Timeline of Major Out-Pourings of the Spirit Among God's People — Merle Weaver

Well, praise the Lord. Brother Dale talked about the first time he preached the message, and then also the first time he preached in Spanish. For whatever reasons, I found this assignment to be very difficult, to be able to put my heart and use these tools, communicate it, and so have grace with me and pray for me.

I feel my weakness very keenly, but that's good, I'm sure. Maybe just as a means of introduction, I have found for the last, I didn't figure out exactly, but somewhere around ten years, myself intrigued to study revival and the move of God in history.

Studying Revival and God's Movements in History

I would rather study what God's doing and what man's doing. So it's been a passion in my life. I consider it an honor and a joy to be able to share together today. I would like just quickly a raise of hands, and it doesn't matter whether you do or don't raise your hand, but how many of you have put time into, let's say, studying at least a book or multiple books about the history of revival, that that's captured your interest and you've invested time there?

Just so I have a little sense of the audience I'm speaking to. Okay, that's a good number of hands. Well, as those of you know that have done that, it's not possible in a short amount of time to report, even in a general way, on all that God's done, and certainly not to do the subject justice.

I told the brother that asked me to share this way, as I prayed about it, I said, Brother, I do not feel clear to just give facts and data, and that's what Brother Ken shared. And even maybe the timeline will try to give a little sense of that, but I would like to highlight a number of different moves of God's spirit that have been representative, as I've studied revival, the characteristics that we can learn from as we study this.

Chester Weaver, a historian, once said that the only thing that we learn from history is that we don't do very well at learning from history, and I consider that to be a good statement. Give me a moment to get my notes here.

I was once amazed sometimes how many times people from seemingly Bible-believing and conservative circles, how little they know about the moves of God in the past and revival. One time I was talking with a young Mennonite boy about something about revival, and he stated something about the revival movement.

And being somewhat astute in revival, I was curious to which revival movement he was referring to, and to my utter surprise he replied, Oh, you mean there was more than one? So I created a little list of different major revivals.

These do not include localized. These are more major ones through the years. As you can see, there's quite a list. When we are not aware of God's movings, it is doubtful that we will press in in earnest prayer to see revival in our day.

Prayer as the Common Denominator of Revival

J. Ed Winore, somebody who's done a lot of study on revival, said when God wants to send revival, he sets his people to praying. Oswald Chambers has said that prayer is not preparation for the work. Prayer is the work.

As I communicated with some of these brothers about what to share, one of the things that they said is maybe to share a little bit about the background and conditions of revival. Really, there is none.

They happen in times of prosperity. They happen in times of national disaster and economic adversity. Yes, it's true that many times when we're more sensitive or need to God, things happen that we tend to pray more, but they've happened in all times.

They've happened in so many different nationalistic backgrounds and so forth. There's only one common denominator that you can absolutely trace to all revival, and that is prayer. That's not just little prayer but much prayer and agreed prayer and gathering together God's people and praying.

Seeking Genuine Revival Rather Than Superficial Experiences

There's always hidden springs to revival. I'm also aware that in our circles, when we have some maybe tent meetings or some sort of evangelistic campaign, we call them revival meetings, whatever, that maybe a few souls get saved or God does a fresh work and we say we're having revival.

My heart in this presentation is to lift that standard and to not let us be satisfied with just a little bit of God moving, and so we just settle down, and that's all we pray for. The late evangelist George R. Brunk II, who God used throughout the 50s and 60s and 70s and even later, I heard him preaching one day in Oroville, Ohio on a table.

Naturally, I was not even born then. He said, I think it was like Saturday evening, just before they had like a two or three-week campaign, they were bringing to a close. He said, you think because 20 or 30 people are walking now each night and people are getting saved that we're having revival.

He said, we are not having revival here. God has not yet broken through. As I listened, I said, how could he say that? How could he speak that so authoritatively like that? But then as I studied the Lancaster Revival in 1951, where he had just been there a number of weeks or months previous to those meetings, I understood why he said that, because he had seen and tasted the real thing.

He knew what it was like when God came down and answered to the prayers of his people and poured out his spirit in a marvelous way. Evan Roberts, a man whom God used in the Welsh Revival in 1904, was often quoted as saying, you're asking God to send his spirit.

He said, I have record that he came. Have you any record that he left? And yet he would also ask his people to pray for the spirit to come. Isn't that interesting? And as we think about this, the spirit is here.

As we've heard this morning, God has poured out his spirit upon all flesh. But there are times when God in his sovereignty chooses to manifest himself in a mighty way, and that is what we are hoping to see today, to look at some of those things.

