The Moravian Revival of 1727…
One of the greatest revivals of God’s people occurred at the Saxony estate of Count Zinzendorf.
The young, Christian noblemen offered many Christians safety on his property.
Many at the time were fleeing imprisonment, death, banishment, and torture for their beliefs.
They fled to Zinzendorf’s and called their new home Herrnhut, ‘the Lord’s Watch’.
There on August 13, 1727 a great revival started.
According to Oswald Smith, “They made the discovery that the Church could not save them; that there was no salvation in its creeds, doctrines or dogmas; that good works, moral living, commandment keeping, praying and Bible reading, could not avail; much less culture, character or conduct.
They found that Christ alone could save; that He was willing and able to receive sinners at a moment’s notice; that justification, the forgiveness of sins, the new birth, etc. were instantaneous experiences received the very moment a sinner believed on Christ; that salvation was through grace and by faith, apart from the deeds of the law; that when a man is saved he has peace with God, and that he receives the assurance of salvation by the witness of the Holy Spirit in his heart.”
History of the Moravian Church
A MODERN PENTECOST
“Lord God, the Holy Ghost,
In this accepted hour,
As on the day of Pentecost,
Descend in all Thy power.
We meet with one accord,
In our appointed place,
And wait the promise of our Lord,
The Spirit of all grace.
The young, the old inspire
With wisdom from above;
And give us hearts and tongues of fire,
To pray, and praise, and love.”
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THUS sang the Scotch Moravian poet and hymn writer, James Montgomery, more than a hundred years ago.
His prayer for another Pentecost was undoubtedly inspired by the experiences of his spiritual fathers on August 13, 1727 in Herrnhut, Germany.
We are now (in 1927) celebrating the Bi-Centennial of what our Moravian Text Book calls the “Signal outpouring of the Holy Spirit experienced by the congregation of Herrnhut.”
We do well to join in Montgomery’s earnest prayer for another Pentecost in our own day.
D.L. Moody in one of his last sermons in Boston, his spiritual birthplace, spoke thus of the Holy Spirit:
“See how He came on the day of Pentecost! It is not carnal to pray that He may come again and that the place may be shaken.
I believe Pentecost was but a specimen day. I think the Church has made this woeful mistake that Pentecost was a miracle never to be repeated.
I have thought too that Pentecost was a miracle that is not to be repeated.
I believe now if we looked on Pentecost as a specimen day and began to pray, we should have the old Pentecostal fire here in Boston.”
A Moravian historian writes in a similar vein as follows:
God says; “It shall come to pass I will pour out My Spirit.”
This was His promise through the prophet Joel.
The first fulfillment of this promise was on the day of Pentecost.
There is nothing in the New Testament to indicate that this was to be the one and only fulfillment of this promise.
On the contrary we read in the book of Acts of many outpourings of the Holy Spirit, as in Samaria (8:14-17) as in Ephesus (19:1-7) and even in the case of the Gentiles (10:44-46).
Church History also abounds in records of special outpourings of the Holy Ghost, and verily the thirteenth of August 1727 was a day of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
We saw the hand of God and His wonders, and we were all under the cloud of our fathers baptized with their Spirit.
The Holy Ghost came upon us and in those days great signs and wonders took place in our midst.
From that time scarcely a day passed but what we beheld His almighty workings amongst us.
A great hunger after the Word of God took possession of us so that we had to have three services every day, at 5:00 and 7:30 A.M. and 9:00 P.M.
Everyone desired above everything else that the Holy Spirit might have full control. Self-love and self-will as well as all disobedience disappeared and an overwhelming flood of grace swept us all out into the great ocean of Divine Love.”
Psalms 14:2
The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men
To see if there are any who understand,
Who seek after God.
God’s warning to Israel…
Deuteronomy 4:27-31
The Message
25-28 When the time comes that you have children and grandchildren, put on years, and start taking things for granted, if you then become corrupt and make any carved images, no matter what their form, by doing what is sheer evil in God’s eyes and provoking his anger—I can tell you right now, with Heaven and Earth as witnesses, that it will be all over for you.
You’ll be kicked off the land that you’re about to cross over the Jordan to possess.
Believe me, you’ll have a very short stay there. You’ll be ruined, completely ruined.
God will scatter you far and wide; a few of you will survive here and there in the nations where God will drive you.
There you can worship your homemade gods to your hearts’ content, your wonderful gods of wood and stone that can’t see or hear or eat or smell.
29-31 BUT EVEN THERE, IF YOU SEEK GOD, YOUR GOD, YOU’LL BE ABLE TO FIND HIM IF YOU’RE SERIOUS, LOOKING FOR HIM WITH YOUR WHOLE HEART AND SOUL.
When troubles come and all these awful things happen to you, in future days you will come back to God, your God, and listen obediently to what he says. God, your God, is above all a compassionate God.
In the end he will not abandon you, he won’t bring you to ruin, he won’t forget the covenant with your ancestors which he swore to them.
