Just days after a distinctively special gathering of God’s people, earnestly expressing repentance and intercession for this generation, I was invited to watch something that I absolutely must share with you. It sounded like nothing I ever heard before. And that’s because our current context is a time like none of us have ever experience before. But, even more, it’s because witnessing the broken, heart-felt contrition of a large number of fellow believers from all over the world in a single public gathering is truly unique.

Hundreds of people gathered for this Day of Repentance in D.C. on Jan 31st and many more watched online. According to co-leaders Jim Garlow and Tony Perkins, “God showed up.”

If you’d like to watch a replay of the National Gathering of Prayer and Repentance, you can do so here: https://ngpr.org/.

Today, I pray the Lord will help me share with you at least a taste of this exceptional prayer time. I’ll say right from the start, that if you have even a single hour in this coming week to give yourself to praying with others to sincerely call out to God for help in our national time of need, you WILL be profoundly rewarded with renewed hope, and invigorated to invite others to a more intimate time with your God and Savior, Jesus, our Messiah and LORD.

Lincoln’s 1863 Prayer & Fasting Proclamation

Do you remember ever reading or hearing President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation? Though it’s over 160 years in our past, How well does it apply to our nation today? Hear an excerpt of the text of Lincoln’s Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day, in March of 1863:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

 Reference: https://www.leaderu.com/orgs/cdf/onug/lincoln.html

Every one of us who recognizes the desperate and seemingly hopeless condition of our world and nation in our time, can be tempted to fear, to extreme grief, and even cowardice and capitulation to the enemy.

Pastor Jim Garlow spoke some of the sobering realities of our time of global crisis.

Rabbi author of the book, The Return of the Gods, Jonathan Cahn, was introduced by Pastor Jim Garlow to give a brief teaching to set the tone of the five-hour meeting. If you haven’t yet read that book, I think you’ll want to get a copy as soon as you possibly can.

After the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, reminded us of the prayer of Israel’s King Solomon for wisdom in the face of his challenging time, a slate of several dozen members of our nation’s civic leadership, particularly our congress, without formal introduction, were given time to give their sincere prayers of repentance and need. It’s fascinating to listen to the sincerity and brokenness of these men and women.

After that, time was given to several different types of group leaders. First were pastors who have stood boldly up to tyrannical persecution. You might recognize some of them for the courage they’ve shown to the world in recent times of unlawful government suppression, like Canada’s pastor Artur Pawlowski.

Many of those who prayed at this special prayer meeting that was hosted by the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., have suffered and experienced God’s miraculous deliverance from seemingly hopeless situations. A whole string of young people in various parts of society were also given time to pray on behalf of their generation.

Significant time was given to let representatives from many of the countries of the world pray on behalf of their nations. This was precious to me, just knowing some of the difficult situations that the people of those lands are enduring. It’s not just the US that has been enduring painful fruit of evil and tyrannical oppression.

When you take the time to actually sit down, listen and personally join in with the prayers of your brothers and sisters in Christ – even for a recorded, Spirit-anointed prayer meeting – it’s indisputably amazing to sense the presence of God, and be stirred in your innermost being with the reality that He is moving on people all over the world to call out to God for His mercy and intervention for His deliverance and salvation.

After listening and joining these many fellow believers in prayer, in the very heart of Washington D.C., I’m sure you will sense, as I did, that God IS not only stirring His contrite servants to voice their dependency on Him, but He’s also raising up a generation of courageous watchmen and warriors to stand for righteousness and expose the works of darkness. And that’s just the kind of providential intervention that will confound the works of the devil and all his minions. He’s raising up Daniels to influence rulers. He’s positioning Esthers to intervene and in the complex workings of governments. He’s preparing ordinary people to use their God-given gifts and positions of influence to change the battleground for a different outcome than our adversaries have planned.  

There’s a tremendous difference between a generation of apostasy and a generation of humble ‘Image-Barrers’ of their Creator who cry out for God’s deliverance… even if it’s just a remnant.

As evil and dark as the horrible things being done by perpetrators of the enemy in our world ARE, yet God is using his humble children to stand against the wicked deceivers. That’s why we must not faint or give up in distressing times. This prayer and repentance gathering is a beacon of hope for us to share with others. Too many people that you and I know, don’t even know that such a meeting even happened. And they won’t ever know about it until you tell them.

Though we see all around us, what seems like an overwhelming ocean of destructive evil and godlessness, ours is unlike the time when God’s prophet Ezekiel had to prophecy a message of complete judgment and destruction upon Jerusalem.  He said:

“And I searched for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found no one. Thus, I have poured out My indignation on them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath; their way I have brought upon their heads,” declares the Lord God. (Ezekiel 22:30-31).

God was looking for intercessors then but found none.

He’s looking for intercessors now, and many are rising up in humble repentance. As they are hearing like what Isaiah heard,

“Who shall I send and who will go for us?”  Isaiah replied, “Here am I, send me!” (Isaiah 6:8).

There is a reason for the big difference between then (in the time of ancient Israel) and now. By His resurrection, Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and earth (Matthew 28:18) and He has given to us His awesome authority over all the power of the enemy. He is still building His assembly, His family, His Ekklesia… and as they receive His authority and use it against the illegitimate powers raised up against the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:5), they will prevail over the gates of Hell and over all the deceptions of the evil rulers of this age.