“And the angel of the Lord came back the second time, and touched him, and said, “Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you.” So he arose, and ate and drank; and he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights as far as Horeb, the mountain of God.” – 1 Kings 19:7-8
Elijah, weighed down by suicidal thoughts and reeling and running from the curse of Jezebel, lies down in the sleep of a deep depression. There, the angel of the Lord comes, not with anger, but with unbelievable compassion and cooks comfort food, the comfort food of heaven, for the great prophet, and directs him into a new pathway of purpose. That pathway was 40 days of fasting, walking, and returning to the place where Moses fasted 40 days on Mount Sinai hundreds of years before.
Elijah knew his history. I believe he realized that in the 40-day fast and returning to the mountain of the historic covenant, God would renew the covenant with him. Could it be, as we enter into this 40-day fast, we are literally reenacting Elijah’s journey back to the smoking mountains of our national revival? What if you discovered in your research, in the archives of fasting history, a saint of the past who moved heaven in a sacred place long before your day? Even touching his or her bones could raise you from the dead and release faith for a new move of God! I would encourage you to even take a pilgrimage during these 40 days, like Elijah did, to that place of divine encounter and offer yourself on that altar for a new generation.
This happened to me recently.
I was mobilizing in Argentina for The Send and the 2020 global 40-day fast when I was suddenly held up there for two weeks with life-threatening blood clots. Sometimes God makes us lie down in green pastures so that He can restore our souls or speak without interference. I now wonder in even writing this if God brought me to an Elijah moment, broken in body and broken in soul. But there, an angel came to me. Or should I say, a family of angels who fed me steak and seafood and desserts beyond compare. Those angels were Claudio Freidzon, his wife Betty, his daughter Daniella, and his son-in-law Chad. Not only did they feed me food and restore my body through the best doctors in Argentina, but they fed my soul with their revival history and the power of the 40-day fast.
I spent hours hearing the story of the great Argentine Revival in 1992. Claudio and Betty had experienced years of wilderness and spiritual barrenness. The wilderness season is always for good reason. It produced a great hunger in Claudio’s soul for the Presence of God and a fresh demonstration of His power. That hunger drove him into a God-ordained 40-day fast on water. Out of that fast he had a dream in the night of holding an evangelistic outreach in a small park next to his church. A handful of people came, but suddenly miraculous signs and wonders broke out! The message spread. People from the nearby high-rise apartments saw the crowds and heard the reports. Hundreds began to gather. People were slain in the Spirit and the sounds of joyful salvation multiplied. Notable miracles took place. The little church could not hold the numbers that began to come. Soon they went into soccer stadiums and thousands gathered. Masses were knocked down by the power of God, just by the sweeping of Claudio’s hand.
Claudio was not alone. Carlos Annacondia and Omar Cabrera were among the many forerunners. Cabrera’s evangelistic work exploded after a 40-day fast in Miami. A man named John Arnott came to taste that revival and took it home and The Father’s Blessing revival broke out in Toronto. A young evangelist named Steve Hill visited Argentina and came back with the fire and the great Brownsville Revival broke out. In some measure you could say that Argentina was the birthplace of a global revival explosion of God and the 40-day fast was the atomic fusion.
As I listened to Claudio’s stories, I knew God was once again reaffirming the message we are trumpeting to the earth for the global 40-day fast.
Coming back from Argentina, I’m asking the Lord, “Did you send me down to Argentina to revisit the place of the 40-day fast, a more present-day type of Mount Sinai, so that once again I could blow the trumpet, not just for Argentina but for the whole globe? Let the earth ascend the Mountain of the Lord, the mountain of the Jesus Fast, that will lead to the global Jesus harvest!
Father, we pray for the release of the grace of fasting on the Church worldwide and all those reading. I pray that the bones of the fasting saints of the past will rattle again in the dry bones of the church in this present age. Answer from heaven! Release a global reward of fasting, the promised outpouring of Joel 2:28, “And it shall come to pass afterward (after The Fast) that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh.”
In the name of Jesus, amen.
