Lead On O King Eternal - Francis Frangipane


Reflection:

Lead on, O King eternal,
The day of march has come;
Henceforth in fields of conquest
Thy tents shall be our home.
Through days of preparation
Thy grace has made us strong;
And now, O King eternal,
We lift our battle song.

First verse of Lead on O King Eternal by Ernest W. Shurtleff

God calls us to war on behalf of righteousness. He does not call us to war and fail, but to conquer in the name of Jesus. Every revival, each breakthrough that has ever occurred on planet earth, came because a people anointed by God with vision persevered until victory came. Yet, I can understand how one could look at our beleaguered world and feel all is hopeless. Iraq seems increasingly out of control; Iran and Hamas, increasingly belligerent. Three out of five movies nominated for “best picture” in the USA were about homosexuals or a transvestite. Israel’s borders are shrinking, while threats of a bird flu pandemic are rapidly expanding.

The fears of our world remind me of my youth. In those days America was engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Both nations stood poised with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other. No one had an answer. Only “mutually assured destruction” served as a deterrent. As a child I was told that, if an atomic bomb exploded during school hours, my “protection” was to kneel beneath my desk.

Yet, during every Sunday church service I remember the church priest leading us, as Christians, to pray for Russia and world peace. Though still terrorized by the dread realities surrounding us, we sincerely asked God for mercy. We prayed for years, but there were no encouraging signs from heaven and, on earth, only “end of the world” predictions from leading Christian authors.

Yet, there was a war raging in the heavens, and in 1990 the Spirit of God began to break the deception surrounding Soviet communism; in December of 1991, the crushing was complete and miraculously the entire Soviet empire collapsed! Amazingly, its demise occurred on Christmas day, 1991! On the day we celebrate the birth of Christ, Soviet president Gorbachev resigned and godless communism came to an end. The nightmare passed and planet earth woke to a day of world harvest on an unprecedented scale. Since then, missiologists tell us that more people have come to Christ worldwide than the sum of all conversions since the first century!

If we will win our battles, we too must learn the power of persevering faith. And we must learn that we cannot draw predictions about the future based on current world conditions; our worldview must come from the word of God!

The Lord said His Spirit would be poured out on all flesh “before the great and terrible day of the Lord come” (Joel 2:31 KJV). Do you see this? A worldwide outpouring must occur before Christ returns! This means that the Muslim world will truly open up and have a legitimate opportunity to hear the gospel! Consider also the Lord’s promise: though deep “darkness will cover the earth,” a time would soon come when His glory would visibly “appear” upon His people. So great would His presence be that He says, “nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising” (Isaiah 60:1-3).

Today, when we hear of nations railing against the Lord, remember that, even while they are blatantly rebelling against heaven, the Most High commands us: “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Thine inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Thy possession” (Ps 2:8)!

Let us, therefore, repent of fainting and put away our doubts. We are not praying merely for survival, but revival! God has boldly removed the limitations upon our faith. He who cannot lie has promised: “All things are possible” for him who believes!

Prayer:
Lord, forgive me for fear and unbelief! You have promised that the nations would see Your glory and that Your gospel would be proclaimed in every nation as a witness before “the end shall come.” You have not given Your church a command to retreat, but to advance! Lead us, King Eternal, the day of march has come!