The Power of Children in the Last Times

...one can easily refute the objections made by adversaries. All these things are confirmed not only from Great Glogau Modern Głogów, Poland. from January 2nd, 1708, but also from Liegnitz Modern Legnica, Poland., from Breslau Modern Wrocław, Poland., and Lemberg Modern Lviv, Ukraine., as can be read at length in the tract, which is printed in folio and is approximately four sheets large. But particularly noteworthy is the circumstance—noted even by an enemy of the praying children—that the largest crowd of the praying children are mostly simple and of those years in which they cannot yet have left the German primary schools German: Teutschen Lehr-Schulen; these provided basic education in the vernacular, indicating the children were very young, likely under 12 or 13.. One sometimes watched them, not without a stirring of the soul, pairing up quietly and walking quite orderly out of the city. There, at a place chosen by them, they would form a circle by modestly joining hands with one another. Then they would sing a morning or evening hymn appropriate to the time, and further, one of them—who acted as a priest and was generally the oldest, and perhaps the most sensible—would read a Psalm, and they would pray several prayers known to them and in themselves quite irreproachable. After completing the singing of the hymns, they would part from one another modestly and quietly to go home. They, the parents, and other elders themselves confess that in the previous years of their lives, neither through sermons nor otherwise, have they had such fervor and stirring of their hearts as they have received through the praying children; whose power—which the Spirit of God has shown in them—they have not been able to re-

-sist, even though they resisted with all their might, partly of their own accord and partly incited by others who held positions of authority. Truly, such an example of persistent prayer by children (an act in which even the Saints often become sluggish) has never been heard of or read about in any province of the world. Should one regard this as a small thing? Or, as some priests have done, reject it entirely and attribute it to the Devil? I would not take all the world’s goods and hold such thoughts, much less pass such a vile judgment as those insolent spirits have passed.

§ 4. Even if nothing were promised in Holy Scripture regarding this grace of prayer foretold for the end times for both old and young, it would still be highly necessary at all times to practice prayer by virtue of the general command to seek the face of God in prayer. But if a special promise is now present through the revelation of God in His words, and such a beginning and dawning is actually taking place, who then is so bold and reckless as to blaspheme against it? For one should take the argument from exactly such stirrings of the Holy Spirit that the signs of the end times are already at the door, and that we therefore have the highest cause to worthily prepare ourselves for the approaching King of Glory and to go out to meet Him as well-adorned brides A biblical reference to the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25), symbolizing the Church's readiness for the return of Christ.. That such promises lie in Holy Scripture, however, I must show from a...