The Painting That Pierced a Young Count's Heart

In 1720, a twenty-year-old German nobleman named Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf wandered into an art gallery in Düsseldorf. He was wealthy, educated, and comfortable — a man whose future was already mapped out in courts and commerce. Then he stopped before a painting by Domenico Feti depicting the thorn-crowned Christ. Beneath it, an inscription read: "This I did for you; what have you done for me?"

Zinzendorf stood motionless. The question cut straight through his aristocratic composure and lodged itself in his chest. He later wrote that he could not walk away the same man. That single encounter reordered his entire life. He opened his estate at Herrnhut to Moravian refugees, built a community of prayer that sustained a continuous intercession lasting over a hundred years, and launched a missionary movement that sent workers to the Caribbean, Greenland, and Southern Africa — places no Protestant had dared go.

This is what happened at Pentecost. Peter proclaimed the crucified and risen Jesus, and the crowd was "cut to the heart." They did not simply nod in agreement or file the sermon away for later reflection. They cried out, "What shall we do?" And Peter gave them the answer that has echoed through every century since: "Repent and be baptized."

The gospel has always done its deepest work not when it informs the mind but when it pierces the heart. Three thousand responded that day in Jerusalem. In Düsseldorf, it only took one — but the Almighty used that one to change the world.