Germany's Destiny (1994)

Germany's Destiny (1994) 
by Loren Cunningham

It was in April 1991, when I was to speak at a European conference for Christian radio and television journalists in Altensteig (Black Forest). Shortly before I spoke, God's Spirit suddenly came over me, and I began to weep over Germany. I wept and wept. And I literally felt a pain; I thought my heart would burst.

I had often felt this kind of pain in prayer for individuals before, but never for a country. That evening God made it clear to me: "I am letting you feel a little of my broken heart for Germany."

God has wept over Germany. He has seen how this land was abused and wounded. God has seen the confusion. His heart is broken because he loves this land so much and because it has missed the original destiny he had intended for it.

I hope I may be forgiven the boldness of presenting here my observations and thoughts on Germany's past, and of speaking about the difficult periods of your history, even though I myself am not a German.

I have visited Germany again and again since 1960, and God has given me a deep love for your country. There are people who devote their entire lives to studying German history; I, on the other hand, am not a historian. And yet, through my ministry, which takes me to many countries, I have gained a quite interesting perspective. (Over the last four decades I have been to 273 nations, countries, and territories.) That gives one a broad — though also somewhat superficial — overview of the world and its peoples.

I have been able to observe that every nation has its own particular personality and its own character. Each has its own traditions and values, its own culture. And yet I must say that Germany is one of the nations that has become especially dear to me and means a great deal to me.

I believe that Germany has its own special place in the heart of God. He wants to restore it and lead it back to the destiny he had in mind for Germany from the beginning.
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If we do not understand our history and do not know where we come from, then we cannot live according to our destiny. That is why the Bible begins with the words: "In the beginning God created..." Every person's past begins with God. We must reconcile ourselves with our past. I have been told that in German you have coined a word for this: Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past). We must face our history and look it in the face.
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Our line of ancestors, too, is an undeniable part of us; it belongs to our "inheritance" — to what we receive from the past. These are our roots.

Nations also have roots. They have a moment of birth and a very particular history. In the book of Acts (17:26) it says that it is God who brings nations to birth. And every country has its destiny; but in order to understand that destiny, every country must look at its past.
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The Berlin Wall, the symbol of Germany's division, fell on November 9, 1989 — that is, 51 years after Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, ushered in the darkest period of this nation.

Just as the ungodly ruler Rehoboam (1 Kings 12) caused the splitting of his country, Hitler likewise led his country into division and death. 55 million people died in that terrible time, and Germany ceased to exist as a unified and sovereign nation.

On October 3, 1990, divided Germany was made one again by legislative decision. Nevertheless, deep-seated spiritual divisions have remained — divisions that will not disappear until Germans accept and forgive their past. This should also find expression in gratitude for the many good role models of the past.
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Five Gifts from Germany to the World

Satan wants to spread lies about the identity of the Germans. So what does God's vision of Germany actually look like?

It is the destiny he devised for Germany when he created this nation. One can recognize this destiny by looking at German history. God has entrusted the Christians in Germany with a rich "inheritance" that may be gratefully acknowledged and put to use.

It may sound superficial now if I limit myself here to just five points. Germany has, after all, been a gift to the nations in so many respects; just think of music, literature, statesmanship, sport, science, industry, trade, and much more. In recent times, Germany's generosity with regard to international aid is impossible to overlook. In addition, many refugees from countries plagued by suffering have been taken in by Germany.

Nevertheless, I would like to point especially to five points for which I, as a foreigner, am personally indebted to the Germans. These points reflect something of the destiny to a truly "international" ministry that God has given this nation — a mandate to bless the nations of this world.

1.
The whole world should be thankful for Martin Luther. When this man nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in 1517, he set off unforeseen changes. Aside from the fact that, through Luther's ideas, Protestantism was called into life as a new spiritual force with new ways of thinking, this step brought about much more: indirectly, Luther also set in motion some positive developments in the Catholic Church (e.g., reform efforts within the Counter-Reformation).

Luther and other Reformation thinkers also turned to the great task of formulating, from a biblical-theological standpoint, guidelines for social life and governmental responsibility.

I cannot imagine my own nation, the United States, or its constitution, without the groundbreaking ideas of the Reformers.

