Chapter 8 The Welsh Revival Before we look
at the Welsh Revival, we should note that
the Pentecostal pioneers had a heritage of many
revivals.
The denominations from which the pioneers came, whether
Methodist, Brethren, Presbyterian, Baptist or Anglican, were deeply
affected and impacted by revivals in previous centuries.
There were those alive in the early 1900s
who remember the great revival of 1859 that
swept Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as
Scotland and England.
All these pioneers were well acquainted with the
history of the Methodist Revival, which swept England
in the 18th century.
The Methodist Revival saved the nation from experiencing
a bloody revolution like the one in France.
God's way of deliverance was to raise up
chosen vessels like George Whitefield, John Wesley and
his brother Charles out at the despised Holy
Club at Cambridge.
Both Scotland and Wales experienced numbers of small
awakenings, as well as large and national revivals
over the centuries when the spirit was outpoured.
In fact, Scotland and Wales have had more
outpourings than any other nation in the world.
Far too many to summarise here, but the
reason we now single out the Welsh Revival,
which broke out in November 1904, is that
it preceded the Pentecostal movement by less than
two years and was probably one of the
greatest moulding influences upon the Pentecostal movement.
In the years preceding the Welsh Revival, there
were very definite signs of coming glory, especially
in the ten months leading into that November.
There were many who were soaked in prayer
and who had a living expectation that they
were on the verge of a great revival.
Many hungry saints had read books, like Andrew
Murray's With Christ in the School of Prayer,
that prepared them for the place of prayer.
God had prepared a people and carefully moulded
many vessels to lead vast multitudes of souls
back to God.
Many were prepared, many were used, but one
person, Evan Roberts, was certainly to become the
most prominent and the one we shall look
at here.
Evan Roberts was born into a very godly,
devout and hard-working family in 1878.
He was one of 14 children and one
of seven sons.
Their home, called Island House, was situated on
the banks of the River Lochr in Lochor,
a small village in Glamorgan in South Wales.
Near Lochor was a coal mine where Evan
went to work with his father at the
young age of 11, which brought an end
to his school education.
He was a door boy, which entailed opening
and closing the door for the drams, carriages,
carrying coal up and down the shafts.
The old Welsh preachers often referred to those
dark and dangerous mines as a picture of
hell or the darkness of men's depraved hearts.
Those like Evan who worked underground could very
well relate to this picture language.
From his earliest years, Evan was a very
serious and solemn boy.
He was a constant student of the Bible
and was never found without it, either in
his hand or in his pocket.
Once, in an explosion in the mine, his
Bible was scorched but Evan was unharmed.
When manning the mine doors, he would often
give the passing miners a written text of
Scripture to meditate on and would later ask
them what they had learned from it.
This boy intended to be a preacher.
His separation from all the boyish fun of
his friends around him was a true mark
of just how serious he was about us.
He had no outstanding gift to speak or
expound the Scriptures that anyone could see, but
the blamelessness of his life was apparent to
all.
Evan faithfully attended every meeting at Moriah Chapel,
the large Calvinistic Methodist church which his family
attended.
Moriah was one of several non-conformist chapels
in Lough Corr.
One day, an elder challenged young Evan concerning
faithfulness in attending God's house.
The elder had asked him how he would
feel if he were absent when the Spirit
of God fell.
After that, Evan made it his habit to
attend every meeting without fail.
There was not a night of the week
when he was not at some meeting.
In 1902, he left his work in the
mine and began an apprenticeship with his uncle
as a blacksmith.
He went about his business faithfully and almost
unnoticed, but his desire to pursue the call
of God became increasingly evident.
For years, he held back from applying for
ministerial training because he knew very well how
such theological schools had killed the spirit of
many.
Prior to the revival, academic qualifications and learning
had become the most emphasised thing in preparing
for ministry.
Spiritual life and fervency were secondary qualifications and
almost ignored.
Eventually, he was recommended for the ministry by
Moriah Chapel in 1903, which meant that he
had to pass the trial of preaching his
first sermon before the presbytery in Moriah to
prove his skills and then to preach in
other associated chapels to further prove his call.
It also meant that his personal experience of
Christ and his call to the ministry would
be scrutinised by mature, godly men in this
church and area.
