We shall divide our time, as we did
in other evening meetings, between a testimony of
what God has done in the past and
a message from his word.
Now you can understand, when the year 1899
came, everyone was talking about the twentieth century.
There had been forty years of steady expansion
of the Church.
Most people thought the twentieth century was going
to be a century of triumph.
In fact, they started a magazine called the
Christian Century.
It is a very liberal magazine today, but
it showed something of the attitude of people.
Now, of course, if this were the year
1999, everyone would have some kind of program
arranged for the year 2000.
And this was happening in the United States.
For instance, the Methodists launched what they called
the Twentieth Century Forward Movement.
They decided they were going to go all
out in preparation for a great awakening.
Their objective was the winning of two million
souls—two million.
They raised twenty million dollars to do it.
And an editorial in the Christian Advocated said
it was believed, with a better knowledge of
how to work and a feeling that it
was a Church-wide movement, a great religious
awakening might be secured at the opening of
the twentieth century.
Now the second largest denomination, the Baptists, had
a great Baptist advance program.
The Presbyterians formed an evangelistic commission.
Dr. Wilbur Chapman was chosen as the recognized
leader, and by 1902 the Presbyterians had fifty
-six evangelists ranging the country, twelve hundred Presbyterian
ministers united in prayer for revival.
But it didn't come that way through organization.
One Methodist said, God waited until we got
our program out of the way, and then
he sent the revival.
Well, did they get any kind of results?
Yes, I jotted down the figures here.
After three years' promotion, the Methodists confessed very
little gain in membership—fifteen thousand or something like
that, not two million.
Now, revival came in a different way entirely.
In 1899 there were all-nights of prayer
at Moody Bible Institute.
There were all-days of prayer at the
Keswick Convention in England.
There were prayer movements in India.
The missionaries in Korea met for prayer.
And it was in response to the prayer
movement, rather than the organizational movement, that the
revival came.
God is sovereign.
He chooses to move where he chooses.
And he chose a little country, Wales, on
the western flanks of England, to begin a
work that amazed the world.
Now, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, famous pastor of
the Westminster Chapel, told me once, if you're
interested in the Welsh revival, get the records
of the New Quay congregation in Cardigan.
I find the minister there was the Reverend
Joseph Jenkins.
He was what was called a Keswick man—perhaps
you've heard that word, K-E-S-W
-I-C-K.
Most Americans pronounce that Keswick, but the W
is silent, it's Keswick.
Some Americans say to me, well, what's a
Keswick man?
The Keswick convention stresses holy living, out-and
-out commitment to the Lord, but their position
is sort of halfway hushed between the West
Wing view of crisis and the Calvinistic view
of a process, a crisis with a view
to a process.
Now Joseph Jenkins was Presbyterian, but as I
say, he was a Keswick man.
He said to his young people one Sunday,
what does Jesus Christ mean to you?
They were embarrassed.
Now, they were godly young people, they always
opened their meeting with singing and prayer, but
the Young People's Society was really the church
youth club.
That's where boy met girl, that's where the
young people went for picnics and so forth.
A social organization as well as a Christian
one, perhaps you could say a social organization
with a Christian veneer.
He said, what does Jesus Christ mean to
you?
There was a long hesitation, then a young
man said, Jesus Christ is the hope of
the world.
No, he said, I don't mean the world.
What does he mean to you?
There was dead silence, and then a girl
called Flory Evans, just three weeks converted, spoke
up and said, I love the Lord Jesus
with all my heart.
She said it so sincerely, there was a
hush of God in that meeting.
That was the beginning of the Welsh Revival.
Joseph Jenkins organized the young people into a
team and he went around preaching with them,
testifying.
And Mrs. Jessie Penn Lewis wrote to the
Life of Faith, a magazine in London, to
say that a cloud no bigger than a
man's hand had arisen in Wales.
Now the leading evangelist of Wales was Seth
Joshua.
