There are moments in history when a door for massive change opens and great revolutions for good or evil spring up in the vacuum created by these openings. In these divine moments, key men and women and even entire generations risk everything to become the hinge of history, the pivotal point that determines which way the door will swing.
The rebellious generation of the 1960s seized its moment, and history crashed into the deep abyss of drug addiction, sexual immorality, hatred for authority, and a rejection of the law of God. The year, 1967, was a culminating and defining moment in that rebellion. During the year, 1967, 100,000 young people, aged 15-25, flocked to San Francisco to experience the hippie movement. This mass convergence was sparked by the hit song, San Francisco. Once there, they experimented with LSD, pot, casual sex, and Eastern mysticism in what became known as the "Summer of Love."
When these newly recruited flower children returned home at the end of the summer, they brought with them new styles and ideas, flooding the cities of the United States and Europe with a message that opposed authority and scorned conservative morals. This counterculture rebellion was fueled by music and art, and it rapidly shifted global culture.
For forty years we have been falling headlong into a black moral morass in America and all through the West. We are reaping the waves of destruction in every sector of our secular post-Christian society. Can America survive another forty years? We are declaring NO! A thousand times NO! Unless a massive spiritual shift occurs at this moment, our children will live under an antichrist system and a godless enculturation that will bring about the demise of America as we know it.
God has a prescription for such a massive shift, and it is revealed in the power of the great transitional forty-day fast. God, in His sovereign control over the parade of history, delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. Longing to release a moral code that would give foundations for righteousness, for time, and eternity, God summoned Moses to a forty-day fast on Mount Sinai. In that fast, all of history changed and the Law of God was delivered from heaven to earth. If America is going to return to God, it must recover that law again as its foundation for truth.
Elijah, at the height of Jezebel's cultic dominion over Israel, fasted forty days, broke the spell of Jezebel off of his own life, and received a mandate to anoint the next generation. That fast unleashed a movement that toppled Jezebel's regime of hell which perpetrated the destruction of family, the killing of innocent children, the silencing of the voice of God's people, and the widespread culture of sexual immorality. The fruit of that fast culminated in the utter destruction of Baal worship in Israel.
Also in the fullness of time, the glorious gospel era was born when Jesus fasted forty days and those who sat in darkness saw a great light. Clearly the forty-day fast is heaven's great transitional prescription, moving nations from failure to fulfillment of promise. Is it any surprise that when Jesus was to enter into His great sacrifice, where death would be swallowed up in victory, Elijah and Moses appeared with Him on the Mount of Transfiguration? All three of them were together as the forty-day fasters. They presided over the great transitions of history.
When the Israelites were poised to move into the Promised Land, spies were sent out for forty days. When they returned carrying an evil report, a whole generation was infected with unbelief and they turned their backs on the Promised Land. God's sentence on that generation was, "And your sons shall be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and bear the brunt of your infidelity, until your carcasses are consumed in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land forty days, for each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know My rejection" (Numbers 14:33-34 NKJV). It was forty years of judgment for forty days failure.
Conversely, the great prophet Ezekiel received a forty-day prayer assignment for a forty-year failure of Judah's iniquity. "Lie again on your right side; then you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah, forty days I have laid on you a day for each year" (see Ezekiel 4:6 NKJV). It was clearly forty days of prayer for forty years of failure.
When Jesus fasted forty days and was tempted by the devil, He quoted from the Book of Deuteronomy saying, "It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." And again, "You shall not tempt the Lord thy God," and again, "You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve" (see Matthew 4:4, 4:7, 4:10). Jesus, in His victory over Satan, was quoting the Book of Deuteronomy, the portion of Scripture delivered by Moses to the generation who failed in the desert. In His forty-day fast, Jesus was clearly identifying with that passage of Scripture and that generation which came out of Egypt. As an intercessor in His forty-day fast, He was fulfilling what a generation had failed in for forty years.
