Prayer Army Sounds Off : ‘Next Billy Graham’ Exhorts 2,500 Faithful

About 2,500 charismatic Christians, many wearing numbered “prayer army dog tags,” gathered Thursday morning in Anaheim to hear Texas pastor Larry Lea present his cheerful brand of spiritual warfare.

The previous night, about 6,000 attended the opening of the three-day “Prayer Breakthrough Over Los Angeles” conference dedicated to inflicting “serious damage” on the “forces of darkness” whom Lea has envisioned hovering over the greater Los Angeles area.

As Lea, the energetic, 38-year-old head of a 7,000-member church in Rockwell, Tex., led the morning faithful in foot-stomping prayer, the audience laughed, cried and spoke in tongues.

Lea, saying that God wants believers to put their foot down, asked them to repeat the warriors’ prayer with each phrase punctuated by the stamping of feet: “Thy Kingdom come” . . . STOMP . . . “Thy will be done” . . . STOMP.

The ‘I-Can’t-Help-Its’

Immediately, Vernice Harper, 39, of Inglewood blurted out an incomprehensible phrase several times, ostensibly speaking in tongues. Lea pointed to her and cried: “There’s a sister with a case of the ‘I-Can’t-Help-Its.’ ”

An acknowledged former mental patient whose followers call him the “next Billy Graham,” Lea is considered a leader in the national prayer movement that began in 1970 and has gathered steam in the ‘80s, according to C. Peter Wagner, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Spinoffs of Lea’s church open with more than 1,000 members.

Lea’s military metaphors refer to a battle against territorial evil spirits believed to have been delegated by Satan to specific geographical areas, Wagner said. Most often, the term spiritual warfare refers to the casting out of demons, he explained.

Some, like Betty Edwards, a nurse’s aide, and her husband, Leon, a restaurant manager from Covina, enlisted in Lea’s Prayer Warrior Army, which he says numbers 180,000, and received their serial-numbered dog tags.

“He’s God’s man, definitely,” Betty Edwards said. “We need a change in our nation, and God has raised up Larry Lea to show us how to do it.”

Lea said that Wednesday’s group donated $97,000 to help finance the next conference in Miami, Fla. On Thursday, some of the same faithful willingly reached for their purses and billfolds and made out checks to “Prayer,” placing them in plastic buckets marked “Breakthrough.” Some also bought Lea’s books, audio and videocassettes and T-shirts in the lobby of the Anaheim Convention Center.

Lea said that 10% of the proceeds will be given to local anti-drug or homeless programs.

Sitting backstage with his wife, Melva, and half a dozen of the 300-member entourage that followed him from Texas, Lea explained his vision while sipping Perrier with lime. A professional makeup artist removed the foundation that he uses to reduce shine when his sermons are taped or televised as was Thursday’s.

“Our goal is to do spiritual warfare,” he said. “We’re not dealing with bad people. We’re dealing with specific powers.”

A year ago, he said, he had a vision while on an airplane over Los Angeles. “I was looking at a cloud and I saw in my spirit a dark cloud hovering over this region.”

He said God revealed to him the names of four specific spirits ruling the Los Angeles area. They are the spirits of insincere religion, witchcraft (exposed, he said, by Geraldo Rivera in his television programs on Satanism), violence and greed (“That’s the love of money, not money itself,” Melva emphasized.)

He said he believes that the cumulative effects of large numbers of people praying can reduce the numbers of actual murders, drug dealers and the like.

“Telling a kid who’s making $1,000 a week carrying drugs to just say ‘no’ won’t make him do that. When you pray, it will come to pass,” said Jim Jackson, 44, pastor of a 40-member charismatic congregation in Independence, Mo. Jackson drove with his wife and 13-year-old daughter to Anaheim to “come to add their voices to prayer, to dispel the darkness.”