I always counted a privilege to come and
minister at Lake Avenue Church, ever since I
came to live in this general neighborhood.
If this were 1999, there would be a
great deal of excitement about the coming 21st
century.
Everyone and his brother would be having special
meetings for the 21st century.
You'd have 21st century crusades and 21st century
stewardship and 21st century missions and so forth.
Now can you understand that in 1899 Christians
were excited about the coming of the 20th
century?
And in fact were praying that the 20th
century might be a century of the not
pouring of the Holy Spirit.
There is a well-known Christian journal of
more liberal theology called the Christian Century.
It was founded at that time and they
gave it the title the Christian Century because
they felt quite sure that the 20th century
would be the Christian Century.
Of course they didn't know what the Lord
knew, that there would occur two of the
bloodiest wars in the history of the world,
and a great economic depression, and two if
not three major revolutions.
They didn't know that, but the Lord knew.
Now you can understand then that at the
very beginning people were praying for the revival
to come in the 20th century.
At Moody Bible Institute they were having all
nights of prayer.
At the Keswick Convention in England.
I found in my research is way up
in the hills of India in the Nilgiri
Hills they had special meetings of ministers and
missionaries to pray for a revival throughout India.
It seemed to be part of the pattern
all over the world, whether at home or
on the mission field, Christians were praying for
revival in the 20th century.
I made another interesting discovery.
The two main topics of scripture study at
that time were on the person of the
Holy Spirit and in 1 John chapter 1.
You may wonder why, but that's the chapter
that contains the verse, if we confess our
sins he is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.
A very significant verse in the coming of
revival.
Now revival came in the 20th century and
it was the most extensive of all the
revivals.
I mentioned that the 1858 revival was the
most approved, most unanimously welcomed.
But the movement of the 20th century turned
out to be the most extensive.
It affected Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples, Lutherans,
Methodists, Presbyterians and Reformed Churches and other evangelical
bodies throughout Europe and North America and Australasia
and South Africa and the daughter churches on
the mission fields throughout Asia and Africa and
Latin America.
By the way, Dr. Paul Ramsey, a very
famous Princeton professor, made a statement some years
ago in writing a preface to Gabriel Vahanian's
book on the death of God.
He said that every great revival in the
past 300 years had revived less and less
of Christendom and each such revival was less
and less an enduring revival.
I would say the very opposite.
I did write to Professor Ramsey and asked
him on what criteria he made this judgment.
I never got an answer.
They don't answer these questions.
When I come to write a book on
revival, giving the whole breadth, I think I'll
take him up.
It's worth taking up.
But that's the impression that people have been
given, that these great revivals are the thing
of the past, that they don't happen anymore.
I still remember a student at Chicago asking
Professor William Warren Sweet, why don't we have
these great revivals nowadays?
He said, why don't we have dinosaurs?
The climate has changed.
But I find that the Holy Spirit works
in the same way.
The pattern is found in the first two
chapters of the Acts.
Now, why did this great revival of 1905
occur at the time it did?
I came across a very interesting paragraph in
the official biography of Wilbur Chapman, the great
evangelist.
His biographer said in review of these very
years, God in gracious providence was reaping a
spiritual harvest before he permitted the outburst of
revolutionary forces.
The harvest is gathered before the field is
doomed to death.
This has happened internationally and nationally.
It's very interesting that revival has begun in
Korea before Korea has faced trouble.
Now, the story of the 1905 revival is
a very fascinating one.
I had a letter just two days ago
from a well-known congregational pastor, Dr. Martin
Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel, since retired.
He said to me once, if you're interested
in the Welsh revival, get the records of
the church at Newquay in Cardigan.
I found that about ten months before the
outbreak of the great revival in Wales, a
local revival began in a church in Cardigan.
The minister was Joseph Jenkins, who was what
we call a Keswick man.
Most people in America have heard the word
Keswick, but they only have a vague idea
of what it means.
The Keswick Convention is committed to a view
of holy living, which might be summed up
in a word, a crisis with a view
to a process.
Protestants tend to be divided at this point.
They either believe that sanctification is a second
work of grace, as the Methodists and Nazarenes
and Salvation Army do, or else they believe
it's growth and grace, as the Baptists and
Congregationalists and Presbyterians do.
Keswick believes in both.
They believe in a crisis with a view
to a process.
In other words, a Christian must come to
a place in his life where he says,
Lord, you're going to have all of me
there is.
Then he really grows in grace after that.
Joseph Jenkins was a Keswick man.
He was greatly concerned over the spiritual life
of his young people, and one Sunday morning
he said to them in their meeting before
church time, what does Jesus Christ mean to
you?
These were decent young people, but their meeting
was more a social gathering.
Oh yes, they sang hymns and prayed, read
the scripture, but it was their social focus,
and they were embarrassed with the question.
Finally one boy spoke up and he said,
Jesus Christ is the light of the world.
Jenkins said, that's very nice, but that's not
what I mean.
What does he mean to you?
In that meeting there was a girl called
Florrie Evans who had been converted only three
weeks.
She said fervently, I love the Lord Jesus
with all my heart.
Immediately a hush fell in that group.
In fact, that was the beginning of a
revival among the young people.
Joseph Jenkins formed them into teams and traveled
around with them giving testimony as he preached.
Jesse Penn Lewis wrote to the Life of
Faith in London and said, a cloud no
bigger than a man's hand had arisen in
Wales.
That still wasn't the public side of the
revival.
I wonder if anyone here knows a Presbyterian
minister, Dr. Peter Joshua?
Yes, someone does.
He has spoken at Fuller Samuel many times.
He's retired, living in Port Wynemy.
He is the surviving son of a famous
Presbyterian evangelist called Seth Joshua.
