Heart-Cry for World-Wide Revival — Wesley Duewel

The Fire of Revival and the Hunger for God

Under the anointing of the Holy Spirit on revival, and I've never forgotten one illustration he used. In those years, the National Park Service had a certain ritual each evening during the season at Yosemite National Park.

Each night at the set time, one of the forest rangers who had previously assembled logs right on the brink and would set them afire, and the logs would flame up into the sky, and at the set moment, a park ranger down below, where the tourists were gathered and waiting, would call up, let the fire fall, and the ranger on top would kick over the burning logs and they would come cascading down beside the waterfall.

May I apply that to us as we are here in this conference? I know that God has placed in your hearts a hunger for revival. Why do I feel so assured that another mighty revival may come before Jesus comes again?

If Jesus comes before I finish speaking, hallelujah. But I rather expect that there will be one, at least one, great revival still to come. And one reason why is this. God has privileged me these last few years, since I'm no longer in missionary administration, to minister in many countries.

And wherever I go, I find God's choice children hungering for revival. I've seen it stronger than all in a series of revival conferences across India, in five centers. But I find it in place after place.

Do you believe the Holy Spirit is playing tricks with us? Do you believe He, do you believe anybody but He would put a desire for revival in our hearts? Of course not. Do you believe that He has been the author of this holy hunger in your heart and mine that brings us at times to tears before our Lord as we long to see His church revived and to see all that will take place when that mighty revival comes?

People who have withstood, if I may use that term, the prayers of family and friends and church, often when the atmosphere becomes saturated with revival power, they yield to the grace of God. And I know that Jesus warns a beautiful bride, holy, spotless, without spot or wrinkle.

And I'll tell you, revival does wonderful things for the bride of Christ. It makes us more like Jesus. Praise God. So I'm expecting. I don't think that the Holy Spirit's playing tricks. I don't think one day He'll say, oh, well, I know.

You thought I was going to send revival, didn't you? No, that's not the Holy Spirit that we know. I believe He is longing. I believe the greatest longing for revival in the church is in the heart of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

And I believe the hunger in our hearts is but a minor reflection of the deep, deep hunger in the heart of God. God has created the desire for revival in our hearts. And history testifies that God sends revival.

You remember the words of Isaiah? Oh, that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come down, that the mountains might float down at thy presence, as when melting fire burneth. Make thy name known, that the nations may tremble in thy presence.

Today, that hunger is echoed in your heart and mine across the world. Thank God for occasional times of revival that spared Israel to survive until the Son of Man was born, because Satan attacked that nation in doing everything in its power to prevent the fulfillment of Scripture and Messiah coming.

Thank God for the revivals. I just mentioned a couple of them under Jehoshaphat, under Hezekiah, when it seemed too late. It seemed everything was gone. But in two weeks' time, the tide turned. But you can be sure there had been years of praying by the prophet Isaiah, and you can be sure that godly young Hezekiah had been tutored by Isaiah and had been praying.

Hezekiah's Revival and the Restoration of Temple Worship

Ahaz did his best to crush the worship of Jehovah, put idols in the street corners of every town and village, the Bible says, and finally ordered the temple to be closed and the fire put out on the altar, and idolatry prevailed across the country.

But when wicked King Ahaz died, the very next day when Hezekiah took charge, he gave the orders for the temple doors to be unlocked and for the Levites to clean out the temple. And for two weeks they were sweeping and cleaning and clearing out the trash and cleaning out the temple.

And then he gave orders when they came and reported to him, it's all clean. Tomorrow morning the worship starts. He gave news in the town. Leading citizens came to the temple, and the next morning that worship of the Lord began, the song of the Lord began, the fire of the Lord began, and the nation was turned around.

That spared the nation. That was part of what spared the nation until the time when Messiah was born. Praise God. God is a God of revival, and history testifies that God sends revival. Down through the ages on occasion, God sent revival.

Savonarola and the Revival of Florence

We don't know a great deal, and yet we do know that God worked in the time of Francis of Assisi, and especially of John Savonarola. I'm amazed when I think of one man who turned the tide for eight years, like God used Savonarola in Florence, and even turned back the army of France when it was already in the borders of the country.

When one godly man went and confronted him and said, yes, you are here because we are a sinful nation. We deserve God's judgment, and God's using you to punish us but your majesty. Have you no sins of your own?

Go down and go back to Paris, lest God's judgment come upon you. And Charles VIII, at the urging of one young man without an accompanying person or army, turned the army around and went back to Paris.

