“Violent power will shake the earth and skies”
Worship is their war cry
This Sunday, I attended Oasis Church in Middletown, Ohio. It’s led by Tim Sheets, brother of Dutch Sheets, known (by some) for his Give Him 15 prayer app.
Both are part of a charismatic movement (also called the New Apostolic Reformation) which believes spiritual gifts like prophecy and speaking in tongues are still possible and that there is a real and present supernatural battle afoot on another plane. Angels are real. Demons fight for control of various principalities.
I spend a good deal of time right now researching the decline in Christian affiliation, but please know that this charismatic movement—though its worldview may be new to you—is the fastest growing arm of American Christianity.
Both Sheets brothers are graduates of Christ for the Nations Institute, a name that may be newly familiar, as it is the alma mater of Vance Boelter, suspect in the killing of Missouri state Rep. Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and the shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.
For what it’s worth, Christ for the Nations Institute claims its teachings are not violent, and that the school’s slogan, “Every Christian should pray at least one violent prayer a day,” is about being passionate and not… violent.
Boelter had what investigators believe was a hit list of other potential victims, other public servants. Minnesota Senator Tina Smith, who was on the target list, said the current political environment is awash with threats of violence. And while such threats are certainly not only stirred within the church, I do think it is vital to understand how some Americans are learning to see themselves as spiritual vigilantes.
Boelter demonstrates how such a spiritual conviction can spill over to real life in tragic, horrifying ways.
This Sunday, praise music included lyrics such as: “Our praise, our praise is a weapon…” and “Our God is a mighty warrior…” That alone wouldn’t likely radicalize a person—such sentiments are as old as the Bible.
What exists within NAR or the growing charismatic stream is a blend of Christian nationalism that can justify political dominance through a spiritual lens where believers view themselves as literally on the side of the angels. They impact the supernatural through their prayers, tapping into prophetic words and healings. The divide between what can be observed physically (and affect us politically) is porous, is not ever far from the realm of angels and demons, a spiritual battlefield.
On Sunday, after about a half-hour of music from the in-house band, with a standing crowd of mostly Boomers and older attendees, two waving flags, Sheets got behind the mic and shared the news that Donald Trump had described in a national address the night prior: “the strikes of the nuclear places in Iran,” as Sheets put it.
During his address, Trump said, “God, I want to just say, we love you God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel. And God bless America.”
Sheets likewise prayed for God to protect Israel and America.
He also advertised a healing service that will take place this Friday at the church, featuring apostolic leaders, including his brother Dutch. Already, he said there were people signed up to attend virtually from 30 states, other nations, from hospices and hospitals.
Not only would they be healing physical ailments, but also resurrecting “the healing movement of the 1940s and 50s.” Tickets are ten dollars.
There was another song while people walked up to make their tithes with the ushers. “Can you hear it, the sound of heaven touching earth?” the women in the house band sang, sounding together like soulful Stevie Nickses.
It seemed to me like a poor choice of songs to accompany a message about missiles falling from the sky, threatening war.
“Let heaven come down, let heaven come down.”
I was not the target audience.
When it was time for Sheets’ sermon, he said he didn’t want to talk from too political or military an angle. He’d been up the night prior, awakened by the Holy Spirit. Throughout the night, he was “talking to people I respect,” including prophets he knows. He had a spread of notes and apologized that his message wouldn’t be neatly packaged with a bow.
In what was indeed a rambling skip of ideas, Sheets said we are witnessing a seismic shift to the world, on the order of Noah and the flood. He called upon the ecclesia (the church), saying, “the ecclesia is to rule and reign with Christ” over the spiritual realm.
In this special moment in which the danger of escalating war in the Middle East was present (and is it gone, really?), he asserted to his church that they wrestle not against flesh and blood, but the dominions of hell.
“While our military is wrestling in the natural realm,” Sheets held, “the ecclesia must wrestle in the spirit realm against demons, principalities and powers that want to thwart the effort of God upon the earth.” He added, “Understand please, spiritual warfare is very real.”
And then in a way that blurred the boundary between military action and supernatural war, he explained that the Spirit is aided by angel armies. He said the angels Michael and Gabriel were very busy the prior night binding the powers of hell in Iran.
Summarizing the Bible story of Esther, Sheets said Persia was the enemy of God, with Iran sharing an attitude “similar to the call in our times, ‘death to the Jews, death to America.’” He claimed modern Iran had killed thousands of God’s people, “shooting thousands and thousands of missiles into Israel.” (According to CBS’s reporting Sunday, the number in this conflict is closer to 450 strikes with 24 people in Israel killed by Iranian missiles and drones, and 722 Iranians killed by Israeli strikes.) He interchangeably referred to Iran as Persia and described both as held by a “demon throne,” one that “has been stopping the gospel from penetrating millions, millions of people.”
Further, he advised that overthrowing a demon throne or demon prince does not mean killing it, “because their spirits, they don’t die.” While the military can get a lot done on Earth, the church is needed because the authority to overthrow “that demon power” was given to the church. “I think that’s one of the reasons why angel armies have been given to us,” the ecclesia, Sheets supposed.
Sheets said that with the military action—and whatever went down with those angels—a third great awakening had occurred. History would reset.
But intercessors needed to pray, needed to win the spiritual war, especially at a time that, he asserted, due to open borders, there were sleeper cells and assassination squads (allowed in by Biden’s administration), who wanted to attack American infrastructure and kill President Trump. People needed to pray for our political system, “because there is evil in it,” a claim that once again blurred the line between earthly realities and a spiritual battlefield.
While I have interviewed charismatic people most interested in healing, here’s where I started to wonder how easy it would be for the right sort of person—say, a spiritual go-getter who believed someone like Sheets has a divine window into the truth of homeland security—to feel a moral responsibility to battle beyond the spiritual plane. To trade prayer for a gun.
Sheets repeated quite a few times that battle in the “natural” world is the job of the military, that he was talking about spiritual warfare. But you likely remember how many folks gathered in Washington, D.C., to do spiritual battle on January 6, 2021, and wound up physically taking the Capitol by force.
There’s a degree to which the human ego, fed a line about being called to right the world, being among the specially elect, will feel justified in doing so—whatever spiritual or terrestrial guiderails have been laid before them.
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