2.
Christians all over the world should remember another German, to whose invention they owe their most precious possession, the Bible. For if it were not for Johannes Gutenberg, who invented the printing press in Mainz in the 15th century, millions of Christians all over the world would not have been able to afford their own copy of Scripture. Before Gutenberg, only the wealthy and the few who lived in a religious community were privileged to hold a Bible in their hands. Apart from this privileged minority, its truth was closed off to everyone else. Gutenberg changed that through his invention. So if I can obtain a handy and affordable Bible without much effort, I owe that to a German.

Set in motion by the ideas of the Reformation, the Bible was then discovered by broad segments of the population. It was the bestseller of the 16th century: one million Bibles were printed between 1522 and 1546 alone. — The roots of modern Bible societies thus lie in Germany.

3.
The three further gifts I want to mention here are all connected to Nikolaus Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf (1700-1760) and to the refugees he took in: the modern missions movement, the concern for intercession for the nations of the world, and the revival movements.

In what follows, let us take a look at the history of the Moravian Church (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine), because this model community illustrates what international calling God has entrusted to this people.

The Hidden Seed

It began in Bohemia and Moravia, the two lands that today form the Czech Republic: a man named Jan Hus worked there as a reformer — long before the Lutheran Reformation began in Germany. He had spoken out against abuses in the church and was burned at the stake in 1415.

The Hussites, however, would not be dissuaded from naming the abuses which, in their conviction, could not be reconciled with the Bible. They were convinced that all who wanted to belong to the fellowship of believing Christians should actually live a life of holiness, help the oppressed, and even be willing to sacrifice their own lives for others.

There is scarcely another community that had to suffer as much persecution as these first Hussites. After the martyrdom of Jan Hus, they were subjected to years of banishment, imprisonment, and torture; they were mutilated, beheaded, drowned, or burned. But before they were completely wiped out, a remnant fled into the mountains, where they lived in caves; there they could pray and read the Bible in hiding.

In 1457 they founded the community of the Moravian Brethren, also known by the Latin name "Unitas Fratrum." Later, in the time of the Reformation, the Moravian Brethren made contact with Luther, Calvin, and others in order to learn from them.

Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670) belonged to this persecuted community. He prayed that God would protect a remnant of the Moravian Brethren as a "hidden seed."

In 1722 — almost a century later — a small group from this Moravian faith community reached the estate of Zinzendorf in Saxony, where they found refuge. In a remarkable way, Zinzendorf had been prepared by God — as the host of these refugees and as the promoter of a revival that would eventually influence the whole world.

Zinzendorf and the Restoration of the Unity of the Brethren

Nikolaus Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf was born on May 26, 1700. He came from an old Austrian noble family. At age 10 he was sent to Halle for his education, a center of the pietist reform movement. (Pietism placed great emphasis on personal conversion and sought a "second Reformation" that was to bring new life into the Lutheran church.)

In 1705 the Pietists in Halle had sent out the first Protestant missionaries; two young Germans had set out for India. Zinzendorf was deeply impressed by the missionary zeal of the Pietists. At the age of 15, during his time of education in Halle, he founded the so-called "Order of the Mustard Seed," whose goal was to send out missionaries to peoples that no one else cared about.

A few years later (1722), God brought the Moravian refugees to the count's estate. Zinzendorf allowed them to establish a settlement near the village of Berthelsdorf. They called their community Herrnhut, because it was to be a place of refuge under God's protection ("under the Lord's keeping"). Other refugees, who had had to leave their homeland for reasons of faith and now sought protection with Zinzendorf, joined them too: Pietists, separatists from the Lutheran and Reformed churches, Anabaptists, and others.

Unfortunately, tempers quickly flared in discussions over doctrinal disputes. What the stake and the torture rack could not destroy was now threatened by religious pride and disagreement.

Some recognized the danger. Zinzendorf visited every family and urgently asked them to join a brotherly agreement (May 12, 1727). This also included the goal of not merely forming a normal village community, but of deliberately wanting to live together as a Christian community. Among the further rules of this agreement was the promise to obey Jesus and to love one another, to preserve unity in essentials, and to practice tolerance in non-essentials.

In July 1727, Zinzendorf learned more about the faith and customs of the old Moravian Brethren when he discovered a book by Comenius ("Ratio Disciplinae"). To his astonishment he discovered that these principles of faith corresponded to what formed the content of their own agreement, reached shortly before. Now he sensed that the Moravian Christians had come to him through God's guidance. God was in the process of bringing this old community, this "hidden seed," back to life, so that it could bring blessing to the whole world.

