September 25, 1977
The Jericho Marches
There were three loud blasts of the trumpets, followed immediately by "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!" shouted by the hundred or so marchers who followed the trumpeters. Farther back, a second group took up the refrain: "For He has done great and mighty things!" Back and around the corner, a third group of one hundred echoed, "We will praise His name for ever and ever!" And the first of two interspersed choirs began to sing.
It was the seventh and last of our Jericho marches. Six Sundays before, we had been a band of about 50 who gathered to pray in silence as we marched the 1 1/8th miles around the campus we were claiming for God. Today we numbered 350, including three trumpeters, two banner bearers, ten ministers, two choirs, and the three praise groups of over 100 each. Because we had to march two-by-two on the sidewalk, the group stretched for blocks, never in a straight line, as it wound its way around the campus.
The six previous Sundays had been without incident. We marched in silent prayer, and only a few people noticed us. In cosmopolitan Southern California, those few had not bothered to find out what was going on.
When Ralph had first suggested that we march around
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the campus, there was almost no one on the staff who wanted to do it with him. It was too bizarre.
"This isn't Jericho, and God hasn't commanded us to do it," they said.
Some were adamant. "Do we really want to seem like kooks? Is this the message we want to give the community?"
It was true, God had not commanded us, and Ralph didn't really know why we should do it. He just felt that by this means we should announce to the world that we were claiming this campus for God and for His cause.
"There is something about a public witness that is good for us as well as for the community," he said to me.
Shortly after we first discussed doing Jericho marches, a newly-arrived member of our staff, out of curiosity, visited the Summit campus bookstore and bought a tape made by Elizabeth Claire Prophet, the cult's leader. On this tape, in the middle of the decrees and chants which she led, Mrs. Prophet had spoken about Joshua and the city of Jericho. She commented about how ridiculous it would seem if anyone were to do that type of thing today.
"I really believe we should do it," Ralph insisted when he heard this. "Those who really don't want to go don't have to; but those who want to, come with me in confidence and faith."
So we did.
Even so, when we began that first march in August, I still had some qualms. We had to keep our eyes open as we walked, and at first I looked to the right and to the left, trying to see what those observing us might be thinking. Actually, few even noticed. Yet I felt a little foolish, and wondered if the Children of Israel three thousand or so years before hadn't felt the same way just walking around Jericho and not fighting as they were prepared to do. The people of that ancient city must have leaned over the walls and sneered at them. "Do you think you can capture our city that way?" they must have said. "How stupid can you be!" And it must
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have taken courage to be willing to seem stupid.
Ralph was out of the country for the first three marches, and so Hal Leaman, the acting associate general director, led the marches. Hal was a proper Bostonian, and I could tell by his rather stiff walk that he felt very awkward. And so did I, but not for long. Praying, even silently, made the difference.
Marching beside Hal on that first march was dear old Dr. Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision. We will probably never know how hard it was for him to join us. The doctor had told him he was slowly dying of leukemia. He had been in bed off and on for extended periods of time, but refused to stay there. Instead, he visited mission stations around the world, and raised money to help with the needs he saw.
"Ralph, I'll be glad to march with you. I am leaving Sunday evening for the East and then on to Irian Jaya, but I don't want to miss this," Bob told Ralph.
So there he was, in the hot sun, walking that 1 1/8th mile with us. He was flushed when we got back, and I worried that we had asked too much of him.
"I came to this campus as a 12-year-old boy and stayed here until I was 20," he commented. "As we walked around the campus, I recognized house after house as having belonged to one or another of my professors at the college. Almost daily I would walk home with Uncle Buddy Robinson, a real saint of the Nazarene Church. And there by that fountain in front of the school, I used to talk with Dr. Wiley, the president for so many years.
"This campus has belonged to the Lord since just after the turn of the century," he continued. "We can't allow the devil to claim it now."
He glanced at us. We were so few to claim such a large campus. And he must have thought of the difficult early days of World Vision. "Do not despise the day of small beginnings," he quoted from Zechariah 4:10. "All great things have started small, and if God is in it — as I believe with all
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my heart He is — it will succeed."
The next-to-last Sunday of Jericho marches was a glorious day. Ray Ortlund, at that time the pastor of the famous Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, joined us with a number of his parishioners, so we had almost 200. Some from the Center staff smiled at his slight hesitation when, that morning, he informed his congregation that he was going to march and invited others to join him. We remembered our own mixed feelings five weeks before.
But we weren't surprised when, that evening, he reported to his congregation: "I went on that 'Jericho march' this afternoon with the staff of the Center for World Mission. Wow! What a blessing! Did you ever miss God's moving if you weren't there! It wasn't just the 200 or so who marched. I could sense the presence of the Lord Himself with us. I felt almost like I was actually with those Children of Israel when they marched around Jericho!"
