During a phone conversation with my good friend “Triple-P”, our conversations flowed into the subject of these “all night prayer rallies / revivals” you see advertised as taking place in charismatic churches.

Usually held overnight on a weekend (Friday night, Saturday morning), many of these all night prayer rallies consist of 75% worship that is singing the same worship songs over and over again mantra style until someone feels a ‘tingle’ and ‘moves’, 20% combination of “repent-a-thons”, stragetic-level spiritual warfare, shofar blowing, and 1 Chronicles 7:14 rallies where they confess everything even inventing sin in hopes of getting God to change his mind and do what they want, and 5% “preaching” which usually consists of a Joel Osteen type of a feelgood speech.

Our conversation on this particular subject went in many areas from the mantra music, the subversive ‘theopolitical dominionalism’ that gets propogated via the open mic times of prayer and repentance, and in particular, the fact that going into the wee hours of the morning, you start seeing some of the bizarre ‘manifestations’ and like the rapper Whodini once said…

The Freaks Come Out at Night

My friend and I both noticed that the later on into the night/early morning hours, the more bizarre those ‘manifestations’ got and the more ‘freaky’ and ‘spiritually spaced out’ some of these people became. And “God officially moved’ at 2:45 AM because we waited (like God can’t “move” at 10:30 PM) But most importantly…..

It seemed that this behavior was deeply encouraged….

And ‘doctrinally supported’ by the twisting of the scripture found in Matthew 26:40-45

Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.” And He came and found them asleep again, for their eyes were heavy.

So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then He came to His disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, My betrayer is at hand.”

Used as scripture twisting to guilt people that decide to leave early, fall asleep, or want to end the all night prayer rally quicker because nothing is happening to stay around a little longer in fear of “missing out” on the “move” of God. It seems to be that there is a mindset among these all night prayer rallies that God can not really do anything until 2 AM when we have prayed hard enough, done enough warfare prayer, “repented” long enough, sorted out the ‘fake’ remnant people, etc.

You see someone leave in the middle and see the facial reactions of those who remain

I’m more “spiritual” because I stayed longer.

They “missed out” on God’s move for tonight.

They are not ‘remnant Christians”

Worse yet is when they leave during the middle of “spiritual warfare” and now everyone believes that the one who leaves was the spirit of oppression and start clapping because they believe that they drove the evil spirit out of the sanctuary.

So they tarry around, re-sing the same chorus over and over again, repent some more, yell in Spiritual warfare some more until they are really tired at 2 AM and then begin to think that they feel a “Holy buzz” and start seeing some shaking, running, dancing, etc in the name of breakthrough. The mindset propagated is

When being “led by the spirit”, the service never gets shorter. It gets longer. The longer the service went, the more of God it was…

At the end of these rallies (determined by lack of attendance or when everyone is really exhausted), the people are tired out physically but so mentally wound up that they end up at the all night breakfast house (eating food and drinking lots of coffee) where their dominionist mentalities equates to being rude to the waitress and leaving no tip, sleep in until mid-morning, and wake up more dazed and confused because their internal time clocks are off. The real tragedy is that the more they cry out ‘change’, the more it has remained ‘the same’ as the west side of town still has a high crime rate and vice crimes are still active, their children still make C’s in school, and Roe vs. Wade is still not overturned.

If these people really did true repentance and ‘warfare’ until 3 AM, wouldn’t God give them supernatural rest and wake them up at a decent hour in the morning feeling reinvigorated and re-energized? I used to say the same things about the spiritual warfare fanatics. If they shouted at the skies claiming to pull down strongholds with victory, then why after their ‘warfare sessions’ are over the first thing many of these people do is complain that their throats are hoarse and reach inside their pocketbooks for throat lozenges to suck on or throat sprays to spray their throats? If their ‘warfare’ was successful and Godly, wouldn’t God keep their voices normal instead of being raspy after all the extensive shouting that took place?