Seth Joshua was what we call the stated
evangelist of the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales.
Some Fuller students think I'm joking when I
speak of the Calvinistic Methodists, but the Calvinistic
Methodists were the followers of George Whitefield.
He was a Methodist, but he was a
Calvinist.
They are now known as the Presbyterian Church
of Wales, but they were known in those
days as the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales.
Seth Joshua went down to Newquay in September
of 1904 to conduct what the British call
a mission.
We would call it a campaign.
A week of meetings.
I've read his diary.
You'll find his diary in the National Archives
of Wales in Aberystwyth.
19th, he said, revival is breaking out, especially
among the young.
He said, last night I closed the meeting
several times, but it went on without any
help from me.
In other words, he pronounced a benediction, and
the young people just went on praising the
Lord and praying and so forth.
He couldn't close the meeting until one o
'clock in the morning.
There they were having a renewed revival.
He went from there to Newcastle Emlyn College,
where the students studied for the Presbyterian ministry.
At that college were two students who were
roommates.
One called Evan Roberts, a coal miner, 26
years of age.
His roommate was Sidney Evans, who afterwards married
his sister.
Seth Joshua told the theological students what had
happened in Newquay.
They were so excited they asked the principal
permission to close down classes so that they
could go to Seth Joshua's next meetings in
a Welsh town called Blaenannach.
They had good evening meetings.
The church was crowded.
But at ten o'clock in the morning,
the attendance wasn't so good, because the women
with children didn't have babysitters in those days,
and only elderly women who could take the
time off in the morning came to the
meetings.
Maybe a dozen or two dozen elderly women
and a couple of pastors and these theological
students.
But it was in that meeting that Seth
Joshua prayed in Welsh, O our glued pligny,
O Lord, bend us.
The Welsh word bend is much more significant
than the English word.
Evan Roberts was in that meeting, and he
went forward of his own accord and knelt
at the front with great agony and tears,
praying, O God, bend me.
He knew that the spiritual crisis of his
life had arrived.
I talked to a professor, a Russian by
the way, whom I met at Columbia Bible
College in South Carolina, who said he saw
the tears on that chair.
Now, Evan Roberts went back to college, but
he found it very hard to study Greek
under these circumstances.
And finally, he went to Principal Phillips and
he said, I want to go home.
I keep hearing a voice that says, you
must go home and speak to the young
people.
Mr. Phillips, he said, is that the voice
of the spirit or is that the voice
of the devil?
And Principal Phillips says, the devil never gives
orders like that.
So you can take a week off.
So Evan Roberts took a train back home,
went to see his parents.
They said, what are you doing home?
We thought you were studying for the ministry.
The first thought was he had been expelled.
Oh no, he had come to preach for
the young people.
Where?
In our church.
But we didn't hear about it.
Well, the minister hasn't asked me yet.
So he went to see the minister.
Now, I wonder what Pastor Orton would do
if some zealous youngster here went to Moody
Bible Institute and after eight weeks came back
and said he wanted to hold a campaign.
I think the pastor would be careful not
to hurt his feelings, but it would be
even more careful not to hurt the people's
feelings.
And so the pastor said to Evan Roberts,
how about speaking for us on Monday night?
There's a prayer meeting on Monday night.
He didn't ask him to speak at the
prayer meeting, but he said to the people
at prayer, our young brother Evan Roberts feels
he has a message for you if you
care to wait behind, meaning it's up to
you.
And 17 people waited behind.
I wonder why they waited.
I can almost see them getting up to
go and then seeing Evan Roberts standing there.
And they all knew him.
They didn't want to disappoint him.
So they waited behind.
Instead of preaching, he spoke directly from the
Lord.
He said, I have a message for you
from the Lord.
You must confess any known sin to God
and put any wrong done to man right
again.
In the second place, you must put out
of your life any doubtful habit.
He said, you must obey the Holy Spirit
promptly.
You must confess your faith in Christ publicly.
Those became the four points of the Welsh
revival.
Nobody ever suggested you had to do that
for revival, but those were the messages that
Evan Roberts gave.
By 10 o'clock, all 17 had responded.
The pastor was so pleased, he said, would
you speak tomorrow night at the Mission Church?
He had them speak on Wednesday at the
midweek service.
On Thursday, they had a temperance meeting, but
they converted it into a general meeting.
On Friday, they had a class meeting, Calvinistic
Methodist style.
They converted that into a general meeting.
No meeting on Saturday.
On Sunday, a visiting clergyman preached, and the
pastor said, I'd love to give you the
pulpit, but Evan Roberts said, I understand.
He just sat in the congregation.
But after the evening service, the people demanded
an after-meeting and had Evan Roberts preach
again.
Then the meetings got hard.
I think it was the Wednesday.
At three o'clock in the morning, Evan
Roberts' mother got up and left the meeting.
At midnight, sensing the meeting was hard, Evan
Roberts said, we're going to pray all night
if need be.
And he meant it.
But his mother didn't agree with him, and
she left the meeting.
He followed her to the door.
He said, are you going home, mother?
She said, son, these people are tired, and
the meeting's hard, and you're stubborn, and these
people have to work in the morning.
So she went on home.
Evan and his brother Dan got home at
daybreak, went to bed to catch up on
their sleep.
Ten o'clock in the morning, they heard
someone weeping, and came downstairs.
The mother was sitting by the fireside with
her Bible on her lap.
She felt she'd grieved the Holy Spirit.
So they prayed with her, and they sang
a hymn together, and that night the break
came.
Now, you might say, what do you mean,
the break?
Well, I've read the Welsh newspapers of that
period, little snippets of what I call ecclesiastical
news.