The week after that Sunday when so many had marched, the devil started tempting me: "This last Sunday you can probably count on 50," he told me. "Those are the old faithful. But after last Sunday you are really going to look like losers. Pastor Ortlund will be gone to a conference, and his people probably won't be back. You thought you could get a great group, but you'll never make it."
"It is Your Name at stake, Lord Jesus," I reminded Christ when I prayed. "We've been willing to seem foolish for Your sake. But now You'll have to bring the people we need to help us."
We wanted to follow the Biblical pattern as much as possible, so we decided to have trumpets, ministers (as our "priests") as well as the rest of us who would function as the ordinary "soldiers." As usual, Prudence was thrown the job of organizing it.
Every day those on staff who could sing met to practice. But we were very few. Prudence called everyone she could think of to locate several trumpets, but she ran into a blank
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wall until one day Mrs. Fischer, who had prayed for my tumor, called and said that her son played the trumpet, and wanted to help. Would we call him?
He was not only willing to come and play his trumpet, but he brought two other trumpeters, a banner, and an entire church choir. With them, our old faithfuls, and others who came after hearing of the marches at the Pat Boone Concert the night before, we had seven times the number of people who had come with us the previous week.
How could we get more biblical than seven times the original number on the seventh march?
In keeping with the biblical pattern, on this last march, we decided to circle the campus seven times. Not everyone would be able to go the entire way: altogether it would be almost eight miles!
We had planned that this would be a victory march. It was scheduled for September 25, only six days before our payment was due. "Surely, if God is going to answer our prayers, He will do it by then!" we had told ourselves two months before.
Instead, this march had to be a march of faith. On that day, instead of $850,000 we had a total of $157,000 in the bank and an additional $222,000 in pledges! We were not even halfway to the goal!
As 50 of us silently circled the campus six times before the final triumphant march of faith, we remembered God's words, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord" (Zechariah 4:6). Humanly speaking we had failed. We had done our best, but we were too weak. We had failed!
But doesn't the apostle Paul tell us that God loves to use the weak to confound the mighty? Doesn't he insist that all God needs is people who will let Him use them? (See 1 Corinthians 1:26-30) We abundantly fulfilled that requirement. So we marched in prayer and in faith.
The first, second, and third marches on that last Sunday were uneventful, except that, for the sake of time, we had to
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move fast. Ralph's 82-year old father had marched with us each Sunday, and now wanted to go all seven times, but we marched so fast he had to drop out. After the first few rounds, several others, much younger, developed blisters and also had to drop out, only to be replaced by others.
As mile after mile was traversed in silence and prayer, we found our hearts anticipating a great victory. We didn't know how God was going to work, but we believed with all our hearts that He was going to do something very special.
All the previous Sundays the Summit people had completely ignored our marches except for broadcasting classical or Christmas music (in August!) on a loud-speaker as we approached the front of the campus. This Sunday, by the time we were completing the fourth march, some of them had gathered on the lawn in front to watch us. We wondered what they were thinking. And we prayed for them as we passed by.
A couple of marchers were splattered with raw eggs from a window of the dormitory occupied by Summit members. Mostly, however, it was a silent, inexorable march to the final and last triumph. As we rounded the back of our building after each circuit, people gathering for the final march would questioningly hold up fingers, asking, "Which round is this? How many more times to go?" Summit personnel also wanted to know. As we approached the campus from the front, one of them asked, "How many times have you gone around now?" And he breathed a sigh of relief when the person at the end of the line held up six fingers.
Finally, a couple of hours after the six silent marches had begun, those participating strode somewhat wearily, yet expectantly, into our courtyard. They smiled broadly when they saw the crowd that had gathered for the final circuit. And the crowd burst into applause for them.
Prudence had spent days planning the sequence of that last march. Unlike the Children of Israel, we had no "fighting men." Our soldiers were the "praise troops." But, like them,
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we were led by trumpets. Next came the banner and the ten ministers (like Joshua's priests), followed by Praise Troop I, Choir I, Praise Troop II, Choir II, and Praise Troop III.
Only the choirs were supposed to sing, lest we get out of tune and meter with each other, strung out, as we were, along the 1 1/8th mile loop. But as the trumpets and ministers rounded the last corner on the last march, observed by Summit members from every window and along the lawns, all of a sudden Choir I began to sing "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, there's just something about that Name!" Like a wave that will not be stilled, the entire line of march, blocks long, spontaneously burst into song.
To the Summit people, Jesus was only one of a number of "ascended masters." To us, He was Lord of Lords, and King of Kings — the One at whose Name one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is God, the only one worthy to receive the power, the riches, the wisdom, the strength, the honor, the glory, and the blessing (Revelation 5:12).
