The Fire at Herrnhut

In the summer of 1727, a ragged community of refugees was falling apart. Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf had opened his estate in Saxony to persecuted believers from across Europe — Moravians, Lutherans, Reformed, Anabaptists — and they could barely stand one another. Theological arguments erupted daily. Factions formed. Some threatened to leave.

Zinzendorf did something unexpected. He gathered them, not to debate doctrine, but to read the Scriptures together and confess their need for God. For weeks they met, prayed, and wept over their divisions. Then on August 13, during a communion service at Berthelsdorf church, something broke open. Witnesses described an overwhelming sense of the presence of the Holy One falling upon them all at once. Former enemies embraced. Barriers between traditions dissolved — not because they abandoned their convictions, but because they encountered a love larger than their differences.

That single day launched a prayer vigil that continued unbroken for over a hundred years. From that unity came the first major Protestant missionary movement, sending workers to the Caribbean, Greenland, and South Africa.

Jesus prayed in John 17 that His followers would be one, "so that the world may believe." At Herrnhut, the world saw that prayer answered — not through uniformity, but through a shared glory so radiant it turned a fractured refugee camp into a sending community that changed the course of Christian history.