Bartholomew's Notes

(H/T: Jim Stewartson and Karen Piper)

Last month, former US General Mike Flynn addressed a crowd at an evangelical Christian Right conference called “Opening the Heavens 2021“. The event was organised by Pastors Hank and Brenda Kunneman of Lord of Hosts Church and One Voice Ministries in Omaha, Nebraska, although it was held over the river at a nearby conference centre in Council Bluffs, Iowa; other speakers included Gene Bailey, Tony Saurez, Kent Christmas, Mario Murillo, Lance Wallnau and Samuel Rodriguez. The first night was streamed via the Victory Channel, a network created by the prosperity evangelist Kenneth Copeland, with the rest streamed by Kunneman’s church.

Flynn ended his speech with a strangely distinctive prayer, which was repeated verbatim by those in attendance and in all likelihood by many of those watching the videostream:

We are your instrument of those sevenfold rays and all your archangels, all of them. We will not retreat, we will not retreat. We will stand our ground. We will not fear to speak. We will be the instrument of your will, whatever it is. In your name and the name of your legions. We are freeborn, and we shall remain freeborn. And we shall not be enslaved by any foe within and without, so help me God.

This has been identified as a modified version of a prayer that appears in the work of Elizabeth Clare Prophet, a religious teacher whose main influences were Theosophy and the I AM Movement. In the 1980s, she famously advised followers to move to Montana to escape an imminent nuclear apocalypse. Prophet died in 2009, but her Church Universal and Triumphant – inevitably dubbed a “doomsday cult” by the media – still has some followers and offshoots, and the groups and ideas she drew from also remain current.

Prophet’s version of the prayer appears in a book called Maitreya on the Image of God: A Study in Christhood by the Great Initiator Book II, which is also Volume 27 in a series called “Pearls of Wisdom: Teachings of the Ascended Masters”. The book appears to have been assembled from pamphlets called “Pearls of Wisdom”, this one being Volume 27 Number 48A. Here is her version:

I AM the instrument of those sevenfold rays and archangels!
And I will not retreat. I will take my stand
I will not fear to speak.
And I will be the instrument of God’s will, whatever it is
Here I AM, so help me, God!
In the name of Archangel Michael and his legions,
I AM freeborn and I shall remain freeborn!
And I shall not be enslaved by any foe within and without!

A note explains that “This dictation by Archangel Michael was delivered by the Messenger of the Great White Brotherhood Elizabeth Clare Prophet on Tuesday, July 3, 1984”. It was subsequently included in a pdf compilation titled Prayers, Meditation and Dynamic Decrees for Personal and World Transformation.

Why on earth would Flynn use such a text? He was asked about it in an interview, and gave a non-explanation:

I carry with me a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, who I am named after.

…That prayer that I gave, I woke up that morning prior to going on to support the Victory Channel and Hank Kunneman…. So I got up that morning and I felt that when I finish my talk I want to finish with a prayer and I was thinking about what should I say, and I carry with me this little card and on this card is the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. So I basically gave a rendition of that prayer, and that’s really what this whole thing is about.

So all these people who talk about turning to whatever… people need to stop overthinking what everybody is saying and listen to what is happening around us.

A lecture on “overthinking” is hard to take from someone who is so prominent within the US conspiracy theory milieu and speaker circuit.

For some reason, Flynn doesn’t tell us how he came to have this card in the first place, nor does he address the issue of its esoteric/occult provenance or its modification. Most Christians would regard a prayer derived from Prophet as inappropriate, and evangelicals – particularly at the neo-Pentecostal end – would normally recoil in horror at the “demonic” connotations of reciting such a text. Yet there is no sign that Kunneman or any other prominent evangelical figure has a problem with what Flynn did, and the only one to have spoken out so far against Flynn’s “seven rays” reference is the fringe anti-Semite pastor Rick Wiles.

I did a video comparison of I AM / Church Universal Triumphant cult leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet in 1984 and Mike Flynn in 2021.

It’s verbatim the same. He just changed “I AM” to “WE WILL”

Please share this with his cult. It’s important that they know he is not a Christian. pic.twitter.com/dFxKZBw4pn

— Jim Stewartson, Antifascist, #RIPQ 🇺🇸🏴‍☠️ (@jimstewartson) October 6, 2021

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