His son is a good friend of mine,
he's in his late eighties, retired in Southern
California, an American Presbyterian minister.
His father was a stated evangelist of the
Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales, now known as
the Presbyterian Church of Wales.
He was having meetings here, there, and everywhere,
he was a man of God with great
power in his life.
But he went down to Newquay, where the
young people had been stirred.
I have read his diary in the archives
of the University of Wales at Aberystwyth.
There you'll find, he tells of how he
visited Newquay in September of 1904.
It was quite an unexpected sort of thing.
I made some notes from his diary, 19th
of September, Revival is breaking out here in
greater power, the young are receiving the greatest
measure of blessing.
They break out into prayer, praise, testimony, and
exhortation.
20th, I cannot leave the building until twelve,
and even one o'clock in the morning.
I close the service several times a year,
but break out again, quite beyond human control.
Peter Joshua, his son, told me, my dad
would say, now young people, it's three minutes
to twelve, tomorrow's another day, let's pronounce the
benediction and go home, tomorrow's another day.
He'd pronounce the benediction, there'd be a short
silence, then somebody would either announce a hymn
or start praying, and the meeting went on
again.
Then he said, now young people, it's after
twelve, tomorrow's another day, and some would say,
this is tomorrow already.
Seth Joshua went from there to the Newcastle
Emlyn College, where a Welshman trained for the
Presbyterian ministry.
The principal was a man called Evan Phillips.
There was a student there, a coal miner,
twenty-six years of age, Evan Roberts.
I knew Evan Roberts, I met him thirty
years later, of course.
But he was a big fellow at the
age of twelve, his father was badly injured
in the mines, so to earn money he
took his father's place.
So he was a coal miner from the
age of twelve.
But at the age of twenty-six, he
decided to study for the ministry.
I have read as much as I can
of his diary.
All his life he was interested in revival.
For eleven years he said he had prayed
for revival.
On Sunday he went to church twice, he
went to a Bible class and to Sunday
school, he taught Sunday school.
On Monday he went to a prayer meeting,
on Tuesday to a mission service, on Wednesday
to the midweek service, on Thursday a temperance
meeting, on Friday to class meetings.
I never found out what he did on
Saturday.
Well, I can guess, bath night.
Back in those days, each member of the
family would take the galvanized iron tub in
front of the kitchen fire and perform his
ablutions.
That's right.
Did you know that Queen Victoria in Buckingham
Palace didn't have a bathroom?
You say, what did she do?
They say she used perfume.
But when I was a lad growing up
in Ireland, and some Canadians told me it
was the same in Nova Scotia, Saturday night
was bath night.
Every week we took a bath, unless we
didn't need it.
Now when Evan Roberts heard of the breath
of revival at Uki, he was electrified.
Seth Joshua had morning meetings at ten o
'clock and evening meetings at eight o'clock.
The evening meetings were packed, but the morning
meetings were not so.
In those days there were no babysitters.
People at work, people at school, and young
mothers simply couldn't come to meetings.
So the only people that were there were
the old ladies of the parish and the
theological students.
Because the theological students, when they heard from
Seth Joshua what was happening, petitioned the principal
to close down classes and let them attend
Seth Joshua's next campaign.
I was in one of the morning meetings
when Seth Joshua prayed in Welsh, O God,
bend us.
That Evan Roberts went forward and prayed with
great agony, O God, bend me.
The Welsh word bend is a stronger word
than the English word.
It really means to shape, the way a
potter shapes the clay.
You know the way we sing, melt me,
mould me, fill me, use me?
That's the kind of idea, bend me.
One of his slogans was, bend the church
and save the world.
Now when he went back to theological college,
he found it rather hard to study.
He said to his roommate, Sidney Evans, do
you think God could give us 100,000
souls?
Now if a fuller theological seminary student came
to me and said, I'm going to evangelism,
you think God would give me 100,000
souls next year?
I would put that down to enthusiasm.