And that's when the revival began in the streets of Florence. And they began singing revival songs, and they went from house to house collecting what they called vanities. Children singing. They piled up a pile in the center of Florence, 60 feet high, 250 feet around it, of pornography.

Yes, there was pornography in those days. Obscene objects, occult objects, stacked 60 feet high. And then while the people held hands in a circle around the bonfire, they lit the fire, and someone started tolling the cathedral bells, and while the bells rang and the people sang gospel songs, that was all burned up.

It was an Ephesian bonfire multiplied. Who was the revival team? What organization? Which churches were choir? One man obeying God. One man who had been crying out to God for revival. It's never too late for God.

Wesley, Whitefield, and Revival in England

History proves, do you remember, do you know the condition of Britain in the time when God raised up John Wesley, Charles Wesley, George Whitefield? Do you know the prime minister openly flaunted immorality?

Do you know that some of the social occasions of the nobility and royalty advertised all the wine you want to drink and your neighbor's wife? Sin was so corrupt at that time. It was unsafe to be alone outside the cities of London, Manchester, Birmingham.

And people traveled in armed bands with escorts because there were armed roaming bands in the countryside. It wasn't too late. France had a revolution a bloody revolution, and England had a revival. The same conditions practically were prevailing in both France and England.

England had revival because God had Wesley Whitefield and people of God. So it's never too late for God. God has raised up people that became, I like to call them persons of revival. Maybe I should say carriers of revival.

Can man carry revival? No, he can't, but he can be used. I don't know how to, the terms to use. Do you realize that often George Whitefield in this country as well as in the British Isles and John Wesley would be only for a few hours or days and sometimes a longer time in a given city or place and they would leave revival behind, a church of go with God, spirit of God behind because they were carriers of revival.

Circuit Riders as Carriers of Revival

In the early circuit riders in this country, they seemed to be carriers of revival. I was thrilled to discover that just like Paul Revere was famous for his going from farm to farm and shouting the people that the British have come and calling them to assemble for the protection of the independence of the United States.

We've all learned the story of Paul Revere's ride in the poetic form when we were in high school or school, grade school. Did you know that the circuit riders had almost a similar situation? The stories tell us that at times the circuit riders would light a fire in two or three different places, mainly once but sometimes twice a day and occasionally three times a day.

The circuit rider would arrive at the courthouse or the village square, the town square. Immediately, Christians would jump on their horses and start out across the countryside from farm to farm. The circuit rider has come, meeting will be at the town square.

We're told that farmers would drop their equipment in the field, get on their horses or hook up their buggies or surreys or whatever they travel with and start. People would stop, not two hours, but they would stop immediately where they were and hasten to the place where the meeting would be.

And the circuit rider would preach for a couple of hours and pray with people and then get on his horse and start away to another center across the frontiers of some of the Midwest states. They seemed to carry revival.

They'd leave behind people starting to worship God with new devotion, new commitment, leave churches behind where there was not before on the frontier. They were carriers of revival. We have been hearing today about a man that, well better come to Charles Feeney first, Jonathan Goforth.

Charles Finney's Expectation for Revival

I too love the story of that man of God. But Charles G. Feeney seemed to be a carrier of revival. Year after year, he would go from place to place, sometimes two or three months, like in Rochester or some other of the cities where he felt led.

And it seemed wherever he went, he would stay there until revival would come. Year after year, he was involved in this ministry. From the time of his conversion, he seemed to be on fire for God. And the night after he was converted, the evening of that day when he received such an outpouring of the Spirit of God upon him, that he carried that fire with him.

From the very next, people gathered in the church. No meetings announced. The church filled up. Charles Feeney was sitting there with the rest of the people. He was just a lawyer. He had just been born again a few hours.

And then, anointed with the Holy Spirit, everybody just sat there. No one was in charge. So finally, Charles Feeney got up, and he began to preach. And he began to have a revival message. And wherever he went, revival came again, and again, and again.

He seemed to be a carrier of revival. Charles Feeney expected that any place where he preached, if there were any unsaved people present, someone would be converted by the time the service was over. He expected if he visited in a home, and there was any unsaved member of the family or neighbor, anybody there in the house, that they would be converted before he left.

But he says, sometimes he came to a place in his ministry where he would preach two or three times, and nobody was savingly converted. And sometimes he would visit in one or two homes, and no one found Christ.