Jeremiah 29:13
You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart!
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That offer still stands and is available to us today, to WHOMSOEVER will call upon His name, with all their heart, mind and strength!
The question is, are we thirsty enough yet?
The Amazing Story of the Moravian Falls Portal
God is still extending this invitation to us today:
Isaiah 55:1-7
The Message
Buy Without Money
55 1-5 “Hey there! All who are thirsty,
come to the water!
Are you penniless?
Come anyway—buy and eat!
Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk.
Buy without money—everything’s free!
Why do you spend your money on junk food,
your hard-earned cash on cotton candy?
Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best,
fill yourself with only the finest.
Pay attention, come close now,
listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words.
I’m making a lasting covenant commitment with you,
the same that I made with David: sure, solid, enduring love.
I set him up as a witness to the nations,
made him a prince and leader of the nations,
And now I’m doing it to you:
You’ll summon nations you’ve never heard of,
and nations who’ve never heard of you
will come running to you
Because of me, your God,
because The Holy of Israel has honored you.”
6-7 Seek God while he’s here to be found,
pray to him while he’s close at hand.
Let the wicked abandon their way of life
and the evil their way of thinking.
Let them come back to God, who is merciful,
come back to our God, who is lavish with forgiveness. Amen
SELAH (let us pause and calmly think about these things)
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From Wednesday, March 01
Worthy Brief
THE ENEMY WANTS TO KILl … BEFORE IT’S EVEN BIRTHED!
“…for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly?
— 1 Corinthians 3:3-4
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing.
In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic.
These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years.
Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified,
“This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”
It began with a young man, Count Zinzendorf, who was 27 years old when he opened his estate to welcome believers escaping persecution and inviting them to settle there.
There were different groups, Bohemian Brethren, Moravian Christians, Reformed Christians, and unsatisfied Catholics.
After a few years, this fragmented community of some 300 individuals with differing spiritual convictions and loyalties was so rife with conflict and disunity it seemed destined to fail.
One of the village founders, Christian David, got so caught up in apocalyptic fanaticism that he referred to Zinzendorf as the “Beast of the Apocalypse,” while the estate manager of the village, Johan Andreas Rothe was termed the “False Prophet.”
In this impossible environment, Count Zinzendorf devoted himself full-time to reconciliation and conflict resolution, visiting each home for prayer and exemplifying the persevering love of Christ.
Amazingly, this personal attention and devotion to unity and reconciliation opened the way for an awakening that would come in just a few weeks.
Yet what would have happened if Count Zinzendorf had lost patience and, in justified frustration, thrown everyone off his estate?
Instead of a 100-year spiritual awakening…NOTHING of spiritual significance would have happened.
The enemy, working through the carnal attitudes of believers [1 Corinthians 3:3-4], continually slandered this young man and one another, but his response was to disarm those persecuting him with the love of Christ.
The result was a genuine revival.
Disunity, and slander are deadly to spiritual life and will absolutely kill any hope of enjoying God’s presence.
This is true in the smallest company of two or three, or in a local church community, or in any size gathering at all.
When the Lord is moving, He will bring humility and love as Zinzindorf did.
Let this humble Count be your example in any sphere of responsibility God places you. God is always desiring to birth something supernatural!
From Thursday, March 02
PART II
SEEK UNITY … NOT CONFORMITY!
“…with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”
— Ephesians 4:2-6
Yesterday we wrote about one of the greatest moves of God … the Moravian Revival.
When the community was in complete disarray, Count Zinzendorf focused on how they could live together in love despite their differences.
He called all the men together for an intense study of the Scriptures to focus on how Christian life in community was portrayed.
These studies combined with intense prayer convinced many of the believers that they were called to live together in love and that their disunity and conflict were contrary to the clear calling of Scripture.
Zinzendorf’s dream was to see the differences among the community’s many traditions become secondary to a corporate unity in love.
In the history of the Moravian revival, we read:
“Zinzendorf was not aiming at organizational unity and uniformity among Christians and did not desire the dissolution of particular traditions, but rather their binding together in fraternal charity, mutual respect, communication and communion within a sort of loose federation.”
Thus they learned to agree to disagree on certain subjects – the one thing they agreed upon was the emphasis on love – and this was necessary in order to fulfill the “great commission.”
The complexities of God’s truth will make uniformity in all doctrines impossible for all believers.
It is even probable that secondary issues may be used of God to test our hearts.
The essential truths of the faith, however, are indisputable among true brethren and they form the truth basis for our unity.
The Moravian Revival motto was, “in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, but in all things love!”
Revivals always reveal the veracity and power of this motto, and their fruit is the result of God’s wonderful unifying presence.
We will not compromise on the essentials (though some may even disagree on what they are); and we will peacefully discuss our convictions about secondary issues, agreeing to disagree and preserving the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
Your family in the Lord with much agape love,
George, Baht Rivka, Obadiah and Elianna (Going to Christian College in Dallas, Texas)
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