Excerpts of Remarks by President Ronald Reagan National Prayer Breakfast Feb. 2, 1984
"We all in this room, I know, and we know millions more everywhere, turn to God in prayer, believe in the power and the spirit of prayer. And yet so often, we direct our prayers to those problems that are immediate to us, knowing that He has promised His help to us when we turn to Him. And yet in a world today that is so torn with strife where the divisions seem to be increasing, not people coming together, within countries, divisions within the people, themselves and all, I wonder if we have ever thought about the greatest tool that we have---that power of prayer and God's help."
Forty years later and the state of the world has not changed! But, we can take heed of President Reagan's charge to direct the power of prayer to the eminently more important ones confronting the nations and our world. We can bring together the prayer of two billion Christians and those of all faiths and beliefs that are worn out and grieving amongst the constant killing and turmoil evident on our planet. The battlefields most conspicuous are those on fields of physical fight, where blood is spilled, sapping the human treasures of a nation's young. We must be cognizant of the persecutions of people of faith, especially Christians, throughout the world by the true murderers of the world directed by hatred. But, we must go deeper than battlefields to the underlying spiritual warfare directed by Satan through his demonic warriors to foster and foment strife and divisions among nations, races and philosophies. President Reagan continued with an incredible story!
"The power of prayer can be illustrated by a story that goes back to the fourth century. The Asian monk living in a little remote village, spending most of his time in prayer or tending the garden from which he obtained his sustenance...Telmacmus...thought he heard the voice of God telling him to go to Rome. And believing that he had heard, he set out. And weeks and weeks later, he arrived there, having traveled most of the way on foot.
And it was at a time of a festival in Rome. They were celebrating a triumph over the Goths. And he followed a crowd into the Colosseum, and then there in the midst of this great crowd, he saw the gladiators come forth, stand before the Emperor, and say, 'We who are about to die, salute you.' And he realized they were going to fight to the death for the entertainment of the crowds. And he cried out, 'In the name of Christ, stop!' And his voice was lost in the tumult there in the great Colosseum.
And as the games began, he made his way down through the crowd and climbed over the wall and dropped to the floor of the arena. Suddenly the crowds saw this scrawny little figure making his way out to the gladiators and saying over and over again, 'In the name of Christ, stop!' And they thought it was part of the entertainment, and at first they were amused. But then, when they realized it wasn't, they grew belligerent and angry. And as he was pleading with the gladiators, 'In the name of Christ, stop,' one of them plunged his sword into his body. And as he fell to the sand of the arena in death, his last words were, 'In the name of Christ, stop.'
And suddenly, a strange thing happened. The gladiators stood looking at this tiny form lying in the sand. A silence fell over the Colosseum. And then, someplace up in the upper tiers, an individual made his way to an exit and left, and others began to follow. And in the dead silence, everyone left the Colosseum. That was the last battle to the death between the gladiators in the Roman Colosseum. Never again did anyone kill or did men kill each other for the entertainment of the crowd.
One tiny voice that could hardly be heard above the tumult. 'In the name of Christ, stop' It is something we could be saying to each other throughout the world today."
We can raise our collective voices. We can look around us at divisions politically. We can look around us at divisions of skin color. We can look around us at divisions of gender. We can look around us at the blood being shed throughout the world on countless battlefields, some highly publicized, others only in small villages. We can direct to our God in Heaven, our prayers, which He will hear and answer, "In the name of Christ, stop!"
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