| Ohio Prayer Focus 2005
State motto: “With God, All Things Are Possible.”
We want to thank you for joining with us in praying for Ohio’s breakthroughs. During the 50 State Tour Apostle/Prophet Chuck Pierce, Apostle Dutch Sheets and Apostle Barbara Yoder pointed out that “Ohio is a sign post. When certain things happen in Ohio, the nation is about to shift. …Ohio is to lift the nation back into its place. …Our nation depends upon the movement of God in this state. We are warring; we are embracing the prophetic (Holy Spirit) to come to the forefront; we are dealing with our idols; we are building relationships (not breaking covenants); and we are in place and in touch through violent praise and worship. Ohio is coming to the front.”
Advances on the spiritual battlefield – a sampling among many:
Cincinnati: The process of Transformation Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky began in February 2002 with a small group of pastors, business people, and ministry leaders - each with a heart of intercession - coming together weekly to worship and intercede on behalf of greater Cincinnati, Ohio and the tri-state region. They began to pray that the Lord would break their hearts to love Him more and love His people the way He loves them. When they began to fully embrace the fact that "We only have one enemy and it is NOT each other”, they started to lay down their own agendas and seek God's agenda for their cities. Now they are seeing the fruit of their labor. Jesus is bringing unity to the Body of Christ. Pastors - African American and Caucasian - are coming together in love and unity to pray together on a regular basis. Christian radio stations - who were in competition with each other - are now sharing the same tents in city-wide events and working together to promote Kingdom events and unity in the city. Local Christian radio is focusing on prayer and transformation messages that are being broadcast to the city. Visions of sports stadiums and arenas being used to lift up the name of Jesus are coming to pass. Businesses, media and the Church are working together to take Christ into the Marketplace. God is bringing the leaders of the city and the Church to true repentance. The Mayor of Cincinnati repented publicly to the family of a young Black man who was killed by the Cincinnati Police Department and stated that “It is time to operate our city according to the teachings of Jesus.” Church leaders repented to this family, the Mayor, the City and to the Police and Fire Departments for not knowing what to do when the city was in crisis (racial riots, etc.).
Mansfield: “Rejoice Richland County”, held on August 6, 2005, was in an outdoor football stadium in downtown Mansfield. It brought together 45 churches with the common goal of developing a Kingdom-mindedness, as well as breaking down racial, denominational and generational barriers that have plagued the area in the past. The sacred assembly, which brought 4,500 people together in grassroots style, was an answered prayer in a county where pastors have competed against each other for “market share,” and where some pastors have declared their own churches to be “separatist churches.” A spiritual beachhead has been established locally in community intercession. A small core of intercessors began meeting in January 2005, three nights a week, doing diagnostic research on the spiritual dynamics of the county during the day, and praying and petitioning the Lord of Hosts at night.
Cleveland: Judge Angela Stokes, the Founder and Chairperson of Project HOPE (Holistic Opportunities and Preventive Education), has started this rehabilitative program in the Cleveland Municipal Courts. This program addresses the problem of prostitution, its devastating effect on the lives of the offenders, and its negative impact on Cleveland neighborhoods. She is helping other Municipal Courts across the nation to establish Project HOPE in their local jurisdictions.
Columbus: Opening Doors, developed by Debbie Roeger, is a program to aid in the reentry of ex-offenders from the Ohio prisons into communities across the state. Typically, more than 27,000 ex-offenders are released from Ohio prisons each year. Historically more than 40% will re-offend and return to prison for a parole violation or new crime. God has spoken very clearly to the Opening Doors organization, that His reentry plan uses the Spiritual Family model from Stand In The Gap Tulsa, (essentially a family support model based on prayer). Opening Doors has agreed to assume leadership for bringing the model to Ohio. Opening Doors is setting up unique intercessory prayer teams in the prisons through the state. These intercessory prayer teams are a combination of Christian prison inmates, Christian prison staff and volunteer prayer warriors from the church. Their purpose will be to pray for the needs of that particular prison under the leadership of the prison chaplain or a delegated prayer leader. Prayer for Prisoners began in March 2005, and is expanding. It started at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville. The women are invited during their worship services to fill out slips of paper with individual prayer requests. The requests are sent to Opening Doors and then are distributed to other prisons, churches, individuals, and prayer ministries so that each request receives individual prayer.
