Sarah Palin & The Third Wave: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

In the 1990’s, a woman named Mary Glazier used her Windwalkers International organization to help propel Alaska Independence Party candidate Walter J. Hickel into the Alaska governor’s office in an upset write-in campaign. For Glazier, it was simply a victory for God, part of a larger struggle in which members of a Christian theocratic movement called “The Third Wave” will take over secular government in the United States, thereby fulfilling Biblical prophesy and helping to usher the world closer to the End Times. Mary Glazier believes in literal spiritual warfare and the existence of demons, which is what she believes she is struggling against.

“I believe in warfare,” declared Glazier. “We were given an assignment in Alaska … we had the very liberal candidates running for governor, and we began to pray for God to give us a Christian.”

Spirit Led Woman Magazine in 2003 wrote about Glazier’s claim of chasing a witch from Alaska through spiritual warfare:

“In 1995, Mary mobilized a prayer network for Alaska’s prisons and began experiencing spiritual warfare as never before. She had received word that a witch had applied for a job as chaplain of the state’s prison system. Mary recalls, ‘As we continued to pray against the spirit of witchcraft, her incense altar caught on fire, her car engine blew up, she went blind in her left eye, and she was diagnosed with cancer.'”

I’ll give you a moment. I imagine some of you might be smiling, wondering if you’ve stumbled onto a work of fiction. I assue you, this is very real. It’s not a recounting of some uneducated nutjob in a foreign country who is ranting about people who she believes cast spells upon her or deprived her husband of his virile member. Mary Glazier is a resident of Alaska, and has a thriving ministry there. She is sincere.

Fine. So, you might ask, what does this all have to do with Sarah Palin?

On June 13, 2008 Mary Glazier told attendees at the “Opening the Gate of Heaven on Earth” conference, who represented many of the top leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation (also known as “The Third Wave”), that she had been present at the inception of Sarah Palin’s political career and that Palin was in her personal prayer group:

“There was a twenty-four year old woman that God began to speak to about entering into politics. She became a part of our prayer group out in Wasilla. Years later, became the mayor of Wasilla. And last year was elected Governor of the state of Alaska. Yes! Hallelujah! At her inauguration she dedicated the state to Jesus Christ. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

Mary Glazier, and many other members of this “Third Wave” views Sarah Palin almost as a fulfillment of Biblical prophesy. While no one has specifically made that actual claim, they clearly consider Sarah Palin one of their own, and believe that God’s will in the United States will be manifested through the Republican vice-presidential candidate. For the rest of us, those who might not be Christian or even Christians who don’t subscribe to these people’s particularly flavor of ideology, it’s clear that we’ll be in trouble once the Kingdom of God is established on Earth through people like Sarah Palin.

“There is a tipping point,” Glazier explained, “at which time, because of the sin of the land, the people then have to be displaced. God is preparing a people to displace the ones whose sin is rising so that then they tip over and the church goes in – one is removed and the church moves in and takes the territory. Now, that does not mean that the people are removed, because God removes them from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light. They are given an opportunity to change allegiances.”

Glazier didn’t elaborate upon what would become of those who would not “change allegiances”.

At first glance it might seem that Sarah Palin has little to do with Mary Glazier, other than being in a prayer group with her two decades ago. But that would be presumptuous. Sarah Palin’s worldview has been shaped by associations with people like Mary Glazier, as well as her longtime association with the Wasilla Assembly of God. They’re both part of a resurgent movement that was declared heretical by the Assemblies of God in 1949. This is the same “Spiritual Warfare” movement that was featured in the award winning movie, “Jesus Camp,” which showed young children being trained to do battle for the Lord. At least three of four of Palin’s churches are involved with major organizations and leaders of this movement, which is referred to as “The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit” or the “New Apostolic Reformation”. The movement is training a young “Joel’s Army” to take dominion over the United States and the world.

For Sarah Palin, the spiritual journey began in Idaho, where she was baptized. Her family moved to Alaska when she was 2 months old, and several years later Palin’s mother began taking her four children to the Wasilla Assembly of God. Sarah was re-baptized at the church at age 12 by immersion in water during a summer family camp, along with her mother and siblings. She attended the church for over two and a half decades, and has been publicly blessed by a number of pastors and religious leaders employed by and associated with the church. The founding pastor of the church, Rev. Paul Riley, delivered the invocation when Palin was inaugurated as governor of Alaska.

