We now arrive in the Oley Dahl or Valley...
Continuing the 1742 unity synods history.
My many gr...grandfather Franz Clewell, born in Auerbach, Baden-Durlach, then a Redemptioner or Indentured Servant in Oley, records in his Moravian Lebenslauf that he was out walking one day and heard a preacher talking to crowd. He first thought they were some sort of Roman Catholics. He later learned that Moravian preaching had come to Oley.
This is part of the story of how the Moravians reached, the then, unchurched Germans. Franz would go on and found, with his brother Georg and others, after they left Oley, Schöneck Moravian Church in Nazareth on October 3, 1762.— at Sacred Oak.
One of the pivotal events of Moravian Work in Oley occurred when
a sermon was given in the home of Jean Bertolett, a French Huguenot, like the DeTurcks of Oley.
Zinzendorf was supportive of the work being done in Oley by Pietists, people who felt the stirrings of God in their heart.
Therefore, he called for a Synod (1742 Unity) to be held there, the third of its kind, and this synod was held at French Huguenot, John Detucrk's home, in February 1742. The picture shows me there.
This was led by the Moravian lay preacher Andrew Eschenbach, and those in attendance included not only Moravians but also Lutherans, Reformed, and Mennonites. (My Project to Unify the Deitsch Faithful of All Beliefs) Without a strong church, some of the Moravians began to establish a true Moravian congregation, but Zinzendorf objected for the sake of the Unity. He asked the Synod to create congregation as what today we would call a non-denominational Christian Fellowship.
Its members would be registered according to the denomination in which they had been maybe baptized or confirmed.
Eschenbach was ordained as the new church's minister, and Christian Henry Rauch and Gottlob Buttner were ordained to be missionaries to the Natives.
At the time, the baptism of three Mohican Natives, who had been brought for the purpose from Shekomkeo and other Missions in New York state.
They were baptized, and spent an entire day preaching the Gospel to local Lenape who had come to the synod. Their names are recorded as having been Shabash, Seim, and Kiop.
They eventually received Christian names and many conversion type and miraculous events, most never recorded, happened in the Magical Oley Valley.
My Photo here shows preaching before the Sacred Oak in Oley. Recognizing and respecting Ancient Holy sites was what made the work of the Moravian Missions and their Indigenous missionaries special.
The Sacred Oak and the Oley Valley has had a pivotal place in the Spiritual Foundations of the Deitscherei!
It needs to be honored as the spiritual Ebenezer that the Mighty Oak is for Deistch and Lenape. in FB https://www.facebook.com/groups/119522640182/?hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen&multi_permalinks=10169050337855183
