The Bible says, "...before the great and awesome day of the Lord...He will restore the heart of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers." Those are the final words of the Old Testament, Malachi prophesying of the move of God in the final days before the millennial reign of Christ is fully established on the earth. Those are words difficult to believe with the moral decay and brokenness in the society surrounding us and even eating away like a cancer in our very own families. Half of marriages end in divorce, one of every three children are aborted, 70% of inner city blacks are born out of wedlock and grow up without a father. It is easy to get angry when a huge welfare dependency class has been brought into being, the major contributor to a three trillion dollar economy-crushing national debt, a class of mostly single or abandoned women struggling to make ends meet in a home without a husband and father present to provide a nourishing and supporting environment for their families. It is easy to be disheartened when fatherless children run in gangs in an attempt to fill the void created by a lack of family belonging. It is easy to be cynical when children without proper role models, parented by insipid television, grow up in a morass of drugs, crime and violence. It is easy to be swept along as racism rears its ugly head once again in our nation, with white cops beating up blacks, and deranged separatist black leaders railing against "bloodsucking Jews" and calling for a separate Islam nation.
And yet the Bible says, "...before the great and awesome day of the Lord...He will restore the heart of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers." And in another place, "The wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little boy will lead them...They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." And in another place, "He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord God will wipe tears away form all faces." We cry, "When, Lord?"
Last weekend I had a first hand opportunity to watch these scriptures begin to be fulfilled right before my very eyes. I traveled with 96 men in two full buses to Dallas, Texas, where we joined in with 60,000 other men coming together to worship Jesus, to recommit our lives to Him, to renew our vows to be godly husbands to our wives, and godly fathers to our children. It was at the final Promise Keepers meeting of 1995 in Texas Stadium, which had been sold out for three months, culminating a year which saw over 700,000 men come together in football stadiums all over this nation in a sovereign move of God to raise up men to raise the standard of holy and godly living in our generation. We sang songs of praise to God in Spanish and English, being led by worship leaders who were African American. Shoulder to shoulder with people of color, we asked for forgiveness from one another and prayed for brotherhood and unity between all races. We were exhorted to no longer look in the mirror to see ourselves, but to look in the countenance of our wives to expose our own character as men. To look and see a worried and harassed woman would indicate our own deficiency as husbands. We were instructed in the five primary needs of women: the need for family commitment, for financial support, for an honest and open relationship, for conversation from their husbands, and for affection and tenderness outside the context of sex. I saw thousands of men streaming to the platform to give their hearts to Jesus. In our bus on the drive home I saw God move sovereignly as our own brothers were coming forward and openly confessing their faults and receiving prayer and ministry, sharing their heartfelt goals and renewed resolve to live for Jesus in a way that almost never happens between males.
Promise Keepers have been criticized by feminists as being "anti-woman." How is it then that many of the men at the event were signed up by their wives? Promise Keepers has been accused of being a bunch of "angry white males" coming together to "put women in their place." To this absurdly ignorant and cynical opinion I can only say, (i) that one of the original and main goals of Bill McCartney, the founder of Promise Keepers, is to aggressively pursue racial harmony through biblical love, and that over half of the platform of leaders were black and Hispanic; (ii) we were anything but angry; I never have been around a more loving, peaceable, accepting, affirming, positive group of people in all of my life; (iii) it is true, we were definitely wanting to put women in their place, their rightful place of honor and respect and appreciation and support.
With all that is wrong and hurtful in our families and in our nation, it is no wonder that God raised up the Promise Keepers. Perhaps the strongest sense that I came away with is an unwavering assurance in my heart that truth will ultimately triumph, that God will prevail, that our fragmented families and divided nation will be put back together again, that love never fails.
@ copyright 1995 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.