Another Century of Intercession

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the “Hourly Intercession” of the Moravian Brethren. On August 27, 1727, twenty-four men and twenty-four women agreed to spend one in every twenty-four hours in prayer, asking God’s blessing on their congregation and its witness. “Encouraged by Zinzendorf,” writes his biographer, A. J. Lewis, “this covenant spread wider, and for over a hundred years the members of the Moravian Church all shared in the ‘Hourly Intercession.’ At home and abroad, on land and sea, this prayer watch ascended unceasingly to the Lord” (Zinzendorf, the Ecumenical Pioneer, 1962, p. 60).

Did anything happen as a consequence of this century-long prayer effort? Is it possible to conclude that some definite happenings were related to the unceasing prayers of the Moravians?

We do know that John Wesley was directly influenced by the Moravians. His biographers recount his Aldersgate experience in London at a Moravian meeting on May 24, 1738. This is what Wesley wrote in his journal:

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

The life and ministry of John Wesley were changed from the moment his heart was “strangely warmed” at Aldersgate. He became a flaming evangel who saw multitudes to whom he preached come into the Kingdom of God. He founded the Methodist Church, and that church later sent many missionaries to the ends of the earth with the same Gospel Wesley preached.

In 1734, a revival began in colonial New England that was forever linked with the name of Jonathan Edwards. It was the opening gun of the Great Awakening that stirred all the colonies, and its repercussions were felt around the globe. Edwards was a Calvinist, Wesley an Arminian, but God worked through both in an amazing way to save England from ruin and to start America on the road to nationhood and worldwide missionary outreach.

The nineteenth century became what Kenneth Scott Latourette called “The Great Century” for missions. This was the period of the greatest geographical and numerical expansion of the Christian Church since the days of the apostles, and Britain and America became the two most important sources of men and money.

In 1887 the China Inland Mission prayed out a hundred new missionaries. The Haystack Prayer Meeting in America generated the founding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Pastor Gossner of Germany, through prayer, was able to send out 144 missionaries during his lifetime; at his funeral service it was said that “he prayed up the walls of a hospital …; he prayed mission stations into being and missionaries into faith; he prayed open the hearts of the rich, and gold from the most distant lands.” Adoniram Judson, America’s first Baptist missionary to Burma, wrote: “I never was deeply interested in any project, I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came at some time—no matter how distant the day—somehow in some shape, probably the last I should have devised—it came!”

It would be imprudent to assert positively that the great missionary advance and the widespread revivals that came after the Moravians began to pray were the direct result of their prayers. But it is fair to say that their prayers along with those of others played an important part in making the nineteenth century the greatest of all centuries since Pentecost for the Christian faith.

Whoever believes the biblical record must agree that weak and ineffective Christians and a faltering Church are characterized by prayerlessness. Nothing like the magnitude of the Christian advance between 1727 and 1900 is happening today. And nothing like that will happen unless God’s people get back on their knees. We can be very grateful for what God has done in our day in response to the little prayer that has gone forth—for such efforts as the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, for example. But at the same time we must consider the long range: such a project will have little lasting effect unless it is suffused with persevering prayer.

Perhaps the time has come to pick up the challenge of the Moravian Brethren and begin another hundred-year prayer effort. We challenge the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization to find twenty-four men and twenty-four women around the world who will pray around the clock every day, each for an hour, for world evangelization. We challenge the National Association of Evangelicals to do the same. We challenge every stumbling denomination to start such a prayer effort for renewal and for dynamic power. We challenge the World Council of Churches to make Geneva a center for prayer with the conviction that prayer alone will do more to right the world’s wrongs than any amount of social and political action that is not bathed in persevering prayer.

God called special servants of his among the Moravians to give themselves to this prayer ministry. Surely there are forty-eight believers around the world whom the Spirit of God will lead to devote themselves to this prayer effort. And they will be able to pray others into the same ministry until there is an unbreakable chain of hundreds of thousands of believers who will not stop shaking the gates of heaven until the churches are revived and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached to every creature.

