America's Josiah Season

Two days after the U.S. election, the Lord twice gave me a Scripture
which has two layers of prophetic application. Many Americans prayed in
desperation for mercy for America and for God’s will to be done in the
selection of our president.

“Because your heart was tender and you humbled yourself before the Lord
when you heard what I spoke… I truly have heard you…” (2 Kings 22:19
NAS) These are the words of a simple prophetess spoken to a repentant
king.

Josiah was the king of Judah when the book of the law was found in the
house of the Lord. Due to tremendous apostasy and gross idolatry, great
moral confusion had gripped the culture and unimaginable neglect of
God’s ways had become the norm in Israel.

Financial House in Order
From his youth, Josiah walked in the ways of David. In his tenth year
of reign (he was only 18 years old) he started setting “things in
order” by turning offerings over to the workmen repairing the house of
the Lord. He said, “No accounting shall be made with them… for they
deal faithfully.” He delegated the work and released dedicated funds.

Financial reform is more than just reducing the national debt, or
wisely using welfare, or governments eliminating roadblocks to small
business, but it includes religious affairs as well. In the kingdom of
God, we are seeing a return to entrustment of large sums to missional
ministry teams led by pioneering catalytic leaders who implement
effective transformations. These leaders can be trusted with financial
responsibility due to their personal integrity and their proven track
record of honest dealings. We need to take a lesson from Josiah: get
the funds into the hands of people who can do the work, then get out of
their way.

Financial reform started a spiritual reformation, for in the process of
doing their job, they discovered the Scriptures. As Derek Prince used
to say, “You treat God the same way you treat your Bible.” In other
words, we relate to God the same way as we relate to His word: either
respect it and obey it, or neglect it and thus despise God’s rule in
our lives.

Josiah’s response to God’s Word was to humble his soul, tear his
clothes, and seek the Lord. He repented for how ignorant and how wrong
they had been. Huldah the prophetess answered the king and interpreted
the times for Josiah. She revealed God’s heart and showed how the Lord
had been watching Josiah’s reaction to His written word.

Respect the Scriptures
Josiah gathered the people and read them their sacred Scriptures.
Josiah began to lead them in a process of national reformation. They
tore down their high places, halted gross immorality, desecrated and
destroyed the altars to alien gods, cleansed their land of defilement,
and reinstituted the true worship of Jehovah. It is hard for us to
imagine the depth of depravity their culture had embraced.

Great blessing and prosperity accompanied these reforms. This is always
the case when the salt and light of God’s superior society by living
and upholding God’s wisdom and God’s ways as shown in the Bible is
injected into any culture. Much later, Josiah foolishly went to battle
with an Egyptian force and was killed in an unnecessary engagement.
Perhaps the pride of success had gone to his head. But regardless, he
had served his generation in an honorable way.

The righteous judgments that were due to Judah as a nation were
forestalled for a generation due to the courageous leadership of a
great reformer. Josiah took advantage of a season of a revival of
values to institute necessary reforms to forestall divine wrath.

By turning to the word of God in repentance and by pursuing what was
right (this is faith in action), they preserved the kingdom and blessed
the people. In the next generation, sadly, leaders once again turned
back to a failed policy of wickedness, immorality, and idolatry. They
departed from God’s truth and disrespected the consequences of sin. The
nation of Judah became terribly oppressed and was then finally carried
away into captivity.

God indeed deals with nations, not just individuals. Nations, like
individuals, have divine destinies (prophetically envisioned
opportunities) that can be achieved or thwarted.

As Josiah went about his process of reforming Judah, he deliberately
destroyed the unholy places which had corrupted his nation. In a free
society, sinful people will build idols or create institutions or
foster movements that are like smokestacks streaming pollutants into
the air. These strongholds of sin are often defended by foolish people
in the name of liberty or personal rights. In America, some of these
smokestacks are labeled “media.” They are often sources of lies and
deceit: casting spells, belching accusations.

On one campaign, Josiah encountered a memorial. Was it a place of false
worship? He asked, “What is this monument I see?” The men of the city
told him, “It is the grave of the man of God who… proclaimed these
things which you have done against the altar of Bethel.” (23:17) Josiah
determined not to desecrate the burial site of the prophets who had
spoken against idolatry, saying, “Let no one disturb his bones.”

The Bones of the Prophets
The bones of the prophets lead us to the second warning. When God gives
a word concerning evil powers or wicked forces that are infecting our
religious or national culture, spokesmen who are hearing and declaring
God’s word, the Lord’s agents of change, need to be very careful. They
need to be humble and careful to fully obey.

Many a hillside is littered with the bones of the prophets. It makes
the soil crusty and hard to plow.

Jokingly, I used to say whenever I saw an old-fashioned country church
surrounded by a cemetery with the graves of parishioners, “Those are
the graves of the pastors they stoned.” Some of that is undoubtedly
true. Religious demons can inflame people to act like the devil. But
the burial plot Josiah uncovered wasn’t of prophets who had been killed
by the people, but prophets who had only partially obeyed the Lord and
were subsequently killed by God.

Any time a prophet is sent by God and has an assignment to take on,
address, or confront an idol, a throne, a principality, or a dominion,
or is told to rebuke a demonic horde which has become incarnate in a
human being who has authority over people (perhaps a dictator), that
prophet is walking into a dangerous place with a very specific mission
with narrow parameters of safety. Picture Elijah as he confronted Ahab
and Jezebel.

The only safe place for prophets of war is a posture of total obedience
from start to finish. Not all prophets are called to engage in such
front-line skirmishes. If they do, they need to be aligned with God’s
generals, apostles of transformation, and they need to be covered by a
shield of intercessors.

The modern Josiahs and the prophets who precede them (or accompany
them) are agents of God’s kingdom helping the redemption of Christ move
from the cross into the culture, beyond individual salvation to
affecting degrees of transformation among the nations.

Sunday, I had a vision of Christ on the cross looking down at potential
leaders being gathered for “investment” by His mantle. We had just
heard of young ministers in Greece being prepared to plant churches and
gospel schools in Iraq. I had just read of Chinese house church leaders
sending out missionaries to the Middle East in a “Back to Jerusalem”
movement. I thought of the Scripture, “He stood and surveyed the earth;
He looked and startled the nations.” (Habakkuk 3:6 NAS)

The eyes of the Lord are still searching for those whose hearts are
toward Him. He is still watching to see who will respond with
conviction when they hear His word. He is looking from the cross for
those who are unafraid of death in order to release life for the
nations to be saved.

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© 2004 by Ron Wood, Touched by Grace Ministry, P.O. Box 12749,
Wilmington, NC 28405 USA. Permission to copy provided content and
byline are intact. For more resources, visit www.touchedbygrace.org.
Write us at ron@touchedbygrace.org.