House of 24-HOUR PRAYER Launched Near SUPREME COURT

HOUSE OF 24-HOUR PRAYER LAUNCHED NEAR SUPREME COURT
A movement propelled by dreams

By Mark Ellis

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WASHINGTON, D.C. (ANS) -- Youthful prayer activists led by a prophetic visionary have secured prime office space near the Supreme Court, and started an all-out prayer assault aimed at reversing Roe v. Wade.

“God put this burden in my heart to launch day and night intercession in Washington D.C.,” says Lou Engle, founder of The Cause USA and the Justice House of Prayer (JHOP). Just one month before the national election in 2004, Engle’s team started their “new radical movement of activism” to intercede in prayer for America. (Pictured: Lou Engle at Lincoln Memorial).

Each day sixty young men and women from throughout the U.S. gather in the upper room office space on Pennsylvania Avenue for prayer and worship, bussed back and forth from a camp in Maryland. Most will pursue their internship with JHOP for six months of service. Some are on extended fasts lasting over 20 days. They are intent on ending abortion in America. (Pictured: Justice House of Prayer).

“We’re praying for President Bush,” Engle says. “God has given us dreams that he’ll be a burning bush and deliver the Moses generation assaulted at the womb,” he says. To Engle and his prayer partners, the dreams demonstrate Bush will be powerfully used to limit if not overthrow abortion. “These acts of justice by the ‘Burning Bush’ could usher in one of the greatest awakenings that the nation has ever seen.”

Engle’s activist zeal began to develop two decades ago after he read “Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting” by Derek Prince. “The premise of the book is that when people pray and fast God changes or shapes history,” Engle notes. Twenty years later, he launched a gathering known as The Call, which brought 400,000 young people to the mall in Washington for prayer and fasting prior to Bush’s first election victory.

His oratorical skills are of a high order—indeed mesmerizing, but slightly unusual. His body rocks and pivots backward and forward in a somewhat exaggerated version of Ray Charles at the keyboard as he speaks. Engle’s voice is usually strained by his tireless efforts to mobilize his young prayer warriors, so he speaks mostly in a hoarse voice just above a whisper. Many young people are drawn in by his passion.

“We believe those prayers, along with the prayers of all the church, shifted something with the Supreme Court so that George Bush got in,” Engle says, referring to the extended drama that played out after the 2000 election, with the Supreme Court ultimately deciding the election.

In 2003, Engle and his team sensed God speaking to them about abortion and injustice. Improbably, they perceived a curious linkage between abortion and the mistreatment of Native Americans and blacks in the nation’s history.

“Roe v. Wade is the fruit of the broken covenant with American Indians,” Engle says. “If you break covenant you pay for it in blood,” he notes. “The tearing to pieces of the babies in the womb is literally a graphic picture of covenantal judgment on a nation.” Engle had a dream that he and his team should walk the historic Trail of Tears, the forced relocation route made by Native Americans in the 1830s.

After President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, all tribes east of the Mississippi began to be removed farther west, to reservations in Oklahoma and Kansas. The most famous march was known as the Trail of Tears, which resulted in the deaths of some 4,000 Cherokees.

Engle and his team walked 770 miles to Oklahoma—joined by Native American leaders, as they retraced the relocation route. “The Lord gave us a dream that we couldn’t buy the fruit of the womb until we put on the sandals of the first nation’s people,” Engle says. “We prayed and wept on the journey, but God showed us this is the ‘arrow of the Lord’s victory’ against abortion.” As they renewed covenant with Indian leaders who joined them, they came to see this as a first strike to overthrow abortion and release God’s covenant mercy on America.

Then, just prior to the 2004 election, Engle gathered students in Colorado Springs for 50 days and nights of intercession. During the 50 days, they received two dreams about a house being built near the White House. In both dreams, a surveyor’s measuring line was being stretched over the White House. “After 50 days and nights of prayer, it was clear our assignment wasn’t finished, and this burning torch of intercession needed to be carried across the nation and planted providentially in Washington.”

A scripture seemed to confirm their direction—Zechariah 1:10: “I am returning to Jerusalem with mercy. My house shall be built in it,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘and a surveying line shall be stretched over Jerusalem.’” Engle saw Jerusalem as a reference to the U.S. capitol, a confirmation of the dreams. He began to pray for a building close to the Capitol, where his team could begin day and night intercession.

Engle and 60 young people traveled across the country to Washington. They arrived on the first day of the opening session of the Supreme Court, and a few days later heard about the availability of an office building in a strategic location. “As soon as we walked in, we knew it was the place. The room was literally shaped like an arrowhead,” Engle notes. “Amazingly, a picture left behind by the former tenants was of an American Indian mother with her infant.”

One of the young men on the team had a dream about thousands of young people coming to the Supreme Court with the word “LIFE” taped over their mouths. A few days after their arrival, they decided to go to the steps of the Supreme Court to pray. They soon found themselves in a confrontation with a large group from the National Organization for Women. (Pictured: Girl with LIFE tape).

In the face of a crowd chanting “Keep abortion legal” Engle decided they should follow the young man’s dream. In complete silence they stood with red tape that proclaimed “LIFE” over their mouths. “We stood before that court identifying with the silent screams of the unborn, praying and repenting for the bloodshed that’s come from this court case.”

Engle’s latest project turned the “Life” tape into a wristband, designed to remind people to pray for an end of abortion. “Our dream is that 10 million people will have these bands praying five times per day,” he says. “That’s 50 million prayers a day asking God for the covering of the blood because of the bloodshed in America.”

“We’re calling for massive prayer,” he adds. “God could do anything if we pray.”