The Reverend Peter Jones has just been appointed
chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's.
Very interesting, but not earth-shaking.
Then it said Mr. and Mrs. John Johnson
have volunteered for service in India under the
Missionary Society.
Then it said Butte Street Methodist Church has
had a very interesting rummage sale, and so
on.
Then suddenly a headline, Great Crowds of People
Drawn to Lahore.
That was Evan Roberts' hometown.
And it said for some days now, a
young man called Evan Roberts, a native of
the place, had been causing great surprise.
In fact, the main road that ran from
Flannery through to Swansea, right past that church,
was packed from wall to wall, people trying
to get into the church.
It said that shopkeepers were closing early to
find a place in the church, and steel
workers were coming directly from work in their
dungarees.
And now the news was out.
Newspapers always like a story, so they sent
a reporter down from Cardiff, and he described
this remarkable meeting.
He said it didn't end until 4.25
in the morning.
Even then the people didn't seem to want
to go home, because they were standing around
in the road discussing what was now the
most important thing in their life.
And then a very British remark.
He said, I felt that this was no
ordinary gathering.
On Saturday, every grocery shop in that area
was emptied of groceries by people coming to
the meetings.
On Sunday, every church was packed.
Evan Roberts wouldn't announce where he was preaching.
In fact, he'd just go from one church
to another.
He would just go all morning, like the
church would be full from early daybreak, and
he would just go from one church to
another.
Then after the revival began sweeping Wales, he
couldn't do that.
He couldn't go to all the churches.
He just went wherever he felt led.
Now here's the significant thing.
The very day that break occurred in South
Wales.
In North Wales, in a town called Rhos,
Dr. R.
B.
Jones, a very famous Baptist preacher, was conducting
a week of meetings and was drowned out
by simultaneous audible prayer.
The response to his preaching was so great
that people began to call upon the Lord
for mercy for their sins, and the volume
of prayer became so great they couldn't hear
the speaker, so it dissolved into a prayer
meeting.
And now it became simultaneous all over Wales.
I want you to understand this, because this
is one of the remarkable things about revival,
that there's a generality.
It's never tied to any one man's ministry.
There's always a generality.
It may raise up a great figure like
Moody, but in its initial stages, it's an
outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh.
I had a friend with whom I was
staying when I was a boy preacher.
His name was H.
J.
Galley.
He had just graduated, he told me, from
Spurgeon's College when he read in the newspapers
of the Welsh revival.
He thought, this I must see.
He sent a telegram to one of his
seminary classmates telling him, meet me off the
London Express tomorrow.
When he alighted at Rhondda, there was Williams
with a shining face.
So Galley said, is this really revival?
And Williams said in his enthusiastic way, it
is like the gate of heaven to our
souls.
Well, said Galley, I've come a long way,
I'd like to hear Evan Roberts preaching.
Where is he preaching?
He told me he was quite taken aback
when Williams said, I don't know, he doesn't
tell anyone.
But, said Galley, I thought he was the
leader of the revival.
Oh no, the Holy Spirit is.
Yes, said Galley, we always say that.
Nobody says he really is.
Look, brother Galley, he said, Evan Roberts might
show up in my church tonight, but it's
only one chance in a thousand.
But the Lord will be there in great
power.
So Galley said, you're having meetings too?
He said, my church has been packed for
six weeks.
He said, you mean the other churches are
using your churches for united meetings?
He said, every church in Rhondda is packed.
Galley said, when do you have the meetings?
He said, we start at six, and we
close at midnight.
He said, that's six in the morning, and
we close at midnight.
He said, not the same people.
Oh no, he said, first we have minors
going on shift.
Mid-morning we have housekeepers.
Noon, a united meeting.
Afternoon, school children.
But from six p.m. to midnight, the
place will be packed.
Galley said, how do you keep up with
the preaching?
And Williams left.
He said, I haven't preached for six weeks.
He said, I don't need to preach.
He was more there like a coach, if
you know what I mean, coaching the others
as it were.
So Galley said, who preached last night?
Well, he said, I didn't keep track of
it.
You couldn't keep track of this.
About seventeen people, I suppose, including an old
granny of seventy-eight and a boy of
twelve.
Now this was what was happening all over
Wales.
Not only in that time, but in town
after town, all over Wales simultaneously.
It can be documented.
Not only where Evan Roberts was, but whether
he was there or not.
I can document these things.
On one occasion, he arrived at a big
church where they weren't expecting him.
But they were glad to see him, of
course.
There were between two and three thousand people
in the church.
So they asked him to say a word.
He began by saying, how many of you
believe the promises of God?
A great roar of Amen.
He said, would you agree with me that
a promise made by the Lord Jesus is
especially precious?
Yes, yes.
Do any of you remember a verse that
says where two or three are gathered together
in my name, there am I in the
midst?
Amen.
Do you believe it?
Yes, yes.
Great roar from the crowd.
Do you really believe it?
Yes.
They were going to convince him that they
believed it.
He said, then is Jesus here?
And they all shouted, yes, Amen.
Then said Evan Roberts, you don't need me.
So he put on his hat and coat
and went to another meeting.
Well, what did they do?
Sing a closing hymn and go home?
No, the meeting went on until two o
'clock in the morning.
Well, maybe not two.
It became a rule after a while, no
meetings after twelve midnight.
But the meeting went on till midnight.
I have a friend, a congregational preacher called
Merton Lewis.
He lives in Birmingham.
If he's still alive, he must be about
seventy-eight.
He told me, when he was a boy
of seven, the revival came to his home
town.
His father was a miner.
He came home from the early shift at
three in the afternoon, took a bath, put
on his Sunday clothes, and said, come mother,
we're going to the meeting.