We need to see the lukewarm state of the church today and where things are at and people just content to be at ease in Zion. And that is what should set us to praying. Our desire is that we would seek God until he comes and rains righteousness upon us.

Not seeking him to do what we will not do, but seeking him to do what we cannot do. When we have done what we will and we've made ourselves available, asking him to come and rain the heavens and to come and rain righteousness on us.

I'm also hoping in this short time to look at what God's done in days gone by and give us a holy dissatisfaction. And as we recount things he's done to stir us up for what the possibilities are that he could do.

Learning Honestly from Revival History

I want to look at history and a number of revivals. I'd like to just say it's been stated many times this week and honesty is so important. It's easy for us to say, well that was them or that was for what God did here or that people group or whatever.

But let's just be honest. When we're not there, say, we're not there. When we study history, the best thing we can do is read what God's done. And just be honest. God loves an honest heart. Sometimes it's difficult.

Sometimes there's things we can't explain. Sometimes there's things we aren't comfortable with. And that's okay. Let's just be honest. Lord, it looks like you've done this. I have no other explanation for it.

I'm not comfortable. If you want to make me comfortable, you're going to have to change me. Here's where I'm at. And that's okay. God wants honest hearts. Again, as I shared earlier, there's no possible way we can even begin to even provide an overview of all that God's done down through the ages.

Naturally, you'll see that in this presentation, at first the dates are far apart and not near as often. Then as it comes later, much closer together and much more often. And part of that, I believe, is communication and records.

And some of it, too, is as the Bible got printed and as the people became awakened, just like we're hoping today, they began to pray. And as they heard of revival in other places and as they read history, what God did there and did here, they said, let's seek God for that for us.

And he came and he visited them. Of course, the first record of revival is the church. Revival is not some super spiritual thing. Yes, there's mighty outpouring of God's Spirit, but revival is only a return to normal Christianity.

And so let's not think we're looking for some major lofty high experience. We just want to walk in the fullness of the Holy Spirit for what he has for us today. We know that, of course, the church started here and it spread.

It spread all the way up through here. And we have much of those records in the New Testament. It spread all over into Asia and up into Europe. And it's amazing how God had key figures. And this has often been this way in revival.

Key figures, men like Paul and some of the other apostles that he used mightily. But he also used everybody. They went everywhere preaching. And this is also very common to revival, those two things. Moving on from the early church, one of the earliest revivals that we have good records on is the Waldensians.

The Waldensians and Revival amid Persecution

And I have here a picture, a sketch actually, of a day when the bitter opposition, often this does happen in revival, bitter opposition breaks out against what God's doing. And we'll talk more about that.

But in this picture, 240 Waldensians were burned in one day. Can you imagine outside of town a picture like this? 240 of them being burned. I can't even fathom. I can't fathom the impact. Something like that would be on a local area.

But that is what happened. But it did not stop them. They went everywhere preaching. And they spread. And God was with them. And the Holy Spirit went with them. Here's a rough picture of representing January 21, 1525, which is often called the birthday of the Anabaptist movement.

I want to just scroll down here a little if I can figure out how to do it. And on that date a number of brothers got together and decided that they are going to decide to follow God in the face of very strong opposition and being told that they must baptize their infants.

Let's see if we can go back here. And God came down and honored their sacrifice. Within two years all those men were dead. But the Holy Spirit, don't think it was just people doing things in the flesh and somehow people caught it and it went on.

The Holy Spirit came down. And then a mighty wind blew out at that time and revived those people. And the church spread by the thousands. They just couldn't stamp it out. And these people were people of spiritual authority.

Things like we might not know much of today. You read the martyr's mirror. You read instances where men cited somebody to appear before the judgment seat of God in three days. Can you imagine that? And he did.

Another place there's a group of Anabaptists being led across a bridge to their execution. And one of them prophesied and said this bridge is not going to be used to carry people across anymore. And within a very short period of time a storm came and took the bridge out.

This was not just people walking good principles and keeping rules. This was people full of the living God. They didn't even know who they were. They didn't even use the name Anabaptists. They just called themselves brethren, Swiss brothers.

And later on those names came from their enemies and they kind of assumed them. But they were just brothers trying to follow Jesus. Pouring out their life. And they have given us things that we can follow.

The Wesleyan Revival and Radical Christian Commitment

Moving on. In the 1700s. Again we're just hitting some highlights. God used two brothers, John and Charles Wesley and their friend George Whitefield. Two brothers mightily in England. Especially the Wesleys got together regularly for Bible study, prayer and accountability.