I wouldn't pour cold water on them, but
I think there's an eager beaver.
Yet in the next five months, in a
movement that Evan Roberts was greatly used in,
more than 100,000 outsiders in Wales joined
the churches.
Evan Roberts said he felt ablaze with a
desire to evangelize Wales.
He had been saving money for 14 years.
He drew $1,000, it's like $10,000
today, and he said he was prepared to
pay God for the privilege of working for
him.
He was going to use this money to
organize a team of young evangelists.
He went to the principal of the college
and said, I can't concentrate.
I keep hearing a voice that says you
must go back and speak to the young
people in the church.
Mr. Phillips, is that the voice of God
or the voice of the devil?
And Principal Phillips said very wisely, the devil
never gives orders like that.
You can have a week off.
So he went back.
When he arrived home, his parents said, why
aren't you studying?
Are you in trouble?
No.
Well, why are you home?
He said, I've come to preach to the
young people.
What young people?
Our young people.
They said, we were in church on Sunday
and no one mentioned this?
He said, the minister doesn't know yet.
When the minister, Mr. Morgan, heard this, he
was a little nonplussed.
What would you say if some student went
from this congregation to Moody Bible Institute or
some theological college and came back after three
months and said, I've come to preach.
The minister didn't want to hurt his feelings,
but he didn't want to hurt the congregation's
feelings either.
So he said, how about speaking for us
on Monday?
That was the prayer meeting night.
He didn't ask them to address the prayer
meeting.
He simply told them after the prayer meeting
was over, our young brother, Evan Roberts, feels
he has a word for you if you
care to wait.
Put the onus on them.
I suppose they were ready to go home,
but they all knew Evan Roberts had grown
up with him.
So 17 waited.
But what a message.
His mode of preaching was quite different.
Welsh people are great orators.
But Evan Roberts was more like a telegram
boy.
He said, I have a message for you
from God.
You must confess any known sin and put
any wrong done to man right.
You must put away any doubtful habit.
You must obey the Spirit promptly.
You must confess your faith in Christ publicly.
And by 10 o'clock, all 17 had
responded.
The minister was so pleased, he said, would
you go to the mission service tomorrow night
with me?
He spoke at the midweek service.
On Thursday, they converted the temperance meeting into
a general meeting.
On Friday, they brought all the classes together
and the church was quickly filling up.
It was a big church, Moriah Church.
On Sunday, another minister had come to preach
by arrangement.
So Evan Roberts sat with his family in
the pew.
But the people got up in the evening
meeting and said, could we have an after
meeting with Evan Roberts?
So the minister said, if I make it
all right with your principal, could you stay
for another week?
It was during that week that the break
came.
You might say, what do you mean the
break?
I've read the Welsh newspapers of the time.
There were little snippets of church news.
Editors know that church people read their paper
and like to be mentioned occasionally.
For instance, the Reverend Peter Jones has just
been appointed chaplain to the Bishop of St.
David's.
Mowbray Street Methodist Church has had a very
interesting sale of work.
That's a rummage sale.
And so on.
Then suddenly a headline.
Great crowds of people drawn to Lochor.
Congregation stays till 2.30 in the morning.
Said a remarkable religious revival is now taking
place in Lochor.
For some days now, a young man named
Evan Roberts, a native of the place, has
been causing great surprise in the Mariah Church.
The place has been besieged by dense crowds
of people unable to gain admission.
Such excitement has prevailed that the road in
which the church is situated has been lined
with people from end to end.
It concluded by saying shopkeepers are closing early
in order to get a place in the
church and steel and metal workers throng the
place in their working clothes.
On the 11th of November 1904 this Mariah
Church was again overcrowded with more than 800
people overflowing into the old chapel.
Many were on their knees for a long
time.
Now a reporter had arrived from Cardiff and
his report was given wide a circulation.
He said instead of a set order of
proceedings everything was left to the spontaneous impulse
of the moment.
