September 17, 2024
I was helping train the staff of Canton Georgia’s First Baptist Church at a retreat center in Peachtree City when our session was interrupted by an unknown lady with a terrified look on her face, saying, “New York City is under attack.” A passenger plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
We took an immediate break from our meeting, went to where dozens of people were looking at a television monitor, and saw the second plane crash into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 AM on that fateful day. To our dismay and what seemed to be a surreal catastrophe we witnessed the collapsing of the two iconic towers in lower Manhattan. Thirty-four minutes after the second tower was attacked, a third plane destroyed the western face of the Pentagon near Washington, D. C.
We decided to end the staff retreat and return to our churches. I was pastor of Eastside Baptist Church in Marietta at the time, and we sent an email to all our members and had a prayer meeting that night. The church was packed with people concerned about the destiny of the nation, and the occasion prompted fervent prayers for both our national safety and spiritual revival. The nation seemed to be in an uncertain and perilous moment in history and the tragedy seemed to inspire a hunger for revival.
Although for several weeks many were preoccupied with the fearful thought that another attack was a real possibility, it was not long until most churches returned to a “business as usual” modus operandi. The terrorists’ attacks altered our lifestyle in many ways, but the passion for a genuine spiritual awakening soon vanished.
Several months after the events of September 11, 2001, I had an opportunity to go to New York City and visited the devastated ruins of the “Twin Towers.” Having seen the World Trade Center when it was a hub of activity in previous years, it was a chilling experience to see that which had been the symbol of America’s corporate and governmental prowess lying in ruins.
After reviewing the ruins of the World Trade Center I walked no more than three blocks to where the Old Dutch North Church once stood at the corner of Fulton and Williams Streets. It was there that a tall, unassuming, middle-aged merchant by the name of Jeremiah Lanphier decided to host a prayer gathering at noon each Wednesday. The first day scheduled for the prayer meeting was September 23, 1857.
Lanphier was a member of the church and climbed the stairs to the third story of the 88-year-old church for the first announced prayer meeting. He had passed out announcements about the prayer meeting, but when the clock struck the twelve o’clock hour, he was the only one present, so he started praying alone, but 30 minutes into his plaintive intercession for revival six men joined him for the remainder of the hour.
On the third Wednesday, the stock market crashed, banks closed, factories shut down and thousands were unemployed. People began to flock to the prayer meetings, and within six months 10,000 people were praying all across New York City.
Newspapers were spreading the story of what came to be known as the Prayer Meeting Revival. People were being saved by the tens of thousands in what some regarded as the Third Great Spiritual Awakening in America.
What will it take to create a hunger for revival in America? Another terrorist attack, a stock market crash, multiple thousands losing their jobs, a political upheaval, uncontrolled protests in the streets, an increase in school shootings, a precipitous decline in churches across the land, an exponential increase in crime, or fire falling from heaven as was the case in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah? What will it take for the United States to truly become one nation under God, for our land to experience the spiritual renewal that we desperately need?
We need another Jeremiah Lanphier - someone who will dare to pray fervently and consistently until a mighty prayer movement becomes a reality.
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J. Gerald Harris is a retired pastor and journalist who served as editor of The Christian Index for nearly two decades. You can reach him at gharris@loveliftedmehigher.org.
