The 100-Year Prayer Meeting

The one-hundred year prayer meeting

A hundred years before Martin Luther, a young Catholic priest named John Hus was burned at the stake for teaching against various Roman Catholic practices including Papal indulgences and the idea of Purgatory.  Hus’s followers remained underground, but faithful, and about fifty years after his death organized themselves into a church in Bohemia called “Unity of the Brethren.”  This group kept its identity separate, but closely aligned themselves with Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.  In effect, they were the first Protestants.

Later, in the 18th Century, a young God-fearing Count named Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf allocated a part of his estate for the resettlement of about 300 refugees of this group from Moravia, establishing a village they named Herrnhut.  At age 27, the charismatic Zinzendorf was nominated leader of this group.  Zinzendorf put an end to the infighting currently plaguing the group by calling the growing community to prayer and corporate study of the Scriptures.

On August 12, 1727, the Moravians conducted an all-night prayer vigil.  They had groups of two or three people in a designated place in the village praying every hour throughout the night.  This evolved into a daily practice that consisted without interruption for over 110 years!  They took their inspiration from the passage in Leviticus 6:13, that the sacred fire was never permitted to go out on the altar.

During this season of prayer, their hearts began to burn for the lost in the world.  This little community sent out missionaries around the globe with the purpose of evangelizing the lost and planting like-minded communities based on the model at Herrnhut. Within the first fifteen years, this community of 300 people sent out seventy missionaries who went and lived among unreached people groups, learned their language and culture, and introduced them to Jesus Christ.  One small group of men voluntarily sold themselves into slavery so they could reach Natives in the West Indes who had been enslaved on sugar plantations.  In the American colonies, they established communities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.  All were planted to be centers for the outreach of the Gospel among the Natives.  One group of Moravian families, en route to Georgia to plant another colony, was caught in a severe storm which made the experienced sailors on the ship panic.  As the families sat in the ship’s hold, rocking violently back and forth, they joined their hearts in calm prayer.  Watching them was a young Anglican minister, himself on a mission to evangelize the Natives, wrought with fear but amazed at the calm courage of the Moravians.  After the storm subsided the young minister, John Wesley, wrote in his diary, “I have come to America to convert the indians, but, Oh, who will convert me?”  This eventually led to his conversion on Aldersgate Street soon after.

During these 100+ years of prayer, the little church established many ‘daughter’ churches and over 30 successful communities around the world based on the Herrnhut model, sent hundreds of missionaries around the world, and formed hundreds of revival communities around Europe.  It is said that the Great Awakening of the 1800s in England and America, as well as the great Protestant missionary movements to follow, were lit by the fires in the Moravian prayer room.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-1/prayer-meeting-that-lasted-100-years.html

https://www.moravian.org/2018/07/a-brief-history-of-the-moravian-church/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Moravian_Church

https://revivalandreformation.org/resources/all/the-moravian-100-year-prayer-movement

Saint Nicholas of Myra

St. Nicholas of Myra is one of those legendary figures in the church for whom it is difficult to distinguish truth from legend.  While it’s hard to sort through the legend, even the mythical stories which have persisted can potentially tell us something about the person.

He was born to wealthy Christian parents around the year 270 AD in the city of Patara, in Lycia, on the Southern Mediterranean coast of modern-day Turkey.  His parents died when he was a young man, and he inherited the entire estate.  In one of the most famous stories of his life, he gave up a great deal of his wealth by dropping sacks of gold in the windows of three young women who were about to be forced into a life of prostitution because their devout father could not afford a marriage dowry for them.  Nicholas, by this point a professing Christian himself, was known for his generosity and ended up giving away his entire inherited fortune via secretive acts of charity like this.

He went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and returned to the nearby coastal city of Myra.  According to tradition, the Bishop of Myra had recently died and the church leaders had determined that the first pious man to enter the church the next morning would be made Bishop.  That person happened to be Nicholas, who had entered the church for his personal morning prayers.

Nicholas apparently proved an able bishop, on at least one occasion intervening in a travesty of justice, involving the bribing of a jury, to save three innocent men from execution.  Nicholas was later imprisoned under the Christian persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, but was released in 306 AD by Constantine the Great.

