PRAYER
AND PRAYING MEN
REV. EDWARD M. BOUNDS
PRAYER
AND PRAYING MEN
BY
REV. EDWARD M. BOUNDS
AUTHOR OF “THE INEFFABLE GLORY,” “PREACHER
AND PRAYER,” “PURPOSE IN PRAYER,” ETC.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
REV. HOMER W. HODGE
HODDER & STOUGHTON
LIMITED : : LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
INTRODUCTION
Rev. Edward McKendrie Bounds was passionately devoted to his beloved
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. His devotion was extraordinary in that
he was praying and writing about Him all the time, except during the
hours of sleeping.
God gave Bounds an enlargedness of heart and an insatiable desire to
do service for Him. To this end he enjoyed what I am pleased to term a
transcendent inspiration, else he could never have brought out of his
treasury things new and old far exceeding anything we have known or
read in the last half century.
Bounds is easily the Betelguese of the devotional sky. There is no man
that has lived since the days of the apostles that has surpassed him in
the depths of his marvelous research into the Life of Prayer.
He was busily engaged in writing on his manuscripts when the Lord said
unto him, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into
the joys of thy Lord.” His letters would often come to me in Brooklyn,
N. Y., in 1911, 1912 and 1913, saying, “Pray for me that God will give
me new nerves and new visions to finish the manuscripts.”
Wesley was of the sweetest and most forgiving disposition, but when
aroused he was a man of the “keenest penetration with a gift of speech
that bit like the stroke of a whip.” Bounds was meek and humble, and
never did we know him to retaliate upon any of his enemies. He cried
over them and wept praying for them early and late.
Wesley was easily gulled. “My brother,” said Charles, on one occasion
in disgusting accents, “was, I believe, born for the benefit
of knaves.” No man could impose on Bounds’ credulity. He was a
diagnostician of rare ability. Bounds shied away from all frauds in
profession, and would waste no time upon them.
Wesley was preaching and riding all day. Bounds was praying and writing
day and night.
Wesley would not allow any misrepresentation of his doctrinal positions
in his late years. Bounds in this respect was very much like him.
Wesley came to his fame while yet alive. He was always in the public
eye. Bounds, while editing a _Christian Advocate_ for twelve years, was
little known out of his church.
Wesley at eighty-six could still preach on the streets for thirty
minutes. Bounds was able at seventy-five in the first hour of the
fourth watch to pray for three hours upon his knees.
Wesley, at the time of his death, had enjoyed fifty-six years of
preferment. His name was on every tongue. Christianity was born again
in England under his mighty preaching and organization. Bounds was
comparatively unknown for fifty years but will recover the “lost and
forgotten secret of the church” in the next fifty years.
Wesley’s piety and genius and popularity flowed from his early life
like a majestic river. Bounds’ has been dammed up, but now it is
beginning to sweep with resistless force and ere long he will be the
mighty Amazon of the devotional world.
Henry Crabbe Robinson said in his diary when he heard Wesley preach at
Colchester, “He stood in a wide pulpit and on each side of him stood a
minister, and the two held him up. His voice was feeble and he could
hardly be heard, but his reverend countenance, especially his long
white locks, formed a picture never to be forgotten.” The writer of
these lines gave up his pulpit in Brooklyn in 1912 to Rev. E. M. Bounds
just ten months before his death. His voice was feeble and his periods
were not rounded out. His sermon was only twenty minutes long, when he
quietly came to the end and seemed exhausted.
Wesley had sufficient money and to spare during all his career. Bounds
did not care for money. He did not depreciate it; he considered it the
lowest order of power.
Wesley died with “an eye beaming and lips breaking into praise.”
“The best of all is God with us,” Bounds wrote the writer of these
lines. “When He is ready I am ready; I long to taste the joys of the
heavenlies.”
Wesley said, “The World is my parish.” Bounds prayed as if the universe
was his zone.
Wesley was the incarnation of unworldliness, the embodiment of
magnanimity. Bounds was the incarnation of unearthliness, humility and
self-denial. Wesley will live in the hearts of saints for everlasting
ages. Bounds eternally.
Wesley sleeps in City Road Chapel grounds, among his “bonny dead,”
under marble, with fitting tribute chiseled in prose, awaiting the
Resurrection. Bounds sleeps in Washington, Georgia, cemetery, without
marble covering, awaiting the Bridegroom’s coming.
These two men held ideals high and clear beyond the reach of other men.
