Charismatic Revival Fury, Ep 4 Part II: Cindy Jacobs - General of Spiritual Warfare
Cindy Jacobs is one of the most influential independent charismatic apostles on the planet. And almost no one outside of charismatic circles has any idea who she is or what she does. It was through Cindy Jacobs that C. Peter Wagner came to believe that Christian prayer could be mobilized on a grand scale to affect and open up entire nations to the gospel.
That infamous passage in Ephesians doesn’t just talk about little garden-variety evil spirits, but it also refers to “principalities” and “powers” and “spiritual hosts of wickedness.” Wagner and Jacobs and a whole bunch of other Charismatics come to believe that, not only are Christians called to do battle against those demonic “principalities” and “powers,” but that there is a profound interface between the spiritual world and the physical world. Wagner would eventually to call these “principalities” and “powers” “Territorial Spirits,” and he imagined elaborate hierarchies of demons - demon commanders, demon generals - who ruled over actual, physical earthly territories - and Cindy Jacobs is the spiritual warfare general par excellence.
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Axis Mundi Welcome to Charismatic Revival Fury, the New Apostolic Reformation.
A special series by Straight White American Jesus.
Created and written by Dr. Matthew Taylor and produced by me, Bradley Onishi.
Alright Our sound engineer is Scott Okamoto.
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Thanks for being here.
Here's the show.
But I want to remind you that the New Apostolic Reformation is the most radical change in the way of doing church since the Protestant Reformation.
That's what we're springing off into the 21st century.
And J.U.'s going to rise up and we're going to rule and reign through President Trump and under the worship of Jesus Christ.
Riots and revival actually erupt together.
Why shouldn't we be the ones leading the way in all spheres of society?
There's this news of revival coming.
There's a rushing mighty wind on steroids.
I said many years ago that we would even come to a place of civil war if this continues.
Okay, so I think we have a pretty good idea, Matt, of this strategic spiritual warfare motif that pervades the New Apostolic Reformation and certain parts of independent charismatic Christianity.
The question now is how does that come into play within the Trump administration?
How does that play out in Trump's orbit and among people who are in the White House?
Trump came into office with a special aura from these charismatic folks' perspectives.
There are miscellaneous prophecies about him, some going back to as early as 2008, and he really cultivated a closeness to the independent charismatics throughout the 2016 campaign.
Trump's pastor and religious advisor was Paula White Kane, who is herself an independent charismatic pastor.
As a sidebar, she's even called herself an apostle, and some analysts have said that Paula White Kane is part of the NAR.
But as far as I can tell, she doesn't have any connection to Peter Wagner.
There are a lot of people who call themselves apostles today, and I think it's overblown to say they're all part of the New Apostolic Reformation, which was Peter Wagner's terminology in Paradigm.
But through Paul Whitecain, these New Apostolic Reformation leaders, and the whole independent charismatic world, felt a special kinship and closeness with Trump.
Lance Wallnau, who we spent a lot of time with in the last episode, was one of the speakers at the Jericho March in December 2020.
What he said there was fascinating.
He tells the story of how the limousine that a friend had rented for Lance and his wife to attend Trump's inauguration in January 2017 was set on fire by anti-Trump protesters.
As far as I can tell, this actually did happen.
And then he broadens it out.
I knew then That this was going to be a spiritual warfare presidency.
I also knew that people like you were going to come out of the, let's say, the shadows.
We were going to come out of, I won't say hiding, because we were never hiding.
We just weren't as engaged as we've become since Donald Trump became president.
And I believe it's important right now.
Embedded in Walnau's Jericho March comments are two keen insights into the relationship between Donald Trump and the Independent Charismatics, to whom Walnau is implicitly speaking at the Jericho March.
First, these independent charismatic networks, particularly the spiritual warfare and prayer networks, that were unnoticed and in the shadows prior to the Trump administration, became visible and engaged in an unprecedented way during the Trump administration.
Second, this mobilization of independent charismatics was largely framed in terms of spiritual warfare.
The period from January 2017 to January 2021 was seen as, to borrow Walnau's phrase, a spiritual warfare presidency.
The upshot of this is that Trump was both seen as a president with a special prophetic destiny and also a president who was especially in need of this strategic spiritual warfare mobilization.
The politically convenient and frankly deeply anti-democratic thing about Peter Wagner and Lance Wallnau and Cindy Jacobs' strategic spiritual warfare framework is that it creates a very simple Manichaean world.
There is good and there is evil, and we know we're on the side of good, so anyone who opposes us must, de facto, be evil and guided by demons.
So these folks love Trump, and they also see that he's unpopular, and that his policy ideas are opposed by most Americans.
So, of course, this means we just need more spiritual warfare.
When you dig into it a little bit, you see a really fascinating bilateral and mutually beneficial hand-in-glove partnership between the Trump administration and these new apostolic reformation leaders, circles, and strategic prayer networks over the course of the four years of the Trump presidency.
Let me offer three examples.
First, there's a group of apostles and prophets who, in January 2017, a couple weeks before Lance Wallnau's limo is set on fire during Trump's inauguration, start an initiative called POTUS Shield.
POTUS, P-O-T-U-S, is short for President of the United States, and a new network of prophets, pastors, and other Christians has formed to create what they're calling POTUS Shield, to put a shield of prayer around the new president and the government.
They came together in Washington to discern, then declare and decree the strategies of God for America.
First all together in a huge gathering at the National Press Club, and then in discrete small groups outside places like the Supreme Court.
POTUS Shield participants aren't gathering just to gather.
They mean to create a serious prophetic and prayer shield over the parts of government like the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court.
And they mean to be serious spiritual partners to the secular government.
And if you look at his cabinet, if you look at his advisors, so many Christians.
He has surrounded himself with godly counsel, and the Bible says that blessed are those who do not stand in the counsel of the ungodly.
Over and over again, the prophetic voices in POTUS Shield mention that God has given the country a time of reprieve, and that Christians in this time must realize how important they are, and that their words and deeds can affect the destiny of their nation.
Paul Strand, CBN News, reporting from the Supreme Court.
Not all the leaders who were involved with POTUS Shield were part of Wagner's networks, but many were.
Becca Greenwood, Cindy Jacobs, Lance Wallnau, Dutch Sheets, Lou Engel, they all get tied into this POTUS Shield group in their meetings.
And this group met several times in Washington, D.C.
throughout the early Trump presidency to do strategic spiritual warfare.
What captures my attention with this whole POTUS Shield initiative is, if you think back to what Peter Wagner was imagining after 9-11, with apostles and prophets battling in the spiritual realm, the way the Bush administration and the American military operated in the natural realm, well, with POTUS Shield, that idea is right out in the open, and even solicitously positioned in alignment and proximity with the Trump White House.
And through Paula White Kane and the members of Trump's Evangelical Advisory Councils who participate in POTUS Shield, these networks of strategic warfare had access directly into the Trump administration in a way that Peter Wagner could have only have dreamed of in his post-911 memo.
Second, and relatedly, I found evidence that throughout the Trump administration, the White House was feeding special prayer requests and instigating gatherings of these same NAR strategic prayer networks and independent charismatic mobilization groups.
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