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A Time for Prayer

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 2, 1902

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 79, No. 48.

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A Time for Prayer

By Editor

It is true that “men ought always to pray, and not to faint,” and it is equally true that appointed times for special prayer and earnest seeking of the Lord are acceptable to God, and a means of special blessing to his people. Again and again when God's people have faced a great crisis and have turned to the Lord with prayer and with fasting, humbling their hearts before him, he has signally wrought for them, and has delivered them. Note the experience of Judah under king Jehoshaphat. When it was told the king, “There cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea on this side Syria,” then “Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah gathered themselves together, to ask help of the Lord: even out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek the Lord.” And the Lord saved them from their enemies.
So Ezra, after starting to lead the released captives from Babylon to Jerusalem, set apart a special time of waiting upon God for needed help. “Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance.” And the result is thus stated in Ezra's own words: “And the hand of our God was upon us, and he delivered us from the hand of the enemy, and of such as lay in wait by the way.” “The supplication of a righteous man availeth much in its working.” “The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.”
It must be evident to every thoughtful believer that we are now facing a crisis in the work of this message. And this is true whether we consider the situation as it is within our own ranks, or as it is in the world outside. We have come to the time of shaking, and to the time for pushing the definite message of the soon-coming Saviour to the ends of the earth before the passing of this generation. It is now time to call this whole denomination to pray the prayer of Daniel as recorded in the ninth chapter of Daniel. The prophet Daniel understood from the words of the prophet Jeremiah that the time had come for the deliverance of God's people from Babylon, and he prayed for the restoration of Jerusalem. It was a prayer of the most humble confession and sincere repentance. Listen to the penitent cry: “We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly. . . . O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against thee.” And now observe the earnestness of the pleading that God would build again Jerusalem. “Now therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord's sake. . . . O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God: for thy city and thy people are called by thy name.”
The time of complete and final deliverance from Babylon has now come. We are now offered the privilege of being “laborers together with God” in the accomplishment of his purpose to “build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down,” as explained in Acts 15:13–17, by proclaiming this closing message to the nations of the earth, and gathering out a people for the Lord's name. It is time for the weak to be as David, and David as the angel of the Lord, but this experience can come only through the valley of humiliation and the mountain-top prayer. To this we invite this whole people. A time for confession and repentance, and of taking hold upon God anew is greatly needed.
The annual week of prayer is appointed for December 20–27. It may be an occasion of such a blessing as has not been known hitherto, or it may be allowed to pass with a mere formal observance. Shall we not pray now and constantly that God will visit his people during this season of prayer, and revive his work in the midst of the years? “O visit me with thy salvation.”