<LV1;2><@BodyText;FW700>HEAL OUR LAND: America's History of Prayer
<@BodyText;PT100>As featured on The 700 Club Newswatch, May 5, 1994
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<PT120>The Facts
<PT180;FW-1>A<PT120>merica has long legacy of prayer extending from the landing of the first settlers at Cape Henry and Plymouth Rock throughout our nation's<PT0> history.
Our nation's official legacy of prayer began in 1775 when the First Continental Congress proclaimed a national day of prayer. And for almost two centuries, the country off-and-on has observed days of national prayer.
<UL2>In 1952, President Harry Truman established the practice into law as an annual observance<UL0>, which some believe is the only law of its kind in the world.
Then <UL2>in 1988, President Ronald Reagan designated the first Thursday of every May as the official "National Day of Prayer<UL0>."
The 1994 observance of the National Day of Prayer centered on the theme "<UL2;FW700>Heal Our Land<FW-1;UL0>." Mrs. Shirley Dobson, chairman of the National Day of Prayer since 1991, sees a grassroots movement to prayer. "People all across America are realizing that <UL2>government can not solve our problems<UL0>-they are too deep and too wide-and that we really need to get back to basics and get on our knees," Mrs. Dobson said.
The recent National Day of Prayer included observances by the federal government, nearly every state government and hundreds of cities across America. <UL2>President Clinton also invited leaders of the National Day of Prayer into the White House for a time of prayer.
<UL0>Perhaps <UL2>the most well-known call to prayer in American history came on April 30, 1863<UL0>. At a crossroads of American history during the depths of the Civil War, <UL2>Abraham Lincoln issued a Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer:
<@BodyText> <UL0>"<IT2>We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us all! It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."<IT0;@BodyText>
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Lincoln's eloquent summons to prayer stands as monument of national humility and dependence upon God.
<UL2>Some believe America today faces a similar crossroads to the one our nation faced in 1863<UL0>. A "<UL2>civil war of values<UL0>" threatens to destroy the moral and spiritual fabric of our land.
Just as in Lincoln's day, <UL2>American's hope rests in continuing its long legacy of prayer<UL0>. As George Washington once said, "It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God...and to humbly implore His protection and favor."
<FW700>Pat Robertson Responds
<FW-1>"Part of the solution to our troubled world is a renewed focus on prayer. We as a people must communicate with the God who made us. Prayer helps set the tone for a nation that is searching for solutions."
<FW700>Standards To Live By
<FW-1>"{If} My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Now my eyes shall be open and my ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place."
