The Spirit’s Witness in the Moravian Church
19th August, 2007
One of the first results in the Moravian Church of the Baptism with the Holy Spirit was the joyful assurance of their pardon and justification. They now experience as they never had before the force and fullness of the Scripture, “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God” (Romans 8:16). They had a joy unspeakable.
It was this joy of their faith suddenly born in their souls by the gift of God’s Spirit in the communion service, August 13th, 1727, that made the Moravian brothers and sisters glad to come to this country and many others, facing all the hardships and difficulties of a new and strange land. It is this Christian joy to which even some preachers have not yet attained and many members have not yet reached, upon which the Moravian Church must depend for its future influence everywhere and thus the word of God be fulfilled in our day as it was two hundred and eighty years ago. The joy of the Lord is our strength.
One instance of this deserves special mention, as setting forth both their own experience, as well as the substance of the message they proclaimed to others.
It was the sight of this joy which the Moravians had in the midst of the storm when the ship was on the point of sinking into the sea that impressed and impacted the lives of brothers John and Charles Wesley forever. This Christian joy so impacted their lives, that it led to a deep personal experience of grace upon which the Methodist Church was founded. The impression that this Christian joy made upon them has blessed the lives of thousands of persons worldwide on every continent. This must be the ultimate reason why the Moravian Church among the many larger denominations still continues to exist.
Why do so many Moravian brothers and sisters believe that the Holy Spirit cease acting with Zinzendorf and the August event? Why is it that so many Moravians have difficulty in singing contemporary songs? Is it that some persons are saying that the Holy Spirit no longer inspire men and women to write hymns? We serve a dynamic God. God is always moving and intervening in the affairs of men and women everyday. It is this same God who has kept the Moravian Church alive. The Moravian Church is what it is today, because men and women dare to open themselves to the move of the Holy Spirit. The Moravian cannot and will not remain what it was 280 years ago. The Moravian Church in the Eastern West Indies Province can no longer afford to be a European Church, where everything is transported wholesale: our hymns, our litanies, our style of worship, music and musical instruments. The Church must find its West Indian identity, like the Moravian Church in Tanzania, South Africa, Nicaragua, North America, Germany, Suriname have its own identity. While our doctrine remains the same, our style of worship must be different, because we are cut from different cultural cloths. It is the witness of the Spirit that will dictate this however.