Convincing Case For a Pardon

Eldridge Cleaver, convicted criminal and revolutionary, is much in the news these days. By the time he was thirty he had spent half of his lifetime in jail. Later he spent seven years in exile, part of the time in Communist countries, after fleeing prosecution for serious charges leveled against him in California. This former key figure in the Black Panther party returned voluntarily to face trial. He now bears witness to a radical transformation of heart and life rising from his religious experience.

Cleaver’s most immediate legal challenge is a trial set to begin May 9 on three counts of assault with intent to kill and three counts of assault on Oakland, California, policemen. He has pled not guilty. Meanwhile newfound friends are seeking the large sum of money needed for his legal defense.

Perhaps the changed circumstances are such that the prosecution should drop the charges or the governor of California should issue a pardon. Other pardons have been granted recently that seem to have been based on less convincing circumstances. We see in Eldridge Cleaver a repentant man who now intends to devote his life to serving the best interests of the nation. We see a man who has encountered Communism firsthand and found it wanting. And we see a member of a minority group that long felt the keen edge of the law against it for reasons of color.

We hope that Christians will write the governor of California intervening on behalf of Eldridge Cleaver. The appeal is for mercy for a man who is willing to go to jail if convicted but for whom a jail sentence would serve no useful purpose. A withdrawal of the charges or a pardon would better serve the spirit if not the letter of the law.

Knowing About A Powerful Name

Kunta Kinte—a now familiar name to millions of Americans who watched the ABC network’s eight-part adaptation of Alex Haley’s best-selling book, Roots. (On one evening the network captured 70 per cent of the television audience.) Although some of the episodes were quite moving, the film could not adequately convey the rich culture of Kunta’s African tribe or the strength of his belief in Allah and the corresponding strength of belief his wife and fellow slaves held in Jesus. Haley, recognizing that our society no longer reads books as it once did, wanted the films to take his story to a broader audience than print could do. The plot was there, but not the theme in all its complexities.

The producers relied on stereotype to convey tribal life in the initial episode. Missing was the intellectual education Kunta received. He read the Koran in Arabic and knew how to write. The film showed him only hunting and tracking. Although some of the importance of his and his child’s names was included, the ritual was changed. The name of a person symbolizes who he is and where he belongs. That is why Kunta refused to answer to his slave name, Toby. It helped him survive slavery. His insistence that his child know her roots, a tradition she maintains with her child and grandchildren, helped keep the family together.

That is the physical heritage of Kunta Kinte’s family. Kunta remained a Muslim, his spiritual heritage. But he married a Christian, who raised their daughter, Kizzy, to be a Christian. In a sense the African ritual of naming Kizzy corresponded to her Christian baptism, where she voluntarily took on the name of Jesus. Her faith in Jesus and that of her offspring united the family spiritually, just as the tale of Kunta united them physically.

Roots is the story of one black family. But it speaks to blacks and whites alike. Know who you are, where you came from, and why you exist. Western culture does not emphasize the importance of names in answering those questions. Christianity does. “At the name of Jesus,” that phrase of Paul’s, eloquently tells us to whom we are bound and what name we bear. Just as Kunta tried to live out the meaning of his name, we should live out the meaning of Jesus’ name.

For the full impact of this theme one should read the book; the films are only a good second best. There’s much more in Jesus’ name than we often show to others. Roots is a powerful reminder both of the evil that was done by those who bore his name (slaveholders who called themselves Christians) and of the power that name has to heal those wounds.

The Whole Counsel And Crisis Counsel

The Bible is always good in a time of crisis. Notice, for instance, how churches turn to the Word of God when they are having trouble paying their bills. Pastors and lay leaders who pay little attention to the whole counsel of God in easier times suddenly find the Bible to be their “only infallible rule” when they want to urge more generous financial support of the church. Somebody at the deacons’ meeting asks, “Where’s that passage about tithing?” With great seriousness the next Sunday, one of the officers challenges the parishioners to test God’s promises (the ones about money).

