There’s this history of Moravian Falls which Reverend John Greenfield, an American Moravian evangelist, published his book "Power On High" in 1927 on the 200th anniversary of the Moravian revival. The information in this article is from that book, which is now out of print.
According to history, the Moravians, a refugee colony from Bohemia, settled on the estates of Count Nicholas Zinzendorf in Herrnhut, Germany, where a powerful revival began in 1727. The Moravains launched 100 years of continuous prayer. Within 25 years 100 Moravians were missionaries, more than the rest of the Protestant church had sent out in two centuries.
"The Holy Ghost came upon us and in those days great signs and wonders took place in our midst. From that time, we beheld His almighty workings amongst us."
The Moravian brethren had sprung from the labors and martyrdom of the Bohemian Reformer, John Huss. They had experienced centuries of persecution. Many had been killed, imprisoned, tortured or banished from their homeland. This group had fled for refuge to Germany where the young Christian nobleman, Count Zinzendorf, offered them asylum on his estates in Saxony. They named their new home Herrnhut, 'the Lord's Watch'. From there, after their baptism in the Holy Spirit, they became evangelists and missionaries. From this base, the Moravians continued with a focus on missionary work to many places in the world. The location of these early missions led to the church today having a worldwide membership made up largely of people of African descent.
The first attempt to settle in America, in the colony of Georgia, was short-lived. The Moravians moved north from Georgia to eastern Pennsylvania in 1740 and founded the town of Bethlehem. From this base in Pennsylvania, they later moved south to North Carolina.
In 1752, in the backwoods of North Carolina the Moravians purchased a tract of almost 100,000 acres . The name of the tract became known as Wachovia. Later the town became known as Moravian Falls because of its 35 foot waterfall and the Moravian community that settled their. Also, in 1766, the Moravians establish the town of Salem (Winston-Salem); Salem meaning "peace" in N.C.,
The Moravians established a rooted community with strong values and stable trade. They continued a legacy of 24 hour prayer and worship centers that were started in Eastern Europe by their ancestors. Their prayer and missionary spirit still have effect in the foothills of North Carolina where today many ministries have established their home bases. The legacy of 24 hour prayer continues at Moravian Falls. Because of this heavy atmosphere of prayer, many angelic encounters have been recorded."
Best Places To Stay:
A cabin at the falls is the ideal place to stay. There are also cabins on Prayer Mountain to rent if you like the adventure of driving up the steep mountain.
The Moravian Community of Herrnhut in Saxony, in 1727, commenced a round-the-clock "prayer watch" that continued nonstop for over a hundred years.
FACT: By 1791, 65 years after commencement of that prayer vigil, the small Moravian community had sent 300 missionaries to the ends of the earth. This proves that there is some relationship between fervent intercession as a basic component in world evangelization.
That heroic eighteenth-century evangelization thrust of the Moravians has not received the attention it deserves. But even less heralded than their missionary exploits is that hundred-year prayer meeting that sustained the fires of evangelism.
During its first five years of existence the Herrnhut settlement showed few signs of spiritual power. By the beginning of 1727 the community of about three hundred people was wracked by dissension and bickering. An unlikely site for revival!
Zinzendorf and others, however, covenanted to prayer and labor for revival. On May 12 revival came. Christians were aglow with new life and power, dissension vanished and unbelievers were converted.
Looking back to that day and the four glorious months that followed, Zinzendorf later recalled: "The whole place represented truly a visible habitation of God among men."
A spirit of prayer was immediately evident in the fellowship and continued throughout that "golden summer of 1727," as the Moravians came to designate the period. On August 27 of that year twenty-four men and twenty-four women covenanted to spend one hour each day in scheduled prayer.
Some others enlisted in the "hourly intercession."
"For over a hundred years the members of the Moravian Church all shared in the 'hourly intercession.' At home and abroad, on land and sea, this prayer watch ascended unceasingly to the Lord," stated historian A. J. Lewis.
The Memorial Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, published in 1822, ninety-five years after the decision to initiate the prayer watch, quaintly describes the move in one sentence: "The thought struck some brethren and sisters that it might be well to set apart certain hours for the purpose of prayer, at which seasons all might be reminded of its excellency and be induced by the promises annexed to fervent, persevering prayer to pour out their hearts before the Lord."
The journal further cites Old Testament typology as warrant for the prayer watch: "The sacred fire was never permitted to go out on the altar (Leviticus 6:13); so in a congregation is a temple of the living God, wherein he has his altar and fire, the intercession of his saints should incessantly rise up to him."
That prayer watch was instituted by a community of believers whose average age was probably about thirty. Zinzendorf himself was twenty-seven.
The prayer vigil by Zinzendorf and the Moravian community sensitized them to attempt the unheard-of mission to reach others for Christ. Six months after the beginning of the prayer watch the count suggested to his fellow Moravians the challenge of a bold evangelism aimed at the West Indies, Greenland, Turkey and Lapland. Some were skeptical, but Zinzendorf persisted. Twenty-six Moravians stepped forward the next day to volunteer for world missions wherever the Lord led.
The exploits that followed are surely to be numbered among the high moments of Christian history. Nothing daunted Zinzendorf or his fellow heralds of Jesus Christ—prison, shipwreck, persecution, ridicule, plague, abject poverty, threats of death. His hymn reflected his conviction:
Ambassador of Christ,
Know ye the way ye go?
It leads into the jaws of death,
Is strewn with thorns and woe.
Church historians look to the eighteenth century and marvel at the Great Awakening in England and America which swept hundreds of thousands into God's Kingdom. John Wesley figured largely in that mighty movement and much attention has centered on him. It is not possible that we have overlooked the place which that round-the-clock prayer watch had in reaching Wesley and, through him and his associates, in altering the course of history?
One wonders what would flow from a commitment on the part of twentieth-century Christians to institute a "prayer watch" for world evangelization, specifically to reach those, in Zinzendorf's words, "for whom no one cared."
By Leslie K. Tarr
[Christian History originally published this article in Christian History Issue #1 in 1982]
Leslie K. Tarr is professor of homiletics and communication at Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto, Ontario.
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