Watchword: Daily Text
August 21, 2013
I
Timothy 3:16
And without controversy
great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, Justified
in the Spirit, Seen by angels, Preached among the Gentiles, Believed on in the
world, Received up in glory.[1] This verse, I believe, is the essence of the gospel. This proclaims the deity of Christ, the fact
he came to earth as a man for one purpose to be the Savior of the world. Paul took the gospel to the unreached ‘til he
laid down his life as a martyr. It was his heartbeat. Now he was training his
young protégé to have that same heartbeat. As the church entered the Dark Ages,
the heartbeat faded. Now that purpose
would become the heartbeat of Herrnhut in 1732.
Today
we celebrate another significant day from Herrnhut – forgive me, but I love these
Moravian special days. Today in 1732,
the Herrnhutters sent forth their first missionaries[2]. That’s incredible! The Reformation began in 1517 and the newly
formed Protestant Church kept the truth of justification by faith locked up to
themselves. Once again, it took intense
persecution for the Church to wake up to the needs of the world. (Think Acts
8!) It was Count Zinzendorf who first
caught the missionary vision. While he was visiting the King of Denmark, he
encountered a man from St. Thomas; he saw the Count spoke to him of the
horrific conditions that existed on the island and then followed his statement
with the plea, “I have a sister in bondage … and I am sure that she would be
converted if only she could hear about Jesus Christ.”[3] Zinzendorf communicated with the people of
Herrnhut, telling them of the vast need that engulfed the island. Upon hearing of the need, Leonard Dober, a potter of Herrnhut, and Tobias
Leupold volunteered to go. After praying the Herrnhutters chose David
Nitschmann, a carpenter, to take the place of Tobias. Leonard and David became
the first missionaries sent forth from Herrnhut.[4] They left on August 21,1732.[5] This missionary endeavor
was the first of the Modern Protestant (Moravian) Movement.[6] Many Moravian missionaries would follow
them. In 1792, William Carey stood before a group of people attempting to
persuade them to allow him to take the gospel to India. Standing there he used
Zinzendorf and the Moravians as an example of great fervor -- he “threw down copies of Periodical Accounts and exclaimed: ‘See what these Moravians have
done! Can’t we Baptists at least attempt something in fealty to the same Lord?’
Thus, the Baptist Missionary Society was born.”[7] And the gospel has gone forth since in
varying forms of missionary endeavors since that day.
[1] I
Timothy 3:16, NKJV.
[2]
www.moravian.org.
[3] Felix Bovet
and John Gill, translator, The Banished Count Or,: The Life of Nicolas Louis
Zinzendorf (London: Kessinger, LLC, 1865), 106, accessed July 5, 2013, http://books.google.com/books?id=nMAEAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
[5]
www.moravian.org.
[6] J.E. Hutton. A
History of the Moravian Church, (1909), 14. Accessed http://www.ccel.org/ccel/hutton/moravian.html
on June 25, 2013.
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