THE AWESOME POWER OF PRAYER

by Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak

In 1985, seeing the horrific carnage being caused in our communities by the police and the army and intensified by the State of Emergency, I repeated a call I made first in 1979: for the church to pray for the downfall of the apartheid regime in South Africa. It caused havoc. One church leader thought it was an issue to be discussed. The rest fiercely rejected it out of hand. Politicians, businesspersons, and even academics screamed indignation. In the media it was chaos. The regime was enraged. I, and those who agreed with me were accused of plotting the violent overthrow of the government. The abuse was terrifying.

Our response that it was a call to prayer, not violent revolution, that we were calling for prayer precisely because we did not want violent revolution, was not even heard. Our question whether the white minority, racist, oppressive, apartheid regime was in fact legitimate, was ignored. As was our question why prayer should strike such fear in the hearts of such powerful people. The question why a call to prayer would cause more outrage in these circles than detention without trial and torture, or children and the elderly hungered to death in those concentration camps the regime called “Bantustans,” or unarmed children shot to death in the streets, could not even be answered. The answer was all too painfully clear. All of them benefited from this system of hatred, submission, and exploitation.

But we persisted, prevailed, and prayed in churches all over the country. It was a stunning moment. Thousands of people, on their knees, praying for deliverance, justice, and peace. Across the country the terror went on. Perhaps more so, driven by the madness of fear, not of us, but for the judgment of God. Around the church where I preached as police with dogs, armored vehicles, guns and tear gas were lined up in their hundreds. Inside the church, however, there was no fear.

We knew three things: one, the power of God is above all. Two, the power of prayer is unstoppable. Three, our prayers were righteous. We were not staging a stunt. Our prayers were rooted in the prayers going up in homes, in prison cells, and churches all over the country for years now. Separately and together, in one continuous line of fragile faith and unshakeable hope, a million candles were burning. The darkness did not know it yet, but it was already being driven away.

That was 1985. By 1989 the walls of apartheid were crumbling and falling. 1990 saw the beginning of the end, and the glimmer of our candles became the light of the rising sun. There is awesome power in prayer. I know. I have lived it. © Allan Aubrey Boesak