Knowing Him , not Getting Burned Out

 

Life in the Melchizedek Order XII : Maurice Smith - I know who I am

From 20th Century Pilgrim by Maurice Smith Chapter 8The darkness was lifting and as the springtime emerged I realised that I had been through what is commonly called today, an identity crisis. Many years previously, around the early days of my new experience in the Holy Spirit, I well recall hearing my eldest son, David, playing his guitar in the bedroom. He was a fine lad and a good son to me. He was a practising Christian and seemed to have some experience of the Holy Spirit. For some time he had been more and more absorbed with the music scene and was engaged in the coffee-bar evangelism we'd set up in the city of Canterbury. Now he was singing, what seemed to me, weird words 'Who am V 'Won't somebody tell me who I am?' It was all beyond me then. I thought everyone knew who they were. I knew who I was: Maurice Louis Smith, Sales Manager, gifted speaker, ex-Indian Army Officer, father of four, with few problems! Looking back it seemed that No. 1 son was certainly a few steps ahead of his dad at the time, for it was to be a full ten years before the same words would issue forth from my own mouth when under extreme pressure. I desperately wanted to know who I was, as a permanent awareness. For years I had been feeling in-and-out of the spirit, or in-and-out of Christ, like the weatherman on the clock. All going fair equals 'in Christ'.' All going wrong, not in Christ. Of course it was the cursed results of living under law , living by standards. As Paul wrote to the Galatians, when they lived under law they

removed themselves from the grace of God.' Either he'd got to be their life, or they had. He and they couldn't live it together or they'd be a split personality. Roger Davin from Minnesota, once delivered some ministry to our fellowship of Christians, and he entitled it: Identity Precedes Function. Marvellous I thought; but it became costly to discover that identity, and to learn to live believing in it. That meant coming to an end of my own living, to find my all in him; to find that he and I were truly one.
A few years ago it was my good fortune to spend a few days in the beautiful home of Derek Prince in Florida. Derek seemed as much at home in the deep comfort of his home as living in Israel, or previously I believe, in the scrubland of Africa in a hut. I spent a good part of the day languishing in his pool, as the temperature was high and the humidity incredible. It was all a far cry from home in Romford and most enjoyable. At the end of our stay, Derek -gave me an autographed copy of his book 'Appointment in Jerusalem', which was really the life story of his late wife, Lydia, and her great work in Israel. Try as I may, I could not get into that book. Several times I took it from my bookshelf and stoically tackled it. But no, I could not get interested. In the midst of my troubles however, I had nonchalantly taken it in hand again and was absorbed from the first moment.

Either he'd got to be their life,

or they had.

He and they couldn't live it together

or they'd be a split personality.

From this book I learned more of how easy it is to function when you are just being yourself, doing what you want to do, and not forever worrying about your identity. Lydia had heard that, 'to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good's properly translated really meant 'God has a special task for everyone!' Having come
through my identity crisis, I could begin to see that my place is unique. There was no point envying who someone else was, or wanting to do what they were doing. I could just trust God. A vessel unto honour, a vessel unto dishonour? 6 'Of him, and through him, and to him, are all things." I suppose some will now have to add 'fatalist' to their list of designations, but it's not that at all, because I am speaking not with resignation but with faith. I can't escape from the sovereignty of God, and I want to respond! Once again I'm caught holding two seeming irreconcilables, one in each hand. It's a comfortable position to be in when you've nothing to prove.




