As IFA’s communications director, I have the privilege of working with an incredible team of people who are seeking God and hearing from Him constantly. This week, a number of messages came together in a most powerful way.

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For several years, and very intentionally and more frequently over the past few months, IFA has posted many articles about God’s call to His Church to draw near to Him. Some examples include such resources as Fellowship with the Father, and articles like The Call to Come Up Higher; Persecution: Pray, Prepare, Proclaim, as well as a new article by Gloria Robles on God’s Great Reset.

Several years ago, Shelley McLaughlin noted that the Lord had said everybody needs to get on the boat. I have thought of this quite a few times over the years, understanding it as a call of urgency for salvation. Recently, Shelley told me to keep an eye this year on April 30, which, according to one biblical calendar, is the day Noah and his family boarded the ark.

On IFA’s Headline Prayer webcast: Praying About the Satanic Conference, IFA contributing writer Angela Rodriguez shared that April 30, the last day of the SatanCon event in Boston, is a key date in history. On that day, Washington gave his first inaugural address (1789); the Louisiana Purchase was completed (1803); President Lincoln declared a national day of prayer and fasting (1863); the Titanic was conceived (1907); and Hitler committed suicide (1945). Not only that, but Angela shared a drawing a friend had made for her of a fire truck headed to a fire, saying: “The Enemy tries to start fires in our minds and life with words of fear and false promises, but Jesus is over everything, and He came to rescue us from our sin and Satan’s lies.” On the fire truck’s license plate is the number 430 — and  Angela’s friend says she does not even know why she put that number there. During that webcast we discussed how the Lord had awakened IFA prayer leader Nancy Rife at 4:30 in the morning to say: “Others may do what they will, but it is imperative that you raise up a house of prayer.”

God has my attention. It appears that 430 means something.

Then, I “just happened” to be reading chapter 7 of the book of Jeremiah, in which God tells the prophet to stand at the gate of the house of the Lord and give a message: “ ‘This is what the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Correct your ways and your actions, and I will allow you to live in this place’ ” (Jeremiah 7:3 CSB).

What ways and actions are to be corrected? God calls the people to act justly toward each other; to stop oppressing the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow; to stop shedding innocent blood; and to stop following other gods (verse 6), as well as to stop stealing, murdering, committing adultery, swearing falsely, and burning incense to Baal (verse 9).

As Charles Spurgeon wrote in a commentary on this chapter: “[T]he best worship of God was holiness. … The blessing is not to the temple … the blessing is to holy people, to such as love righteousness, to such as obey the living God and do justice between them and others — and especially between them and the poor and needy of the earth. … The state of one’s heart and one’s life is the all-important matter.”

Sin at the Temple

The people of Jeremiah’s day were sinners, surely, but they even added to it: “Then do you come and stand before me in this house that bears my name and say, ‘We are rescued, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts’ ”? (Jeremiah 3:10). God, through Jeremiah, called out the hypocrisy of acting one way outside the gates of the temple and then putting on the forms of worship inside the temple. This is true today. There is sin outside the Church, certainly. And yet the sin is inside the churches as well.

A few weeks ago, I attended a Christian concert at a wonderful church in my area. As I waited for the concert to begin, a man sat down right in front of me. He was alone, and it was still some 20 minutes from the concert’s starting time. He was close enough to me that I could see what was on his phone as he closed a TikTok video and opened Facebook. After a while I looked back and saw that he was scrolling through Facebook friend requests. I saw a name I recognized, and that intrigued me. Then he tapped another of the names, and a nude woman appeared on his very large screen that was no more than 18 inches from where I sat. He scrolled through her feed. While seated inside a church. Completely surrounded by people. I was stunned. I tapped his shoulder with my hand. He closed the screen and put away his phone. Soon, he proceeded to “praise the Lord,” including singing, dancing, and lifting his hands — for the next two hours.

“ ‘Has this house, which bears my name, become a den of robbers in your view? Yes, I too have seen it. This is the LORD’s declaration’ ” (Jeremiah 7:11 CSB).

Jesus must have been quoting this when He drove the money-changers from the temple, as the Gospels cite: He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers” (Matthew 21:13). A house of prayer! Nancy’s house of prayer is a wonderful place of worship and praise. But there is more to this. Reading both of these passages together, “house of prayer” is a call to holiness and prayer springing from a right relationship with God.

When satanists descend on Boston, is the American Church ready to pray that they be set free? Why do we tolerate porn use in the churches, by a growing number of Christians? Why aren’t God’s people being freed from this sin, and from so many others?

But wait. There’s more. Shelley also warned me recently about the “queen of heaven” and Athena, the Greek goddess the Statue of Liberty represents. Look at these verses: Don’t you see how they behave in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The sons gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods so that they provoke me to anger (Jeremiah 17–18 CSB). 

Athena, patron goddess of the Greek city of Athens, was said to represent wisdom, the arts, and classical learning. She was associated also with warfare and heroism, in recognition of which she was often portrayed wearing a breastplate as the symbol not just of defense and assault, but even of strife and fear.

But Athena seems in fact to be an exact counterfeit of what God desires for us. He tells us to seek His wisdom and to wage war with His weapons, and He gives us a breastplate of righteousness, casting out all fear. Thus, Athena seems to represent much of Western culture, and even, sadly enough, supposed Christian culture.

Jeremiah records the tragic words of God: “When you speak all these things to them, they will not listen to you. When you call to them, they will not answer you. Therefore, declare to them, ‘This is the nation that would not listen to the LORD their God and would not accept discipline. Truth has perished — it has disappeared from their mouths (Jeremiah 7:27–28 CSB). 

I don’t want any of this to describe me or anyone I know and love.

Paul preached a powerful sermon on a mount in Athens, of which Athena was said to be the protectress. There, the apostle declared that God created the world and established the nations, and that He put each one of us on earth in the place and at the time that would give us the best chance to find and know Him (see Acts 17:24, 26–28). Paul emphasized that the Almighty God is not like the idols people make, and he closed his sermon with this admonition: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31).

I don’t know what may or may not happen on April 30. But I know that God is calling us all to live in holiness, to repent of sin as often as we sin, and to understand that eternity is at stake for us and for the world.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief; on that day the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, the elements will burn and be dissolved, and the earth and the works on it will be disclosed. Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, it is clear what sort of people you should be in holy conduct and godliness as you wait for the day of God and hasten its coming. Because of that day, the heavens will be dissolved with fire and the elements will melt with heat (2 Peter 3:10–12 CSB).

After this article was written, but before it was published, Pennsylvania state leader Betsy West posted this comment on Organization Teaches Kids About the Bible:

I will never forget when I taught Bible Release Time in our elementary school. I had a very troubled 5th grade girl who lingered after the invitation to receive Jesus. As we prayed together she began to weep. We shared a hug and she was back on the bus to go back to the classroom. Later that afternoon as she was crossing the highway after exiting her school bus she was struck by a speeding car and killed instantly. God knows that Sarah had a divine appointment that day and I will see her again on the streets of gold.

Let’s not be distracted by end-times predictions and prophecies. The Lord’s call to repentance is an urgent message every day, because we do not know what the future holds: For man does not know his time … (Ecclesiastes 9:12).

Join me in praying this prayer:

Lord Jesus, do draw us back to Yourself. Save us. Save our families, the people in our churches, and the lost. Give us Your heart for the people in our lives, and for those for whom we pray. Holy Spirit, convict us of sin and guide us into all truth. Almighty God, to You be all glory, honor, and praise. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

If you sense the Spirit’s conviction, share this with others and help spread the fires of repentance.

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