Columbus: The Center for Moral Clarity, developed by Pastor Rod Parsley, assisted by Daryl Sanders, consists of six hundred leaders from across Ohio, actively helping to transform Ohio.
Lancaster: Patriot Pastors has been developed by Pastor Russell Johnson. Four hundred pastors are committed to transforming Ohio.
Marietta: Bridges of reconciliation are being built across the Greenville Treaty Line between Appalachia (Virginia) and the Northwest Territory. This has great spiritual significance for Ohio. The triangle of spiritual influence (that includes along the Greenville treaty line) from Detroit to Dayton to Pittsburgh is being affected.
PRAY:
* that God would expose corruption and control in the high places of Ohio’s government and marketplace. Please pray that the officials that God wants in office will be elected in the state and cities. Gubernatorial, Mayoral and Judges elections are upcoming.
* that God would make a way for Ohio to confront and correct the sins of its past, especially the broken trust and treaties, betrayal of hospitality, and shedding of innocent blood that characterize its original interactions with the First Nations of the area. Pray also that God would release Ohio from the spirits of violence, retaliation, tribalism, deceit, and arrogance that entered at that time.
* that Transformation Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky’s upcoming events will see success and fulfill what God has planned. Events are: “Set Free” on September 17, National Day of Prayer for Jerusalem on October 2, “Shout of Judah” Conference on October 13-15 and “Prayer, Praise and Worship Service” on October 30.
* that God will continue to help the churches of Mansfield/Richland County to come together to combat the social bandage issues. Richland County is listed as having the most sexual crime offenders living in its boundaries per capita in the state of Ohio.
* that God will provide and bless Judge Angela Stokes and her effort of Project HOPE in Cleveland.
* that our prisons would be filled with God’s glory and that churches will stand in partnership with Opening Doors in order to implement the Stand In The Gap work. Opening Doors needs hundreds of Christians to become part of a Spiritual Family with Christian ex-offenders. Pray that God will call the prayer warriors who will be willing to go inside Ohio prisons to become part of the prison intercessory prayer teams forming across the state. Pray also that God would provide all the individuals, churches and prayer ministries so that every prayer request from a prisoner will have a prayer covering.
* that God will cleanse the spiritual waters of Ohio. The physical waters and spiritual waters of Ohio are tied together. Ohio’s environment and life-giving waters were polluted during the industrial age. The Lake and rivers were “miraculously” cleansed when the state changed direction in the 1970’s. In the same period, God sent life-giving spiritual waters of revival through Ohio. The natural waters are becoming polluted again. Change did not go deep enough. Right now in Columbus, a cultural event called “WaterFire” is taking place on the Scioto River. The whole event is dedicated to the Greek gods. In Cleveland, a group of three lamas from the monastery of the Dalai Lama of Tibet are planning on October 8th to put a sand Mandala that they have been praying over, in the Lake. They will be calling up “gods of the inner earth”. Please join with us in prayer that the Church in Ohio will unite to lead in a deeper repentance that will not allow the waters, natural and spiritual, to be fouled again.
Historical Context for Present-Day Prayer
Ohio played a pivotal role in national affairs in the years between the Civil War and WWI, the period when the U.S. rose to prominence as a global power. Ohio became a marketplace leader in industry, education and technology. The state is home to more colleges than any other state except Pennsylvania. Cities such as Cleveland, Toledo, Akron, Canton, Dayton, and Youngstown became centers of industry. A large number of inventors called Ohio home, and the state was the location of many technological breakthroughs, particularly in the fields associated with transportation. The technology to tap natural gas was developed and implemented first in northwest Ohio. The cracking process for converting oil into gasoline, the procedure for vulcanizing rubber, and the invention of the electric starter all took place through Ohioans. Ohio inventors also developed the first gasoline-powered automobile and the first airplane. John D. Rockefeller became America’s first billionaire by establishing a system for petroleum distribution that became the Standard Oil Company. Leadership continued into the field of aeronautics; Ohio has given birth to more astronauts than any other state, Neil Armstrong and John Glenn being the most well-known.