We would say the Holy Spirit was directing
the meeting.
At 4.25 in the morning the gathering
dispersed, but even then the people didn't seem
to want to go home.
As I left to walk back to Tenessee,
I left dozens of them still on the
road discussing what was now the most important
subject of their lives.
Then a very, very British comment.
He said, I felt that this was no
ordinary gathering.
I suppose every praying woman in Wales thought
there was revival coming and got in her
neighbors to pray.
On Saturday the 12th every grocery store in
that industrial valley was emptied of groceries, people
coming to the meetings, and on Sunday every
church was packed.
It broke like a flood all over Wales.
It's interesting, the same week in North Wales
a Baptist minister, R.B. Jones, was preaching
in the town of Rhyl when the crying
of the people and their prayers drowned out
his preaching.
And now there's a flood of revival all
over Wales.
Now most Americans are so conditioned to think
of revival in terms of mass evangelism.
They would assume then Elvin Roberts became the
Billy Graham of Wales.
Nothing of the sort.
I had a good friend, H.
J.
Galley, who had just graduated from Spurgeon's College
in London and had his first church in
the metropolitan area.
He read in the English newspapers of the
revival in Wales.
He thought, this I must see.
He sent a telegram to a classmate saying,
meet me off the London Express at 12
noon tomorrow.
And when he got there, there was his
Welsh friend with a shining face.
Galley said, is this truly revival?
And Williams said, it is a gate of
heaven to our souls.
Well, said Galley, in a practical way, I've
come a long distance, I'd like to hear
Elvin Roberts preach.
Where is he preaching?
Williams said, I don't know, he doesn't tell
anyone.
But I thought he was the leader of
the revival.
Oh no.
He said, you mean the newspapers have it
all wrong?
Well, he said, God signally uses him, but
the Holy Spirit is the leader of the
revival.
Galley said, don't we always say that?
He said, Brother Galley, we mean that.
Look, Brother Galley, there are about a thousand
churches in South Wales.
Elvin Roberts might show up at my church
tonight.
But if he doesn't, the Lord will be
there in mighty power.
Oh, said he, are you having special meetings?
He said, my church has been packed for
six weeks.
You mean the other churches in town are
using your church for united meetings?
He said, every church in town, from Anglican
to Salvation Army, is packed.
He said, when do you have the meetings?
Six to midnight.
What, he said, from six to midnight?
He said, I mean from six in the
morning to midnight.
He said, not the same people.
Oh no, he said, first of all, we
get minors before they go on shift, mid
-morning housekeepers, noon a united meeting, the afternoon
schoolchildren, but from six until midnight, the place
will be packed with everyone.
By the way, during the Welsh revival, there
were no separate meetings.
No young people's meetings, no old people's meetings,
no children's meetings, no special meetings.
The whole church was filled with all the
people, young and old, and everyone, I was
going to say enjoying it, moved by it.
Gally said to Williams, how do you keep
up with the preaching?
He said, what do you say?
How do you keep up with the preaching?
Six hours every evening?
He said, I haven't preached for six weeks.
He had become the coach, not a player.
So Gally said, who preached last night?
Oh, he said, maybe seventeen people, including an
old granny of seventy-eight and a boy
of twelve.
This was happening in Wales.
Someone asked me if I knew Mervyn Lewis.
He died in his eighties, a Welshman, been
over here.
Mervyn Lewis told me he was only seven
when the revival hit the Rhondda Valley.
His father was a coal miner.
His father came home from the early shift
at three o'clock, been up from the
job since six in the morning, took a
bath, put on his Sunday best.
He always dressed to go to church in
those days.
He said, come mother, we're going to the
church.
Four o'clock, the place was packed.
They couldn't find a seat, but when they
saw a mother with three little children, they
made room for her.
Evan Roberts arrived unexpectedly at seven in the
evening.
The church was so crowded he had to
climb on a bench and walk on the
shoulders of the men in the aisles, then
climb up over the front of the pulpit.