Things like we're doing on this weekend. Gathering in circles. Praying together. They would do that regular. And did you know the Methodists as their groups came to be called were despised people? Today we see the big lofty churches and all the big fancy buildings and all those things.

To become a Methodist in the early days was to be despised. They were one of those lowly Methodists. One of those crazy people. So and so has gone to join the Methodists. That was the tenor of the day.

But it didn't matter. These people didn't care. They wanted reality. They wanted God. And these people, these men sold out to God. Got born of the Spirit. And they regularly preached. In those days without electronics the crowds of thousands.

Sometimes 10 ,000. And these of course are just sketches. But here it shows George Whitefield preaching to some of the Americans. And John. And here's sometimes as many as 10 ,000. It's reliably reported in some cases.

After John was done preaching there was over 1 ,500 men lying prostrate on the ground. Totally overcome of conviction for their sin. And when they came to they walked in holiness of life. They turned the tide against things like gambling and drunkenness.

In the places they went to preach. In fact, there's a brother who wrote in a book. I highly recommend it. How the Methodists Saved America. And he talks about how these people, these circuit riders who just lived for the gospel.

They went everywhere. The average lifespan of these men was 33 years old. But they didn't care. They were full of God and they were going to burn out their life for Jesus. And they went everywhere preaching.

And a new town would open up on the frontier. And before it was opened up there was a circuit riding preacher. Preaching to those depraved souls who were looking for reality. And they were trying to find the things of this world.

And they knew that where those pioneers were there were souls that needed Jesus. And they would be there at the end of the road. Tracking them down. Preaching the gospel. Sometimes they would ride miles and miles.

Going from community to community. Preaching the gospel. And people came under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. There was a time when the Methodist movement was most near the Amish movement. Because they were such a conservative people.

Not because they had a list of rules. But because they took the commands of Jesus literally. And I'm not lifting up people groups. But I'm just giving an example of what happens. Now we see these things later.

Things have cooled off. But somehow in our minds sometimes we look at groups like them and we say, Well, that's not us. You know, we're here. But do we think that we can afford to cool off? Look what happens when people follow the things of this world and get lukewarm.

Charles Finney and Revival through Prayer and Conviction

Next I want to talk a little about Charles Finney. Charles Finney was a lawyer in New York. And probably, possibly no man greater used by God in revival than Charles Finney. At least in an obvious way.

And also possibly no more of a controversial figure than this man in church history. As people have looked at him. Charles Finney was part of a prayer meeting or Bible study. And they asked him if they should pray for him for his salvation.

He said, Don't bother. I've been listening to you pray for revival. And God's not answering your prayers. I don't see as it will help anything. But he was incredibly practical. And I believe that's why he was used by God.

Because he held God at his word. He took God at his word. And he did get born again. And he did get filled with the Holy Spirit shortly thereafter. And he was mightily used as a preacher. And he would go from town to town preaching the gospel.

And sometimes hundreds of people would cry out for mercy as they realized their sinfulness. It was in a day when the mindset of the people was that I'm just, you know, whatever is going to happen. It was fatalistic.

Whatever is going to happen has happened. He challenged them before a holy God about their sin. But it wasn't just his words. It was his spirit. And there's reliable instances where he recorded where he actually just looked at people.

Somebody talked about that last night. About just a look from God was the most valuable thing that a brother took with him from one of these Kingdom Fellowship weekends. Just a look. And he saw that brokenness and he said, I want to be like that.

This man was in a knitting mill and there were these girls that were at the mills weaving. And they were casual and laughing and joking. And he looked across and the Holy Spirit fell on them in conviction.

And the one was so surprised she jerked and it broke the thread. The knitting mill seized up. They all fell down and repented of their sins together and got born of the spirit. Never even talked to them.

He also preached to thousands. I think this is in New York. It's in the early days of photography. It's not a good photo. And the thing is they didn't even advertise these meetings. They didn't have campaigns.

They just showed up to preach and people started talking. And the Holy Spirit of God was there. And people just started coming. This is another characteristic of revival is it is not organized. It is not over here we're going to have revival meetings on such and such a date.

It's God shows up and people hear about it and they tell others. And come, come here. And people get saved. And then other people, they go tell other people, I got saved. And after a while, the building, wherever they can't find a building is big enough to hold it.

And that's why sometimes they've just preached out in the open air. Following Finney's ministry, or out of that, there's a young man by the name of Jeremiah Lanphier. And Jeremiah Lanphier was, I believe, converted during one of Finney's meetings somewhere.

