A leader of the Christian charismatic movement has declared that the unprecedented resistance to U.S. President Donald Trump signals a deeper, spiritual battle that is taking place over America’s soul.
Lou Engle, the founder of several Christian ministries, has highlighted two recent events that give cause for concern to Christians: the Women’s March on Washington, with its close alliance with the U.S. abortion lobby, and recent calls to use witchcraft to “bind” and utterly destroy the president.
In an essay in Charisma Magazine, the charismatic leader of “The Call” wrote that the Women’s March “was the first shot across the bow, heralding a revolutionary rise against the president of the United States,” and the fellow citizens who elected him. The March was also an uprising against “the foundational biblical truths upon which our nation was founded,” Engle said.
“Soon after, the second shot was manifested publicly: an unprecedented global summons of witchcraft to curse President Trump, his Cabinet and all of those aligned with a biblical worldview,” Engle wrote. “Suddenly, the whole controversy was elevated to a global spiritual dimension, inaugurating a spiritual battle that cannot be won on the playing field of protests and political arguments.”
“Only the church has the answer to this unprecedented manifestation of witchcraft. Spiritual strategy must be used to overcome this open-faced, brazen challenge of the powers,” he said.
Understanding fierce ideological battles in spiritual terms is no novelty for Christians. As Saint Paul wrote some 2,000 years ago, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
In this battle, Engle sees great cause for hope, since many Americans do not identify with the anger, extremism and above all visceral hate being directed toward the president and those who voted for him.
“Hundreds of thousands of women watched the March, heard the vitriol and could not identify with the radical ideologies being expressed that would not acknowledge God’s Word and ways in the public controversy,” he wrote. “This new woman declared deep inside her heart, This is not my revolution.”
Lou Engle is not alone in his analysis. Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput recently expressed his astonishment at the mainstream media’s ongoing war against Donald Trump.
“It’s just amazing to me how hostile the press is to everything the president does,” Chaput told a radio talk show host last month.
“I don’t want to be partisan in my comments here, but it seems to me if we are really serious about our common responsibilities, we support the president,” Chaput said, adding that good citizens should “wish him success rather than trying to undermine him.”
As a way of joining in the spiritual battle, Engle has proposed three days of fasting and prayer for the nation, beginning on Wednesday, March 8. In what he is calling an “Esther fast,” in commemoration of the Jewish heroine Esther, Engle invites the nation to fast and pray for three days leading up to the Jewish deliverance feast of Purim, which begins this year on Saturday evening, March 11.
Among the many intentions of this Lenten “Esther fast,” Engle proposes that Christians and all people of good will pray in particular for the overturning of the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which, together with Doe v. Bolton, struck down existing abortion laws and granted abortion on demand for the full nine months of pregnancy for the entire country.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
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