27th May, 2007
The Moravian Pentecost
Whit Sunday or Pentecost is the day when according to scripture that the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Disciples and thus energized the people of God for Missions. The disciples were told by Jesus that in order for them to be empowered for the tasks ahead, they had to wait to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 1: 4).
The gathered community of the Moravian Church which was renewed in 1722 in Herrnhut Germany, was poised for a great move of God, as they acknowledged the centrality of Jesus Christ in their lives. There was a serious problem encountered by the community. The Scottish Moravian poet and hymn writer, James Montgomery, summed up the condition of the community at the time:
“They walked with God in Peace and Love,
But failed with one another;
While sternly for the faith they strove,
Brother fell out with brother;
But He in whom they put their trust,
Who knew their frames that they were dust,
Pitied and healed their weakness”.
God moves in mysterious ways, for on August 13th 1727, He took a fractured, divided Church; healed their wounds, set them on fire for the kingdom and transformed them into the Church that He wanted. The hand of God moved mightily upon the worshippers assembled at the Berthelsdorf Chapel (next door to Herrnhut) for Holy Communion on that Wednesday morning, August 13th. Great signs and wonders took place in their midst. Hardly a day passed without them experiencing something of the hand of God moving mightily among them. A great hunger after the Word of God took possession of them so that they had three services every day at 5.00 and 7.30 am and 9.00pm. Each one desired above everything else that the Holy Spirit might have full control of his or her life. Self –love and self-will, as well as all disobedience disappeared and an overwhelming flood of grace swept over them. The community was literally transformed.
Fifty years before the beginning of modern foreign missions by William Carey the Baptist Missionary, he said to his Church in England: “See what the Moravians have done! Cannot we follow their example and in obedience to our Heavenly Master go out into the world, and preach the Gospel to the heathen?”
The well known German historian of Protestant Missions, Dr. Warneck, says: “this small Church in 20 years called into being more Missions than the whole evangelical Church has done in 2 centuries”. History records that more than 100 Missionaries were sent from Herrnhut by the Moravians in the first 25 years since the Pentecost experience in 1727
