Chuck Pierce, the self-proclaimed prophetic apostle who claims his prayers are so powerful that they caused earthquakes and captured Saddam Hussein, has issued a dire new warning that a dragon is attacking Israel and only he and his fellow apostles have the power to “silence the dragon for this time period.”

And he means all of this quite literally:

When we were flying into Tel Aviv earlier this month, I saw an unusual sunset. The sun, though setting, looked like it was rising from the ground. Above the glory realm hovering on the ground was sky. In the sky was a perfectly formed black dragon! The message the Lord had me to deliver in Jerusalem was: “The dragon is hovering over Israel. There is a birth that is near and the enemy wants to stop what God is birthing. There will be much conflict in the next several months but you can stop the dragon from having his way.” I went on to speak from Revelation 12. I called Rick Ridings, the leader of the 24 Hour House of Prayer in Jerusalem. Rick had already planned to share an earlier vision of a great fire-breathing dragon circling the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He shared that when flames came from its mouth, violence was released onto the Mount (which has been the scene of increasing turmoil over the past several months). Amazing!

We must stand and turn the enemy from Israel. In the vision, Rick was made to be aware that the dragon’s real intentions were to ignite a much larger and more far-reaching conflagration of violence. Suddenly, he saw two words in the heavens, “NOT NOW.” His message was: “I saw a dragon on the Temple Mount, but God said, ‘NOT NOW!’” A great foot descended from Heaven, pinning the dragon to the ground. Then the Lord reached down, placed shackles on the dragon’s feet, and imprisoned it in the underground mosque at the southeast corner of the Temple Mount. As this was happening, in the worship room where Rick was having the vision (which has a view of the Mount), the leader was singing from Psalm 149 about the high praise of God’s people “putting kings in chains and nobles in shackles.” In the days following this, conflict continued and many in the media were predicting an impending huge eruption of violence and the start of a new intifada (“uprising”).

In a second vision on November 4, Rick had a vision of the imprisoned dragon shrieking and attempting to break out of its dungeon in which it was imprisoned—demon spirits were going forth from its mouth out of the confines of the prison to incite terror. Rick felt the Lord say we were to ask Him, as the Judge of the Universe, to give a “gag and restraining order” to silence the dragon for this time period.