Rev. Riley said Palin’s public testimony and drive to encourage others to do God’s will set her apart at a young age. “That’s where we noticed the first indication of leadership.”

According to her biography, her faith continued to grow. In high school, she led basketball and track teams in prayer and to church when they traveled. She signed yearbooks with Bible verses, taking her own motto from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances.” According to the biography, she began to feel as she matured that the messages from the pulpit were intended for her. When she prayed, she felt connected and fed by a power beyond herself.

“She couldn’t remember a time when God wasn’t real in her life,” wrote Kaylene Johnson, author of “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down.”

Rev. Riley’s successor, Rev. Tim McGraw, Palin’s pastor when she became mayor of Wasilla, said she gradually became more committed to church attendance once she started a family and entered politics. When she became mayor of Wasilla she scheduled regular appointments with the pastor, who counseled her through the transition and prayed with her privately.

“She was very conscientious about applying the worldview of what she was discovering in Christ to her day-to-day life,” McGraw said.

Sarah Palin did not forget where she came from. As chief executive of Alaska, she signed a proclamation marking Christian Heritage Week as an occasion to remind Alaskans of the role Christianity has played in the state’s history. Palin also argued that public school students should engage in a “healthy debate” between evolution and creationism. Attending a pastors conference as governor, she told Riley and other Assemblies of God clergy that Alaska had been dedicated to the Lord – “and I know the Lord is not going to take it back.”

So. Sarah Palin is religious. Why should that worry anyone?

Well, we can answer that by looking closer at how a small town girl like Sarah Palin went from being a mayor of a tiny town to being governor of Alaska and on to being a vice-presidential candidate in a very short period of time. Palin reportedly drew early attention from state GOP leadership when, during her first mayoral campaign, she ran on an anti-abortion platform. Normally, political parties don’t get involved in Alaskan municipal elections because they’re supposed to be non-partisan. But once word of her evangelical views made its way to Juneau, the state capitol, state Republicans put money behind her campaign. The party establishment helped her to be elected to her first political office, and supported her in her run for governor. Later, all evidence suggests that Palin was specifically selected by the leadership of the Bush-Cheney-McCain Republican party to galvanize the Party’s activist Evangelical base (something which John McCain had been unable to do).

The gist of this is that it is Sarah Palin’s religious views that led to her whirlwind romance with the GOP. Her views are at the very heart of why she was thrust into the public eye to begin with. Her views are the reason she wound up as John McCain’s running mate, not the laughable contention that she’s “very qualified” and “has executive experience”.

Not surprisingly, given her background, Sarah Palin considers her rise to power less in political terms than in spiritual ones. She partially credits an African evangelist named Thomas Muthee for her rise to the office of governor. Pastor Muthee has given guest sermons at the Wasilla Assembly of God on at least 10 occasions in his role as the founder of the Word of Faith Church, which is also known as the Prayer Cave. Pastor Muthee founded the Prayer Cave in 1989 in Kiambu, Kenya after “God spoke” to him and his late wife Margaret and called him to the country (according to the church’s website). The pastor speaks of his campaign against a demonic presence in the town in a trailer for the evangelical video “Transformations”, made by Sentinel Group, a Christian research and information agency.

“We prayed, we fasted, the Lord showed us a spirit of witchcraft resting over the place,” Pastor Muthee says.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, six months of fervent prayer and research identified the source of the witchcraft as a local woman called Mama Jane, who ran a “divination” centre called the Emmanuel Clinic. Her alleged involvement in fortune-telling and the fact that she lived near the site of a number of fatal car accidents led Pastor Muthee to publicly declare her a witch responsible for the town’s ills. He ordered her to offer her up her soul for salvation or leave Kiambu.

Says the Monitor, “Muthee held a crusade that ‘brought about 200 people to Christ’.” They set up round-the-clock prayer intercession in the basement of a grocery store and eventually, says the pastor “the demonic influence – the ‘principality’ over Kiambu – was broken”, and Mama Jane fled the town.

According to accounts of the witch-hunt circulated on evangelical websites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots and killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon.

After Mama Jane was questioned by police – and released – she decided it was time to leave town, the account says.

Think about that. Thomas Muthee founded his ministry with a literal witch-hunt against a Kenyan woman whom he accused of causing car accidents through demonic spells. He has frequently referred to this witch-hunt in his sermons as an example of the power of “spiritual warfare”.