It is of interest to note that George
Muller's writings on faith and prayer left a
quiet mark upon him in his walk with
God.
As he prepared for ministry, he prayed much
that God would baptise him with the Holy
Spirit and power.
Evan was no victim of higher criticism or
modernism.
He believed in the total depravity of man's
heart, the eternal punishment of Christ-rejectors and
of the miracle-working power of God to
save sinners, to wash them clean in his
precious blood.
He preached obedience, holiness and subjection to Christ
in all things.
But he was deeply depressed over the state
of church generally across the nation.
It was a sad failure in comparison to
what he read in the scriptures.
One night, while trying to prevail with God
and prayer, he fell asleep.
In the middle of the night, he awoke
suddenly with unspeakable joy in the very presence
of Almighty God.
For four hours, he spoke to the Lord
face to face as a friend would speak
to a friend.
From that moment, he knew that God was
going to work in the land.
A similar burden of prayer came to him
every night for the next four months.
It would be wrong to say that this
was the beginning of his prayer for revival,
for he had been praying for it throughout
the previous 11 years that God would send
revival to Wales, and for 13 years he
had prayed for a personal filling of the
Holy Spirit.
In September 1904, at the age of 26,
he moved to Newcastle Grammar School for preliminary
studies for the ministry.
It was here that he would have a
meeting with God that would be as significant
as Moses meeting God at the burning bush.
Seth Joshua, pioneer evangelist for the Calvinistic Methodist
forward movement, had been mightily converted back in
1882 at a Salvation Army meeting when he
knelt at an old mourner's bench and cried
unto God for forgiveness and salvation.
Those were days when Salvationists had invaded the
Welsh Valleys with a spirit of revival.
They held open-air meetings and the Salvation
Lassies played the tambourines amidst testimonies and shouts
of Hallelujah!
The CM forward movement, Calvinistic Methodist forward movement,
was founded by denominational leaders as an earnest
attempt to reach the Welsh communities previously untouched
and unmoved by the power of the Gospel.
The forward movement certainly carried something of the
spirit of those old-fashioned Salvationists and so
did Seth Joshua.
Those who knew Joshua called him a man
of God, for he was wholly dedicated and
consecrated unto God.
He was a man that God could use.
He was not bound by typical trends of
religion or tradition, for some time he'd been
greatly concerned about the emphasis on education rather
than emphasis on a real spiritual experience and
walk with God as the main qualifications for
ministry.
He continued with a deep burden and prayer
that the Lord would, open quote, take a
lad from the coal mine or from the
field even as he took Elisha from the
plough to revive his work, close quote.
When old Joshua came to Newcastle, Emlyn, to
hold a campaign, the principal of Evan Roberts'
school encouraged all the young men to attend
the meetings.
At these meetings Evan was much impressed with
the fervour and the message of the preacher
as he sat night after night intently listening
to this messenger from heaven.
The campaign ended without any unusual manifestational sign
that God was about to do a great
work and Joshua thought that the ground was
hard and the people unresponsive.
Even Evan found his own heart to be
somewhat hard and cold.
The evangelist moved on to his next preaching
appointment, a small neighbourhood on the coast of
the cardigan bay, but there were some very
definite workings of God in the hearts of
the people of this place.
A group of the students from the grammar
school made plans to travel to those meetings
and Evan was among them.
As they travelled they sang, It is coming,
it is coming, the power of the Holy
Ghost, I receive it, I receive it, the
power of the Holy Ghost.
After the first early morning meeting Seth Joshua
prayed asking God to bend them.
This prayer became Evan's prayer in a powerful
way.
Now he prayed, bend me Lord, with all
his heart.
Soon this would become the prayer of a
nation.
In the meeting the next morning young Evan
fell upon his knees and then lay prostrate
asking God this one thing, bend me, bend
me.
He was sweating profusely as he travailed in
prayer and groaned in spirit.
That day he died, he became a new
man, another man.
It was a virtual baptism of fire in
which God did bend him.
These meetings continued for several days with other
young friends having similar experiences.
Evan was now given over to prayer for
a great spiritual awakening in Wales.
It became impossible for him to carry on
his studies at the college.
