Thursday, February 5, 2009

The 100-year-long prayer meeting

Nicholas Ludwig, aka Count Zinzendorf, was born in Dresden in 1700. He was a part of the Pietist movement in Germany, which emphasized personal piety and an emotional component to religious life. This was in contrast to the state Lutheran Church of the day, which had grown to symbolize a largely intellectual faith centered on belief in specific doctrines. He believed in "heart religion," a personal salvation built on the individual's spiritual relationship with Christ.

As a teenager at Halle Academy, Zinzendorf and several other young nobles formed a secret society called "The Order of the Grain of Mustard Seed." The stated purpose of this order was that the members would use their position and influence to spread the Gospel. As an adult, Zinzendorf later reactivated this adolescent society, and many influential leaders of Europe ended up joining the group. A few included the King of Denmark, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Archbishop of Paris.

In 1722, he was approached by a group of Moravians to request permission to live on his lands. He granted their request, and a small band crossed the border from Moravia to settle in a town they called Herrnhut, or "the Lord's Watch." By the beginning of 1727 the community of about three hundred people was wracked by dissension and bickering. His tenants went through a period of serious division, and it was then in 1727 that Zinzendorf left public life to spend all his time at his Berthelsdorf estate working with the troubled Moravians. Largely due to his leadership in daily Bible studies, the group came to formulate a unique document, known as the "Brotherly Agreement," which set forth basic tenets of Christian behavior. Residents of Herrnhut were required to sign a pledge to abide by these Biblical principals. In addition, Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf and others covenanted to prayer and labor for revival. On May 12 revival came. Christians were aglow with new life and power, dissension vanished and unbelievers were converted. This experience began the Moravian renewal, and led to the beginning of the Protestant World Mission movement.

The Moravian Community of Herrnhut in Saxony, in 1727, commenced a round-the-clock “prayer watch” that continued non-stop for over a hundred years. By 1791, 65 years after commencement of that prayer vigil, the small Moravian community had sent 300 missionaries to the ends of the earth.

In 1731, while attending the coronation of Christian VI in Copenhagen, the young Count met a converted slave from the West Indies, Anthony Ulrich. Anthony's tale of his people's plight moved Zinzendorf, who brought him back to Herrnhut. As a result, two young men, Leonard Dober and David Nitchmann, were sent to St. Thomas to live among the slaves and preach the Gospel. This was the first organized Protestant mission work, and grew rapidly to Africa, America, Russia, and other parts of the world. By the end of Zinzendorf's life there were active missions from Greenland to South Africa, literally from one end of the earth to the other. Though the Baptist missionary William Carey is often refered to as the "Father of Modern Missions," he himself would credit Zinzendorf with that role, for he often refered to the model of the earlier Moravians in his journal.

His overwhelming interest in the colonies involved evangelising the native Americans, and he travelled into the wilderness with Indian agent Conrad Weiser to meet with the chieftains of several tribes and clans. As far as we have been able to identify, he is the only European noble to have gone out to meet the native American leaders in this manner.

There are numerous churches in Pennsylvania where Moravians would start a church and school for the settlers and native Americans, and then turn it over to the Lutheran Church, the Reformed Church, or whatever denomination they perceived to be the strongest in that area.

Both John and Charles Wesley had been converted through their contact with the Moravians.



I call this "The Cross Signal," or, "A call for help." I took a photo from "The Dark Knight," and, in Photoshop, changed the bat to a cross, and replaced Aaron Eckhart/Harvey Dent/Two-Face/Gotham's white knight with a photo of myself, adding lighting and a photo filter effect.




OK, since a question was asked about my photo, here is my driver's license photo from a little over 3 years ago, untouched. All I did was scan it in at 300 dpi, crop it, rotate it, and increased the size proportionally to 2 inches width (which decreased the resolution). The white areas are from the plastic covering, which I intentionally did not remove. My color profile photo (which you can see on the right side of my blog page) is the same photo, except I added a mustache with Photoshop. But this photo here is how it originally looked.


GREAT QUOTES

"If you wish to know God, you must know his Word.
If you wish to perceive His power,
you must see how He works by his Word.
If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass,
you can only discover it by His Word."
(C.H. Spurgeon)

"I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him.
I ended up by asking Him to do His work through me."
(Hudson Taylor)

"The most important thing in your Christian life
is fellowship with God."
(Peter S. Ruckman)

"To educate a man in mind and not in morals
is to educate a menace to society."
(Theodore Roosevelt)

"Nothing but Christianity will give you the victory.
Until a man believes in his heart
that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Master...
his course through life will be neither safe nor pleasant.
My only regret is that I was so long blinded by my pleasures,
my vices and pursuits, and the examples of others
that I was kept from seeing, admiring,
and adoring the marvelous light of the gospel."
(Francis Scott Key, author of the words of our national anthem)

The above edited information was gathered from the following websites:

http://www.1timothy4-13.com/files/chr_vik/greatquotes.html
http://ctlibrary.com/ch/1982/issue1/118.html
http://www.zinzendorf.com/countz.htm

27 comments:

Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...