He said, I would immediately betake myself to two or three days of fasting and prayer. Whereupon, that's his word, whereupon the power would come upon me in all its fullness. And then he added this sentence, this has been the experience of my life.

He was used of God. He expected God, and God honored him. He was a carrier of revival. Some wonderful stories are told. When he got older and he began to, he had a weak constitution, he had to take some time off and several months of recuperation and rest.

He'd go back to Oberlin. They say whenever he would arrive at Oberlin, almost every time, revival would start when he got there. And after several months, he would have a renewed strength and health. He'd start on it, and immediately revival.

He just seemed to carry revival. Once it was needed so much restoration, he went to the British Isles to rest and relax. But of course, the Lord made use of him while he was there, too. Coming back on the trip, he spent a whole day in fasting and prayer.

And out of that came things that God used, such as his revival lectures. And that became a bestseller. Only 25 million people in America in those days. We were a smaller nation by far. But over 100 ,000 copies of his book were sold in a matter of months.

It was phenomenal in those days. Why did they sell? The Spirit of God was developing a hunger among God's people. And people began to believe and to pray. And no doubt, God used that to help prepare the way of the Lord for the 58, 59, 60 working of God's Spirit and revival in our nation.

Jonathan Goforth and Revival in China

Jonathan Goforth was a faithful missionary in North China. Someone sent him somehow or other a leaflet in one of their letters, which had several pages of Finney's writing. He read that. He said to his wife, if Finney's right, I'm going to prove it.

Then someone providentially sent him a copy of The Life of Finney. He was all the more stirred up. And about that time, the secretary of missions from Toronto, the Canadian Presbyterian Church, arrived in North China.

And he spent a couple of weeks there. He said to Mr. Goforth, you know, I'm hearing reports about revival in Korea. I believe I'm going to go there and check it out to see if it's genuine or not. He said, would you like to go with me?

Would he like to go? He was ready in heart. So Jonathan Goforth went with him. And they saw what God was doing. That was the revival fire that began, you remember, from country to country. And so Jonathan Goforth came back to North China.

The first night he came back, he was asked to tell a story of what he'd found in Korea. And revival began. He began to move from station to station, place to place. And every place that he stopped, revival.

He seemed to be the carrier of revival, probably especially chosen by God or especially prepared by God because of the hunger in his heart, his heart cry for revival. We're talking about heart cry for revival.

So he began to go, usually staying only one week or sometimes maybe six days and then travel one day to the next place. Ever if he went for several years, revival began. They say, Mr. Goforth, don't expect to have that kind of results here in our station that you're having, but you don't know the people here.

Our Chinese are so proud. They are so stubborn. They don't want to lose face. Don't expect them to confess their sins. But by the second or third or fourth, sometimes the fifth night and once or twice on the sixth, the last day, suddenly revival fire fell and people were confessing their sins and making things right with God because he became a carrier of revival for that period in his ministry.

Pandita Ramabai and Revival in India

History proves that God is a God of revival. If I had time, I would tell about Pandita Ramabai in India. Maybe I can say just a bit. A brilliant woman, Hindu, one to Christ. She began to long for revival.

She heard about revival. She sent word to the Catholic Convention in Britain, pray for God to send revival to India. She heard that Alexander, oh the team, Charles Alexander, who was the evangelist before Tory.

No, not Woody. Anyone, not quite as well anyway, that they were in meetings down in Australia and that there were prayer groups praying for those meetings in Australia. She sent her daughter right away to Australia to go and ask those prayer groups to pray for India.

She began asking her girls, you know, she took widows, child widows. She took Hindu prostitutes that were sold to be used in the worship of the Hindu gods. She rescued them, tried to win them to Christ.

She had over 2 ,000 of these girls and young women in her institution living by faith just like George Mueller had done. Now she began to pray for revival. She got the girls forming prayer bands, 60 girls per prayer band, and they were praying at different times.

Now God doesn't normally do things like this, but God can do if he wants to. Just like he sent the sound of revival to Andrew Murray's experience there. The girls were praying for God to send revival fire, and all of a sudden they saw the fire burning around one girl.

Another girl ran and grabbed a bucket of water and came. It was just going to douse her when she realized it was not ordinary fire. It did not consume. It was the glory of God. This has nothing to do with Pentecostalism.

This is nothing like it. This is just God's sovereign way of illustrating, I suppose. I don't know. Listen, revival began among her girls, almost the same time that the Wales fire leaped from Wales to northeast India where the Welsh missionaries were serving.

