Are You Part of the Call2Fall?
I have prayed for a spiritual and moral awakening in America for over forty years. Why? Because I believe that a great reformation of the world’s leading nation would make a profound and positive impact on fulfilling the Great Commission in this generation.
Also–it’s happened before–three times actually. And each time revival came to America, a surge of spiritual life sent waves of blessing all over the world.
Are you a part of the Call2Fall?
Here’s America’s revival history:
The First Great Awakening – It began in the 1730’s in New England and lasted for over a decade. One-fifth of the Colonies committed their lives to Christ and the moral steel to build a new nation was born. Our founding fathers were children of the America’s first great spiritual gusher.
The Evangelical Revival took place in the early 19th century centering in camp meetings in the “western” frontier. Thousands of people renewed their faith in God with much supernatural phenomenon. This was the mega-church movement of the time, and greatly aided America’s continental development and missionary advance around the world.
The Great Revival – It began after the Stock Market Crash of 1857 and lasted through the Civil War. Over 60% of the Confederate Army gave their lives to Christ during the awakening–and following the war’s end and the abolition of slavery, the largest missions movement up-until-that-time was launched. The Student Volunteer Movement sent 100,000 missionaries world-wide between 1880 and 1930. Many of them were women (because 600,000 men had died in the War Between the States).
There have been other moves of God in the 20th century including the Pentecostal Revival, the charismatic movement, and the rise of evangelicalism–including the national and spiritual renewal during the Reagan years.
But there has not been a great awakening for over one hundred and fifty years.
By American standards, we’re overdue. Will 2016 be the year that God visits us once again?
Only he knows–and he usually doesn’t tell. He just “sets his people praying” and comes in power when we meet the conditions of humbling ourselves, seeking his face, and turning away from sin (2 Chronicles 7:14).
That’s what the Call2Fall is all about.
On Sunday, July 3, 2016, millions of Christians in the United States will fall to their knees in repentance and prayer and ask God to do in our hearts and nation what no man or government can accomplish. I have been working with the Call 2 Fall for seven years and and encourage you to talk to your pastor or priest and make sure your congregation participates.
Here is the vision for Call2Fall.
“We’re asking churches as an act of humility, on behalf of the church first and the nation second, to get on our knees and cry out to God on July 3,” said Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins, who is spearheading the initiative. “On July 4 we celebrate our independence, and it’s our desire on July 53to declare our dependence upon God as a people and as a nation.”
Perkins hopes to see millions of Christians in scores of thousands of churches nationwide kneel in prayer for three to five minutes this coming Sunday before Independence Day, and he is urging pastors to register their congregations at the Call2Fall Web site. Perkins noted that the prayer call is not to advance public policy, but to see spiritual renewal.
“I think the church is coming to a point where we’re coming to the end of our own devices and we’re looking to God for the prescription of what it will take to turn this nation around,” Perkins said. “And I think we can’t come to God on our terms, we have to go to Him on His terms, and He’s made it very clear [in 2 Chronicles 7:14] … that we are to humble ourselves before Him and seek Him and turn from our wicked ways—and that’s not the nation, that’s the church. So I’m very encouraged that if the church will take this challenge, take the call to fall, that God will move in this nation.”
Although other movements have called Christians to prayer and repentance, the Call2Fall uses Independence Day as a touch point for addressing the Church’s need to seek God for national renewal.
“We feel deeply and passionately that if something is not done quickly, we really could lose our whole country,” says Pastor Larry Stockstill. “As Paul Revere woke up the nation to the invasion of the British, we’re waking up the nation to the invasion of the demonic powers that are pulling us away from God.”
“There really isn’t a new political agenda we can pull out of the hat or any other form of medicine for America,” Stockstill added. “It’s only prayer and fasting.”
Another Call2Fall supporter, Dr. Richard Land, notes that great revival movements typically start with fasting and prayer, and he expects Southern Baptists to be very receptive to the prayer effort. “We are similarly convinced that the only real answer for America is spiritual renewal and revival that must start with those that claim the name of Christ,” Land said. “We believe that as Christians we have failed to live in a way that would be as pleasing to the Lord as we would hope, and we need to repent of that and humble ourselves, and we need to seek His face and seek His guidance and direction for ourselves, for our churches and for our country.
“I think that the Holy Spirit is leading different segments of the Lord’s kingdom in a very similar direction to call for the revival that our hearts yearn for.”
African American pastor Wellington Boone says the nation is at a point of repentance or humiliation. “I know that I’d rather be voluntarily humble than to be humbled by God,” said Boone, who leads a national network of churches.
“Our nation is seeing some judgment, and the men of God have to stand up and say what’s necessary to get God to turn for us instead of turn against us,” Boone added.
Stockstill, who helped New Life Church address a sex and drug scandal involving its pastor, Ted Haggard, in 2006, said the call to repentance begins first with pastors, whom he said are often failing to offer moral leadership in the nation. He said churchgoers, too, have drifted into carnality, prayerlessness and compromise.
“[Christians must] decry our own failures, our own sins, our own loss of influence to the nation and ask God to restore first pastors, then churches and then our nation into revival,” Stockstill said.
Another supporter, Bishop Harry Jackson of the High Impact Leadership Coalition comments:
“This is not an anti-Obama or anti-administration movement. Every president needs the power and wisdom of God in order to take our rightful position in the world and appropriately administer justice and represent not only the nation but the world in God’s name. … I am just expectant that we’re going to see something dramatic happen. Not through demonstration, not through political action … but the spiritual dimension, God awakening and quickening the hearts of our people, causing them to be revived by His grace.”
However, Jackson said religious liberty will be in jeopardy without a significant cultural shift. “We need to recognize that if we do not violently—in terms of spiritual violence, not physical violence—violently, aggressively seek God in these spiritual things, we are going to be the Christian community and oppressed people, discriminated against and put down by this culture,” he said. “But God has ordained that we turn this around. I believe we’re going to see America changed.”
Real change. Spiritual and moral change. That’s what we need in 2016.
Just thirteen days following the Call2Fall, hundreds of thousands of believers will converge on the Washington Mall for Together 2016: Re-set, another special day of prayer for revival in America.
The Call2Fall is the heart cry of primarily older leaders in the Church. Together 2016 is a vision of the younger generation to “re-set” our nation back to seeking and honoring God.
July 30, 2016 is also the 60th anniversary of our national motto: In God We Trust. There is a movement underway to saturate the nation with “window decals” as an expression of the American identity and our true hope for the future. You can get your window decals here.
America’s fourth great awakening is upon the heart of God. Let’s prepare ourselves. Let’s pray individually and in small groups. Let’s fall to our knees on July 3. Let’s converge on the nation’s capital on July 16.
Let’s not ask God to bless America. Let’s change our hearts and lives so that we can be a blessing to Him in reaching the world for Jesus Christ.
