In my last video of highlights from Cindy Jacobs' "Reformation Day" election prayer event, I included a short clip of a video that Jim Garlow sent to them to be played during the evening because he could not be there in person.
But I wanted to highlight a few things from Garlow's video separately because he is, in many respects, the linchpin tying self-proclaimed apostles and prophets like Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs with the more traditional Religious Right leadership like Newt Gingrich and the video he recorded provides a perfect example.
As we've noted several times before, Garlow has deep ties to people like Engle and Jacobs and 7 Mountains Dominionism, which I think is amply demonstrated by the fact that he recorded this video for Jacobs' 7 Mountains-themed "Reformation Day" event because he could not be there in person.
In the first part of the video, he provided this long and rather rambling explanation of why Satan is out to destroy our understanding of marriage:
The attack on marriage is not without careful construction and thought on the part of the secularists. Why would they attack marriage?
Number one, in marriage God says I am going to create you in my image. No male by himself, it's the full image, the full spectrum of God's image. God is neither male or female. God has the strength historically associated with masculinity; God has the tenderness historically associated with femininity and the nurture capabilities. That being the case, God is neither male nor female.
So for us to have the full spectrum of who God is, his characteristics, the result is we have to have male and female come together. As male and female come together as one, they together represent the whole spectrum in the covenant of marriage of the nature of God. When he made us in his image, he made us male and female coming together and there we represent the fullness of the Godhead.
So if I were the enemy I'd want to destroy the definition of marriage so that imagery would be forever destroyed.
We go from Genesis to the end of the book, the Book of Revelation, it says Jesus and the church will get married. That's the final consummating event of all of human history. That is real marriage by the way. You and I have never seen real marriage because that has not occurred. All we have is a facsimile thereof on Eath.
Paul says that's a mystery, we can't understand Jesus and the church coming together. It's a mystery, he says. But to help us understand, God established on the Planet Earth what we call marriage with a small "m." You've never seen Capital M marriage yet, that's yet to occur. Think of the best marriage you know of on Earth and God is so gracious he says I want you to have an appetizer for the main course so I'm going to establish male and female coming together on Earth and the ecstasy and joy that you experience spiritually, physically, and emotionally, that oneness, that's a depiction of what it's going to be like because you can't grasp because it's a mystery what it's like when Jesus and the church come together.
In fact, even the delight of sexual expression, the joy of sexual expression within a covenantal marriage, that is the depiction we find in Psalms where is says at our right hard are pleasures for ever more. The day will come when the church and Jesus are united with great ecstasy and joy. People say why is there no marriage in Heaven? Because there is marriage, real marriage, in Heaven - Jesus and the church. Can't understand it, so they gave us a picture of it Earth.
People say why is there not sexual expression in Heaven? There's the delight and joy equivalency of that as we delight in, literally, the presence of God. It will be an amazing, absolutely amazing moment. That is why we use marital bed language to talk about this, we talk about the consummation of history, the climax of history. Those are languages associated with the marital bed that is now associated with history.
So if I were Satan, if I were the Devil, I'd want to destroy the imagery of male and female coming together with light and joy, covenantal marriage on Eart,h so people would not grasp what it might be like at the End Time, what it will be like when Jesus and the church come together.
And then he went on to explain that he went to work for Newt Gingrich because the entire Gingrich family wakes up every day with a mission of saving Western Civilization:
I serve as Chairman for Renewing America Leadership. It's an organization that was started by Newt Gingrich, it is based in Washington DC. And as I was sorting out whether to accepting the appointment of the Chairmanship, I met with Newt Gingrich's adult daughter who runs his operations. She flew out here along with another of Newt's colleagues and we met with them for hour after hour, people in our church met with them, because I wanted to be sure I did not compromise the Gospel by being involved, I did not compromise my pastoring, and my Christocentricity - my Jesus-centeredness.
And so we met hour after hour and I asked question and question and finally one moment, Kathy Lubbers - that's the daughter of Newt Gingrich - she stopped and she said this: "Let me just explain one thing that will help you understand exactly what we're about. Every morning, we as members of the Gingrich family, the Gingrich organization, get up, look in the mirror and ask ourself one question: what can I do today to save Western Civilization?"
That impacted me when she said that. Here is the question I ask myself and I ask you to ask yourself as I close right now: as you get up every morning, look in the mirror and say "what can I do this day to help establish the Kingdom of God, the rule of Christ Jesus on the hearts of humanity across this nation and around this world?"
