Awaken the Dawn, a ministry that organizes large-scale worship events in outdoor tents, told supporters Monday that its ambitious 2020 plans for the summer and fall are still scheduled to take place, but said they would make adjustments to comply with public health mandates if necessary. Awaken the Dawn is led by David Bradshaw, who has said that God told him tent events are “a silver bullet for the move of God in America.”
On a Mar. 20 prayer call organized by Awaken the Dawn, Bradshaw said the coronavirus is part of a “satanic agenda” and “demonic assignment” to take out what he said were at least 20 large events scheduled this year, culminating in a stadium rally in Kansas City in October. The call featured prominent Trump-supporting “prophetic” leaders, including Alveda King, Rick Joyner, and dominionist Lou Engle, who has spent years organizing political prayer rallies in stadiums and on the National Mall.
Monday’s email to “the ATD Family” said “we are encouraging every believer within the sound of our voice to walk above fear and to believe God for great things in this season,” adding that “Jesus Himself wants to be known as Healer in our nation!” Here is more from the email:
While we take the threat of coronavirus to our bodies and economy seriously, we also see this as a tremendous opportunity! How many times in scripture did God use a crisis to turn the hearts of His people back to Him? May it be so in our time!
We will be monitoring the situation over the next weeks, and if we need to make any adjustments to our upcoming events for the sake of public health or compliance with government mandates, we will do so. We also have some exciting creative ideas about how to leverage social media for worship and prayer. So please stay tuned for updates!
With all of that said, we want you to know that as of now, Awaken the Dawn and Tent America are still ON! Yes, that means:
1. A mass gathering and worship festival on the national mall with Together 2020 in June which…
2. …launches a 100 day procession of worship, prayer, and gospel proclamation in tents all across America, and culminates at…
3. ...a worship festival on the Truman farm in Kansas City where we will join The Send in Arrowhead stadium for mass evangelism with signs and wonders.
Awaken the Dawn and allied organizations met in Fredericksburg, Virginia, for several days beginning on New Year’s Eve to bring Bradshaw’s tent plans into alignment with promoters of “stadium Christianity” who have their own 2020 plans for events designed to spark the global End Times billion-soul “harvest” that was prophesied by the late Bob Jones—and to boost President Donald Trump’s reelection prospects.
The Movement 2020 conference featured prominent dominionist leaders Mike Bickle and Engle—appearing by video for health reasons—along with unsuccessful congressional candidate Sean Feucht, a musician and worship leader at the influential Northern California megachurch Bethel. Right Wing Watch reported from Movement 2020 in January:
Various movements and organizations will be collaborating on a traveling show that will begin on the National Mall in Washington D.C., in June with a Lincoln Memorial gathering led by Together 2020. Caravans of worship tents will then spend 100 days traveling across the country before convening in Kansas City on a farm once owned by Harry Truman and now owned by IHOP-KC. In October, participants will march from the Awaken the Dawn tent gathering on IHOP-KC’s land to Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium for a massive stadium rally sponsored by The Send.
Kansas City’s Arrowhead stadium is considered by movement leaders to have its own prophetic importance, because Jones also allegedly prophesied years ago that when the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl—as they did this year—it would be a sign of a coming revival.
Earlier this month, Engle called a global three-day fast to stop the “demonic force” behind the coronavirus from interfering with plans for 2020, which he said “has been marked by the Holy Spirit as a year of Stadium Christianity and explosive advance of the Kingdom.”
“It is our conviction,” Engle wrote, “that the storm of this pandemic has been stirred up by a high-level demonic principality to hinder the surge of the Church’s mighty assault of fasting, prayer, sending and missions on the global gates of Hades.”
Andy Byrd, organizer of The Send stadium events, had implored Engle to call the fast because he said the coronavirus “is threatening the global advance of evangelism and is determined to stop Stadium Christianity and the sending movement.” In February, The Send had a successful rally in Brazil that was attended by the country’s right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, but an April gathering planned in Argentina was cancelled as part of the government’s coronavirus-control efforts. Byrd told Engle, “The Send Kansas City must not be stopped! Other great gatherings must not be stopped!”
In Engle’s call for an anti-coronavirus fast, he declared:
Together, in the victory Christ has already won on the Cross, we will speak to this coronavirus, saying, “Be thou removed!” As we do, let’s believe together that this pandemic will abate, stadiums will be filled, elections shifted, and 2020 will go down in history—not as the year where the nations collapsed—but as the year of historic advance of evangelism and missions worldwide!
Many of these leaders are aligned with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, which is part of a Pentecostal movement that religion scholars Brad Christerson and Richard Flory have dubbed Independent Network Charismatic Christianity, the fastest-growing form of Christianity and one that seeks “to bring heaven or God’s intended perfect society to Earth by placing ‘kingdom-minded people’ in powerful positions at the top of all sectors of society.” Christerson and Flory wrote about the movement in their 2017 book “The Rise of Network Christianity.” They predicted that the movement “will produce a growing number of Christians who see their goal not just as saving souls but as transforming society by taking control over its institutions.”