Sometimes the crisis appeal from Scripture works, and the offerings increase for a while. Seldom does the giving continue at an acceptable level, however, if the Church does not have a consistent teaching and preaching ministry based on the Scriptures. When God’s Word is not presented throughout the year as truth, members will have difficulty accepting and practicing the biblical teaching on stewardship.

Christians who love the Bible and who want to see it applied to all of life should rejoice whenever it is presented as the Church’s rule of faith and practice—even when it is cited only as a stimulus to giving during a financial crisis. God honors his Word, and blessings will accompany its use.

A new crisis in major American denominations has now sent some prominent church leaders back to the Bible. We are glad, not that they are confronted by this new situation, the demand for ordination of practicing homosexuals, but that it gives an opportunity to quote Scripture. The people of God are being reminded again that God has spoken for their guidance. His Church is expected to follow the teachings in his Book. If nothing else, the Bible’s clear prohibition against homosexual activity acts as a brake on those who would sanction open immorality among the ordained leadership.

New York Episcopal bishop Paul Moore’s ordination of an acknowledged lesbian has set off a storm of protest throughout his denomination.

The United Presbyterian Church is still studying the possibility of ordaining homosexuals. But when the denomination’s top executive, Stated Clerk William P. Thompson, addressed the independent Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns last month, he made his position clear: “I would not ordain a homosexual.” He explained, “As I read the Bible, homosexuality is a sin.”

Thompson is a lawyer, but one does not need legal or pastoral training to be able to understand the clear teaching of Scripture on this matter. But the Church will continue to be in crises until the whole counsel is taught as a matter of course, not just of crisis.

Blind and Loud, Then Grateful

Mark’s account of the healing of blind Bartimaeus (10:46–52) shows that the beggar not only wanted Christ’s help but also took initiative to get it. Jesus was passing through Jericho on the way to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and subsequently to his crucifixion. The disciples were not ready to accept the fact that he was about to die. Bartimaeus, however, seemed to sense the urgency of the hour. Perhaps with the keen perception that God often gives to blind people, he realized that Jesus would not pass his way again.

The beggar was a determined kind of man, and he began to shout (v. 47). He wanted to be sure he got the attention of the man he recognized as the messiah (v. 48). His efforts met with rebukes from those around him (v. 48), but he would not be silenced. Bartimaeus was probably a demonstrative, perhaps even somewhat offensive person who would not “fit” in today’s conventional church services.

Christ, who hears silent prayers as well as shouted appeals, did take notice (v. 49). He called for the blind man to come forward, and Bartimaeus “sprang up” (v. 50) and went to him. Even then, his sight was not restored. Bartimaeus was required by the Lord to state his request, which he gladly did (v. 51).

It took only a word from Jesus to remove the blindness and make Bartimaeus a seeing man. “Your faith has made you well,” Bartimaeus was told (v. 52), and this recipient of God’s grace went forth a grateful follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.

On The Move

After more than twenty years of operation in rented quarters, Christianity Today is purchasing its own property. The magazine’s board of directors voted last month to buy an attractive, seven-year-old building in a suburb of Chicago. Editorial offices, now located in downtown Washington, will probably be moved to the new location this summer.

The announcement of the impending move made by CT board chairman Dr. Harold John Ockenga cited several reasons underlying the decision. Among these is the fact that the Chicago area has the largest number of theological seminaries and other academic institutions of any geographical region in the United States, and has academic and personnel resources far beyond those that are available in the Washington area.

Ockenga also noted that the Chicago area is geographically central for travel and outreach and that its publishing resources in terms of graphics, typesetters, second-level labor pool, and overhead are advantageous. He declared, moreover, that it is more representative of the broad U.S. outlook theologically and ecclesiastically.

The board received with appreciation a report that the magazine ended 1976 in the black and is in the best financial shape in its history. The acquisition of a building will make for more efficient operations, allow for expansion, provide additional income from rental property, and help to keep the magazine financially viable.

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