Special Edition - A Day of Reckoning
Letter From the Editor
Dear Friends of The Briefing,
I’m sorry for the recent delay in getting The Briefing out to you. I just had a second major back surgery and may need another one in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, we have much prophetic data to share with you all! So, Paul and I welcome your prayers and patience as we seek God’s restoration for my body in the midst of this critical season of intercession for our nation.
Through The Briefing, we usually publish strategic prophetic dreams that bring insight to the times in which we live and how we must pray. This Special Edition Briefing does just that and more. In light of the present crisis in the nation, we felt it was important to retrace the key revelations and assignments of our prophetic storyline that have led us to today. Please read and judge for yourself this unfolding narrative that has us soberly convinced we have come to a day of reckoning in America for the shedding of innocent blood.
— Cheryl Amabile
A Day of Reckoning - Part 1
“Upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.” Matthew 23:35-36
In the book of Joel, the prophet begins to address the people of Israel about the crisis in the land by asking, “Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors?” If we were to ask the same question in America today, many would associate our current circumstances of caustic division with the very tensions that were escalating between the states just prior to the Civil War. We would agree.
It is also our understanding, as it was Abraham Lincoln’s, that America’s Civil War was the day of reckoning for the bloodshed of slavery. In Lincoln’s second inaugural address he framed the context of their present reality with these words...
“Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”
By 1861, when the first shots of the Civil War were fired, the atrocity of slavery had continued uninterrupted for over two centuries, being woven into the fabric of our nation’s everyday life. It is a chilling reminder of how God will often tarry for generation after generation until he requires a reckoning for persistent bloodshed. Suddenly, in just four years’ time, over 650 thousand men, from both the North and the South, died on the battlefields of the Civil War to atone for the land.
We believe God is bringing us now into a day of reckoning once again for the bloodshed of over 60 million babies that have been slaughtered in the womb since abortion was legalized in 1973. Yet, for the past twenty years, hundreds of thousands have gathered in fields, stadiums and arenas to plead the blood of Jesus before the court of heaven, seeking an end to this modern-day holocaust. That blood may yet save us. But one way or another, whether Roe V. Wade is annulled through our court system or through another civil war-type crisis, we believe abortion in America will be brought to an end.
Back in 2003, Lou Engle was flying from Canada to America reading a biography of William Wilberforce. There on the plane, the Lord spoke to him, “You will raise up a prayer movement for the ending of the slave trade of abortion in America.” Lou began to weep as he was gripped with this sense of commissioning.
Not long afterwards, Lou was led into a 40 day fast in California to break the spirit of Jezebel. Little did he know he was going to be challenging the death altars of Baal as they did in the days of Jezebel when babies were being offered up to Molech. Then, while ministering in Connecticut, a woman had a dream that he was walking the “trail of prayers”, which she knew had to do with the Trail of Tears. When Lou got home, a young man had a dream. This dream is possibly one of the most poignant sounds we must capture at this time.
In the dream, he saw warring drums in the heavens and they were Native American drums. Then he heard a voice say, “This is God’s war against abortion. Native Americans must lead it. African Americans must lead it. The whole nation must lead it!” Then the scene changed and the Native chiefs were with Lou and his wife and there was a special fruit they were looking at. The Natives said, “You cannot buy this fruit unless you walk in our sandals.”
We knew this dream meant that we could not deal with the precious fruit of the womb unless we first walked in the sandals of the Native Americans, identifying with their pain, confessing the bloodshed, the massacres, and the broken covenants that we made with them. We began to understand how the bloodshed and our broken covenants with the indigenous people were foundational to the next wave of bloodshed that came with the African slaves who were brought to the land.
So, we walked the Trail of Tears from North Carolina to Tahlequah, Oklahoma where thousands of Native Americans had previously walked, and died, when they were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands. An African American leader named Will Ford joined us in this identificational walk of prayer and repentance. As the trail led through Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King had pastored at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he and Lou Engle made a covenant together as intercessors that they would give their lives to the ending of abortion and to the healing of the races.
That night, Will had a defining dream. In the dream he and Lou were driving together in a car to pick up Martin Luther King, Jr. When he came out to meet them, he was carrying a white bag with black handles. Before getting in the car, King violently emptied the contents of the bag and threw it to the ground. In the dream, Will remembered thinking that the bag would make a good souvenir, so he jumped out of the car to pick it up. Just then, Martin Luther King grabbed him by the shoulders and said, “Don’t you pick up that bag!” He then shared with him what it would take to heal the race issue in the nation and to bring reconciliation. Will couldn’t remember all that he was told, but he broke down weeping in the dream and woke up still weeping.
As he and Lou processed the dream together, Will sensed the Lord speaking to him about its meaning. He understood that the white bag with the black handles was about how the blacks have handled their white baggage. He knew the Lord was saying to him, “You’ve been carrying it way too long.” Then he sensed the Lord speak to his heart, saying, “Get rid of your bitterness, get rid of your resentment, get rid of your unforgiveness, so you can all get into this new vehicle that’s going to bring revival and justice for everyone!”
Will Ford, and others like him, have become signs and wonders in our day of how God is raising up men and women, in spite of their pain and suffering, who have embraced the cross of Christ. We believe that in many ways, the Natives, the African Americans, and those who have been wounded the most, have the greatest authority to heal the nation - if they can forgive.
(Part 2 coming soon)
