Let God Arise!

IN AMER ICA’ S INNER CI T I ES

43

Content to reduce Christianity to their own kind of parochial religion, many evangelicals have narrowed the scope of our Cosmic Drama; they have whittled down the majestic call of saving faith in Christ to nuclear family ethics, strong patriotic fervor and political con- servatism. With no sense of a stained or disturbed conscience, many Christians have turned their backs to the cries of the dying in the city. For a church called to be like our Master, this is totally unacceptable! Affirmation and Acknowledgment The final two dimensions of a Let God Arise! prayer concert, Affirmation and Acknowledgment respectively, allow for the giving of testimonies and final prayers which affirm God’s truth about himself and his intention to win the city. While we affirm the cruel oppression and persistent evil of the city, we likewise affirm the hope of the city’s salvation, as in the case with Nineveh of the book of Jonah, Assyria’s dark capital of violence, which God pardoned. In his forgiveness of their transgression and his relenting of judgment of that dark city, we see God’s deep love for lost and rebellious humankind, and his willingness to relent from judgment of even the most wicked city if its inhabitants merely humble themselves before him. If God would deliver the thousands-filled