The Day of the Watch Has Come

By James W. Goll 

“I will restore the ancient tool, the Watch of the Lord, that has been used and will be used again to change the expression of Christianity across the face of the earth.”

Since God ignited my burden for the Watch of the Lord at Herrnhut, the site of the great Moravian prayer watch, it is no accident that He has sent me to draw from their deep pool of wisdom again and again along my journey. Indeed, the Day of the Watch has come.

God is restoring the fire of the Holy Spirit to His people so we will restore the fire of prayer on His altar of incense and release the glory of God on the earth! Look at the striking parallels between the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on people of prayer in Jerusalem, and on another people of prayer 17 centuries later in Herrnhut, Saxony!

The same God who engineered this miracle in Jerusalem and in Herrnhut in the 1700s appears determined to do the same across the earth before the dawn of the millennium! God is not interested in “corporate assent” to the principle of revival—He demands personal surrender, commitment, and sold-out service in prayer and public witness to His glory!

When the people of God dare to surrender to the Holy Spirit of God and then live lives of continuous consecrated prayer, they will display an infectious joy that will draw the lost to them again and again in divine appointments of destiny.

God’s Intention

Matthew Henry wrote, “When God intends great mercy for His people, the first thing He does is to set them a praying.” God intends to cover the earth with His glory and with a flood of mercy and grace. But first God must wake His sleeping giant, the Church. It is time for you and I to shake the world for Christ from our places of prevailing prayer! We can no longer afford to hear the urgent word of the Lord and walk away passively. The call is the same regardless of what title or flavor adorns the sign over the door of our place of worship.

God is calling His watchmen—every blood-washed saint and redeemed king and priest—in groups of twos or threes to come together on the wall. He is calling forth the ancient tools to bring salvation to our generation. Do you believe dead men’s bones can live again?

I believe dead men’s bones will live again. I believe that the same Spirit who kept the promises of God for generations in the past is waiting for us to enter into the Holy of holies for our time and our generation! There is only one path for you to take if you have received and believed the message of this book: You need to be possessed. God wants you to be possessed with His Spirit in the same way Gideon was! The Amplified Bible says:

But the Spirit of the Lord clothed Gideon with Himself and took possession of him, and he blew a trumpet, and [the clan of] Abiezer was gathered to him (Judges 6:34 AMP).

Nehemiah’s Tools

When Nehemiah the prophet risked all to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem in occupied territory filled with violent enemies, the first thing he did was to establish watchmen on the walls. In fact, everyone who worked on the wall was both workman and watchman, builder and soldier. They would work with a trowel in one hand and a spear in the other. God is quickly setting things into place to build His Church in a quick work. Again, this building project takes place in temporarily occupied territory surrounded by violent and desperate enemies. The first thing God is setting in place is “the Watch of the Lord.”

What are the rewards for these labors? If you could ask the Moravians this question, they would instantly answer: “To win for the Lamb that was slain the reward of His sufferings.” The prayers of the “possessed” are more powerful than any of us know. A German historian named Dr. Warneck wrote in his book, Protestant Missions, “This small Church [the Moravians] in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”

The work of the Holy Spirit was so complete and deep in the people at Herrnhut that they literally began to live out in microcosm the plan of God for His spotless Bride when He returns! Listen to the words John Wesley wrote after visiting Hernhutt in August of 1738, as recorded by Moravian historian Rev. John Greenfield:

“ `God has given me at length,’ he wrote to his brother Samuel, `the desire of my heart. I am with a Church whose conversation is in Heaven; in whom is the mind that was in Christ, and who so walk as He walked.’ In his journal he wrote: `I would gladly have spent my life here; but my Master called me to labour in another part of His vineyard. O when shall this Christianity cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea?’ ”

On a Worldwide Scale

God fully intends to do on a worldwide scale what He did more than 200 years ago among a divided group of believers from diverse backgrounds. He is out to raise up a Church, a nation of kings and priests, whose determination is to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Him crucified, whose theology has become Christology, and whose creed was in one word, the “Cross.”

Are you willing to be “possessed for prayer?” Will you yield yourself as a living sacrifice this very day so that God can clothe you with Himself and conduct warfare for souls? Little keys open big doors. What goes up must come down!

The key to fulfillment and fruitfulness in your life is found in one word of eternal significance: “Yes.” Your commission is clear: As a king and priest cleansed by the blood of Jesus, your lifelong calling is to offer the fire and incense of prayer, praise, worship, and intercession to the Most High God and to intercede on behalf of this lost and dying generation.

Allow the Spirit of Pentecost to fall on you again in all of His fire and glory. Find those of like mind who also have discovered the secrets and power of God’s altar of prayer. Join with one or two others to harmonize your requests to God as you restore the Watch of the Lord in your area. Work with your pastor or church members to raise up a “house of prayer for all nations” that truly fulfills the desire of God.

Pray for the harvest, for workers of the harvest. Seek the face of Him who bared His right Arm in Christ Jesus and redeemed you from the kingdom of darkness. Then, do anything and everything that He tells you with all of your heart. The Moravians discovered the secret place of power called prayer. They also lived out another secret of effective Christian living—that all men and women are ministers of the gospel of Jesus and stewards of a sacred hope that must be trumpeted to hurting people at every occasion. It is time to mount the Watch of the Lord. It is time to light the watch fires and restore the lost art of intercession, the ancient tool of the Lord, to the Church of the Lord. Let it begin!

