"Praying" Hyde

"Praying Hyde"

John Nelson Hyde was the son of a Presbyterian minister. He went to the Punjab to be a missionary.  He was one of only five missionaries in a territory holding nearly one million non-Christians.  Hyde wasn’t very good at learning the new language because he was partially deaf, and therefore could not speak in public. He devoted most of his time in Bible study rather than language study.  He learned some of the language after a little while. He prayed to God that he would be able to lead the fellow missionaries in intercession for India. Hyde prayed so hard that in 1899, he became spending his nights face down before God. 

In a letter to his college he wrote: “Have felt led to pray for others this winter as never before. I never before knew what it was to work all day and then pray all night before God for another… In college or at parties at home, I used to keep such hours for myself, or pleasure, and can I not do as much for God and souls?”

Hyde and his friends formed the Punjab Prayer Union and prayed each day for half an hour for revival. Their prayers were answered at the Sialkot Convention, a special anointing fell upon those who gathered. He was made the prayer leader in the union and everyone was amazed at his depth and spiritual insight. He prayed that every day for the next year that one person would be saved. Throughout that year more than 365 people had been saved, baptized, and publicly confessed Jesus as their Savior. Eight hundred people being saved was recorded that year. He had a great passion for saving the lost. He even said, “Give me souls, oh God, or I die!” In the next twelve months he went to India and was now known as “Praying Hyde”.

            His health was rapidly deteriorating so his friends encouraged him to go to the doctor. John Hyde's heart had shifted out of its natural position on the left side of his chest to a place over on the right.  The doctor told Hyde that if he didn’t rest, he would die in six months.  He lived two more years and was able to see revivals in Punjab and India. Before he died, he shared what God had shown him: “On the day of prayer, God gave me a new experience. I seemed to be away above our conflict here in the Punjab and I saw God's great battle in all India, and then away out beyond in China, Japan, and Africa. I saw how we had been thinking in narrow circles of our own countries and in our own denominations, and how God was now rapidly joining force to force and line to line, and all was beginning to be one great struggle. That, to me, means the great triumph of Christ. We must exercise the greatest care to be utterly obedient to Him who sees the entire battlefield all the time. It is only He who can put each man in the place where his life can count for the most.”