He asked God for others who were filled
with fire who would stand by him for
the task and they were soon given to
him.
He made initial plans to step out in
faith with this little band in evangelistic labors
from county to county but it seems the
Lord restrained him from this.
One day with great excitement Evan went to
see his good friend Sidney Evans to tell
Sidney that the Lord had given him a
vision of all of Wales being lifted up
to heaven and that he'd received the assurance
that 100 souls would be saved.
Another night while standing in a garden with
Sidney looking up at the beautiful full moon
they experienced the same vision at the same
time.
It was a hand reaching down from the
moon to the earth to take something unto
itself.
They were both convinced that this was a
token of the confirmation that the hand of
God would be outstretched to work in the
nation to bring in a great harvest of
souls.
Another time he had a vision of hell
and the terrible suffering of lost sinners.
As he saw this he pleaded with God
to close hell's door for one year and
give the people an opportunity to repent.
During those weeks of intensity there were those
who felt Evan was losing touch with reality
and that he was becoming fanatical and extreme.
They were very concerned about him.
Evan and Sidney would be up frequently in
the middle of the night travailing in prayer
and one night their hostess came and rebuked
them for the noise at such an unearthly
hour.
It was in the Sunday morning meeting as
the minister Evan Phillips preached on the subject
Father the hour is come that Evan had
a vision of the church in Locore with
young men sitting in rows and he was
preaching to them.
The Spirit of God was commissioning him to
go and to speak to them and he
yielded to God's will.
After speaking with the principal of the school
he left Newcastle on the 31st of October
to return to Locore by train.
All he had was the Holy Spirit and
a vision from God.
No one was expecting him in Locore and
no meetings were arranged.
His family were skeptical of his enthusiasm and
his minister was slow to arrange a meeting.
Finally he persuaded the various older ministers in
the area to allow him to speak at
some of the smaller less important meetings that
week.
The first meeting was a youth meeting held
on a Monday night.
There were just 17 young people present.
As he testified of what God had been
doing in his life and was about to
do in the nation he exhorted them to
prepare themselves for a baptism of the Holy
Ghost.
At first the meeting was hard going but
suddenly the power of God came down and
all who were not saved were converted and
others yielded themselves unreservedly to God.
The next days news of the deep impact
and change in the lives of these young
people spread in the community.
Night after night meetings were held with more
gatherings as Evan went from church to church.
The people prayed, listened, repented and rejoiced.
His message to sinners was repent.
His message to the saints was be filled
with the Spirit.
By the end of the week the community
was astir.
Meetings went on for five hours with many
laying prostrate on the ground under deep conviction
of sin and agony of soul until they
received salvation.
The following week meetings continued to five in
the morning with sleep, food and normal activities
forgotten.
Then an invitation came from a church in
Aberdare 30 miles to the east where the
proposed speaker had cancelled his morning engagement.
Evan arrived there with three young ladies accompanying
him.
The congregation had been trundling along in normalcy
but not for much longer.
The church elders expected a good service but
nothing unusual.
The service began with one of the young
ladies bursting into song as tears rolled down
her cheeks.
The young preacher was bent over in his
seat shaking as he wept.
Suddenly one of the church's proudest members fell
on her knees and confessed her sins publicly
in agonizing prayer.
People knelt everywhere.
The organ remained silent with the organist on
her seat as the service continued all day.
By nightfall the community was astir and a
great host gathered at the chapel that evening.
Some were singing, O the lamb, the bleeding
lamb or throw out the lifeline.
Others were praying and travailing.
Some were sitting, many were kneeling and others
were prostrate.
Words of knowledge flowed from the young revivalist.
Meetings continued, the fire spread and homes were
changed.
The exact same thing happened in every chapel
in Aberdare where the people sought God.
The services were spontaneous and unorganized.
People prayed, testified and sang as prompted by
the spirit of God.
Reports began to appear in newspapers which at
first were very disparaging but when reporters also
began to get converted the papers carried very
positive supportive reports.
News of this Welsh revival now spread abroad
to many nations.
At times Evan could preach for hours, other
times he gave short direct words but always
in the Welsh language.
Sometimes he cried, sometimes he laughed and other
times he rejoiced.
He was of course the most prominent in
this new revival, a vessel raised up by
God to lead but the revival was everywhere.
