Christian author and 24-7 Prayer founder Pete Greig has shared a prophetic warning which he believes Christians should take seriously - “Prepare for war.”
Greig says the word came to him in March while he was in South Africa worshipping with a group of 24-7 Prayer leaders.
The apparent prophecy was not accompanied by a specific prediction about the identity of an enemy, the timing of a conflict, or the precise form that such a war might take. Rather, the emphasis was on preparation.
"During one of the times of worship, the Lord gave me a picture," Greig said in a recent episode of the 24/7 podcast.
"I was looking down at the Earth. I could see dark storm clouds rolling across the Earth, and I could hear thunder. As I watched, thinking, 'What on Earth is going on?' I heard a drum roll, like a marching band drum roll, and somehow the sound of the thunder morphed into the drum roll.
"Then I heard - not an audible voice, but a very distinct, sudden, unexpected sense of preparation - and it was this: I heard these three words, 'Prepare for war.'"
His response to the prophecy was to think, “Oh my goodness, we really do live in cataclysmic days."
Thinking he was "barking mad", he took another leader aside who had senior level experience in the Foreign Office and asked him what he thought about it.
Far from thinking he was mad, this man replied, “Pete, nine years working in the Foreign Office - seven of them we've done almost nothing else but quietly, behind the scenes, prepare for war.”
The significance of the experience became more apparent to Greig when, within approximately an hour, he learned that members of the 24-7 Prayer team in Beirut were being displaced in anticipation of Israeli bombing.
The coincidence caused him to take the word more seriously, particularly given the increasingly unstable international situation.
A second experience subsequently reinforced the warning for Greig. After returning to Britain, he received a handwritten account from a woman he had never met. She described having a disturbing dream in which she saw the bodies of young men being piled up. According to her account, she was then instructed to communicate a message to Greig: “Prepare for war.”
The fact that this message closely echoed the impression Greig says he had received independently was striking to him. Greig later discovered the woman’s dream happened on the same day as his own revelation.
Rather than interpreting the experience simply as a prediction of a particular military conflict, Greig has presented it as a call for Christians to prepare spiritually and practically for potentially difficult times ahead, and speak more openly about this.
"The last two years, it's become frenetic," he observed.
"The thing I find strange is that when I hang around Christians, they're barely even talking about what's happening in our world right now. I thought, 'Oh my goodness, this is starting to feel serious.'"
Later in the conversation, he described feeling like "we are undoubtedly in a kind of perma-crisis - the notion that there are a series of consecutive massive global crises that are now starting to interlock and exacerbate one another".
"The environmental crisis is clearly one of the real biggies. But it's not just 'over there' ... it affects us all," he said, adding that the first war won't necessarily be military but cyber.
Greig called upon the government to give additional funding to defence in order to deter any potential aggressors.
"I think we also need to be interceding - this is perhaps a little controversial - that defence would become a priority for Andy Burnham," he said.
"I am not making a left-wing or right-wing statement, but I will tell you what this very senior military official said to me. He said, 'The world is now being ruled by bullies.'"
While Christians might object on the grounds that "we're pacifists, we're Christians, and we'd rather put money into this than into nasty guns", he said this senior military official had warned that without sufficient defence funding, bullying nations "will totally ignore you unless you actually have the military hardware to stand up to evil".
He also said Christians should be praying for members of the Armed Forces.
"I spend a lot of time in America. I find it interesting that over there they are unbelievably diligent at honoring veterans, and over here it's almost like an embarrassing secret," he said.
"These people are giving their lives; they're risking everything. It's often not easy on your marriage and everything else.
"I think the very least we can do as Christians is pray for them and pray for army chaplains and so on and so forth. Even if you don't think we should have an army, you should still be praying for these people and for those who are missionaries in their midst."
On a more cheerful note, he added that a "quite remarkable" move of the Spirit was already happening among members of the Armed Forces.
"It's disproportionate," he said. Members of the Armed Forces have themselves made similar observations recently.
He stressed, though, that the approach of the Church must not be one of fear mongering or spreading a sense of doom, but equipping Christians spiritually for what's ahead.
Greig said 24/7 Prayer is "praying that this word never comes to pass" as he urged fellow believers to also continue praying for peace and maintain their hope in God.
A well respected figure, Greig has in the past spoken about receiving divine inspiration at around the turn of the millennium to set up the 24-7 Prayer movement.
