"The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision." (Ezek. 12:23)
New England Concerts of Prayer sends this report on a recent crusade in Boston, of all places, that drew 18,000 people:
Curiously (but not surprisingly) there was no mention in the Boston Globe. In Sunday’s Ideas section, there was a front-page article on the abortion-rights movement rediscovering religion, but not an inch on what happened at the Garden.
It is reminiscent of New York City in the fall of 1857. Jeremiah Lanphier’s Wednesday Noon prayer hour had become an underground phenomenon. His church, “Old North Dutch,” could not hold all the people who came to pray. Neither could all the other churches in lower Manhattan – or the firehouses and police stations, the restaurants and theaters.
Word reached the uptown editorial offices of that city’s two great newspapers: Something extraordinary was going on downtown. “Nonsense!” scoffed James Gordon Bennett of the Herald. “If it was news, we would have heard about it!” His arch-rival, Horace Greeley of the Tribune, had exactly the same response.
Nevertheless, on the remote chance that something might be going on, they each sent their best man to cover it. When their ace reporters came back born-again and praising God, the astonished editors realized something significant was afoot. They began to cover it, and word began to spread of the Great Prayer Revival of 1857, which eventually went around the world and sparked revivals in both the Union and Confederate Armies.
When the one who controls secular media does not like a newsworthy event, he renders it a non-event by withholding coverage. That happened in Washington in 1980. Other than couple of photos of bizarre fringe elements and two column-inches of copy, the Washington Post ignored the fact that a family event of epic proportions had taken place on the Mall. But other newspapers did cover it, and the further west one got, the wider and deeper the coverage.
Twenty-six years later, there are many more vehicles to get the word out – ipods, live-streaming video, Christian radio and television networks, email, and the Internet itself. All who should know, will know.
Indeed they will. Something is stirring in New England (and in Connecticut and Massachusetts in particular) that cannot be hidden or ignored by the media much longer. We know that if there had been a gathering of 18,000 people for nearly anything else in Boston, the press would have covered it extensively. But that's not the point. The point is that the Word of God is not bound and Christians are only bound or limited if they choose to be limited by seeking the approval of men.
The Church is re-learning the great lesson that the weapons of her warfare are not fleshly but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Because of this the great movements of prayer and unity are getting ready to break forth into a great revival in New England. Some reporter somewhere, perhaps at the Boston Globe, perhaps at the Hartford Courant, is missing a great story in the making.
Tags: Christianity, Connecticut, Massachusetts, News
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