In October 2005, Pastor Muthee delivered ten sermons as a guest preacher at the Wasilla Assembly of God, the audio of which was available on the church’s website until it was removed without explanation (around the time Sarah Palin’s national candidacy was announced). At a speech at the Wasilla Assembly of God on June 8 this year, three months before she stepped on to a national stage, Mrs. Palin described how Thomas Muthee had laid his hands on her when he visited the church in 2005, prior to her successful gubernatorial bid. It was during these sermons that Palin, who was then preparing for her gubernatorial run, was anointed by Pastor Muthee. His intercession, she says, was “awesome”.

Even Palin expressed surprise at Muthee’s advocacy for her candidacy. In video footage of the speech in June, she is seen saying: “As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me. He’s praying, ‘Lord make a way, Lord make a way…’ And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m gonna do, he doesn’t know what my plans are, and he’s praying not, ‘Oh Lord, if it be your will may she become governor,’ or whatever. No, he just prayed for it. He said, ‘Lord, make a way, and let her do this next step.’ And that’s exactly what happened.”

She then adds: “So, again, very very powerful, coming from this church,” before the presiding pastor comments on the “prophetic power” of the event.

So. Let’s think about that. Sarah Palin gives at least partial credit for her rise to the office of governor in Alaska to a blessing she received from a man who conducted a literal witch-hunt in Africa.

To put this in proper context, and return to the subject of The Third Wave and “Joel’s Army” (which is the primary reason I’m writing this), it should be understood that Sarah Palin mentioned being blessed by Pastor Muthee in a June 8, 2008 speech which was made to mark the graduation of students from the Wasilla Assembly of God’s Masters’ Commission. This “Masters’ Commision” believes that Alaska will be the refuge for American evangelicals upon the coming “End of Days”, according to Ed Kalnins, the senior pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God since 1999.

After her speech, Palin was presented with an honorary Masters’ Commission diploma. So she’s literally been anointed to conduct spiritual warfare in the coming “End of Days”. And you thought she was just a pretty face?

Okay, to connect the dots I feel that I should mention that Pastor Kalnins and Masters Commission students have traveled to South Carolina to participate in a ‘prophetic conference’ at Morningstar Ministries, one of the major ministries of the Third Wave movement. The head of prophecy at Morningstar, Steve Thompson, is currently scheduled to do a prophecy seminar at the Wasilla Assembly of God. Other major leaders in the movement have also traveled to Wasilla to visit and speak at the church. The point being that the Wasilla Assembly of God is affiliated with many of the movers and shakers with the Third Wave movement.

Needless to say, it would be fair to take a closer look at Sarah Palin’s church and its ideology.

A review of recorded sermons by Ed Kalnins offers an eyebrow-raising overview of the church in which Palin grew up. Pastor Kalnins has preached that critics of George W. Bush will be banished to Hell. He’s questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 will be accepted to Heaven. He’s charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Iraq were part of a war “contending for your faith” and that Jesus “operated from that position of war mode.”

During the 2004 election, Kalnins praised Bush’s performance in his debate with Sen. John Kerry, then offered a blunt message about his own preference: “I’m not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I’m sorry.” Kalnins said, “If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time.”

Kalnins later bristled at the criticism Bush was facing for the government’s handling of Hurricane Katrina: “I hate criticisms towards the president, because it’s like criticisms towards the pastor — it’s almost like, it’s not going to get you anywhere, you know, except for hell. That’s what it’ll get you.”

Kalnins said in that appearance with Sarah Palin in June that, when he moved to Alaska from New Jersey in 1999, “When I got to meet the mayor of Wasilla … I said this person loves Jesus … And then when she became our governor, I said, I know her. She came to this church.”

Kalnins’ office said in a statement that Palin “has maintained a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here,” and added, “As for her personal beliefs, Governor Palin is well able to speak for herself on those issues.”

Sarah Palin did speak for herself, in that June address at the church: “Having grown up here, and having little kids grow up here also, this is such a special, special place,” she told the congregation. “What comes from this church I think has great destiny.” She also said, “It was so cool growing up in this church and getting saved here,” and praised “the umbrella of this church … God has sent me from underneath the umbrella of this church throughout this state.”

As for his former congregant and current vice presidential candidate, Pastor Kalnins has asserted that Palin’s election as governor was the result of a “prophetic call” by another pastor at the church who prayed for her victory (that would be Muthee). “[He made] a prophetic declaration and then unfolds the kingdom of God, you know.”

