Truth City
A message from GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies:"I am zealous for Zion - I care!
I'm angry about Zion - I'm involved!"
"I've come back to Zion,
I've moved back to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem's new names will be Truth City,
and Mountain of GOD-of-the Angel-Armies,
and Mount Holiness."
Zechariah 8, vs. 1-3 (the Message)
Greater Mexico City has a population around 19 million. It's largest college campus, UNAM, has 300,000 college students. Of those students, about 500 are involved in a campus ministry. And who knows of that 500, how many really get that Jesus is their Savior.
Last weekend around 7,000 college students from across the nation gathered at the Palacio de los Deportes. There is no way of telling who came really expecting to meet Jesus. But by the end of the weekend, I know their hearts were branded with the fire of His love. Campus ministries in Mexico are already reporting an increase, a movement of God on their campuses. 10 new ministries have sprung up on 10 campuses...campuses that were before a desert who now are thirsting for the Living Water. Praise the Lord!
And He's just getting started.
It's October 2nd, Thursday night, around 7 p.m. The sun is setting, and we are driving down Reforma Boulevard away from our hotel to a restaurant. Police dressed in riot gear line the streets, expecting protesters. Roads are being closed down as sirens continue to sound. We have to park our cars and walk a ways to the restaurant as the sun disappears. There are so many police they crowd the streets and sidewalks. We move off the sidewalk only to encounter huge military craft carrying soldiers down the narrow dark streets.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre, when thousands of students were slaughtered during demonstrations protesting bad education. 40 years is a long time for a city to remember, to hold on to the pain. 40 year is also a number of completion, a biblical number. We're believing God for a radical change.
Emotions run high during this time every year; as passionate hearts remember the slaughter of innocent lives. There are still so many alive who remember what it was like, ones who hid under stairwells while watching others being killed. Bodies were unceremoniously dumped into trash bins.
On the plane ride over, it's the passionate hearts of Mexico that God is talking to me about. Mexico City is the heart of Mexico, located in a valley between mountains. Topographically it even looks a little like a human heart. I firmly believe the gift Mexicans give the most to the Kingdom is their passion, their love, their hearts. The enemy wants it black. He wants a smoky haze to cover the land. God says LET THERE BE LIGHT! LET THERE BE FIRE!
I feel the spirit of fear, of death as I walk down the streets tonight. It presses in on every side. It rushes in like a sucking black hole. Mexico City is a dirty, crowded city with beautiful French architecture that is now a shadow of it's opulent past during the Mexican Revolution. The stunning, bronze Angel of Independance was erected then and many cathedrals were built out of the Aztec ruins. Recycling at it's best. Now, a scrolling wrought iron fixture is illuminated by a lamp against the night sky; an Art Deco hotel surrounded by the poorest tenants on an unnotable street.
I am wondering and praying for the gangs, the druglords. God has had me pray so steadily, so confidently for them I know beyond a shadow of a doubt He is going to work there this weekend. I have no idea if any of them will come to the sports stadium. I know His ways are not our ways. I know He is strategic, and it would not be beyond the God of the Impossible at all if He got on the inside track in some powerful Mexican mafia families. Believing Him for it.
As we leave the restaurant, there is crowd of Passion people waiting for rides. I see in the distance a lone figure in a long black coat approaching us on the sidewalk. He is so young and so thin, wearing masses of silver jewelry that shines in the dark. His face is dark, as his long strides sweep his velvet coat past us. He seems impenetrable. "Please get him Jesus," I pray as he passes me.
Back at the hotel, I can't really sleep. I pray for the young prayer team coming from Puebla on busses. I pray for this city I am fast falling in love with. It's not green and hilly like Austin. It doesn't have sweet coffee shops and a river running through it. But it has college students. It has a heartbeat that is loud and passionate. It desperately needs rescue. The hurt runs deep, the wounds are open and the evil pours into them. They desperately need Jesus.
A message from GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies:
Old men and women will come back to Jerusalem, sit on benches on the streets and spin tales, move around safely with their canes- a good city to grow old in. And boys and girls will fill the public parks, laughing and playing- a good city to grow up in."
Zechariah 8, vs. 4-5 (the Message)