And he was a businessman slash missionary in the city of New York. And he felt impressed by God to start a noontime prayer meeting to pray for revival in New York City. This was in the year somewhere around 1850, maybe 57, 59 in there.

And the first time they got together, nobody came. He prayed for half an hour. Nobody came. He had got the word out. And in about half an hour late, six people straggled in and had their prayer meeting.

I think they only had an hour prayer meeting. And they all went back. But the next week it was, I think, 12 and then 24 and 48. And it just mushroomed. And soon there was thousands of people praying. They couldn't find buildings big enough to hold these prayer meetings.

People stopping their work in the middle of New York City to get together at lunch to pray. And there came a time when all across America it was said you could not get off a train at noontime in a city of America and not find a prayer meeting going during the daytime in a town in America.

It was hard to find that. There was times when there were ships doing that revival in New York City. There were ships 100 miles out at sea would come into the presence of God. Knew nothing about the revival.

Knew nothing about any of this. They didn't have all the cell phones and all the things we have today. Knew nothing about it. Would come into the presence of God. And the sailors, these immoral, lewd sailors, would kneel down on the deck.

And they would cry out to God for mercy for their sin. And they would send telegraphs back to shore. Send minister. And until they came to shore, they were coming to shore and they were leading people to salvation in Christ.

And these were not cheap conversions. These were conversions of people coming under the power of the Holy Ghost and living holy lives and being changed. Sure, there's always been hype. There's always been somebody who would come along for the ride.

But always, one of the hallmarks of revival when God moves is that it changes people for life. They're never the same. Even today, when you talk to people that knew people involved in some of the revivals we'll talk about in just a bit, they were changed for life.

The Welsh Revival and Thirteen Years of Prayer

Sometimes it didn't pass on to the next generation, but it did change them. One of the revivals you want to think about is the 1904 Welsh revival. Here's a picture of Evan Roberts who God used a lot in that revival.

He was not the only man. God used a lot of men in that revival. But Evan Roberts was a man of prayer. And this is why I want to think about Evan Roberts. He prayed for 13 years for revival for his country, for his little island country of Wales.

Thirteen years. And in the end, isn't it interesting? God many times uses the people that pray to be part of the answer. And this was Moriah Chapel. And Evan was off at, I believe, studying to become a preacher, if I remember.

Some seminary or something somewhere. And God put a vision on him of a little prayer meeting with the young people of their church. This was Moriah Chapel where the revival started in that section of the country.

And so he went home to his elder or leader, whoever, pastor, and shared his vision. He wasn't so sure about it, but he gave him a little slot off to the side somewhere. He said, you can have a little prayer meeting here.

And God came down, and history was written. Because God came down and touched this group of young people. There was people. It was just like today. It was packaged different. There were people going to dances, not going to church.

It shut the football games down in Wales in 1904. Don't think that God couldn't do it again today. We don't want to be part of this world, and Brother Dale talked about this so much. But the heart of God beats with a passion for these things.

It's not great just to go back our nice long lane to our nice little cottage and talk about how bad those people are. All they do is talk about football. That's not okay to just talk about. It's good to not follow after the things of the world, the sports and all those things.

But what about seeing God visit those people and shut down the games because there was nobody to come because everybody had gone to the revival meetings. That weren't planned. That just sprung up everywhere.

It was notable because these men would, here's a sketch, down in the coal mines, which the area was a coal mining region. These men would take breaks for prayer and preaching down in the mines at lunch when God came to visit them.

Evan Roberts himself was from a coal mining family and others too. They had a problem that happened when the revival hit the coal miners. They couldn't get these ponies to cooperate anymore because the ponies only knew how to respond to cursing.

They didn't understand what their masters were saying anymore. Eventually they came along and got it, but it actually shut the coal mines down or slowed them down for a while. From the 1904 Welsh revival that spread, God had given Evan Roberts a promise of 100 ,000 souls.

Now I don't know what you or I would do if God spoke to heart and said, You pray, and you get real with me, and you press in, and I will give you 100 ,000 souls. Probably most of us would be tempted not to believe God.

But Evan Roberts didn't. He believed God. In fact, he was foolish enough to tell people that God had given him the word. It is reliably reported there were at least 100 ,000 that were judged to be true conversions during the Welsh revival, plus others that made professions and maybe slipped back.

Out of that, thousands of people went all over the world doing missions out of that revival. The revival spread to Africa and India and over into China and down into Korea. All out of that, and even over to the United States, out of what God did there.

Jonathan Goforth and Meeting God's Conditions for Revival

I want to talk a little bit about Jonathan Goforth. He was a man from Canada. He, like Finney, was a man that believed that any time that God's people met the condition, God was willing to send a revival.

