Dear Intercessors,

Isaiah 52:8 (NASB) “Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices, they shout joyfully together; for they will see with their own eyes when the LORD restores Zion.”    
Ephesians 2:14 (NASB) “For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall…”

In the fifty first and fifty second chapters of Isaiah, God speaks to the righteous remnant of Israel, of returning Israel - which has been oppressed over the course of their history, because of their sinfulness, first by Egypt and then by Assyria - to their land, which represents His promise.  With this returning comes the restoring of His presence and His blessing to Zion.   It is the watchmen, the intercessors, who rejoice at seeing the Lord restore to Israel His purposes and His presence.

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, he writes of reconciliation to God, but reconciliation that also extends to where there is enmity.  Groups where there is enmity are reconciled “by the blood of Christ,” “through the cross” and in the body of Christ.  Over the years attention has been given to reconciliation between races, cultures, genders, etc.  We want to focus, however, on a place where enmity exists that God has exposed.  Given the dynamics of our culture and our recent history there is a breach between generations.  The “generation gap” of the sixties and seventies has turned into an enormous chasm.  God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but in our nation within the last forty years, which represents one generation, “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” have been at enmity against one another.  The promises of God, however, transcend the generations.  God gave a promise to Abraham that was realized four generations later through Jacob’s grandchildren.  Isaac and Jacob however would have had no inheritance had it not been for the promise God made to Abraham, their father and grandfather, respectively.  The prophecy of Joel chapter two, which is quoted by the Apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost, includes, “your sons”, and “your daughters,” “your old men,” and “your young men.”  Where we, the church have increasingly segregated the generations from one another, over the last generation, God is, in this hour reconciling young and old.  The very last thing that God says, through the prophet Malachi, before He is silent for the next ten generations is that, “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”   The consequence of enmity between children and their fathers is a curse on the land.  The result of oneness between fathers and their children is the restoration of both the promises and the blessings of God to His people.  The promises are to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The problem that God has had with His people is that rarely have His moves been sustained beyond one or two generations.

In our day we are seeing among our sons and daughters and in many cases among our grandsons and granddaughters, an unprecedented fervency as watchmen, as intercessors crying out to God because of “our” sinfulness.  They are crying out in confession and in repentance on behalf of a sinful and rebellious church.  “The Call,” “The International Houses of Prayer (IHOP),” an international movement of “24/7 Prayer Rooms, Furnaces and Houses,” and numerous prayer movements on college campuses are but a few examples of the ranks among the watchmen being filled by the “next generations.”

Two passages, one about returning and restoration the other about reconciliation, both linked together.  God has been dealing with us here in Northeast Ohio about our “broken walls,” about both our individual and corporate sinfulness.  One of the walls that are being rebuilt is the connectedness of the generations.  This is especially true among the watchmen.  His heart is to restore to us His purposes, His presence, and His blessings.  We need to give ourselves to this reconciliation, by embracing, encouraging, and empowering this “next generation” to take their place beside us on the wall as we cry out to God.  I believe as we do so, it will be said of us in Northeast Ohio “…Your watchmen lift up their voices, they shout joyfully together; for they will see with their own eyes when the LORD restores Zion.”

Yours in His service,
Carlton H. Smith,
Founder and Advisor

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