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Special Prayer Target: Call2Fall - Sunday, July 5, 2009
June 18, 2009
Dear Praying Friends,
God holds those of us who identify ourselves as His people preeminently responsible for our nation’s condition. He charges us to humble ourselves and pray and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways (2 Chr 7:14). FRC has launched an emphasis that embodies this charge: the Call2Fall (see http://www.Call2Fall.com).
Hastily planned due to the urgency of the hour, the Call2Fall is now just three Sundays away on July 5! Christ-centered churches from many denominations will join the Call2Fall on our knees in repentant prayer. This is the key to our hope to pass on to our children a free society, where God and the Constitution are honored, where civil government protects and defends the innocent and punishes evildoers, and where public servants labor to produce moral and healthy public policy (see Rom 13:1-7).
Why is FRC leading this initiative? The short answer: obedience! FRC President Tony Perkins has long pondered the promise of Scripture in 2 Chronicles 7:14. He was uniquely prompted by the Holy Spirit to lead this effort.
How Call2Fall Came About - A few months ago, Tony preached in a large Southern California church about “Real Change” in America. It was a message of “repentance.” This message was preached by the prophets, Jesus, John the Baptist, Peter and all of the apostles (see Eze 18:30-32; Mt 3:2; 4:7; Mk 6:12; Acts 2:38; 17:30). After church, an elderly lady stood in line to greet Tony. She said Tony’s message was for the entire Church and that God had called Tony to call the Church to get on its knees. Tony thanked her, and told her he would pray about it. She stopped him, “No, you don’t understand… God has called you to call His people to get on their knees.”
Tony has long believed that repentance and revival in the Church offer the only hope for reversing the godlessness and immorality that have characterized the trend in our laws and government for fifty years, a trend now spiraling out of control. He has pondered God’s call to humility, the first step in 2 Chronicles 7:l4, preceding the call to pray, repent, and seek His face. Humility is something many Americans know little about. How do we begin to humble ourselves?
Later that day, flying home, Tony picked up a book and began to read where he had left off. It was Ira Stoll’s biography of Samuel Adams. Tony’s eyes lit upon the place where the Continental Congress proclaimed a day of “public humiliation, fasting, and prayer throughout the Colonies on July 20th, 1775.” A year before the Declaration, military clashes between Britain and the colonies were already underway. It was a time of great perplexity, but God-fearing men like Samuel Adams knew what they had to do. They called Americans to seek the face of God. Three million heeded that urgent “call to fall.” Later, a friend of Adams, James Warren, described what he observed in his church that Sunday.
“This fast,” he wrote, “has been observed as you could wish; with that deference to the authority that appointed it; with that devotion that our circumstances require. It is a grand solemnity. Three millions of people on their knees at once, supplicating the aid of Heaven, is a striking circumstance, and a very singular one in America. May the blessings of Heaven follow in answer to our prayers!
When Tony saw the words, “three millions of people on their knees at once…,” he remembered the lady who told him, “God has called you to call His people to get on their knees.”
A Time to Act - Stirred, Tony conferred with FRC’s Pastors Council, who wholeheartedly affirmed this call. The urgency of the hour demanded a swift response. It soon became clear that July 5th, 2009, the day after “Independence Day,” was the day to declare our “national dependence upon God.”
In Churches, on Sunday Morning - The second thing became clear. While God has raised up many para-church prayer ministries during the past 35 years, this effort would be led by pastors and conducted in churches on Sunday morning, during regular Sunday services. The hope was that churches - pastors and people - would search the word, study the Biblical call to “solemn assembly,” and read about days of “humiliation, prayer and fasting” called amid historic times of national crisis.
Tony is urging pastors to organize days of fasting, prayer and other Biblical expressions of humility and repentance in their churches, as the Lord leads them. The primary call is for an act of corporate humility; for each church to unite with believers across the land by taking just 3 to 5 minutes during the Sunday morning service to fall to their knees in humble repentance, asking God to forgive and heal our land.
The Biblical Mandate - Ezekiel, called to be a watchman to Israel just as today’s preachers are called to be to America, was warned of God that should he fail to warn God’s people of sin’s consequences that he would be held to account. Later God commanded Ezekiel to tell the watchmen to “sound the trumpet” and warn of impending danger. God said He has no desire to see sinners die; rather He wants them to repent so that He can withhold His judgment. He warned that if the watchmen saw judgment coming, but failed to warn the people, the people would die, but the watchmen would give an account to God for their blood (Eze 3:16-21; 33:1-16).
Through the prophet Joel, the Lord also issued a call to the spiritual watchmen of that day:
Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet.
Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?
Then will the LORD be jealous for his land, and pity his people (Joel 2:15 -18).
Time is Short - Sufficient numbers of Christians and churches must hasten to meet God’s conditions as outlined in 2 Chronicles 7:14 for real change to happen and for our nation to have a chance. Without it, the handwriting for America is already “on the wall.” Our corporate sins are multiplying swiftly and with them, unthinkable consequences.
For example, let’s look at the consequences of just one contemporary issue. Five New England states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, have legalized same-sex marriage. So has the Midwestern state of Iowa. The public schools in each state will teach and defend homosexuality and same-sex “marriage” as legally protected behavior to schoolchildren at every age of development. However, Jesus warned that it would be better for a person to be drowned in the bottom of the sea than to cause one innocent, believing child, to stumble or sin (Mt 18:6 ASV, ESV).
Yet six states and the District of Columbia will all soon be teaching public school children that homosexuality is normal and OK. They will teach that homosexual “marriage” is good - morally equivalent to holy matrimony. Isaiah wrote, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Is 5:20) This is just one of thousands of consequences that this one sinful public policy change will make.
Please Help Enlist Others for Call2Fall - There are just three weeks to go! Prayer Targets readers understand the urgent necessity of prayer and repentance. We need your help now to inform churches across the nation about the Call2Fall!
Would you please consider doing three things?
- Sign up to participate in the Call2Fall (visit www.Call2Fall.com and click on “I’m in.”)
- Enlist your pastor and church to participate.
- Send Christian friends a personal note, urging them and their churches to join us.
Send this link: http://call2fall.com/welcome_participant to everyone you know. There are devotional Blogs, inspirational videos, suggestions for individual and corporate prayer, bulletin inserts, Bible study materials and more.
- Please pray often between now and July 5 that God will use this Biblical call to birth a new movement of prayer and repentance! May tens of thousands of churches embrace the Call2Fall! May God birth a season of solemn assemblies that bring revival to the Church and another Great Awakening! May God give our children an America where He is honored as Savior and Lord, that will become a light to the nations (2 Chr 7:14; Jer 3:12; 4:1-4; Joel 1:13-15; 2:12-19; Mal 3:7a; Mt 4:5-6; Acts 3:19; Jas 4:10; 1 Pet 5:6).
As always there are many significant problems that demand our attention, but nothing is as urgent as praying for this nationwide, God-honoring response to 2 Chronicles 7:14. Thank you for your faith and past prayers, and thank you for praying now!
Sincerely,
Rev. Pierre Bynum
National Prayer Director |
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