E. M. Bounds (1835 – 1913)

Who Was He?

Edward McKendree Bounds was born on 15 August 1835 in Shelby County, Missouri. He trained as a lawyer and was admitted to the bar at the age of nineteen, but within a few years felt the call of God so powerfully that he left his legal career and entered the Methodist ministry. He was a man of extraordinary zeal and dedication from the very beginning.

During the American Civil War, Bounds served as a Confederate Army chaplain. He was wounded in the First Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, and spent time as a prisoner of war. After the war, he returned to pastoral ministry, serving churches in Missouri, Alabama, and Tennessee. For eight years he served as the editor of the Christian Advocate newspaper in Nashville.

Bounds was not famous during his lifetime. He served in relative obscurity. But from the mid- 1880s until his death in 1913, he rose every morning at four o'clock and prayed for three hours before the rest of the household woke. He did this every day for thirty years. He did not merely write about prayer — he lived it.

During those pre-dawn hours, Bounds also wrote. He produced eight manuscripts on the subject of prayer, covering its necessity, its power, its weapons, and its relation to the preacher and the church. None of these manuscripts were published during his lifetime. After his death on 24 August 1913, his friends gathered the manuscripts and published them. They have since sold millions of copies and remain among the most powerful and convicting writings on prayer in existence.

A Great Answer to Prayer T he greatest answered prayer in E. M. Bounds’ life is the publication and global influence of his eight books on prayer — books he never saw published, written in the hidden hours of pre-dawn prayer.

Bounds prayed faithfully for thirty years in obscurity, believing that the Church desperately needed to be awakened to the power and necessity of prayer. He saw almost none of the fruit of his labours in his own lifetime. Yet God was listening. In the century following his death, his books have stirred millions of pastors and intercessors to give themselves to prayer, and their influence continues to grow.

This is itself one of the most powerful testimonies to the nature of answered prayer: that God sometimes answers our prayers not in our lifetime but through th e legacy we leave. Bounds’ prayer — that the Church would be revived through a deeper understanding of prayer — has been answered on a scale he could never have imagined.

Key Scriptures Luke 18:1 — “Men always ought to pray and not lose heart.”

Ephesians 6:18 — “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.”

John 15:16 — “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He may give it to you.”

His Words on Prayer “What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organisations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men — men of prayer.”

“Prayers outlive the lives of t hose who uttered them; outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.”

“Around us is a world lost in sin, above us is a God willing and able to save; it is ours to build the bridge that links heaven and earth, and prayer is the mighty instrument that does the work.”

“Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.”

“Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things; the simplest and the sublimest; the weakest and the most powerful; its results lie outside the range of human possibilities — they are limited only by the omnipotence of God.”

Prayer and the Word of God “The Word of God is the fulcrum upon which the lever of prayer is placed, and by which things are mightily moved. God speaks to man in the Bible; man speaks to God in prayer.

One reads the Bible to discover God's will; he prays in order that he may receive power to do that will.”

“The word of God is the food by which prayer is nourished and made strong. No two things are more essential to a Spirit-filled life than Bible- reading and secret prayer.”

Prayer and the Holy Spirit “It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life -giving fire descends, for none but the earnest man gets access to the ear of God.”

“Men whom the Holy Spirit can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not come on machinery but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men — men of prayer.”

“Every mighty move of the Spirit of God has had its source in the prayer chamber.”