My story and history by Harald Eckert

This brief overview of my personal life's journey will give you a deeper and more personal understanding about what motivated me to initiate the Global Prayer Call.

God loves the nations! As He loves Israel, His “firstborn son”! As He loves the church! As He loves every human being! Yes – He loves the nations!

Can anything good come out of Germany for the Jewish people and Israel?

I was born in Munich Germany. Munich is the birth place of the Nazi-Movement. Here Hitler founded the Nazi party. Here he developed the SA and the SS. Here, in Dachau, a suburb of Munich, he “invented” concentration camps. “Dachau” was the first and the last active concentration camp in the “German Reich”. It was the prototype of all the other concentration camps. In 1933 he went from Munich to Berlin. And from Berlin he destroyed half of Europe and exterminated half of European Jewry while mercilessly dispersing the other half.

As a young teenager, having been born in Munich and being a German, I hated myself and I hated my nation. I was in an existential crisis: “nothing good could come out of my nation”. Germany, as far as the Jewish people were concerned, was the greatest of all sinners.

Then I found the Lord and met his love, his compassion, his forgiveness and the power of redemption for myself.

“Harald, do you love my people?“

A little later on I experienced one of the most significant Kairos spiritual moments of my life as I heard this question resonate several times within me: “Harald do you love my people”? From that very moment on a veil was removed from my heart and I received a profound impartation of the Lord’s love for the Jewish people. This moment impacted my whole life’s journey. I have never been the same since.

I grew up under the teaching and solid foundation of a bible teacher named Derek Prince.

I learned to pray out of God’s love, God’s word and into God’s promises for Israel. As I understood his affection for Israel and the Jewish people, his love and redemptive purposes for my own country began to unfold in my heart.

The peaceful reunification of Germany in 1989 was such an act of God’s mercy towards us, that it convinced me even more of his loving purposes for my nation. Yes, God loves Germany and he has a good calling for the future of this nation.

I became one of the leaders of a prayer movement – Intercessors for Germany. Standing on this deep biblical conviction: “Where sin abounds, God’s grace wants to abound even more” (Rom. 5:20).

For the next twenty years, I grew in love and faith – for Israel and for my own nation – teaching on repentance and God’s redemptive heart for Germany and taking responsibility and leadership in several German and European initiatives related to Israel and the Jewish people.

Live up to your responsibility!

If this is true for Germany, how much more is this desire of God to bless and draw all nations into his redemptive purposes a deep longing of his heart?

He told us the way: “Those nations who bless Israel, will be blessed, those nations who curse Israel, will be cursed.” (Gen. 12:3).

Who can stand in the gap for his nation but the body of believers? Who can cry out for mercy until a nation accepts God’s conditions to bestow his blessing on a people, but the intercessors? Who can hope for a better future for his nation, but the church?

The church has to own up to its responsibility and pave the way for its nation to be able to recognize God’s election and calling of Israel with all humility and reverence.

The nation that blesses Israel can count on God’s blessings.

We live in fascinating times. Israel is being restored before our very eyes. Time seems to accelerate. There will be a moment when my nation, your nation, will be gathered by the Lord in the “valley of decision” (Joel 3). There, the Lord Jesus will separate the sheep-nations from the goat-nations (Matt. 25). 

On which side will my/your nation be? 

Like you, I am longing to see the favor of God fall on my nation and on each nation of this present world. 

About five years ago, the Lord opened doors for me to share my experiences, first in Europe, and then all around the world. I wrote a book called “Israel, the Nations and the Valley of Vecision”, which has since been translated into a dozen languages and encapsulates the insights and teachings that my life’s journey with God has taught me - a German - about Israel and the nations. 

2015 was an important year: the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII and the end of the Holocaust in Europe. 

With the support of other organizations and leaders, I launched the “Global prayer call”: 100 days of prayer framed by two major gatherings in Krakow Poland and in Jerusalem Israel. Christian leaders, churches and intercessory networks from about 60 nations, representing all the earth's continents, participated in this intercessory movement. 

At the end of this intense period of prayer and fasting we discerned a new emphasis being given to praying intercessors. More than ever before our attention was drawn to the Lord's burning desire to call the nations to consider their ways with Israel and to take the opportunity to re-align with His original intention for our nations regarding Israel and the Jewish people. A real shift took place from the former focus on deep repentance and sorrow for what Christians did to the Jews in the past, to this new emphasis on a realignment of the nations with God's heart and intensions for His land and His people Israel. 

Keep on calling! 

Today, 40 years down the road, and to my own surprise, I hear the inner invitation of the Lord stronger than ever to keep on calling the body of believers around the world to stand and to pray for their nation. To pray that their nation will not stumble over God’s choice of Israel and the Jewish people and its role in the course of history, including that which is yet to come. To pray that they will thus enter into the blessings that God promises to those nations that do so.

What I have learned in Germany over so many years, I long to share with the praying church around the world. God chose a German from Munich, who could not see any good or any future for his own nation based on its history. And yet God deposited in him a burning assurance of God’s love and redemptive purposes for the nations that will turn and align themselves with God's heart to bless those who bless Israel and the Jewish people. 

How will the next chapter unfold? I do not know. But I hear Him saying: “Keep on calling”!