Does God really answer our daily prayers? Yes, and the wondrous reality of His perfect responses is being recorded for future generations in a very unusual mammoth national landmark being built next to a busy motorway network in England.
Called the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer, the monument will be a living testimony that Jesus is truly alive and listens to his children – helping to restore hope in the power of answered prayers.
The project is fully underway with planning permission granted for the monument on a piece of land earmarked between the M6 and M42 motorways on the edge of Birmingham city.
The idea first occurred to “just a bloke that God spoke to 20 years ago,” says marketing consultant Richard Gamble, now aged 55, in a conversation with Christian Daily International.
Gamble received local media coverage for carrying a large wooden cross 77 miles across the county of Leicestershire during the Easter celebrations of 2004: “I just wanted people to think about Jesus and I suppose I would describe that as performance art, and it just got traction with local media. It got people talking.
“It provoked lots of conversation and I was praying to God, ‘What do you want me to do next?’
Then a prophetic vision “flashed” through Gamble’s head. He saw the building of a wall of a million small bricks. Each brick represented a story of a miracle and a testimony, and answered prayer. Thus the vision for the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer was born.
However, the practicalities of building such a wall felt daunting for Gamble. By his own admission, “I am not an architect and I am banned from all Do-It-Yourself projects in my house! I can’t put a shelf up, so it seemed ridiculous for me to be trying this. But I just prayed.”
Two important aspects developed from prayer about the monument. Firstly, he shared the vision with people. “It’s important to speak out a vision from God, to give it legs.”
Secondly, the Bible story of Joseph and his dreams helped Gamble feel his way in turning the vision into a certainty. He saw that Joseph spoke out his vision and that became the catalyst for turning a perception into a reality.
Gamble prayed for 10 years after receiving his vision for the answered prayer landmark.
“I was utterly naive. In my head, I thought if I can raise £20,000 [$25,000 USD] I can buy some land. But after 10 years, I just felt this real pressure from God to get started.”
Gamble met with an architect and they decided to run a global architectural competition with the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2016 to find the design for the monument. The competition was open to any entries and 133 anonymous applications were received from 28 countries.
The designs were narrowed down to five final entries. Eventually the winning blueprint was declared to be Paul Bulkeley, lead architect for Snug Architects in Southampton, England.
The winning Eternal Wall design is a giant white infinity ribbon loop known as a Möbius strip, comprised of a million bricks. It has neither a beginning or end and reaches 51.5 meters [169 feet] upwards into the sky, with a diameter of 80 meters [262 feet].
Artistic technology embedded in the design means anyone can point a cellphone at any one of the bricks and a bespoke app utilizes an audio or video sharing a story of someone whose prayers were answered.
“When you get to face the monument,” explained Gamble, “you will see how colossally big this landmark is, and how small the bricks are, and that will blow people away knowing that each story represents an answered prayer and that should provoke intentional questions.”
The site will also involve a visitor center, education center, 24/7 prayer room, exhibition space, bookshop and cafe – all within 10 acres of ‘green space.’
About 300 church leaders of different denominations have visited the site in the last year, “coming to pray blessing on the land.” Meanwhile, a 1.1 mile [1.7 km] access road to the monument has been constructed and the plan is to build the compound in a few months. Then the foundations for the wall itself will start building early next year, 2025 with hopes for completion by 2026.
“However, on this 20-year journey one thing I have learnt is that things can take longer,” warned Gamble. “One of the great lessons for me personally is patience and submitting to the timing of God. But a few years ago it was a vision, and then an idea and now we are very close to making this a reality.”
The construction of the design is a “long build” involving complexities because it is so highly technical. “We will have to do a number of months of testing and building mini monuments to check the load wrights, all sorts of stuff like that,” said Gamble, “it’s not like building a box or something people have done before. The way of the arch, the twists involved means every element is unique and novel. It’s going to take a long time to build. We estimate between two to two-and-a-half years.”
Gamble said the fundraising had been “fantastic” but more funds were needed.
“We’ve seen incredible gifts and pledges, and generosity. There was even a local farmer selling eggs on his farm to raise money, and people selling stuff on Ebay.”
No U.K. Government funding has been given for the landmark but 17,000 people have officially supported the project to date.
“Its unique aspect is that we are going to create a landmark of prayer funded by the people,” said Gamble.
“What is something never expected though is that it’s easier to gather people to ask them to give donations than to share their prayer testimonies. That’s interesting to me at this stage and I am trusting that will change over time.”
A team of volunteers helped to collate the answered prayer testimonies. Some 40,000 answered prayer testimonies have been documented so far and another 40,000 yet to be recorded for the monument.
“We want to get to between 200,000 to 300,000 answered prayers by the time we open,” Gamble explained “but we don’t want the [bricks data] to be full when we start because we want to demonstrate that Jesus is alive, listens and answers prayer.
“So we don’t want it to be a completed monument but to grow over time, so that the message of this piece of art is that when you pray, God listens. And so the lighting for the site will happen over time to the extent of the answered prayers.”
Gamble estimates that 800,000 people using the nearby motorways will see the monument each week and it will also be visible from Birmingham Airport.
“I think it’s really important to proclaim the deeds of the Lord,” said Gamble about the vision. “In Psalm 145, it says to proclaim the deeds of the Lord to the nations and that is what we will be doing. We will proclaim the deeds of the Lord and pass it to our children’s children.”
The challenge of current secular society is that the “church is being put on mute”, according to Gamble. “It seems to me that people are happy for churches to provide social action but there are many restrictions on sharing the gospel, and we are not able to freely share testimonies of God’s hand at work.
“I have heard of a number of churches who had social media accounts suspended because of ‘fake news’ and what are we going to do about that? How are we going to tell the generations that follow?
“We are going to build a global iconic landmark so that millions of people will be able to see and hear and listen to the deeds of the Lord.”
Gamble said that 30 million people have searched on Google for Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, “but they find out little about Jesus.”
In comparison, “with this project, when people Google it and find out what this is about they have access to a database of a million answered prayers and search for whatever storm in life they are facing because people have been in the same situation as them.”
“Sometimes God answers prayers immediately and sometimes it takes decades,” added Gamble, “and sometimes it is in ways we don’t like. But the overriding message in this piece of art is that Jesus wants to have a relationship with us and prayer is a journey with him.”
The favor of God on the whole project has been “unbelievable”, Gamble said.
“We couldn’t have made anywhere near the progress we made without the incredible provision of God, not just in finance but with the right people at the right time, using their expertise and skills, and we are seeing in a consistent way that God is helping us get this over the finish line.”
To submit an answered prayer, visit the Eternal Wall's website.
