On June 7th, 2008 Sarah Palin interrupted her schedule of state business and spent Alaska state taxpayer money to fly up from Juneau to the Mat-Su Valley where she attended on June 8th two religious events dominated by the Wasilla Assembly of God, which is demonstrably Palin's key Alaska church.
At the end of one those events, young adults in a church Palin had attended for over two decades were presented with Samurai swords. "Warriors of old were considered undressed if they were without their sword... Swords were worn in service to the lord of the realm. Some of the most renowned swordsmen were the Samurai," intoned a church member officiating the sword ceremony, who then quoted Psalms 149 verses 6-9:
"May the praise of God be in their mouths and a double edged sword in their hands to inflict vengeance on the nations, and punishment on the peoples, and to bind their kings with fetters, their nobles with shackles of iron, and to carry out the sentence written against them."
In one of the two ceremonies Palin attended on June 8, 2008, known as "One Lord Sunday," a Christian supremacist gathering of Mat-Su valley area Christian church members, Palin was blessed and anointed by Wasilla Assembly of God head pastor Ed Kalnins. A second ceremony Palin attended that day was nationally publicized because of footage on the Wasilla church's website that showed Palin giving a speech in honor of students graduating from the Wasilla Assembly of God's Masters Commission program.
In the speech, governor Palin effused, "It was so cool growing up in this church!" and went on to suggest the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan was sanctioned by God, and the governor. And Palin was prayed and blessed over by Ed Kalnins and Wasilla Assembly of God founder pastor Paul Riley. But media did not delve into the nature of the Masters Commission program, nor did reporters and journalists, or bloggers for that matter, bother to watch the video segment of the June 8th, 2008 Wasilla AoG video segment in full.
Anyone who did so would have noticed, later on in the ceremony, 1) a speaker addressing Palin from the stage, indicating she was still in the audience and, 2) shortly after, a ceremony in which a speaker invoked the Samurai code of honor and male 3-year Masters Commission students were then presented with Samurai swords.
Special note was made of the specific uses of the Samurai swords gifted to the students, such as cutting down opponents from horseback, ground-level combat, and in very close combat -- as an auxiliary blade to be plucked out for a sudden, killing blow.
The one female 3-year graduate of the program present in the ceremony was presented with a western-style broadsword larger than the Samurai swords presented to the male students.
[below: 3-year graduates of Masters Commission Wasilla Alaska program given swords]
Other video to be found on the Wasilla church's web site, from a September 7, 2007 Masters Commission event at the Wasilla Assembly God, shows a national Masters Commission speaker waving a sword about from the pulpit while addressing students in the program, then playing an excerpt from the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot and suggesting to the program students that there are times when it is necessary to fight.
[below: Masters Commission national speaker Jayme Montera waves sword about during sermon, plays clip from Mel Gibson war movie "The Patriot"]
From September through to November 4th, 2008, there was an almost uniform failure, by not only mainstream media and progressive media but also bloggers, to notice such unusual and highly distinctive characteristics of Palin's religious associations. It was more than a trivial oversight; following the election, a story printed in the February 2009 issue of Charisma Magazine confirmed Palin's continuing association with Alaska religious leader Mary Glazier.
Glazier is a high level leader in a religious movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). She and Sarah Palin prayed together, both over the phone and in person, the Charisma story revealed.
On June 13, 2008 Mary Glazier told attendees at the "Opening the Gate of Heaven on Earth" conference, who represented many of the New Apostolic Reformation's top leaders, that,
There is a tipping point, at which, at which time, because of the sin of the land, the people then have to be displaced.... God is preparing a people to displace the ones whose sin is rising so that then they tip over and the church goes in -- one is removed and the church moves in and takes the territory. Now, that does not mean that the people are removed, because God removes them from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light. They are given an opportunity to change allegiances.
Later in the speech, Mary Glazier described how she had been present at the inception of Sarah Palin's political career and that Palin was in her personal prayer group :
There was a twenty-four year old woman that God began to speak to about entering into politics. She became a part of our prayer group out in Wasilla. Years later, became the mayor of Wasilla. And last year was elected Governor of the state of Alaska. Yes! Hallelujah! At her inauguration she dedicated the state to Jesus Christ. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
On January 7, 2009, both Mary Glazier and another key Third Wave and New Apostolic leader, Dutch Sheets, appeared at the church most closely linked to Sarah Palin, the Wasilla Assembly of God, where Palin was re-baptized and attended for over two and a half decades. During the church service Sheets declared that Glazier "was the lady who brought us into the state [Alaska]." On June 7, 2009 another New Apostolic Reformation leader, International Coalition of Apostles member Lance Wallnau, gave a talk at the Wasilla church, in which he outlined the "Seven Mountains Mandate."
The July 12-14, 2008 Opening the Gate of Heaven on Earth conference that featured a number of speeches and sermons -- on the plans of leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation to take control of society and government through their "Seven Mountains Strategy."
These efforts to take control of religion, family, education, arts and entertainment, media, government, and business are clearly defined in their publicity and in numerous conferences on their efforts. In an October 16, 2005 Wasilla Assembly of God church event, in a speech given shortly before he blessed and anointed Sarah Palin, Thomas Muthee quite plainly laid out the need to take over the seven "kingdoms" in the short sermon, or speech, Muthee gave before the anointing of Sarah Palin.
Loren Cunningham is credited as one of three evangelists who supposedly received the Seven Mountains idea as a vision from God. Cunningham is founder of the global evangelizing organization Youth With a Mission, which owns the increasingly notorious "C Street House" where GOP Senators John Ensign and Tom Coburn enjoy cut-rate rent and Bible classes, and swap personal secrets such as news of Ensign's recently disclosed extramarital affair.
For another informed take on Sarah Palin's religious and political leanings, see Alaska native Leah Burton's recent book Theo Palinism: The Face of Failed Extremism
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