May 23, 2010

The Moravians, a refugee colony from Bohemia, settled on the estates of Count Nicholas Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Germany, where a powerful revival began in 1727. It launched 100 years of continuous prayer and within 25 years 100 Moravians were missionaries, more than the rest of the Protestant church had sent out in two centuries.

The Holy Ghost came upon them and great signs and wonders took place in their midst. From that time scarcely a day passed without them experiencing the Almighty working amongst them.

A Moravian historian wrote that Church history abounds in records of special outpourings of the Holy Ghost, and verily August 13, 1727, was a day of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. A great hunger after the Word of God took possession of them so that they had three services every day, at 5.00 am, 7.30 a.m. and 9.00 p.m. Every one 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 them into the great ocean of Divine Love.

No one present could tell exactly what happened on that Wednesday morning, August 13, 1727 at the specially called Communion service. They hardly knew if they had been on earth or in heaven. Count Nicholas Zinzendorf, the young leader of that community, gave this account many years later:

“We needed to come to the Communion with a sense of the loving nearness of the Saviour. This was the great comfort which has made this day a generation ago to be a festival, because on this day twenty-seven years ago the Congregation of Herrnhut, assembled for communion (at the Berthelsdorf church) were all dissatisfied with themselves. They had quit judging each other because they had become convinced, of his lack of worth in the sight of God and each felt himself at this Communion Service to be unworthy of the noble countenance of the Saviour. O head so full of bruises, So full of pain and scorn. In this view of the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, their hearts told them that He would be their patron and their priest who was at once changing their tears into oil of gladness and their misery into happiness. This firm confidence changed them in a single moment into happy people which they are to this day, and into their happiness they have since led may thousands of others through the memory and help which the heavenly grace once given to themselves, so many thousand times confirmed to them since then”.

Zinzendorf described it as 'a sense of the nearness of Christ' given to everyone present, and also to others of their community who were working elsewhere at the time.

The congregation was young. Zinzendorf, the human leader, was 27, which was about the average age of the group.