He couldn't get around any other way.
He got up and he said one word
in Welsh, three words in English, gwelyon, let
us pray.
And immediately all 1800 people began to pray.
I said to Merton Lewis, well, was it
an ejaculatory prayer?
You know, you go to a meeting, you
hear some people saying Jesus, Jesus, amen, amen,
Lord, Lord, Lord.
No, no, he said it wasn't.
Everyone was praying his own prayer.
He said one man was praying behind me,
oh God, give me another chance.
I'll put things right if you just give
me another chance.
Then someone else saying, Lord, I'll go to
India.
I won't argue anymore.
And some other was praying for her son
in Liverpool.
This went on for hours.
One man took his elbow and hit Mr.
Lewis senior and said, would you stop praying
and tell me how I can become a
Christian?
I can't stand this anymore.
At two o'clock in the morning, Mr.
Lewis said, come mother.
One child had fallen asleep and another was
tottering over.
They walked home in the drizzle, put the
children to bed.
But it was so close to daybreak, Mr.
Lewis sat in the rocking chair by the
fire and dozed until it was time to
go to work.
Came back at three in the afternoon and
said, come mother, let's go to the meeting.
Went back to the same meeting, still going
full tilt.
He said, that's incredible.
Did you ever hear about the Asbury College
revival?
When the chapel at Asbury College was filled
night and day?
Well, could you imagine that happening in every
church in a country?
Because the churches of Wales were filled every
night at least for 18 months.
I attended the last Graham crusade in Los
Angeles, 40,000 a night.
If Billy Graham had said, don't come here
tomorrow night, go to your own church, midweek
service, and you pastors who don't have one,
open up, these people are coming.
Supposing a pastor who didn't have a midweek
service went to his custodian and said, we're
expecting some people tonight for a meeting.
The custodian said, what for?
Well, a devotional meeting.
Would you get the church ready?
How many do you expect?
How many could he expect?
If you'd taken the 40,000 and divided
that by the 5,000 sponsoring churches, you
would have had eight people per church, and
they all could have sat in the front
row.
How could you compare mass evangelism at its
best with a movement of the Holy Spirit
that filled every church?
That's what happened in Wales.
A hundred thousand outsiders joined the major denominations.
Maybe another hundred thousand were converted who were
already church members.
When a man is a member of a
church and becomes converted, he doesn't resign and
join again.
His pastor notices the difference, all right, but
he doesn't resign and join again, generally speaking.
A man called J.B. Morgan wrote a
book to debunk the Welsh Revival five years
later.
His major criticism was of the, in round
figures, 100,000 who joined the churches five
years before in the excitement of the revival.
After five years, only 75,000 still stood.
Now, if you study church growth figures, you'll
find that the most optimistic estimate they give
of perseverance in evangelism today is about 25
% in the best campaigns.
And one that they criticized rather strongly is
that 3%.
But even then, I don't know where he
got the figures.
All he did was he took the figures
of those who joined the major denominations, took
their membership, and then compared it with five
years later.
I think there was about a 20%
increase the first year, and then about 5
% loss at the end.
But Wales was a poor country.
Welsh people were emigrating to Pennsylvania and to
Australia and New Zealand and elsewhere, to Liverpool
and Birmingham and London.
And then J.B. Morgan gave the game
away.
He said many were lost to mission halls
and to the Pentecostals.
What a way to be lost.
In other words, some churches went back to
their formal ways, and the people converted in
these meetings looked for other fellowship.
The social impact was astounding.
Now in 1974, 70 years afterwards, I visited
a very famous Presbyterian minister in Chicago.
I was preaching at Moody Bible Institute.
Nearby is Fourth Presbyterian Church.
The minister there is a great orator, Elam
Davies.
I knew his wife.
She was the daughter of one of my
good friends and sponsors.
So I went to visit them.
He said, look at this.