The helpful pilgrims were crowding in now, I'm glad to say. At one time I seemed surrounded by Job's comforters," but now the appointments have a sort of divine timing about them. Six years had elapsed since my visit to Florida, and now I was preparing to go back to the States to the home of Peter and Brenda Parris. They were an English couple who had gone, with their children, to live in Little Rock, Arkansas. Eileen and myself, along with Matthew our youngest son, needed a break, and we jumped at the offer to visit the slow-moving Southern State. We found the advertising to be true, 'Arkansas is a natural'. We spent lazy day after lazy day by the pool at the 'Y', and soaked in the sun and the surroundings. The home was a haven of rest to us and I could almost feel myself being done good to.
There was just one small enigma hanging over the trip. Earlier in the year I had toured South West England briefly with a prophetic team of men under the leadership of Graham Perrins from Cardiff. It had been a most instructive time for me, when I had received several words of prophecy myself. All of them had a distinct ring of truth about them and seemed to me both complementary and progressive. One man in the team was Lattie McDonough from Joplin, Missouri, and he asked me one day when I was coming to America again.
'I'm not,' I replied, and he looked puzzled. 'Are you sure?' he persisted.
'Well, I'm not coming to minister-, but I do have a holiday booked and I really need that. I don't need a ministry tour!'
He smiled knowingly and said,
'When you come to the U.S.A., the doors will open wide for you!'
You could have blown me over, for it was the last thing I had in mind, and I had come to know that Lattie was usually spot on with his words from God.
So here we were, near the end of our time in the United States and no doors had opened, well, cer-tainly not wide. We'd shared a little with our friends in Little Rock, Russelville, and New York, but nothing you could call a fulfilment of such a specific word. Just two days to go and Peter asked me if I'd like to accompany him to a small house meeting on the other side of town. Eileen stayed home whilst Brenda and we men went off together. I'd already expressed that I'd rather sit and listen that evening and Peter said he had some thoughts he'd like to share. We arrived and settled in, and I met up again with some of the folks who were getting to be just like family to me after only a few weeks. First a short time of singing together, then Peter started to speak. He has always been an excellent communicator and brought a natural sense of God's presence with his delivery. This was different; it sounded just like a familiar tune - but now being played by the greatest musician on earth. I guess the setting was just right. It was perfect timing. Peter was telling us how seeing ourselves as separate from God, was the main problem with Christians today. This dualistic type of thinking had robbed us of our inheritance. I won't attempt to emulate it, because I couldn't. Every word was going home and revealing and confirming all God had been impressing on me over the recent months and years. He and I were one.Feelings were secondary not primary. The fact was our union." The performance in no way affects the fact. The reverse was the truth. Believe that and there would be a difference. I guessed Peter had learned all this in the hard school of experience. Then he suddenly stopped and said,
'If I continue we'll just have a good evening, but God wants to do something special here tonight.'
He then asked me to add anything if I could. I sensed that what he had spoken had had more effect on me than on many of the others. Briefly I recorded how many years ago I had seen myself as dead (to sin) I in Christ, and that I had enjoyed one year of ecstatic high flying when nothincy worried me. Then I had crashed from a great altitude and experienced gross darkness and confusion. How could I get back to that place when I saw I was dead with nothing to worry about: How could I rest continually and abide in the promised land? The fact that I had now died to the law also, was established in me. No more trying to be a Christian. I knew that didn't pay off. I thought secretly, 'But what a shattering experience it's all been, and what havoc all my self-effort has caused to myself and especially to others. My family had been through hell on earth really, and bore the marks caused through an insecure and immature father. Oh yes, my pilgrimage had been sincere enough, but at what cost to others?' The past concerned me.
'I think we should pray now,' said Peter and we were quiet for a while and a few took part in the same quiet spirit. To me we were on holy ground, I sensed the weight of God's presence more intensely than I've ever known it. I actually took my shoes off, nothing else seemed appropriate." It was a hot night so I guessed no one would think it strange, but I knew something special was happening. Then Peter started to read from Daniel and suddenly a phrase penetrated right into me, as though driven home by a divine arrow; 'Those that have revelation shall be brought down, in order that they might be purified . . . " 5 1 asked Peter to read it again. It was too good to be true. I had been brought down. Brought down! God had done it, not me. Not all my selfish struggling and striving. Not just my insecurity and self-centredness. God!
God was in everything. In all my failures, in all my circuitous route into the promised land of rest. No doubt I'd have to stand and declare that glorious positive fact in the face of many negative feelings and appearances in the days ahead, but no need to worry about that. This is now. This is God speaking again. I could explore at leisure, but this was a time for truth to do its work."
It was then that Brenda began to prophesy. 17 1 had shared nothing of Lattie McDonough's original prophesy with her, so you can imagine my surprise
was considerable when she said something like this:
'Your life has been one of doors. You have come up to a beautiful door and gone through it, full of expectation. Then you have found yourself in a corridor, and have walked the length of this and found another door. You have been delighted and gone through again and found another corridor. This has been repeated through all your experience; doors and corridors. But tonight in this place, the doors open wide for you and you walk through and into freedom.'
Word for word! 'The doors will open wide for you.' I could hardly believe my ears. They were Lattie's words exactly. And I had been thinking of doors of ministry! All through the years I had been coming to beautiful doors of revelation and walking through them and finding a confined space; but now the confinement was over. The death blow had been struck to separatist thinking. Christ and I were one. I knew it. He was in me; I was in him; we were in the Father. That long-loved chapter seventeen of John was coming true in my life. Not by the organisation of a super church, not by getting our structures all correct, but by his glorious way! By the mystery of. 'I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one,' and 'Christ in (us), the hope of glory.' Christ in us all, as the be-all and the end-all. The mystery hidden for so long —God's eternal purpose, to sum up all things in Christ — had edged forward a notch, as I acknowledged my place in him. Now by letting Christ live through me, in good times and seemingly bad times, I had found my identity. I really was a permanent part of the body of Christ. I was Maurice
Christ. He was living as me. Jesus Christ was the unique son of God and my Lord, and to say I was Jesus Christ would be blasphemy; but now after years of trying to find my identity in myself, I had found my identity in him. These two words, 'in him', or similar, seem to appear more than any others in the New Testament. And, of course, they contain the secret of consistent living. The Good News Bible translates the phrase as 'in union with him' time and time again. I find that very helpful. Now the identity is fixed. Wherever I wake up, I wake up as myself. I don't have to do anything to become me. I am me. If I feel bad, I'm a new man in Christ, part of the second man 2(not the second Adam). The last Adam has gone, buried with Christ. If I don't behave like the usual me, it's an off day, but it's still me.
Perhaps it would be helpful here to repeat that, of course it never really was 'us' that were at fault anyway. We are always containers of someone else, expressers of one God or another. Previous to our receiving the life of Christ, the son of the living God, we did the works of our father the devil," the god of this world;" but now that one who so misused us has been dealt the death blow at the Cross." We see now that he was the trouble all the time, not us. You may object that not all works previous to conversion are evil, and I would agree; but they do all stem from the forked tree of the knowledge of good and evil and it doesn't matter whether we were up the good fork, or the evil fork –neither were the Tree of Life. We were not living by the faith of the Son of God" but faith in ourselves, and the fruit of that wrong tree was, and is, the law of sin and death . Once again we're back to
that old basic sin – independence. That was the life that Satan expressed through us, whether nicely or horridly; we were doing our own thing, producing fruit from the wrong tree." Now the axe has been laid to the root of that tree in our lives." But no more are we fooled into thinking separation. We are one with Christ and totally dependent upon his living out his life as us. From time to time we may forget who we are, but more and more we become fixed in our understanding that Christ is formed in us."
We can't really function properly, as Roger Davin says, until we know who we are; identity really does precede function. Once we do know, we stop worrying about ourselves and start living for others. Now I'm not referring to some obviously sacrificial life-style necessarily, but it just starts to be natural, because we've been released from concern with ourselves, and our own progress and performance. We are now depending on the one who cares, who lives in us.