Nicholas was in attendance at the Church Council of Nicea, held in 325 AD, to debate the doctrine of Arianism – which held that the person of Jesus was a created being and of a lesser substance that God the Father.  Some accounts record Nicholas actually slapping the face of an Arian who had come to debate.  The council determined Arianism to be a heresy and denounced it in strong terms.

Nicholas died in the year 343, from unknown causes, and was buried in a sarcophagus in Myra.  A shrine was built over his burial site which became a very popular pilgrimage site.  In the year 1087, the inhabitants of Myra were facing being conquered by Muslims so a group of Italian merchants from the city of Bari, without authorization, removed his bones and brought them to a shrine in their hometown.  Later crusaders visited the site and found that a number of Nicholas’ smaller bones remained, so they were brought to the city of Venice.  Today, the Turkish government is negotiating with Italy for the return of the remains of Nicholas to its original burial site.

The story of Nicholas was very popular throughout Europe and was the basis for may legends.  During the Reformation most of these stories died out, except in Holland where the story of “Sinterklaas” remained popular for children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Nicholas

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/august/real-saint-nicholas.html

Mel Trotter

Mel Trotter was born in Orangeville, Illinois in 1870, one of seven children.  His bartender father was described as a man who, “drank as much as he served.”  In his teenage years, Mel became an alcoholic himself.

At 21 years of age he married Lottie Fisher, who was apparently unaware of his alcoholism when they wed.  Mel had training as a barber, but his addiction soon pushed the young family, including their young child, into poverty, even selling his family’s possessions to pay for his drink.  Again and again he promised his wife he would quit, again and again he failed.  

After one ten-day drinking spree, Mel came home to find his two-year-old child dead in his wife’s arms.  He later wrote, “I’ll never forget that day.  I was a slave, and I knew it.  It pretty nearly broke my heart.  I said, ‘I’m a murderer.  I’m anything but a man.  I can’t stand it, and I won’t stand it!’”  He embraced his wife and swore, literally on his child’s coffin, that he’d never drink again.  Two hours after the funeral he staggered home, falling-down drunk.

In his shame, he left his home and boarded a train for Chicago in January of 1897.  When he arrived, he sold his shoes for a drink.  Drunk, broke, and shoeless in the Chicago snow, he determined to throw himself in to freezing Lake Michigan and end his life.  On the way to kill himself, he was pulled inside the Pacific Garden Mission.  The Director of the Mission who was leading the singing stopped the song when he saw Mel come in and pleaded with God in prayer saying, “O God, save that poor, poor boy.”  The Director told those there of his own past addiction and how Christ had delivered him.  That night, Mel answered the invitation to receive Christ that evening.  Asked later how he knew he was saved, Mel replied, “I was there when it happened, January 19, 1897, ten minutes past nine, Central Time, Pacific Garden Mission, Chicago, Illinois, USA.”  He claimed 2 Corinthians 5:17 as his favorite verse, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.”  The Mission helped Mel find a job as a barber and helped him reunite with his wife.  He became very active in the work of the Mission.

In 1900, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, some business leaders contributed seed money for a Gospel Rescue Mission in their city.  They reached out to Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago for assistance, and they nominated Mel Trotter as the new mission’s director.  Despite having never led a single meeting on his own, he accepted and found himself very adept at the work.  He became a well-sought preacher, an effective fundraiser, and able administrator, and mentor to many who followed him in the work.

He found he could both preach and deal with the hecklers.  On one occasion, while he was preaching a small group of young men came into the meeting, jeering and being generally disruptive.  Trotter stopped his sermon and began leading the song “More About Jesus.”  By the time the song was completed, he had physically thrown each of the ‘tough guys’ out of the building.  

Trotter won a man named Herb Sillaway, another drunken barber, to Christ.  Over the next four weeks, Herb got drunk six times.  In despair, he tried to drown himself.  Mel found him in jail, clothes still wet.  Saying nothing, Herb noticed Trotter standing in front of him, weeping.  Herb said, “My God, man, I believe you love me.”  “Yes, Herb,” Trotter replied, “I love you like I love my own soul.”  Sillaway eventually became Trotter’s trusted assistant.