Many ministers arose to preach and lead their
people back to God and into personal revival.
National sports events were deserted of their normal
large crowds, theatres were empty, pubs were closed
and crime dropped immediately.
In Cardiff police reported that drunkenness dropped by
60 percent within one month of the revival
beginning.
This revival even invaded brothels and gambling dens
in the city.
Hardened cursing minors were suddenly transformed formed and
these were regarded as the hardest people to
reach in the entire land.
Agnostics repented and put faith in the blood
of the Lamb for forgiveness of their sins.
Children prayed down the power of God.
At the centre of every prayer, every song
and every message was the finished work of
Calvary and the bleeding Lamb.
Preachers came from across Britain and the world
to see the glory of the Lord fill
his temple.
When F.B. Meyer, the famous London preacher
and teacher, came to investigate he was urged
to preach but he refused and sat silent
in the school of the Holy Ghost as
he listened to inexperienced untrained minors preach eloquently.
The great Bible expositor G.
Campbell Morgan, scared of being a hindrance, finished
his preaching engagements in Wales as quickly as
he could and told Evan he was leaving
to return home.
When asked his opinion about the revival he
said it is Pentecost continued.
William Booth packed his bag and left the
revival as quickly as possible.
These great preachers and leaders were scared to
touch this work of God.
They sat idly by while children and old
coal miners prayed and testified.
True revival is never organised by man, committees
or denominations.
The fear of God was dominant amidst manifestations
of power and it protected the work.
Evan himself strove to keep out of sight
so as not to hinder the work of
God.
He refused many international invitations to minister.
Even politicians had to take note.
Mr Lloyd George, a member of Parliament and
later Prime Minister of Great Britain said, quote,
it is certainly the most remarkable spiritual movement
this generation has witnessed.
It seems to be rocking Welsh life like
a great earthquake, close quote.
This revival especially captured the youth but it
never missed or neglected the old.
It was a singing revival but the songs
were crammed with sound doctrine.
It was a time of blessing for the
church.
The emphasis was on seeing sinners saved.
It was indeed a Welsh revival not a
British revival but the fire did spread to
Britain, Europe and the world through those whose
tongue was touched by a call from off
thy altar.
A desire and love for reading the written
scriptures was restored to the church during this
revival.
Holiness of heart and conduct was wrought mightily
deep within lives.
Worldly methods of drawing and keeping people in
the church were nullified.
This was a heaven-sent revival.
One eyewitness said divine movements have their birthplace
in the heart of deity, close quote.
Evan Roberts had maintained an unparalleled and active
schedule without proper break or rest.
It was inevitable that this would take its
toll.
By January 1906 he had finished a phase
of his life.
He had ministered in South Wales continually as
well as in the North and in Liverpool
in England.
A great many praised him as an anointed
man of God while others considered him a
deceiver and his revival false and erroneous.
He passed into a time of terrible mental
strain and fatigue and his body was tired.
To the surprise of all he seemed to
suddenly disappear from the work and disappear from
sight.
Then in January 1951 Roberts went to be
with the Lord.
We do not have the space to continue
the story here but there are many great
biographies on Evan Roberts and the Welsh revival
available to read.
At a glance what were the final results
of this revival?
Within two months of its beginning there had
been over 30,000 converts.
Within six months 100,000 converts.
By the beginning of 1906 who could know?
By 1910 its influence was felt in every
corner of the globe.
Religious systems in Britain tried to explain it
away by claiming it was the product of
Welsh emotion but for well over 100 years
it has now been regarded as a major
part of Christian heritage of genuine revivals and
Christians continue to be encouraged and challenged by
it.
It has been much speculated and stated that
within two years much of the harvest was
lost but the evidence in fact shows that
the vast majority remained as members of established
churches.
The proof of this is that all the
local churches were full and later membership suffered
little.
Now what was the influence upon the Pentecostal
movement?
Without doubt the primary mark and greatest effect
of the Welsh revival upon the Pentecostal movement
was the converts it produced.
Welshmen like Stephen and George Jeffreys, Dan and
Joan Williams and Tom Mercy were converted and
deeply impacted at this time.
