Early History of the Spring and Fall 10 Days

Jonathan’s Call: Santa Fe, New Mexico—Early Fall 2004. During a season of fasting and seeking God concerning the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 for the unity of the Church and a personal call to ministry, I had an experience of God’s presence, voice, and direction.  On the last night of the fast, the Lord showed me two 10 day periods of prayer that I was to call others to participate in. These two 10 Day periods were to be Sabbath times, where God’s people dropped their normal lives in order to seek God in an exclusive and intent way.

10 Days in the Spring—Pentecost: That night, the Lord told me that I would be praying for 10 days leading up to Pentecost in 2005. Several months later I learned that the first Global Day of Prayer was being planned for Pentecost Sunday, 2005. Part of the strategy was to precede the Global Day with 10 days of 24/7 prayer, in imitation of the apostles before the first Pentecost (Acts 1). This remarkable providence served as a striking confirmation that this call to set aside these times was really from God.

10 Days in the Fall—The Days of Awe:  That night as I was praying, I heard God say, “Babylon refuses to mourn”, a reference to the city of Babylon in Revelation 18.  In response to what God was saying, I answered back to Him, “But your people will mourn before you return.”  Over the next minutes, I sensed God calling me to call others to a season of mourning during the 10 days from Rosh HaShannah to Yom Kippur on the Jewish calendar.

10 Days Northfield 2007 After moving to New England to attend seminary, we began doing these 10 day gatherings in small groups at our local church.  In 2006, we did “A Time to Mourn” with 7 others. During this time, I had another experience of God giving an assignment, even though I was not looking for one.  He said, “Call 120 to pray for 10 Days leading up to Pentecost” and showed me four rooms of prayer called Worship, Intercession, Scripture Reading, and Silence. Jeff Marks, my mentor from New England Concerts of Prayer, encouraged and confirmed this call.

David McCahon, a prayer leader and pastor from the Pioneer Valley partnered with me at this time for our first 10 Days Northfield. Along the way, God amazingly confirmed each step we took. Among other signs, He confirmed our choice of location at the school founded by D.L. Moody by showing us that Moody had hosted a nearly identical 10 day prayer gathering based on Acts chapter 1 at Northfield in 1880.  It was after this gathering that the campus was dedicated.  Amazingly, God had brought us back to Northfield just two years after the campus had been closed and put up for sale.  We sensed our presence there was part of the beginning of the next chapter of Northfield’s history.

From May 17-May 27 2007, a core group of about 12 people and 122 total people participated in the first ever 10 Days in Northfield, Mass., a place I had never heard of four months before we arrived. We capped our 10 days off by attending the New England wide GDOP in Fitchburg. Those of us who stayed for the entire 10 days left changed people, having experienced, in the words of one participant “a degree of unity that I did not believe possible before heaven.”

A Time to Mourn 2008

In the Fall of 2008, on the day that the stock market crashed 777 points (Rosh HaShannah), we launched “A Time to Mourn” in a public setting at Northfield for the first time.  It was amazing to us that we were issuing this invitation to mourn at the very time when the world system was reeling with the results of the stock market’s crash, especially because this vision had been percolating since the Lord first gave it in 2004.  This first fall gathering included involvement in the first New England Solemn Assembly in Weymouth, MA.