A special day in the history of Herrnhut was August 13, 1727. On this Wednesday, the Lutheran pastor of the village had called the believers together for the Lord's Supper. Once again, Zinzendorf had gone from door to door and asked the brothers and sisters of their community to settle their differences and come together in humility to receive the Lord's Supper.

On the morning of August 13, the communion service took place in the chapel of Berthelsdorf. Some went to others even before this gathering to reconcile with them. After the sermon, everyone knelt down to pray. During this time of prayer, some quietly stood up and asked others for forgiveness. Afterward, Zinzendorf himself spoke a prayer in which he — on behalf of everyone — asked God for forgiveness and for reconciliation within the community.

Zinzendorf reports that this communion service was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. An atmosphere of worship spread out, which continued all day long into the night.

At that time — about 300 years after the martyrdom of Jan Hus — a new Moravian revival began. "The hidden seed" was — figuratively speaking — planted in German soil. To put it in another image: at that time the faith experiences of the Moravian Brethren became part of the "genetic code" of Christianity in Germany.

The Ministry of Intercession and an Unbroken 100-Year "Prayer Watch"

After the Herrnhuters had merged into a unity, their prayers turned increasingly outward: now the non-Christian peoples of the earth came into their view. This group of about 300 people prayed for far-off lands (e.g. Turkey, North Africa, Greenland, and Lapland). Especially for Protestants in Europe, this was unprecedented at the time.

As they prayed, they also began to think about how they could reach distant places. But this seemed hopeless, since they were, after all, just a bunch of penniless refugees. Everyone worked hard and lived simply; they could barely meet their own needs. But Count Zinzendorf held firmly to the conviction that God would prepare the way for them and send them out as missionaries.

Five years later, the first two Herrnhuters were indeed sent out to the African slaves of St. Thomas in the West Indies. The motivation of the two men was the thought that the Lamb of God might receive the reward for his suffering.

It is astonishing how quickly, from that point on, missionaries were sent to other countries. They went to Greenland, Lapland, to the Native Americans in North America, to Surinam, to the Ivory Coast of Africa, and to India.

After three years of missionary work in the West Indies, where the Herrnhuters worked alongside the slaves and were thereby able to proclaim the gospel to them in peace, four people had been converted. But the effort through which these four people came to faith cost ten Herrnhut missionaries their lives.

During the first four years of the Herrnhut mission, a total of 22 missionaries gave their lives. Nevertheless, they did not stop going. When Zinzendorf died in 1760, this one community in Herrnhut had already sent out 226 missionaries!

Within one generation they reached almost every continent; they worked among the Hottentots in Africa, slaves in the Caribbean, Eskimos in the Arctic, and among Native American Indians.

An impressive development was the beginning of the "prayer watches" in May 1727. The Herrnhuters knew that God has an enemy who sleeps neither by day nor by night, and so they assigned members of their community, in turns, to the ministry of prayer. This daily prayer ministry, in the form of a 24-hour "prayer chain," continued for over 100 years. They prayed that every country on this earth would be reached with the good news.

The Bloody Revolution That Never Happened

This new perspective of the Herrnhut Pietists for world missions kept spreading further. For example, through the exemplary commitment of Herrnhut missionaries, a young Englishman named William Carey (1761-1834) was won over to the idea of missions and motivated to go to India himself as a missionary.

The Herrnhut community also influenced two other young men who then decisively shaped the course of history in England, America, and beyond: Charles and John Wesley.

John Wesley was an Anglican clergyman. He was on a mission trip to America and got to know Herrnhut missionaries during the crossing. They told him about their experiences with Jesus in such a personal way as Wesley had never heard before.

In the middle of the Atlantic a strong storm arose, and it seemed as though they would all perish. John Wesley was in mortal fear. But then he noticed how calmly the Herrnhuters faced death, that they sang songs of praise, and that even their children showed no fear in the storm.

The ship survived the storm, and they arrived safely in America. But Wesley could not forget his encounter with the Herrnhuters. He set out to find them and was able to learn more from them about their life with Jesus. August Spangenberg asked him whether he knew Jesus as his personal Savior. Wesley answered yes to this question, but — as he later admitted in his diary — he had no assurance of salvation.