Under Mel Trotter’s leadership, the Rescue Mission in Grand Rapids became the largest of its kind in the United States.  They purchased a nearby theater (which had hosted a burlesque show) to make space for all the ministries of the Mission.  The Mission Sunday School had 300-500 children in attendance, feeding them as well as evangelizing them.  There were prison ministries, Bible classes, and street evangelism.  His wife began the Martha Mission, teaching homeless women to sew.  In addition to all this, Trotter played a major role in establishing dozens of similar Rescue Missions across the United States, many of them led by people he had ministered to and mentored.

During World War I, he preached to soldiers in training camps preparing to be shipped to Europe.  The USO required him to “entertain” as well as evangelize, so to avoid being placed between prize fighters and movies, he enlisted a quartet to sign as part of his preaching.  He counted over 16,000 soldiers who came to faith under his preaching.

Mel had become a popular Bible conference speaker, and even preached in some of Billy Sunday’s campaigns.

Mel Trotter passed away in 1940.  Many spoke at his funeral.  One recounted that he would pray with an alcoholic then stand him up, slip him a dollar, and tell him to return that evening with his wife and children.  The individual recalled that the alcoholic said as he left, “I would rather die than spend this dollar on booze.”

The mission Mel Trotter founded is still in operation today in Grand Rapids.  It has since been renamed “Mel Trotter Ministries.”  The ministry’s web site shows that in the year 2020: 264 people found employment, 336 decisions for Christ were made, 92% of people they found housing for did not need to return, and that hundreds were served at the medical clinic they operate.  The Mission still has a strong evangelistic thrust, bringing the hope of Jesus to those in the worst of situations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Trotter

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/alcoholic-mel-trotter-delivered-from-drink-11630650.html

https://www.meltrotter.org/themission/history

https://www.meltrotter.org/themission

'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

Born in England in 1850, Louisa emigrated to the United States when she was 21.  She felt called to missions work as a teenager and tried to pursue it as a young adult.  When her plans for missions fell through due to her ill health, she married William Snead at age 25 and had one daughter they named Lily.

When Lily was a young child, the small family went on a picnic by the seaside.  While there, they heard the screams of a drowning boy.  William dove into the water to help the boy and ended up drowning alongside the boy with his family watching.

William’s untimely death left Louisa and Lily destitute, but reflected later that many times when she seemed to be at the end of her rope that some person would feel led by the Lord to bring her a meal or provide in some other tangible way.  Grateful to Him, she wrote a poem which was later set to music:

'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, Just to take Him at His Word;

Just to rest upon His promise, And to know, "Thus says the Lord!"

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him! How I've proved Him o'er and o'er
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus! O for grace to trust Him more!

O how sweet to trust in Jesus, Just to trust His cleansing blood;

And in simple faith to plunge me; 'Neath the healing, cleansing flood!

Yes, 'tis sweet to trust in Jesus, Just from sin and self to cease;

Just from Jesus simply taking; Life and rest, and joy and peace.

I'm so glad I learned to trust Thee, Precious Jesus, Savior, Friend;

And I know that Thou art with me, Wilt be with me to the end.

She eventually traveled to South Africa to take up the missions work she had felt led to for so many years.  There she remarried a local man and continued to rest in the Lord’s blessings.  After a brief health visit back to the United States she and her daughter resettled in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) where she continued missions work the rest of her life.  She died in 1917 and is buried there.

Lily followed her mother into missions work and married a missionary to serve alongside him.

https://discover.hubpages.com/entertainment/The-Tragic-Story-behind-the-song-Tis-so-sweet-to-trust-in-Jesus

http://hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/t/e/a/stead_lmr.htm

Mary Slessor

 

Mary Slessor

Mary Mitchell Slessor was born in 1848 in Aberdeen, Scotland, one of four surviving children to a poor working-class family.  Her father was a shoemaker and an alcoholic, and unable to consistently provide for their family.  Her mother was a devout Presbyterian who brought income to the family by working as a weaver.  At times, her mother pushed her out of the house into the streets to escape a drunken beating from her father.  While on the streets, she had to fend off drunks.

