PRAYING JOHN HYDE

" THE APOSTLE OF PRAYER"

Some of the places He prayed were in what is now PAKISTAN..ie Sialkot is in Pakistan.  The Punjabi region covers part of India and Pakistan.

I also read that he read through the bible 70 times I think contemplatively.  Much of what He and others have prayed, we will reap. He believed there would be a restoration of apostolic at the end of times, just like Kathryn Kuhlman, and others.

Profiles In Prayer: Praying John Hyde

By Richard Klein

The 700 Club

It was to the Punjab that the son of an Illinois Presbyterian minister, John Nelson Hyde, felt led to begin his lifetime of missionary endeavor. At the time of his posting, he was one of only five missionaries in a territory holding nearly one million non-Christians. Progress was slow, but measured. In a letter to his seminary after his first year in India, Hyde wrote:

Yesterday eight low-caste persons were baptized at one of the villages. It seems a work of God in which man, even as an instrument, was used in a very small degree. Pray for us. I learn to speak the language very, very slowly: can only talk a little in public or in conversation.”

Hyde's inability to master the complex native languages was due in no small degree to his partial deafness. To the dismay of mission authorities, he devoted most of his time to Bible rather than language study, displaying the withdrawn intensity of a visionary rather than the engaging demeanor of the traditional missionary. In time, however, Hyde gained a certain fluency, though he never lost his zeal for Scripture. With periods of outright persecution by natives, and few, if any conversions, Hyde began leading his fellow missionaries in intercession for India. So deep was his call to prayer that by 1899 he began spending entire nights face down before God. In a letter to his college he wrote:

Have felt led to pray for others this winter as never before. I never before knew what it was to work all day and then pray all night before God for another… In college or at parties at home, I used to keep such hours for myself, or pleasure, and can I not do as much for God and souls?”

In 1904, Indian Christians and western missionaries gathered for the first of an annual series of conventions at Sialkot in what is today Pakistan. To support this time of spiritual renewal, John Hyde and his friends formed the Punjab Prayer Union, setting aside half an hour each day to pray for revival. The results of their prayers were plainly seen at the Sialkot Convention as a special anointing fell upon those gathered. Year by year the prayer union fasted and prayed, and at each convention a growing urgency for evangelism and intercession filled each attendee. John Hyde emerged as the prayer leader, and all were amazed at both the depth of his spiritual insight, and the ferocity of his burden for India.

By 1908, John Hyde dared to pray what was to many at the convention an impossible request: that during the coming year in India one soul would be saved every day. Three hundred sixty five people converted, baptized, and publicly confessing Jesus as their Savior. Impossible -- yet it happened. Before the next convention John Hyde had prayed more than 400 people into God's kingdom, and when the prayer union gathered again, he doubled his goal to two souls a day. Eight hundred conversions were recorded that year, and still Hyde showed an unquenchable passion for lost souls.

At the 1910 convention, those around Hyde marveled at his faith, as they witnessed his near violent supplications, "Give me souls, oh God, or I die!" Before the meeting ended, John Hyde revealed that he was again doubling his goal for the coming year. Four souls a day, and nothing less. During the next twelve months John Hyde's ministry took him throughout India. By now he was known as "Praying Hyde," and his intercession was sought at revivals in Calcutta, Bombay, and other large cities. If on any day four people were not converted, Hyde said at night there would be such a weight on his heart he could not eat or sleep until he had prayed through to victory. The number of new converts continually grew.

It was in Calcutta that friends persuaded Hyde to see a doctor about his rapidly deteriorating health. The years of travail had obviously taken a toll. Yet no one expected the medical examiner's incredible diagnosis. John Hyde's heart had shifted out of its natural position on the left side of his chest to a place over on the right. It was unlike anything the doctor had seen before, and he warned Hyde that unless he got complete rest he would be dead in six months.

In fact, Praying Hyde lived for nearly two more years, long enough to see a wave of revival sweep through the Punjab and the rest of India -- and long enough to have his own personal vision enlarged. Before he died, he shared what God had shown him:

On the day of prayer, God gave me a new experience. I seemed to be away above our conflict here in the Punjab and I saw God's great battle in all India, and then away out beyond in China, Japan, and Africa. I saw how we had been thinking in narrow circles of our own countries and in our own denominations, and how God was now rapidly joining force to force and line to line, and all was beginning to be one great struggle. That, to me, means the great triumph of Christ. We must exercise the greatest care to be utterly obedient to Him who sees all the battlefield all the time. It is only He who can put each man in the place where his life can count for the most.

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Praying Hyde

Part I

by

Francis A. McGaw

Christ in the Home

John Hyde, "The Apostle of Prayer," as he was often called, was reared in a home where Jesus was an abiding guest, and where the dwellers in that home breathed an atmosphere of prayer.

