Lou Engle Shares What Esther 8:4 Reveals About America’s Reality

As natural things often point to spiritual realities, we are impressed by evidence that these are days of gold and glory for the church. The veil between past intercessions and present experience, between disappointment and destiny, seems to be eroding.

Resistance and unbelief are yielding to hopeful expectation even as warfare increases. On March 11, 1977, the Lord told the late prophet Bob Jones that He was removing His glory for a season, writing Ichabod over the church with the rebuke, “My glory is not for sale!” Since Ichabod means, “The glory has departed,” it was as if God were once again proclaiming, “My glory I will not give to another” (Is. 42:8).

In Scripture, gold is symbolic of the glory of God. Perhaps this is because some of the Lord’s most anointed vessels from previous moves sadly ended up seeking glory for themselves. Regardless, the American church has endured a measure of trials and refinement, a 40-year wilderness, designed to test our affections, priorities, faithfulness and humility. But a new day is dawning.

What does this mean for now?

Lou Engle recently released a word calling the church to a three-day Esther Fast from March 8 to March 11. On the Jewish calendar, Purim was the day of historic deliverance from the wicked schemes and occultism of Haman, who had conspired to totally annihilate the Jewish people. His extermination plan was guaranteed to work, except for a divine disruption that took place when “Esther and her handmaidens” committed to a radical three-day fast. As you know, Haman’s plot was exposed, and the highest levels of government shifted when the king extended his golden scepter toward Esther’s intercessions. Although we can turn a blind eye if we choose, in these days of open witchcraft against our newly elected government, the church would be wise to take note of the story God is telling through history, symbols and headlines.

We see evidence of heaven’s divine clock at work in many places. Esther 8:4 may provide a clue for the moment we are in. At the conclusion of her fast, Scripture gives an astonishing picture of the king’s favor being given to His fasting bride. After her fast, “When the king held out the golden scepter to Esther, she rose and stood before the king.” 

Again, note the gold, because another natural “gold sign” is happening right now in the signpost state of California. From Hollywood to Silicon Valley, from the Gold Rush to the Azusa Street Revival to the Jesus Movement, the impact of what starts in California often spreads to the ends of the earth. It was roughly 10 years ago that Lou was in northern California and prophesied something we loosely call “the Oroville Dam Break Revival.” At the time, Lou said, “When the church seeks for God as she has sought for gold, the glory will return.”

Over recent weeks as the floods came on strong, international headlines detailed how the 500-year mega-drought has suddenly been erased by massive downpours across the state. It was only last year that 70,000 people called for those rains, and many more have prayed over the years. Clearly, God heard the cries of His intercessors as levees spilled and dry aquifers now overflow.

The drought is over. But for our team, Azusa Now wasn’t about rain, it was always about re-calibrating the church to the desperate thirst for God’s manifest presence “in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water” (Ps. 63:1). In fact, when Lou mobilized among pastors in 2016, he would draw on that language—that what we really needed was a return of glory. That’s why this story is about more than droughts and floods, it is about gold. So we took note when the Oroville Dam nearly broke, because Oroville is part of the historic Gold Rush Territory of northern California’s storied past (Oro means “gold” in Spanish). Azusa Now took place on April 9 not only because of the Azusa Street Revival of April 9, 1906 but also because we felt it was a prophetic statement: that the “Forty-Niners” were coming again (i.e. 4-9, April 9), referring to the famous Gold Rush of 1849. In fact, one of the worship songs released that day was written by Ryan and Nina Landis as a prophetic decree:

“Rush … Rush! It’s coming again/Rush … Rush! In the hearts of men,/Let His story unfold, let there be gold!”

Now, less than a year later, and in the wake of recent floods, San Francisco media is reporting that storm runoff through the hills of gold country have triggered a new gold rush. A recent news story revealed that “The known gold digs were washed out, trees uprooted, and landscape eroded. Runoffs have also removed gold out of the old abandoned mines and sent it down the river.”

Surely this is more than coincidental. As the “Trump surge” pushes the stock market into record territory during this same period of time, could natural things be prompting us to recognize the day of favor if we have ears to hear?

Could natural gold, lost and buried by the past, resurfacing in a flood after a period of great drought—Bob Jones’ “Ichabod!” if you will—point to a spiritual wealth of glory now being released in our day? Can an Esther Fast during Purim, ending exactly 40 years after that Ichabod word was given, signal an end to the drought and a breaking of witchcraft? Can we fast, not with despair, but confidence? Can we pray, yes, but even more begin to declare that a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit is upon us? Can the church turn our hearts from our wilderness-faith to a renewed-promise-faith, to the God “Who gives life to the dead and speaks of nonexistent things that [He has foretold and promised] as if they [already] existed” (Rom. 4:17, AMPC)?

If we are truly in days of gold and glory, what must change? How would we live and pray differently, speaking to nonexistent, but promised things, as though they already existed? This is the Esther Fast we encourage you to enter. Not one of fear, but boldness and faith. If these are high days for corporate union and the manifest glory of God, how then shall we live? 

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