TODAY’S MESSAGE IS A REPOSTING. IT IS A MUST-READ. 

On the 20th anniversary of 9-11, Lamplighter Ministries extends our honor and gratitude to the families of those who perished, and to the first responders who put their lives on the line for their brothers and sisters. We also honor all who served in the military, the intelligence community, in diplomatic posts and humanitarian aid who sacrificed to make America safer and give other nations, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, a taste of true freedom. Finally, we want to honor the watchmen in the spirit, the prayer warriors whose ceaseless intercession amidst great trial has preserved us as a nation under God. 

CALL REPLAY—CALL 9-11! One of our most important calls. We have received tremendous feedback about its impact. REPLAY NUMBER: (605) 313-5155

DEAR WATCHMEN ON THE WALL,
On the 20th anniversary of 9-11, Lamplighter Ministries extends our honor and gratitude to the families of those who perished, and to the first responders who put their lives on the line for their brothers and sisters. We also honor all who served in the military, the intelligence community, in diplomatic posts and humanitarian aid who sacrificed to make America safer and give other nations, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, a taste of true freedom. Finally, we want to honor the watchmen in the spirit, the prayer warriors whose ceaseless intercession amidst great trial has preserved us as a nation under God.

GLORY TRAIN JACKSONVILLE! SEPTEMBER 15-17th, 7pm nightly. OVER YOM KIPPUR! With Chris Mitchell Jr, Jon & Jolene, more. Old Chapel at Beaches Museum and Railroad, hosted by Lauren Main and Chazah Fellowship.

DEAR MIDNIGHT WATCHMEN,
Two decades ago on September 11, terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in hijacked planes. Armed with boxcutters and a nominal understanding of how to fly, the terrorists incinerated the very symbols of the economic and military might of the United States. On a broader level they targeted our relationship with Israel, as well as the embrace and protection of Jewish life within the United States. Both have long provoked their wrath. 

But above all else they targeted the essence of who we are as Americans. Freedom. Inclusiveness. Justice. Civil discourse. Generosity. Innovation. Prosperity. The dignity and worth of every human being. Proactive governance by consent of the governed rather than totalitarianism. Balance of power. Freedom of the press. Religious liberty. Protection of the family unit. An inherent goodness based on a strong moral compass. A godly patriotism which unites rather than divides. Hope for the future. Resolve to overcome.

No King but Jesus.

These core values define who we are as Americans. And they are all sourced from our covenantal foundation as a nation under God. 

Twenty years ago, in response to the 9-11 tragedy, Americans united around the vision of protecting these values. Astonishingly, today the greatest challenges we face in protecting these values is now coming from our elected leaders.

The Awakening Alarm
Our nation was birthed out of an awakening alarm. In a midnight hour, a distant relative named Paul Revere was alerted by signals from a church tower. He rode through the night from city to city, sounding the alarm to awaken an army. The American Revolution began the very next day. 

Cindy Jacobs once prophesied that Jolene and I would carry a similar forerunning call. Holding out a burning lamp and riding from city to city, we would resound an awakening alarm. The Lord is coming! That is largely our message amidst today’s midnight hour. Prophetically I feel that a similar alarm, perhaps of even greater magnitude than 9-11-01, is now sounding from Heaven. A limited window of opportunity for turnaround is opening concurrently..

9-11: My Emergence into National Prophetic Ministry
My family lived in metro DC, and my grandparents lived near New York, so I grew up traveling to the city. I remember straining to see the World Trade Center each time we visited, crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Interestingly, 9-11-01 marked my emergence into national prophetic ministry. Six days prior to the date the towers fell, the Elijah List published a few prophetic perceptions about the northeast region of America experiencing a martyr’s harvest for a martyr’s seed. 

John 11:11 was highlighted, noting how the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact, our foundational national covenant with the Lord, on 11-11, 1620. This is what the passage says: Lazarus our friend has fallen asleep. I go that I may awaken him from slumber. It was my first national word.

