Andy Birkey at Minnesota Monitor reports on evangelical stirrings that ascribe special spiritual signficance to Interstate 35.
Evangelicals throughout the Midwest, from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minn., have been praying at 24-hour prayer rooms for a month for Interstate 35 in order to "light the highway." Young people in the movement have been holding "purity sieges" in front of LGBT businesses, abortion clinics and stores that sell pornography. So far, Minnesota has been spared of "purity sieges," but 24-hour prayer rooms have been set up in Minneapolis, Albert Lea and Duluth.
If you follow some of the links in Birkey's story, it just sounds like a church in Dallas decided on some new outreach and chose the Interstate that runs through town and up the middle of the country.
But others are certain there's much more to it.
The scriptural basis for the new movement comes from Isaiah 35:8, which reads, "And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it." Because of chapter 35, believers say the highway mentioned must be Interstate 35.
Even if God knew 2000 years ago there'd be an Interstate Highway System on a sparsely inhabited continent unknown to the Middle East, the prophets certainly didn't index their own writings. So God also had to know that his obscure revelation to Isaiah was going to become part of chapter 35 someday. Awesome.
But it gets even better. One local prayer group sees all kinds of insidious connections: Between the date of the I-35 W bridge collapse and the date of Israel's claiming of Jerusalem; the fact I-35W passes an area of Minneapolis called the West Bank, which has a high proportion of Muslims; Keith Ellison, a Muslim, was the newly elected Congressman for the district....
Okay, just read it.
