Hungarian Church Press, 1968 (20. évfolyam, 2. szám)

1968-06-01 / 2. szám

HOP Vol XX Speoial Number

1968 No 2- 69 -(07775)

these are the acts of the Church discharging the prophetic ministry. The prayers of Jesus, especially his prayer in Gethsemane, in which he accepted the burden of the world, are examples and sources of strength for the Church at all times. Responsibility, penitence and prayer, these constitute the burden cf the prophetic service.

c) The Experiences of Prophetic Service in ihe Evangelical Churches

The Protestant churches in Hungary, in the course of their history, have often been in situations in which there was a great need for the prophetic charisma, for the prophetic vision of reality and for prophetic courage, in order to fulfill their mission. The work cf the Hungarian Reformation was oarried out at a time of great national catastrophes, The call to repentance had a serious content of social ethics also. In the days cf the Turkish occupation and Hapsburg oppression, whm the vision of national doom often loaned on the horizon, the Hungarian Reformers performed their prophetic ministry by castigating the nation with the message cf Judgment and comforting people with the message of God*s grace. The historical catastrophes had been caused by grave social sins. The message of penitence and Judgment proclaimed by the Reformers was directed against the domineering, selfish, self-indulgent aristocrats who, for personal gain, had betrayed their ocuntry. The prophetic preaching of the Hungarian Protestant churches was never lacking In the progressive movements and popular uprisings of the XVIIth, XVIIIth and XIXth centuries*

A message was proclaimed that transcended the boundaries cf the ohurch and witnessed to the acts of God the Creator and Redeemer who shapes and directs history.

Then, beginning with the second half, cf the XIXth oentury,aooomodation to the ideology of the feudalistic bourgeois sooial system and the influence of the rationalistic and liberal theology silenoed for a long time the courageously realistic prophetic message. In the subsequent period we only note a few lonely figures in the Protestant churches viio had the boldness to utter prophetio words about the problems of the rising movement cf the-indust rial workers, on other sooial changes and on the assessment of World War I, But theirs was only a voice crying in the wilderness, having no background in the ohurohes or even provoking the contradict ion of the official church leaders.

After the catastrophe cf the two world wars and the graoious Judgment experienced therein, we witnessed again in the Protestant churches to the revival of Evangelical preacning which had the hope and sacred claim to convey indeed "timely prophecies” to the Hungarian people.

This "timely prophecy” certainly had its antecedent s in the history of the Protestant churches, yet, in the new historical situation we had to face some entirely new problems toward the solution of which our past experiences