Someone had written three articles in the Welsh
Western Mail in Cardiff, attacking the Welsh revival
of 70 years before, especially attacking Evan Roberts.
It said he was an immoral man.
There were whispers of the many women in
his life.
They said his preaching was so aphrodisiac that
he so inflamed his congregations that they went
out to the graveyards, and when the women
became pregnant, they blamed it on nightingales.
It said that a historian has said that
the Welsh revival increased illegitimate birth rate in
Wales.
I felt my indignation rising.
My friend Elam Davies is much more liberal
in his theology than I am, but he
said, I felt bad about this.
He said, I met Evan Roberts once.
He said he was a man of God.
Well, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote to the editor.
I said, you haven't heard the last of
this.
He wrote back.
I entered the letter, by the way.
Where is your British sense of fair play?
You can get under an Englishman's skin at
that point.
He wrote back, all right, fair play is
fair play.
You write three articles.
We'll publish your three articles.
I got in touch with a friend of
mine, the Reverend David Davies, principal of the
South Wales Baptist College.
We had an argument.
He said, what can you do with froth?
I said, I'm not a drinking man, but
in the Air Force, I know what men
do with froth.
They blow it off, and I intend to
blow this off.
So I went all the way at my
own expense, and David Davies arranged meetings for
me in Bangor, Aberystwyth, Swansea, and Cardiff.
We ended up in the biggest church in
Cardiff, admission by ticket, hundreds turned away, the
Lord Mayor there in his regalia, and I
felt like Samson with the jawbone of an
ass, slaying a thousand.
I said, who said that it increased the
illegitimate birth rate?
Turned out, not an historian, but a Baptist
minister in Birmingham.
So I called him.
Did you say that?
He said, yes, my mother told me that.
I said, how would your mother know?
Well, she knew a girl who got into
trouble during the revival.
I said, in the meetings?
Oh, no, no, I mean, you know, the
excitement of the time, and maybe some girl
was careless.
But I said, maybe for every girl who
was careless, if there were any, perhaps a
thousand girls decided to quit fooling around.
Actually, the number of marriage ceremonies went up
during the revival.
That sometimes happens in times of revival.
People get married.
But I said, I can't argue with anecdotes,
because I said if girls quit fooling around,
it wouldn't show in the statistics.
That's right, non-pregnancies are never reported.
Then I had an idea.
Oh, yes, but they are.
Indirectly.
I went up to London and got all
the figures.
Births, deaths, marriages, illegitimate births.
Every big town, every county.
I discovered in Radnorshire, the illegitimate birth rate
dropped 44% in one year.
In Marinershire, the same.
In Glamorganshire, only 8%.
Evan Roberts was a man of God.
He was so chaste, so pure, that the
world couldn't understand a person like that.
He was so dedicated to God.
Drunkenness was cut in half.
I have the figures from the chief constable.
Cut in half, the number of arrests for
drunkenness.
But there was a wave of bankruptcies.
He said, how could a revival cause bankruptcies?
Taverns went broke all over the place.
Couldn't sell their booze.
Judges were presented with white gloves.
Not a case to try.
I don't know what it was like in
Maryland, but in California, if someone commits a
murder, it may be a year before he
appears in trial.
There are so many cases on the calendar.
But in Wales, when the judge would arrive,
the chamberlain would say, Pray, rise, for his
majesty's judge, the Honorable Trevor Jones.
Everyone would stand up.
The judge would come in, in a gown,
like an American judge, but also with a
wig, like a British judge.
Take a seat, say pray, be seated.
Then the chamberlain would get up and say,
Your Honor, there are no cases to try.
No rapes, no robberies, no murders, no burglaries,
no embezzlements.
Nothing.
The district councils had emergency meetings to discuss
what to do with the police now that
they were unemployed.
Some were in favor of economizing, saying, We
don't need them, let's cut their salaries.
They sent for a sergeant of the police
in one particular place.
They said, What do you do with your
time?