At last those two confusing verses at the end of Romans seven held meaning for me. Hitherto they had ruined the whole argument; now they upheld it and gave it total credence. After Paul has ranted on desperately about not doing what he wants to do, and doing what he doesn't want to do, he concludes that it's not the real him that's doing all this, but an intruder called sin . 'O.K.' he says, `it's not really me; but who is going to deliver me from this dead body of sin ' which I continually carry around?' With a final shaft of divine revelation he shouts, 'I thank God through Jesus Christ!' He sees before that the blood of Christ has cleansed him from his sins 11 and now the dying body of Christ has really freed him from the sinner. Paul saw he was,Buried with Christ, and raised with him too; What is there left for me to do?
Simply to cease from struggling and strife, Simply to walk in newness of life.
Glory be to God!
T. Ryder (Hymn)
They are the facts. Then he goes on to say, 'So, then, with the mind I serve the law of God; but with the flesh, the law of sin' . . . and . . . 'there is, therefore, now no condemnation to them who are in Christl` There were no dividing chapter headings in his letter; it's all one flowing argument. He's totally free from condemnation and up into the promised land of rest at last. Whether he sins or not is not the issue. He is in Christ. Full stop! He has been set free by the death of Christ. He's free to sin or not to sin. Of course the new man in him hates sin, but he is no longer thrown because of his performance. He is completely dead to the law of pleasing God. He lives by faith. He takes it at absolute face value that he is in Christ, and Christ is living in him and as him, whether he observes sin in his members or not.
If you now try and interject, 'Oh, well then he will not sin'; you are going too fast. You have to simply believe what he says regardless of your performance. We die with our eyes closed. We do not keep opening one eye to peek at our performance, or continually dig the 'old man' out of his grave. Dangerous? It's dynamite. It'll set you free. Remember if we deep, deep down want to live in sin, we're not Christians at all. God just never condemns us, sin or not. The law will, and the religious people may stone us; but Christ will always say, 'I don't condemn you,' as he did to the woman when the stoners were all ready to go into action." He was condemned that we might never be. We were included in his judgement and death, and should not now judge ourselves . This will only ring true in those like Paul, and like me, and like countless others, who have ached and longed to live a holy life. They get the hymn-writer's revelation: 'Holiness by faith in Jesus, not by effort of my own.' We consent to the law that it is good, but find the only way to keep to it is to die to it! Even then it's not a set of laws we're referring to, but the higher 'law' of love.
It all finally locked into place for me when I returned home from a week's holiday with my wife. I nonchalantly asked if there was any news of my son, who was in Spain for the World Football Cup. Within moments I had learned that he'd had his money stolen and all his match tickets were taken too. With all else that was going on, this was the final straw. I was inwardly furious, but quickly covered up my anger with a graceful murmur of 'Praise the Lord' and forced myself to insincerely mouth, 'all things work together for good'. I quietly made my way to my garden office. Once inside I felt I wanted to rant and rave. I'd come to the end of this plastic attempt to be gracious and somehow trying to let a Christ-like image be squeezed through my raging emotions. On holiday, I'd just read an article by an American called Bill Volkman who had met a man who had said that he was free to swear, and Bill had at first reacted and felt the danger of it all. Now swearing was all I wanted to do. So I did. Not the one single expletive which I'd uttered all those years ago, when God came and showed me that he collected failures. Oh nol This was the works. I went on and on, letting God have my full-bridled vocabulary. Another son, Jason, looked into the office and I gave him a piece of my mind and shouted,
'Don't expect me to be nice; if God can't keep his eye on my family for just one week, he can't expect me to walk about like a Holy Joe!' My wife got an earful too and I never shouted at her, I was too nice a Christian. Daughter Josslyn was next In line.
`You've seen the last of gracious Maurice,' I stormed. I kept this up for two whole days. If Christ didn't come through without my help then he wouldn't come through at all, and I'd be like this for the rest of my life.
Gradually I noticed two strange things were happening. First I wasn't worrying at all about my son in Spain, whereas I had worried about my family ever since they were born. Secondly, I felt God's smile was on me continually. I sensed he was winking at my sin. I remembered vaguely the Archbishop who said, 'Oh that men would vent their anger into the bosom of the Lord who is well able to bear it!' God just would not condemn me. 'You're in Christ son,' was all I could hear. The price was paid, the slave set free. Absolutely free to do what I wanted. 'I didn't break your chains of iron to bind you up again. Any chains I put on you now, are chains of gossamer' – that's how a family friend, Doris Barton, expressed it so beautifully to me when I visited her in Aberdeen. 'You can break free whenever you want.' All of a sudden there was no point in swearing. The law was dead and sin had lost its power." Abuse turned to quiet praise. The superior law of life of being in Christ Jesus had
set me free from the law of sin and death." I could full-bloodedly sing the last two verses of Romans seven with Paul at last, and I leaped joyfully straight into Romans eight. (Do excuse anv theo-logical jargon but after so many years struggling in
those chapters, it's how I think now.) All I can do now is cry with the freed slaves of old, I love my Master. Make me a bond-slave Lord; pierce my ear at the door!" Having been set totally free I find I want to serve on; but it must be that way round. I know what the ancient hymn-writer meant now: 'In whose service is perfect freedom!' I can do what I like now; I'm really one with St. Augustine when he said, 'Love God, and do as you like.'
Dave Bryant, in one of his latest songs, sings these words:
There are no prison walls of religion and law that could ever hold the life we share; The bond of peace and irresistible love Are the only chains that we'll ever wear ...
and who could encapsulate our imprisonment to love more poignantly or poetically?
I do not care to debate with you the conse-quences of all this. If you say, 'Do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature"'; then my re-joinder is simply, 'Who wants to?' But 'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free' not to start keeping the law again." Whew! What a long haul it has been to take God at face value and trust in his son's complete work at Calvary. This was glorious and good news. It is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. 'and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God'. I never knew those words. 'and the life which I now live' were in the text. Truly now, 'For me to live is Christ. "' Passivity is gone; I'm back with a bang, enjoying 'the life which I now live'. I know the revelation of this chapter of the book is all mixed up with that of the previous chapter, but that's how it happened with me. Not all chronological and clinical; but like mists clearing away. Getting a glimpse and losing it, until finally the light of day is breathtakingly clear. The fresh morning air cries out: 'Everest fills all'; or Christ 'fills all in all'. A continuous fixation has come. All is of God."'