Has this race of men entirely gone out of the world now that they are
dead? Let us pray.
HOMER W. HODGE
Brooklyn, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I PRAYING SAINTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENTS 13
II PRAYING SAINTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENTS (_continued_) 21
III ABRAHAM, THE MAN OF PRAYER 29
IV MOSES, THE MIGHTY INTERCESSOR 33
V ELIJAH, THE PRAYING PROPHET 42
VI HEZEKIAH, THE PRAYING KING 54
VII EZRA, THE PRAYING REFORMER 66
VIII NEHEMIAH, THE PRAYING BUILDER 72
IX SAMUEL, THE CHILD OF PRAYER 80
X DANIEL, THE PRAYING CAPTIVE 89
XI FAITH OF SINNERS IN PRAYER 97
XII PAUL, THE TEACHER OF PRAYER 107
XIII PAUL AND HIS PRAYING 121
XIV PAUL AND HIS PRAYING (_continued_) 131
XV PAUL AND HIS REQUESTS FOR PRAYER 142
XVI PAUL AND HIS REQUESTS FOR PRAYER (_continued_) 150
PRAYER AND PRAYING MEN
PRAYER AND PRAYING MEN
CHAPTER I
PRAYING SAINTS OF THE OLD TESTAMENTS
_The Holy Spirit will give to the praying saint the brightness of
an immortal hope, the music of a deathless song, in His baptism and
communion with the heart. He will give sweeter and more enlarged
visions of heaven until the taste for other things will pall, and
other visions will grow dim and distant. He will put notes of other
worlds in human hearts until all earth’s music is discord and
songless._--REV. E. M. BOUNDS.
Old Testament history is filled with accounts of praying saints. The
leaders of Israel in those early days were noted for their praying
habits. Prayer is the one thing which stands out prominently in their
lives.
To begin with, note the incident in Joshua, 10th chapter, where the
very heavenly bodies were made subject to prayer. A prolonged battle
was on between the Israelites and their enemies, and when night was
rapidly coming on, and it was discovered that a few more hours of
daylight were needful to ensure victory for the Lord’s hosts, Joshua,
that sturdy man of God, stepped into the breach, with prayer. The sun
was too rapidly declining in the west for God’s people to reap the full
fruits of a noted victory, and Joshua, seeing how much depended upon
the occasion, cried out in the sight and in the hearing of Israel,
“Sun, stand thou still upon Gideon, and thou moon in the Valley of
Ajalon.” And the sun actually stood still and the moon stopped on her
course at the command of this praying man of God, till the Lord’s
people had avenged themselves upon the Lord’s enemies.
Jacob was not a strict pattern of righteousness, prior to his all-night
praying. Yet he was a man of prayer and believed in the God of prayer.
So we find him swift to call upon God in prayer when he was in trouble.
He was fleeing from home fearing Esau, on his way to the home of Laban,
a kinsman. As night came on, he lighted on a certain place to refresh
himself with sleep, and as he slept he had a wonderful dream in which
he saw the angels of God ascending and descending on a ladder which
stretched from earth to heaven. It was no wonder when he awoke he was
constrained to exclaim, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it
not.”
Then it was he entered into a very definite covenant with Almighty
God, and in prayer vowed a vow unto the Lord, saying, “If God will be
with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread
to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house
in peace; and shall the Lord be my God, and this stone which I have set
for a pillar shall be God’s house; and of all that thou shalt give me,
I will surely give one-tenth unto thee.”
With a deep sense of his utter dependence upon God, and desiring above
all the help of God, Jacob conditioned his prayer for protection,
blessing and guidance by a solemn vow. Thus Jacob supported his prayer
to God by a vow.
Twenty years had passed while Jacob tarried at the house of Laban, and
he had married two of his daughters and God had given him children. He
had increased largely in wealth, and he resolved to leave that place
and return home to where he had been reared. Nearing home it occurred
to him that he must meet his brother Esau, whose anger had not abated
notwithstanding the passage of many years. God, however, had said to
him, “Return to thy father’s house and to thy kindred, and I will be
with thee.” In this dire emergency doubtless God’s promise and his vow
made long ago came to his mind, and he took himself to an all-night
season of prayer. Here comes to our notice that strange, inexplicable
incident of the angel struggling with Jacob all night long, till Jacob
at last obtained the victory. “I will not let thee go except thou
bless me.” And then and there, in answer to his earnest, pressing and
importunate praying, he was richly blessed personally and his name was
changed. But even more than that, God went ahead of Jacob’s desire,
and strangely moved upon the angry nature of Esau, and lo and behold,
when Jacob met him next day, Esau’s anger had entirely abated, and he
vied with Jacob in showing kindness to his brother who had wronged
him. No explanation of this remarkable change in the heart of Esau is
satisfactory which leaves out prayer.