When they got to the meeting, the big
church was packed out at four o'clock
in the afternoon.
They couldn't get in, but when they saw
a mother with children, they made room for
her.
Evan Roberts came at seven o'clock that
evening.
The church was so packed, he had to
walk on the shoulders of the men to
get into the pulpit.
Climbed up over the pulpit.
He got up and said one word in
Welsh, gwelywm.
That's three words in English, let us pray.
And immediately, all eighteen hundred people began to
pray.
I said to Merton Lewis, well now, was
it just ejaculatory prayer?
You know, when you go to some meetings
where they all say Jesus, Jesus, amen, hallelujah,
you know the way they keep murmuring while
somebody else is praying.
No, each person was praying his own prayer.
One man would be praying, oh God, give
me another chance, Lord, give me another chance,
I'll put things right.
And perhaps a mother was saying, Lord, my
son, my son.
And perhaps a theological student was saying, Lord,
I'll go to the mission field, I don't
want a big church, I'll go to the
mission field, and so on.
One man said, would you stop praying and
tell me how I can become a Christian.
That's what was happening.
They never heard another word out of Evan
Roberts.
Now, of course, these meetings were described by
those who were outsiders as noisy, because everybody
praying, of course, sounded noisy.
But at ten o'clock, Evan Roberts left
the meeting.
It took him quite an effort to get
out, as it did to get in.
The family with whom he stayed said he
prayed all night, but Merton Lewis told me
that his father, about two o'clock in
the morning, said, come mother, we must get
the children to bed.
So they forced their way out, had to
walk home in the drizzle, put the children
to bed, but Merton Lewis's father slept in
the rocking chair until daybreak, went to the
mines, came back at three in the afternoon,
took a bath, put on his Sunday clothes,
and went back to the same meeting going
full tilt.
Now, can you understand what I mean by
something unusual in times of revival?
Well, you've heard of this sort of thing
at Asbury College or sometime back at Wheaton
College, but can you imagine this happening in
the majority of churches in Pasadena?
Because that's what happened in Wales.
R.B. Jones was preaching, every minister was,
of course, his own evangelist.
At the same time, they couldn't keep up
with all day meetings, so whoever was raised
up of God preached.
Some people say there was no Bible teaching
in the Welsh revival.
It's quite true that most of the time
was taken by testimony and confession, prayer and
singing, but the amount of preaching during the
revival was ten times as much as before
the revival.
The social effects were astounding.
Drunkenness was cut in half.
I have the records of arrests for drunkenness
for five years, and for about three years
after the revival, they stayed cut in half.
There was a wave of bankruptcies all over
Wales due to the revival.
Tavern after tavern couldn't pay for its booze
and went bankrupt.
Sometimes the churches very gleefully bought out the
tavern and used it as a youth club.
David Lloyd George, who became Prime Minister of
Great Britain, later said that the total sale
of liquor in his hometown on Saturday night,
the drinking night of the week, was fourpence
ha'penny, nine cents.
The Swansea police in Swansea, the industrial city
of South Wales, said on New Year's Eve,
the drinking night of the year, there were
no arrests for drunkenness at all.
I found in Radnorshire and Marionthshire, within a
year of the beginning of the revival, the
illegitimate birth rate dropped forty-four percent.
It didn't drop as low as that in
Glamorgan, it only went down eight percent, but
even eight percent is a very significant drop.
District councils met to discuss what to do
with the police now that they were unemployed.
In fact, in one district council where I
had the records, some councillors suggested, well, we
must dismiss half of the police force.
And a minister who was a councillor said,
that's not very fair to men who have
dedicated their lives to the protection of the
community.
So they sent for the sergeant of the
police, and they said, Sergeant Roberts, what do
you do with your time now?
Well, he said, before the revival, we had
two main functions.
One was to prevent crime, and the other
was to control crowds, you know, like a
football game on Saturday and so forth.
He said, since the revival, there's practically no
crime, so we go with the crowds.
They said, what does that mean?
Well, he said, you know where the crowds
are.
We have seventeen police in our station.
We've got three policemen's quartets.
If any church wants a quartet, they just
call the police.
I came across a case of a policeman
on the island of Anglici on duty outside
a courtroom, I suppose to prevent any unauthorized
flight from the courtroom.
When he heard a burst of singing from
the courtroom, rushed in to see what had
happened.
The prisoner at the bar had broken down
and wept and confessed he was a sinner.
The judge took his gavel and suspended the
court for the moment, said, I would like
to speak to you as a Christian man.
The judge pointed the prisoner to the Lord,
the prisoner accepted Christ as Savior, the jury
burst into one of those great Welsh hymns,
and the policeman stayed and added his base
to the choir.
In court after court, judges were presented with
white gloves, not a case to try.
No rapes, no robberies, no murders, no embezzlements,
nothing.
Sounds incredible.
Profanity was reduced everywhere.
In fact, there was a slowdown in the
coal mines.
He said, well, how can a religious revival
cause a strike?
Not a strike.
Actually, the management and the miners on each
shift would meet for a prayer meeting before
the strike.
They allowed the miners to have prayer meetings
on company time, because the production rate was
up so much.
But 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.
Archdeacon Wilberforce referred to this in Westminster Abbey,
and Merton Lewis told me, yes, he said,
my father told me about it.
In fact, his father told him that there
was one profane haulier, they called him, the
man that operated the horses.
He had just been converted, and the horse
didn't understand him.
And finally, he said, come on, Betty, I
can't swear at you.
Come on now, girl, come on, come on,
Betty.
Betty couldn't understand.
Betty just put her ears flat, you know.
So the miner took off his hat and
he said, well, I can't swear at you,
but I can pray for you.