Life in the Order of Melchizedek IX : Derek Prince

From the Elijah List Book page

Christians Can Change World Events
Christians have altered the course of history and governments by emphasizing Biblical methods of prayer and fasting. In Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting (1973), Derek Prince recounts from personal experience how history was shaped through prayer during the Second World War in North Africa, the birth of the State of Israel, the end of the Stalin Era, and the independence of Kenya, East Africa.

You can make a difference. The times we are living in are scary, to say the least. The world is unstable. Global politics are volatile. The rate of change we now experience is spiraling out of control. We're uncertain about what will happen tomorrow, and we feel helpless to do anything about it. Yet what we are facing isn't new. There have been many wars. There have been threats and acts of terrorism. History is spotted with violent episodes of unimaginable carnage and horrors. And what did people do about them? The only thing they could do—they prayed!

Discover with Derek Prince how your prayers can change the world. You don't have to fight. You don't have to hold a high political position. You don't have to be a certain age. You don't even have to have power, money, or influence on earth. What is important is your influence in Heaven. Whether you are a teenager or an adult, you can learn to touch the heart of God through prayer—prayer that will change your family, church, locale, country and the world!



--------------------------------------------------
Chapters

The Salt of the Earth
A Kingdom of Priests
Praying for Our Government
Rulers Are God's Agents
Seeing History Shaped through Prayer
Fasting Intensifies Prayer
Fasting Brings Deliverance and Victory
Fasting Prepares for God's Latter Rain
Practical Guidelines for Fasting
Laying a Foundation by Fasting
Fasts Proclaimed in American History
Culmination: The Glorious Church

---------------------------------(End of Elijah List.)


Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting extract

Chapter 5 - Seeing History Shaped Through Prayer

For me the power of prayer to shape history is no mere abstract theological formula. I have seen it demonstrated in my own experi­ence on many occasions. In this chapter, I will relate four such occasions. To make them ef­fective as illustrations, I have chosen situa­tions in which different nations and different political factors were involved.

The War in North Africa

From 1941 to 1943, I served as a hospital attendant with the British forces in North Africa. I was part of a small medical unit that worked with two British armored divisions—the First Armored Division and the Seventh
Armored Division. It was this latter division that became celebrated as the "desert rats," with the emblem of the white jerboa.

At that time the morale of the British forces in the desert was very low. The basic problem was that the men did not have confi­dence in their officers. I myself am the son of an army officer, and many of the friends with whom I grew up were from the same back­ground.
I thus had some valid standards of judgment. As a group, the officers in the desert at that time were selfish, irresponsible, and undisciplined. Their main concern was not the well-being of the men, or even the effective prosecution of the war, but their own physical comfort.

I recall one officer who became sick with malaria and was evacuated to a base hospital in Cairo. For his transportation to Cairo, he required one four-berth ambulance for himself, and a one-and-a-half-ton truck to carry his equipment and personal belongings. At the time, we were continually being reminded that trucks and gasoline were in very short supply, and that every effort must be made to econo­mize in the use of both. From Cairo, this offi­cer was then evacuated to Britain (a procedure that certainly was not necessitated by a mere bout of malaria). Some months later, we heard him on a radio broadcast relayed from Britain.

He was giving a very vivid account of the hard­ships of campaigning in the desert!

At that period our greatest hardship wa,, the shortage of water. Supplies were very strictly rationed. Our military water bottles were filled every other day. This was all the water that we were allowed for every pur­pose—washing, shaving, drinking, cooking, etc. Yet the officers in their mess each evening regularly consumed more water with their whiskey than was allotted to the other ranks for all purposes combined.

The result of all this was the longest re­treat in the history of the British army—about seven hundred miles in all—from a place in Tripoli called El Agheila to El Alamein, about fifty miles west of Cairo. Here the British forces dug in for one final stand. If El Alamein should fall, the way would be open for the Axis powers to gain control of Egypt, to cut the Suez Canal, and to move over into Palestine. The Jewish community there would then be subjected to the same treatment that was al­ready being meted out to the Jews in every area of Europe that had come under Nazi con­trol.

