Editors comments: Following the release of his latest book “Prayer Power – Changing the World and You” –– which is drawing lots of positive comments from around the world, we asked Rev. Dr Stuart Robinson, an award winning and bestselling author, to share his thoughts on what he sees as the greatest need for God’s people in this hour.
PRAYER MATTERS
In May 2018, in Nigeria 500 former Muslims gathered at night to pray and learn something from God’s Word. Hearing about the meeting, Boko Haram Islamists attacked. They captured 72 men, women and children and demanded they all return to Islam. Should they refuse, the next morning, their children would be killed while they watched. Throughout the night the captives agonised over what response to make. Then some of the children reported that there was no need to fear. They claimed that Jesus had visited them to reassure them they would be protected. The next morning the Islamists returned, lined up the children and asked for the adults’ response. It was that they would not revert to Islam. They would not forsake their faith in Jesus. The firing squad was lined up and ordered to aim their rifles ready to fire. Before any trigger was depressed, suddenly the would-be killers were screaming, “Snakes are attacking us.” Some of them dropped dead where they stood. Others dropped their guns and fled.
Seizing the opportunity a Christian darted out, retrieved one of the guns and was about to shoot at the fleeing killers when a child raced forward calling out, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. Can’t you see the men in white are fighting for us?” The angels had arrived. Sometime later upon hearing what had transpired a number of foreign missionaries came to check it out. In that everyone interviewed recounted exactly the same story, they accepted that it was true. One of them then raised a disturbing question. “Why is it that we never see this sort of event back in our countries?”[1] In another country in which I carry some ministry responsibilities a similarly motivated group were hunting for a local man wo was a member of our staff. If they could catch him, they intended to kill him because it was their belief he had committed treason. He had left Islam to follow Jesus of the Bible. The penalty is death. Knowing this many of us were praying for his protection.
Having learned that on his day off each Friday he cycled alone out to his distant farm plot to tend his vegetable garden, they lay in wait ready to ambush him. Three times they waited to kill him. Three times they failed to attack. Why? What happened? Later they reported, “We couldn’t implement our plan because every time this apostate came, he was surrounded by a number of men dressed in white.” Those angels—again! These sorts of events, the appearance of angels, bolts of lightning flashing from the sky exactly as it was in 1 Kings 18 with Elijah on Mt Carmel locked in a deathly contest with the 400 prophets of Baal, the dead returning to life and much more, are relatively common in non-Western places in which I am privileged to minister. Why doesn’t it happen in the West?
Reinhardt Bonnke was an evangelist who was invited to come to Australia twice late in the twentieth century. Across Africa millions of people attended his vast open-air meetings. It is well documented that in those meetings thousands of people were miraculously healed of all sorts of major infirmities. But in his two visits to Australia, in his weeks of ministry there was not a single instance of anyone being healed or freed from demonic bondage. Why is that? Why is it that in the West, compared with any other era in Christian history, our clergy are the best trained to the highest accredited academic standards, they have the best technology to share their message, from the best facilities money can buy. Yet in every country in the West the church is in a state of rapid decline, lurching seemingly blindly toward a chasm of extinction. One published report claimed that by the 2090s there may be no current mainline denomination left in the UK.[2]
Here in Australia, we are closing churches at such a rate and selling the buildings to become housing units, theatres, restaurants or for use by other non-Christian religions. By the 2090s our Christian landscape may look even bleaker than that in the UK. Conversely, there are other countries in which I get to minster, where followers of Jesus are booming on all fronts, growing exponentially in spite of poverty and persecution. Recently I was working over the manuscript of a book which will be published in 2025. The subject is about just one movement in which there are 452,319 members in 20,651 churches. They have no church buildings, no finance sapping Bible Colleges, no hierarchical structures and no trained clergy in our understanding of that office. Their founding leader is still alive and in the prime of life. And there are many other movements like them. Why don’t we see this in Australia?
