ANDREW MURRAY- SOUTH AFRICAN REVIVALIST

 

 

For some years, Rev. Andrew Murray, Sr., longed and prayed for revival in South Africa. Every Friday night he spent several hours in prayer. The revivals of 1858 in the United States and 1859 in Northern Ireland were reported in the Dutch Reformed journals. A little book on "The Power of Prayer" was published. Individuals and prayer groups in various places across South Africa began to pray specifically for revival.

 

In April 1860, a conference attended by 374 was convened at Worcester, South Africa. Representatives of twenty congregations-sixteen Dutch Reformed, plus Methodist and Presbyterian gathered. The main topic was revival. Andrew Murray, Sr., was moved to tears and. had to stop speaking. His son, Andrew Murray, Jr., prayed with such power that some say the conference marked the beginning of the revival.

 

Fifty days after the Worcester conference, revival fires began to burn. In Montague, near Worcester, a prayer revival began in the Methodist church. Prayer meetings were held every night and on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, sometimes as early as 3:00 A.M. People who had never prayed before began to pray. One evening God anointed a young girl to pray. Young and old began to cry to God for mercy and continued until midnight. As Dutch Reformed people left their prayer meetings, they crowded into the Methodist church.

 

For weeks, the village of Montague experienced great conviction of sin. Strongmen cried to God in anguish. Six prayer meetings were going on throughout the village. The report reached Worcester, and prayer meetings began there as well. Whole families, both European and native African, were humbled before God.

 

"One day I was talking with a missionary," writes Andrew Murray, "and he said to me, 'Brother, remember that when God puts a desire into your heart, He will fulfill it.' That helped me; I thought of it a hundred times. I want to say the same to you who are plunging about and struggling in the quagmire of helplessness and doubt. The desire that God puts into your heart He will fulfill.

"If any are saying that God has not a place for them, let them trust God, and wait, and He will help you and show you what is your place.

"I have learnt to place myself before God every day, as a vessel to be filled with His Holy Spirit. He has filled me with the blessed assurance that He, as the everlasting God, has guaranteed His work in me. If there is one lesson that I am learning day by day, it is this; that it is God who worketh all in all. Oh, that I could help any brother or sister to realize this!"

One of four children born to Andrew, Sr. and Maria Murray, Andrew Murray was raised in what was considered then the most remote corner of the world - Graaff-Reinet (near the Cape), South Africa. It was here, after his formal education in Scotland and three years of theological study in college in Holland, that Andrew Murray returned as a missionary and minister.

Murray's first appointment was to Bloemfontein, a remote and unattractive territory of nearly 50,000 square miles and 12,000 people beyond the Orange River. Even at this early stage of ministry, he already showed signs of becoming a noted author. The "deeper Christian life" was a favorite subject for Murray. He told how God was committed to revealing more of Himself to those who would seek Him.

As a preacher, he consistently drew large crowds and led many to trust Christ as their Savior. But Murray's life was not without testing. As a young man, an enduring sickness left him weak and exhausted. Later at the prime of his ministry, a severe illness resulted in his absence from the pulpit for two years. But God used each trial to remove all that hindered his devotion to Christ.

Murray wrote, "That awful pride and self complacency which have hither to ruled in my heart." He fought an insidious battle with pride, but God had the victory.

"I had never learnt with all my theology that obedience was possible," writes Murray. "My justification was as clear as noonday. I knew the hour in which I received from God the joy of pardon. I remember in my little room at Bloemfontein how I used to sit and think, What is the matter? Here I am, knowing that God has justified me in the blood of Christ, but I have no power for service. My thoughts, my words, my actions, my unfaithfulness - everything troubled me."

Murray's daughter wrote of her father, "It was after the 'time of silence' [in sickness] when God came so near to father and he saw more clearly the meaning of a life of full surrender and simple faith. He began to show in all relationships that constant tenderness and unruffled lovingkindness and unselfish thought for others which increasingly characterized his life from that point. At the same time he lost nothing of his strength and determination."

When revival came to Cape Town, Andrew Murray was hesitant. He didn't want to be swept away in the heart of emotion. But Murray quickly realized that God was working in South Africa the same way He was in America. The result was an even deeper knowledge of the things of God.

He writes in The Secret Of Adoration, "Take time. Give God time to reveal Himself to you. Give yourself time to be silent and quiet before Him, waiting to receive, through the Spirit, the assurance of His presence with you, His power working in you.

"Take time to read His Word as in His presence, that from it you may know what He asks of you and what He promises you. Let the Word create around you, create within you a holy atmosphere, a holy heavenly light, in which your soul will be refreshed and strengthened for the work of daily life."

Friends share how the Murray home was always filled with activity. He and his wife, Emma, had nine children, and there was an endless stream of visitors and friends. In 1873, Andrew helped to establish the Huguenot Seminary, a school where young women could be trained for educational work. Girls from all over the country began arriving. When classes opened, the building was too small for all who had enrolled and a wing had to be added.

He also served as the first president of the Young Men's Christian Fellowship (YMCA). Not only was he the author of over 240 books, he was also a man of great prayer. Through his private devotion with the Savior, he learned that laughter and fellowship were two of life's most important activities.

He often prayed, "May not a single moment of my life be spent outside the light, love, and joy of God's presence and may not a moment without the entire surrender of my self as a vessel for Him to fill full of His Spirit and His love."

Abiding in Christ was the cornerstone to Andrew Murray's life and ministry. He writes: "Abide in Jesus: your life in Him will lead you to that fellowship with God in which the only true knowledge of God is to be had. His love, His power, His infinite glory will, as you abide in Jesus, be so revealed as it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive .

 

THUNDER FROM HEAVEN

 

One Sunday evening, during the youth fellowship meeting, an African servant girl arose and asked permission to sing a verse and pray. The Holy Spirit fell upon the group and she prayed. In the distance, there came a sound like approaching thunder. It surrounded the hall, and the building began to shake. Instantly everyone burst into prayer. The assistant minister knelt at the table.

 

 Andrew Murray had been speaking in the main sanctuary to the service there. He was notified and came running. Murray called in aloud voice, "I am your minister, sent from God. Silence!"' No one noticed as all continued calling out loudly to God for forgiveness. Murray asked his assistant to sing a hymn, but the praying continued undiminished.

 

All week long, the prayer meetings were held. Each service began with profound silence. "But as soon as several prayers had arisen the place was shaken as before and the whole company of people engaged in simultaneous petition to the throne of grace." The meetings often continued until 3:00 A.M., and as the people reluctantly dispersed, they went singing their way down the streets.

 

Services were moved to a larger building because of the crowds. On Saturday, Andrew Murray led the prayer meeting, preaching from the Bible. He prayed and then invited others to do so. Again, the mysterious sound of thunder approached from a distance, coming nearer until it enveloped the building. Everyone broke out in simultaneous prayer.

 

Murray walked up and down the aisle trying to quiet the people, but a stranger in the service tiptoed up to him and whispered, "Be careful what you do, for it is the Spirit of God that is at work here." Murray learned to accept the revival praying. As many as twenty found the Lord in one service. Mrs. Murray wrote, "We do feel and realize the power and presence of God so mightily.  His Spirit is indeed poured out on us.”

 

The South African revival then scattered like buckshot and spread to other areas.  One pastor reported something of “the glory of the church in the first century”.  Prayer meetings multiplied.  Many Christians met each week in prayer groups of three to four.  Some churches could not hold all who came to worship.  Spiritual awakening came to places up to two hundred miles away.