Dearest Friends in Jesus:

Let me begin this by saying I believe our president is a righteous man before God, and is truly doing what he believes is best for the protection of our country. My prayers are with him, but here is what is in my spirit regarding our current events, and it is from this perspective I am praying for God to grant him much wisdom in the days ahead:

America may be fully ready to go to war with Iraq from a flesh and blood military perspective, but from a spiritual perspective........NO, NO, NO!!!

This is mainly because the American Church (those from every denomination, inter-denomination and no denomination that recognize there is no other Name given under heaven whereby we can be saved but the Name of Jesus) is greatly caught up and entangled in loving to have an audience with man more than loving to have an audience with God.

Preaching, teaching, singing, worshipping (especially where talents are on great display) and prophesying is all much more popular with God's people than the prayer closet, and certainly more popular than the SECRET prayer closet. ( A little aside on why a prayer "closet": The enclosed space of privacy and communion with God is akin to the compression of power encased within the shell of ammunition whether it be a bullet or a bomb. When you get alone with the great Creator of the Universe, and actually do get an audience with Him, you are inviting the source of ALL power, and might and dominion. I live in a house with a very open floor plan. My main prayer place is the major floor of the house where I would walk from room to room as I am praying. I do not intend to forsake this habit as I get a great "pacing" anointing on me at times. But the Holy Ghost told me I needed to make

time in a "prayer closet" because it's in the "counsel room of a great ruler" that we receive power. )

Many prophets in the land are calling us to intercessory prayer in order that a full-scale war against Iraq be averted. Oh, that we would hear their pleas and respond by truly getting on our faces before God. Unless we do, as Benny Hinn recently said on a program, rivers of blood are going to flow in America. This war will not be without grave consequences and it is an arrogant mindset that would lead us to believe we can flippantly take this pathway of behaving like the world's saviour when we have not truly and humbly sought the Saviour to rescue us and deliver us and cleanse us from some of the sins in our own hearts and land. God will not be mocked, and He will not suffer hypocrisy.

There may be a madman ruling Iraq who greatly deserves to be checked, and the desire to do so is completely understandable and even applaudable. It's very easy NOT to miss the marks of a viciously cruel tyrant loose in our world. But it is a great oversight and incredible testimony to gross spiritual darkness and blindness not to perceive the gross scum off a seething carcass of the putrefying sins of perversion here in our country from the holocaust of abortion to almost casual recent revelations of pedophilia from the most admired in our society. The horseleach of sin and uncleanness has two daughters, and is never satisfied and is sucking all purity and life and goodness from the soul of every person not fixed steadfastly upon God, though it be a slow drain of the life's blood and propensity toward wholesomeness and goodness.

Do you understand that I am telling you that your eternal soul created in the image of Almighty God can be every bit the victim of the madman of the raving lunatic stalking your inner person with the spiritual rape of lies and perversions and delusions against the truth of a holy and righteous God as those who are victims of a callused dictator such as Saddam Hussein? We can't make the connection because our prevalent senses are natural ones, and the fullness of our feelings is in our ruling flesh. It's easy to have sympathy for those living under the deplorable conditions of a natural despot. But my beloved friend, make no mistake. Your soul is suffering and in agony and pain if it's under the lordship of a the destructive works of the devil, and there is yet a day coming when it will be revealed just how miserably wretched and desperately in pained anguish we are apart from the conquering and delivering and cleansing blood of Jesus and the great love of God.

The collective work of sin in our society manifesting outwardly is the eroding of our foundations until we find ourselves as Christians either in utter consternation or in incredulous disbelief at what we see transpiring on a daily basis to strip us of all purity and absolutes. We are on a downward spiral into hell except there be righteous men and women of God who know how to cling tenaciously to the walls of salvation while getting a sure toe grip into eternal and prevailing truth so that they might make that upward climb out of the pits of apostasy and delusion determined to suck us into its quagmire of filth and perversion and lies. Lies, lies, lies and more lies.

This is the very sad condition of the soul of America. We need a revelation of our very fearful condition so that we will get a true burden to pray.