A Prayer of Consecration

Here I am, Lord. Possess me with your Holy Life. Teach me to release the highest weapon of spiritual warfare—the brilliance of your great Presence. Let the fire of your hot love burn on the altar of my heart. Let there be fire on my altar and may it never go out. Count me in. Sign me up as a watchman on your wall. Restore the lost art of intercession. Restore the power and the passion of the watch of the Lord. Use me in Your End Time Army and set me as an intercessor for Christ’s namesake. Amen. 

October 2009

There has been such excitement and anticipation as we’ve been meeting together to seek the face of our Lord, worshipping and praying. We all sense something significant is about to happen and our desire is to be awake, alert and watching….not distracted or indifferent. We believe it is so vital to spend even more time in prayer, personally as well as corporately so we can be positioned for the Holy Spirit to do in our hearts what needs to be done to prepare us for whatever lies ahead.

We as a core team at SHOP have been praying for people to take their position in the various gates in our province, along with praying for a specific strategy to mobilize the Church to pray. God does answer prayer! At the beginning of September, I was introduced to Blake Penson, a resident of Saskatoon that is now serving as a missionary in Cuba. Blake, along with another pastor in Cuba did extensive research regarding the ‘watches’ of the Lord and found numerous scriptures from the Old and New Testament of God’s divine pattern of the 8 watches within 24 hours. Blake taught “The Divine Prayer Clock” in Yorkton for the first time in North America on September 5th, before going back to Cuba on the 9th. He has been teaching this revelation throughout Cuba and now Central America and is seeing the Church mobilized in prayer like never before. I first met Blake on the phone and then a week later in person and instantly we felt the oneness in heart and spirit, sharing the same desire regarding intimacy with Christ and prayer. Blake had been praying for someone to receive this teaching that would run with it in Saskatchewan and beyond. At the end of the day Blake gave us the release to share this teaching as well as gifted SHOP with 2000 books that will be published in December.

I personally was so inspired with the teaching, for it gives us a track to run on, a biblical pattern to know God’s heart and when and how to pray. In the New Year we will be sending the book to pastors throughout Saskatchewan, making this teaching available. Our main aim and focus at SHOP is to call out, mobilize and inspire people to pray…to first become an individual ‘house of prayer’ and then connect with others of like mind and heart to seek and hear the Lord together. We want to invite those we have relationship with to come together on Saturday, October 31st to hear this teaching before we release it to the larger body.

Some topics Divine Prayer Clock covers:
– a biblical base that exists with times and themes established by God
– how the Body can ‘pray without ceasing’ as Paul wrote in I Thessalonians 5:17
– how God views time and how to align ourselves with His Kairos times
– how we are to become a ‘house of prayer’ and how we become a part of the ‘house’ God is building
– how Satan attempts to deceive others concerning his power through the teaching of a spiritual astral clock
– establishing the Tabernacle of David is the key to the world harvest of souls

Patricia Fraser and SHOP Team

It has been so wonderful to connect with many across the province, to share hearts and hear what the Spirit of the Lord is saying throughout the land. Recently our prayer team in Regina have been getting a reoccurring message and it’s all in the line of worship. We are hearing the same theme from many of you in various parts of the province. He has spoken a lot to us in regards to bells, trumpets and drums. As we’ve met to worship and wait upon the Lord, He has led us to release various sounds and has spoken about a reawakening of the people of God to take their place. Over and over in the scriptures the Lord directs His people to release a sound and the breakthrough comes, the Glory comes down and the enemy is defeated. The sounds are in the form of praise, worship, a shout, the blast of the shofar, the sound of marching feet, spoken word and even the sound of silence.

We are including a few specific words for you to read and meditate on and would love to hear what you are hearing. Our desire is to accumulate what the Lord is saying to the larger Body and discern what His strategy is for this hour. We believe this will be a specific call to unite and release a sound that our Father wants to hear at this time.

The vision I saw was of Saskatchewan, I saw two sounds filling the air across Saskatchewan. The first sound was the sound of the call to worship and I heard again the bells ringing through our province. (I hear them ringing as I travel to and from reserves and see the little country churches with bells). The second sound I saw was the sound of the worship itself. It saturated the whole atmosphere of Saskatchewan. Then I saw a sound to the right in this vision, it was the sound of “incoming” and I saw ground troops (on their knees) suddenly running for cover and other foot soldiers running in fear as the enemy attack worked it’s destruction.

When God showed me the sounds filling the “air” all across Saskatchewan, I believe as we obey and move with the Spirit in the first two sounds, we will not hear the third sound pending. In essence, God is launching His own air strike against the enemy before the enemy has his chance to launch his attack. I realize “incoming” may not only be enemy fire from the air but can come from enemy foot soldiers but the vision was specific to the air of Saskatchewan being filled.

Some significant points regarding:

Bells: signify the time; represents European origin or immigrants; used to convey a message over a long distance; in the past bells were melted down to make spears in time of war, then converted back to bells in time of peace; gathering of the people