I don't know what it's like here in
the Washington area.
But if I were to call the police
in Los Angeles and say, There's a prowler
around, they'd say, We're sorry, we're too busy.
But let's know if anything happens.
They will have time for you.
But this sergeant said, What do you do
with your time?
Well, he said, Before the revival, we had
two main jobs.
One was to prevent crime.
The other to control crowds at football games,
market days, that sort of thing.
Since the revival, there's practically no crime.
So we just go with the crowds.
What do you mean you go with the
crowds?
Well, councilors, you know where the crowds are?
They're packing every church.
Well, what do you do, direct traffic to
the churches?
Oh, no, he said, We have 17 police
in our station.
But we've got three trained quartets.
If any church wants a quartet to sing,
they notify the police.
There was even a slowdown in the coal
mines.
You say, How could the revival cause a
strike?
Not a strike.
Slowdown.
So many Welsh coal miners were converted and
stopped using bad language that the horses that
dragged the trucks in the mines couldn't understand
what was being said to them.
You can bear me out on that.
Merton Lewis told me that his father heard
ungodly men.
Merton Lewis said the Welsh, what do you
call it?
They called them hauliers.
That's like a mule skinner, like the Kentucky
mule skinners, very profane, swearing at the horses
and mules and so forth.
And he said one took off his hat
and said, Come on, Betsy.
Come on, girl.
And the horse didn't understand the order.
The horse laid its ears flat.
He said, Come on, Betsy.
You know I can't cuss you out anymore.
Please, Betsy.
Then he said, Well, I can't cuss you,
but I can pray for you.
And he took off his hat and asked
the Lord to help this dumb beast understand
the language.
Now, when I was growing up, I saw
lots of articles that said, Why didn't the
Welsh Revival affect England, Scotland and Ireland?
Why didn't it spread?
Merton Lloyd-Jones, that famous Welshman, said, I
didn't know the Welsh Revival had any effect
outside Wales.
But it swept the British Isles.
They called a meeting of the bishops of
the Church of England.
Thirty bishops came.
First to speak was the bishop of St.
Asaph's.
He said, Fathers and Brethren, I've just come
from Oswestry.
That's a Western English town.
Where in a single church I confirmed 950
new converts.
The bishops voted in favor of the Revival.
When the Revival broke out, for instance, in
the Midlands, they ran rail excursions to the
prayer meetings.
Whenever a Revival broke out in Uneaton, Birmingham
people could travel from Birmingham to Uneaton and
back again before midnight at a shilling.
The Revival broke out in Scotland.
Motherville near Glasgow, the streets packed from wall
to wall.
And after the excitement died down, seven churches,
four public halls packed every night.
The Revival broke out, first of all, among
the Methodists in Lurgan in Northern Ireland, then
in fact at the Presbyterians.
The Revival broke out in Norway.
I knew the man that God used there,
a man called Albert Lunde.
Bishop Berggrav, the famous Norwegian bishop, told me
the greatest movement I ever saw was 1905
in Oslo.
So great was the Revival in Norway that
the Parliament passed special legislation to allow licensed
Lutheran laymen to conduct Holy Communion, a thing
that only the clergy can do.
Because there were so many converts, the clergy
couldn't give up with it.
The Revival broke out in Denmark.
The Danish Home Mission said it was the
greatest winter since Christianity came to the Vikings.
It broke out in Sweden.
One of the leaders was Prince Oscar Bernadotte,
the brother of the king.
I met him also, prayed with him.
The same Revival swept Finland, Germany.
It broke out in France.
It broke out in India.
In India, the number of Christians increased sixteen
times as fast as the number of Hindus
proportionately for ten years.
That Revival broke out in China.
In Korea, it was phenomenal.
I think I mentioned that once before, about
the phenomenal awakening that happened in Korea.
Korean churches.
By the way, the biggest prayer meeting I've
attended was Yongnak Presbyterian Church in Seoul.