And then from northeast India, they wrote to the missionary friends in Korea, and it leaped from there to Korea, and from Korea to north China. But independent of that, but at the same time, in the same season, Pundita Ramabai is hungering for revival.

She gets people praying. God began to use her girls. There were missions, schools of various denominations and groups in India. They began to write, hear, heard about what's happening to Pundita Ramabai's girls at the place called Mukti, which means salvation.

And they would send invitations. But the girls didn't always wait for invitations. They would pray they'd get a burden for a certain town. They'd go to that town and ask for a place where they could, the 60 of them, could be a place alone to pray.

They would get to towns where there were mission stations. They even came as far north as Allahabad, where I spent 25 years of my life in missionary service. Not while I was there, but that's the record.

They even came there, and God sent revival to Allahabad at that time through those girls. Nobody preached. They were not special singers. They would just shut themselves up in a room and pray. Within one or two days, they say, people would arrive, oftentimes mission workers, evangelists, teachers.

They'd start confessing their sins. They didn't know the girls were there, but they were gripped by the Holy Spirit and drawn in. Revival fires were lit, not huge, widespread, but in place after place in India, places that I know about, because they became carriers of revival.

God Is a God Who Revives

So history proves that God sends revival. Now, second, I want to just briefly say, not only does God send revival, but this is the nature of God to revive. God is a God of compassion. God is a God of love.

God is a God that wants to pour out His Spirit. Even in Old Testament times, in individual ways, God put His hand on prophets and people on occasion, and they knew when it happened, and they said, the hand of the Lord came upon me.

But we're in a dispensation now, and we have the promises of God's Word made available to us. We have God's Word in our hands. Do you realize what a treasure that is to have the Word of God? I can't understand why Christians don't read the Bible much more.

This is the Word of God. God has built revival into the very fabric of nature. After winter season in this part of the world comes spring, and nature is revived. After sickness can come healing, when the physical body becomes revived.

After the weariness of a hard day's labor comes sleep, and the body is revived again, and we're ready for another day for God or for whatever our work is. God is a God of revival. That's His basic pattern, it seems, in the universe.

Biblical Promises of Refreshing and Revival

The Old Testament history records a few examples of revival. Old Testament prophets prophesied promises. And by the way, do you realize that the Bible is the only religion in the world, the Christian religion, that has a Bible with promises?

No other religion has a God who makes promises, because no other religion has a God who can fulfill promises. But we have a God who makes promises. Praise God. And God has promised things symbolically which point to revival.

Streams of living water, the outpouring of the Spirit in various ways. Do you remember Peter, in his first sermon after Pentecost, told how God would send what? Times, plural, times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.

As the church was filled with His Spirit and obeying Him, God would send times of refreshing, and He has continued to do that. Big, widespread revivals are comparatively rare. We've not had an international revival with fire, as it were, leaping from country to country since the first decade of this century.

But praise God we've had it before then, and we can have it again, I believe, if it pleases God, and I believe it will please Him. We have every biblical reason to believe that God is both willing and able to send times of refreshing in our day.

And it seems like the more widespread the hunger—I can't prove this, but it seems that way from history—the more widespread the hunger and prayer, the more widespread the fire spreads when revival comes.

It just seems like God has gotten people ready, just as God used the writings of Phineh to get many churches in many places ready. And then there were two convocations, revival, special convocations held, one in St. Louis and one in Pittsburgh, I believe it was, when they concentrated ministers on the subject of revival.

God was preparing the way to get people to pray and expect, and then the revival fire could spread. God can do the same thing today. The holy yearnings in the heart of Jesus for His bride to be pure, spotless, gleaming with His glory, surely those can be answered again and again.

The holy yearnings of the Holy Spirit, which He shares with us, God's children, causing us to believe and dare to believe and hold on for revival, surely that can be answered. The holy groanings of the Holy Spirit that sometimes come to you and me if we're walking close to God and if we're carrying prayer burden for revival, sometimes the groanings become almost too deep for words.

Where do those originate? Not in us. In the heart of God. We are just beginning to realize what God is longing when we get that close to God. Praise God. So, they are waiting. Do you remember how many times Jesus was disappointed with His disciples' lack of faith?

I looked that up recently again. Five times Jesus said, O thou of little faith. Three times He conditioned His mighty work by saying, If ye have faith. Luke tells us He asked, Where is your faith? Again, He asked, How is it that you have no faith?

