At the very time when overwhelming evidence is building up to reveal how utterly corrupt Trump and his administration are, the major legacy networks are increasingly wary of criticising him to avoid giving Trump grounds for removing their licence.

The world is fast changing now that newly emboldened Xi believes himself to be the leading superpower and the ‘glue’ that holds the world together – not least as the result of hosting visits from Trump and Putin – and of China owning possessing something like 90% of certain of the rare earth minerals on which modern life depends.

It is obviously important to pray for what happens in Beijing, which is one of the two countries named by Britain’s top intelligence chiefs as posing serious cyber and sabotage threats to Britain, but first let me take you a long way back in our nation’s history to the time of Fursey, an influential preacher-cum-missionary-cum anchorite who moved in the seventh century from Ireland to East Anglia before ending his days in France.

In a powerful vision, he saw four great fires of conflagration sweeping across the world. They were Falsehood, Covetousness, Discord and the Iniquity of regarding it as no crime to rob and to defraud the weak.

In his vision, Fursey saw these fires spreading and in time meeting each other, and becoming an immense flame. The Lord made it very clear that those guilty of such crimes and sins would be severely punished. You can check out my original blog post on this seminal vision but as you read remember that it is not only other people who commit such things!

Since the outset of my ministry I have longed to see the Lord influence different ‘sectors’ of society such as the political, and financial world, together with the Media and entertainment, not to mention underpinning education. It is wonderful when the Spirit of God permeates and influences these ‘pillars’ of society. More recently, proponents of the Seven Mountain Mandate movement see these as ‘targets’ for imposing a Christian heritage on America, albeit too much from the point of seeking to impose the faith rather than for it to grow and develop organically. The crying shame of this is that a godly vision has been both diluted and distorted by major moral failings – and these have become areas where dangerous fires are now burning. And whereas the modern movement seeks to occupy the seats of power in order to change the world, John the Baptist remained firmly outside the seats of power, calling to those within without fear or favour to repent and turn to the Lord.

It is with the negative connotations of this that I have felt led to focus here in this follow-up to yesterday’s posts. In modern-day parlance, John the Baptist might have been tempted to monetise his lifestyle and to run courses for people to come and learn how to grow spiritually by spending time in the wilderness. How about Asceticism for beginners: 10 Days to developing survival skills and cultivating a sharper spirit. Not to mention ‘Learning to identify and protect the creatures that adapt to living in the Judean Wilderness!’ In keeping with all true prophets, he refused to let any distractions tempt him away from remaining focused on his message and his mission – which wasn’t merely ‘spiritual in a vacuum’ but had immediate social and political consequences. In particular he ‘targeted’ two specific groups that represented the “mountains” of his day:

• The Political Elite (Herod Antipas). By continuing to upbraid Herod for his “flagrant immorality”— specifically his unlawful marriage to his brother’s wife, Herodias—John was demonstrating that the prophetic voice holds even top rulers accountable to a higher moral law.
• The Enforcement Arm. When soldiers asked how they should live, John attacked their systemic exploitation. When he commanded them to “rob no one by violence” and to “be content with their wages,” he was directly challenging the culture of extortion that defined the Roman occupation, and that in different ways is endemic in the way the Trump administration has moved to reshape America.

Amongst the vast amount of evidence that is now emerging of Trump’s brazen and far-reaching corruption, Anne Applebaum (who did such an excellent job many years ago in charting the unrepented of excesses of the Soviet Union) writes a regular ‘Kleptocracy Tracker’ column in The Atlantic on the coming together of corruption, autocracy, and the many ways in which democracy is being undermined. (“Kleptocracy” speaks of ‘The Rule by Thieves.’)

We are used to hearing about this in relation to both Trump and Putin, but Anne writes too of other autocratic states – including China, Iran and various Gulf States —that are connected not by a shared ideology, but rather by rather by common financial interests – together with a great desire to conceal illicitly garnered funds. Anne’s ‘Kleptocracy Tracker’ traces and details how Trump and his close associates make immense profits from events that they themselves have engineered – not least to do with pronouncements about a deal being close to end the war with Iran.

