by CHUCK PIERCE

http://www.gloryofzion.org/illinois.htm

ILLINOIS

Illinois has been a more conservative (than liberal) state for many, many years. However, I believe satan has targeted this state (at the heart of the nation) to tear down the values we’ve always stood for. For the first time in many, many years, the entire political structure is in the hand of a more liberal element. However, as our state is uniting in intercessory prayer, we are watching signs of the turn-around take place.
 
When you see the videos of transformation around the world, one of the signs is the reproductively of the crops and the environment. Illinois is the largest corn producing state in the nation, and we must guard our ability to feed the nation and the world. Illinois, under God’s blessing, can and will be stronger than it has ever been, and we declare Jesus, Lord over Illinois.
 
Just as we are praying for a new political climate that will honor God, we are praying for new values to come back to our land. Several boats for gambling have been licensed in the last few years. Now they are targeting cities for casinos. We are praying intensely against this move, which would only cause moral decline in our state. As the Illinois Strategic Prayer Network is rising up over the entire state, there is awareness throughout the intercessors’ leadership that there is already coming a shift in the heavenlies that is manifesting in many areas.
 
One of our targets has been the establishment of new businesses to take the place of many jobs that have been lost to foreign countries. THIS IS HAPPENING!! In spite of bad political leadership, God is honoring the prayers of believers to restore Illinois completely.
 
We have dealt with several areas in the state where sins have been committed against the Native Americans here. We still have more to do, but progress is being made there, too. Continue to lift us up in prayer for that.
 
Our Legislature recently passed a law allowing homosexuals, lesbians and transvestites, to be protected by Civil Rights. This bill was slipped through very quickly and without much attention. Now that it is passed, our Legislators are doing their best to undo some of this un-Godly establishment in our state law. It doesn’t go into effect until January 2006, and we believe by then to reverse this bill and bring God’s favor back in Illinois. Some of our legislators, who are believers, have entered a bill to make our public libraries free from pornography, so that children and youth will not have ready access to this destructive and un-Godly appetite. Along with that, there is an Embryonic Stem Cell Referendum Bill before our house. We are confident God is turning Illinois around, and we solicit your corporate prayers for us.

During the Chuck Pierce and Dutch Sheets’ 50 State Tour to Illinois in August, 2003, Chuck gave the following word to John Eckhardt and the state of Illinois. We are standing and believing that what the Lord has spoken will not return to Him void:
“ I'm about to visit Illinois a second time. You will be a prototype for the states.  You'll begin to build what it takes to house My glory. There will be six weeks of rearranging.  You will have an order and an anointing to put things in order. Many will come to this state to be a part of that glory.  The glory will not only be in the house, but without this house, says the Lord.  From this state My glory shall proceed forth as a wheel that shall turn this nation.”

Brief State History

Early Inhabitants and European Exploration
At the end of the 18th cent. the Illinois, Sac, Fox, and other Native American groups were living in the river forests, where many centuries before them the prehistoric Mound Builders had dwelt. French explorers and missionaries came to the region early. Father Marquette and Louis Jolliet, on their return from a trip down the Mississippi, paddled up the Illinois River in 1673, and two years later Marquette returned to establish a mission in the Illinois country.

In 1679 the French explorer Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, went from Lake Michigan to the Illinois, where he founded (1680) Fort Creve Coeur and with his lieutenant, Henri de Tonti, completed (1682–83) Fort St. Louis on Starved Rock cliff. French occupation of the area was sparse, but the settlements of Cahokia and Kaskaskia achieved a minor importance in the 18th cent., and the area was valued for fur trading.

By the Treaty of Paris of 1763, ending the French and Indian Wars, France ceded all of the Illinois country to Great Britain. However, the British did not take possession until resistance, led by the Ottawa chief, Pontiac, was quelled (1766). In the American Revolution, George Rogers Clark and his expedition captured (1778) the British posts of Cahokia and Kaskaskia before going on to take Vincennes. The Illinois region was an integral part of the Old Northwest that came within U.S. boundaries by the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution. Under the Ordinance of 1787 the area became the Northwest Territory. Made part of Indiana Territory in 1800, Illinois became a separate territory in 1809.

