Family Research Council Says We Must Save the Nation, Use Founders’ Example: Drop to Our Knees by the Millions, Repent [+video]

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a Marine veteran, and eight year member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, is also an ordained minister. He preaches frequently in churches across America. In early 2009, Tony preached on “The Quest for Change” at a large evangelical church in Southern California. At the time, the term “change” was fresh in the popular mind of Americans. President Barack Obama had highlighted the word “change” in his presidential campaign theme – “Hope and Change.”

Yet Tony’s message was not a call to political change; but to a central message of the Bible: Repentance. It is a message found in the Law and the Prophets (2 Kings 17:13; Acts 28:23), Jesus in his earthly ministry (Matt 4:1), John the Baptist (Matt 3:2), the Disciples (Mark 6:12), Peter (Acts 2:38), Paul (Acts 17:30-31); the New Testament churches (Jude 1:3 ff; and the risen Christ in his apocalyptic warning to the churches of Asia Minor (Rev. 2-3).

Tony’s text was Matthew 4:17, Jesus’ call to “repent” (i.e., change) for “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” His call to action was from 2 Chronicles 7:14 “If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, forgive their sins and heal their land.”

Birth of the Call2Fall

In several services that Sunday morning, over 50 people had made professions of faith in Christ. Afterward, church folks lined up to greet Tony. An elderly woman came up to Tony and said: “You have the message that the Church needs to hear. You have the answer to what we are facing.”

She went on to say that when she had come in that morning, the Holy Spirit had told her to get on her knees during the worship, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to be embarrassed. She said she had to later repent for being disobedient. Her focus was on the bowing of the knee. She said, “You need to call churches across the nation to get on their knees, literally, before God.”

Tony writes, “I politely told her I would pray about it. She then became insistent that this message was “of the Lord” and “the Church needed to respond.”

Later that evening while Tony was flying home, he picked up a book he had been reading earlier – a biography of Samuel Adams by Ira Stoll. “I was at the place where the Continental Congress passed a resolution calling for a day in July of 1775 for “public humiliation, fasting and prayer; that we may, with united hearts and voices, unfeignedly confess and deplore our many sins; and offer up our joint supplications to the all-wise, omnipotent, and merciful Disposer of all events; humbly beseeching him to forgive our iniquities, to remove our present calamities, to avert those desolating judgments, with which we are threatened…”

Responding to the results of that day in 1775, Patriot James Warren wrote his friend, Founding Father Samuel Adams: “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.”

“At that point I remembered my earlier conversation with the elderly lady and my request of God earlier that morning for an answer to the dilemma America faces… For weeks I studied and meditated upon the book of Joel, which is 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 in book form.”

Both the book of Joel and the passage in 2 Chronicles speak of God’s temporal judgments on a sinful nation. Are we not facing similar threats in America today? There are natural calamities as well as man-made calamities and a list of sins too numerous to list. Then there is an over-reaching big government that robs our families via profligate spending, borrowing and confiscatory taxes; government’s scandalous violation of our constitutionally guaranteed rights, including religious liberty, and our sacred liberty of conscience. These are massive cosmic and systemic societal problems that require the direct intervention of Almighty God. Bottom line: America’s problems cannot be fixed without God’s help.

Tony asks, “What if on one Sunday in churches all across the nation, Christians literally fell on our knees before God as an act of humility, acknowledging our absolute dependence upon God’s mercy, crying out for the nation in intercession and confessing our sins? Would God not hear such prayers from His people, forgive our sin and heal our land?”

We already have a National Day of Prayer on the first Thursday in May, but Call2Fall reminds us that we need a national day of prayer in our churches, during Sunday worship and indeed every day. That is what God is looking for: A repentant people who are seeking His face daily in church, at home, at work and at all times. He wants men to pray everywhere, “lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting” (1 Tim 2:8).

Call2Fall is a token, an honest symbol, a church-oriented prayer meeting where every church in America can take a step toward becoming a “house of prayer for all people” – pointing toward a nation-changing Joel 2:12-18 style solemn assembly.

When Tony shared with FRC’s Pastors Council what God had shown him, some of those present argued for extended times of prayer and fasting, but the oldest, wisest members said: No, we need something every church can participate in, even at an entry level, to move people toward prayer and seeking God. Consequently, at minimum, we are calling on churches to spend at least 5 minutes on their knees, but they can do much more as the Holy Spirit leads them. Some spend just 5 minutes, but others spend their whole worship services crying out to God for America. Still others have set aside a week for fasting, prayer and the seeking of God’s face for our nation. We have marveled as members of hundred plus-year-old churches have gotten on their knees before God for the first time in their church’s history.

Last year nearly 1.5 million believers participated. Can we double that number during the next 4 weeks and match the number of Americans who bowed before the Lord on that Sunday in 1775 which was the precursor to the Declaration of Independence and victory in the Revolutionary War? Can we begin to win back our nation for the God our forefathers sought and for whom they gave their lives? Before we celebrate on July 4th, let’s gather on our knees across America to re-consecrate our nation to Him who Alone gives freedom. May we consecrate our churches and homes as Houses of Prayer on Sunday, June 30th for that purpose. May God hear the cry of our hearts and answer our prayers.

Please pray constantly between now and June 30th. Talk to your pastor and use social media to tell everyone you know about Call2Fall! Thank you for praying! (“FRC’s Call2Fall to Save the Nation Using Our Founders’ Incredible Example: Drop to Our Knees by the Millions, Repent”, originally posted HERE)

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