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,
and that's what I want to talk about
tonight.
Now you can understand that if this were
the year 1999, everyone would be having a
special program or project for the next century.
And in 1899 that was the case.
For instance, the Methodists decided they were going
to evangelize the whole of the United States.
They raised $20 million, they said they were
going to win two million people to Christ,
and they also added, with the knowledge that
it was a nationwide movement, they believed they
could secure an awakening at the beginning of
the twentieth century.
But it didn't come that way.
One Methodist said, God wait until we got
our project out of the way before he
sent revival.
The same was true of the Baptists.
They had Baptist events.
The Presbyterians were engaged in a great evangelistic
crusade.
But from a spiritual point of view, there
are all nights of prayer at Moody Bible
Institute.
Over in England at the Keswick Convention they
had special prayer for revival in the twentieth
century.
In the Nilgiri Hills in India, the missionaries
and nationals were praying for revival in India.
There was the same sort of movement in
Korea at a place called Wonsan.
In Melbourne they had ten thousand people in
prayer circles praying for revival in the twentieth
century.
So you could say that it came about
in answer to prayer.
The worldwide awakening of the early twentieth century
came at the end of forty years of
evangelical advance.
Those were the days of Moody.
Those were the days of success.
In Wesley's day, the revival came after a
long night of infidelity.
But it was different.
This was more like a blaze of glory
at the end of the nineteenth century.
It was perhaps the most extensive evangelical awakening
of all time.
It affected revived Anglicans and Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples,
Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Reformed.
It spread throughout all of Europe and North
America, Australasia and Africa.
On the mission fields, more than five million
people were converted to God in the two
years of the greatest excitement of the revival.
And in the wake of the revival, there
arose the Pentecostal denominations.
Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones died earlier this year,
the famous Welsh preacher whose church was Westminster
Chapel in Buckingham Palace Road.
He said to me once, if you want
to find out something about the Welsh revival
and its beginnings, get the records of the
church at Newquay in Cardigan, which I did.
The pastor was a man called Joseph Jenkins.
He was what they call a Keswick man.
Most Americans don't understand, they've heard the word
Keswick, sometimes they pronounce it Keswick, but it's
Keswick.
By the way, this was the first year
that Keswick ever had a Pentecostal ordained minister
speak there, Chuck Smith.
But the Keswick movement was committed to holy
living.
You know that the Westlands, the Methodists, believe
in a crisis of commitment, whereas the Presbyterians
and Baptists believed in growth and grace.
Keswick emphasized a crisis with a view to
a process.
In other words, you get to the place
where you say, Lord, you can have all
of me, and then you go on grace.
So they combined both emphases.
Joseph Jenkins said to his young people one
Sunday morning, what does Jesus Christ mean to
you?
They were embarrassed.
Now they were decent young people, they always
began their meetings with prayer and singing.
They loved to get around the piano or
organ and sing Welsh hymns.
They would give little testimonies, generally recitations, if
you know what I mean.
But this was their Christian social club.
It just so happened they were church young
people.
They went on picnics together, that's where boy
met girl, and so forth.
Then there was a silence, and when Joseph
Jenkins asked a second time, a young fellow
spoke up and said, Jesus Christ is the
hope of the world.
He said, no, no, I don't mean that.
What does he mean to you?
A girl called Florey Evans, who had only
been converted three weeks, spoke up in first
love and said, I love the Lord Jesus
with all my heart.
And it was so sincere, there was a
sense of the presence of God in that
little meeting.
Joseph Jenkins formed the young people into a
team.
He went around preaching and used them for
testimony.
And Mrs. Jessie Penn Lewis, a famous woman
Christian in Wales, wrote to the Life of
Faith, a magazine in London, and said, there's
a cloud no bigger than a man's hand
arising in Wales.
Now, the outstanding evangelist of Wales at that
time was a Presbyterian called Seth Joshua.
His son, Dr. Peter Joshua, is retired, living
in Port Wynemy, around the California coast.
Seth Joshua went to that church for a
week of meetings, organized in the usual way.
But there was such power.
I have read his diary—you'll find it in
the National Archives of Wales—19th of September.
I tried to close the meeting several times
last night, but it went on without human
control.