I was well acquainted with John's father, Smith Harris Hyde, D.D., during the seventeen years he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Carthage, Illinois. Dr. Herrick Johnson, of Chicago, shortly before he died, wrote these words:

Hyde's father was of rare proportion and balance, a healthful soul, genial and virile, firm of conviction, of good scholarly attainment, of abundant cheer, and bent on doing for God to the best of his ability.

Personally I knew him in his home to be a courteous, loving husband. I knew him to be a firm, yet sympathetic father, commanding his household after him. I knew the sweet-spirited, gentle, music loving, Christ-like Mrs. Hyde. I knew each one of the three boys and three girls who grew up in that home. Often I have eaten at their table. Twice I have been with the family when the crepe was on the door; once when Mrs. Hyde was taken away, and again when dear John's body was brought home and lovingly laid to rest in Moss Ridge Cemetery. Often I have kneeled with them, and have, as a young minister, been strangely moved when dear Dr. Hyde poured out his heart to God as he prayed at the family altar. I knew him in his church and in the Presbyterial meetings. He was a noble man of God. Under God, his congregation was built up, and he was a leader among his ministerial brethren.

I have frequently heard Dr. Hyde pray the Lord of the harvest to thrust out laborers into His harvest. He would pray this prayer both at the family altar and from his pulpit. It is therefore no strange thing that God called two of his sons into the Gospel ministry, and one of his daughters for a time into active Christian work. Dr. Hyde magnified his office, and rejoiced to give his sons up to a life of hardship and trial.

I read in "Far North in India" [about 1930] the statement by a former missionary in India, Dr. W. B. Anderson, that a hundred million people in India to-day have not heard of Jesus Christ, and as things are now have not the remotest chance to hear about Him. There are other millions in Africa and other countries in the same Christless ignorance. Why is it so?

Because prayer closets are deserted, family altars art broken down, and pulpit prayers are formal and dead!

Bible schools and seminaries can never supply the workers needed. My own sainted mother prayed as a young girl that the doors of the heathen countries might be opened. Afterwards as the mother of ten children (eight of whom grew to manhood and womanhood), she prayed for laborers to enter these open doors, and God sent one of her sons to India and two of her daughters to China.

Grandmother Lois and mother Eunice prayed, and when the Great Apostle to the Gentiles was about to take his departure he could lay his hands on son Timothy and commission him to "Preach the Word!"

John Hyde was an answer to prayer, and when in other years he prayed in India, God raised up scores of native workers in answer to his prayers. The Great Head of the Church has provided one method for securing laborers. He said, ""The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray . . ." (Matthew 9:37-38, NKJV).

Holy Ground

In the Tabernacle of Moses there was one room so sacred that only one man of all the thousands of Israel was ever permitted to enter it; and he on one day only of all the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. That room was the Holy of Holies. The place where John Hyde met God was holy ground. The scenes of his life are too sacred for common eyes. I shrink from placing them before the public.

But when I remember Jacob at the brook, Elijah on Cannel, Paul in his agony for Israel, and especially the Ian in the Garden, then I am impressed by the Spirit of God that the experiences of this "Man of God" should be published for the learning and admonition of thousands. So we take our stand near the prayer closet of John Hyde, and are permitted to hear the sighing and the groaning, and to see the tears coursing down his face, to see his frame weakened by foodless days and sleepless nights, shaken with sobs as he pleads, "O God, give me souls or I die!"

Hyde's College Days

Some of his class-mates in the M'Cormick Seminary have kindly lifted up the curtain and allowed us to see something of the spirit which possessed the students of that Seminary during the year 1892, when John Hyde was one of the students. Dr. Herrick Johnson called that class "The Missionary Class of M'Cormick Seminary. " Hyde's beloved friend and fellow student—Burton A. Konkle—says: "Out of forty-six students in that class twenty-six decided for the foreign field. Hyde of India was our ‘man of prayer.' Lee of Korea has been called ‘The Apostle of Korea.' Foster our `man of suffering,' whose beautiful life influenced us all. They were more to me than my own brother, and I never think of them but with a glow of thankfulness."

J. F. Young, once Pastor at Hyde's home, said: "I think Konkle is right when he says that Hyde made little impression on any of us (his fellow students), the first year in the seminary, and I rather doubt whether he did the second-he was just one of us, and we did not think much about him. It was during the senior year after the death of his brother Edmund-his eldest brother who was in the Seminary and was a student volunteer for the foreign field-that his fellow-students realized that he was not an ordinary young man. Hyde was greatly impressed by his brother's death, and a great struggle took place as to where his life should be lived. At last he surrendered, and in substance said: "I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord. " The result was a change in his own life, and we began to count it a pleasure to go for a walk with him.

