Last year, Nick Szkiler took over from Clifford Hill as chair of Issachar Ministries, which is closely linked to Prophecy Today. In this, Nick, along with Issachar Ministries advisor Sarah Winbow and the IM team set out their vision both for IM, and for the Church as a whole in this nation, as we face new and unchartered waters. This is the last of five articles, all taken from Crossing Over, a booklet published by IM this summer (parts 1-4 are available here).

Preparation begins with our hearts

If our desire is to see God sweep through our nation, bringing many thousands into His Kingdom, then this must be preceded by serious, sober, sacrificial repentance and prayer.

• Can we truly say we have renounced secret and shameful ways or are we still living daily with compromise (2 Cor 3:12-4:6) of some sort?
• Are we a people who reflect God’s glory?
• Are we distinct and recognisable as belonging to God?
• There is a need to encourage the Body into greater degrees of purity and holiness – to become a people able to consider what it means to love God with ALL their heart, soul, mind and strength and to truly surrender EVERYTHING to Him.

This clarion call is not intended for those who have already heard the message. It is to go out to a different constituency – those who have not heard. We have a responsibility to proclaim this message, whether people listen or they do not. We live in a time where God is massing His army and knitting His units together right across the world. He is acting Sovereignly to pull people together so that a diversity of giftings flow together under His anointing.

Preparing an Unshakeable People

How we will respond to and endure the increasing storms we will face will depend on the spiritual foundations we have in place. We need to have proved God’s constant love and faithfulness through our personal storms now, so that when bigger storms hit, we will be able not only to stand strong ourselves but also reach out, offering the gospel of true hope to others. Not one of us can say with any certainty that we WILL stand under such immense testing; we hope that we will, but we may not. Faced with the seriousness of this, we must be willing to take whatever steps we can to mature in the things of God. Theory, theology and head knowledge will not suffice. We will need much more than this. The day is coming when it will no longer be sufficient just to say the right things, sing the right songs or raise our hands at the right moment; we will need to truly KNOW HIM and have proved Him faithful through our experience of Him at work in our everyday lives.

There is an urgent need to:

• Equip people to put down deeper roots into their relationship with God.
• Enable believers to live as overcomers.
• Teach what Kingdom values really are and how they challenge our lives.

The Celtic Chrstians not only expected that believers might face ‘red’ martyrdom that involved being killed, but there was also an expectation that all believers would be brought to ‘green’ martyrdom i.e., the laying down of their lives from self before God as wholly His to use and direct as pleased Him. This is both the beginning of true servanthood and the cost of true discipleship.

Reaching Out

Sometimes people are held back from sharing their faith by their own feelings of inadequacy, low self-worth or repeated negative cycles of thinking and behaviour.

There is a need to:

• Disciple the Body into maturity so that it stops going round in inward-looking circles and begins to look outwards and learns to love its neighbours as itself.
• Equip the Body so that everyone becomes a person living ‘on mission’ and understands how to express the gospel to someone else.
• Equip small groups to reach their neighbours and friends.
• Effectively disciple new converts so that they, in turn, can also make disciples.
• Equip and resource the Body in effective means of intercessory prayer.

Communication

One of the important lessons from our experience of the Coronavirus pandemic has been that we can no longer take for granted our historic right to meet and communicate with each other in person. Nor can we expect to be able to exercise free speech, or trust established mainstream and social media to publish what would historically have been regarded as legitimate debate or the airing of opposing views. Platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have all exercised blatant censorship over the past two years, under the banner of ‘breaching community guidelines’.

As a result, many believers have turned to new platforms like Brandnewtube, Odyssey and Rumble to host video and used smartphone Apps like Signal and Telegram with robust end-to-end encryption to send messages securely. Communicating with other believers may not in future be possible in the ways we have taken for granted. We may lose access to the internet; our cell phones may be disconnected and ministry websites may be hacked or subjected to DDS attack if they publish Christian messages of which the authorities do not approve.

These are all real and present threats we need to carefully consider and find solutions for. Many years ago, a retired employee of GCHQ – the British government’s intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence and information assurance to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom – explained how he once sent a morse code signal right around the earth from Ascension Island using a tiny one watt of transmission power using shortwave radio. Perhaps we will have to look into the past to find answers for our future challenges, but these are matters we need to carefully weigh and consider under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, if we are to be a people prepared for the uncertain times ahead of us.

Practical Preparation

There is a need to equip the Body in practical preparations for the end-times.

The generations raised before the 1960s were taught a wide range of practical skills, from how to take care of themselves to cooking, personal hygiene, sewing, home DIY, basic first aid, gardening and animal husbandry. We now have two generations in our society who lack these, the most essential skills for surviving in much straitened times.

The modern education system has left people completely unprepared for the life circumstances we envisage. We must step into that space, or many will needlessly perish through lack of practical knowledge.

The task and the vision are enormous, and we cannot do it without God. As long as we do not presume that we know how to navigate the way forward and are willing to stay humble, submitted, and willing to allow God to lead, then we can be confident that He will.