Call 911! Dream Before the Towers Fell
A month before the towers fell I found myself straining for a glimpse of the World Trade Center once again. Dutch Sheets and Lou Engle had gathered a group of leaders for a prayer journey from Williamsburg Virginia to Boston, Massachusetts, touching the foundational roots of our government. 

The journey was called the Kettle Tour. It was named for an old iron kettle passed down to another leader of the group, my friend Will Ford. Generations before, Will’s slave forefathers would often gather in the midnight hour to pray for freedom. They would prop up the kettle and intercede beneath it so that their cries to the Lord would be muffled. Heaven would indeed hear—but their white masters would not. 

One day the accumulated prayers of generations of slaves suddenly were met with breakthrough. Harriet Lockett carried kettle across the threshold to freedom. 

This old iron kettle became a symbol of the bowls of Heaven, pictured in Revelation 5 as containing our collected prayers. From city to city throughout the northeast, the story was told. And we would then prophesy the tipping of these bowls and the outpouring of God’s Spirit in response. 

“Wouldn’t it be just like God,” Dutch would often say, “in His justice and His irony, to store up the prayers of a slave generation to set this generation free!” 

Which is why, in August 2001, I was again crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge. This time in a large, luxurious bus instead of a 1970 Volkswagen Beetle with a rear engine so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. 

But I still knew just the right point on the bridge where the “Big 11” were most visible. I interrupted our conversation to point them out. It was the last time any of us would ever see the towers again.

Around that time, Dutch Sheets had just shared a dream from his wife Ceci, which she had received that very morning. Ceci dreamed that she was pregnant. She looked down at her baby bump and realized that she had suddenly come to full term. In a panic she realized there was nobody around to assist her. 

“Call 911! Call 911!” She began to exclaim. “This baby is about to be born, and there is nobody to help deliver the child. The experts are needed at this time!”

The Meaning
What was the meaning of this dream? That was the subject that consumed our bus as we crossed the Hudson River. Dutch had shared his sense that the 9-11 call represented Psalm 91:1. Dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, abiding in the shadow of the Almighty, and thus securing His protection. For me, Amos 9:11 made the top of the list. “In that day I will rebuild the tabernacle of David which is fallen, and repair its breaches. I will rebuild it as in the says of old!” 

Who was right? All of us were. Psalm 91 soon became an intercessory decree for the protection of our nation. And amidst the rubble and ruin, the 9-11 alarm to rebuild the fallen tabernacle of David was released on a global level.

So we were all accurate in our perceptions. Yet none of us had gained from the Lord the real-time warning embedded in the dream. Nor could we have imagined that on September 11, 2001—otherwise known as 9-11—the World Trade Center would come crashing down, and the Washington headquarters of the US military would be overflowing with smoke. None of us perceived how the 9-11 alarm, sounded by Ceci in her dream, actually symbolized the opening of a “time gate” that would soon define history. 

Yet unimaginably, by God’s sovereign orchestration we were on a tour crossing the Hudson River, gawking at the twin towers in the distance while processing, praying through and prophesying into a dream about 9-11. Moving through the gates of the very city from which the awakening alarm would soon globally sound.

On a broader scale, I believe the baby in Ceci’s womb represents America. Amidst the conflicts mandated by the terror strikes, the Lord wanted to bring our nation into what Abraham Lincoln described as “a new birth of freedom.” An awakening. A turnaround, yielding to Him. 

Yet just as Ceci’s dream predicted, the response to the potential afforded through this birth was by no means enough to secure its potential. Twenty years later, it is clear to me that America largely failed to heed the awakening alarm. And we certainly failed to fully turn. One look at the Afghanistan debacle should convince you. 

Maybe this backstory will help you more fully appreciate the sobriety of the message Jolene and I are conveying to you right now. It is again a midnight hour. Prophetically, the awakening alarm is again sounding. We must arise. This time the turnaround must genuinely be secured. Because the rebirth of our nation depends on it.