National protests are more well-organized and well-funded than previously thought.
PRAY FIRST for God to reveal the truth behind the scenes of the American political machine.
The First Amendment protects against both private lawsuits and government prosecution for the right to organize and to participate in protests. However, the First Amendment does not protect certain types of expression, including speech that will immediately and inevitably cause harm, such as falsely shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater.
Lawful protests have long been seen as a right of free speech across America. Many will recall during the 1960s and 1970s when the Vietnam War sparked protests of many young people across the nation. Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, protests erupted led largely by Black Lives Matter, a group founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin.
BLM and Palestinian groups are “cut from the same radical cloth,” says Mike Gonzales a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation. “The relationship between Palestinians and the global Marxist networks that birthed Black Lives Matter has an old pedigree,” he said.
Journalist Osama Al-Sharif wrote, “The link between BLM and the Palestinians’ suffering is unbreakable,” so much so that the Palestinians have adopted the BLM slogan, changing it to “Palestinian Lives Matter.”
As many as 300,000 people gathered in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., Sunday to march in support of the Palestinians. Organizers bussed thousands of people to protests.
An article that predates the BLM protests asked the question, “How is it that highly organized protests…keep popping up across the country?” Their simplistic answer is, “Follow the money.” Later it says, “Follow the George Soros money through his Open Society Foundation.”
“Mr. Soros’ Open Society Foundation,” the Associated Press article said, “also is busy …in a well-financed attempt to strip America and other nations of our sovereignty and make us beholden to an international government.”
The Washington Times reported that the Open Society Foundation donated at least $33 million to the Black Lives Matter group, which a representative for Soros’ foundation denied, saying, “it has not directly given money” to the BLM organization.
An October 29 report says Soros has funded over $15 million to groups behind pro-Palestinian protests. Recent reports also show that there is an increasing number of “particularly opaque dark money funding structures” that are participating in funding protests such as the one in Washington.
“It’s a huge problem,” said one legal adviser to the Israeli watchdog group said. “That these groups have such shadowy financing is something the U.S. government really needs to investigate. It’s definitely a national security issue.”
The Washington Examiner investigation found that “groups behind the increasing number of anti-Israel protests and the recent one in the nation’s capital that sponsored vandalism maintain particularly opaque dark money funding structures and have also faced scrutiny over the years for their ties to terror.”
Not only should you be aware of the funding mechanisms for these protests, but you also need to be careful to examine the ideologies they promulgate.
Pat Buchanan, author, political commentator, and politician who has worked in the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, said, “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.”
Allen Mendenhall, associate dean of Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, a Christian university in Alabama, said, “Cultural Marxism exists…it is real. We must know its effects on society and in what forms it materializes in our culture.” You must not “wish it out of existence or dismiss it as a bogeyman,” for “it is real,” he says.
HOW THEN SHOULD WE PRAY:
— We should pray for clarity and discernment. “I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught: avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve” (Romans 16:17-18).
— Pray that that you will not be taken in by Satan’s lies. “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
— Pray that you will hang onto the hope given you in Christ Jesus. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I am come that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
CONSIDER THESE ITEMS FOR PRAYER:
- Pray for God’s protection over His people
- Pray that God will use the circumstances in the Middle East to draw people to Himself.
- Pray that protests in the United States would remain peaceful.
- Pray for the humanitarian casualties of the war in Israel on all sides.
- Pray for God to be at work through the hearts and minds of world leaders as they address the conflict in Israel.
- Pray that God will make known the things hidden in the dark.
Sources: APNews, Arab News, The Guardian, BlackLivesMatter.org, Heritage.org, BrennanCenter.org