Statehood and Settlement
The fur trade was still flourishing throughout most of Illinois when it became a state in 1818, but already settlers were pouring down the Ohio River by flatboat and barge and across the Genesee wagon road. In 1820 the capital was moved from Kaskaskia to Vandalia. The Black Hawk War (1832) practically ended the tenure of the Native Americans in Illinois and drove them W of the Mississippi. In the 1830s there was heavy and uncontrolled land speculation. Mob fury broke out with the murder (1837) of the abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton and in the lynching (1844) of the Mormon leader Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum at Carthage.

Industrialization and Abraham Lincoln
Industrial development came with the opening of an agricultural implements factory by Cyrus H. McCormick at Chicago in 1847 and the building of the railroads in the 1850s. During this period the career of Abraham Lincoln began. In the state legislature, Lincoln and his colleagues from Sangamon co. had worked hard and successfully to bring the capital to Springfield in 1839. As Illinois moved toward a wider role in the country's affairs, Lincoln and another Illinois lawyer, Stephen A. Douglas, won national attention with their debates on the slavery issue in the senatorial race of 1858. In 1861, Lincoln became president and fought to preserve the Union in the face of the South's secession. During the Civil War, Illinois supported the Union, but there was much proslavery sentiment in the southern part of the state.

By the 1860s industry was well established, and many immigrants from Europe had already settled in the state, foreshadowing the influx still to come. Immediately after the Civil War, industry expanded to tremendous proportions, and the Illinois legislature, by setting aside acreage for stockyards, prepared the way for the development of the meatpacking industry. Economic development had outrun the construction of facilities, and Chicago was a mass of flimsy wooden structures when the fire of 1871 destroyed most of the city.

Discontent and the Rise of the Labor Movement
In the latter part of the 19th cent. farmers in the state revolted against exorbitant freight rates, tariff discrimination, and the high price of manufactured goods. Illinois farmers enthusiastically joined the Granger movement. Laborers in factories, railroads, and mines also became restive, and from 1870 to 1900 Illinois was the scene of such violent labor incidents as the Haymarket Square riot of 1886 and the Pullman strike of 1894.

In the 20th cent. labor conditions improved, but violent labor disputes persisted, notably the massacre at Herrin in 1922 during a coal-miners' strike and the bloody riot during a steel strike at Chicago in 1937. State politics became divided by the conflicting forces of farmers, laborers, and corporations, and opposing political machines came into being downstate and upstate.

Diversification and Change
In 1937 new oil fields were discovered in southern Illinois, further enhancing the state's industrial development. During World War II the nation's first controlled nuclear reaction was accomplished at the Univ. of Chicago, paving the way for development of nuclear weapons during the war. The war also spurred the further growth of the Chicago metropolitan area, and in the postwar period thousands of African Americans from the rural south came seeking industrial work.

Adlai E. Stevenson, governor of Illinois from 1949 to 1953, achieved national prominence in winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956. Also during the 1950s the “gateway amendment” to the Illinois constitution simplified the state's constitutional amendment process. In 1970, Illinois adopted a new state constitution that, among other reforms, banned discrimination in employment and housing.

Southern Illinois experienced population declines in the 1950s and 60s as farms in the south became more mechanized, providing fewer jobs in the area. The area was hard hit again in the 1980s as farm prices fell and farm machinery, the major industrial product of southern Illinois, was no longer in high demand. The northern portion of the state saw a major decline in manufacturing in the 1970s and 80s, which was partially offset by an increase in the service and trade industry and Chicago's continued strength as a financial center.

Source: The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Columbia University Press. Copyright 2004. http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/us/A0858749.html

Recently, I sent out the first portion of a prophetic word the Lord brought to us during one of our Tuesday Morning Prayers. The word encourages us to "wait for His Presence, hear the heartbeat and get in synch with His best for you." Much response came from this prophetic word. I now feel it is time for the remainder of the word to be released. The second part of the word is below. This encourages us to understand that the faith window is changing and the Lord is "realigning and developing our faith in the next three months." Read and pray this word over yourself.

Prophetic Word of the Lord from Chuck Pierce

"You might ask yourself, 'Why have I been positioned here in this mundane job when all I want to do is worship You?' I would say, You are there because of timing. Otherwise, you would get out of time, and touch the ark, rather than follow behind or carry the ark. Enjoy and celebrate the mundane assignments and then you will see your ark move."