After his return to England, Wesley one evening attended a gathering of an Anglican society taking place on Aldersgate Street in London. There, someone read aloud from Luther's commentary on the letter to the Romans. Wesley later reported that his heart was "strangely warmed" by the Holy Spirit in that moment.

So several Germans were involved in this momentous conversion of John Wesley: first the Herrnhuters, and then — through his writings — Martin Luther as well. (The contact with the Germans deepened when Wesley visited Herrnhut and Halle.)

At that time England was marked by corruption and godlessness. There was no church that cared for the working class. The bloody revolution of France threatened to spill over the Channel, since hundreds of thousands in English cities had to work in factories under inhumane conditions. But then England did not experience a revolution, but a revival.

The Anglican Church closed itself off to John Wesley's work, so that the Methodist Church came into being. But John Wesley and his brother Charles brought the gospel to the masses in great outdoor evangelistic meetings. George Whitefield was also active as an evangelist at that time, and hundreds of thousands came into the kingdom of God.

This was a revival that truly changed an entire society. It led, among other things, to the reform of working conditions, to the abolition of child labor and slavery, and further revivals followed.

The early Methodist congregation adopted many of the Herrnhut methods, e.g. preaching the gospel on horseback. As the United States was founded and gradually conquered the entire continent, mounted Methodist preachers followed hard on the heels of the pioneers, spreading the "Great Awakening" throughout America.

From this revival, further revival movements received their impulses: for example, the revival movement led by Charles Finney as well as the Salvation Army founded by William Booth . Some results of these revivals were the equal rights of women, the so-called temperance movement, an education reform, an improvement of orphanages, laws protecting the inmates of psychiatric institutions, a reform of the healthcare system, and improved conditions in prisons.

The stream of revival that flowed from Wesley's work continued in the Cumberland Revival, the Holiness Movement, the Pentecostal movement at the beginning of the 20th century, and in the revival of evangelical thought in the 1950s, in the Charismatic Movement of the 1960s, and the "Jesus People" movement of the 1970s.

The roots of these effective developments and events can all be traced back to a small town in Saxony and to a group called the "Moravian Church" (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine). It is no exaggeration when Christians all over the world say that they owe many blessings of God to Germany.

German Pioneer Missionaries

But the Herrnhuters were not the only ones who came from Germany. Other German missionaries also left traces of their work all over the world. I have been to many remote places where I stayed in buildings that German pioneer missionaries had built.
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On any list of outstanding German missionaries Berthold von Regensburg must also appear, who worked as a traveling preacher in the 13th century. He preached outdoors in Bavaria, Swabia, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Switzerland. From historical accounts we can gather that he spoke to hundreds of thousands, of whom countless numbers decided to follow Jesus.

Johann Adam Schall von Bell went to China in 1618, where he gained the trust of the first emperor of Manchuria. Schall was an excellent astronomer; he reformed the Chinese calendar. He also founded Chinese congregations and was even able to convince the emperor to have the idols removed from his palace.

Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg was one of the two Germans who, in 1706, were the first to be sent to India by the "Danish-Halle Mission Society." Although he died at the young age of 36, he left behind a congregation of 250 members and a school. He had also helped set up a paper mill and a printing press, had shown people how to spin wool so that they could earn their living that way, and had translated the New Testament into the Tamil language.

In the 19th century Ludwig Nommensen went to Sumatra, which at that time belonged to the Dutch East Indies. He learned the language of the Batak people. Although these people twice tried to poison him, he survived the attacks and won their hearts. Before Nommensen's arrival, there had not been a single Christian on Sumatra. When he died in 1918, he left behind a flourishing church with 180,000 Bataks. He had also trained Batak pastors, set up hospitals, a home for leprosy patients, a vocational training school, and a printing press.

In 1750 another German missionary, Christian Friedrich Schwartz (1726-1798), came to India. He settled in Tranquebar. Many mission scholars today refer to him as the "model missionary of the 18th century." Schwartz was one of the most active, fearless, and successful missionaries since the time of the apostles. He worked in India for 48 years without ever returning to Germany again. Hindus and Muslims were converted. Schwartz trained native pastors, began vaccination programs, and built public schools on a biblical foundation. When he died in 1798, he left behind a congregation of 2,000 members in India.