Ohio industrialists and Ohio Civil War veterans exerted a powerful influence on the state’s leaders, who in turn shaped the nation’s political processes and decision making. Seven Ohio presidents were elected during this period, including three in a row after the term of Andrew Johnson (Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, and James A. Garfield). Three of these presidents died in office (Garfield, McKinley, and Harding), the former two by assassination.
A century later Ohio’s industrial and economic condition had declined precipitously. It became the buckle of the rust belt; industries relocated out of the state, taking thousands of jobs with them. By the 1960’s Lake Erie and the Ohio rivers were dying. However, drastic changes led to a near-miraculous cleansing of the waters within decades, a process that most ecologists predicted would take centuries.
Before Ohio Became a State
Ohio was hotly contested between the French, British, and many of the First Nations throughout the 1700’s. During the Revolutionary War, almost 100 Christian Indians (mostly women and children) were clubbed to death by colonial forces at Gnadenhutten. The last engagement of the Revolutionary War took place in Ohio, where a coalition of First Nations defeated a military force; the commander, Col. William Crawford (a close friend of Washington), was captured and executed by a contingent of the Lenape/Delaware, a member nation of the coalition.
The U.S. government claimed the Ohio country by right of conquest after the Treaty of Paris. Virginia claimed lands in southern Ohio for its war veterans (the Virginia Military District), while Connecticut claimed lands in northeast Ohio for its veterans (the Western Reserve). A group called the Ohio Company was formed in Boston in 1786 to establish American settlements in the Ohio country – in land Virginia also coveted. Ohio therefore became the first site where North and South found themselves in competition. In 1787 Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, opening Ohio to settlement and organization, with a promise of fair treatment to the indigenous peoples. (In the document, Congress declared that “the property and land” of the Indians “shall never be taken from them without consent.”) Subsequent interactions with the First Nations, however, were consistently marked by betrayal, deceit, and domination. Coalitions of nations, led by the Miamis, Wyandottes, Lenapes, and Shawnees turned back a number of expeditions sent to subdue them and in 1791 inflicted the greatest defeat ever suffered by a U.S. military force at the hands of the First Nations (over three times the number of casualties than at Little Big Horn). An American victory at Fallen Timbers, however, convinced the Nations to sign the Treaty of Greenville, which ceded the southern part of Ohio and promised them the lands north in perpetuity. This treaty and many thereafter were kept by the Native signatories but ignored or broken by the U.S. government.
2005 is 210 years after the signing of the Treaty of Greenville between the newly constituted U.S. Government and representatives of the 12 tribes of Native populations that inhabited what are now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The signing took place August 3, 1795.
210 years is spiritually significant. It constitutes 3 cycles of 70 years. 70 years is the biblical span of time between the removal and restoration of the Israelites from their land and signifies the cleansing of the land (See ex. Jer. 29:10-14; Lev. 25:1-55). The number 3 represents the Divine realm.
Every 70 years since the beginning of the cycle, from 1795 to 2005, has seen a pivotal shift in U.S. relationships with the First Nations.
* 1795: Beginning of U.S. policy of ethnic cleansing
* 1865: Acceleration of U.S. government attempt to wipe out Native peoples and cultures
* 1935: U.S. government stops its attempt to wipe out Native peoples and reverses course
* 2005: This is the year where confession, repentance, restoration and reconciliation must take place.
Sources:
Paper written by Dr. Daniel Hawk, Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at Ashland
Theological Seminary
Opening Doors – Deborah Roeger
Richland Community Prayer Network – contact Ben Mutti
Pastors Art and Ella Fowler of Cleveland
Transformation Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky – contacts Ford Taylor and Ann Forbes
www.waterfire.com/about/boats.html
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