Trump moved swiftly to fire those responsible for monitoring corruption and ethical standards. All of this has made what would once quite rightly have been regarded as brazen corruption something that is increasingly being accepted almost as normal – to the great detriment of righteous standards.

May I particularly encourage you to read David French’s article in The New York Times on the type of people who completely flummox Trump because they believe in what they believe in, rather than regarding everything as transactional and ‘purchasable.’ It is well worth creating a free account to read this superbly reasoned article.

Staunch Trump followers are increasingly feeling emboldened to say and do the most outrageous things, because they are confident that in the last resort, if they do go too far, that Trump will come to their aid and pardon them. The effect this is having on the morals and manners of the nation is truly terrible. So confident are they that they are winning the battle of the networks that Republican analyst Scott Jennings resorted to intense profanity on a panel discussion on CNN the other day. Using the f-word should be a cause for dismissal in panel discussions, but of course no such thing befell Donald Trump-loving Scott Jennings.

Tragically, this feels symbolic of how confident Republicans are that CNN will soon be joining CBS in being politically neutered under the ownership of a Trump supporter. We saw in a post yesterday how the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the result of a legitimate referendum on redistricting to ensure that the process doesn’t favour the Democrats. Has there ever been a time when independent journalism and politics has been at greater risk in America?

You may remember Kamala Harris warning of what a Trump administration without the guardrails would be alike. No wonder that she has recently has described the Trump administration on Fox News as ‘the most corrupt, callous, and incompetent presidential administration we’ve ever seen.’ No wonder that Republican-leaning stronghold network did not appreciate her words!
Amongst many sources exposing the Trump administration, one could look to the writings of Ukrainian born *Lev Parnas: Lev Remembers. Lev served a 20-month sentence for campaign contributions to Republican politicians, including Donald Trump, that secretly came from a Russian oligarch. As he puts it, “I’ve seen the swamp from the inside. They know me in Washington, and I’m the last person they want with a seat in Congress and the power to call them before the people.”

Lev recently told the Miami Herald that he had believed he was serving his country when, in fact, he was actually being indoctrinated.

“I was pulled into one of the biggest political scandals of modern American history, but something important happened in that moment,” Parnas said: ‘I woke up.’ I was one of the leaders of that cult. I trained people in how to brainwash people in that cult. I can tell you as somebody that’s been in that cult and now is out of it, it’s a cult.”

It is by no means certain that he will be elected as the Democrat contender for what is actually a very safe Congress Republican seat in Florida, but long may Lev continue to play his part in exposing what is really going on. He is joined in his campaign by his son, a Democrat who has with five million Tik Tok followers. We have often found his reporting to be incisive and revealing.

Along similar lines, Mary Trump’s article ‘The corruption is the strategy’ also makes for sobering reading about the way in which Trump is pocketing tens of millions as a result of such manoeuvres as announcing that peace deals are imminent.

It reminds me in some ways of one Marina Ovsyannikovaa, a top presenter on Russian tv, who became more and more aware of Kremlin influence in limiting the things she could say or refer to, and who bravely told the nation that they were being lied to, and fled the country most dramatically.

The Lord sees exactly what is happening. These untruths are not harmless white lies; they are like systemic wildfires that are threatening the very fabric of our civilisation. May He yet intervene to prevent America from becoming completely taken over by the fire of these four things: Falsehood, (the ‘mountain’ of misinformation) Covetousness, (unchecked greed and consumerism that is prepared to resort to financial improprieties) Discord (increasing polarisation, tribalism, and the breakdown of civil discourse) and Iniquity (systemic acts of injustice) – even as we pray for the people of Russia to one day be free again too.

The work of the Spirit through godly people requires us to warn that society is on fire, as well as acting as a firebreak against these systemic fires – but above all to be modelling an entirely different lifestyle and embodying an altogether different message.

Check out too my original blog post on this seminal vision here – but as you read, do remember that it is not only other people who are guilty of indulging these sins!

Photo by Juho Luomala on Unsplash