The Greatest Man of Prayer I Have Ever Heard Of

(My inner response to reading “Praying Hyde’s” biography)

By Vander Warner, Jr

While in an evangelistic meeting in Dayton, Ohio, I read The Official Biography of John Hyde, known as “Praying Hyde”.  I had read excerpts before.  We’ve all heard of him, but when I spent several mornings in a row in the story of his life, I was drawn into the awareness of a man whose life can only be explained in terms of the movement of God.  What he did, how he prayed, how he preached or did not speak is a wondrous thing to behold.  I hope you will ask God to give you the impressions that will whet your own appetite for the things that come from “effectual fervent prayer.”

I wrote in my notes in 1996 the following:

The extraordinary self sacrifice, serving in India, no marriage - he said he wanted to give everything including his love to the Lord…the unparalleled devotion to and time spent in prayer…it was not uncommon for him to spend days and nights in almost uninterrupted prayer. His bed at the convention (their term for revival) center would often not be slept in for weeks.  He would often have food brought to him while he prayed, more often refuse it, sometimes take his rice bowl over to a corner of the prayer room and eat there rather than going to the dinning tent.  He after day and night in prayer sometimes would fling himself into a corner of the prayer room and curl up for a while to sleep.

I read all Sunday afternoon, (3/3/96) scanning pages for accounts that reflected the quality of his spiritual life...my heart yearning all the time for a small measure, at least, of his quality of life.

On one occasion, when it became obvious how successful he was with reaching the men for Christ in Punjab, the local leaders sent a man - part of a committee - to find out something evil in his life which they could spread abroad to discredit him.  The man knocked on his door and was warmly received by Hyde.  He stayed certain days with Hyde sleeping there, eating meals with him.  One day he ran out of the house yelling over and over, “The man is without fault, the man is without fault.  He is not a man he is a God!”

Letting those stories and repeated instances of similar nature wash over my soul had the effect of creating a yearning for a walk with God which would enable such a life of prayer and witnessing.  It gives rise to hunger for the Lord.  It rather shone a light on our half hearted, light hearted approach to prayer and desire for revival.

Hyde’s own vision grew until he could ask for and receive from the Lord 1 soul a day - not just witnessed to but won, confessed and baptized.  He kept raising his sights in successive years till he asked and received 4 souls a day!

He was in Britain once while Chapman and Alexander (Presbyterian evangelists) were there.  Since he was also a Presbyterian he wanted to attend.  He saw there the tiny crowd - the unconcern of many of the local clergy who so disappointed Chapman that he walked out of a planning meeting.  John’s head got lower and lower during the meeting as he prayed.  When the time came for them to go - he had to preach elsewhere - he requested his room be engaged for the following Monday.  He reasoned, “I can’t leave a brother preacher with such a burden.”  “He traveled a long distance by train on the following Monday to return.  It was at this meeting that Chapman records the time of private prayer with Hyde in which he describes the moment they knelt and for minutes there was only silence then Hyde uttered just two words, “Oh Father,” and waited minutes, perhaps 5 before saying anything else.  Chapman says “The awe of that moment the sense of God’s presence all charged the moment.  My eyes filled with tears and my heart pounded.  Then there issued forth such words of adoration and supplication as I had never heard.”

The tide turned in the meetings as Hyde stayed to pray.  It is difficult to believe Hyde’s prayer did not change things.

Even more than the answered prayer was the incomparable blessing of the manifest presence of God in that prayer period.  I doubt there is a blessing in answer to compare with the visitation of His presence.  That is the sweet sad yearning that prevails when I read of John “Praying” Hyde.

Praying Hyde, The Official Life. p.19

Having taught the people to put the Holy Spirit first:  “It was pointed out that God would not be mocked - till we had learned the lesson as to putting the H.S. first all times or God would not give any fresh messages.

    “At one time John was told to do something and he went and obeyed, but returned to the prayer room weeping, and confessing that he had obeyed God unwillingly.  ‘Pray for me, brethren, that I may do this joyfully!”  We soon learned after he went out that he had been led to obey triumphantly.  Then he received the promise that he would be the spiritual father of many children - and Abraham indeed.  He entered the hall with great joy, and as he came before the people, after having obeyed God, he spoke three words in Urder and three in English, repeating them 3 times: ‘Ai Asmani Bok,’ ‘O Heavenly Father.’

What followed who can describe?  It was as if a great ocean came sweeping into that assembly, and ‘suddenly there came from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.’  Hearts were bowed before that divine presence as the trees of the wood before a mighty tempest.  It was the ocean of God’s love being poured out through one man’s obedience.  Hearts were broken before it.  There were confession of sins with tears that were soon changed to joy and then to shouts of rejoicing.  Truly, we were filled with new wine - the new wine of heaven!”

Praying Hyde, The Official Life, p. 90

“Let us look at Hyde in the prayer room, say at the Sialkot Convention.  The prayer room is in the Scottish Church.  Some of the seats have been moved aside, and a carpet covers this open space.  Sometimes there are hundreds of people there, at other  times only 2 or 3.  Right on his face on the ground is “Praying Hyde” - -this was his favorite attitude for prayer.  Listen! He is praying -  he utters a petition and then waits; in a little time he repeats it, and then waits, and this many times, until we all feel that the petition has penetrated into every fiber of our nature, and we feel assured that God has heard and without a doubt He will answer.

“How well I remember his praying that we might “open our mouths wide that He might fill it” (Psalm 81:10).  I think He repeated  the word “wide”, Lord, “Wide,” “Open wide,” “wide”.  How effectual it was to hear him address God, “Oh Father, Father!”  Even before he asked anything I always felt that the Father knew what he was going to ask for.

“When he finished his prayer, perhaps half-a-dozen are sobbing.  Hyde goes to one of them, and others who are present got to others.  Hyde’s arm is around the neck of the one that he is going to deal with; he speaks but little, but his well-worn Bible is used, and before long he stands up with a smile, and the man with him, and he begins to sing:  “‘Tis done, the great transactions done,” and he is so full of joy that his whole body begins to move, he claps his hands, and then his feet begin to move, and look! he begins to dance for joy, and others join him until the whole place rings with God’s praises.”

John Hyde – The Preacher

My thoughts are still awash, not flooded but washed like when a furniture maker applies color to unfinished wood to give it a color tone. Just so my thoughts are tinged with, colored by, thoughts of the sentences I have recently read about John Hyde.

We have many good preachers today, perhaps more than ever, if you judge on research skills, organization of material, humor, illustrations, and scholarship even.  Some are greatly gifted as communicators.  But if you are looking for a man to “break the sky into and let the face of God shine through,” I don’t know where to tell you to look.  There are brilliant insights aplenty, not a few emotionally wrenching, some with considerable persuasive power.  But where is the man who becomes such a link between heaven and earth that he seems to mediate the very Spirit of God?  Some of us have had that rare and memorable experience once or twice in our lives.  And having had it one or twice longed for it ever after.  We occasionally need to do what Moses did when he asked the Lord not to ask them to move if He didn’t move with them. Brother Hyde preached the way he did, because he prayed the way he did.  Help us Lord.

And those who heard and saw him were amazed, really amazed at his countenance and the affect upon the hearers after brief messages.

There comes to my mind the line from an old hymn:

“All is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down.” Amen.

 

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