By the time she was eleven, she was working from 6AM to 6PM in the mills preparing jute and flax for the weavers.  Eager to improve herself, she signed up for night schooling offered by the factory for the child workers.  When she would nod off in class from exhaustion, she would be forced to stand for the lectures as punishment.

She became a Christian when a woman held her hand near a fire and warned her of Hell.  As she grew older, she began holding Bible classes for the poor children in her area – children she shared a background with.  She organized picnics and ‘fun’ days, raising the eyebrows of “proper” Christians by running races with the children.

During this time, a gang of young men tried to intimidate her.  They slung mud at her and mocked her during her teaching.  At one point, they grabbed her and stood her up.  The leader of the gang whirled a lead weight on a string around, getting closer and closer to her face.  Praying inwardly for strength to stand her ground, Mary faced the threat down until the weight grazer her forehead.  Impressed with her courage, the gang leader made all in his group attend her meetings.  “What is courage, but conquering fear?” she later said.

Presbyterians at this time were very missions-minded.  Letters from missionaries were circulated among churches and read aloud during the service.  A monthly magazine was published called the Missionary Record containing the writings and needs of various missionaries around the world.  When the great Dr Livingstone died, Mary was 27 years old and resolved to follow the legendary missionary’s footsteps in Africa.

Mary immediately began laying the groundwork for a missions trip herself, and a year later boarded the S.S. Ethiopia in August of 1876 headed to what is now Nigeria.  Recalling the effects of alcohol on her family, she was distressed to see the main cargo of the ship was large barrels of whiskey.  She remarked, “Scores of barrels of whiskey, and only one missionary.”

In Nigeria, despite having read up on the culture there, she was shocked at the level of depravity and native superstition in her field.  Life meant little – it was nothing to kill a slave, or a child.  The birth of twins to a family was regarded as an evil omen, dealt with by slaughtering the babies and either killing the mother or running her out of the village.  Matters of guilt or innocence were often determined by having the accused eat poisoned berries of seeing if they survived being immersed in burning oil.  The death of a village elder was accompanied by the human sacrifice of his servants so they would accompany him into the afterlife.

Mary, noted among the people there for her bright red hair and bright blue eyes as much as her quick ability to pick up the local languages, had a tremendous impact among the locals.  She was very active in rescuing twins and their mothers, helping them to see their lives had value in the eyes of Christ.  She ministered to the mothers and children, helping them to see their worth in Christ and helped them acquire vocational skills to take care of their children and themselves.  She adopted a number of orphaned children.  At great risk to herself, she spoke against the dehumanizing practices in the culture and worked to change them, village by village.  Fearlessly, she often ventured alone into remote villages to combat the dehumanizing religion of the area, at one point chasing down a group of masked bandits and ripping the mask off the ringleader to demonstrate their weakness.  She played a major role in stopping or preventing outright wars between villages.

She contracted Malaria more than once, having to return to England on occasion where she was a great inspiration to the church.  Earlier sicknesses of Malaria rendered her body weak later in her life, to the point that she had to be pushed in a homemade wheelchair from village to village.

While at a missionary station in early January of 1915, she fainted after hearing the news of Europe at war.  She was revived, but weakened to the point where she died on January 13^th of that year, age of 64.

A memorial plaque over her grave in Nigeria reads: “In loving memory of Mary Mitchell Slessor.  For thirty-eight years a heroic and devoted missionary chiefly among the up-river tribes of this land.  The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.  They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.”

 

e-mail from Christian History, 10 January 2021

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Slessor

https://infomaryslessor.org/page%202.html

Charles F. Weigle

Dr Charles Weigle, born in Indiana in 1871, was an itinerant evangelist and hymnwriter.  Returning home after a series of meetings, he found a note from his wife.  It read, “I’m leaving, Charlie.  I don’t want to live the life you’re living.  I want to go the other way – toward the bright lights.”  She took their only child, a daughter, with her and filed for divorce.

Charles wandered aimlessly for a period of time, during which he contemplated suicide.  He wondered if anyone could ever care for him again.  Eventually, though, he turned his despair around and resolved to commit himself to living completely for Jesus.  Charles met his ex-wife by chance a few months later, and she mocked him, bragging to him about the sins she was committing.  Two years later, she lay on her deathbed – a result of the life she chose.

