Brother Carrin shares a lesson from church history about a renewal that changed missions and changed him forever.

I am now 75 years old, and as you can imagine, looking back in gratitude to God for all my adult life spent in ministry. There are too many highlights to mention but here is one that stands above many others:

Magen’s Beach, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

In 1987, on the 250th Anniversary of its founding, I visited New Herrnhut Moravian Church on the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Being at this mountainside shrine and the jungle overhanging its cemetery impacted my life in a way I will carry to my grave. There are churches in the Western Hemisphere much older than Herrnhut, but none can compete with its special history. In 1737, the first missionaries of the modern era came to this jungle island to bring the gospel to African slaves. When Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann, stepped ashore on St. Thomas, Bibles in hand, they struck the “gong” that awoke a slumbering evangelical church and sent the mission movement around the world. From the vibrations of that gong, in our century alone, more than 100,000,000 new believers in Latin America and the Caribbean have come to Christ. Let me share part of this beautiful story with you.

In the early 1700’s, a congregation of some 300 Hussites, Anabaptists, Calvinists, disciples of Swingle, Schwenkfold, and other non-conformists, trying to escape the fire of religious persecution in Europe, sought refuge on the estate of Count Zinzindorf in Saxony, East Germany. Like the Count, who was only 27 years old, most members of the community were young; all had fled persecution in other countries.

In the beginning, they quarreled over doctrines of baptism, predestination, holiness, etc., until the Count encouraged them to concentrate on their love for Jesus. It was the Cross, not doctrines about the Cross, he reminded them that brought their redemption. In that understanding, they united in Covenant-agreement and began seeking the Lord in travailing prayer. What happened not only changed their world—and our’s—but will personally change you. Here is what happened:

Tuesday, August 5, 1727, Count Zinzindorf spent the entire night in watching and prayer. “Herrnhut” means the “Lord’s Watch”.

Sunday, August 10, 1727, At noon, when Pastor Rothe preached, the congregation fell under the power of the Holy Spirit.

Wednesday, August 13, 1727, at morning Communion, the fire of God fell upon the entire community in such shattering force that men working in the fields 10 miles away were stricken under the shock of it. Even today, its impact is without parallel in modern Christian history.

Tuesday, August 26, 1727, the children were anointed with 3 hours of anguished intercession.

Wednesday, August 27, 1727, at the initiation of the children, Herrnhut began a prayer meeting that lasted night and day, without stopping, one hundred years. That century-long prayer meeting of laboring, travailing intercession, 1727-1827, birthed the modern mission movement. One hundred years later, long after the original members of Herrnhut were dead, every Protestant denomination actively engaged in carrying the gospel to foreign lands did so because of that century of Moravian praying.

John Wesley, who began the Methodist Church and sent revival around the world, was converted under Moravian influence. The first Baptist missionary to India, William Carey, in pleading for support, threw a Moravian magazine on the table before his peers, challenging them to take up the Cross of world evangelism. Many other Christian bodies came under the impact of Moravian revelation.

1737. Ten years after the Holy Spirit’s fall, the first Moravians left for St. Thomas. During that decade of self-crucifying preparation, ripening of grace, they sought the Spirit’s endowing for the work. They well knew that once in the Virgin Islands, they too might become slaves. Still they determined to go. When the day came to make the choice as to who would be the first to leave, Scripture quotations were written on slips of paper and placed in a box. After agonizing prayer, each person drew out one of the notes and obeyed its command. Whether one stayed in Moravia or went to the mission field was determined in that way. Acts 1:26. With heart racing, one of the young men opened his paper and read the words, “Send the lad with me and we will arise and go.” Genesis 43:8.

With that message in hand, Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann left home, walking more than 100 miles to Copenhagen, Denmark. In the port they found passage to the islands by working as deck hands on shipboard. They were soon followed by Tobias Leopold who went to the island of St. Croix. What they found numbed them. Slaves were not allowed near churches. One who left his master’ s carriage and listened outside the church window was punished by having his ear cut off. Frederich Martin soon joined Leonard and David in St. Thomas but was imprisoned in the Fortress dungeon at Charlotte Amalie for his preaching. Through a tiny, barred window of this 1671-built fort, he boldly proclaimed the Word to listeners outside. Slave-churches which these men established still survive on St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, and surrounding islands.

In 1737, the first missionaries of the modern era came to this jungle island to bring the gospel to African slaves. When Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann stepped ashore on St. Thomas, Bibles in hand, they struck the gong that awoke a slumbering evangelical church and sent the mission movement around the world. From the vibrations of that gong, in one century alone, more than 100,000,000 new believers in Latin America and the Caribbean have come to Christ. The story behind these young men is the Crown Jewel in the modern mission movement.

Herrnhut, 1765, in what is today eastern Saxony, Germany.

In the early 1700’s, a congregation of some 300 Anabaptists, Calvinists, Hussites, disciples of Swingle, Schwenkfold, and other non-conformists, sought refuge on the estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf in Saxony, eastern Germany. Like the Count, who was only 27 years old, most members of the community were young; all had fled persecution in other parts of Europe. In the beginning, they quarreled over doctrines of baptism, predestination, holiness, etc., until the Count encouraged them to concentrate on their love for Jesus. It was the Cross, not doctrines about the Cross, he reminded them, that purchased their redemption. In that understanding, they united in Covenant-agreement and began seeking the Lord in travailing prayer. The Count’s simple exhortation became the key that opened the congregation to an all-powerful invasion of the Holy Spirit. This is how it happened:

1. Tuesday, August 5, 1727, Count Zinzendorf spent the entire night in watching and prayer. “Herrnhut” means the “Lord’s Watch.”

