In 1921, the British government gave the people
of Ireland a free choice whether they wanted
to continue in association with Scotland and England
and Wales or to go on their own.
The South voted for going on their own,
but the North didn't want to do that.
The result was a kind of civil war,
and it came along religious lines because most
Catholics were in favor of independence, and most
Protestants didn't see why they should separate from
their friends in Scotland and England and Wales.
But then riots began, assassinations, burnings, lootings, murders,
with retaliation and a bitter, bitter feeling.
The true Christians, the praying people, got so
desperate they prayed, Oh God, send anyone, anyone,
just to bring the people back to yourself.
Now the Lord has a sense of humor,
he sent them a man from Glendale, California.
He was an Irish-American called W.
P.
Nicholson, and he began to preach in Bangor,
Northern Ireland.
It was in the midst of these riots
and troubles.
Now Nicholson had been a sailor before the
mast.
He said he was most religious when he
was drunk, but he was converted at home
in 1899, and he went to the Bible
Training Institute in Glasgow.
Then he joined Wilbur Chapman's evangelistic team in
Australia and New Zealand, and then came back
to this country.
It wasn't until 1920, after the war, that
he was able to go back and visit
his native country.
So he started in 1920 in this town
of Bangor, a very old city going right
back to the days of St. Patrick.
The largest buildings were packed.
It wasn't until 1921 that he was able
to come and follow it up.
He went to Port Adang.
More than 900 inquirers were counseled, although it
was a revival among Christians.
Then he went to Lurgan, then he went
to Newton Hards.
When he came to the city of Belfast,
conditions were so bad that people used to
lie on the floor of the streetcars because
of the bullets going through the windows.
But Nicholson's preaching was so powerful, it was
regarded as one of the things that brought
the Civil War to a stop.
Now he was a very rough-tongued man.
He didn't speak of his holiness the Pope.
He always called him the old bachelor on
the tiber.
The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland took him
aside and said, Mr. Nicholson, you're doing a
great work, but please don't say anything to
make it worse with our Roman Catholic fellow
citizens.
Nicholson thought it over.
He said, all right.
I'll lay off the Catholics.
I'll take it out on the Plymouth Brethren.
He did.
He was a Presbyterian, and he used to
lay into the Baptists and the Plymouth Brethren
because of Believer's Baptism and so forth.
Yet they were the denominations that grew most
through his ministry.
Now when I say he was a rough
-tongued man, I remember he was preaching in
Newton Hards Road Methodist Church.
A man in the front seat began to
heckle him.
Nicholson didn't suffer fools gladly.
He said, I'm giving you one more chance.
The man heckled him the second time.
Nicholson hesitated.
Then he said, if you open your mouth
again, I'll put you out.
Now this rather shocked the church people.
They thought that it would be a mark
of good manners just to take no notice.
But when the man heckled the third time,
Nicholson put his notes in his Bible, closed
the Bible, came down from the pulpit, got
him by the shoulder, marched him up to
the door and pushed him out.
Closed the doors, came back again in dead
silence, came up to the pulpit and said,
now where was I?
That was too much for a Presbyterian lady.
She came up after, Mr. Nicholson, what a
thing to do in a gospel meeting.
He said, what was wrong with it?
Putting a man out from the sound of
the gospel, I never heard the like of
it in my life.
She said, he said, the man was preventing
people from hearing the gospel.
Oh, she said, you're impossible to talk to.
She said, what would the Lord have done
if the Lord had been here?
Well, said Nicholson, if the Lord had been
here, he would have cast the devil out
of the man.
I couldn't do that, so I just shoved
the two of them out together.
Now you can understand the man with that
kind of sense of humor drew the working
class, the working men.
In fact, the biggest shipbuilding yards in the
world are Harlan and Wolfe in Belfast that
built the Titanic, and the men marched en
masse in their dungarees, straight from work to
the meetings.
And when they couldn't get into some of
the churches, they carried away the railings and
part of the wall.
One Episcopalian vicar welcomed 400 inquirers, 77 volunteered
for sensical work, 51 for open air ministry,
123 for Bible class, and 56 for confirmation.
That was the sort of thing that was
going on.
