Pheonix, Arizona: Superbowl Massacre Averted By Prayer

Published: November 4th, 2008

A bloody massacre was averted at February’s Superbowl XLII in Phoenix, Arizona, and Pete Greig sincerely believes that it was thanks to an outpouring of 24-7 Prayer across the State. Here is the remarkable story..

“The trees are taller than people, the Grand Canyon is just up the road, grapefruits grow by the Highway, and you could have fried an egg on any one of the cars parked outside the City of Grace Worship Center when I visited Phoenix, Arizona earlier this year. But inside the auditorium, pastors seemed to be blinking in amazement at the realization that their congregations are suddenly praying every minute of every hour of every day. Every week the baton of prayer passes from church to church and, in this way, believers across Arizona are praying continually throughout 2008. Sharing a coffee with organizer Deb Fritch, I happened to ask what impact this unprecedented wave of prayer is having. What she told me is one of the most remarkable stories I have heard in almost a decade of 24-7 prayer…

In January, just after the launch of the Arizona year of prayer, God warned Deb in a dream of impending disaster at the Superbowl which was due to take place at the University of Phoenix Stadium on February 3rd. Deb saw blood being poured out in a specific location, so the night before the Superbowl she sent a team of intercessors to the parking lot outside the stadium to pray preemptively against the violence she’d seen in her dream.  The next day the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots 17-14, watched by a record-breaking 97.5 million viewers. America’s biggest sporting contest passed uneventfully and Deb (who left a well-paid job in accountancy to co-ordinate the Arizona year of prayer) confessed that she wondered if she’d got it all wrong. Had the prayer meeting in the parking lot been merely an embarrassing mistake?

But then came the news…

‘I will slay your children’

In an article entitled “Superbowl Massacre Averted At Last Minute’ the East Valley Tribune reported that a 35-year-old man called Kurt William Havelock had decided to wreak revenge after becoming enraged by Tempe City Council’s refusal to grant him a license to sell alcohol on the premises of his restaurant (which he wanted to turn into a ‘Halloween-themed bar’). The would-be killer had written eight letters to media outlets saying that he intended to “test the theory that bullets speak louder than words. I will slay your children,’ he said, ‘I will shed the blood of the innocent.” A Magistrate would later tell a US District Court ‘I haven’t heard more chilling words, and I’ve been doing this a long time.’ Having mailed his letters, Havelock took 200 rounds of ammunition and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle to the Superbowl with the intention of killing as many people as possible. He was still carrying one final letter, which simply said ‘Do Not Resuscitate’.

Miraculous change of heart

But as he sat in his car, armed to the teeth in the very location where the team had prayed against violence, Kurt Havelock inexplicably experienced a sudden ‘change of heart’. The would-be killer made a call, confessed to his family, and was persuaded to turn himself in. "He was sobbing hysterically," his father later recalled. "He said, 'I've done something terribly, terribly wrong.'"

When a man bent on mass-murder is stopped in his tracks, realizes that he is ‘terribly, terribly wrong’, confesses his sin and hands himself into the police, such a change of heart surely constitutes a direct and dramatic answer to prayer.

I looked at Debs grinning back at me, and tried to get my head round the fact that her ‘foolish’ obedience in response to a mere nightmare, had apparently disarmed a potential killer, saved many lives, and averted an atrocity that would have been witnessed by the second largest television audience in American history. Quite a testimony to the power of prayer!

Later that day, sitting in my hotel room staring out at the towering cacti, shimmering in the heat, I reflected on some of the challenges which Deb’s testimony inevitably presents:

1. I need to be more responsive to dreams and whispers from the Holy Spirit. What miracles do I miss when I’m too spiritually dull to recognize God’s prompts to persevere in prayer? (1 Kings 19:12)
2. Prayer is not an optional extra. What might the newspaper headlines look like if we were not praying the way we are? What disasters are being averted daily because of all the prayer rooms around the world? (Acts 4: 23-31)
3. The spiritual realm determines the material reality. So often I assume that the balance of power is the other way round. ‘Lord, give me eyes to see…’ (2 Kings 6:17, Eph. 6:12)
4. It can matter where I pray, as well as what I pray about. It mattered that Deb’s team stood where they stood to pray. Jesus himself didn’t just intercede from heaven – he came to earth. (John 1:14)
5. God primarily changes history by changing hearts. One at a time. In praying for big issues, I should laser in on individuals, remembering that even the hardest heart can change. Repentance is the greatest force ever unleashed in the world. (Matt 3:2)

On 27th October, Kurt William Havelock was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Will you join me in praying for him? God once intercepted another deceived and angry young man, bent on murder. Subsequently, Saul became Paul; one of the greatest witnesses of God’s forgiveness to the nations. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a second part to this story of God’s miraculous intervention in Kurt Havelock’s life in answer to prayer?

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Post Script
My conversation with Deb took place in June. By August she had another remarkable story about the impact of their prayer initiative on the region. Police announced that, between January and June, violent crime in Phoenix had dropped by 8.5% per 100,000 people, and that property crime had fallen by 10.4%. The Arizona Republic commented ‘The decrease from January through June marked the largest crime reduction in Phoenix in the past decade.’ The momentum of non-stop prayer has become so great in Arizona, that the prayer vigil is going to continue into 2009. Eight weeks of next year are already covered.  ‘We’re going to continue until the Lord tells us to stop’ laughs Deb.

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