So there's no question about this.
This was in all the newspapers, everywhere.
They admitted that the ethical results of the
revival were just astounding.
Martin Lloyd-Jones said to me, I didn't
know the Welsh revival affected England.
I saw on Christianity Today an article by
a friend of mine in which he mentioned
again, why didn't the Welsh revival touch England?
It swept all over England.
The Archbishop of Canterbury called for a day
of prayer.
The Bishop of London laid aside his miter,
cope, and staff and went out preaching the
gospel in the Church of England throughout London.
Cosmo Lange, who became Archbishop of Canterbury later,
preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on oil for
your lamps.
Thirty English bishops met to discuss what was
to be the attitude of the Church of
England to the revival.
The first speaker was the Bishop of St.
Asaph's, and he said, Fathers and Brethren, I
have just come from Oswestry in Shropshire, that's
in England, where in a single parish church
I confirmed 950 new converts.
The bishops voted in favour.
The Midland Railway ran excursions to Nuneaton, to
the prayer meetings near Birmingham.
In Motherwell in Scotland near Glasgow the streets
were packed from wall to wall, and when
the excitement of the revival died down a
bit, seven churches and four public halls were
packed nightly.
The revival broke out in Lurgan in Ireland,
so it became general.
Except that in England, Scotland, and Ireland, nothing
happened that surpassed what happened in Wales.
Wales seemed to be the demonstration model, and
after a while the newspapers took it as
nothing new.
But I can give you this place called
Kirkby-Steven, up in what's now called Cumbria
in England, not far from Keswick, where they
had a big political rally.
And two members of Parliament came up to
address this huge rally, and they called on
someone to lead in prayer, but whoever it
was got carried away, and it became a
wonderful prayer meeting, but they never did hear
the political speakers.
So it became a religious meeting.
This revival swept Norway, under the leadership of
Albert Lunde, whom I knew and for whom
I preached.
I knew Evan Roberts, too, in the 30s.
In fact, the revival in Norway was so
great that the Norwegian Parliament passed special legislation
to permit laymen to offer Holy Communion to
the converts.
The clergy couldn't keep up with it.
The revival broke out in Sweden.
In Denmark, the Lutheran Home Mission, Indre Mission,
reported that they hadn't had a winter like
it since Christianity came to the Vikings.
I remember, to my great surprise, seeing in
a German textbook that God graciously revived his
people in Germany before those dark days of
World War I.
The revival broke out in Imperial Russia, under
a man called Fetler, who was a student
at Spurgeon's College and went back to Russia.
Great revival in 1905 in St. Petersburg.
Now, you know, of course, this news was
bound to reach the United States.
It was in every newspaper.
I found out some interesting things.
For instance, at the beginning of the twentieth
century, the Methodists had a Methodist forward movement.
The Baptists had a Baptist advance.
The Congregationalists had their movement.
Everyone was going to do something for the
Lord at the beginning of the twentieth century.
I found from the Methodist figures that they
were going to win two million souls to
Christ, and they raised a fund of twenty
billion dollars to do it.
But nothing much happened.
They had a few thousand converts.
One Methodist said, God waited until we got
our project out of the way, and then
he sent us the great revival.
Because the revival came in 1905.
For a long time I've studied the subject
of revival, and in fact people used to
refer to my writings on the subject, but
I didn't know about this revival until maybe
seven years ago now.
I was reading through some files of the
Christian Alliance Weekly, now called The Witness, I
think, in which in January of 1906, surveying
1905, it said, 1905 has been the year
of the Holy Ghost.
What are they referring to?
Then I discovered that everywhere in the United
States there was revival in 1905.
Yet I wrote a book in 1965 for
Professor F.
F.
Bruce, in a series in Church History, in
which I said that although Wales had the
great revival in 1904, there was nothing significant
in 1905 in the United States.
This isn't true.
What happened was, all the Protestant 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.
The same thing happened in St. Louis, in
Louisville, in Cincinnati, in San Francisco, everywhere in
the country.
They had meetings of ministers to discuss what
to do.
I noticed an interesting thing.
The Southern Baptist said, we are, as usual,
doing the inconsistent thing.
We read that the Welsh revival was born
in prayer and has no machinery, so we
get all our machinery working in order to
have revival.
That's the American response.
If they heard of a great revival beginning,
let's say, in Scotland or New Zealand or
something like that, then they'd try to form
committees to organize it here.
It doesn't come that way.
It actually broke out in Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania.
Anyone here from Pennsylvania?
Well, you know where Wilkesbury is?
A lot of people of Welsh extraction there,
who had worked in the mines, began a
little Baptist church of Welsh-speaking people, who
were excited by the letters they were getting
from Wales.
The pastor in one month baptized 127, mostly
men.
It spread from Wilkesbury to Scranton.
When it reached Philadelphia, the Methodists alone had
6,000 on trial membership.
That means new converts.
It broke out in Pittsburgh, Newcastle.
It jumped to Schenectady.
I've got a very good friend there, I
shouldn't have mentioned it because I can't remember
his name.
He never heard of this.
Yet when I was looking up the Schenectady
papers to see if I could find any
trace of the revival, I found the Schenectady
Gazette was running a column called Yesterday's Conversions.
If you want to know who was converted
yesterday, they had a special column in the
paper.
When the revival reached New York City, before,
2,200 in Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church, they
took in 384, mostly heads of families.
When the revival reached the Brooklyn Baptist Tabernacle,
500 waited behind for counsel, one meeting.
The revival swept New England like a tidal
wave.
It broke out everywhere.
For instance, in Atlantic City, the ministers reported
of a population of 60,000.
To their knowledge, there were only 50 people
left unconverted.