However, I want to show you some Scripture about a provision that Jesus provided. In Mark 8:1-9:

In those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said to them, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar.”

Then His disciples answered Him, “How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?”

He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?”

And they said, “Seven.”

So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. And He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before them; and they set them before the multitude. They also had a few small fish; and having blessed them, He said to set them also before them. So they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And He sent them away.

Jesus was doing something we just do not see in many of today’s “all night prayer rallies / revivals”. He was being sensitive and considerate to the real needs of the people who followed him. How many people when asked why they were leaving ‘early’ and gave their answer would be told by the mother hens of the all night prayer rallies that their reasons was either “invalid excuses” (but the reasons of the mother hens would always be valid) or that five letter pentecostal / charismatic “F-Bomb”…

FLESH!

and that staying longer and eventually doing the charismatic bunny hop and repenting long and hard during the repent-a-thon would kill that “five letter pentecostal / charismatic F-Bomb” and make you more ‘spiritual’ and more worthy to be in the “remnant”.

Jesus knew it was time to stop teaching and began to make provision for the hungry people who were about to faint. The story here in Mark 8 is not about ‘rewarding’ those who ‘tarried’ throughout the entire three days because they were the new remnant Christians because they passed some kooky ‘grand mega test theology’ to receive the mega blessing. The story is about a Jesus who provides nourishment and meets the needs of all the children of God to ensure that they will run and not be weary and walk and not faint.

But the most important part of this story is the part that preachers never preach from. Usually, sermons tend to focus on the feeding of the four thousand and the excess fish and bread that remained. However, the next thing after all were fed, needs were met, and excess was accounted for is the fact that

And He sent them away

Jesus not only knew that it was time to stop teaching and address the needs of the people, but he knew that it was also time for those people to leave and go back to their normal daily routines of life. Jesus did not ‘stretch out’ the time to ‘work up’ another tingle nor did he ever lay down ‘gospel guilt trips’ to drag the four thousand along promising them something if they ‘made it’. The people followed him on their own will because they were drawn to the message and teachings of Jesus, not the potential mega hundredfold blessings if they put more money in the plate. This was not some convention full of charismatic cliches, but the demonstration of not only provision but also love.

Jesus fed them both spiritually through his three days of miracles and teachings and physically at the end re-energizing and re-strengthening the people. You go to the all night prayer rallies and you mention the word ‘hunger’ at 1 AM and you may get the hordes of warriors trying to cast a spell off of you because even though they try to convince you that you have ‘works of the flesh’, the real reason is because many have ‘fasted’ and they have been broken out of their revival zone to realize that they are now hungry. Jesus dealt with the whole person when meeting their needs, not with the ‘agenda of the day’ and not trying to deny the needs by mistakenly calling their true needs that five letter pentecostal / charismatic “F-Bomb”…

It’s okay to leave early if you have to. You do not have to run these prayer services all night long to feel more spiritual. God is sovereign enough that he can move at other times of the day besides 2 AM in the morning and not be angry if the service gets shut down one hour after it started.

In fact, you don’t even have to go in order to feel more spiritual. You can go to your private place and God will both meet your needs and tell you when it’s time to stop praying in order for you to go back to normal everyday life. Jesus never ministered in an overnight setting inside a three ring trinitarian circus alongside the freak show exhibits where the freaks came out at night to demonstrate their ‘spirituality’ in front of the ‘super-remnant’ followers. Jesus ministered out in the open broad daylight in decency and order where the signs, wonders, healings, and deliverances came forth to be viewed by all who were part of the general public that were drawn to Him. The signs, wonders, healings, and deliverances came forth because Jesus’ authority commanded them to come forth, not because you tarried all night, put some money in a plate, voted Republican, prayed long enough, or repented hard enough.

It’s not about how much time you could tarry in an all nighter in the name of being a ‘weekend warrior’, it is what you do during the precious moments you spend with the Lord that matters in the eyes of God.

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