Prayer Warriors

Praying John Hyde (1865-1912)

(Missionary to India and Prayer Warrior)

John Nelson “Praying” Hyde was an American Missionary who worked in the punjab region of India. From a Presbyterian minister’s family, his father prayed that God would raise up more ministers. John had not been initially planning to become a missionary, but changed his mind through God’s providential workings and the death of his brother. He left for India in 1892. On the way there, he read a letter from a friend who spoke of praying that John would be filled with the Holy Spirit. This initially angered John, but he later realized God was speaking through his friend, and he seriously sought for God’s help. It wasn’t easy for John to be a missionary because he was deaf and had difficulty learning the language. At first there were few converts and much persecution. To change the spiritual tide, John began praying for God’s blessings to come upon the missionaries, including spending entire nights in prayer for the mission. He attended the first Sialkot missionary conference in 1904. Afterwards he also started up the Punjab Prayer Union, in which members agreed to pray for thirty minutes each day for spiritual revival in India. It was while praying that he felt impressed that one convert would be won each day. Later he prayed for two converts each day. Eventually he felt impressed to pray for four converts each day. At the end of his life he returned to America where he died in 1912.

Pandita Ramabai

"When Pandita Ramabai followed in the steps of Franke of Halle and George Muller of Bristol, and gave to the world another example of mountain-moving faith, she built right from the start of her work a prayer tower where day and night, during the twenty-four hours of the day, the prayer watch is being kept. And a constant incense of prayer ascends to the throne. One would have thought that soon every mission, nay, every station on the foreign field, would have seen the divine fitness and appropriateness of this prayer watch and have imitated it. This, however, is how interceding prayer was looked at in one of the missions in India. When the Lord laid the intercession on Brother Hyde, his unceasing prayer and supplications were only frowned at by his excellent fellow workers, and as Brother Hyde would not be silenced, a petition was sent to the home board complaining about the excessive prayerfulness of Brother Hyde and asking the board to direct Brother Hyde to work more and pray less."—Wholly For God