that plague and that paralysis. A few months later, the nation was hit by an unprecedented outbreak of civil unrest, riots, violence, and destruction. Added to the chaos were movements seeking to overturn the nation's ideological and political foundation. On top of this, the American economy began deteriorating on a scale that rivaled the Great Depression.
As the nation approached the presidential election, it found itself more polarized and divided than in any time in living memory. Far from bringing the country together, the election only served to leave it even more divided. By the end of the year, a new presidential administration stood poised to take power and promised to enact a sweeping agenda that many saw as presenting an unprecedented danger to religious liberty, free speech, the unborn and the issue of life, the functioning of the Church, and the spread of the Gospel.
As we continue this new year, where does all this leave us? Up to this date, there has been no spiritual revival in America of a national scale. Without revival, the nation is lost. And yet, as people of God, we are of hope. Regardless of who sits in the White House, we know Who sits on the throne. And He is never finished. And if we find the surrounding culture darkening, we know it is time that we all the more shine as the lights we were called to be. And though these are perilous times, they are also the times that open the door to greatness for those who will stand uncompromised. As we continue 2021, let us not let up in our vigilance to pray for America, for repentance, return, and revival - for God's people, for America, and for the world.
And may God greatly bless you this month as you do.
See Message: The Return: The Potter's Jar
Scripture: Mark 13:5-8
Rabbi Jonathan Cahn