In his sermons, Pastor Kalnins has also expressed beliefs that lie outside of mainstream Christian thought, indicating that he views the current conflict in Iraq as part of an apocalyptic End-Times struggle. This is a worldview which he shares with the Third Wave adherents. He preaches repeatedly about the “end times” or “last days,” an apocalyptic prophesy held by a small but vocal group of Christian leaders. During his June appearance with Sarah Palin, he declared, “I believe Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to the state to seek refuge and the church has to be ready to minister to them.”

Speaking before the Pentecostal church on that same day, Palin echoed Kalnins’ line of thought by painting the current war in Iraq as a messianic affair in which the United States could act out the will of the Lord.

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she asked the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

She also sought prayer on another matter: A $30 billion national gas pipeline project that she wants built in Alaska “I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that.”

One would like to believe that none of Kalnins’ rhetoric sounds any farther out than what you would hear at any mainstream church in America from a firebrand preacher trying to stir up his flock. Well, I can say that, anyway, but I was brought up Baptist. My threshold for extremism might be more finely developed than yours. But I hope to make it clear in the rest of this article that you could only believe that Pastor Kalnins’ preaching is harmless rhetoric if you don’t look deeper into the underlying theology.

Pastor Kalnins and the churches Sarah Palin has attended embrace a theological system called “dispensation”” that emphasizes man’s dominion over the earth and the end times – theology that could potentially shape a believer’s environmental and foreign policies should they decide to run for political office. The Wasilla Assembly of God is part of an extreme fringe of the American Evangelical movement which espouses these theories. They’re known as the “Third Wave Movement”, or as the “New Apostolic Reformation”, or as “Joel’s Army”. All are part of what is called Dominionism.

Dominionists believe that God gave mankind dominion over the Earth, to use as man sees fit. Some of the more extreme viewpoints among these people say that if a single tree is left standing when Jesus returns, then mankind has wasted the gifts that God gave him. These are the people who believe that Jesus cannot return until certain parameters are met. The fundamental difference between their beliefs and mainstream Christians is that Dominionists believe mankind can play an active role in helping to establish those parameters which will allow Jesus to return, and thus literally bring about the End Times.

These are the theologies that Sarah Palin grew up with. Nancy Hardesty, a professor of religion at Clemson University in South Carolina, said of Palin, “When she talks about using up our non-renewable resources, drilling on the North Slope and building the pipeline, it’s almost with glee because in a sense it doesn’t matter. All her brand of Christians may be gone before those things run out. It tends to lessen a long-term view.”

From a standpoint of public policy, it’s vitally important to understand that Third Wave doctrine teaches that their leaders are raising a generation of youth who will be imparted with supernatural powers and form a conquering Christian army. These youth, often referred to as “Joel’s Army” and as “the generation born after 1973”, will purge the earth in preparation for Jesus’ return. The movement features special gatherings of believers to use “spiritual warfare” to purge “territorial demons” and end “generational curses” in order to transform the cities of America and the world. Social reform thus takes place through the expulsion of demons.

Third Wave doctrine is an example of an extreme religious exceptionalism – not only are all other religious and philosophical belief systems on Earth seen as invalid and under Satanic influence, but Third Wave theology sees all competing branches, sects and denominations of Christianity, particularly other conservative Christians who refuse to join “the river” of these outpourings, as an obstacle to God’s divine will. Third Wave adherents believe that other Christian churches must drop their competing doctrines, which prevent them from joining this final end-time army, and group together under the new authority of the Apostles and Prophets of this final age. In other words, true believers will join together, in one triumphant end time church, to do battle against evil in the final generation.

As one researcher familiar with the history of the Third Wave Movement or Dominionism describes it, “The Third Wave is a revival of the theology of the Latter Rain tent revivals of the 1950s and 1960s led by William Branham and others. It is based on the idea that in the end times there will be an outpouring of supernatural powers on a group of Christians that will take authority over the existing church and the world. They believing Christians of the world will be reorganized under the Fivefold Ministry and the church restructured under the authority of Prophets and Apostles and others anointed by God. The young generation will form ‘Joel’s Army’ to rise up and battle evil and retake the earth for God.”