His friend, Mr. Konkle, describes him thus:

During the senior year, when there was a growing interest in foreign missions in our class, Hyde came to my room about eleven o'clock one night and said he wanted all the `arguments' I had for the foreign field. We sat then for some moments in silence, and then I told him that he knew as much about the foreign field as I did; that I didn't believe it was argument that he needed, and that I thought the way for him to settle it was to lay it before our Father and stay until He decided for him: We sat in silence a while longer, and, saying he believed I was right, he rose and bade me good night. The next morning as I was going up the chapel steps, I felt a hand on my arm, and looking back I saw John's face radiant with a new vision. 'It's settled, Konkle,' said he, and I didn't need to be told how.

From that day he grew in power rapidly until, I think we would all agree, he was easily the most powerful single instrument for the foreign field in the Seminary. He prayed for men individually, and then sought them out, and his soul seemed aflame. Prayer was his pathway to greater things, and it became the characteristic of his whole life and work, because it was his peculiar power. He was a torch of prayer, that carried light and warmth. We are only beginning to appreciate the beauty and glory of his life.

One can see, therefore, how the choice of a field would be to him a mere incident compared to steps in progress, in insight into the Truth, and consequent ink consecration. During that senior year, as organizer of missions, I had appointed him Librarian of the Home Mission Committee, to which field he had, up to that time, seemed most inclined.

After he had decided for foreign work, he became restive at giving his time to the home field so much, and came to me asking if I didn't think he should be relieved from it. He knew I was pledged to the foreign field, and yet was organizer of our whole city mission work. So I looked at him with a twinkle in my eye, and asked him if he thought I should be relieved of my work for city missions. He colored a little, smiled with acquiescence, and said, 'I knew you would say that.' He saw that our principle, The field is the world, was one which we could not weaken in our Seminary outlook at least.

One of our class-mates has spent over thirty years in Korea, and built up sixty-seven churches, and his decision to go abroad was due to Hyde's influence as an instrument.

First Years in India

At the first John Hyde was not a remarkable missionary. He was slow of speech. When a question or a remark was directed to him he seemed not to hear, or if he heard he seemed a long time in framing a reply. His hearing was slightly defective, and this it was feared would hinder him in acquiring the language. His disposition was gentle and quiet; he seemed to be lacking in the enthusiasm and zeal which a young missionary should have. He had a wonderful pair of blue eyes. They seemed to search into the very depth of your inmost being, and they seemed almost to shine out of the soul of a prophet.

On arriving in India, he was assigned the usual language study. At first he went to work on this, but later neglected it for Bible study. He was reprimanded by the committee, but he replied: "First things first. "He argued that he had come to India to teach the Bible, and he needed to know it before he could teach it. And God by His Spirit wonderfully opened up the Scriptures to him. Nor did he neglect language study. "He became a correct and easy speaker in Urdu, Punjabi, and English; but away and above that, he learned the language of Heaven, and he so learned to speak that he held audiences of hundreds of Indians spellbound while he opened to them the truths of God's Word."

The Punjab Prayer Union

In every revival there is a Divine side and a human side. In the Welsh revival the Divine element comes out prominently. Evan Roberts, the leader, under God, seems in a sense to have been a passive agent, mightily moved upon in the night seasons by the Holy Spirit. There was no organization and very little preaching—comparatively little of the human element. The Sialkot revival, while just as certainly sent down from Heaven, teems not so spontaneous. There was, under God, organization; there was a certain amount of definite planning, and there were seasons of long continued prayer.

Just here, as showing where the human agency avails I wish to mention the Punjab Prayer Union. This was started about the time (1904) of the first Sialkot Convention. The principles of this Union are stated in the form of questions which were signed by those becoming members.

1. "Are you praying for quickening in your own life, in the life of your fellow-workers, and in the Church?"

2. "Are you longing for greater power of the Holy Spirit in your own life and work, and are you convinced that you cannot go on without this power? "

3. "Will you pray that you may not be ashamed of Jesus?"

4. "Do you believe that prayer is the great means for securing this spiritual awakening?"

5. "Will you set apart one half-hour each day as soon after noon as possible to pray for this awakening, and are you willing to pray till the awakening comes?"

John Hyde was associated with this Prayer Union from its beginning, and also had a definite part in the Sialkot Convention. The members of the Prayer Union lifted up their eyes according to Christ's command and saw the fields white to the harvest. In the Book they read the immutable promises of God.

They saw one method of obtaining this spiritual awakening, even by prayer. They set themselves deliberately, definitely, and desperately to use the means till they secured the result. The Sialkot revival was not an accident nor an unsought breeze from Heaven. Charles G. Finney says: "A revival is no more a miracle than a crop of wheat." In any community revival can be secured from Heaven when heroic souls enter the conflict determined to win or die-or if need be to win and die. "The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12, NKJV).

