Burn On! (Part One)

“Then David built an altar to the Lord…and He answered him with FIRE FROM HEAVEN…”
(1 Chronicles 21:26)

Dr. Paul Cedar, past president of the Evangelical Free Church in America and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals said, “Without a doubt, the major opportunity before us is the potential of an historic revival akin to the first and second great awakenings which took place in the early history of the United States.”*

Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, the largest world missionary force, said before his death, “Wherever I go, I sense a God-given conviction that revival is desperately needed. Lately I have sensed that the Body of Christ is on the verge of the greatest spiritual break-through in the history of Christianity.”**

–Fred Hartley III, Prayer On Fire: What Happens When the Holy Spirit Ignites Your Prayer Life, pp136-7

*NAE Action, March-April 1992, pp55-6
**Worldwide Challenge, March 1983, p29 (He made a similar statement with increasing frequency)

Ignited!

“He presented another parable to them saying, “The kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field.”
(Matthew 13:31)

On May 13, 1727, the Holy Spirit visited a band of Christians in Herrnhut, Germany. “The whole place was indeed a veritable dwelling of God with man,” wrote their godly pastor, Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf.

At six years of age, Zinzendorf had thrown love letters to Jesus from the window of his castle. As a youth, he was trained in Franke’s school in Halle, where he founded the Order of the Mustard Seed, a missionary prayer band, among his peers. From there he studied at Wittenberg, where he led all-night prayer meetings. “I have but one passion—’tis He and He only,” he would say. As an adult, Zinzendorf invested his resources in building a community for three hundred Moravian believers with whom he shared a common passion. Together they formed Herrnhut, or “the Lord’s Watch,” a praying fellowship with a mission to reach a lost world through a revived church.

After weeks of concerted prayer, on May 13 they received their “baptism with the Holy Spirit.” Love, obedience, fellowship and prayer abounded. Prejudice, secret estrangement and misunderstandings were exposed and put away. “Signs and wonders were seen among us, and there was great grace on the whole neighborhood.” The entire congregation bowed under a sense of God’s presence and continued in prayer until midnight. Children were changed. By August 22, the community established an around-the-clock prayer meeting, appointing a man and a woman to be “in the Lord’s Watch” at all times. Each person would serve at their watch one hour each week.

Soon people in neighboring communities learned of the move of God’s Spirit and likewise came under profound conviction and repentance. The ripples spread as far as Turkey, Morocco and Greenland. Within five years the community sent out their first missionaries. Over the subsequent years, they sent out six hundred teams of missionaries.

J.R. Mott and others attribute this Herrnhut Pentecost as the birthplace of the modern missionary movement. This means that the hundreds of thousands of missionaries who have been sent out over the years owe a little of their thrust to this 24/7 prayer meeting that lasted one hundred years.

Fred Hartley III, Prayer On Fire, pp134-135
Source: Andrew Murray, Key To The Missionary Problem, pp47-65

Kindled

“…I saw the Lord sitting on a Throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the Temple…Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts!”
(Isaiah 6:1,5)

Off the northwest coast of Scotland, the rugged Hebrides Islands received a remarkable outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit in 1828. “Oh, God, I seem to be gazing through an open door. I see the Lamb in the midst of the Throne,” one fifteen-year old youth cried in public prayer. “Oh, God, there is power there, let it loose!”

That’s all it took. The floodgates of heaven suddenly opened. People were sobbing, lying on the floor, begging for mercy.

As the revival spread, prayer meetings lasted twenty-four hours. Hundreds of people in various villages begged to be saved. At times the presence of God was so tangible at the close of a worship service that the organists were literally unable to move their hands over the keyboards.

–Source: Duncan Campbell by Andrew Woolsey, pp115-135
Quoted from Prayer On Fire, by Fred Hartley III

Fire

(The next few posts contain the past and present reports of what God is doing with His Bride in the earth…Each will have inscriptions that are synonomous with fire for which purpose will become obvious to you as we go along)

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering…”
(I Kings 18:38)

On New Year’s Day 1739, John and Charles Wesley, George Whitfield and a band of seventy others met at Fetter Lane in London. “About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground (overcome by the power of God). As soon as we recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His majesty, we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.’”

John Telford
The Life of John Wesley, p117

Living With All Your Might

“These are evil times, so make every minute count.”
(Ephesians 5:16, CEV)

Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-1843) is living proof that life–real life–is not measured in years. Though he died at the tender age of 29, this prolific preacher, who loved Jesus more than preaching, left behind more than 300 soul-stirring messages. Consider these quotes from this “brand plucked from the burning”:

• “If the Gospel pleased carnal men, it wouldn’t be the Gospel”
• “Resolved: to live with all my might while I do live!”
• (from his diary) “February 23. Sabbath. Rose early to seek God, and found Him whom my soul loveth. Who would not rise early to meet such company?”
• “Above all, keep much in the Presence of God. Never see the face of man until you have seen His face who is our Life, our All.”
• “Hurry prevents the calm working of the Spirit on the heart. The dew comes down when all nature is at rest–when every leaf is still. A calm hour with God is worth a whole lifetime with man.”
• “It is a holy-making Gospel. Without holy fruit all evidences are vain. Dear friends, you have awakenings, enlightenings, experiences, a full heart in prayer, and many due signs; but unless you want holiness, you will never see the Lord. A real desire after complete holiness is the truest mark of being born again. Jesus is a holy Savior.”
• “Let Jesus bear your whole weight. Remember, He loves to be the only support of your soul. There is nothing you can possibly need but you will find it in Him.”