That doesn't mean the whole population was converted
in the revival, but it meant so many
were converted that to their knowledge there were
only 50 adults holding out.
The revival swept the South.
The First Baptist Church in Paducah in Kentucky
received 1,000 new members in two months.
The pastor was an old man, Dr. J.
J.
Cheek, and he died of overwork.
The Baptist said a glorious ending to a
devoted ministry.
They said that the revival rolled through Houston
like a tidal wave.
In Chicago, the ministers got together and arranged
a central clearinghouse prayer meeting.
The ministers all met at ten o'clock
in the morning to discuss what was going
on, and one after another would report simply,
My church has never seen such a blessing
as we're having today.
And they were getting converts as well as
seeing the church members revived.
In Lansing, in Michigan, a Methodist church reported
700 converts, of whom a certain number joined
the church.
This is what struck me.
They claimed 700 converts, of whom 740 joined
the church.
They must have picked up 40 in the
way or something to the membership meeting, but
they said this is no guesswork.
I think it was the 20th of January,
1905, that the mayor of Denver called for
a day of prayer.
At ten in the morning, all churches were
filled.
At noon, all the theaters were filled.
Every school was closed.
The Colorado legislature closed.
And they said Denver never saw a winter
like it.
The only man I ever met who ever
heard of this was Joshua Gravett of Denver.
He was pastor in Galilee Baptist Church, long
since dead and gone.
In Portland, in Oregon, 240 department stores signed
an agreement among themselves to close each day
from 11 to 2 for prayer, so that
nobody would cheat, to allow their employees and
customers to go.
The report said from boot blanks to bank
presidents, all for soup, money making for prayer.
You find the same sort of report from
Seattle.
I find that just at the height of
the revival, Wilbur Chapman was in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles had a population of about 100
,000 at that time.
And yet, Wilbur Chapman had the same attendance
that Billy Graham had when Los Angeles had
a population of over two million.
You read of great demonstrations.
You know, we've had dry weather, but when
it rains here, it rains heavily.
But great demonstrations, marching through the streets, picking
up all the drunks and prostitutes and taking
them to the Grand Opera House to be
converted.
I taught a Bible class at Temple Baptist
for a while.
They were making renovations to the auditorium, and
Paul Copp asked me to come teach a
Bible class at the worship time.
And he said to me, I never heard
of this.
Well, I said, why don't you look it
up in your own records?
Doesn't any deacon have records anywhere?
Next Sunday, he said, you know, our church
took in 500 new members.
Temple pastor was a man called Burdett.
Yes, that's what Burdett Hall was named for.
This was happening in Redlands, San Bernardino, all
around.
Do any of you know Dr. Arnold Bold,
the secretary of the Baptist City Mission here?
He said to me, I suppose that would
explain why the Baptist City Mission was founded
in 1906.
I said, yes, it also explains why Biola
was founded.
The Bible Institute of Los Angeles was built
in that revival.
Whoever tells you these things?
The movement was felt in Canada from Newfoundland
to the coast of British Columbia.
Dr. Oswald Smith, with whom I was associated
for a long time, or he's still my
good friend, said to me, well, I never
heard of this revival.
I said, Dr. Smith, I found out that
First Baptist Church in Winnipeg was turning thousands
away.
So we talked about it, and I said,
well, when will you convert it?
He said, 1905.
He couldn't see the forest for the single
tree.
I find that church membership in the United
States in seven major Protestant denominations increased by
more than two million in five years.
In 1906, it had 870,389 new communicants,
not counting the Pentecostals and the Nazarenes and
the new denominations.
In Britain, it's very hard to count numbers
because the Church of England doesn't keep record
of them.
If a man is baptized and confirmed and
then is converted, he doesn't resign from the
church and join over again.
So it's very hard to get totals there.
But in the free churches, there were 300
,000 conversions.
There were phenomenal awakenings throughout India.
Every part of India was swept by this.
In Telugu country, that's Andhra, they had meetings
lasting from five to ten hours.
It began with the phenomenon of the rushing
mighty wind.
I have a report written by a medical
missionary, Dr. David Downey.
He said that in 1906, it was agreed
that the Telugu church should pray until the
blessing of revival came.
This continued for ten days, with the meetings
getting bigger and more intense.
Then he said, while someone was praying, the
spirit came with power.
He said there was a sound of distant
thunder, and then the whole meeting was enveloped
in prayer of confession.
Some crying out, some beating of their breasts.
This went on until two o'clock in
the morning.
I find in India, the Christian population increased
sixteen times as fast as the Hindu population
during that revival decade.
Burma, in gatherings, surpassing anything known in the
history of the mission.
In China, sweeping movement, 1903, 1905, 1906, and
then 1908 under Jonathan Goforth.
Dr. Andrew Gee is the surviving evangelist of
the great Chinese revival of 1927-1939, and
he told me he hadn't heard of this.
Yet, the number of Protestant communicants in that
decade doubled to a quarter of a million.
The number in the evangelical community, half a
million.
So it shows that something was happening.
Perhaps the most remarkable revival of all was
in Korea.
Now, you know that Billy Graham's biggest meeting
was not in the United States, but in
Seoul.
The police reported an attendance of over a
million.
But one of the fuller graduates, Joon-Gon
Kim, was greatly taken with Bill Bright's idea
of layman's institute.
You know what I mean by layman's institute?
Where laymen get together to study soul winning,
and to memorize texts to use, and so
forth.
Use methods of speaking to people.
What they do is, they expect maybe 500
people will sign up and pay so much
in advance, and all the rest of it.
Joon-Gon Kim had this all over Korea,
but two summers ago, he had a big
one in Seoul, and 347,000 signed up
and paid.