What heroes! What pioneers of faith! What a wealth of role models, a heritage of faith experiences available to young Christians in Germany. One really has to wonder how a nation that had produced so much blessed commitment could be so seduced by Adolf Hitler and become involved in such an abominable crime as the Holocaust.

Diabolical Revenge

In the Bible we read that God does not regret the gifts and callings he gives (Romans 11:29). God has given Germany the calling and the gifting to positively influence other nations all over the world.

I am certain that Satan was full of rage over the revival movement of the Herrnhuters and over the stream of blessing of missionaries that Germany sent out into the whole world. He saw the dynamism of this nation and decided to cripple Germany. When he went on the counterattack, he made use of precisely the strengths and gifts of the Germans: he used their abilities and perverted them through intellectual pride; and in this way he succeeded in poisoning the whole world. This development shall be sketched out below (though only very briefly and in simplified form).

One of these men whose pride he used was Friedrich Nietzsche, who was born in 1844 as the son of a Protestant pastor in Prussia. Nietzsche was influenced by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), by evolutionist thinking, and by his friendship with the composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

Nietzsche categorically rejected traditional values — especially those values that stemmed from Christianity. His basic starting point becomes clear in the slogan he coined, "God is dead." He taught that moral values corresponded only to the mentality of slaves; instead, one could create new values for oneself. Thus he introduced the concept of the "Übermensch" (superman). By this he meant a kind of ideal human being who does not let himself be carried along by the currents of the broad masses, but lives securely in his independence. This "superman" was to newly define his own values, a "master morality," and possess a creative will to power that distinguished him from the inferior broad masses.

In all the totalitarian ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries, the aftereffects of Nietzsche's philosophy can be detected — both in communism on the extreme left and in National Socialism on the extreme right.

Nietzsche also influenced later philosophers, e.g. Martin Heidegger (1899-1976), whose ideas were taken up by Jean-Paul Sartre. This philosophy brought deep despair into our century. An entire generation began to believe that there were no absolutely valid truths and no deeper meaning in life. This thinking influenced every area of society, from art to film, from music to literature. The greatest tragedy was the claim that there are no absolute values; and thus right and wrong could no longer be defined. Traditional morality had died; it was now replaced by the relativity of truth and an ethic that gives quite different guidance depending on the situation.

Even Christianity itself was led astray. From Germany came theologians such as David Strauss (1808-1874), who declared that the Gospels were a collection of myths, and Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), who taught that only such events could be regarded as historical for which there was already an equivalent in history. An event like the resurrection of Jesus Christ could accordingly never have taken place. Troeltsch paved the way for a generation of liberal theologians who influenced Europe before the First World War.

In the period between the two world wars, Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) developed his program of "demythologization": since modern man could no longer believe the miracle stories of the Bible, which Bultmann regarded as myths, the Bible had to be "demythologized."

Preparations for the Tragedy

Already Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) had glorified Germanness. He claimed that the perfecting of humanity could proceed only from the German people. At the same time, Fichte held antisemitic views. (Unfortunately, antisemitism had a long history in Europe. Even Martin Luther had made frightening statements about the Jews.)

Richard Wagner, who was friends with Nietzsche, drew on the pre-Christian ideas of Germanic religion and composed powerful operas in which the superior race of the Aryans and the Germanic gods were glorified. Wagner likewise held antisemitic views.

Adolf Hitler received a satanic calling as a young man when he listened to an opera by Wagner. This experience of a special calling, which Hitler referred to as a mandate or mission, took place in 1904 at the opera house in Linz: a friend who had accompanied him that evening reported that after the performance a different being seemed to speak out of Hitler, and that he looked almost dark and grim. Later, Hitler referred several times to that evening at the opera and declared: "It began in that hour."

Other Germans were also used by the devil, who perverted and abused their God-given ability to influence other nations. Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) together founded modern communism. No one can count the millions of people who — as a result of the teachings of Engels and Marx — languished in prisons, were tortured, or had to die. The trail of this suffering can be traced in Latin America just as much as in Africa or China. The worldwide effects of the communist ideology, set loose upon the world by two Germans, become suddenly clear when one thinks of the starving of millions in Ukraine, of the "killing fields" of Cambodia, or of the brutal murders and mutilations carried out by followers of the "Shining Path" in Peru.

