Strang Report - Current Events and the Need to Pray!

0:00 Hello everyone. I'm Stephen Strang and welcome to this live edition of the Strang Report on Thursday, April 11th. I'm glad that you tuned in. Thanks for watching. You know, there are a lot of podcasts you can watch. There are a lot of commentators. It seems that the people who write about and have podcasts on controversy get the most attention, especially in this very strange social media environment. But you know, that's not my goal. I'm a journalist, if you know anything about me. I was trained as a secular journalist at the University of Florida. I worked in secular journalism until I began to see how liberal and truly corrupt it was. Now, I only saw a tiny microcosm of what's developed since then, but also God gave me a desire to minister to the Christian community by providing news and information and articles and featuring positive things about what the Holy Spirit was doing around the world. Because when we started in the 1970s, the Charismatic Movement was going.

1:08 It was new. It was exciting. People were interested in it. Well, you know, it's still going. The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement are continuing to grow. It's not happening like it was back then. In fact, this is a little aside, but the Charismatic Movement was an early victim in some ways of cancel culture because there was a vibrant Charismatic Movement within the Lutheran Church, the Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, and most of those ministries are essentially gone. Either they were drummed out as being heretics in some instances, or people just got discouraged and quit, or a lot of the people just gave up and went to independent Charismatic churches where they were more welcomed. However, at a grassroots level, it's continuing to grow and develop, and it's still one of the fastest growing segments of Christianity. And that's the segment that we serve, and we serve for years, but we served it differently today than we did back when it was just in print. But Charisma Media is doing a lot of good things. In fact, I encourage you to read our CharismaNews.com and our Charismamag.com content that we put out every day. It's our effort to try to add something to the news because most of the news about the Charismatic Movement is bad if there's a scandal like the one that's very controversial. Boy, the secular media is glad

2:44 to play that up. But if good things happen, even if miracles happen, if prophecies are made and come true, they ignore it as if it didn't exist. They want to ignore it. And the thing is that this has been around for as long as I've been in the business. I thought it was bad years ago. It's even worse now. And the interesting thing is, I'll just make this one parallel and we'll go on and talk about spiritual things, which is the topic of today's podcast. I have no guests today. I'm just sharing with you from my heart to help you to understand. That's the purpose of The Strang Report. And really, everything I do is to try to help you understand the times like the sons of Issachar. You know, people can take anything and spin it. Look what they do about Donald Trump or what they do about President Biden. He does all these crazy things like declaring a transgender awareness day and they spin it. And he does all these other things and they spin it. You know, sadly, he's getting to the age where he has some level of dementia, where he falls down. You've all seen it on TV. They spin it. Well, when it comes to spiritual things, which are a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times more important than whatever's happening in Washington, D.C., they spin it. They try to make it seem as if it doesn't

4:18 happen. And here we are trying to get out the word and with God's help and by God's grace, we've been doing it now for more than 40 years. And now we're doing it by podcast and online and lots of ways. We're publishing many books. You probably know that we're Jonathan Kahn's publisher, but we publish many, many books and every book we do falls into line with we're trying to help you understand what's going on. And today I'm going to talk about some issues in the news and the fact that we need to not only understand, but we need to really, really pray. So if you know someone that you think might want to tune into us live or watch it later on YouTube, please do that. We're building our list. My goal is to build my subscriber list to one hundred thousand. So if you haven't subscribed yet, if you would do so and hit the little bell when you're notified that we're on live every Tuesday and Thursday, four p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. And also, I'll just mention to you this is not about my book today, Spirit-Led Living in an Upside Down World. But listen, we've got to be led by the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit now more than ever. We need it to be strong with really what's persecution in lots of ways that I'll talk about a little bit. But also we get persecution personally. I mean, even family members put us down or

5:49 say that religion is not important. And really, it's a spiritual battle. It's a spiritual battle. If you listen to me very much, you know, I say that a lot. In fact, I've even been ridiculed in some articles where they were trying to, you know, it was sort of an anti article about a Christian leader. They were probably had nothing against me personally. And they made fun that I called things a spiritual attack as if that was a dumb thing to say. Well, no, this. Listen, there's a real evil in the world. And there's, of course, goodness and truth and light. And that's God and everything he represents. And those of us who love God and have given our lives and accept Jesus as our savior and have been filled with the Holy Spirit, we have a responsibility. God put us here now for a very important reason.

6:43 God put none of us asked to be born when we were born. We're born in this generation and we have to stand up. And my writing this book, I make that point in the book and Pentecost is coming up. And just today I was working with some pastors who are taking my book for Bible studies in their church and also for Pentecost. This is not a commercial for that. I'm just trying to mention it that if you're interested, you can write me at info at charisma media dot com. Charisma Media is written as if it's one word. And I'll tell you all the information I won't take time to tell you now, but I'm selling the the book barely over our manufacturing and developmental costs just because I want to get out the word. I want to encourage people. I get the feeling. In fact, one of the reasons I got the feeling or I wrote the book was because I got the feeling that people were discouraged. And I know, you know, I listened to certain materials to try to help me professionally and personally.

