Nation Builders founder Mary Colbert says a new bill the Democratic-majority House recently passed threatens the survival of her nationwide prayer calls.
The Senate is set to vote on WC Docket No. 18-155 (“Updating the Intercarrier Compensation Regime to Eliminate Access Arbitrage”) this Thursday, Oct. 3. The bill will require participants to pay to enter conference calls instead of accessing them free.
The Rural Broadband Association (NTCA) believes the bill will eliminate abuses of intercarrier compensation and protect rural consumers. (Intercarrier compensation, according to the FCC, is the charges one carrier pays to another to “originate, transport and/or terminate telecommunications traffic.”)
But Colbert believes the Democratic Party’s real intentions are much more sinister: “[The bill] is trying to shut us down from having free calls for prayer, because we can get people from all over the world now coming on free to pray. I couldn’t believe it. The devil is that scared of our prayers?”
She addressed her fellow prayer warriors across the nation in a text alert:
“Attn: Intercessors and concerned patriots, it has been brought to our attention by CEO Dave Erickson, Free Conference Call founder, that the House has passed an egregious bill to shut down this much-needed phone line for ministries, nonprofits and small-business owners. … I am asking you to phone your two U.S. senators and tell them to vote against this horrible bill passed by the House. This is an evil plot to shut down ministries to have access to free conference line calling.”
Colbert started her conference prayer calls during the 2016 presidential election campaign in response to prophecies about Donald Trump that began to emerge. Colbert heard from a patient who had received a prophecy that Trump would become president.
Colbert told Charisma News in 2016 that she immediately knew that prophecy was a word from God. As the presidential election campaign progressed, she felt Trump needed to be covered in prayer. So with the help of her son, Colbert set up conference calls every morning at 9 a.m. so they could pray for Trump and other political leaders. One of those calls had as many as 100,000 people.
Those calls, which last anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, have been free since Nation Builders’ inception.
“I’m definitely on the radar,” she says. “They’re not wanting me to do what I did for 2016 in 2020.”
Colbert’s strategy for 2020 was to expand Nation Builders’ prayer calls. By creating a new line per state, she says, Nation Builders could grow to the point of allowing hundreds of thousands of people to join the prayer calls.
Colbert is hopeful the bill won’t pass in the Senate because of its Republican majority, but she still encourages believers across the U.S. to speak out against the legislation.
“People need to call their senator’s office and say, ‘Vote no against this legislation to charge for free conference calls,'” Colbert says.