"This is a season that I am teaching My people how to enter into My presence. You must have My Presence to secure your future. Without you being where I have placed you NOW, you could never understand My presence for your future. I am developing a testimony in you. Because of this testimony, you truly will enter into the new beginning and be repositioned in days ahead. Allow Me to develop and create the image for your future. If you will stand and allow Me to prosper everything you put your hand to, no matter how mundane and insignificant it seems to you, then you will prosper."

"O afflicted one, tossed and thrown, I am coming to comfort you. My Voice will call you up in a new way. Do not try to come up in the same way you have come up in the past, for this is a day of new beginnings. In this new beginning, I am bringing a renewal of covenant to My people. I am breathing on the way that I am agreeing with My people. You are in agreement with some things that you must let go of. I am not in agreement with those things. Break agreement, that I might renew My covenant with you. You are in agreement with the way you see yourself, and that is not the way I see you. Unless you get My image, you cannot be transformed for your future. You must see yourself the way I see You."

"It is the sure mercies of David that I am calling forth. They come through Me and agree as ONE. I have taken you through the caves and the wilderness, but now I am ready to bring you to a new beginning. The only thing that can stop this new beginning is you not yielding to Me or not receiving instruction from those I position in your path to help you find the new way. If you agree with Me, then My sure mercies that I poured out on My servant David, I will pour out on you. It was the witness that I was forming in him that enabled him to lead. Many of you are wanting to be out front without My witness. Wait for Me to witness in your spirit before you go forward."

"This is a day of rearranging leadership and preparing you with enhanced skills. I AM causing talents that have lain dormant within you to come forth. This is My new beginning, so you must let Me go before you to prepare that new beginning for you and bring you fully into it. Seek Me, while I may be found, for this is a month of seeking. There will be three months to develop faith in a new way in you. My word will become strong and you will be called forth into that place. You will find yourself establishing and breaking the ground I have given you, but you must allow Me to prepare you to stand on new ground."

"My people do not have the mind for super-abundance nor do they have the strength to carry extra baskets. This is a season that extra baskets must be carried by My people and you must carry them together. Some of you would love to grab your baskets and run, but that will not get you into the fullness of the place where I would establish you."

"Find what I have given you, but know that I can cause it to multiply. Where you did not have anything but a sack, I can multiply it into 12 baskets, but there is no way you can carry the 12 baskets by yourself. You must get realigned and find those to work with you. Know that it is the delight of My heart to bring My people into this new place."

"The new beginning has begun. I am teaching My presence in a new way. Do not look at ministry in the way that others have, for this is a time of developing witness and not a time of causing My people to be seen as ministers. My word does not return to Me void, but it produces a fullness. Watch for the fullness of My word to manifest. My ways are higher than your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts. You are limiting My high ways to your thought processes. I have other 'highways' for you to travel and other ways for you to step in. You have gotten caught in the midst of a machine and it is not what I am doing in your life. It is producing a blueprint that is NOT what I long for others to see in your life."

"In your gleaning, be very satisfied, for I am very near to you in the midst of the gleaning fields. Listen to My word and listen to My way, for others are watching you in a way that you have never been watched before. You are longing to gain audience with one and it is someone else that I am causing to see you. Even now, there are Pharaohs who are watching and observing you, and it is those that will favor you, My people."

"This is a day of transference of wealth, but you must be connected with those who have amassed it for My Kingdom plan. I know who can release it. I can realign it. This word will not return void. If you will wait for your heart to realign, then instead of void and chaos being on your path, there will be baskets full of My blessings. Wait and watch, for My presence has now realigned with you, and you will be aware of My presence at every turn."

I would encourage you to read Isaiah 55. Verse 2 says, "Listen carefully to Me and eat what is good. Let your soul delight in abundance." Tell your soul to rise up and delight in abundance. The desires of your heart must be in alignment with the delight of God to experience His abundance. I am asking for the hearts of God's people all over the globe to delight in His abundance. If you are striving over supply, stop, until you can delight in abundance.

The Lord is saying, "Incline your ear and come to Me." I decree that you are going to hear how to come forth. You will not come forth in the same way as you did in the past because the Lord is not calling you forth in the same way.

Blessings,

Chuck D. Pierce
Glory of Zion Ministries