A few years later, Charles sat down and contemplated all that God had brought him through.  He thought about how Jesus was there for him, even when he felt abandoned and that nobody could care for him.  He said he wrote these words in the span of about 20 minutes, and wrote the music soon after.

I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus; Since I found in Him a friend so strong and true;
I would tell you how He changed my life completely; He did something that no other friend could do.

(Chorus)
No one ever cared for me like Jesus, There’s no other friend so kind as He;
No one else could take the sin and darkness from me.  O how much He cared for me.

All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me; All my heart was full of misery and woe;
Jesus placed His strong and loving arms around me; And he led me in the way I ought to go.

Every day He comes to me with new assurance; More and more I understand His words of love;
But I’ll never know just why He came to save me; Till some day I see His blessed face above.

Dr Weigel retired to Chattanooga at the age of 80.  He lived near Tennessee Temple Schools, a Bible college, and was active in the lives of young people training for the ministry.  He died in 1966, at the age of 95.  The last time he was seen alive, he was in his office Bible open, making notes in the margins.

https://welovegod.org/guide/charles_frederick_weigle/#:~:text=Charles%20Frederick%20Weigle%201871-1966%20Evangelist%20and%20Gospel%20songwriter.,training%20that%20later%20helped%20him%20in%20his%20ministry.

https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/conversion_of_charles_weigle.html

Welch's Grape Juice

Thomas Bramwell Welch was born in England on the last day of 1825.  He emigrated to America with his parents at age 8.  As a teenaged young man, he became a staunch Wesleyan Methodist and heavily involved in the two social issues predominant in his day: temperance and abolition.  Throughout his late teen years, he was involved in the Underground Railroad, the transporting of escaped slaves surreptitiously into Canada.

Thomas graduated from a Wesleyan seminary at age 19 and became an ordained minister.  He served his church for a few years until his voice failed.  He went back to college and took up the profession of dentistry, but remained an active church member.

Wesleyans, as a number of denominations of the day, were Temperance-minded – prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or consumption of any intoxicating liquor.  A number of churches recognized the appearance of hypocrisy in offering fermented wine during the rite of the Lord’s Supper.  Welch’s denomination addressed this by mandating that only non-fermented grape juice be used in Communion.

This presented an issue – as pasteurization had not yet been invented and non-pasteurized grape juice naturally ferments when stored at rom temperature.  Individual churches took a variety of approaches to meet this requirement.  Some churches squeezed their own grapes during the week and would serve the juice before it had a chance to ferment.  The problem with this was that not all churches had a ready supply of grapes.  Others would pound raisins to a pulp and mix the pulp with boiling water – making their own “wine.”  Some churches did not offer Communion unless grapes were available to be freshly squeezed.  Other churches used water in place of the wine – using Jesus’ miracle of turning water to wine as Scriptural justification.

A staunch Temperamentalist, as well as a godly man who wanted to obey God’s word in all things, Dr. Welch pushed his own church in Vineland, New Jersey, to use unfermented grape juice.  After reading about the new process of pasteurization, Welch experimented with ways to apply the technique to grape juice – with the intent of supplying churches with an alcohol-free substitute for Communion.  For four years, he tried to sell what he marketed as “Dr Welch’s Unfermented Wine” to churches.  Unfortunately for him, the idea didn’t evolve into a sustainable business model and he had to give up his side business.

Two years later, Thomas’ son Charles – also a dentist – encouraged his father to try again with an expanded reach.  He published advertisements in Temperance magazines and offered samples to churches, marketing the product as “unfermented wine” and “the kind [of wine] that was used in Galilee.”  He later marketed the product as a health tonic.  The business took off when it samples were given out at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. 

Today, Welch’s is a multinational corporation offering many products.  It began, however, with the desire of a godly man to give his church an alternative to fermented wine during the Lord’s Supper.  In Charles Welch’s will he wrote, “Unfermented grape juice was born in 1869 out of a passion to serve God by helping His Church to give its communion the ‘fruit of the vine,’ instead of ‘the cup of devils.’”

https://www.umc.org/en/content/communion-and-welchs-grape-juice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bramwell_Welch