About eighteen months previously, in a military barrack room in Britain, I had received a very dramatic and powerful revelation of Christ. I thus knew in my own experience the reality of God's power. In the desert, I had no church or minister to offer me fellowship or counsel. I was obliged to depend upon the two great basic provisions of God for every Christian: the Bible and the Holy Spirit. I early came to see that, by New Testament standards, fasting was a normal part of Chris­tian discipline. During the whole period that I was in the desert, I regularly set aside Wednes­day of each week as a special day for fasting and prayer.

During the long and demoralizing retreat to the gates of Cairo, God laid on my heart a burden of prayer, both for the British forces in the desert and for the whole situation in the Middle East. Yet I could not see how God could bless leadership that was so unworthy and in­efficient. I searched in my heart for some form of prayer that I could pray with genuine faith and that would cover the needs of the situa­tion. After a while, it seemed that the Holy Spirit gave me this prayer: "Lord, give us lead­ers such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them."

I continued praying this prayer every day. In due course, the British government decided to relieve the commander of their forces in the desert and to replace him with another man. The man whom they chose was a general named W. H. E. "Strafer" Gott. He was flown

to Cairo to take over command, but he was killed when his plane was shot down. At this critical juncture the British forces in this major theater of the war were left without a commander. Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister of Britain, proceeded to act largely on his own initiative. He appointed a more-or-less unknown officer, named B. L. Montgomery, who was hastily flown out from Britain.

Montgomery was the son of an evangelical Anglican bishop. He was a man who very defi­nitely fulfilled God's two requirements in a leader of men. He was just and God-fearing. He was also a man of tremendous discipline. Within two months, he had instilled a totally new sense of discipline into his officers and had thus restored the confidence of the men in their leaders.

Then the main battle of El Alamein was fought. It was the first major allied victory in the entire war up to that time. The threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and Palestine was finally thrown back, and the course of the war changed in favor of the Allies. Without a doubt, the battle of El Alamein was the turning point of the war in North Africa.

Two or three days after the battle, I found myself in the desert a few miles behind the advancing Allied forces.

A small portable radio beside me on the tailboard of a military truck was relaying a news commentator's description of the scene at Montgomery's headquarters as he had witnessed it on the eve of the battle. He recalled how Montgomery publicly called his officers and men to prayer, saying, "Let us ask the Lord, mighty in battle, to give us the vic­tory." As these words came through that por­table radio, God

Picture :El Alamein

spoke very clearly to my spirit, "That is the answer to your prayer."How well this incident confirms the truth about promotion that is stated in Psalm 75:6-7. The British government chose Gott for their commander, but God set him aside and raised up Montgomery, the man of His own choosing. God did this to bring glory to His own name, and to answer a prayer which, by the Holy Spirit, He Himself had first inspired me to pray. By this intervention, God also preserved the Jews in Palestine from coming under the control of the Axis powers.

I believe that the prayer which God gave me at that time could well be applied to other situations, both military and political: "Lord, give us leaders such that it will be for Your glory to give us victory through them."

The Birth of the State of Israel

During 1947, the future of Palestine was brought before the General Assembly of the

United Nations. At that time the British still governed the country under a mandate that had been assigned to them by the League of Nations shortly after the end of World War I. On November 29, 1948, the United Nations voted to partition the country into two sepa­rate states, allotting a small area to an inde­pendent Jewish state and the rest of the country to the Arabs, with the city of Jerusa­lem under international control. The date set for the termination of the British mandate and the inception of the new political order in Pal­estine was May 14, 1948.

picture General Allenby enters Jaffa Gate

Almost immediately after the United Na­tions decision in favor of partition, the Arabs of Palestine, aided and abetted by' infiltrators from the surrounding Arab nations, embarked on an undeclared war against the Jewish communities in their midst. Several main ar­eas of the country were virtually taken over by armed groups of Arabs, with little or no sem­blance of normal civil government. By the early part of 1948, the Jewish community in­side Jerusalem already presented the appear­ance of a beleaguered city. They were almost totally cut off from supplies of food and other commodities, and were in a condition border­ing on starvation.

On the date set for the inauguration of the new Jewish state, all the surrounding Arab nations simultaneously declared war on it. Something like 650,000 Jews, with the barest minimum of arms and equipment, and without any officially constituted military forces, found themselves confronted on every frontier by a hostile Arab world, fifty million strong, who boasted well-trained armies and abundant military supplies. The leaders of the Arab na­tions publicly declared their intention to anni­hilate the newborn Jewish state and to sweep the Jews into the sea.

At this period, my wife Lydia and I were living with our eight adopted daughters in the center of Jewish Jerusalem. We occupied a large house on the southeast corner of a main intersection between King George Avenue and a street leading eastward to the Jaffa Gate of the old city. Lydia had been living in or near Jerusalem for the previous twenty years. She had been an eyewitness to a long series of ear­lier conflicts in that area between the Arabs and the Jews. She recalled that invariably the Jews had been poorly armed and ill-prepared to resist attack. In this critical hour, it seemed that the odds against the Jews were immeas­urably greater than on previous occasions, and the results of defeat too terrible to contem­plate. picture: bisection of Jaffa Rd and King George Street,Jerusalem

Together Lydia and I searched the Scrip­tures for words of encouragement or direction

from God. Each day we became more and more convinced that we were living in the period of Israel's restoration, to which their prophets and leaders had looked forward over the long centuries of agony and exile. This was the time spoken of in Psalm 102:12-13: "But thou, 0

Lord, shalt endure for ever .... Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come. "

We realized that we were seeing before our eyes the fulfillment of God's promise to Israel:

Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west:

I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth. (Isaiah 43:5-6)

These and other passages of Scripture convinced us that the restoration of the Jews to their land was the sovereign purpose of God being brought to fulfillment. If it was God's purpose to restore Israel, then it could not be His will for them to be driven out or destroyed. This gave us faith to pray for Israel's deliver­ance, based not on nationalistic prejudices, but on the scriptural revelation of God's will.

