In the final weeks of the 2008 presidential election, one of the religious leaders closest to Sarah Palin hinted that the Alaska governor might soon get an unexpected career boost... from a terrorist attack.
Independent Charismatic Christianity vexed the McCain campaign throughout the 2008 campaign, first in the debacle that followed John McCain's decision to accept a long-sought political endorsement from Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee, when an anti-Semitic 2005 sermon by Hagee surfaced, then through infighting between Sarah Palin and McCain campaign staff.
Palin's new autobiography Going Rogue, and the numerous Palin media appearances accompanying the book's release, has provoked a fresh outburst of hostility, especially from McCain campaign head Steve Schmidt - who declared Palin's book to be "all fiction". In June, Schmidt warned that if Palin were nominated as the 2012 GOP presidential candidate the result would be "catastrophic."
Fueling Schmidt's obvious hostility may be an astonishing but little noticed September 2008 "prophecy" from Palin's prayer group leader of almost two decades, Alaska evangelist Mary Glazier, that seemed to envision John McCain winning the 2008 election but then being killed soon thereafter, tragically, in a terrorist attack that would leave Palin to succeed McCain as president.
On September 22, with the 2008 presidential election little more than five weeks away, Glazier sent a prophetic "Warning of Imminent Attack" out through her prayer network [see 1, 2, 3]. Glazier later released a slightly sanitized version but her original "warning" concerned an "imminent" terrorist attack that could leave American in mourning with Sarah Palin "stepping into an office that she was mantled for."
Sarah Palin has been close to Mary Glazier throughout the entire course of Palin's political career. On June 13, 2008 Mary Glazier told Christian leaders at a church conference held near Seattle that Palin had joined Glazier's personal prayer group in 1989, around the time Palin went into politics [to listen to excerpt of Glazier's speech, see video at end of story],
"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!"
In the same speech, Glazier described an envisioned campaign of what would appear to be violent "religious cleansing" of unbelievers :
"There is a tipping point, at which, at which time, because of the sin of the land, the people then have to be displaced. But while this measure of wickedness is rising, the measure of faith in the church is rising. 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."
A January 2009 Charisma Magazine article, The Faith Of Sarah Palin confirmed that Palin's relationship with Mary Glazier continued into 2008, when Palin and Glazier prayed together both over the phone and at the Alaska Governor's Prayer Breakfast. As the Charisma article quoted Glazier,
"She asked me to pray with her for wisdom and direction," Glazier recalls. "I sensed a real heart of surrender to the will of God in her. God often chooses the least likely people to be at the forefront, and I do believe that God has equipped [Palin] for this hour."
As the article details, Mary Glazier's prayer group has been praying for Palin, whom Glazier feels has been selected by God for political advancement, for the entire length of Palin's political career:
Mary Glazier heads an Alaska-based prayer ministry called Windwalkers International. Charisma caught up with her on her way to a prayer meeting in Anchorage, the purpose of which was to pray specifically for Palin. This is nothing new, according to Glazier. "We actually began to pray for [Palin] before she became mayor of Wasilla," Glazier says. "We felt then that she was the one God had selected."
Mary Glazier is one of two religious leaders (along with Thomas Muthee) associated with Sarah Palin who claim to have successfully fought witches. Glazier has described a campaign of "prayer warfare" which she says her prayer group used to drive a woman, whom Glazier claimed was a witch, out of the state of Alaska. As Glazier told the Christian magazine SpiritLed Woman, for a 2003 article, "As we continued to pray against the spirit of witchcraft, her incense altar caught on fire, her car engine blew up, she went blind in her left eye, and she was diagnosed with cancer."
Glazier is an apostle in C. Peter Wagner's International Coalition of Apostles. Her fellow apostles include retired Col. Jim Ammerman, who controls 6-8 percent of the chaplains in the US military and the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, who has helped shape the Democratic "Third Way" platform on culture war issues such as abortion. The NHCLC has just formed a strategic alliance with John Hagee's Christians United For Israel. Mary Glazier also serves on the elite Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, and is credited with having brought the movement to Alaska. [for more on this religious movement see here]