Thus the preparations for the coming tragedy were complete. The situation from the beginning of the 20th century to the start of the 1930s could — in simplified terms — be summarized as follows: many people subscribed to the statement that God is dead; the Bible was increasingly regarded as a book full of myths; and the idea that there are absolute standards for right and wrong was widely rejected.

Here we encounter a strange paradox: although Satan used rationalism to destroy faith in God and his work, on the other hand he flooded the country with a wave of irrational occult manifestations. While theologians denied or reinterpreted those elements of the Christian faith that could not be grasped by reason, many people in Europe searched for spiritual enlightenment from the East.

At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, one can observe in Europe a mixture of various occult currents: the most diverse secret societies, which wanted to revive ancient mystery cults, combined this with antisemitism and with ideas of an evolutionary higher development that was supposed to lead to the emergence of a god-like race.

A steady stream of pilgrims set out from Europe toward Tibet toward the end of the 19th century. One of these pilgrims was the spiritist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891). She published revelations she had received from "exalted masters" in Tibet, which spoke of a prehistoric, Aryan race of supermen and their symbol, the swastika.

New Age thinking, too, can be traced back to Madame Blavatsky and the Englishman Aleister Crowley. But their ideas influenced Europe well before our own time.

A similar effect came from Guido von List, who called for a return to the pre-Christian gods of the Germanic peoples and especially spread the secret science of rune lore. Lanz von Liebenfels held the view that a master race should be bred; subordinate races were to be exterminated.

Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855-1927) has been called the spiritual father of National Socialist ideology. In a book he had combined the theories of Nietzsche and Wagner with one another. He taught that Aryan Germany would fulfill its historical task of renewing and ruling the world, under the leadership of an inspired and perfectly developed leader. The astonishing thing, however, is that Chamberlain said his texts had been dictated to him word for word by demons. These spirits had told him that he would recognize the occult messiah when he appeared. Before Chamberlain died in 1927, he publicly identified Adolf Hitler as this man. In this sense, one could describe Chamberlain as a perverted herald of the messiah, as a "false John the Baptist."

The Religious Character of National Socialism

On close examination, National Socialist ideology resembles a religion more than a political movement. One could say: in this religion, Adolf Hitler was the messiah, Heinrich Himmler the high priest, Richard Wagner the psalmist, Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" the holy scripture, the swastika the symbol of the cross, and the SS the clergy.

Modern historians have tried in vain to explain Hitler and the phenomenon of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. I believe the reason is that they view it from a rationalistic perspective and overlook Hitler's deep entanglement in occultism, as well as the religious, demonic nature of the Nazi rituals and their teachings.

The National Socialists mixed three streams of occult teachings: Germanic mythology, Gnostic thought, and Far Eastern mysticism; then they added improperly used findings of natural science, so that an ideological mixture arose from this with terrible consequences.

People who had previously denied spiritual realities were completely overwhelmed when this phenomenon broke out after Germany's humiliating defeat in the First World War. Even the Prime Minister of England, Neville Chamberlain, was deceived by Hitler. Chamberlain was convinced that man is good at the deepest core of his being; he believed that in the end human reason and rationalism would prevail. But the dark cloud that overshadowed Germany and the whole world in the 1930s was not born of human reason: it had its origin in hell, and through intellectual pride it had grown to an enormous size.

Why Could the Christians Not Avert the Disaster at That Time?

Does not the word of God tell us that "he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4) and that "the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much" (James 5:16b)? Despite the conformed worldview and the spiritual death that had spread through many congregations, there were still dynamic groups of Christians in Germany at the beginning of this century. So the question arises: why could darkness overshadow the light for a whole generation?

The spiritual power of Bible-believing Christians had largely been neutralized due to deep division among Christians. As I mentioned before, I have traveled a great deal around the world. I have served in the most diverse denominations and have been in contact with believers from every part of the Christian spectrum and from almost every country on this earth. And yet, for a long time, I have not experienced such a deep division anywhere else as I was able to observe at that time among Christians in Germany.

In August 1987 I spoke in Frankfurt to a gathering of 8,000 people. God prompted me to make a statement at this gathering: "There are two states in Germany today, but God wants a united Germany." (My words were quoted in the media at the time, because this was still a politically explosive topic in 1987. But God had pressed me to make this statement.) Another statement I was prompted to make that same evening was that Germany was split into two parts because the congregation of Jesus Christ in Germany is divided.