I was only nine years of age when
that movement started.
It was evangelism, and yet at the same
time, all over the country was this spirit
of revival, and it came about because the
Christians prayed.
By the way, 12,409 were counseled in
the inquiry rooms, and I noticed the last
half dozen moderators of the Presbyterian Church of
Ireland were converts of Nicholson.
At the same time, there was a revival
in East Anglia, that's in the eastern part
of England, under Douglas Brown, and a revival
in Scotland, in Aberdeenshire, under a fisherman called
Jock Troop.
I knew Jock Troop well, I knew Nicholson
as well.
I was rather amused to read in a
book that Jock Troop preached at a roar.
He only dropped his voice for emphasis.
Some preachers shout when they want to emphasize
something, but he always shouted, and then he
lowered his voice to emphasize a point.
What a wonderful movement they had in Scotland.
I was converted in 1921.
My own mother led me to Christ, so
in a sense I could say I was
a product of that time of revival in
Northern Ireland.
At the same time, there was stirring in
other parts of the world, but it wasn't
until I was in my late teens and
early twenties that I got busy in Christian
work.
And in 1935, I went to Norway, the
first foreign country of my experience.
There I saw a revival that seemed to
be affecting a whole nation.
There was a Swedish-Finn, some people in
Finland speak Swedish as their mother tongue, as
well as Finnish, who came to Oslo, the
capital of Norway, and took some meetings in
a church called Bethlehem.
It was most unlikely that revival would begin
there, but actually that's what happened.
Frank Mungs, was his name, M-A-N
-G-S, he's still alive, and he began
preaching so powerfully that after a while, Bethlehem
church asked people being converted there, please don't
join us, we've got too many, go and
look for another church in town, and it
became a blessing to the whole city.
Then a strange thing happened.
There was a movement, some of you older
people may remember the Oxford group movement.
It became moral rearmament.
It was very weak in theology, but they
used to challenge people to get right with
God.
When they went to Norway, they had to
get interpreters to tell the people what they
were saying in English, turned it into Norwegian,
and they picked on several very godly evangelicals
to interpret for them.
Now could you imagine that someone whose theology
wasn't very clear, came to preach in Southern
California and somebody from World Vision, for example,
interpreted.
You know that their messages would get a
much more evangelical flavor through the interpretation.
The result was nationwide revival in Norway.
I arrived there in January of 1935 not
knowing a soul, yet I found all the
churches packed.
I stayed in the Baptist seminary with the
students.
We used to go from six until midnight
just from one church to another, finding every
church full.
Now you know today there are some churches
in Los Angeles that are full, but could
you imagine this happening every night in every
church?
That was the great revival of the 1930s
in Norway.
It was the first time after I'd grown
up that I saw such a movement.
I was traveling then as an evangelist, started
out on a bicycle, but in 1935 I
went to Canada.
The first invitation I had was to preach
for Dr. Oswald Smith and the Great People's
Church.
The church became too small, so we took
the Massey Auditorium to conclude the meetings.
Then I went to the Moody Church for
Dr. Harry Ironside and kept ministering throughout Canada
and the United States.
And sometimes we saw touches of what Americans
like to call real revival.
Now when Americans speak about holding a revival,
they say, we're going to have our revival
in such and such a time, but then
they speak about real revival.
I wish they just used the word revival
for revival, but they often use the word
revival for a week of meetings.
But in 1936 I went to speak in
the chapel of Wheaton College in Illinois.
Some of the students had been praying for
revival there.
It was the 13th of January, I happen
to know, because that evening on the 13th
of January I spoke to 11,000 people
in the Chicago Coliseum.
In those days I was called the boy
preacher.
I've grown up since then.
A student came to me afterwards and said,
your word on revival stirred me, but when
are we going to see revival at Wheaton?
I said, what are you doing about it?
He said, we're having half-nights of prayer.
I said, maybe it will come when you
pay the price and put things right with
God.
The students redoubled their prayers and in February
they had their evangelistic meetings and a very
godly man, Robert McQuilken from Columbia, South Carolina,
came.
The students were sure God was going to
visit them through his ministry.