Three Men

David's mighty men are catalogued in the Scriptures; there were the first three, then the second three, and afterwards the thirty; Jesus had many unnamed disciples. He had the Twelve, but in the inner circle nearest to himself were the special three: Peter, James, and John. Hundreds came to Sialkot and helped mightily by prayer and praise. But God honored a few men as leaders. This sketch is not given to flattery or fulsome praise, but God's Word says: "Honor to whom honor is due. "

God laid a great burden of prayer upon the hearts of John N. Hyde, R. M’Cheyne Paterson, and George Turner for this wonderful convention. There was need for a yearly meeting for Bible Study and prayer, where the spiritual life of the workers-pastors, teachers, and evangelists, both foreign and native—could be deepened. The church life in the Punjab (as indeed in all India), was far below the Bible standard; the Holy Spirit was so little honored in these ministries that few were being saved from among the Christless millions. Sialkot was the place selected for this meeting, and 1904 became memorable as the date of the First Sialkot Convention.

Before one of the first conventions, Hyde and Paterson waited and tarried one whole month before the opening date. For thirty days and thirty nights these godly men waited before God in prayer. Do we wonder that there was power in the convention? Turner joined them after nine days, so that for twenty-one days and twenty-one nights these three men prayed and praised God for a mighty outpouring of His power. Three human hearts that beat as one and that one the heart of Christ, yearning, pleading, crying, and agonizing over the Church of India and the myriads of lost souls. Three renewed human wills that by faith linked themselves as with hooks of steel to the omnipotent will of God. Three pairs of fire-touched lips that out of believing hearts shouted, "It shall be done!"

Do you who read these words look at those long-continued vigils, those days of fasting and prayer, those nights of wakeful watching and intercessions, and do you say, "What a price to pay!" Then I point you to scores and hundreds of workers quickened and fitted for the service of Christ; I point you to literally thousands prayed into the kingdom and I say unto you, "Behold, the purchase of such a price!"

Surely Calvary represents a fearful price. But your soul and mine, and the millions thus far redeemed and other millions which may yet be redeemed, a wrecked earth restored back to Eden perfection, the kingdoms of this world wrested from the grasp of the usurper and delivered over to the reign of their rightful King!—when we shall see all this shall we not gladly say, "Behold the purchase"?

1904—The First Sialkot Convention  [ Sialkot is now part of Pakistan ]

One of his dearest friends in India writes about the great change that came to John Hyde's spiritual life at this convention in 1904. He writes that though John was a missionary and a child of God, for he had been born of God, he was yet a babe in Christ. He had never been compelled to tarry at his Jerusalem till he was endued with power from on high. But God in his love spoke to him and showed him his great need. At this convention, while he was speaking to his brother missionaries on the work of the Holy Spirit, God spoke to his own soul and opened up to him the Divine plan of sanctification by faith. Such a touch of God, such a light from Heaves, came to him, that he said at the close of the convention: "I must not lose this vision." And he never did lose it, but rather obtained grace for grace, and the vision brightened as he went obediently forward.

Another missionary tells how John came to this convention to lead the Bible studies. During those days he spoke of the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of God. That mighty love seemed to reach out through him and grip the hearts of men and women and draw them closer to God. This brother writes:

"One night he came into my study about half-past nine, and began to talk to me about the value of public testimony. We had an earnest discussion until long after midnight, and I think until after one o'clock, and as I remember it, quite an interesting argument.

"We had asked him on the next evening to lead a meeting for men which was being held in the tabernacle out on the compound, while the women of the convention were holding a meeting of their own in the missionary bungalow.

"When the time for the meeting arrived the men of us were seated there on the mats in the tent, but Mr. Hyde the leader had not arrived. We began to sing, and sang several hymns before he did come in, quite late.

"I remember how he sat down on the mat in front of us, and silent for a considerable time after the singing stopped. Then he arose, and said to us very quietly, 'Brothers, I did not sleep any last night, and I have not eaten anything to-day. I have been having a great controversy with God. I feel that He has wanted me to come here and testify to you concerning some things that He has done for me, and I have been arguing with him that I should not do this. Only this evening a little while ago have I got peace concerning the matter and have I agreed to obey Him, and now I have come to tell you just some things that He has done for me.

"After making this brief statement, he told us very quietly and simply some of the desperate conflicts that he had had with sin, and how God had given him victory. I think he did not talk more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and then sat down and bowed his head for a few minutes, and then said, 'Let us have a season of prayer.' I remember how the little company prostrated themselves upon the mats on their faces in the Oriental manner, and then how for a long time, how long I do not know, man after man rose to his feet to pray, how there was such confession of sin as most of us had never heard before, and such crying out to God for mercy and help.

"It was very late that night when the little gathering broke up, and some of us know definitely of several lives that were wholly transformed through the influence of that meeting."

Evidently that one message opened the doors of people’s hearts for the incoming of the great revival in the Indian Church.