He explained, Matthew explained, Jesus explained as reported by Matthew, because you have no faith. In John, we read that He said, Be not faithless, but believing. Matthew tells us He could not do many mighty works because of their unbelief.

Mark tells us that He upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart. Eighteen times Jesus spoke with sorrow, disappointment about the lack of faith on the part of His disciples. O, may my weak faith not hinder the coming of new mighty times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.

May we somehow be able to believe that its promises are for us, therefore today, that this is still the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, that this is still the age of grace, that this is still, may I use the term, an age of revival, refreshment, renewal, whatever terms you want to use.

It is still that period of human history when God wants to bless His church with new revelations of Himself, new outpourings of His Spirit. Now, finally, this heart cry for revival that we're talking about at this conference, that has been born in the heart of God.

God's Heart Cry for His People

I believe this with all my heart. I believe it is the heart cry of God. Do you remember the passage in Isaiah 65? I remember the first time I read it in one of the modern translations. It shocked me. I've been reading this many times.

I believe in reading the Bible through consecutively again and again. And I had done so, but when I read in one of the translations, the wording was, ready was I to answer men who never asked me, ready to be found by men who never called on my name.

I held out my arms all day long to a faithless generation. The one translation that uses his words, I called out, here am I, here am I. That has meant so much to my mind in missionary service and since being back in the States again.

I see over and over in our country the same Jesus that wept over Jerusalem was revealed to Isaiah. He is the one, how often would I gather your children together as a hen gathers her little chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

Here he says in Isaiah, I called out, here I am, hi, here I am to a people who never called on my name. Why should we be surprised? That's the heart of our God. I believe that God looks down upon our Christian convocations at times and says, oh, children, oh, my beloved, here I am, here I am, ready to do so much more for you than you are grasping hold of.

I believe God longs to be gracious. I believe his heart of compassion is reaching out. And I believe somehow that there is still such unfinished work for the church. Now, mind you, Christ can make quick work.

Revival does in a few weeks or sometimes, if it lasts a year and a half or so, it does in that period of time what has not been done in 40 years before. God speeds up the work when he comes in revival dimension and revival power.

The Prayer Revival of 1858–1859

Oh, it seemed as if he hovers over the church, just as in the revival of 1858 and 59 in this country when the spark was lit by Josiah Lamphere and he started that prayer meeting. In a matter of a few months, there were prayer meetings all over the city and they began to spread across America.

In Washington, even the President of the United States day after day went to the prayer meeting at noon. Every noon before many months were past, there were more than 10 ,000 cities and towns across America where businessmen were shutting down their businesses at noon.

They were gathering together in a place large enough where they could assemble. They said oftentimes on some of the doors there would be a paper on the door closed until after the prayer meeting. In more than 10 ,000, I have seen some of the totals, the state of Indiana I think was around 230 towns, in Ohio maybe 250, so many in Kentucky and other states where the people were gathering every noon, 365 days of the year to pray.

Who did the preaching? Nobody. There were not times of preaching. There were times of prayer. They might sing a hymn, something. People would get up and ask for prayer. They would pray for that, another request, another request.

They would pray until one o 'clock. People would go back to their businesses. It was an unusual moment of the spirit. But when that canopy of prayer, may I use that term, that incense of prayer was like a canopy over the nation, especially over the eastern part of the United States.

And you've heard the stories how the ships would arrive from London. There were no radios in those days. They didn't know what was going on. But within 150 to 250 miles of our coast, the spirit of God would begin to work on the ship.

One freighter, the captain, and every member of the crew were all converted in the last 150 miles. Who was the evangelist? No evangelist. Who was the preacher? No preacher. Just seized by conviction of sin.

Just like R .A. Torrey, when he was converted, was seized in the middle of the night without any human people having evangelized him or talked to him. Of course, his mother had prayed, and he had a friend who was praying daily for his salvation.

But Torrey realized how God's spirit can come upon a person and convict. And that was happening on the ships at sea. The United States Charleston in Boston Harbor was the training ship for the Navy. And revival started on the ship.

Three young men knew the Lord and decided to have a prayer meeting down, I think it was on the sixth deck down. And they were kneeling in a circle, and they started to sing, and their voices rose up. Someone on the top deck heard them.

Christian songs on the battleship. What's going on? He started laughing and jeering and calling fellas to come. And some of them started running down the steps. And by the time they got to the bottom floor, they were so seized by the Holy Spirit that they went sprawling on their knees calling on God for mercy.