2. Sunday, August 10, 1727, at noon, when Pastor Rothe preached, the congregation fell under the power of the Holy Spirit.

3. Wednesday, August 13, 1727, at morning Communion, the power of God came upon the community in such shattering force that men working in the fields 10 miles away were stricken under the shock of it. Even today, its’ impact is without parallel in modern Christian history.

4. Tuesday, August 26, 1727, the children were anointed with 3 hours of anguished intercession.

5. Wednesday, August 27, 1727, at the initiation of the children, Herrnhut began a prayer meeting that lasted night and day, without stopping, one hundred years.

That century-long prayer meeting of laboring, travailing, intercession, 1727-1827, birthed the modern mission movement. One hundred years after it closed, and long after the original members of Herrnhut were dead, every Protestant denomination engaged in carrying the gospel to the heathen did so because of that century of Moravian praying. In 1737, ten years after the Holy Spirit’s fall, the first Moravians left for St. Thomas. During that decade of self-crucifying preparation, ripening of grace, they sought the Spirit’s endowing for the work. They well knew that once in the Virgin Islands, they too might become slaves. Still they determined to go. When the day came to make the choice as to who would be the first to leave, they wrote Scripture quotations on slips of paper and placed them in a box. After agonizing prayer, each person drew out one of the notes. Whether one stayed  in Moravia or went to the mission field was determined by the instruction he withdrew. Acts 1:26. With heart racing, one of the young men opened his paper and read the words, “Send the lad with me and we will arise and go.” Genesis 43:8.

Part 2 of Tongues and Other Miraculous Gifts

Part 3 of Tongues and Other Miraculous Gifts

Part 4 of Tongues and Other Miraculous Gifts

Richard M. Riss presents evidence for the operation of the gifts of the Spirit throughout the Church Age.

The Moravians

The gift of tongues is sometimes associated with the Moravian Brethren, a remnant of the Bohemian brethren (followers of John Huss) who became newly organized after finding refuge on the estate of Count von Zinzendorf (AD 1700-1760) in Saxony in 1722, in a Christian community which they called Herrnhut. In 1727, Zinzendorf retired from government service to devote himself to leadership of this community. In August of that year, there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Herrnhut. A Moravian historian wrote as follows:

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.¹¹³

Herrnhut, 1765, in what is today eastern Saxony, Germany.

This account of the Moravian revival is not specific with respect to the signs and wonders that took place in their midst. Although the gift of tongues was not endorsed by the leaders of the Moravians, their opponents believed that they spoke in tongues.¹¹⁴

John Wesley

The Moravians were a direct influence upon John Wesley (AD 1703-1791), the father of Methodism, whose conversion in 1738 took place shortly after long talks with Peter Boehler, one of the Moravian brethren. Wesley’s response to a book published in 1748 clearly indicates his position with respect to operation of the gifts of the Spirit in his own day. Dr. Conyers Middleton, fellow of Trinity College, had written a book entitled A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church. Wesley spent twenty days, from January 4 until January 24 of 1749, writing a letter to Conyers Middleton refuting his thesis that there had been no miracles in the history of the church after the Bible had been written. With respect to the gift of tongues, Wesley wrote as follows:

Section VI.1. The eighth and last of the miraculous gift you enumerated was the gift of tongues. And this, it is sure, was claimed by the primitive Christians; for Irenaeus says expressly, ‘We hear many in the church speaking with all kinds of tongues.’ ‘And yet,’ you say, ‘this was granted only on certain special occasions, and then withdrawn again from the Apostles themselves; so that in the ordinary course of their ministry they were generally destitute of it. This,’ you say, ‘I have shown elsewhere’ (page 119). I presume in some treatise which I have not seen. 2. But Irenaeus, who declares that ‘many had this gift in his days, yet owns he had it not himself.’ This is only a proof that the case was then the same as when St. Paul observed long before, ‘Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues?’ (I Cor. xii.29-30). No, not even when those gifts were shed abroad in the most abundant manner. 3. ‘But no other Father has made the least claim to it.’ (page 120). Perhaps none of those whose writings are now extant—at least, not in those writings which are extant. But, what are these in comparison of those which are lost? And how many were burning and shining lights within three hundred years after Christ who wrote no account of themselves at all—at least, none which has come to our hands?¹¹⁵

Wesley’s defense of the existence of tongues in history continues at considerable length, ending with the observation that the gift of tongues had been heard of within fifty years of their time, among the French Prophets. He wrote:

Since the Reformation, you say, ‘this gift has never once been heard of or pretended to by the Romanists themselves’ (page 122). But has it been pretended to (whether justly or not) by no others, though not by the Romanists? Has it ‘never once been heard of’ since that time? Sir, your memory fails you again: it has undoubtedly been pretended to, and that at no great distance from our time or country. It has been heard of more than once no further off than the valleys of Dauphiny. Nor is it yet fifty years ago since the Protestant inhabitants of those valleys so loudly pretended to this and other miraculous powers to give much disturbance to Paris itself. And how did the King of France confute that pretence can prevent its being heard anymore? Not by the pen of his scholars, but by (a truly heathen way), the swords and bayonets of his dragoons.¹¹⁶

Wesley was undoubtedly aware of the presence and validity of the gift of tongues in his day, for Thomas Walsh, one of Wesley’s foremost preachers, wrote in his diary on March 8, 1750, “This morning the Lord gave me language that I knew not of, raising my soul to Him in a wonderful manner.”¹¹⁷