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This Year's Prayer Season

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 19, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 47.

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This Year's Prayer Season

By W. A. S.

THINGS actually done in heaven and on earth, is the meaning of the prayer of faith. More people and more languages than ever before will unite in the coming week-of-prayer season. And something very special in heaven and on earth is to be looked for now.
The Lord puts in the mouths of his people in the very last days this prayer for the finishing of the work:— “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. . . . Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?”
The Lord responds to this cry: “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem.” Then the answer to the prayer is promised: “The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”
This we must see now, and in ever-enlarging measure. A whole people is called to unite, in the assembly and in the closet, in seeking God for the revelation of this arm of might. No activity in effort or in gifts can take the place of prayer. Only the power of God can cleave the way of this advent movement through the seas of peoples and tongues that lie between us and the promised land.
The tendency of the time is to anything rather than prayer. But let us make this coming season truly a week of prayer. Something is done when a church spends an hour in earnest and specific prayer to God, for one another, for the backslider or unconverted, for the conference, and for the mission fields.
It has always been that as the church prayed on earth, the power of heaven has been revealed. World-changes have come. Deliverances have been wrought. The church has been revived. The cause of truth has triumphed over difficulties. From many a far corner of the earth, thoughts will turn toward the home churches at this prayer season; and every missionary, if he could, would repeat to the believers the words that Paul sent to the church in Rome: “I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God.”
W. A. S.