Introduction:
June 1: The day God tore down a ‘gay pride’ flag
In 2008 Anne and I relocated to Springfield, Massachusetts, with the intention of leaving the culture-war battlefield on LGBT issues to launch a more traditional inner-city mission to serve the bottom strata of society in one of the most depressed and decrepit population centers in the country. Springfield was identified by Forbes Magazine that year as “one of the 10 fastest-dying cities in America.” To further this mission I founded a new church under the name Redemption Gate Mission Society, bought and moved into a fixer-upper former crack house in the heart of the worst neighborhood as our personal residence, and acquired an historic building across from the truly historic Springfield Armory (established by George Washington during the Revolutionary War) for our church and ministry operations center.
God – working through my adversaries – had other plans regarding my role in the culture war (“Just when I tried to get out they dragged me back in!”) But we personally led that mission for seven years (one Shemitah cycle, for those who know the biblical time-keeping system) and then turned it over to my ministry partner, Pastor C.S. Cooley, who kept it going for another seven years. I’m writing a book about that amazing ministry right now, under the working title “To Redeem a City.”
Important to this story is the fact that Redemption Gate’s expressly stated mission was to re-Christianize this post-Christian city. I had prayed for the Lord to give me a city to reclaim for Him as we were nearing the end of a foreign mission on that theme, and He sent us to Springfield. Important to the achievement of the mission objective was the choice of the city whether to allow itself to be re-Christianized. And important to that choice was the fact that on April 25, 2011, our Redemption Gate ministry team began circulating a petition in Springfield to have the national motto “In God We Trust” added to the pediment of Springfield City Hall.
Summer 2011 was exactly halfway through our first seven years, and it was at that biblically significant three-and-a-half year mark that a powerful supernatural event occurred, one I will share publicly for the very first time today.
On June 1, 2011, I was taking an early morning prayer walk in downtown Springfield, the high point of the experience being the path through Court Square (originally the town common), described on Wikipedia as “the City of Springfield’s only topographical constant since its founding in 1636 …” which features “a scenic pedestrian-only walkway from the courthouse toward Springfield’s historic Old First Church.”
Court Square is the symbolic and spiritual heart of the city. It was therefore greatly disturbing to me when I reached the end of the path at Main Street and discovered an official “Gay Pride” banner hanging from the lamppost in the same place and manner as the annual Christmas banners. I was deeply vexed in my spirit, because this was to my knowledge the very first time Springfield had allowed such a display – indicating that the historically Catholic city had succumbed to the LGBT Borg and had chosen the path of defilement instead of Christian redemption.
At 4:30 p.m. that very day a massive tornado touched down in Westfield (where Anne and I had lived the first couple of months after our arrival) and carved a 39 mile path of destruction through West Springfield, South Springfield and several towns eastward. It barely missed the Old First Church, but ripped through the rest of Court Square right where the offending banner had hung. The way I see it, God tore down that particular flag Himself.
Significantly to us, the tornado came right to the edge of our designated “Redemption Zone,” turned south along its western border, then continued east along its southern border. There was damage only at the far southwest corner of our prayer-covered mission territory. One of our ministry staff standing on the back porch of the third floor of our church building actually watched the monster bear down directly at him from the west and then turn away south and then east.
That tornado was just the first of three nature-based wakeup calls for Springfield that year. On Aug. 23 it suffered a 5.9 earthquake that literally rocked City Hall (overlooking Court Square from its northern edge). Then a week later, on Aug. 29, Hurricane Irene tore through Springfield and all of Western Mass causing massive flooding and storm damage.
No one but our pastoral staff raised the obvious spiritual questions about this sequence of disasters.
As we would learn later, 2011 was the year that Massachusetts passed “the Expanded Gaming Act … and gambling was legalized in the Commonwealth” … culminating in the creation of the state’s first gambling casino (MGM) in Springfield. The casino went up precisely where the tornado had torn its path through the Italian south end (site of the Mafia hit on the local Don, “Big Al” Bruno, in front of the Our Lady of Carmel Social Club a few years previously), suggesting that the legislation was proposed and passed in consequence of the tornado (though we don’t know the specific timeline).
During the Springfield City Council’s deliberation process about whether to approve the casino, I personally led a group of Christians to offer public comment against it, and to present our “In God We Trust” petition, bearing a little over 500 signatures. I appealed to the council to turn back to God as the means of restoring the health and prosperity of the city. But Springfield chose the Mob instead of Christ.
I spent some time a while back trying to document the city’s “Pride” program for 2011 but found nothing online. But I know what I saw with my own eyes. And I know in my spirit there was a connection between that banner’s symbolic declaration of allegiance to the LGBT agenda and the advent of the tornado. Pat Robertson once got in a lot of trouble with the leftist media making a similar connection between LGBT advocacy in New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina before backing down under the onslaught. I suppose my knowing that might have played a part in not telling this story back when it happened. But that was before my long ordeal at the hands of the Massachusetts LGBT activists (which, coincidentally, also began in 2011) hardened me against coercion. Now I simply don’t care what the world thinks about anything I say or do.
So this is my testimony about Springfield’s Gay Pride and God’s response – and my explanation for why Springfield never was re-Christianized as a city (so far), despite all the powerful influence our mission had and continues to have on the individuals to whom we still minister within the boundaries of the Redemption Zone.