But alas, Dr. McQuilken developed laryngitis and couldn't
speak a word.
His song leader was a man called Homer
Hammondtree, and he appealed to Moody Bible Institute,
Northern Baptist Seminary and other places for speakers
to pinch hit for the man who was
ill.
One morning at chapel they were closing the
service when a student passed up a note.
We heard about revival again.
When are we going to see revival?
Now Dr. Wilson of Kansas City had spoken
that morning on the Holy Spirit, but he
was in a hurry to catch a train
to Kansas City, and he left before pronouncing
the benediction.
His song leader was concluding.
He said, well, I'm sure God lands our
prayers when we do what he tells us
to do.
A student stood up and said, I wrote
that note.
I'm supposed to be a big man on
campus, but things are not right in my
life, and he began confessing his faults before
the congregation.
Somebody shouted from the gallery, let's all get
to our knees.
That meeting went on day and night.
There was one humorous thing that happened.
At Wheaton they didn't allow the students to
smoke.
Some students who couldn't give up the habit
found that they had a fail-safe method
of doing it without being detected.
If they went into chapel and went straight
down the stairs to the basement where they
had the furnaces, nobody would know they were
there.
They could smoke the cigarettes, throw the butts
into the furnaces, no evidence, and then come
up another series of steps right up to
the platform.
But they couldn't do that until the students
were going out, and then they were counted
out for attendance.
It's a sure method.
But this particular morning, they said, who's preaching
this morning?
10.30, then 11 o'clock struck.
Who is it?
The meeting went on when 12 o'clock
struck.
One fellow turned pale.
He says, it's the rapture, and we're left
behind.
But what happened as a result of that
awakening?
Twenty-five of the seniors that graduated that
year became famous missionaries.
I knew Jimmy Bellote, who went to China,
became secretary for all of Eastern Asia for
the Southern Baptists.
Don Hillis went to India, now he's general
director of the Evangelical Alliance mission.
Kenneth Hood went to Costa Rica, Wilbert Norton
went to the Congo, I could go on.
Among those that stayed in this country were
Dr. Carl Henry, famous theologian, Harold Lenzel, who
was editor of Christianity Today, and I could
mention others.
That movement really stirred the whole company of
students.
I went up there to see what was
happening, because the president sent me a telegram.
Great revival had broken out at Wheaton.
I went from there to Atlanta.
I preached for a young Scottish minister called
Peter Marshall.
That was before he became famous.
And then I went to Columbia, South Carolina,
where the students of the Columbia Bible College,
a missionary college, were praying for revival, now
that their president had come back and told
them what had happened at Wheaton.
They were hoping that perhaps something would happen
before long, but that week we saw revival
break out again.
It's very interesting that some seniors from Wheaton
and some seniors from Columbia got together at
Ben Lippin Conference Grounds that summer and started
the Student Foreign Mission Fellowship, which today draws
those great crowds to Urbana.
You've heard of 17,000 students coming to
study missions at Urbana.
That arose from that movement.
Now there's something further one could say.
While the tide seemed to be out in
the Western countries between the two world wars,
generally speaking, with exceptions, there were great revivals
on the field.
For instance, in China, in 1927 a movement
began in Shanghai.
What a movement it began among young Chinese.
Some of them became very famous as evangelists.
I knew quite a number of them.
Before the 30s were up, I traveled in
China with what was called the Bethel Bands.
When they went to Peking, Christians would come
at 10 o'clock at night with bedding
and sleep all night in church so as
to get a place in the crowded early
morning prayer meetings.
That movement touched every part of China.
Every part.
One of the leaders was Andrew Gee, and
another was Dr. John Sung.
Dr. John Sung had a Ph.D. from
Ohio State University, but he became an evangelist
and like W.P. Nicholson was rather rough
-tongued.
He did things that Orientals didn't do.
For example, while he was preaching on, Because
thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,
I will spit you out of my mouth,
he got carried away and spat on his
interpreter, and that's something that Chinese people never
do.
Never do a thing like that.
But Andrew Gee, John Sung, Leland Wong, I've
mentioned a host of them, were used of
God throughout the whole of China.