A thousand people in a prayer meeting?
Do you know how many churches in the
United States have a thousand people in a
prayer meeting?
That came out of that Revival.
In Japan, the churches increased 62.5%
in one year.
The same Revival moved Australia and New Zealand.
It moved East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa,
South Africa.
The Revival broke out in Brazil, in Chile,
in Mexico.
And it swept this country from coast to
coast.
It broke out in the Maritimes of Canada.
I asked Dr. Oswald Smith, my senior colleague,
what do you know about the Canadian Revival
in 1905?
He said, never heard of it.
I said, come now.
I said, First Baptist Church in Winnipeg was
turning away 2,000 in the snow.
By the way, in Winnipeg, snowfall like this
doesn't keep people from church.
They have snow on the ground for four
months, as you know, so they're sort of
used to it.
Oswald Smith said, I never heard of it.
Well, I said, what year were you converted?
He said, 1905.
He was converted in that Revival.
The Revival broke out in this country, first
of all, when news of the Welsh Revival
was on the front pages of so many
newspapers.
All the ministers of New York City got
together in the Marble Collegiate Church to discuss
what to do when the Revival came.
All the ministers of Chicago got together in
the First Methodist Church in the Loop in
Chicago.
Same thing.
Pittsburgh, Louisville, St. Louis, Denver, everywhere.
They were all electrified.
Revival is coming.
And it first of all broke out in
Pennsylvania, in Wiltsbury, in a Welsh church.
Then it spread to Scranton.
Then it broke out in Schenectady.
I've read the newspapers.
The Schenectady Gazette ran a column.
You know the way in a smaller town,
a city like Harrisburg, they have an obituary
column.
They can't keep up with obituaries in Los
Angeles or New York, too many, but in
a smaller town, the older people, the first
thing they do is they look at the
obituary column and see what one of their
friends has passed on.
But in Schenectady, they ran a column called
Yesterday's Conversions.
Do you remember who had been converted yesterday?
There he was, Chief of Police, just converted,
and so on.
The Revival swept Pennsylvania.
The Methodists had 6,000 on probation in
Philadelphia.
The Revival broke out in New York.
In the Calvary Methodist Church, they took in
384 one Sunday morning.
Must be heads of families.
Revival in Brooklyn, Baptist Temple, 500 joined the
Church one day.
The Revival swept New England.
Broke out all over the place.
Paducah, Kentucky, pastor of the First Baptist Church
was a Dr. J.J. Cheek, an old
man.
Took in a thousand new members in two
months and died of overwork.
And the Southern Baptist said, what a glorious
way to go.
The Revival in Denver broke out in January.
The Colorado Legislature closed down.
All schools closed.
Ten o'clock, all churches filled.
At noon, every theater downtown filled with business
people praying.
They said Denver never had a winter like
it.
The Revival broke out in Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Portland, Seattle.
A sweeping Revival.
Yet I never heard of it myself.
Only discovered the clues about ten years ago.
I wrote this book on the Revival of
1900 onwards.
Why has it not been remembered?
I suppose one of the reasons would be
that World War I broke out five years,
well, ten years later.
And that was such a trauma for the
human race.
The British lost a million men.
The French lost more than the British.
The Germans lost more than the French.
The Russians lost more than the Germans.
And it was such a trauma that people
forgot what had gone before.
Like if we had in Los Angeles a
great earthquake, nobody would remember the Redskins visiting
Pasadena.
They'd remember the earthquake, not the Redskins visiting
Pasadena.
So maybe that's one reason why it was
forgotten.
But that was the worldwide awakening, I say,
of 1905, in our own century.
Now I wish in some ways that this
series of meetings were going on.
I'd be able to bring you right up
to date and tell you of modern movements
in our own time.
But this will be my last little talk
on what God has done.
As Stuart Hamlin says, it is no secret
what God can do.
What he's done for others, he'll do for
you.
What he's done before, he can do again.