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June 2: The Rainbow Belongs to God, Not the Gays
“The appearance of the brilliant light all around Him was like that of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD (Ezekiel 1:28).
The word “gay” once meant “happy” and “carefree” until it was appropriated by the homosexual movement. Now it’s a word that describes sodomy and gender identity disorder. When it first was introduced to public school students as a form of LGBT indoctrination, those children who had never known the true meaning of the word began to use the phrase “that’s so gay” to describe things that are wrong and undesirable (until they started being punished for it). Homosexual activists and their surrogates tried to sanitize a lifestyle of unnatural sex by giving it a new name, but instead corrupted something that once was clean and wholesome. The world has irreversibly lost a unique and precious gem of the English language that still adorns the poetry and musical lyrics of a more innocent time, like the fading photograph of a beloved child who died long ago, or perhaps more appropriately, a kidnaped child who never came home.
The word “homosexual” was invented by the early LGBT movement in 1860s Germany to accomplish the same impossible goal. In that case, the brand new word, “homosexual,” was invented to replace the term “Sodomite.” “Homosexual” was intended to sanitize the lifestyle defined by the practice of sodomy, by characterizing it as a medical condition rather than a moral weakness, but instead the word became so corrupted in the public mind for so long that the movement eventually felt compelled to abandon it in favor of “gay.”
This brings me to the hijacked symbol of the rainbow. The rainbow belongs to God and was created by Him as a symbol of His authority over creation. Revelation 4:3 describes a rainbow around His throne in heaven. Ezekiel 1:28 also associates the rainbow with God’s very presence. Genesis 9:13-15 declares that He placed the rainbow in the sky as a promise to never again punish the earth by flood. Then in Genesis 19 He gave a preview of the future destruction of the earth by fire — by incinerating Sodom and Gomorrah. Both Peter and Jude remind us that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a warning to all generations not to follow the gross sexual immorality of those cities (1 Peter 2:6, Jude 1:7).
Who were the sinners of Sodom that prophecy warns will rise again in the end times to dominate society (Romans 1:26-32 and I Timothy 3:1-9)? They were first called “Sodomites,” then “homosexuals,” and now “gays.” Their movement has adopted the rainbow flag as an act of defiance against God, and their final attempt to sanitize their sin is to wrap themselves in His own cloak.
Every authentic Christian (and Torah-faithful Jew) knows that the rainbow belongs to God, not the “gays.” But how many realize that the hijacking of the rainbow by the LGBT movement is a leading sign of the immanency of the last days Antichrist kingdom? Cloaking itself in God’s rainbow represents far more than just arrogant disregard for God teachings in the Bible, it is proof that Lucifer himself is the spiritual head of the triumphal “pride” celebrations taking place across the world.
Satan’s obsession from the beginning has been to take God’s throne for himself – and that is exactly what the “pride” movement represents. Indeed, the only glimpse the Bible gives us of what God’s throne in Heaven actually looks like is the Apostle John’s testimony in Revelation 4:3: “At once I was in the Spirit, and I saw a throne standing in heaven, with someone seated on it. The One seated there looked like jasper and carnelian, and a rainbow that gleamed like an emerald encircled the throne.”
The rainbow signifies the presence and authority of God, which is why He chose that symbol to seal His covenant with mankind after Noah’s flood. In His own words He said:
“I have set My rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember My covenant between Me and you and every living creature of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life” (Genesis 9:13-15).
What was the sin of Noah’s generation that finally triggered God’s wrath and unleashed the flood? The ancient Hebrew rabbis said it was humanity’s choice to “compose…nuptial songs in honour of pederasty and bestiality” i.e., to accept and celebrate homosexual “marriage” (Talmud, Genesis Rabbah 26:5:4).
Importantly, God also warned that the next time humanity reaches that level of sin, He will sentence the people of the earth to destruction by fire. The incineration of Sodom and Gomorrah was a foretaste of that, as expressly stated in 2 Peter 2:6 “He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction, reducing them to ashes AS AN EXAMPLE of what is coming on the ungodly.” Jude 1:7 adds “In like manner, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, who indulged in sexual immorality and pursued strange flesh, are on display AS AN EXAMPLE of those who sustain the punishment of eternal fire.” [Emphasis mine.]
Biblically speaking there is no greater form of national rebellion than the celebration of homosexuality, and, unfortunately, our society has perfected that rebellion in so-called “gay pride” parades. As Isaiah 3:9 summarizes: “The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they parade their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.” That “reward” of God’s anger is not just for the “Sodomites” themselves but everyone who celebrates them (Romans 1:18-32), in contrast to the Bible’s example of “righteous” Lot who escaped God’s wrath because he was “vexed in his spirit” about their corrupt culture and conduct (2 Peter 2:7).
The now-defiled rainbow is your warning sign. If you condone, let alone celebrate, “gay pride” you choose the side of Lucifer against God and earn for yourself a share of the wrath to come. Moreover, even if you consider yourself righteous in believing the Bible about LGBT sins, failure to meet your Watchman duty to warn the wicked of these truths puts their blood on your hands (Ezekiel 3:18).
From Genesis to Revelation the Bible shows that God does not mess around when it comes to this category of sin. Please remember that, and your duty to speak plain truth, whenever you see His rainbow being defiled.
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This article is a composite of several prior articles which may be found by a search of the word “rainbow” at www.ScottLively.net.
