Ken Walker: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
Ken Walker, “Blessed Are Those Who Mourn,” Charisma (September 1999), pages 38-46, 91.
What happens when young people pray that God would do whatever it takes to bring about revival? Is there a connection between prayer and the tragedies that have taken place in Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado and at Wedgwood Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas?
Eight months before Columbine, Mike Higgs wrote in the September/October 1998 issue of Pray! magazine, that “Littleton, Colorado, students are on their way to establishing a prayer group on every campus in their community.” Jonathan Graf, editor of Pray!, reported that one of the student leaders of this movement told adults to “lead us, join us, or get out of the way!” Graf went on to comment in his editorial that “In a very real sense, the Columbine shooting was a result of the prayers of these young people. They wanted God to do something so huge on their campuses that the world would take notice. Satan tried to stop them when two troubled boys entered Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, and started shooting. But God turned Satan’s scheme into the very answer to their prayers. Something huge for the kingdom is coming out of this tragedy” (Pray! Nov/Dec 1999, p. 5).
There has been an E-mail, reportedly circulated by Pastor Dr. Ed Tropp of Circle Drive Baptist Church in Colorado Springs, that has said, “What the news is not reporting is the revival that’s begun. There were 2 other backslidden Christian kids in that library while people were getting killed, who watched her step up and give her life and came out and vowed never to compromise their faith again as long as they lived. Christian kids that were in public schools in the whole area that had been embarrassed because they wanted to be cool, didn’t want to stand up for Christ, have all opened their mouths this week and there are hundreds of teenagers turning to Christ. They don’t want to hear about peer counseling and psychology, they’re falling on their knees and crying out to Jesus Christ. . . .One girl stood forward and said, ‘I believe in Jesus,’ and what that has done in the hearts of the people in this community is unbelievable. What the news isn’t reporting is what they don’t understand, a revival has begun.”
Wendy Murray Zoba quotes Reinhold Niebuhr, “It may be that there will be no salvation for the human spirit from the more and more painful burdens of social injustice until the ominous tendency in human history has resulted in the perfect tragedy.” In her opinion, Columbine was the perfect tragedy to awaken the United States (“‘Do You Believe in God?’: Columbine and the stirring of America’s soul.” Christianity Today, Oct 4, 1999, p. 33).
Category: Living the Faith, Spring 2000
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