Jeff Jenkins is Bruce Wayne's new butler, Jenkins, but when needed he assists Batman as Crossman the blog wonder.

Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...

'Both John and Charles Wesley had been converted through their contact with the Moravians.'

"To educate a man in mind and not in morals
is to educate a menace to society."
(Theodore Roosevelt)

Interesting.

Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...

Batman from when I was little

Andrew Mtewa said...

Inspirational quotes!
Last night I was listening to pastor Asaph Nkang'a on transworld radio as he was doing a bible exposition on the seventh and the 8th seal from the book of Revelations.
He said we can not stop wars in the world by disarming the fighting sides because even if you disarm a non believer, he will still be able to get on to some body and strangulate him to death because the sinful nature in him will always lead him to do that.
Now get this quotation again that I also liked from him. 'I would rather have an armed born again christian that a disarmed non believer because he can still get onto some one and murder him with bare hands' (or paraphrased at the end).
Meaning that Men need Jesus Christ to be preached to them if they are to stop fighting.

You and I have a task to pray and evangelize even through blogs to serve people both in this life and the promised life to come in a place where Jesus is preparing for us!
Hold on to Christ!

Jeff said...

Russ,

Jeff Jenkins is Bruce Wayne's new butler, Jenkins, but when needed he assists Batman as Crossman the blog wonder.

LOL!

I remember that cartoon.

When I was in 6th grade, I used to watch the live-action Batman series. And I barely remember Secret Squirrel. I also used to watch a superhero cartoon with Rope Man, Diaper Man, the Human Tornado, etc.

Jeff said...

Andrew Glory,

I've never heard of Asaph Nkang'a, but Transworld Radio was the first Christian station I ever listened to, on a world band radio.

I believe that there will never be peace on this earth until the reign of Christ.

You and I have a task to pray and evangelize even through blogs to serve people both in this life and the promised life to come in a place where Jesus is preparing for us!

Amen! I attempt to be a witness through blogging and Facebook and e-mail, but I also think its important to go out on the street and witness to people and pass out tracts. Friendship evangelism is also important, but also I believe door-to-door evangelism is important. I think that ALL of them should be utilized! Ideally, we should pray for the Holy Spirit to open up opportunities for us to speak to people, and to lead us to the persons whose hearts He has prepared.

And yes, the BEST way to combat false religion, criminals, terrorists, murderers, assassins, etc., is to lead them to Christ!

Thank you for your comments, Andrew!

Greg said...

Hey, Jeff. Interesting history. Our "America's God and Country" book has a long excerpt from Charles Wesley's account of his first meeting with the Moravians. It's quite inspirational... maybe I'll post it.

The picture is pretty good (though I can see the sharp edge at the bottom of the photo of you, where it was pasted in), but that looks NOTHING like your two profile pictures! How old are the profile photos, anyway?

Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...

Yes, I can see the sharp edge too. It merely means that one of Crossman's powers is the temporary removal of his head for spying purposes.

Jeff said...

Greg and Russ,

That bottom edge of my photo didn't show up on my monitor, but then, my monitor is old. Anyway, let me know how it looks now, since I can't tell on my monitor. I lined up the bottom edge of my photo with the bottom edge of the image.

Greg,

The color profile photo is from my driver's license, which is maybe 3 years old or so. The B&W photo is about 20 years old. The photo in the Bat signal image is only about a month old or so, but it was taken after I had gotten only 3 hours of sleep the night before.

Jeff said...

Also, with the photo in the bat signal image, I added a spotlight lighting effect, painted in additional shadow with the paintbrush tool, and used a blue photo filter effect on it. So it looks a bit different from the actual original photo.

Jeff said...

It merely means that one of Crossman's powers is the temporary removal of his head for spying purposes.

LOL Russ!

And by the way, I like that name...Cross Man!

Jeff said...

Oh, and I also like "the blog wonder."

'Cross Man the blog wonder.'

Cool.

Jeff said...

I think my Philips Magnavox monitor is about 10-12 years old, if I remember correctly. It was dimming out temporarily and not starting up easily for a while, several months ago, but it seems fine now. My brother gave me one of his old monitors (which is much newer than mine!), but I want to wait until this one dies completely before I toss it and replace it.

