50 Hours of 24/7 Prayer, Worship to Occur at State Capitols; 'Tent America' Organizers Hope for New Jesus Movement
Fifty hours of unbroken, round-the-clock intercession and worship will begin Thursday from the grounds of state capitol buildings in all 50 states and at hundreds of universities.
What is being called Tent America 2018, sponsored by Awaken the Dawn, will start Thursday evening at 9 p.m. EST and last until Saturday 11 p.m. in tents across the nation at every state capitol and on college campuses.
According to ATD's website, the focus of the event is to pray fervently for the Holy Spirit to reveal the beauty and worth of Jesus to the nation, that a new "Jesus movement" would be ignited to capture the heart of the millennial generation, and for a new missions movement to be launched.
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In a Sept. 23 Facebook live video, David Bradshaw, who is the director of the Fredericksburg, Virginia-based Prayer Furnace, explained that the event will be done in the spirit of 2 Chronicles 20.
"I'm just so stirred by watching God's hand mobilize America," Bradshaw explained in the video along with Bob Parry, a pastor and intercessor.
In that particular passage of Scripture, the Israelites are overwhelmed by their enemies and King Jehoshaphat prays in desperation: "For we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We dont know what to do but our eyes are on you."
Confident in God's power, Jehoshaphat sends the singers and musicians out before the army who said: "Give thanks to the Lord for his steadfast love endures forever."
Just as God acted on behalf of the Israelites in 2 Chronicles 20, "I believe God is going to act on behalf of our nation this week," Bradshaw went on to say.
"Imagine, thousand and thousands of musicians are going to be in public ... under tents, singing their guts out to the Lord while intercessors gather and pray."
"The thing that motivated us, more than anything, we just love God, we love His presence, we love Jesus. We want His worth put on display ... He's going to do [supernatural] things we could never produce."
Concurrent with the 50 hours of intercession, evangelists will be out and about sharing the Gospel with others in teams.
"Tent America is a beautiful symphony of God bringing unity to the body of Christ across every state with the remnant who have heard the call to praise and war for what is rightfully ours," said Rachel Dennis, 38, a business owner and church leader at The Equipping in Troy, Michigan, in an interview with The Christian Post Wednesday afternoon.
Dennis is going to be be volunteering in Lansing, Michigan, at the State Capitol. She plans to join the evangelism team and will be praying at Michigan International House of Prayer with The Moral Outcry, a pro-life group.
"He is knitting us together as one family and one body as we were always intended to be. God is breaking down barriers and raising the Church up as warriors to claim back the mountains of influence in every sphere for His glory to be revealed," Dennis continued.
"The harvest is ripe and the seeds sown over the next three days in worship, prayer, and intercession will reap a harvest of souls this world has not yet seen. Time to take back all that is ours to rule and reign over in the earth for such a time as this."
Last year in the lead-up to America's Tent of Meeting, which was also put on by ATD and took place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Bradshaw told The Christian Post in an interview that they are on a "rescue mission" for this generation and he believes they are living in a time when the Church must unite to pray and proclaim the Gospel in order to see a spiritual shift in America.
Like the ATD event last year, Tent of America coincides with the Jewish Feast of the Tablernacles, which runs from Sept. 23 to 30 this year. The holiday is intended to remember the kin of fragile dwellings in which the Israelites lived during their 40 years of travel in the desert after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, and to remind them how dependent they are on God.
The feast marks the end of the harvest time and thus of the agricultural year in the Land of Israel. The more elaborate religious significance from the Book of Leviticus is that of commemorating the Exodus and the dependence of the People of Israel on the will of God.
"In a very unusual way the Lord spoke to us, to do [America's Tent of Meeting] in 2017," Bradshaw told CP last year, marveling at God's omniscience given not only the spiritually significant anniversary of a massive prayer gathering in the exact same spot and the Jewish holiday, but especially in light of the recent violence.
"That it would land in the week of the worst mass shooting [in modern U.S. history], not to mention the natural disasters, not to mention the situation in Puerto Rico, not to mention the existential crisis of a whole generation ... I do believe, absolutely, yes, that this is a moment for repentance, for cleansing, and prayer for healing," he said at the time.