Peter Joshua said his father would say, now,
young people, it's three minutes to twelve.
Tomorrow's another day.
So let's have a benediction, and you can
go home, and they'd have the benediction.
There'd be a slight pause, and then someone
would say, let us pray, and they'd start
again.
But he said, now, young people, it's after
twelve, tomorrow's another day.
Someone said, today is tomorrow, this is tomorrow
now.
Seth Joshua went from there, from the best
campaign he'd ever had in his life up
to that time—but he hadn't seen anything yet—and
he went to Newcastle Edmund College, where there
was a young coal miner, twenty-six years
of age, studying for the ministry.
His name was Evan Roberts.
I knew Evan Roberts well, but of course
not in 1904.
I'm not that old.
Evan Roberts was a very spiritual young man.
Taught Sunday school, but he worked in a
coal mine.
I tried to find out what he did.
On Sunday he went to church twice, he
went to Bible class in the Sunday school,
he went to a prayer meeting on Monday,
he went to a mission meeting on Tuesday,
the midweek service on Wednesday.
On Thursday he attended a temperance meeting, and
on Friday they had class meetings.
I couldn't find out from his diaries what
he did on Saturday night, but I think
I know.
In those days, in the homes of the
poor, on Saturday night each member of the
family had the right to use the kitchen
where there's a fire burning, to use the
old galvanized iron tub for a bath.
That's when they performed their ablutions.
You see, before World War I, there weren't
many bathrooms.
Do you know that there wasn't a bathroom
in Buckingham Palace in Queen Victoria's day?
You say, what did they do?
They used perfume.
When Evan Roberts heard of the moving of
the spirit in Yuki, his heart was moved.
The students petitioned the principal of the college
to close down classes for a week and
let them all go to the next meetings
being held by Seth Joshua.
And Principal Phillips said, you'll learn more in
one week of revival than in a year
of theological study.
So he closed down.
The meetings in the evening in Blainanach were
crowded, but in the morning at ten o
'clock not many people.
In those days young mothers didn't have babysitters.
People at work or school couldn't get away,
so just the students and some nice old
ladies at ten o'clock in the morning.
But the nice old ladies are often the
powerhouse of the church.
And it was in that meeting that Seth
Joshua prayed in Welsh, Oh, our Glywyd plig
me, Oh Lord bend us.
And Evan Roberts went forward with tears and
brokenness and prayed, Oh God bend me.
This was the beginning of the public phase
of the awakening.
Evan Roberts was so stirred up, he said
to his roommate, Sidney Evans, Do you think
God could give us a hundred thousand souls?
That sounded like big talk, but within five
months there were a hundred thousand Welsh people
converted from outside the churches, not counting all
those converted in the churches.
He took his savings out to pay his
way.
He said, I was so filled with the
Spirit, I was willing to pay God for
the privilege of preaching.
But he went to Principal Phillips, he said,
I can't concentrate on my studies, I keep
hearing a voice that says you must go
home and speak to the young people.
Mr. Phillips, is that the voice of the
Spirit or the voice of the devil?
And Principal Phillips said, the devil never gives
orders like that.
You can have a week off.
When he arrived home, his parents said, why
aren't you studying, are you in trouble?
No.
Well, why have you come home?
Well, I've come to speak to the young
people.
They said, we were in church on Sunday,
there was no announcement made.
The pastor doesn't know yet.
And what would you do if you're a
pastor of a church and a young fellow
just two months in Bible school came back
and said, I've come to preach.
The pastor was anxious not to hurt his
feelings, but not to hurt the congregation's feelings
either.
So he said, how about Monday night?
So Evan Roberts went Monday night, he didn't
ask him to speak to the prayer meeting,
but he simply said, our young brother Evan
Roberts feels he has a word for you
if you care to wait.
Seventeen people waited.
No doubt they all knew him and didn't
want to see him stand there alone.
But he got up and said, I have
a message for you from God.
You must confess any known sin to God
and put any wrong 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 ten o'clock, all seventeen had
responded.
The pastor was so pleased, he said, will
you speak at the mission service tomorrow night?
He spoke at the midweek service on Wednesday.