Samuel, the mighty intercessor in Israel and a man of God, was the
product of his mother’s prayer. Hannah is a memorable example of the
nature and benefits of importunate praying. No son had been born to her
and she yearned for a man child. Her whole soul was in her desire. So
she went to the house of worship, where Eli, the priest of God, was,
and staggering under the weight of which bore down on her heart she was
beside herself and seemed to be really intoxicated. Her desires were
too intense for articulation. “She poured out her soul in prayer before
the Lord.” Insuperable natural difficulties were in the way, but she
“multiplied her praying,” as the passage means, till her God-lightened
heart and her bright face recorded the answer to her prayers, and
Samuel was hers by a conscious faith and a nation was restored by faith.
Samuel was born in answer to the vowful prayer of Hannah, for the
solemn covenant which she made with God if He would grant her request
must not be left out of the account in investigating this incident
of a praying woman and the answer she received. It is suggestive in
James 5:15 that “The prayer of faith shall save the sick,” the word
translated means a vow. So that prayer in its highest form of faith
is that prayer which carries the whole man as a sacrificial offering.
Thus devoting the whole man himself, and his all, to God in a definite,
intelligent vow, never to be broken, in a quenchless and impassioned
desire for heaven--such an attitude of self-devotement to God mightily
helps praying. Samson is somewhat of a paradox when we examine his
religious character. But amid all his faults, which were grave in the
extreme, he knew the God who hears prayer and he knew how to talk to
God.
No farness to which Israel had gone, no depth to which Israel had
fallen, no chains however iron with which Israel was bound but that
their cry to God easily spanned the distance, fathomed the depths,
and broke the chains. It was the lesson they were ever learning and
always forgetting, that prayer always brought God to their deliverance,
and that there was nothing too hard for God to do for His people. We
find all of God’s saints in straits at different times in some way
or another. Their straits are, however, often the heralds of their
great triumphs. But for whatever cause their straits come, or of what
kind soever, there is no strait of any degree of direness or from any
source whatsoever of any nature whatsoever, from which prayer could not
extricate them. The great strength of Samson does not relieve him nor
extricate him out of his straits. Read what the Scriptures say:
“And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him; and
the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords that
were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his
bands loosed from off his hands.
“And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and
took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.
“And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with
the jawbone of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
“And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking, that
he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place
Ramath-Lehi.
“And he was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast
given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant, and now
shall I die of thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?
“But God clave a hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came
water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again and he
revived.”
We have another incident in the case of this strange Old Testament
character, showing how, when in great straits, their minds
involuntarily turned to God in prayer. However irregular in life they
were, however far from God they departed, however sinful they might
be when trouble came upon these men, they invariably called upon God
for deliverance, and, as a rule, when they repented God heard their
cries and granted their requests. This incident comes at the close of
Samson’s life, and shows us how his life ended.
Read the record as found in Judges, 16th chapter. Samson had formed an
alliance with Delilah, a heathen woman, and she, in connivance with the
Philistines, sought to discover the source of his immense strength.
Three successive times she failed, and at last by her persistence and
womanly arts persuaded Samson to divulge to her the wonderful secret.
So in an unsuspecting hour he disclosed to her the fact that the
source of his strength was in his hair which had never been cut; and
she deprived him of his great physical power by cutting off his hair.
She called for the Philistines, and they came and put out his eyes and
otherwise mistreated him.
On an occasion when the Philistines were gathered together to offer a
great sacrifice to Dagon, their idol god, they called for Samson to
make sport for them. And the following is the account as he stood there
presumably the laughing-stock of these enemies of his and of God.
“And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand, Suffer me
that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may
lean upon them.
“Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the
Philistines were there; and there were upon the roof about three
thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport.
“And Samson called unto the Lord and said, O Lord God, remember me,
I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, my God,
that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.
And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house
stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand
and of the other with his left.
“And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed
himself with all his might, and the house fell upon the lords, and
upon all the people that were there within. So the dead which he slew
at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”