Pastor Greg Laurie's SoCal Harvest event will be held Friday, Aug. 17 through Sunday, Aug. 19 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California and is expected to draw tens of thousands of people to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This year is the 29th anniversary of SoCal Harvest, making it the longest-running large-scale evangelistic event in American history.
Each nightly event will feature some of the top Christian musical artists, including MercyMe, Passion, Phil Wickham, Lincoln Brewster, Andy Mineo, Jordan Feliz, and Chris Tomlin.
Saturday night's event will also feature a Freestyle Motocross Show featuring FMX legend and former world champion Nate Adams, Jimmy Fitzpatrick and the "Fitz Army," Jarryd McNeil, Taka Higashino, Destin Cantrell, and Todd Potter.
Laurie will also present a special life-changing message of hope through Jesus Christ each evening designed to answer life's big questions like 'Why am I here?', 'Is God real?', and 'What happens when I die?'
According to the Harvest Christian Fellowship website, Harvest events are designed to be opportunities for Christians to invite family members, coworkers, friends, and acquaintances to hear the gospel in an environment that is entertaining and non-threatening.
Laurie is also encouraging Southern Californians to bring a Bible with them to the event as a part of the SoCal Harvest's #StandWithTheBible campaign. The campaign is in response to a local real estate company that removed billboards from its Fashion Island Mall and the Irvine Spectrum after receiving complaints and at least one "serious threat" because the ads featured an image of Pastor Laurie holding a Bible.
As CBN News reported, the Bible depicted in Laurie's hand did not have a cross, religious symbols, or even the word "Bible" on it.
On Friday, the event's opening night, Laurie will ask everyone in attendance to hold the Bible high over their heads in a show of support for the "book of books." Laurie hopes the campaign will be a positive way for Christians to stand up for the Word of God.
"Countless people throughout the ages have been transformed because of the Bible, and its impact around the world is literally impossible to quantify," Laurie said in a press release. "Instead of being offended by it, more people ought to pick it up, read it and see for themselves what it has to say. I believe our cities, our nation, and the world will be immeasurably better off if more people read and even more importantly follow what the Bible says."
More than 300 Southern California churches of many different denominations will be involved in the 2018 SoCal Harvest.
Since 1990, more than 8.9 million people have participated in Harvest events in person or online, with 509,897 of them making professions of faith.
In 2012, Harvest simulcast its Southern California Harvest Crusade to thousands of locations across the country for a coast-to-coast evangelistic outreach called Harvest America.
Harvest America has since become an annual event that now reaches audiences around the world through internet and satellite technology. The 2018 Harvest America event held at AT&T Stadium in Dallas in June, was live streamed to 6,630 remote host locations around the world and drew tens of thousands of participants.
Laurie is the pastor of the Harvest Christian Fellowship with locations in Riverside and Irvine, California and Maui, Hawaii. The author of more than 70 books, he also serves as a board member of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
The SoCal Harvest event will be streamed live online on all three nights and can be viewed at https://www.harvest.org/crusades-and-events.
The event will begin at 7:00 pm Pacific/10:00 pm Eastern on Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday night, the event will be streamed at 6:00 pm Pacific/9:00 Eastern.
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