Some of the theological and political background to the Joel’s Army, or Third Wave movement, is instructive. It teaches a radical fundamentalist creed that its adherents must actively engage in politics, to become what they term, “soldiers in God’s Army”. The Joel’s Army movement focuses on recruiting young people to sessions of writhing on the floor in uncontrollable ecstasy, calling it a sign of the “Holy Spirit”. Children as young as five speak of having “gotten saved”. This movement is extremely authoritarian according to those conservative Christian churches who have studied and openly oppose the sect as heretical. It teaches a dogma that echoes the infamous line of George Bush following the shock of September 11, 2001: “There are two kinds of people in the World: Those who love Jesus, and those who don’t.”

Joel’s Army believers are hard-core Christian “Dominionists”, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of Biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy, pluralism or tolerance. To paraphrase George W. Bush, “You’re either with us or you are against us.” Joel’s Army followers are most often easily manipulated teenagers and young adults. They’re taught to believe that they are members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world.

Sarah Palin was twelve when she first started hearing this stuff.

According to Sarah H. Leslie, a former Christian Right leader, “Dominionists teach that men can be coerced or compelled to enter the kingdom. They assign to the Church duties and rights that belong Scripturally only to Jesus Christ. This includes the esoteric belief that believers can ‘incarnate’ Christ and function as His body on Earth to establish His kingdom rule. An inordinate emphasis is placed on man’s efforts; the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is diminished.”

Leslie quotes from Al Dager’s Vengeance Is Ours: The Church In Dominion: “Dominion theology is predicated upon three basic beliefs: 1) Satan usurped man’s dominion over the earth through the temptation of Adam and Eve; 2) The Church is God’s instrument to take dominion back from Satan; 3) Jesus cannot or will not return until the Church has taken dominion by gaining control of the earth’s governmental and social institutions.”

Leslie pinpoints the central deception behind the current spread of Dominionism among various Protestant denominations across America today: “Dominion theology is a heresy. As such it is rarely presented as openly as the definitions above may indicate. Outside of the Reconstructionist camp, evangelical dominionism has wrapped itself in slick packages – one piece at a time – for mass-media consumption. This has been a slow process, taking several decades. Few evangelicals would recognize the word ‘dominionism’ or know what it means. This is because other terminologies have been developed which soft-sell dominionism, concealing the full scope of the agenda. Many evangelicals (and even their more conservative counterparts, the fundamentalists) may adhere to tidbits of dominionism without recognizing the error.”

“To most effectively propagate their agenda, dominionist leaders first developed new ecclesiologies, eschatologies and soteriologies for targeted audiences along the major denominational fault lines of evangelical Christianity. Then the 1990s Promise Keepers men’s movement was used as a vehicle to ‘break down the walls’, i.e., cross denominational barriers for the purpose of exporting dominionism to the wider evangelical subculture. This strategy was so effective that it reached into the mainline Protestant denominations. Dominionists have carefully selected leaders to be trained as ‘change agents’ for ‘transformation’ (dominion) in an erudite manner that belies the media stereotype of southern-talking, Bible-thumping, fundamentalist half-wits.”

C. Peter Wagner, a central figure in the organization of the movement, believes that this second Apostolic age began in 2001 and that it is “heralding the most radical change in the way of doing church at least since the Protestant Reformation.” He also claims that this international movement under the direction of his Apostles is the only large sector of Christianity growing faster worldwide than Islam. The three levels of spiritual warfare, according to Wagner, include the casting out of demons from individuals, “occult-level warfare” against “powers of darkness” (like New Age thought and Tibetan Buddhism), and “strategic-level warfare” against whole geographical areas thought to be controlled by Satan. They engage in a process called “Spiritual Mapping”, which is the practice of gathering information on patterns of belief and unbelief in cities and communities, and trying to gain territory for God. (Note to professor-types: spiritual mapping often finds demon-inspired unbelief to be centered around an area’s universities.)

Wagner and his Apostles monitor their progress through the World Prayer Center in Colorado Springs, attached to the New Life church formerly led by Ted Haggard. Leading Apostles and Prophets with titles such as “Generals of Intercession” go on spiritual warfare ventures with names like “Operation Ice Castle” – to attack the territorial demons which they believe prevent Muslims and Roman Catholics from embracing the true faith.