And the evening meetings were open to the
public.
The police reported an attendance of well over
a million.
I've heard those figures challenged.
I've seen pictures of the vast crowd, but
I've heard the figures challenged.
Let's say they exaggerated, and there were only
half a million people in the meeting.
But this began in 1907.
The Presbyterians had a wonderful idea.
North Korea has a climate like Saskatchewan.
The ground's frozen for three months.
The farmers can't work outside, it's too cold.
The Presbyterians said, why not get them into
town for Bible school?
They can stay with their relatives.
It will be a festival occasion.
It was very successful.
They liked the idea.
In 1907, in January, they had Central Church
packed with men, 1,500 men, and Southgate
Church packed with women.
And in the Central Church there came a
great spirit of prayer.
Now, Dr. Graham Lee was moderator of the
Bible School, an American.
He said, brusquely, before we get to the
business of Bible study, let's have a short
season of prayer.
Mr. Kim, would you open with prayer?
Mr. Young, would you conclude?
One or two others, but Mr. Young, be
ready to conclude.
You know what I mean, like, let's have
some prayer, but not too much.
When Mr. Kim was praying, at least half
a dozen stood waiting their turn to pray.
When the second person started to pray, there
were at least a dozen on their feet.
After five or so had prayed, Mr. Young
tried to conclude, but somebody beat him to
it every time.
Finally, he gave up and sat down.
So Graham Lee shouted, stop!
He finally stopped the praying.
He said, look, you seem to want to
pray.
All right, then we'll make this a prayer
meeting.
You may pray.
He was quite taken aback when all 1
,500 began to pray aloud.
He had never seen that in a Presbyterian
meeting before.
Now, at Duarte, at the missionary retirement home,
I talked to a dear old ex-Korea
missionary, Dr. William Newton Blair.
He died at the age of 93.
He was in that meeting.
He said the effect was beyond imagination.
Not confusion, but a vast harmony of sound
and spirit, he said.
And as the prayer continued, there was an
intense conviction of sin.
Every man's sins seemed to be rising before
him.
Now, not only every Korean, but missionaries would
be suddenly convicted of jealousy of another missionary,
and that sort of thing.
A Korean elder got up to confess a
grudge against an American missionary.
Actually, it was Dr. Blair, against Dr. Blair.
And Dr. Blair wanted to offer forgiveness publicly.
He was going to do it by saying,
Heavenly Father, bless our dear brother who has
so courageously confessed his faults.
He never got any further than up, oh
gee, Heavenly Father.
When, it said, with a rush, some power
seemed to take over the meeting.
He said men were standing at their feet,
calling out for an opportunity to humble themselves.
Others were so convicted, they were beating their
fists against their heads.
This went on until two in the morning,
when the missionaries couldn't take it anymore and
brought it to a halt.
Next morning, the missionaries had an emergency meeting.
One said, we prayed for revival, but we
didn't expect this.
But after a storm, there will be a
calm, and we'll teach them the word of
God.
That night, they had their plans well laid,
but the Holy Spirit took the meeting out
of their hands again, and the conviction began
again, and went on all week until everyone
that professed the name of Christ had faced
the issues of his life.
I asked Dr. Newton Blair if there were
any holdouts.
He said, yes, there were some that hardened
their hearts.
There was one man, an elder, who got
up and mumbled some prayer, Lord forgive me,
but he wouldn't confess his faults, whatever they
were, until a woman's confession exposed him.
So they removed him from eldership.
The last the missionaries heard of him, he
had become owner of a brothel.
95% of all college students were converted
in Korea that year.
If you want the significance of it, John
Wesley, after 50 years, left 70,000 Methodists
in England.
In the Korean Revival, there were 79,221
added to the Church rolls permanently.
These are subject to verification.
Yet, I must confess, a lot of people
are more impressed by the number of white
people converted than the number of Orientals or
black people.
They seem to think if an American is
converted, that's a greater work of grace than
a lot of these Africans getting converted.
No, no.
There was a recession after that, and that's
worth discussing.
An American Methodist missionary had a wonderful idea.
Why not in 1910, three years after the
Revival, why shouldn't we have a great soul
-winning crusade?
So they worked out that the Methodists would
be responsible for winning 200,000 to Christ.
Then they shared the idea with the Presbyterians
and others, and they worked out that for
the whole of Korea, they were going to
win a million souls to Christ.
It was called the Million Souls Crusade.
They even had Chapman and Alexander help them
kick it off.
What was the outcome?
They had 15,000 conversions.
That would be wonderful in a normal year,
but when you're aiming for a million, 15
,000 isn't so many.
Most Koreans felt that the Million Souls Crusade
was a failure.
What lesson do we learn from this?
Then there came a time of dryness, and
then a renewal, and 300,000 church population.
Today, about one-third of all South Koreans
are members of Evangelical churches.
The Awakening touched Indonesia.
100,000 Evangelicals in 1903 became 300,000
within seven years.
In one little island, Nias, just after that,
300,000 people were converted in a phenomenal
revival.
The same sort of thing happened in Madagascar.
There was an unusual revival in Brazil, Mexico,
and Chile.
Those three countries are still the leading countries
for Evangelicalism in Latin America.
The Edinburgh World Missionary Conference said that more
progress had been made in all Africa in
the first decade of the twentieth century than
experienced hitherto.
I found in that decade the communicants had
risen from 300,000 to 500,000.
David Barrett, who has the computers for the
World Council of Churches' World Church Handbook, says
that within a generation, Africa will in the
main be a Christian continent, and the number
of Africans, he said, has been increasing faster
than the population explosion since 1910.
Why 1910?
It was an ecumenical awakening in the best
senses of the word.