They converted the temperance meeting into a general
meeting, and on Friday they brought all the
classes together for a general meeting.
On Sunday, some visiting clergyman came to preach
by appointment.
So Evan Roberts sat in the pew with
his family.
But the people got up on Sunday evening
and said, we want to hear Evan Roberts
again.
And the pastor said, if I make it
right with the principal, could you stay another
week?
It was in the middle of that second
week, which was rather hard and tough, that
the break came.
Now you might say, what do you mean
the break?
I've read the Welsh newspapers of the period.
There were little snippets of church news, like
the Reverend Peter Jones has just been appointed
chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's.
That was very interesting to the Episcopalians, but
not earth-shaking, if you know what I
mean.
Then there were items like, Mowbray Methodist Church
has had a very interesting rummage sale.
Then suddenly a headline, great crowds of people
drawn to Lochor, that was Evan Roberts' home
town.
It said, for some days now, a young
man named Evan Roberts has been causing great
surprise in the Moriah Church.
It said, the main road between Swansea and
Llanelli, on which the church is situated, was
packed from wall to wall.
People trying to get into the church.
Shopkeepers were closing early to find a place.
Steelworkers and miners were coming in their dungarees.
Now the news was out.
The Western Mail sent down a reporter to
report on this.
He said it was a most unusual meeting.
The meeting, he said, had no structure.
It seemed to just go on.
It didn't close till 4.25 in the
morning.
And even then, people seemed unwilling to go
home.
And then a very British remark.
He said, I felt that this was no
ordinary gathering.
This was reported in the newspaper, and I
suppose every praying woman in Wales started to
pray.
On Saturday, every grocery store in that industrial
valley was emptied of groceries.
People coming to meetings.
And on Sunday, every church filled.
And then the revival broke like a flood.
Like the breaking of a great dam.
All over Wales.
The same week that the blessing came with
Evan Roberts in South Wales, in North Wales,
a Baptist preacher, R.B. Jones, was preaching,
when the praying of the people drowned out
his preaching.
And the revival was sweeping Wales.
Now you immediately think, then Evan Roberts became
the Billy Graham of Wales.
Nothing of the sort.
Billy Graham was an evangelist.
Evan Roberts was like a prophet.
A revivalist.
Speaking to the church.
He wouldn't even announce where he was having
meetings.
He went to one place, they weren't expecting
him.
But they were glad to see him.
He got up in the pulpit and he
said one word in Welsh, three words in
English.
Gwedion, let us pray.
That was all they ever heard him say.
Because immediately all 1800 people began to pray.
On another occasion he stood up and said,
How many of you believe the promises of
God?
There's a great roar of Amen.
Would you agree, he said, that a promise
made by the Lord Jesus is specially precious?
They all said yes.
Do you know one that says where two
or three are gathered in my name, there
am I in the midst?
Yes.
Do we have two or three here tonight?
Great roar of laughter, there are nearly 3000.
Is Jesus here?
Yes.
I ask you, is Jesus here?
Yes.
Do you believe it?
Yes.
Then he said, you don't need me.
He put on his hat and coat and
went to another meeting.
The impact of that revival was astounding.
As I said, 100,000 people from outside
the churches were added to the memberships.
Not counting maybe 100,000 more who were
converted who were already members.
When a man is a member of a
church and gets converted, he doesn't resign and
join again.
So it doesn't show in statistics.
Perhaps a quarter of a million people converted
in five months.
But of the 100,000 that joined the
churches, it's interesting that five years later, a
critic wrote a book to debunk the revival.
And his major criticism was that after five
years, only 75,000 still stood.
Only 75,000.
But did that mean that 25,000 converts
drifted away?
Not necessarily so.
First of all, Wales is a very poor
country and people are always emigrating to Canada,
to Pennsylvania, to Australia and so forth.
Or going to Liverpool in England to look
for a job or to Birmingham.
But the second factor was perhaps some of
the old members couldn't take the new life.
They were the ones that left.
In the third place, J.B. Morgan sort
of gave the game away.
He said many were lost to the admission
halls and to the Pentecostals.
What a way to be lost.
The social impact was equally powerful.
Judges were presented with white gloves.
Not a case to try.