I'm not splitting hairs between the righteous and the unrighteous or the just and the unjust here because the Biblical posture for repentance was that God's people OWNED the sins of the nation and cried out from the depths as if they were every bit as guilty and would be held accountable unto God. (Ezra 9:5-10:1) Before true repentance comes, though, there needs to be a true revelation of our condition because until we see exactly where we are going we cannot turn around to go the other direction. Religious platitudes unto repentance are ringing very hollow because our souls have not been gripped by a revelation of just what a sad mess we are in.

You want to respond to the call to prayer?? Start out by asking God to make it real to you just how serious and grievous the condition is in His eyes. When we begin to even get an inkling of God's perception , we won't have to be reading words online to get stirred up to pray. We will be too busy running to the prayer closet and crying out to God from the depths of our innermost beings out of the fear of the Lord to care about anything except seeking His face to entreat His grace and mercy.

What about all the prophecies of revival and blessing coming to America? I say AMEN and AMEN. Let it be so, in the Name of Jesus!! I believe those words, but those prophecies must be PRAYED THROUGH, and they won't be prayed through from the faulty foundation of the misguided misconception that we are a people prepared for such a thing.

God, get us ready for your visitation. God says, Clean your hearts and clean your house, and THEN I will come.

How do we do it?? We cannot apart from His mercy and His grace. He tells us what to do, and then watches as we see we cannot do it and then He comes in and does it. Without Him we can do nothing!! He told Ezekiel to "stand upon thy feet". (Ezekiel 2:1) But then it was the Spirit that had to stand him upon his feet. (Ezekiel 2:2) Except the Holy Ghost makes us to stand in this hour, we cannot stand, and we will not stand.

We don't only need a word from God, we need an inner work of the Spirit to enable us to receive that word.

We need to hear the truth of our condition in order that we might pray. Otherwise, it's just empty lip service void of any true power.

I had a dream a few weeks ago. In my dream, I was in a house that was apparently my house. The house had hard wooden floors (I'm sure this speaks of the solid foundations). A man came into my house, well-dressed and with an arrogant attitude. We made some pleasant small talk, and then he asked me if he could use the restroom. I was going to give him directions to the rest room, and then began remarking how many bathrooms I had in this house. There were 5, ( the number of grace. ) I led him to one of the restrooms, and whatever he planned to do then became not an issue at all. Instead, I discovered in my bathtub a child who looked like an alien almost from outerspace. I'm sure the message of that part of the dream was to show me it was absolutely NOT an American child. The child was emaciated, about 8 years old, and had Mid-Eastern coloring.

My first thought was, "Oh my goodness......look at this poor child, I must take care of him." He was scared and trembling, and his ribs were showing. I picked him up to wrap him in a towel. Then I proceeded to take him out of the bathroom to another room. When I did this, my wooden floors were no longer wooden, but they were a pale/whitish color carpet .....very clean, beautiful and plush. Even though the child had been found in my tub, his feet were bloody, and dirty, and he got dirty and blood on my pretty white carpeting. This was quite disturbing, but I tried to feel more concerned about the child than the carpeting.

This dream had much symbolism. The grace God has shown to America in the presence of that which should literally be flushed down a toilet (the five bathrooms). The grace God has shown America in spite of our arrogance (represented by the visiting man.......he was a "visitor".......this is NOT the true spirit of America but something that has crept in to defile us. And yet I had entertained him. We have entertained the spirit of arrogance in America as if we are something better and special in the eyes of God above others. How deceived we are!!! Our foundations were to acknowledge God, and be humbled before Him, and His almighty greatness.) But here is what the Spirit very specifically spoke to me when I awoke:

That was all He said, and I'm not going to add to that statement. What it means in light of what we intend to do in Iraq, though, truly has me shaking and trembling before God in my spirit.

Oh, that we might truly get a burden to pray in these weeks ahead because despite all the prophecies, I believe we are past the point of no return in our determination to go to war, except there be a true intervention and miracle of God.

Always your sister in Jesus,

Clo DiPilato