I've been asked in these meetings twice.
There's no evidence of any response among the
Roman Catholics or the Greek Orthodox.
Some people have said to me, does that
mean that revival doesn't touch them?
The Roman Catholic churches had spiritual renewal, but
it takes quite a different pattern.
It generally issues in the formation of a
new order, an elite, until John XXIII.
And since John XXIII, there have been grassroots
movements in the Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical and
Charismatic.
I say that deliberately, because there are Evangelical
movements that are not necessarily charismatic.
My friends in the Charismatic movement tell me
that the Roman Catholic Charismatics are the most
moderate of the Charismatics.
In other words, they're quite willing to accept
evidence for the fulfilling of the Holy Spirit,
other than one single gift.
What about the social impact of the revival?
Throughout Britain, there was unanimity over the high
ethical character of the movement.
I told you about Wales.
It reduced crime, promoted honesty, inculcated truthfulness, and
produced chastity.
Drunkenness and gambling were sharply curtailed.
It was the same in the United States.
A wave of morality went over this country.
I saw in the Methodist Review, reviewing the
previous year, it said during the past 12
months, we've had a revival of national righteousness.
It said it had revived the public conscience,
overthrowing corrupt officials, crossing party lines, electing governors,
senators, assemblymen, mayors, and district attorneys of recognized
honesty.
For instance, they had a very corrupt civic
government in Philadelphia.
The Christians went to the polls and voted
them out, put in a Christian mayor.
Washington Gladden, the Congregationalist who was called the
father of the social gospel, a man with
a very sensitive social conscience, we remember him
for having written a hymn called, O Master,
Let Me Walk With Thee.
He said he was assured that the General
Awakening was creating a moral revolution in the
lives of the people.
There are many more things I could say
about this awakening, but this all happened just
before World War I.
And as I quoted about Wilbur Chapman, it
seemed as if God were gathering a harvest
before the terrible days of the First World
War.
Now, to round out the discussion tonight, out
of the Welsh Revival period came two great
emphases.
I told you people were praying and studying
about the work of the Holy Spirit.
In the wake of the Welsh Revival, there
arose the Pentecostal movement.
Now, the General Revival was not glossolatic.
As in 1858, I found no evidence, for
instance, in Wales of speaking in tongues during
the intense conviction period of the Revival.
A rather well-known Pentecostal professor from Georgia
made the statement in one of his books
that speaking in tongues came from Wales to
Azusa Street in Los Angeles.
I phoned him up long distance, and I
said, I thought it was the other way
around.
Well, he said, I heard that some people
in Wales who had never spoken Welsh before
preached in Welsh.
I said, yes, indeed, but they knew what
they were saying.
For instance, Seth Joshua always had preached in
English until the Welsh Revival.
Then he was so enthusiastic during the Revival,
he preached in Welsh, which he had never
preached in before.
But that's not speaking in tongues.
Then, said Professor Simon, how did speaking in
tongues come to Wales?
Well, I said, the first occurrence was on
the 23rd of December, 1907, three years after
the Revival began.
It happened in a town called Wanllwyd, in
the Ebbw Vale, I think it is, and
in the home of the Reverend Thomas Maddox
Jeffreys at about 8.30 in the evening.
But beyond that, I wouldn't care to be
specific.
He said, I'll take your word for it.
I said, don't take my word for it.
I got it from George Jeffreys and Donald
Gee, the great Pentecostal leaders.
So the Pentecostal movement arose as a post
-Revival movement.
And actually, it had some connections with Pasadena.
The pastor of the First Baptist Church of
Los Angeles was a man called Joseph Smale.
His church sent him to the Holy Land
for a vacation, the most unusual thing in
those days.
He came back through Wales and saw such
a wonderful thing in the Revival.
As soon as he got back to Los
Angeles, he had a meeting that went on
for weeks and weeks describing what happened in
the Welsh Revival.
And the same sort of thing broke out
in Los Angeles.
But the meetings were spontaneous, as in Wales.
Anyone could speak who felt led of the
Spirit.
After a while, the deacons tried to control
it.
The result was Joseph Smale resigned.
He did a very Baptistic thing.
He founded the First New Testament Baptist Church
of Los Angeles.
They met in a hall called the Burbank
Hall.
Now, the same sort of Revival broke out
in First Methodist Church of Pasadena.
And some of the eager beavers from those
two churches got together and decided to pray
for something more.
They met in a private house in Bonny
Bray Street.
Some of you may know Bonny Bray Street.
There, the meetings were so hilarious, with hand
clapping and foot tramping and hallelujahs, that the
ceiling fell in on them.
So they looked for something more permanent, and
they found a little disused Methodist church on
Azusa Street.
And that became the granddaddy of the Pentecostal
movement.
So you could say that the Pentecostal movement
arose in the wake.
Oh, by the way, it began at Azusa
Street, this phenomenon of glossolalia, just after the
San Francisco earthquake.
And it spread from here all over the
world.
I'm not a Pentecostal, but I have to
admit that it's an evangelical denomination.
And if you travel in Latin America, you
know that they're on the ball there.
And they've done a remarkable work.
I don't accept some points that they stress.
Lord, we pray thee for our nation.
We pray thee for our state.
We pray thee for this great metropolitan area.
We pray thee for Pasadena, and we pray
thee for this congregation.
Lord, wilt thou not revive us again, that
thy people may rejoice in thee?
Lord, help us to learn the lesson.
It's not by might nor by power.
It's not by organization or chain of command.
But by my Spirit, saith the Lord.
Lord, teach us to pray for revival.
Now may grace, mercy, and peace from Father,
Son, and Spirit be our portion now and
always.
Amen.