Pastor: Prayer Can Turn Election

In a letter emailed to prayer supporters Monday, pastor Dutch Sheets of Freedom Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., asked intercessors to pray for the elections “like you’ve never prayed for any in the past.”

With prayer, he said, Republican candidates John McCain and Sarah Palin will win the election, but without it they will lose. “Lose some sleep, miss some meals—pray!” he wrote. “Pray like never before for these elections.”

He said the next president may appoint two U.S. Supreme Court justices, and Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden would likely nominate liberal judges if elected. “Make no mistake about it, the two of them do have a litmus test for Supreme Court justices, and a major part of that is Roe vs. Wade,” Sheets said, noting that both Obama and Biden voted against conservative justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts.

He said McCain and Palin have “very strong” pro-life positions, a fact that on its own “makes the choice for president simple.”

Sheets gave a similar call to prayer in 2000, when he said that without enough prayer “God’s person” would lose the election. In his current appeal, which he says surpasses the 2000 letter as the most important prayer call of his life, Sheets said prayer turned the tide of that election, adding that President Bush’s appointment of Justices Roberts and Alito confirmed that he was “God’s choice.”

Although he wants to see a first black president, Sheets wrote that Obama is not that man. “To allow that noble desire [to see an African-American president], the economy or one’s position on the war to trump this issue of life and death for the innocent unborn is simply wrong,” he said. “The scriptures teach that if we choose first to exalt righteousness and turn from evil, God promises to heal our land.”

He said the prayer efforts will require concerted spiritual warfare, as the Republican ticket faces opposition like that described in Daniel 10, when the prince of Persia fought with the angel assigned to deliver God’s answer to Daniel’s prayer. “The spiritual warfare in this election is incredibly fierce,” Sheets said, “and just as it was in Daniel’s day, it is all about restoration of a nation. And also like Daniel, we must keep praying until we win the battle in the heavens.”

In August, Sheets said the month of September would mark a shift in the election’s momentum. He believes that happened with the nomination of Palin, whom he described as a “true Esther in our generation,” but the momentum was not sustained. “We can see it turn again if we approach this battle as the spiritual warfare it truly is and bind the evil forces involved,” he wrote. “The reality is that this election can be the breakthrough we need to fully shift the Court (and ultimately our nation) or it will be an immeasurable setback that could take many years to reverse—if ever.”