But that's changing. The time of "Rachel weeping for her children" (Jer. 31:15) is giving way to the time of hope: "For thy work shall be rewarded... and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border" (vv. 16,17).
Head to Head With Hollywood
I've been in faith and I've prayed and stood in expectancy for more than 20 years concerning revival among our children. This ministry has thrown its entire weight, effort, faith and strength into ministry to children just the same as we do our calling to teach adults.
To accomplish this calling takes a lot. God told me it would. He said His people have been trying to use 29-cent quarterlies to compete with the technology of Disney, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, ABC, CBS and NBC.
Maybe you have heard people talk about Christian material and products for children and say something like, "Well, that's good enough for kids." If so, think about this: The devil will spend $50 million on some horror movie every chance he gets - just to get our kids. He has spent the last 30 years, in particular, doing everything he can to totally destroy our children.
Hope Implants
But kids need something the movie and entertainment industries are not giving them. They need what I call "hope implants." God implanted hope in Abraham by showing him the stars of the heavens to help him see how many children God was going to give him.
Like Abraham, children need a vision of hope. Hope is the image inside our hearts in which faith becomes the substance. Right now this is so far removed from the thinking of the children of this generation, that they could never grasp it if God didn't start it with a video or something powerfully graphic.
The children and young people of this day and time are totally immersed in imagery technology. High-tech sin, unbelief and ungodly material of every kind. Reading doesn't impress them much. In the younger ones, almost not at all. They are all image-dependent. Even their games are TV images. With God's power and wisdom, we can fill their hungry hearts and minds with images of God's grace, love and glory.
Malachi 4:5,6 says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." It is significant that these are the last two verses of the Old Covenant.
Restoring Hearts
If God did not anoint the prophetic ministries in these end times to bring the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers, then the earth would be overwhelmed with a mighty curse.
But God's not going to allow that curse to take place. The anointing of Elijah, the double-portion kind of anointing of God Almighty, is restoring our children. It excites me because it is happening right now. That anointing has come and it is working! Praise God!
Children are coming to the Lord by the hundreds and the thousands and the 10s of thousands all over the world where people are reaching out to them and ministering to them. They're receiving hope! Their faith is coming alive!
Jesus Loves the Children
Jesus personally associated Himself with children. He told His disciples in Mark 10:14 to permit them to "come unto me."
Jesus instructs us to receive the kingdom of God as a little child. So if we must become as a little child, why not get hold of a person when they are a little child?
Well, we're going at it. Whatever we must do, we're going to reach kids and give them hope. We are going at it believing God. We're going at it saying there is no price too big, no effort too great, no job too hard for our God to reach our children.
Eagle Mountain International Church, Inc.
aka: Kenneth Copeland Ministries