When Lydia and I were thus brought to­gether by the Holy Spirit concerning God's will, our prayers fulfilled the condition stated in Matthew 18:19: "Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven." One day as we were praying together, I heard Lydia utter this short prayer: "Lord, paralyze the Arabs!"

When full-scale fighting broke out in Jeru­salem, our house was less than a quarter of a mile from the front line, which ran more or less along the west wall of the old city. In the first six weeks of fighting, we counted approxi­mately 150 windowpanes that had been broken by bullets. For most of this period, our whole family lived in a large laundry room in the basement.

Because of the strategic location of our house, our backyard was taken over by the Haganah—the volunteer Jewish defense force that later developed into the official Israeli army. An observation post under the command of a young man named Phinehas was located in the yard. Because of this, we became quite well acquainted with a number of the young Jewish people—both men and women—who manned the post.

Early in June of 1948, the United Nations succeeded in imposing a four-weeks' cease-fire, and there was a temporary lull in the fighting. One day during the cease-fire, picture: towards Jaffa gate

some of our young Jewish friends were sitting in our living room, talking freely about their experiences in the initial period of fighting.

"There's something we can't understand," a young man said. "We go into an area where the Arabs are. They outnumber us ten to one and are much better armed than we are. Yet, at times, they seem powerless to do anything against us. It's as if they are paralyzed!"

Right there in our own living room, this young Jewish soldier repeated the very phrase that Lydia had uttered in prayer a few weeks previously! I have never since ceased to marvel at God's faithfulness. Not only did God liter­ally answer Lydia's prayer to "paralyze the Arabs," but He also provided us with first­hand, objective testimony from a Jewish sol­dier in our own living room that this was what He had done! God's purpose to grant Israel continuing occupation of their land was, in this miraculous way, achieved with the loss of fewer lives than would otherwise have been the case.

It was the invading Arab armies, with all their superiority in arms and numbers, that were defeated and driven back. In the next twenty years this initial victory of Israel was consolidated by equally dramatic victories in two succeeding wars. Today the state of Israel has been firmly established and has achieved amazing progress in almost every area of its national life.

For Lydia and me all of this had greater significance than the mere record of unusual military or political achievements. Each time we received some fresh news concerning Is­rael's continuing development and progress, we said to ourselves with deep inner satisfac­tion: "Our prayers played a part in that."

The End of Stalin's Era

From 1949 to 1,956, I was pastor of a con­gregation in London, England. I retained a special interest in God's dealings with the Jew­ish people, which had first been kindled by in-, experiences in Jerusalem at the time of the birth of the state of Israel. Early in 1953, I re­ceived information from reliable sources that Josef Stalin, who at that time ruled the Sovie: Union as an unchallenged dictator, was plan­ning a systematic purge directed against the Russian Jews.

As I meditated on this situation, the Lord reminded me of Paul's exhortation to the gentile Christians concerning the Jews:

For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief

Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may ob­tain mercy. (Romans 11:30-31)

Somehow, I felt that God was laying at my door the responsibility for the Jews in Russia. I shared my feelings with the leaders of a few small prayer groups in various parts of Britain, who also had a special concern for the Jews. Eventually, we decided to set aside one day for special prayer and fasting on behalf of the Russian Jews. I do not recall the exact date chosen but I believe it was a Thursday. All the members of our groups voluntarily committed themselves to abstain from food that day and to devote special time to prayer for God's in­tervention on behalf of the Jews in Russia.

Picture of Stalin's dead body lying in State

Our own congregation met that evening for group prayer devoted primarily to that topic.There was no particularly dramatic spiri­tual manifestation in the meeting, no special sense of being "blessed" or emotionally stirred. But within two weeks from that day, the course of history inside Russia was changed by one decisive event: the death of Stalin. He was seventy-three years old. No advance warning of his sickness or impending death was given to the Russian people. Up to the last moment, sixteen of Russia's most skilled doctors fought to save his life, but in vain. The cause of death was said to be a brain hemorrhage.

Let it be clearly stated that no member of any of our groups prayed for the death of Sta­lin. We simply committed the situation inside Russia to God, and trusted His wisdom for the answer that was needed. Nevertheless, I am convinced that God's answer came in the form of Stalin's death.

In Acts chapter 12, a somewhat similar answer to the prayers of the early church is recorded. King Herod had the apostle James, brother of John, executed. Then he proceeded to arrest Peter and hold him for execution im­mediately after the Passover. At this point, the church in Jerusalem applied themselves to ear­nest, persistent prayer on Peter's behalf. As a result, God intervened supernaturally through an angelic visitation, and Peter was delivered out of the prison. In this way, the prayers of the church for Peter were answered, but it still remained for God to deal with King Herod.

In the closing verses of the chapter, Luke gives a vivid picture of Herod, arrayed in his royal apparel, making a speech to the people of Tyre and Sidon. At the end of his oration, all the people applauded, shouting, "It is the voice of a god, and not of a man" (Acts 12:22). Puffed with conceit at his own achievements, Herod accepted the applause. However, the recorc concludes, "Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down because he did not give Goa the glory. And in fearful internal agony & died" (12:23 PHILLIPS). The outworking of the power of prayer in human history can at times be swift and terrible.