A Polarization Engineered by Satan

This division had begun shortly after the turn of the century, when some Christians who had experienced the Pentecostal revival in Norway also brought this teaching to Germany. Much of what they brought was positive, but their meetings in Kassel escalated into extremes. The leader of these gatherings in Kassel, the community preacher Heinrich Dallmeyer, was worried that he might "quench the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19). For this reason he made the extreme statement that every manifestation of the gift of tongues ("speaking in tongues"; cf. 1 Corinthians 12:10) was from God. Instead of testing the spirits, as the word of God tells us to do, everything was permitted — including experiences that, as it seems, were of demonic origin.

Many Christians were unsettled — especially when Dallmeyer later distanced himself from all these spiritual experiences and declared that all these spiritual gifts that had been experienced in Kassel had not been caused by the Spirit of God, but by a spirit of lies.

A leaders' meeting was convened, and on September 15, 1909, 56 leaders of the fellowship movement formulated their response. In doing so, however, they fell into the opposite extreme: the Berlin Declaration, which they signed, stated that the Pentecostal movement was "not from above, but from below." In article 1 it is said of the Pentecostal movement: "Demons are at work in it, which, cunningly guided by Satan, mix lies and truth in order to seduce the children of God. In many cases, those who supposedly possessed spiritual gifts later proved to be possessed..."

Christian Krust later wrote about this Berlin Declaration that no secular court would ever have handed down such a serious verdict on the basis of such inadequate evidence with such one-sided reporting.

The leaders of the early German Pentecostal movement sought reconciliation, but the fear was too great. The Pentecostals continued their ministry, but they had to suffer under constant rejection. Later, some of them declared that the signers of the Berlin Declaration had placed a curse on them. Thus both parties attributed dark motives to the other side. In this way, the polarization that Satan had aimed for was achieved.

I personally believe that the Spirit of God was deeply grieved. And certainly the spiritual potential of the congregation of Jesus Christ in Germany was sufficiently neutralized that it could not stop the coming tidal wave of evil. How else could one explain that a country in which there were praying Christians triggered two world wars within just 25 years? The cause lies in the fact that these Christians had become divided and thereby powerless (cf. Psalm 133:3).
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It was a thought of God's that East and West Germany should experience their reunification in 1990. And now he says to you that the time of mourning is over. You have gone through a very dark time, but now you are coming back into the light. It is time for you to rediscover your task of taking up a servant leadership role, and for an influence on the nations, oriented toward the will of God, to go out from you. We have missed your missionaries with their devoted service very much. It is time for you to come back and take up again the calling God has entrusted to you — just as Elisha once took up the "prophet's mantle" (1 Kings 19:19).
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The key role that Germany has does not only concern the mission mandate we are to carry out. This key role also concerns peace in the Middle East. We Christians are all to pray for peace for Jerusalem; but peace cannot come as long as forgiveness is not spoken. As I was told, a German politician was in Israel some time ago. When he asked for forgiveness for the Holocaust, however, his conversation partners refused to forgive. So we must pray that Israel finds the willingness to forgive Germany. Then Israel too will receive forgiveness and find a way out of its suffering.

Germany also has a key role with regard to a revival in Europe. Where Satan brought death and sin in overflowing measure, grace will exceed every measure by far more. Precisely in the land over which the enemy broke in like a flood, the Spirit of God will raise the "water level of spiritual life." Many prayer movements are gaining strength. The hunger for unity is growing; that can be seen quite clearly in events like the "March for Jesus." The divisions of the past are to be bridged. Intellectual pride is being replaced by humility and love for one another. More and more evangelists are rising up. This land, with a great heart for the nations, will once again bless the whole earth with Bibles, a new Reformation, revival movements, prayer for the nations, and the sending out of missionaries to every continent.

But now take courage, all you people of this land! Take courage, declares the LORD, and work, for I am with you.
Haggai 2:4

Loren Cunningham
Germany's Destiny
in: George Verwer, Luis Bush et al. (eds.), Go Now! A Handbook for Missions, Marsch für Jesus Verlag, Lüdenscheid 1994, pp. 54-70