Now if a man commits a murder in
Los Angeles, it may be a year before
he comes to trial, the calendar so crowded.
But in those British courts, the Chamberlain would
get up and say, Your Honour, there are
no cases to try.
No murders, no robberies, no rapes, no embezzlements,
nothing.
And often the judge was presented with white
gloves as a symbol of no cases to
try.
They had emergency meetings in the district councils
to discuss what to do with the police
now that they were unemployed.
Some had an affirmative program.
They said, well, we respect them for what
they want to do, although they have nothing
to do, so let's just continue to pay
them their salaries.
Others said, we're wasting money.
They called in a sergeant of the police
on one occasion.
What do you do with your time?
Well, he said, before the revival, there were
two main jobs.
One was to prevent crime, the other to
control crowds at football games, at market days,
that sort of thing.
Since the revival, there's practically no crime, so
we just go with the crowds.
A councillor said, what do you mean, police
spend their time directing traffic to meetings?
No, no.
He said, we have seventeen police in our
station, but we've got three good quartets.
If any church wants a quartet to sing,
they just notify the police.
Drunkenness was cut in half.
I have the figures for the county of
Glamorgan, in which Cardiff is situated.
Cut down from ten thousand arrests a year
to five thousand, within a year.
But there were a lot of bankruptcies.
You say, how could a revival cause a
bankruptcy?
Nearly all taverns couldn't sell their booze.
I came across a case in North Wales,
a place in Anglesey, where a policeman was
on duty outside a courtroom, when he heard
a burst of singing in the courtroom.
So strange to hear people sing in a
courtroom.
He rushed in.
He found the prisoner had broken down, and
confessed he was the sinner.
Asked this advocate not to defend him anymore.
The judge took his gavel and said, I
adjourn the court.
Now young man, may I speak to you,
not as a judge, but as a Christian.
And he told him, you have sinned against
society, but I want to tell you first
how to get right with God.
And the young man accepted Christ there.
And the jury burst into one of those
great Welsh hymns.
And the policeman added his bass to the
choir.
Now about seven years ago, I read three
articles in a leading Welsh newspaper attacking that
revival of 70 years before.
I felt my blood pressure rise.
They said Evan Roberts was an immoral man.
There were whispers of the many women in
his life.
That his preaching was so aphrodisiac, that people
poured into the graveyards, and when the women
became pregnant, they blamed it on nightingales.
An historian said that the Welsh revival had
raised the illegitimate birth rate.
I wrote to the editor and I said,
you haven't heard the last of this.
I went over at my own expense, and
I challenged them.
I said, give me the name of the
historian who said that the illegitimate birth rate
went up.
Turned out to be a Baptist minister, so
I called him up.
I said, I'm a Baptist minister.
I'd like to ask you some questions.
Did you say that?
He admitted he did.
He said, my mother told me that.
How did your mother know?
Well, she knew a girl had got in
trouble.
I said, in the meetings?
Oh no, oh no, he said.
This, you know, the excitement of the times,
perhaps some girl was careless.
I said, look, for every girl that was
careless, if there were any, maybe a thousand
girls quit fooling around because of the revival.
But that wouldn't show on statistics.
I said, you have a point there.
He said, I have an idea.
I went up to London, and I went
to Somerset House.
Got the births, deaths, marriages.
There's a whole section of illegitimate births, county
by county, city by city.
I found that in Radnor, Radnorshire, the illegitimate
birth rate dropped 44% in one year.
In Marinershire, 44%.
In Glamorgan, only 8%.
But in every county in Wales, it dropped.
You can't argue with anecdotes.
But here are the statistics.
We had a great rally in Cardiff, in
the biggest church there.
Hundreds turned away.
And the Lord Mayor was there with his
regalia.
I felt like Samson with the jawbone of
an ass.
I slew a thousand, I can tell you.
And I enjoyed it.
You know, there are even slowdowns in the
coal mines.
You say, you mean a revival caused a
strike?
Not a strike, just 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 they were saying.
And transportation slowed down.
Until they learned the language of Canaan.
That's the Welsh revival.
Some people say, well, why didn't it last?
Well, the excitement couldn't last forever, could it?