And revival spread on the Charleston, that the revival fires burned for months. And when a group would be graduated, you know, every so many two or three months, transferred. This was a training ship.

They'd be brought there, trained, sent back. They'd take revival back until it was like a revival spreading in the U .S. Navy. One captain arrived near the shore. He didn't know what to do. In the staterooms all over the ship, people were crying, praying.

So when he got to the outer part of the harbor, the only way he could communicate was by his flags. You remember? He ran up the flags, send the preacher. He had revival, but he didn't know what to do with it.

That's the sovereign God, working in answer to the prayers of his people. My brothers, my sisters, if we could see the heart of God today, we would see how he's longing to bless and come upon us as a people of God.

He wants to renew our churches. He wants to come upon our boards and commissions and conferences and all the things we have. He wants to become predominant. He wants to reveal his glory. Oh, if revival would come, if revival, if the God would come down like Isaiah prayed.

David and Isaiah's Prayer for God to Come Down

Do you remember? David prayed it long before Isaiah. David was the first one that we know about who prayed for the Lord to come down in revival power. I can find quickly in my notes here. I pray in almost identical words with Isaiah's.

Come down. No doubt Isaiah read that and that encouraged him in his prophecies. Oh, may God come down upon my life and upon your life that we become dissatisfied with quote normal Christian living, with ordinary Christian living.

Oh, that the glory of God might come upon us, his church. Oh, you remember how Isaiah prayed? Oh, that thou wist rend the heavens, that thou wouldst come down, that thou wouldst, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence as when the melting fire burneth, the fire cause of the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble in thy presence.

When thou didst terrible things, which we had not looked for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence. For since the beginning of the world, men have not heard nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.

Thou meetest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways. Praise God. So, that's what God wants to do again. And I hope and pray that from these days, God will send us back to our homes, to our churches, to our institutions, to our places of work with that kind of a hunger that calls to God.

Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival

Evan Roberts had to start working in the mines when he was 12 years old after his father died. He had to help support the family. He had to stop his schooling. And we're told that for 13 years, two prayers were in his heart, day after day after day.

He worked at various tasks in the mines, sometimes digging, sometimes other activities. But two great prayers, O Lord, fill me with your spirit, send revival to my country. O Lord, fill me with your spirit, send revival to Wales.

O Lord, fill me with your spirit, send revival to Wales. Day after day, those two cries, the heart cry for revival. Why did God choose Evan Roberts, a young man who had never even finished grade school?

Why did God, there were great evangelists, Seth, Joshua, some of the other, godly people. They were used of God in, shall I use the term, more ordinary ways. But why did God take this young man out of the coal mines?

He attended a little preparatory school for two weeks. The fire was burning such that he had to go back. He said to this schoolmaster, may I go this weekend to my village? He went back. His family said, what are you doing here?

He said, God's going to save 100 ,000 people. Well, they thought there was something wrong with his mind. He went to the pastor. He said, pastor, I must speak to the young people. Will you let me speak to the young people?

That God's going to save 100 ,000 people. The pastor thought, poor Evan. What's going wrong with his mind? He said, well, I'll tell you, Evan, what I'll do. Monday night, I won't say anything before, but Monday night we have our youth meeting.

And when the youth meeting is over, I'll pronounce the benediction. And then I'll say, now, Evan would like to talk to you. If any of you would like to listen to him, you can stay and he'll talk to you.

Not very propitious, is it? So Monday night, he did. And 17 people stayed. And Evan went over and turned the lock in the door. He said, come on, sit here in the front rows. It was my privilege to know three of the first five converts of the revival in Wales.

And two of them took me there, the Penry brothers, took me, started describing to me. One of them, Henry said, there's where I was sitting when the fire fell. Ooh, that went through my heart. I'll tell you, there's where I was sitting when the fire fell.

You know what, how Evan Roberts conducted his service after the service? He lined them up. He said, now, you stand up. He said, the man, stand up. He's just like he was a captain in the army. Stand up.

He stood up. He said, now, repeat this prayer after me. Lord Jesus, forgive my sins and fill me with your spirit. Amen. He did. Sit down. He sat down. Now, you, second one. He went down the line, the first one.

He didn't preach. He just told them that God was going to send the revival, that more than 100 ,000 people were going to be saved. Then he started praying. Then the second row, and then the third. Nothing happened.