Jeff said...

OK, I just checked, and this B&W photo of me that you see here beside my comment is taken from a SEPT. 1986 issue of "Flexlines" magazine, which I did the cartoons for between 1986-88. So yes, it's from over 22 years ago!

The color profile photo is from my driver's license, which was issued in Oct. 2005. However, in my driver's license photo, I don't have a mustache. I added the mustache with Photoshop.

Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...

Now that I can see the profile photo properly you do not look black at all.;)

Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...

Now in that Crossman photo it looks like your right arm was cut off...no it is on a special mission.;)

Jeff said...

LOL!

Not only am I not black, but, according to that photo, I have white streaks running down my face! Hey, maybe that's like Michael Jackson!

"On a special mission"...LOL

See, on my monitor none of that side cutoff shows up. The reason that is happening is that the photo is too narrow for the other image.

Jeff said...

OK, I drew in a shoulder for my photo in that image. The original photo didn't have a shoulder, since it was cut off by the edge of the photo. You'll have to let me know how it looks, since I can't tell on my monitor.

Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...

Magnifique!

Except the sleave does not have spots like the rest of the shirt..LOL.

Wales would ask you to revise!

You could just turn the entire shirt black.

Jeff said...

Wales would ask you to revise!

You could just turn the entire shirt black.


You know, since I can no longer see where the shirt collar stops and my neck begins (because of my monitor, I assume), I'm just going to have to tell Wales to go jump in a lake. I can completely understand why you are doing all those revisions (for your PhD), but as to why I'm doing all these revisions for this image which I will not use for anything else (other than the fact that I previously posted it on Facebook several days ago), and for which I am not getting paid or anything, I haven't a clue why I'm bothering to do revisions on it. Especially since I can't even see what you're talking about on my monitor.

Jeff said...

And the one I posted on Facebook remains completely unedited. But probably no one sees that anymore, anyway, since newer postings have probably replaced it.

Dr. Russell Norman Murray said...

LOL, excellent reply!

Jeff said...

OK, I looked at the "cross signal" image on my computer at work, and now I see what you guys are talking about! I would have to use the clone tool or something to fix it, but I would have to do it at work (which I don't currently have time for), so I could see what I was doing. Wow, it looks VERY different on my monitor at home! All of that area is total black!

Jeff said...

BTW, when I looked at the image on my computer at work, I could see that the shadowing I did on the face looked pretty bad. Again, since I did it on my computer at home, I could not see any of that detail, but merely black in all of that area. But I'm not doing any more revisions on it. I'll just count that as a failed experiment.

Greg said...

Man, Jeff! I had no idea this whole picture thing took a life all its own! I'd like to say that I'm sorry for the hornet's nest I stirred up..., but I won't. ;)

At any rate, "Crossman" looks much better now.

Amazing what a simple mustache can do! Maybe I'll post pictures of me, with and without (real) facial hair, just for fun. Jim Leisure made such a big deal about a guy that he thought looked like me in my profile photo, but when he e-mailed it to me, it looked NOTHING like me! After squinting a little at my profile photo, I could see the resemblance. I think I look much cooler now. ;)

Ah, so the BW pic is 20 years old... which explains the 80's mullet! LOL!!!

Jeff said...

Greg,

Man, Jeff! I had no idea this whole picture thing took a life all its own! I'd like to say that I'm sorry for the hornet's nest I stirred up..., but I won't. ;)

Well, not only from you, but from a couple others, it seems the artwork has stolen the focus and the attention. That is never what I intended; I only wanted the artwork to make the blog post more interesting, not to be the focus of the blog articles.


At any rate, "Crossman" looks much better now.


Thanks. Like I said in my previous comment, when I saw it on my monitor at work, it looked pretty bad, so I assume it must have looked even worse when you made your previous comment. But since I cannot see that detail here on my computer at home, I'm just going to leave it as it is.

Amazing what a simple mustache can do!

Yes, it does seem to make a big difference.

Maybe I'll post pictures of me, with and without (real) facial hair, just for fun.

Yeah, you should do that!

I think I look much cooler now. ;)

LOL!

Ah, so the BW pic is 20 years old... which explains the 80's mullet! LOL!!!

LOL, now you're the one being fooled by shadows! I have never had a mullet in my life. That is actually the shadow on the back wall. My hair in back was very short then. The way my hair is right now in the back is probably the longest I've ever had it, and it is just touching the high collar on my button-down shirt. And that's only because I haven't gotten a haircut in about 3 months or so.