“Operation Ice Castle” was conducted in the Himalayas in 1997. Several of the group’s top prophets and generals of intercession spent weeks in intensive prayer to “confront the Queen of Heaven”. This queen is considered by them to be one of the most powerful demons over the earth and is the Great Harlot of Mystery Babylon in Revelation. (The “Great Harlot of Mystery Babylon” theme also figures prominently in the sermons of Texas megachurch pastor and Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee, former endorser of John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid.) Wagner and his group claim that the Queen of Heaven is Diana, the pagan god of the biblical book Ephesians and the god of Mary venerated in the Roman Catholic Church. Following the “Operation Ice Castle” prayer excursion (which included planting a flag for Jesus on Mt. Everest), one of the lead prayer intercessors from the excursion, Ana Mendez, reported that there had been dramatic results including, “millions have come to faith in Asia… and other things happened which I believe are also connected… an earthquake had destroyed the basilica of Assisi, where the Pope had called a meeting of all world religions; a hurricane destroyed the infamous temple ‘Baal-Christ’ in Acapulco, Mexico; the Princes Diana died… and Mother Theresa died in India, one of the most famous advocates of Mary as Co-Redeemer.”

The important thing to take away from this is not that Sarah Palin worships with these nutjob exorcists, but that she is an ambitious woman who has accepted the spiritual direction and leadership of a religious group that is conducting what you could call a “gentle inquisition” – if you’re not with us, you’d better get with us or we’ll run you out of town. It’s paranoid and cruel. It’s based on an apocalyptic mythology that leads its adherents to wish the worst for their neighbors. This is especially worrisome when you consider that audience members at Sarah Palin speeches are shouting about Barack Obama “traitor!” and “kill him!” and “off with his head!”

As for Sarah Palin herself, her views on these topics are hardly being hidden. They’re the primary reason she was chosen, out of a cabal of imminently more qualified candidates, to be John McCain’s running mate in the upcoming presidential elections. In the wake of the controversy over Barack Obama’s association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a debate has raged about whether political figures should be held responsible for the comments of their religious guiders. Clearly, however, Pastor Kalnins, like many national conservative religious leaders, considers Alaska’s governor one of his own. “Gov. Sarah Palin is the real deal,” he told his church this past summer. “You know, some people put on a show… but she’s the real deal.”

Rev. Tim McGraw, Palin’s pastor when she became mayor of Wasilla, said believers look to Israel for signs of the coming end times and where they are in God’s plan. McGraw believes that would undoubtedly influence Palin’s approach to foreign policy.

“I believe Sarah would not live in a fragmented world,” he said. “The idea that Sarah would take this huge influence of the worldview that really only the Bible and the relationship with Jesus opens up … and suddenly marginalize it and put it over on the shelf somewhere and live apart from it – that would be entirely inconsistent.”

That’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?

I realize that a lot of people will dismiss this article as nothing more than an attack on a Christian. To that issue, I’ll say “bullocks”. The history of the United States is full of Christians who served their country well. People I respect. People who believed in the Christian God and were strong in their faith, but who also believed in secular government and the Separation of Church and State. There is no way a reasonable person could honestly believe that by questioning Sarah Palin’s extremist views you’re attacking Christianity itself. To Sarah Palin and those who believe as she does, an article such as this could be seen as the work of demons that are trying to undermine her holy mission. But thankfully most of us aren’t that far out there yet.

In summation, it’s difficult to examine Sarah Palin’s religious background without serious misgivings concerning her intent and ambition. What could we expect from a Sarah Palin presidency? This is a woman whose religious beliefs hold that not only are we potentially living in the End Times, but that it is the God-given duty of people who believe as she does to seize control of secular government and institutions in the name of God so that they might be turned over to Conservative Christian leaders to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth and set in motion events that will lead to the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ.

Myself, I don’t have a problem with Sarah Palin believing any of this stuff. I do, however, have a major problem with her sitting in the White House as the leader of the free world, where she’ll be expected to negotiate with world leaders whom she will clearly view as being under Satanic influence. When you are fighting a literal spiritual war in the name of God and establishing God’s Kingdom on Earth, everyone who disagrees with you is an agent of Satan.

Wow. Does that sound familiar? What was it George W. Bush said? “You’re either with us, or you’re against us.”

All I can offer is an invocation: “Jesus, please save us from your followers.”

Or, more specifically, save us from these demons who pervert and twist your teachings to their own political gain. People like Sarah Palin and other members of this quicky approaching “Third Wave”.

References – from the Third Wave – The Voice Magazine – How to Benefit from a Five-fold Apostle – Pressing into Kingdom Thinking – A New Breed of Christians in Town

Links

• Muthee Wasilla Speech