Prayer in the holiness tradition
by Major David Taylor (Salvationist, 20th April 2002)
It is common knowledge that the Salvation Army began as a small East End Mission, growing relatively slowly but steadily over its first 13 years, until in the year 1878, it exploded, planting 1000 corps in the next 8 years. Often the new name and metaphor of a 'Salvation Army' is attributed as being the decisive factor, and whilst there is significant importance attached to how anything is packaged and conceived in human terms, this analysis on its own is woefully lacking!
George Scott Railton commented that "the progress of the Mission.has been more remarkable internally than externally". What was most astonishing to him was "the all pervading, all-consuming love to God and souls among our people, which fits humble and uneducated men and women to go and seize any town for their Lord".
Where did this passionate love for souls come from? It came from God in the Holiness and Prayer meetings. The Salvation Army may have begun in the open-air, but without any doubt the furnace of its fiery heat was found in Holiness and Prayer. Holiness Meetings and all-nights of prayer were the boiler room from which the powerful energy of the Holy Spirit flowed. Over one hundred years before Pensacola and Toronto, the Holy Spirit was transforming a humble group of ordinary men and women, in equally dramatic and controversial fashion, into a passionate army of love inspired evangelists, just as he had done two thousand years before at Pentecost. Bramwell Booth reflected some years later that "something of the same force which manifested itself on the day of Pentecost manifested itself at those meetings in London".
Interestingly Harold Begbie reports that "the character of these meetings eventually provoked the fiercest attacks ever made upon (William Booth) by religious people". Catherine Booth writes about an 'all-night' of prayer in the North, attended by one thousand people, ticket only. "The meeting began at ten, and went on until six in the morning, and there were strong men, men in the middle of life, and old men, lying on their faces on the floor...it was the power of God"
Having established that the incubation of the extraordinary growth and power of the Army's early explosion was found in its passionate prayer and seeking after Holiness, as witnessed in the most remarkable meetings in London, that spread around the country, there are two further points which must be made, one theological and one practical:
The Conditions of Prevailing Prayer
Catherine Booth fervently taught that there were God given conditions that we had to fulfil in order to see our prayers prevailing. This may sound rather mechanical if it were not for the deep spirituality of those conditions. The conditions she saw in Scripture included such primary truths as 'abiding in Christ', obedience to what God has revealed, being sensitive to the Holy Spirit's leading and holding on to God in faith. They are conditions of relationship with God.
When a revival that swept Ireland and America missed England and raised ridicule in the National Press for the way Christians had been praying and expecting God to move mightily, Catherine was angry and exclaimed, "I knew it was not because our God was asleep; not because His arm was shortened; not because His bowels of compassion did not yearn over sinners: not because he could not have poured out His Spirit and have given us the same glorious times of refreshing they had in other places. THAT WAS NOT THE REASON. There was only one reason, and that was that His people asked amiss. They did not understand the conditions of prevailing prayer...'the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much".
For Catherine Booth prayer and holiness were inseparable. Her language somewhat echoes the words of 2 Chronicles 7:14, "if my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land".
Prayer and Action.
Churches are often characterised by their prayer life or by their energetic activity, and all too rarely by both. It is so often difficult to combine these two successfully. There are those who are tempted to believe that it is too unspiritual to work hard for the Kingdom, when all that is needed is that we pray, and those who think that praying is an opt out of working hard. The truth that the early Salvation Army demonstrated is that we need both, a truth undrlined by Bill Hybel's provoctaive book title, "Too Busy not to Pray"!
Bramwell Booth wrote about a lady called Bamford who met God in one of those early 'all-nights of prayer', in which she 'lay for nearly five hours unconscious.It afterwards helped her to win hundreds of souls for God.In some of her Corps her name is still as 'ointment poured forth'." As they say, its not whether you fall over, but how you get up that matters! So the Salvation Army expanded rapidly through this country and overseas through an inseparable combination of prayer and mission activity, in which God filled hearts and lives with such love and passion in the boiler room of prayer that souls were inevitably won for the Kingdom through their everyday lives.
The great secret of the world's salvation for George Scott Railton was "the contact of one heart filled with the love of Christ, with another heart groaning in darkness for want of him".
Our brief survey of early Army history reveals that this love and power can be best incubated in time spent with God in relationship and prayer where we seek after Him and his heart. Such is the testimony of this branch of God's church.