PAM, DEVOTIONAL PUTTS STS SHIT TT SLES + 3 iJ Kederal Council of the Churches of Christ in America ‘Rev. Shailer Mathews, D.D., President Rev. Charles S. Macfarland, Gen. Sec. Be A Call to Prayer FOR A World-wide Revival i Issued by the Commission on Lvangelism Rev. Wm. H. Roberts, D.D., Chairman Rev. Bishop Joseph F. Berry, D.D., V.-Chairman Rey. W. E. Biederwolf, General Secretary Rev. Charles E. Schaeffer, D.D., Treasurer RR TUIAANLALALANATNANEHAAEECANAAANGUNANOCAUGUADACENOUOCHUOUELACUSGUOCUUNNGDAGUOUEOCOUNNANAGUSUONCAUGRRELDOGLOCC TOUNSUQDAGUONC 2OUSOUOUADUGNCQUEQEERUGEAUOLQUENUNAEQUOHUCONONODOONODIC QUGU0QNCUEOLE SS IIUTTAUTATETUGANAGUNAUOC QUUDAAEOUOUOC SENUKUACOUGNOCQSOCUGUCSESEELIODUANGURACRUC IODUOUDOYRUBHEUQUEOGQEGLOECOEGNNONGNDSGECQUUGRRHQINEGIC JOUOEOUSSDEIC 3SUO0QNONUSRGE 2SOUNUGCQUSEOC 2O0UQQ0000000 POOL STOUT LT eT A Call Ue) Prayer FOR World- aan Revival Fe! »|HE Commission on Evangelism or a of the Federal Council of the ge) Churches of Christ in America, acting for the Federal Council, issues a solemn call to the Churches of Christ, to unite in prayer for a world-wide Revival of true Religion. The primal consideration that has inspired this call is the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ always stands ready with all the forces of omnipotence to aid His people, pleading and striving in His name and for His sake, for the salvation of that world for which He died, and which he lives to redeem. We have also the incentive contained in the Saviour’s prayer the night before his atoning death, ‘‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all ' u wane may be one, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” Christian unity can find inspiring manifestation, not only in the United States, but in all lands, in united prayer for the salvation of the world. Another incentive to prayer for world revival is found in the fact that the Christian Church began its career of spiritual advance, with a revival of religion so great that the word Pentecost has been a marked note of encourage- ment to Christians through all the centuries. Pentecostal revivals have been God’s gift to the United States repeatedly. The ‘Great Awakening”’ of the Eighteenth Century, the Nation- wide revival of the opening years of the Nineteenth Century, the great spiritual quickening of the year 1857, and other evangelistic movements that could be mentioned, were followed invariably by great spiritual and moral uplifts through- out all our territory. To-day our country needs more and greater revivals, revivals more thorough and far reaching in their results in individual salvation than any of the past, and more complete and permanent, in the moral reformation 3 both of individuals and the nation. For the situation in our country is, from a spiritual viewpoint, at a critical stage. A majority of our male population is not in direct connection with any Christian Church, either Protestant or Catholic. Fully forty millions of our adults do not recognize Christian standards of conduct. In addition, many professing Christians have no active interest in the supreme work of the Church, the winning of souls for and to Jesus Christ. In Europe the situation is strenuous. There, professedly Christian nations are killing and wounding men by the mil- lions, and only a great revival of true religion can produce the inward change demanded, the effecting a mental revo- lution in the attitude of great nations towards war. And the masses of the warring peoples, as a result of the exist- ing conditions, it is to be noted, are impressed deeply with the value of spiritual realities, so that the church edifices are crowded with worshipers. What is true of Europe is true of other regions. God, as an overshadow- ing presence, is consciously felt in all the world. The needs of the hour are definite; the Church Universal reawakened to duty; the Christian conscience re- aroused, and a wide-spread revival of Christ’s redemptive Spirit in the hearts and lives of men. Reform measures, it is true, are accomplishing in some lands much good, but still the hosts and forces of sin advance in many places more rapidly than those of the Gospel. The great need is for a change of heart; for a return to the simple virtues of the pious life; for the honoring of God’s Word because of its absolute truth and great spiritual power; for a return of the recognition of God at the table and fireside; for a renewal of the honoring of God by attending His house, and above all for prompt and constant obedience to the command implied in the words of Christ, ‘‘I am come to seek and to save that which was lost.” This solemn call, is also the recogni- tion that the duty of regular daily prayer needs at times to be supplemented and intensified by extraordinary prayer. The need for concerted and extraor- dinary supplication was involved in the Saviour’s words to His Disciples, s “Depart not from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father.’’ And that prayerful waiting brought Pente- cost. Every great revival of religion has been preceded by waiting upon God. We plead, therefore, not only for special individual prayer for revival, but we plead for the whole Church in prayer, in the spirit of the Apostle Paul, who exhorts all Christians, not Timothy only, ‘‘that supplications, prayers, inter- cessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and accep- table in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”” The one continuous petition in intercession, however, should be for that blessing divinely promised, ‘‘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 daugh- ters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will 6 pour out in those days of my Spirit.’ “And it shall come to pass, that who- soever shall call on the name of the Lord, shall be saved.” Let prayer then be made for all men, for all nations and their rulers, for all the Churches of Christ in this and every land, for all ministers and church officers, for all church members, for the masses of men and women who are in spiritual darkness, and especially for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in every land in Pentecostal revelations of divine power unto salvation, so that Jesus Christ may be accepted as the divine Saviour by all the world, and the Gospel may be so applied by the Holy Spirit, that human nature everywhere shall be truly regenerated, and men dwell together here on earth as brethren in Christ, even as it is the assured hope of saved men so to dwell in the ever- lasting and heavenly Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Breth- ren in Christ of every denominational and Church name, let us unite in prayer for a world-wide Pentecost, in His name and for the extension of His Kingdom, who died upon His cross “the propitia- 7 tion for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”’ Let us pray in the spirit and power of the words, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.’’ In behalf of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. Wa. HENRY ROBERTs, Chairman Commission on Evangelism. WILLIAM E. BIEDERWOLF, Secretary of the Commission. SHAILER MATHEWS, President. CHARLES S. MACFARLAND, General Secretary. PHILADELPHIA, PA., MARCH 20, I9I5.