In that part of the world a seminar was held for these sorts of church leaders. A pre-condition for being allowed to attend was that each person had to have planted a minimum of 25 churches. None from any Western country could have qualified. Conference organisers were eager to discover what the secret was for such amazing growth often in most inhospitable circumstances. They paid a team of experts to interview each attendee and report back on their data collation, analysis and conclusions. The results indicated that there was no regular pattern or methodology which could be codified and on-sold to rescue the spiritually emaciated church of the West. The only element common to each interviewee was the extraordinary importance they attached upon prayer. These leaders prayed alone from 4.00am to 7.00am and then met to pray with their leaders before going off to work when offices opened at 10.00am. The churches they led were also noted for their exceptional prayer practices.
They shared this characteristic ministry outcome and way of life with the earliest church in the New Testament. They in turn followed the example and command of Jesus when it came to prayer. In the Old Testament, excluding the Psalms, there are 77 explicit references to prayer. But in just the four gospels there are 94 references to Jesus and prayer. This is one lesson Jesus’ band of disciples never forgot. So, Peter urged believers to remain “clear minded and self-controlled” so that they could pray (1 Peter 4:7). James declared that prayer is “powerful and effective” (James 5:17-18). John assured us that “God hears and answers” our prayers (1John 5:15). Paul commands, “Pray continually. For this is God’s will for you” (1Thessalonians 5:17-18). Elsewhere he urged believers in Colossae to “devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving” (Colossians 4:2). From where did he get that idea? And what did he expect to happen if they did? That pattern of ministry and way of life was embedded in the earliest church from the very beginning.
The Bible says that “they devoted themselves to prayer” (Acts 2:42). What happened when they did that? Again, the Bible records that “every day the Lord added to their number” (Acts 2:47). At first that number was 2000. Then in response to Peter and John’s preaching an additional 5000 men responded (Acts 4:4). When Paul preached in Ephesus (Acts 19:26) a “considerable number of people” responded. That threatened the city’s major commercial enterprise, the manufacture and sale of idols. A riot broke out to stop Paul’s preaching. Whenever people become serious about prayer supernatural things happen. A missionary in China was despondent because there was no response to his labours. He wrote to his mission secretary in England asking could he recruit people to pray for each of the ten places where he preached. Relatively quickly in seven of the ten locations, response from locals came and churches were formed. Later when he returned to England and visited mission headquarters, he reported what had happened but could not explain why only seven of the ten responded.
The secretary of the mission replied that when he got the request to recruit intercessors, he succeeded in finding sufficient for seven of the locations. He failed to recruit anyone to pray for the remaining three.[3] “Church on the Rock” in Rockwall, Texas grew from 13 people to 11,000 in just nine years. When its founding pastor was asked to explain the phenomenon, he replied, “I didn’t start a church. I started a prayer meeting.”[4] An associate pastor explained further: The evangelistic programme of our church is the daily prayer meeting… Each morning Monday through Friday we meet at 5.00 to 6.00am for prayer… If we see the harvest (of conversions) fall off for more than a week, we see that as a spiritual red alert and seek the Lord…[5] In Australia and throughout the Western world we have forgotten that nothing of consequence happens except in answer to prayer. But it’s not just any prayer. Jesus said, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark11:22-24).
He said that in the context of moving mountains. The challenge is could any of us pray and without any doubt, believe that a mountain could be moved by prayer? That was exactly the challenge Muslim Caliph Al-Mu’iz of Egypt presented to Christians in 979CE. On the eastern edge of Cairo squatted Mount Mokattam. It was in the way of the Caliph’s development plans. So, he challenged Christians to live out their faith and pray as Jesus said in Mark 11, that the mountain would be moved. He gave three options: a) Pray to move the mountain. b) Leave Egypt. c) Should they fail—be killed by the sword. Church leaders summoned the church to pray and fast. If they failed the Caliph’s challenge—genocide would be the result. They accepted the challenge to pray and approached a pious shoemaker to pray on everyone’s behalf. He accepted on condition that no one was to know he was the one appointed to pray on behalf of the whole community. Her also gave specific instructions on how to pray to be followed by everyone.