A great revival that lasted during the 1930s
in preparation for what the church was going
to go through in World War II and
then the Communist Revolution.
I spoke to you once before about what
I found in the People's Republic of China
this year.
There was such revival in China in the
1930s that the way was prepared for them
to sit right through and stand steadfast for
the Lord during those times of the worst
persecution on earth.
There was also a revival in East Africa.
I have a friend, he must be nearly
80 now, retired and living in Cambridge, a
graduate of Cambridge University, a medical doctor.
He was in a little country called Rwanda
in East Africa.
It was that time under Belgian control.
He and one of his black assistants didn't
get along too well.
He was very interested in the preaching of
the gospel, but those hospital assistants, they said,
we are medical men, we don't go out
preaching like these others.
And Dr. Joe Church insisted that they should
go out, and that offended some of them.
One of them was so offended he went
off in a huff, and he went to
complain to his brother-in-law.
He said, the Europeans are rotten, the hospitals
are rotten, they're all rotten.
He was quite taken aback when this other
Christian said, well maybe the trouble is with
you, maybe you're rotten.
He was angry, and he was started back
again for Rwanda.
He was held up at the frontier because
the customs men were having their midday break,
and there he put things right with God,
and went back and put things right with
his fellow Africans and with the missionaries.
And a revival began in East Africa that's
continued from the early 1930s to the present
time, more than 40 years.
Most revival movements don't last more than a
few years.
But this movement is still going on.
Not so long ago I had two Ugandan
students come to me, both working on their
master's degree, one on Master of Arts, the
other Master of Theology.
And they mentioned in the course of their
writing that a certain Episcopal rector, a black
man, suddenly stopped in the middle of a
Sunday morning sermon and said to the people,
I haven't experienced this myself, and broke down
and was converted in the pulpit.
I said, that's a good story.
Who was the minister?
And they said it was a man called
Erica Sabiti.
I said, he's the Archbishop of East Africa
now.
That's right.
He was the one before the one who
was murdered by Idi Amin.
Now that movement lasted right through the Mahmoud
persecutions.
Those black Christians were often tortured for their
faith because they would not hate anyone.
At that time the blacks who had suffered
so much because of exploitation hated the whites.
But these Christians refused to hate anyone.
Their movement is still going strong, and I
would say they've captured East Africa.
The East African Revival Movement is still going
strong.
Now these were the revivals that happened during
the time that the tide was out in
United States and Great Britain and most of
Western Europe.
There was not much going on between world
wars.
It's true that the Pentecostal evangelists were having
blessing.
You've read the stories of Amy Semple McPherson's
great campaigns.
You know that in Britain there was a
great evangelist called George Jeffreys.
He was a friend of my parents.
He belonged to the, he founded the Elam
Foursquare denomination over there.
There were also some other great evangelists, Gypsy
Smith, Lionel Fletcher and others who were going.
But largely speaking there was no great revival
between World War I and World War II.
Yet in every part of the mission field
the Lord's work went on as if the
Lord said now you've had your chance, I'm
going to give it to the people on
the frontiers.
Next time I have the opportunity of talking
to you about revivals, I'm going to tell
you of some of the remarkable awakenings since
World War II.
Because there was a revival in Cuba before
Castro.
Most people don't know this.
I saw a revival in Brazil.
I've seen streets packed from wall to wall.
Young people sitting on the top of buses
listening to the word of God.
Churches packed till midnight.
Praise services first thing in the morning.
Not only did that happen in Latin America,
in many parts, but the great movements of
God in Indonesia.
Movements of God in Korea.
Movements of God in parts of India.
I told you already that there was a
great movement of God in Nagaland that broke
out five years ago and a hundred thousand
people have joined the churches, as many as
they had in membership after a hundred years.
It has been taught in most of our
theological seminaries that these great movements of revival
have given way to great organized evangelistic campaigns.
I don't believe that.
I believe there has been a series of
world evangelists from George Whitfield to Billy Graham.
I thank God for them.
But the great unstructured, unorganized movements of the
Holy Spirit are continuing.
And I believe they will continue until the
Lord comes.
Now as to what we do to prepare
for them, I'll keep that for the other
part of my message.
Thank you.