Frank C. Laubach - Prayer: The Mightiest Force in the World

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PRAYER

The Mightiest Force in the World

FRANK C. LAUBACH

Contents

FEW BOOKS ON prayer have caught the public eye and heart as has this one: since its first printing in 1946, popular demand has called forth edition after edition, and the end is not yet.

Perhaps it is because it is a book covering the why, how, when and where of prayer. Or because it is a laymans book, in layman language. Or because once begun, it is a book that cannot be put away until the last word is read.

But primarily it is because it is a book born in the flame and zeal of one of the great missionaries and prophetic voices of our age. Dr. Laubach has taught millions of people to read, to become literate; beyond this, he has inspired millions more to seek and find strength as well as solace in prayer; he has made them literate, intelligent and confident in approaching God and bringing God back to men. He regards prayer as the boundless, mightiest force in our world, ready and able to accomplish anything .

This book, born of his rich and rare experience, is the record of his faith in prayer, his manner and method of prayer, his exultant belief that prayer not only can save the world, but will.

It is for all who prayor who would like to pray!

THE PUBLISHERS

PRAYER The Mightiest Force in the World

...More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep or goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God....

Tennyson

LETS PRAY HARD, you guys, or this ships goin to blow up. That American sailor in World War II told the truth about the good ship earth, as well as about his own carrier. For our wounded world is full of holes and fires. One more global war and we shall all be destroyed. Pray hard, you guys, or this ships goin to blow up. It helped those gobs to keep cool heads, so that they did the right thing to put out the firestheir ship still floats. Prayer will do the same thing for us. We need cool heads to do the right thingto put out the fires of hate and prejudice, if our ship earth is to surviveand prayer will quench hate, fear and panic when nothing else will do it.

We now know that V-Day did not mark the end of the war, but only the end of one early battle. That war will not be over for another twenty years. No war is won until we win the peace. Thank God for the United Nations, but that was only a first step toward peace, for the fires of hate are burning all over the world more fiercely than ever in history. The racial hatred in South Africa, or in our own South, has in it a possibility of bloodshed as hideous as the Nazi massacres of the Jews, as every wise person sees. India, China, Argentina, and all the countries of Europe are full of dynamite which could blow up the world.

We need to mobilize a new army of ten million and train them to use a weapon as powerful for peace as rocket bombs were for destruction. Other weapons converted enemies into skeletons. This weapon must convert enemies into friends. It must heal the horrid open wound which bombs have left across the face of the world. Only prayer, which releases the infinite might of God, can win this final battle for mens minds and heartsthis battle against hate, this battle for one world.

Right praying, Jesus repeatedly declared, can remove mountains, can accomplish anything. Before this last war many people had regarded His sweeping statements as Oriental exaggeration, or at least not true of our day. But people are changing their minds. There is a strong and widespread swing back toward faith in the might of prayer. Much of it came from battle fronts.

Probably everybody in the United States has read some of the numerous books and magazine articles by soldiers, sailors and airmen who say they saw prayer answered.

Today few educated men doubt the power of prayer. Millions of people, however, are haunted with a guilty sense that while we have pursued scientific inquiry in other directions with enormous results, we have failed to investigate and use the mighty energies which prayer can release. Especially in this the most crucial hour in all history, when we need to employ every resource there is, we are afraid that we have overlooked the greatest resource of all.

We had better not neglect prayer now! As Cordell Hull solemnly warned us, The human race is confronted with the gravest crisis in its experience. We who are on the scene of action have to say which way it is going. We are, in fact, in a terrifying dilemma. Science has been developing missiles which travel thousands of miles an hour, and superexplosives so diabolically efficient in wholesale killings that all scientists agree with President Eisenhower that we cannot survive a third world war. But we have never yet had permanent peace. That is our dilemma. We must now find and follow some straight and narrow path never before trodden. If we do not find it, we shall perish.

The way to peace is an untrodden path, but it is not unknown. It is the way Jesus gave us.

Love thy neighbor as thyself, not in word but in deed.

Let all men spend their lives, as Jesus did, helping others.

Let strong men sacrifice their personal advantage so that all may have equal opportunities.

Jesus way would be peace itself if we followed it. But men dont want to change as radically as that! They are still trying to make selfish greed work. In the peace negotiations, nations have jostled for special privilege, and selfish business interests have tried to grab advantages that would be sure to make other men hate them. Senator Vandenberg wrote before the San Francisco Conference that nations were striving for America first, England first, Russia first,the very attitude which has caused all wars. Peace cannot be permanent until we put the whole world first. No part of the world, whether America or England or Russia, or any business enterprise, is as important as the welfare of all. Thy kingdom come on earth is not only Christian, it is the only possible roadway to lasting peace.

We are still in the heat of a crucial battle between the way of Jesus and the way of greed. The Allies have cut a cancer out of Italy, Germany, and Japan; but the cancer still poisons the blood stream of the world, and will break out again and kill us unless we get the cancer tissue out of our system. Nobody but God can cleanse our blood stream, and even God can remove it only if He has full gangway. We must pray for Gods miracle or perish. For if we refuse to yield to God, His only recourse is to sweep us off the earth and start over.