Herrnhut: A Caribbean Shrine You Need to Know
Brother Carrin shares a lesson from church history about a renewal that changed missions and changed him forever.
I am now 75 years old, and as you can imagine, looking back in gratitude to God for all my adult life spent in ministry. There are too many highlights to mention but here is one that stands above many others:
In 1987, on the 250th Anniversary of its founding, I visited New Herrnhut Moravian Church on the island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Being at this mountainside shrine and the jungle overhanging its cemetery impacted my life in a way I will carry to my grave. There are churches in the Western Hemisphere much older than Herrnhut, but none can compete with its special history. In 1737, the first missionaries of the modern era came to this jungle island to bring the gospel to African slaves. When Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann, stepped ashore on St. Thomas, Bibles in hand, they struck the “gong” that awoke a slumbering evangelical church and sent the mission movement around the world. From the vibrations of that gong, in our century alone, more than 100,000,000 new believers in Latin America and the Caribbean have come to Christ. Let me share part of this beautiful story with you.
In the early 1700’s, a congregation of some 300 Hussites, Anabaptists, Calvinists, disciples of Swingle, Schwenkfold, and other non-conformists, trying to escape the fire of religious persecution in Europe, sought refuge on the estate of Count Zinzindorf in Saxony, East Germany. Like the Count, who was only 27 years old, most members of the community were young; all had fled persecution in other countries.
In the beginning, they quarreled over doctrines of baptism, predestination, holiness, etc., until the Count encouraged them to concentrate on their love for Jesus. It was the Cross, not doctrines about the Cross, he reminded them that brought their redemption. In that understanding, they united in Covenant-agreement and began seeking the Lord in travailing prayer. What happened not only changed their world—and our’s—but will personally change you. Here is what happened:
Tuesday, August 5, 1727, Count Zinzindorf spent the entire night in watching and prayer. “Herrnhut” means the “Lord’s Watch”.
Sunday, August 10, 1727, At noon, when Pastor Rothe preached, the congregation fell under the power of the Holy Spirit.
Wednesday, August 13, 1727, at morning Communion, the fire of God fell upon the entire community in such shattering force that men working in the fields 10 miles away were stricken under the shock of it. Even today, its impact is without parallel in modern Christian history.
Tuesday, August 26, 1727, the children were anointed with 3 hours of anguished intercession.
Wednesday, August 27, 1727, at the initiation of the children, Herrnhut began a prayer meeting that lasted night and day, without stopping, one hundred years. That century-long prayer meeting of laboring, travailing intercession, 1727-1827, birthed the modern mission movement. One hundred years later, long after the original members of Herrnhut were dead, every Protestant denomination actively engaged in carrying the gospel to foreign lands did so because of that century of Moravian praying.
John Wesley, who began the Methodist Church and sent revival around the world, was converted under Moravian influence. The first Baptist missionary to India, William Carey, in pleading for support, threw a Moravian magazine on the table before his peers, challenging them to take up the Cross of world evangelism. Many other Christian bodies came under the impact of Moravian revelation.
1737. Ten years after the Holy Spirit’s fall, the first Moravians left for St. Thomas. During that decade of self-crucifying preparation, ripening of grace, they sought the Spirit’s endowing for the work. They well knew that once in the Virgin Islands, they too might become slaves. Still they determined to go. When the day came to make the choice as to who would be the first to leave, Scripture quotations were written on slips of paper and placed in a box. After agonizing prayer, each person drew out one of the notes and obeyed its command. Whether one stayed in Moravia or went to the mission field was determined in that way. Acts 1:26. With heart racing, one of the young men opened his paper and read the words, “Send the lad with me and we will arise and go.” Genesis 43:8.
With that message in hand, Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann left home, walking more than 100 miles to Copenhagen, Denmark. In the port they found passage to the islands by working as deck hands on shipboard. They were soon followed by Tobias Leopold who went to the island of St. Croix. What they found numbed them. Slaves were not allowed near churches. One who left his master’ s carriage and listened outside the church window was punished by having his ear cut off. Frederich Martin soon joined Leonard and David in St. Thomas but was imprisoned in the Fortress dungeon at Charlotte Amalie for his preaching. Through a tiny, barred window of this 1671-built fort, he boldly proclaimed the Word to listeners outside. Slave-churches which these men established still survive on St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, and surrounding islands.
Back in Moravia, the Holy Spirit began flooding Missionaries out of Germany like water over a spillway. Within 25 years more than 200 excited gospel-bearing preachers went to every Continent on earth, including Greenland. Embracing each other in tears of farewell, they left home knowing they would not meet again until Heaven welcomed them. But they went! In the zeal of First Century believers, these Spirit-baptized youths took the flame of the Holy Spirit to every country in North and South America, much of Asia and Africa. Of the 18 missionaries who sailed to the Virgin Islands, half perished of tropical disease the first year. Tobias Leopold died on St. Croix, shouting the message of the gospel. Most avoided [what would become] the U.S. in preference for unevangelized areas and for that reason; Moravian Churches are practically unknown in North America.
On my first trip to St. Thomas, I wanted to leave part of myself on the island. I did that by exploring every dungeon in the old Fort, kissing its stone walls, praying, telling Frederich Martin I loved him. The big impact came later, pushing my way through jungle growth to find tombstones below Herrnhut Church. Here, I heard voices of young men and women speaking from 250 years in the past.
There is no way to describe that moment. As an evangelist, flying in and out a number of times in the comfort of a modern jet or in the luxury of a cruise ship, I felt unworthy to touch their burial ground. I wept aloud, yelling my thanks at the top of my lungs for what they did. It didn’t matter who heard me. I wanted Hell to hear me. I wanted my own heart to hear me. Most important of all, I wanted God to hear me say I would die unfulfilled unless I experienced the same love for Jesus and power of the Holy Spirit that those young Moravians knew.
Being 75 years old isn’t bad at all! My life has been so rich, so blessed, so full, and with Heaven’s help I look forward to another 20 years of Holy Spirit-empowered Kingdom-preaching. God willing, I intend to go back to that old church in the Virgin Islands. There are some youthful German-speaking preachers hiding among the trees I need to hear again. Perhaps some of you younger men and women will go and meet them. But when you go, don’t go merely as a tourist or historian! Go as a disciple of Jesus! Get bathed in the fire of God! Get filled with the Holy Spirit! Let the example of Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann talk to you. Listen to the memory of Tobias Leopold, Fredrich Martin, and others. The dungeon will shout their message at you. I promise. You will not be the same. And when you get to be an old man or woman your memories may include some of the same friends I have. If so, their friendship will make you as rich as I am.
This article by Charles Carrin was originally published in August 2006 and is reprinted here with permission. Later included in the Winter 2022 issue.