7:50 And I was listening to secular people talk about how you need to have one writer that I write about in this book talked about you had to work 10 times harder and 10 times faster and be 10 times smarter. And if you did, you would have the energy to be successful. That was kind of his secular theme. And it occurred to me that those of us who have the power of God, we have a power that is much more than 10 times more. And if we would just use it, that was kind of the germ of the idea that I write about in the book. Now, let me talk about what's going on. I just got an email from Paula White Kane, who's a longtime friend of mine. You may know that she's a friend, a confidant of the presidents. And she sent out this thing to encourage people to pray. And I want to encourage you to pray too, because there's a power in prayer. The secular people make it sound like it's just vain religious repetitions. And I guess there are some prayers that are. But listen, if you're empowered by the Holy Spirit and you know how to pray, especially if you can pray in your prayer language, I talk about that in the book too. We have a power and you know, God answers prayers. And it doesn't matter if the people on social media are not saying, oh, God answered this prayer and that prayer. Listen, most of the people in those settings are not of this world. In fact, they are, they are not from the spiritual side. They're

9:21 from the devil side. I hate to say that. And I'm not talking about anybody in particular. I'm just saying that that is where what we're up against and listen to what Paula said. She said that there's chance of death to America in Michigan that has a large Arab population around Detroit. Then there are pro Palestinian protests in the U S Capitol. There is talk of ISIS inspired attacks on American churches. And she tells the story of how a young girl in Washington, DC applied to start a little interfaith praying club and was denied in Washington. She says it's time for America's faithful to wake up to anti-Christian and anti-Jewish attacks happening, not only around the world, but in our own communities. And we need to pray. We need to pray that God does something. Now I've talked about that.

10:20 There is, there's one side, you know, there's like our country split right down the middle and a lot of it comes down to politics. We have an election coming up and listen, I've written three books on Donald Trump and I've researched it well and I have very, very strong feelings, but today I'm not talking politics other than to say that when president Biden had a transgender awareness day, which happened to fall this year on Easter, a lot of us who'd never heard of it, uh, didn't realize that he's done this every year since, uh, 2021. We thankfully, nobody paid much attention to it, but this year it fell on Easter and you know, he could have backpedaled that. In fact, he should have never done it to start with. He got a real blowback and then he said he couldn't remember signing it, which is a little scary when you think about it. President Trump responded by, um, saying that he was going to have a Christian visibility day on November 5th. Now that happens to be election day, but he, you know, he's, he's great at coming up with these ideas and yes, he probably did it to stick his eye, his finger in their eye, but you know what? I think that it deserved that. I really did. I did a previous podcast just about how terrible it was and decided not to, we recorded, I decided not to play it because I decided I don't want to just

11:51 harp on the political stuff and what's on the news cycle. I want to talk about what's happening spiritually. Listen, the drift that our country has been going on for, has been going on for decades. It's just kind of gotten to a tipping point. In fact, I think it, it comes down to politics. Our country has been split. We've known since the nineties that our country is split, but it was a little bit more on our side. In other words, let's say it was maybe 52% our way and 48% the other way. So when it came down to crucial elections, like the 2000 election that was decided by just a few votes, you may remember that election.

12:34 There was a count and a recount down here in the state of Florida where I live. It was like we, we won. Now it seems to have tipped that when it's close, it just goes the other way. You know, neither president Obama did not win by a landslide. It was a fairly substantial amount president Biden, even by a less amount. And, uh, but do you know what the politics are dirty? They just are. I, as a journalist, I'm aware of that. And especially when I wrote these books, both parties are unrighteous in my opinion, but one espouses everything that is against the Bible from abortion to transgender to, uh, gay rights and all that kind of stuff.

13:22 The Republicans at least give lip service, but then they don't do anything. They just really don't. Donald Trump is different. And that's why, uh, I have supported him in the past and why I support him now, because he moved the embassy to, uh, Jerusalem, like he said he would. The others didn't. He appointed Supreme court justices that were conservative, which have resulted in some rulings in the way that we believe they should have been. Uh, he has, he listens to, um, godly counsel. Listen, you go on YouTube and see groups of pastors. Uh, Paula White is one, Kenneth Copeland, others, some pastors you wouldn't know. Some are, are nationally no names like Robert Jeffress at first Baptist Dallas, praying for him and laying hands on him. You can see it on YouTube. Now I have had the privilege as a journalist to interview, um, three us presidents, actually four, including Donald Trump, both bushes, president Obama and Donald Trump. And I've been in settings where they invited different Christian leaders up to Washington for a briefing, usually trying to get our support. Sometimes they talk about prayer one day on the national day of prayer. They talked about prayer. They never prayed. Donald Trump is open to that. Now there's a lot you can criticize about Donald Trump and the other side does that all day long. And frankly, some of the mega