On the agreed date, a crowd of Christians gathered as did the Caliph and his troops ready to draw their swords to commence the slaughter. But the moment Simon beseeched the Lord of Heaven and Earth to intervene, a great earthquake hit the mountain lifting it off the ground so that repeatedly daylight could be seen between it and its earth base. Terrorised the Caliph begged the Christians to stop the prayer meeting.[6] Today in the side of that mountain a 10,000-seat auditorium has been excavated by hand. On an appointed night each week, Christians pack that auditorium to pray for the sick. Along one side is a vast shed filled with wheelchairs and crutches, discarded by those who no longer need them. In Exodus 17:10-13 as long as Moses kept his hands aloft in prayer, Joshua and his troops were beating the Amalekites. When he tired and lowered them the Israelites were losing. Aaron and Hur stepped up and held his arms up till complete victory was achieved.
In 2 Chronicles 20:20-30 the vastly outnumbered Jehoshaphat and his troops were about to be vanquished by the Ammonites and Moabites. He called his people to pray and fast. The enemy self-destructed in confusion killing one another. Every Jew in the ancient empire of Persia and Media was about to be killed through a conspiracy hatched by Haman, a leading noble in the court of King Ahasuerus. Then Esther, the Jewish queen, summoned her people to pray and fast. The treachery of Haman was exposed, and he went to the gallows. Genocide was averted. Prayer linked with fasting is even more powerful because it removes two barriers which inhibit the Holy Spirit working through us. These are: a) Self-will and b) Self-gratifying appetites of the body (Galatians 5:19). With prayer linked to fasting according to 2 Corinthians 10:4, the weapons of our spiritual warfare are unleashed to demolish strongholds. In that case there is no limit to what may be achieved.
Wayman Rogers wanted to leave his church because it had plateaued for some time at 200 people. Then the Lord told him that if he stayed and called the people to serious prayer things would change. He did and church grew from 200 to 2000 within a couple of years. But things really broke loose when intercessors added fasting to prayer. There occurred multiple healings and deliverances from demons. The church grew to 10,000. The only problem they encountered was the traffic jams around the church and arguments over who would get to sit in the front rows. In East Germany in 1982, 10-12 people gathered on Monday nights to pray and fast for their nation to be freed from the Communist yoke and to be reunited with West Germany. By 1989 their number had grown to 50,000. Then in 1990, 300,000 of them moved out into the streets praying and worshiping. And in Berlin the wall separating East from West Germany came tumbling down.
Throughout the West, in every country the church is dying, and we are descending into deeper chaos. The solution to all of our societal problems will not be found in parliamentary legislation, increased numbers of police on the streets or costly programmes sponsored by our already heavily in debt governments. The greatest need of our day is for God’s people to start to seriously pray, fast and believe. With the Webb Telescope we can see billions of miles into space. But we cannot see God in our own lives. We can communicate with robots on Mars but seem to have forgotten how to communicate with the Lord of the earth. If that is so, our only hope is to humble ourselves as did the first disciples, to kneel and beg, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1).[7]
Source: Rev. Dr Stuart Robinson Founding Pastor of Australia’s largest Baptist church; pioneer frontline missionary, international conference speaker, Bible college teacher and award winning, bestselling author. https://drstuartrobinson.com
End notes:
[1] God’s intervention saves 72 Nigerian Christians from Boko Haram firing squad. Barnabas Aid. May/June 2019, 12.
2 Martyn Perry, With the Church of England Dying, how much longer can we justify having bishops in the House of Lords? https://prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/60132/with-the-church-of-england-dying -how-much-longer-can-we-justify-having-bishops-in-the-house-of-lords/, October 6, 2022.
3 Allan Webb, Unleashing the Power of Prayer. East Asia’s Missions, Vol.104, No.2.
4 Larry Lea, Could you not Tarry One Hour. Altamonte Springs, Florida, Creation House, 1987.
5 David Shibley, Let’s Pray in the Harvest. Rockwall, Texas: Church on the Rock, 1985,7.
6 Father Mattaos, The Biography of Saint Samaan the Shoemaker. Cairo, 1994.
7 Stuart Robinson, Prayer Power-Changing the World and You. Mt Gravatt, CHI Books, 2023, 22.
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