In a few days, on July 4, America will celebrate her 242nd birthday. She is the oldest constitutional republic in the world, and many Christians, for various reasons, believe her best days are behind her. I too once believed that God was through with America, but that all quickly changed on a hot summer day in 2010.
Ever since my commitment to Christ, I have been a student and proponent of revival. By 2010, however, I had given up hope of America ever seeing another great, national spiritual awakening. The revivals of the 1990s, it seemed, had turned inward, becoming self-serving and were unable to stem the cultural and moral decline of the nation.
Although I believed there could still be individual and local revivals, I had reluctantly succumbed to the popular eschatological idea that there would not be another great national revival and that America’s time in the sun was over and done.
Surprised by the Holy Spirit
That all changed, however, in the summer of 2010 when I experienced an eight-hour visitation of God that completely upended my thinking in this regard. It began on a hot summer day in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when I began a two-hour drive to Kingfisher, Oklahoma, where I would be preaching the following day in a Sunday-morning service.
Without any warning or anticipation of such a thing happening, the Holy Spirit seemed to fill my car, and I suddenly felt enveloped in God’s presence. At the same time, my mind and heart began to be flooded with thoughts of hope and faith that America could see another great, national spiritual awakening that would impact the culture and alter the course of the nation.
As I drove along the highway, I was hardly aware of my surroundings. By the time I arrived at my hotel, my heart was so full I could hardly contain myself. I could hardly wait to open my notebook PC and began writing down the thoughts that continued to flood my mind. That experience lasted far into the night as I sat on the hotel bed and prayed and praised God and wrote.
The Fruit of That Experience
Two significant changes came out of that experience. Firstly, my hope was renewed for another national, spiritual awakening in America that will impact the culture and stem the tide of immorality and false religion that is flooding the land. Secondly, I saw for the first time that there was a direct bearing of the First Great Awakening on the founding of this nation. I saw that America had had a spiritual birth.
Out of that experience came my book America’s Revival Heritage and then The Faith and Vision of Benjamin Franklin. More than once, I was amazed at how I was providentially led to the resources necessary to confirm the vision I had seen and to fill out the historical narrative to document America’s spiritual birth. This was important for as George Orwell said in his classic,1984, “Whoever controls the past, controls the future.”
When America’s Revival Heritage sold out and I began an edit for republication, there was so much new material that it soon became obvious that a new book was emerging. As a result, I published Pilgrims and Patriots, which expanded the historical narrative of America’s spiritual birth and showed, in even more detail, the role of prayer and the Great Awakening in her founding. Then came my most recent book, a small 38-page volume entitled Five Pillars of the American Republic.
This research and writing has solidified in my mind and heart the truth that was revealed to me that summer day in 2010. God brought forth America for a special purpose, and that purpose is not yet fulfilled.
God Is Ready to Do it Again
Jonathan Edwards once said that when God determines to do a thing in the earth, He first sets His people to praying for the very thing that He has determined to give. Couple that truth with the obvious fact that there is a new hunger stirring across the body of Christ for a divine awakening from heaven. Not something skillfully worked up by a religious maestro, but a divine visitation that is prayed down from heaven.
Just a few days ago, I was providentially led to Zechariah 10:1, which reads, “Ask for rain from the Lord during the season of the latter spring rains.
And the Lord will make the storm winds; and He will give them showers of rain;” all will have vegetation in the field. It was a fresh prod from the Lord to ask for the rain of the Holy Spirit in these days of the latter rain when God is pouring out His Spirit on all flesh as predicted in Acts 2:17-18.
This is why I am convinced that God is not through with America and that another Great Awakening is on the horizon. {eoa}
Dr. Eddie L.Hyatt is an author, revivalist and ordained minister. His books are available from Amazon and his website at eddiehyatt.com. Out of his research, he has produced a PowerPoint presentation called “America Reawakening” that he presents in churches, schools and wherever the Holy Spirit opens a door. In addition, he and his wife, Dr. Susan Hyatt, are establishing the Int’l Christian Women’s Hall of Fame and Ministry Center on Main Street in Grapevine, TX adjacent to the DFW Int’l Airport.
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