It remains to point out the consequences of Stalin's death. The planned purge of Rus­sian Jews was not carried out. Instead, a pe­riod of change in internal Russian policy was initiated, so significant and far-reaching that it later came to be known as the era of "destalin­ization." In due course, Stalin's successor and former associate, Khrushchev, denounced Stalin as a cruel and unjust persecutor of the Russian people. Later, Stalin's daughter, who had been raised under the teaching of atheistic communism, fled from her native land and sought refuge in the country which her father had persistently abused.

Sea of Flowers at Stalin's funeral

She further professed her faith in a crucified Jew, whose followers her father had cruelly persecuted.

Kenya's Birth Pangs

From 1957 to 1961, Lydia and I served 3.5 educational missionaries in Kenya, East Africa.I was the principal of a Teacher Training Col­lege in Western Kenya.During this period, Kenya was still pain­fully struggling to recover from the bloody agonies of the Mau Mau movement, which had created bitter mistrust and hatred, not only be­tween Africans and Europeans, but also among many of the various African tribes. At the same time, the country was being hastily pre­pared for the end of British rule and for na­tional independence. This was eventually achieved in 1963.

In 1960, the Belgian Congo, which is to the west of Kenya, gained its independence. With­out adequate preparation, the various different African groups inside the Congo were unable to meet the demands of self-government, and were plunged into a protracted series of bloody internal wars. Many of the European residents of the Congo fled eastward into Kenya, bring­ing with them gruesome pictures of the strife and chaos they had left behind them.

Against this background, the forecasts of the political experts for the future of Kenya were dark indeed. It was generally predicted that Kenya would follow the unhappy course of the Congo, but with problems made even more serious by the internal antagonisms that were the legacy of Mau Mau.

In August 1960, I was one of a number of missionaries ministering at a week-long con­vention for African young people held in west­ern Kenya. There were about two hundred young Africans in attendance, most of whom were either teachers or students. A consider­able number of these were either students or former students from the Teacher Training College of which I was the principal.

The convention ended on a Sunday. In the final service that evening, we witnessed a ful­fillment of Joel's prophecy, quoted by Peter:

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. (Acts 2:17)

A missionary colleague from Canada brought the closing address, which was trans­lated into Swahili by a young man named Wilson Mamboleo, who had recently graduated from our Teacher Training College. The first two hours of the service followed a normal pat­tern, but after the close of the missionary's address, the Holy Spirit moved with sovereign power and lifted the mee^ting onto a super­natural plane. For the next two hours, almost the whole group of more than two hundred people continued in spontaneous worship and prayer without any visible human leadership.

At a certain point, the conviction came to me that, as a group, we had touched God, and

"You are the future

'leaders of your people,"

I told them,

"both in the field of education

and also in the field of religion."

that His power was at our disposal. God spoke to my spirit, and said, "Do not let them make the same mistake that Pentecostals have so often made in the past, by squandering My power in spiritual self-indulgence. Tell them to pray for the future of Kenya."

I began to make my way to the platform, intending to deliver to the whole group the message which I felt God had given me. On the way, I passed Lydia, who was sitting beside the aisle. She put out her hand and stopped me.

"What do you want?" I asked her."Tell them to pray for Kenya," she said."That's just what I'm going up to the plat­form for," I replied. I realized that God had spoken to my wife at the same time that He had spoken to me, and I accepted this as con­firmation of His direction.Reaching the platform, I called the whole group to silence and presented God's challenge to them. "You are the future 'leaders of your people," I told them, "both in the field of education and also in the field of religion. The Bible places upon you, as Christians, the re­sponsibility to pray for your country and its government. Your country is now facing the most critical period in its history. Let us unite together in praying for the future of Kenya."

Wilson Mamboleo was with me on the platform, translating my words into Swahili. When the time came to pray, he knelt down beside me. As I led in prayer, almost every per­son present joined me in praying out loud. The combined volume of voices rising in prayer reminded me of the passage in Revelation 19:6:

"And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings." The sound of prayer swelled to a crescendo, then suddenly ceased. It was as if some invisible conductor had brought down his baton.After a few moments of silence, Wilson stood up and spoke to the congregation. "I want to tell you what the Lord showed me while we were praying," he said. I realized that God had given him a vision as he knelt beside me in prayer.

Wilson then related the vision he had seen, first in English and then in Swahili. "I saw a red horse approaching Kenya from the east," he said. "It was very fierce, and there was a very black man riding on it. Behind it were several other horses, also red and fierce. While we were praying, I saw all the horses turn around and move away toward the north."

Wilson paused for a moment, and then continued, "I asked God to tell me the meaning of what I had seen, and this is what He told me: 'Only the supernatural power of the prayer of my people can turn away the troubles that are coming upon Kenya!"'

For many days after that, I continued to meditate on what Wilson had told us. I realized that Wilson's vision was in some ways similar to one recorded in Zechariah 1:7-11. I asked Wilson whether he was familiar with this pas­sage of Zechariah, and he replied that he was not. I gradually concluded that by this vision God had granted us an assurance that He had heard our prayers for Kenya, and that He would intervene in some definite way on behalf of the country. Subsequent events in Kenya's history have confirmed that this was so.

