MANSFIELD — A special National Day of Prayer & Thanksgiving
commemorating the 170th anniversary of a historic account of answered prayer will be taking place this Thursday, May 2nd between 11:30-100 PM at the Mansfield Central Park Gazebo.
The corporate assembly which is open to the public will include Mansfield Christian’s IMAGE choir, directed by Dan Fleming, proclamations by several elected officials, and keynote speaker Reverend El Akuchie of the Richland Community Prayer Network (RCPN.)
“The kids are excited to be a part of the National Day of Prayer and they made sure to remind me at the beginning of the school year that IMAGE would be participating,” laughs Fleming, who is in his first year as the choir’s director.
The event has been sponsored by 90.7 FM WVMC, 99.3 FM “The Light,” Frontlines Ohio, and RCPN.
In case the assembly “is under the weather” with inclement conditions, an alternate location will be at First English Lutheran at 53 Park Avenue West at the corner of Mulberry Street and Park Avenue West.
National Day of Prayer by President Zachary Taylor
As a response, on July 3, 1849, President Zachary Taylor proclaimed a National Day of Fasting during “a season when the providence of God manifested itself in the visitation of a fearful pestilence spreading itself throughout the land,” the proclamation read.
Proclamations by elected officials will recognize a national prayer movement that occurred in 1849 when the nation was at death’s door.
During the nineteenth century there was a world-wide epidemic of the infectious and fatal disease cholera, which by 1849, killed 8,000 in Cincinnati, spread to the west killing an estimated 12,000 travelers to the California Gold Rush, and in total, it is believed that cholera killed 150,000 Americans, even causing Ohio to postpone its first state fair.
As a response, on July 3, 1849, President Zachary Taylor proclaimed a National Day of Fasting during “a season when the providence of God manifested itself in the visitation of a fearful pestilence spreading itself throughout the land,” the proclamation read.
View he video by Bill Federer on the historic account of answered prayer during the Cholera Epidemic.
The proclamation recommended persons of all religious denominations to “abstain as far as practical from secular occupations and to assemble in their respective places of public worship, to acknowledge the Infinite Goodness which has watched over our existence as a nation, and to implore the Almighty in His own good time to stay the destroying hand which is now lifted up against us.”
In Dayton, Ohio, Mayor John Howard also proclaimed a Day of Fasting in 1849 and ordered all stores to close, resulting in hundreds of citizens kneeling openly in the streets and praying.
Afterward Tim O’Neil of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote in a published account reporting that after President Taylor’s Day of Fasting was observed August 3, 1849, “The number of deaths dropped suddenly in August. 1849.”
The Bottom Line:
The Bible says in Second Samuel Twenty-Four, “David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. Then the LORD answered prayer in behalf of the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.“