Forty years are up! Could the church of America in a forty-day fast deliver a nation out of a forty-year curse? We have scriptural precedent to believe for such a turning! Therefore, we are trumpeting a call to forty days of fasting like Moses, like Elijah, like Ezekiel, and like Jesus. We must bear the iniquity in forty days of fasting and intercession for the past forty years of divorcing God in America, embracing a culture of sexual immorality, hedonism, materialism, abortion, and the rejection of Christ in the public place. But we are also calling for forty days of fasting and prayer for the greatest outbreak of the kingdom of God, in signs and wonders, and spiritual awakening in America, which will collide with this present darkness and topple its cultural dominion over our people. Thousands went on forty-day fasts in 1946, and in 1947 the great healing revivals broke out. In 1948, the latter rain outpourings began. Bill Bright and Billy Graham's ministries were born at the same time, and Israel became a nation. Could it be that the forty-day fast preceded this explosion of power by the Spirit? (see Luke 4:14) After Jesus' forty-day fast, the Scripture says He returned in the power of the Spirit. Yes, the promise of Joel 2 is that after the fast He will pour out His Spirit on all flesh….
Forty years ago in 1967, the Jesus Movement broke out. It was a youth revival starting on the streets that swept across the country, exploding in college campuses and coffee houses. People were being saved everywhere. Now forty years later we are crying: Do it again God, way beyond the Jesus Movement!
In 1967, in a war and obviously by the supernatural hand of God, Jerusalem was taken and once again brought under the control of the state of Israel. This was a monumental signpost in the shifting of eras. The dispensation of the times of the Gentiles is now beginning to shift to the time when Jerusalem will become the last-day focus for God's activity in the earth. For forty days, we are joining Israel in a forty-day fast, crying out to God that they would see their Messiah and that they would begin to receive their greatest spiritual awakening since the days of the apostles.
Brothers and sisters, moments like these come only once in a lifetime. To miss such a moment could be to miss the purpose of God for a generation. The generation which refused to cross over the Jordan did not know that they had only one day to make the decision to cross over the Jordan, and missing that day meant forty years in the desert.
Even now we are receiving reports that other countries are calling forty-day fasts. Could we be in a global forty-day season of fasting like Jesus to see a global outbreak of light when great darkness is covering the earth?
Beginning the evening of May 28, we are calling two generations to forty days of fasting and prayer culminating on 7-7-07, the perfection of time, in a massive national gathering of fasting, intercession, repentance, and worship, declaring we want to remarry the Lord. We want to cross over into the Promised Land of national revival. We want to break this forty-year curse. May thousands seek God in water, juice, and Daniel fasts from 5-28 through 7-7-07, The Call, Nashville!
What would happen in America if for forty days we halted the electronic cultural sewer that flows nightly into our living rooms and spent our strength seeking the Lord? What if tens of thousands of fathers and mothers across our nation fasted for forty days, repenting and cleansing themselves of inward toleration of sexual immorality, pornography, addiction to food and entertainment, and materialism? What if they prayed daily for their spiritual and physical children to see them converted to Christ and freed from rebellion, addictions, depression, and suicide? What if the young generation fasted for forty days to be cleansed from lust, media addiction, rebellion toward their parents, believing that a double portion of the Holy Spirit would come upon their lives?
Moses fasted forty days and mentored a spiritual son named Joshua, which means "the Lord saves." Elijah fasted forty days and threw his mantle on a double portion son, Elisha, which means "the Lord saves." John the Baptist fasted in the desert and prepared the way for a double portion Son named Jesus, which means "the Lord saves." Jesus fasted forty days and unleashed the apostolic glory of the eternal Son of God into the earth. What if we are preparing a generation for the greatest day of salvation in history? And so, what if tens of thousands of both generations fast together and gather on 7-7-07 for The Call, Nashville in LP Field, to cry out to God in a Joel 2 moment for great national returning to the Lord?
The parade of history has brought us into a profound generational landmark and a great vacuum has opened again. If the church does not seize this moment, Muslims will! Antichrist rage will! Sexual perversion will! Anarchy will! But now is the time for key men and women, even an entire generation, to risk everything to become the hinge of history, the pivotal point that determines which way the door will swing in America and in the nations of the earth. It is forty days or forty years! Seize the day!
We will be launching this fast with a worldwide simulcast on God TV on May 26. For all information on the forty-day fast and The Call, Nashville, please visit www.thecall.com.