But I asked a pastor in Swansea, Mount
Pleasant Church, how long did the Welsh revival
have effect here?
Well, he said, we were bringing in extra
chairs for 20 years.
That's fair enough.
But of course, since then, World War II.
When I was in Wales in the 1930s,
I used to say, how many were converted
in the Welsh revival?
Practically everyone over the age of 50 raised
his hand.
Well, why not under 50?
Because they weren't alive then.
You see, that generation has passed away.
But the Welsh revival swept Britain.
Do you know that in Nuneaton they were
running special excursions on the railway to the
prayer meetings?
In Scotland and Motherwell near Glasgow, the streets
were packed from wall to wall and after
the excitement died down, seven churches and four
public halls filled every night for months.
The same revival broke out in Northern Ireland,
in Lurgan, first among the Methodists, spread to
the Presbyterians.
The same revival broke out in Norway.
So powerful was that revival in Norway under
Albert Lunde, whom I also knew, that the
Norwegian Parliament passed special legislation to allow Lutheran
laymen to conduct Holy Communion.
The clergy couldn't keep up with the number
of converts.
When the revival reached Denmark, the Danish Home
Mission of the Lutheran Church said there hasn't
been a winter like it since Christianity came
to the Vikings.
It broke out in Sweden.
One of the leaders was Prince Oscar Bernadotte,
brother of the king with whom I prayed
way back in those years, in the 30s.
The revival swept Finland.
It broke out in Germany.
It broke out in France.
I met some men from Silesia in Czechoslovakia.
The revival broke out there in the Welsh
mining area.
It was recently in Belgium.
The revival broke out in Charleroi.
This Belgian who was driving me said there
are more Christians in Charleroi than in any
other part of Belgium.
That's where the revival was most powerful.
The revival broke out in India.
Have you ever heard of Amy Carmichael who
has written some choice missionary books?
Lovely books.
She was Anglican.
She describes it.
You know, of course, the Anglicans have a
liturgical service.
There's a time to stand, a time to
kneel, a time to recite the Lord's Prayer,
a time to recite the Creed.
It's an ordered service.
And this, quote Amy Carmichael's diary, on October
20th, as a little girl said in the
orphanage, Jesus came to Donover.
Oh, she said he'd been there before.
But this time he came in such power
it's no wonder it struck the child as
a new coming.
Now, the Anglican service was going on, according
to the prayer book, when the one leading
it, not named, was overcome.
Then some people began to cry out.
A teenage boy got up and tried to
pray, broke down.
Somebody else tried to pray, broke down.
Soon the whole upper half of the church
were on their faces on the floor.
Men and women, boys and girls, oblivious of
all others.
She said the sound was like the sound
of the wind in the trees or the
ocean on the beach.
This was the visitation of the Holy Spirit.
And she said for the next two weeks,
actually she said for the next fortnight, we
were like the apostles who gave themselves daily
to the ministration of the word and to
prayer.
I'd read that verse so many times, I
didn't realize what it meant until I saw
it amplified in history.
The apostles in the day of Pentecost were
so busy, like doctors in epidemic, praying with
people and giving them the word.
And that's what happened when the revival reached
India.
Do you know that in the next ten
years Christians increased sixteen times as fast as
the Hindus?
Ten years.
Great revival in every part of India.
The same revival was felt in China and
Korea.
One thing I must say in passing, I
had a letter or a phone call once
from a very famous Pentecostal scholar and he
said I understood that speaking in tongues came
from Wales to Azusa Street in Los Angeles.
I said I thought it was the other
way around.
Oh no, I heard that some people spoke
in Welsh that had never spoken in Welsh
before.
I said oh yes, those were people whose
mother were Welsh and father were English, but
if you speak in a language that you
know, you're not speaking in tongues.
When did the speaking in tongues begin?
Well I said it began on the 23rd
of December 1907.
Two years later in the home of a
man called Thomas Maddock Jeffreys in a place
called One Fluid in the Ebbw Vale about
8.30 in the evening.
Beyond that I couldn't specify.
Laughter The next time I talk to you
I'll tell you about how the same revival
swept the United States because in the wake
of that revival the Santa Costa denominations arose.