These men all played significant roles in the
three Pentecostal denominations that later arose in Britain
and Ireland.
An indelible mark was left upon these men
of the reality, power and purpose of God
in bringing a nation to its knees.
There can be no doubt that these men
were the main pioneers of Elam, the assemblies
of God and the apostolic churches across the
land.
Later their ministries were to have a profound
effect in many other nations of the world.
After the Welsh revival began to wane there
were those across the land who were not
willing to return to dead denominationalism or the
formalism of former years.
Very often these children of the revival were
pushed out of their old churches and left
with no option but to start their own
mission halls and assemblies.
Many of these new assemblies later received the
message of the Pentecostal baptism.
Donald G was converted in London through preaching
of Seth Joshua in October 1905 who came
red-hot from the revival.
Others who were already mature in ministry were
profoundly stirred.
For example, Alexander Boddy came to see the
revival personally and talked with Evan Roberts asking
him to come to Sunderland.
Boddy's church hall was that one used in
the first Sunderland Wits and Tithe convention in
1905 for Welsh revival meetings.
In Boddy's mind these two revivals were inseparably
linked.
Smith Wigglesworth visited the revival in 1905.
Cecil Paulhill visited in 1906.
T.B. Barrett of Norway published reports of
the Welsh revival in his paper called By
Poshton and also carried the story of Evan
Roberts's baptism in the Holy Ghost.
This had a wide readership in Norway.
In January 1905 Barrett wrote to Evan Roberts
in Wales asking for earnest prayer that Norway
might have a similar revival and that he,
Barrett, might experience a baptism of fire.
When Barrett later received his baptism in the
Holy Spirit followed by the revival in Oslo
in December 1906, he believed that this was
the answer to prayer by the Welsh saints.
Pandita Ramabai, who was the daughter of a
Brahmin in the west of India, was highly
educated and very active in social reform in
the nation.
While staying in England in the 1880s she
was converted and baptized in water.
In 1895 she opened a home in India
called Mukti, meaning salvation, which gave refuge to
young women.
By 1905 Pandita Ramabai had two thousand girls
who'd taken refuge with her.
Her work was very well known and respected
in many nations.
After hearing of the Welsh revival in 1904
she started special early morning prayer meetings in
January 1905 during which they sought God for
a genuine revival for themselves and the world.
In July that year revival came and when
it did it carried all the marks of
a Pentecostal revival.
These ladies were filled with the Holy Ghost,
spoke in tongues, prophesied and went forth by
hundreds to witness and preach the gospel in
their region.
As they did many turned to the Lord
and sick bodies were healed.
Whilst this predated the Pentecostal revival which later
came to America and Britain, Pandita Ramabai later
had close ties with the Pentecostal pioneers.
Joseph Smale, an Englishman trained at CH Spurgeon's
College, was a pastor in Los Angeles.
At a time when he needed a vacation
he returned to England and took a tour
of the Middle East.
Before returning to LA he heard of and
then encountered the Welsh revival.
When he returned to LA in June 1905
he entered his pulpit on fire.
His first message was the great Welsh revival.
He wholeheartedly believed that a similar revival would
come to LA and just before his return
in 1905 F.B. Meyer had spoken in
LA about the Welsh revival which many of
Smale's congregation had attended.
Frank Barthelmen corresponded with Evan Roberts informing him
about the work in LA and asking for
prayer.
He received three responses from him between June
and November 1905 assuring him of prayer.
Barthelmen also distributed accounts of the revival right
across the city's churches and leaders.
These men were later central in Los Angeles
outpouring or as it became known the Azusa
Street revival.
In 1910 Barthelmen visited Britain for the first
time to minister at a Pentecostal assembly.
In between visiting and ministering with Smith Wigglesworth
in Bradford in the north of England and
for Cecil Paulhill in London he stopped with
Evan Roberts in Leicester for an afternoon.
The evidence is in the fruit.
We can see that the Welsh revival was
a significant if not major influence in the
bringing forth of a Pentecostal revival in India,
America, Britain, Norway, Europe and in Britain it
is utterly impossible to separate the two.
Interestingly in later years when someone asked Evan
Roberts where the fruit of the Welsh revival
was he pointed to the Pentecostal evangelist Stephen
Jeffreys.