WASHINGTON, D.C., June 7, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Evangelical pastor Dr. Jim Garlow told a gathering of religious conservatives from a variety of faiths and denominations that the United States is suffering from a spiritual cancer that requires enormous sacrifice and a return to truths contained in the Bible to overcome.
Garlow, the senior pastor of the Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego, revealed Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in the nation’s capital that he was speaking to them at his wife’s insistence. He choked up as he told several hundred attendees that he and his wife just discovered that she has a very advanced stage of aggressive cancer.
“In order for us to go through our land, we are going to have to go through tough things,” said Garlow. He likened the sacrifices that Americans must make to restore their country to the hardships of chemotherapy and radiation on the human body. “At the end of 2012, I want to be able to say that my wife is still alive, and so is my country,” he said.
Garlow blamed the United States’ already sky-high national debt ($14.3 trillion) on the U.S. Congress, which he said has been robbing America’s children of their future by amassing a debt that may become impossible to pay off.
“They lack biblical truth,” Garlow said, adding that the struggle in Washington is not “right verses left, but right versus wrong.”
He also condemned President Barack Obama’s failure to defend marriage in favor of same-sex “marriage.” He said gay “marriage” would deprive children deliberately of their right to have a father and a mother – a violation of the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.”
Garlow was heavily involved in rallying pastors to oppose same-sex “marriage” in California. He founded the California Pastors Rapid Response Team, which coordinated with several thousand pastors in the state to support the natural definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman in Proposition 8.
“I’m speaking on biblical issues that have political ramifications,” said Garlow, who went on to praise the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian public interest firm, for challenging pastors to record bold sermons and send them to the Internal Revenue Service as a sign they will not be intimidated against speaking out.
Garlow added that if a pastor “will not stand on biblical truth” regarding abortion, marriage, and driving the nation into debt, he recommended they vote with their feet and “find a new church.”
He said the times require the courage of the “black-robed regiment” of pastors that stirred up Americans in their churches to defend their liberty, religion, and rights in the American War for Independence.