Monday Prayers in Leipzig

On October 9, 1989, seventy thousand people filled the streets of Leipzig, East Germany, carrying candles. The Communist regime had stationed troops and armored vehicles throughout the city. Everyone expected a massacre — a repeat of Tiananmen Square just months earlier. But the soldiers never fired. The regime buckled, and within weeks the Berlin Wall fell.

What most histories overlook is where those seventy thousand came from. For six years, a small congregation at the Nikolaikirche had gathered every Monday evening to pray. Pastor Christian Führer opened the doors at five o'clock, and a handful of believers knelt and asked God for freedom. Week after week, year after year, the prayers seemed to vanish into the vaulted ceiling. The Stasi infiltrated the meetings. The state pressured Führer to stop. Nothing visible changed.

Then, almost overnight, everything changed. The Monday prayer gatherings swelled from dozens to hundreds to thousands, spilling out of the church and into the streets, until an empire that had seemed permanent simply crumbled.

The believers in Jerusalem who prayed all night for Peter never expected a knock at the door. When Rhoda came running to say Peter was standing outside, they told her she was out of her mind. That is how God so often works — answering faithful prayers so completely that the very people who prayed them can scarcely believe what He has done.