Does God Hear Prayer?

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 28, 1866

Does God Hear Prayer?

THE town of Scandia, in Minnesota, was settled by a colony of pious Swede Baptists. They are in the main industrious, praying farmers. During the first year of their settlement, some eight or nine years ago, the country was ravaged by grasshoppers—coming down from the North, and laying waste and desolate the most fruitful fields. What was to be done? The seed had been sown in faith, and the only visible hope for these worthy Scandinavians, for the coming winter, was in their crops. Would not God prevent the approaching destructive army if his throne was besieged in that regard? A few days more, and to all human probability, the attack would commence upon their fields; for such was the celerity and system of their movements, that the people had come to calculate with almost a certainty their arrival. In this dilemma, these praying men and women met, as a unit, to intercede God to turn the grasshopper aside from their fields. He did turn them aside. When within a few miles of their “town line,” this mighty army parted, went around on both sides of them, and again united a few miles below. Theirs was a faith which took hold of the arm of the Almighty, and would not let him go until he blessed them.

When war's clarion notes sent an electric thrill through the nation, the church of Scandia again prayed that God would designate the men to lay upon the altar of their adopted country. Nine stalwart men enlisted, and those that remained pledged one day for prayer, in each week, until their safe return from the bloody field. Never once, in three years, did that day of prayer fail to be observed. Let the pressure of the work season be ever so great, rain or shine, hot or cold, snow or mud, it was faithfully and promptly regarded till each of these nine soldiers of the cross, as well as their country, all bronzed by a Southern sun, but without a scar or scratch, knelt with the home band to return thanks for their merciful preservation, and the peace that once more smiled upon our land. Such instances, methinks, are sufficient to silence all caviling on the subject of prayer. Such simple, earnest, persistent faith, “moves the Arm that moves the world.”—Times and Witness.