Ange and I are reading a book called Red Moon Rising. It’s about the 24-7prayer movement and it’s really interesting. This passage really struck us and, strangely, gives me a lot of hope:

J. Edwin Orr, a widely respected historian, in a message called “Prayer & Revival,” described the situation in America in the 1780s. Drunkeness was epidemic, and the streets were not judged to be safe after dark. What about the churches?

    “The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samual Shepherd of Lennos, Massachusetts, in sixteen years had not taken one young person into fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Bishop Samuel Provost, quit functioning; he confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment.

    “The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church ‘was too far gone ever to be redeemed.’ The great philosopher Voltaire averred and the author Tom Paine echoed, ‘Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.”

The spiritual state of America’s universities at the time concurred with such gloomy predictions, giving little or no hope for the future of the faith in that land:

    “Take the liberal arts colleges at that time. A poll taken at Harvard had discovered not one believer in the whole student body. They took a poll at Princeton, a much more evangelical place, where they discovered only two believers in the student body, and only five that did not belong to the filthy speech movement of the day. Students rioted. They held mock communion at Williams College, and they put on anti-Christian plays at Dartmouth. They burned down the Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced the resignation of the president of Harvard. They took a Bible out of a local Presbyterian church in New Jersey and burnt it in a public bonfire. Christians were so few on campus in the 1790s that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.”

It’s hard to believe that this was taking place in America 200 years ago but then, Orr continues, God intervened, and He did so by mobilizing His people to pray.

    “A prayer movement started in Britain through William Carey, Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliffe, and other leaders who began what the British called the Union of Prayer. Hence, the year after John Wesley died (1791), the second great awakening began and swept Great Britain [and eventually America].
    …
    “Out of that second great awakening came the modern missionary movement and its societies. Out of it came the abolition of slavery, popular education, Bible Societies, Sunday schools, and many social benefits.”

We are not too far gone.
Mark

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