During the period of British rule, Kenya was one of three states that made up British East Africa. The other two states were Uganda to the west and Tanganyika to the south. (Tanganyika was later renamed Tanzania.) Kenya eventuall^y achieved her independence on December 12, 1963. The other two states had already achieved independence somewhat earlier. Immediately after independence was declared, a national government was duly elected in Kenya, with Jomo Kenyatta as the nation's first president.
In January 1964, there was an exact out­working in Kenya's history of the vision which Wilson had seen. A bloody revolution broke out in Zanzibar, off Kenya's east coast. This was led by an African from Uganda who had been trained in revolutionary tactics under Castro in Cuba. The revolution succeeded in over­throwing the Sultan of Zanzibar.

In the same month, a revolutionary move­ment gripped the national army of Tanzania. Its influence also spread to the army of Kenya. The aim was to overthrow the elected govern­ment in Kenya and to replace it by a military dictatorship under communist control.

Picture: graves in 1964 Zanzibar

At this critical point, Kenya's new presi­dent, Jomo Kenyatta, acted with wisdom and firmness. Enlisting the help of the British army, he suppressed the revolutionary move­ment in the Kenyan army and restored law and order throughout the country. Thus, the authority of Kenya's duly-elected government was preserved, and the communist attempt at a military take-over was completely foiled.

In Wilson's vision, the red horses that turned away from Kenya moved towards the north. Northward along the African coast from Kenya lies Somalia. The kind of communist military coup that failed in Kenya was success­ful in Somalia. Someone later described Soma­lia as "a communist military camp."

The other countries bordering on Kenya have likewise experienced serious political problems. To the south, in Tanzania, strong communist influence has brought about vari­ous limitations of political freedom. To the west, in Uganda, there has been a history of unstable governments and internal tribal clashes, with a very determined effort by the Moslems to gain control of the country and to make Islam the official religion of the nation. Yet in the midst of all this, Kenya has suc­ceeded in combining order and progress with a high degree of political and religious liberty to a remarkable extent.

The attitude of Kenya's government to­ward Christianity has been consistently friendly and cooperative. Although President Kenyatta does not himself profess to be a Christian, he has officially invited the various Christian bodies in Kenya to teach the message of Christianity in every government school in the country. In many ways, Kenya has become a strategically located center from which trained national Christians are able to move out with the gospel message to all the sur­rounding countries.

Sometimes God uses unexpected means of getting information to us. In October 1966, I was in the office of a travel agency in Copen­hagen, making arrangements fora flight to London. While I was waiting for my ticket to be prepared, I picked up an English edition of the London Times. There was a special six­teen-page supplement which dealt exclusively with Kenya. In essence, the theme of this supplement was that Kenya had proved to be one of the most stable and successful of nearly fifty new nations that had emerged on the continent of Africa since the end of World War II. As I turned each page of the supplement, I seemed to hear the inaudible voice of God within my spirit, saying, "This is what I can do when Christians pray with faith for the gov­ernment of their nation."

When I decided to record God's dealings with Kenya, I wrote to Wilson Mamboleo in Nairobi. I outlined my recollection of the vision which God had given him in 1960, and asked him to indicate any ways in which I could make my account more accurate. I also asked him if he had any comments to make on the then present situation in Kenya. The following are some extracts from his reply, dated June 30, 1972:

Thank you for your letter. It is the Spirit of the living God who has guided you to ask me to write these things....It is so wonderful how the Lord has worked. I and another brother who loves
to pray have been uplifting you before the Lord in prayer and while we were doing so, I received your letter...Concerning my vision of 1960, I feel you have grasped it well, so there wouldn't be any need for an addition...

At this time Kenya is leading a peace­ful life. Economic development is steadily growing. Foreign investment is in a healthy structure. Business among the Af­rican people is booming in every town in the countr^y. The success which is being achieved in Kenya is because of the stabil­ity of the present government led by His Excellency the President, "Mzee" Jomo Kenyatta.

I can say that God chose this man to lead our nation at such a time as this, and I, as well as many other faithful Christians in the country, do pray for him, that God may grant him wisdom.

Many people in the country do not have an answer who would be a successor to President Kenyatta, when his days on earth are over. In the eyes of men, there is no man of his caliber who will have such a commanding leadership, accepted by all his countrymen, as Kenyatta. However, I do believe, and this is what I tell those I meet, that "God will provide" a man—but only as a result of persistent prayer of the saints...

We thank God that Kenya enjoys more freedom to worship God in the way a person is led, than the other neighboring states. In Tanzania, religion—and espe­ciall^y Christianity—is being suppressed. Open-air evangelistic meetings are not al­lowed unless one has a valid permit from the authorities .... In Uganda, the military government led by General Amin, a Mos­lem, is urging all religious bodies to be­come ecumenical. Recently General Amin himself made a mixture of worship—Mos­lem prayers were conducted in a Christian church, when the General himself at­tended the prayers....

The military government of Somalia is a socialist type of government. Somalia has close ties with the communist coun­tries of the East—the Soviet Union and Red China. Large amounts of financial and material aids are given to Somalia, just as Tanzania receives its aid from China (including military training and supplies of Chinese MIG fighters)....

Over these past years, the history of Kenya and the surrounding nations has dem­onstrated the exact outworking of the vision which God gave to Wilson in 1960. The inter­vention of God on behalf of Kenya came through a group of Christians who united to­gether to pray, in accordance with Scripture,for the government and the destiny of their nation.

As you ponder on this record of God's faithfulness, call to mind the words with which Wilson's vision closed: "Only the supernatural power of the prayer of my people can turn away the troubles that are coming upon Kenya."

Is there not good reason to believe that these words apply just as much to your country and to mine?