14:59 people are a little bit of an embarrassment. They've almost made him into an idol. That's wrong too. But you know what? We as Christians, we can do a middle ground where we can stand for principles, but not be nasty about it. Not be yelling and screaming on figuratively speaking on social media where we can register our people and get them to the polls, where we can stand up for the right kind of causes, where we can support the kind of politicians, which we have a right as Americans to vote for the kind of people that are going to lead our country in the right kind of way. The Bible tells us to pray for godly leaders so that we can do that. And so we need to pray. Like I said earlier, it's hard to prove that prayer is answered. But over the years I've come across different things. Usually it's fairly obscure writing about how people pray to World War II. We tend to forget that World War II was as bad as it was and Hitler was as bad as he was because our side won. But at one time, especially early in the war, it looked like Hitler would win. It looked like England would cave in. America was not in the war at that point. And really the war did not turn until D-Day. And it could have been that they would have made peace with

16:29 Hitler to just try to avoid the bloody war that happened. But you know, people prayed. And there was a miracle. If you ever saw the movie on Winston Churchill, they depict it very well. They sort of leave out the prayer part. But Winston Churchill did call for a national day of prayer. And this flotilla of boats evacuated, if I remember the number right, it was about 400,000 British soldiers, which was most of their army, saved their lives and they were able to fight another day. That was an answer to prayer. And of course there were stories about people in the United States praying. We had a terrible war going on in the Pacific with Japan. And you know, Roosevelt died while he was in office.

17:22 God raised up an unknown man named Harry Truman, who in a manner of speaking, provided real leadership at the right time. He's even the first one to recognize Israel. By the way, as I wrap this up, let me just say that what's going on in Israel is very, very concerning. We've got to stand strong with Israel. We've got to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And we have to try to do our part to influence public opinion, which means talking to your neighbors and friends about it, writing letters. There's all kinds of things we can do without being loud and nasty and everything else that happens so often. I've been reading lately a book that's very, very critical of evangelicals. They're even critical of me, but some of the stuff they say about the religious right is true. A lot of times people are mean. They tend to put politics up on a pedestal almost higher than the Lord Jesus himself. That's wrong. So I know today I've talked about everything from A to Z. In some ways that's my life.

18:30 I'm dealing with all these things all the time. And to some extent you are too. That's why you tune in because I'm one more voice who can give you advice on how to deal with these things and how we need to deal with them is to pray. So I'm going to wrap up the podcast with prayer. I am doing this live, but people will be watching it. But you know what? People like Oral Roberts and different ones have prayed. I remember Oral Roberts used to reach out his hand and even tell people to touch the radio as a point of contact or touch the television back in the early days as a point of contact. You know, God is everywhere all the time. He's omniscient and you know, the technology we have is pretty amazing that you can be wherever you are watching. But you know, when we pray, something happens in the spiritual realm. I really believe that. So let's pray right now, Lord, in the name of Jesus, I just joined my faith with the, those who are watching who are also praying and Lord, we pray that you will turn things around in this country. We pray that you'll raise up the right kind of leaders. We pray Lord that you bring the truth. We pray that you swing public opinion, but Lord, we really pray that revival comes in the hearts and lives of many people. Lord, if people's hearts change at the grassroots level, other things will change. Lord, we just take authority over the enemy. We know that we have the power of the Holy Spirit to bind it loose. We just loose the Holy Spirit to work. We just bind

20:04 the enemy and we agree as believers, Lord, that you're going to do something great and miraculous. And I thank you for praying for me. I thank you for watching. Please share this with others. Tune in. I'm going to be dealing. I've got some great guests coming up, some kind of big name people that I think that you'll enjoy watching. I'm doing more newsletters. Sign up for my newsletter, The Strang Report, if you don't already, and be sure to subscribe and help me get the word out. And remember, if you're interested in this, write me at info at CharismaMedia.com and I'll send you all the information. Thank you for watching The Strang Report today. Thank you for partnering with us, trying to get out the word that there is the power of the Holy Spirit is for today, is something we can experience. And we have, we know it's like I heard Bob Mumford say, we read the end of the book and we win. We believe that we've got to stay strong and believe that and do our part while we're here. Thank you for watching. God bless you.

21:13 Do you ever feel discouraged? Do you need hope? The world is so upside down that even if you believe there's power in the Holy Spirit, sometimes you need to be reminded that greater is he that is within us than he is in the world. My new book, Spirit-Led Living in an Upside Down World, was written to give you hope, to remind you of things you know, to explain spiritual truths that you didn't understand or maybe have forgotten. I draw on my decades of covering the worldwide move of the Holy Spirit to give you examples and stories of great men and women of God, from Jack Hayford to Catherine Kuhlman and many others explaining spiritual gifts and telling stories of victory in the face of trials and temptations. I wrote this book for you and I want you to read it. It's easy to read with lots of practical stories to help you. It is not a theological treatise on the Holy Spirit. In a way, it's a self-help book looking at the spiritual side of life. So if you long for more of God and to experience the power of the Holy Spirit and the power to rebuke the spiritual attacks in your life and boldness to stand for God when the cancel culture wants you to sit down and shut up, then my book Spirit-Led Living in an Upside Down World is for you. You can find the book

22:47 wherever Christian books are sold, including Amazon.com or MyCharismaShop.com. Remember, the Holy Spirit is here to help us now and for all the days ahead, no matter how upside down the world gets. Enjoy the book and God bless you.