Praying to the God of Hezekiah by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 27, 1913

Praying to the God of Hezekiah

By W. A. S.

In his “History of the Church Missionary Society,” Mr. Eugene Stock tells of an experience of God’s delivering mercies in the early history of mission effort in the Yoruba country of West Africa, generally known now as the Lagos country. There was war between Dahomey and Yoruba. It was in 1863. The Dahomans had massacred the inhabitants of one town, where there were Christians, and were marching unopposed upon the capital, Abeokuta, where the missionary headquarters and training-school were located. The British naval officer on the coast had given his decision in the quarrel in favor of Dahomey,—an act deeply deplored in England,—and ordered all Europeans out of Abeokuta.

This, in native eyes, was full license to the savage Dahomans to do their worst, and it was considered that Abeokuta was “doomed.”

The missionaries in Abeokuta felt that they could not forsake their people and their work. They sent word that they would remain. The mission committee in London realized the peril of the situation, and felt that only by God’s intervention could the mission be saved. They issued a call to prayer throughout England, while the Dahomans were gathering to the siege of Abeokuta. This call to prayer quoted the words of Hezekiah when the king of Assyria besieged Jerusalem, “With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God,” and the promise of God through the prophet: “Thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return.” There was earnest and continual prayer throughout the constituency of the society in England. Mr. Stock says:—

The committee’s circular had invited prayer that “Dahomey might be restrained, and be compelled to return to his own land, if it might be without bloodshedding.” “We felt,” wrote Ridgeway in the Intelligencer, “that in asking this we were asking a hard thing, but not too hard for the Lord.” Yet he so ordered it. The Dahoman army did return to its own country without a battle, and almost without bloodshedding. And Buehler, in writing from Abeokuta, quoted the very passage which the committee had quoted in their circular: “The king of Dahomey has not come into this city, nor has he shot an arrow there, nor has he come before it with shields, nor has he cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same has he returned, and has not entered into this city.”

The details, when received, seemed almost incredible. For sixteen days in March, the Dahoman army had remained encamped about five miles from Abeokuta. Night after night an attack was expected; morning after morning dawned without a gun having been fired; and on the seventeenth morning the camp was found deserted. The whole Dahoman army had gone off, no one knew why. Certain words of St. John occur to the mind: “But the servants which drew the water knew.”

Mr. Buehler, one night when alarm was given, overheard an Egba Christian woman praying aloud, quietly took down the words, translated them literally into English, and sent the translation home. All over England were that woman’s simple heart-outpourings read with thankful sympathy:—

“O Lord Jesus, lift up thine arm; lift up, lift up, O Lord, Lord Jesus our Redeemer, lift up thine holy arm and deliver us from the cruel Dahomans. O Lord Jesus, remember what they have done to thy saints in Ishagga, how much innocent blood they have shed. O Lord, Lord, deliver us, that we may not fall into their hands. Thou hast sent thy messengers to us with thy Holy Word. We trust in thee, O Lord our God; do not forsake us. Thou didst deliver thy people Israel from the hand of Pharaoh, and hast overthrown his army.

Thou didst deliver Hezekiah and his people from the hand of Sennacherib, who blasphemed thy holy name. Do also remember us, O Lord; remember thy church, remember thy servants, remember our children. O Lord God, deliver us for thy dear Son’s sake. Amen.”—Vol. II, page 437.

It is in the latter days, when God is sending the light to all nations and tongues and peoples, preparatory to Christ’s second coming, that we may look to see him working as in ancient days. Inspiration puts upon the lips of his children in the last days the prayer: “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days.” Through the whole history of the “modern mission century” we see the hand of the living God doing things on earth, and more and more earnestly, as the end draws near, may be pressed the petition for the arm of the Lord to be revealed in mighty power as in the ancient days.

W. A. S.