It wasn't something that God was holding to a certain time. But if God's people would honor and get on their face and humble themselves, and this is something I would like us to get a hold of, he would go everywhere preaching that.

What are you waiting for? Get on your knees, get real, and God will come and meet you. They would do that. They would confess their sins, clean out the closets, and begin praying together and agreeing together in prayer, and God would come and meet them.

All over China, Korea, South Asia, God used that revival to sweep thousands into the kingdoms in the early 1920s. Two more I would like to just talk about. The one is not as near a widespread revival, but because of the people group I'm talking to, it's of significant impact.

The Lancaster Revival and Its Lasting Impact

In fact, it's one of the few revival movements among the Mennonite people in the country of America. It's what happened, actually, where I come from, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the early 1950s. Here's a picture of the East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church where they started a prayer meeting.

They started a prayer meeting from 6 to 7. I believe it was every weekday. Eventually, it just started a little Sunday school room. That's all they needed. But as soon as it moved to the main sanctuary, and then that filled up.

In that time of prayer, they asked Brother George Brunk to come and share. They started with the tent meetings. It was supposed to run two weeks outside the church, but soon it was too big to hold. They had to move it out of the city to the Lancaster Airport grounds.

Here you see pictures of it. It went for seven weeks. Many, many folks, even grandparents today, date their conversion to those days. These are people that God totally changed churches. Some of you are from the Beachy background.

The Weavertown Mennonite Church was greatly impacted by this revival. Up to that point, they were farming tobacco and lots of questionable things, a bit materially focused. God came into their church, and tobacco got plowed under, not just their church, but across Lancaster County fully.

It was tobacco season, and full stands of tobacco got plowed down. Nobody told them they needed to do that, but God told them. On the final evening when they decided to close the revival, the estimate of between 15 ,000 and 20 ,000 people attended those meetings from all over.

Again, this was just people praying and God moving and people preaching the gospel. I'd like to talk a little bit about the Revival on the Isle of Lewis. That's just north of the coast of Scotland. The instrument that God used a lot in that revival was Duncan Campbell.

The Revival on the Isle of Lewis and Victory over Sin

Duncan Campbell makes it very clear. He said, I did not bring revival to Lewis. Revival was there when I got there. One of the unique things about the revival there in Lewis is that, again, this element of people waking up in the middle of the night.

Here's the chapel where it first started. Sometimes they'd close the meetings, and then God was moving, and there'd be hundreds of people outside the church that came out in the middle of the night. The meetings were ready to close them down.

The Spirit of God was moving to another place, and this is an important one. They went to an area, a region that bitterly withstood Duncan Campbell because they thought he preached sinless perfection.

Because what? He preached victory over sin. He said, you can be delivered from the power of sin through grace. Grace will give you the ability to walk a victorious Christian life that is not under the power of sin, that isn't constantly falling.

He said, I never believed and taught sinless perfection, but they thought that. What did they do? Did they just turn away and say, well, the churches are closed in this section of the country. We can do nothing about it.

No, they prayed. They had a little prayer meeting. There was a blacksmith. He wasn't an educated person, but he was a connected person. He knew God. Duncan felt led in the Spirit to call on him to pray.

They were in this prayer meeting. It was like one or two in the morning. This blacksmith just poured out his heart to God and challenged God that his glory was at stake and that he must do something. God came down, and they thought they had an earthquake, but Duncan Campbell said, I have my own thoughts about what happened.

I remember what happened next. They went out, and the whole community was alive. Lights were on everywhere, and people were getting up. They all came out, and hundreds and hundreds of people came to the Lord.

These people woke up with a conviction of sin. They went to bed sinners and woke up in the middle of the night with a conviction of sin. How can you explain that but by the Spirit of God? I'd like to talk in closing a little about the Chinese revival.

The Chinese Revival and Surrendered Faith

I personally didn't get a lot of details together, but today in China, the church is spreading at an amazing rate because people are embracing the cross. Yes, they may have their own flat spots. They do.

They have their own weaknesses, but one thing they have, they have a love for the Lord Jesus, and they're willing to go even unto death. God is again honoring the sacrifice of the surrendered vessel. I believe that the Lord wants to send revival to his people.

Brother Denny has preached a message on Psalm 80. Some of you may have heard that on reviving the righteous route of anabaptism and talks about God visiting the anabaptist or even just the American church with himself.

The church at once showed the glory of the Lord forth, and I believe the vision, this little artistic rendition, is that God would inflame households and bring people together all across. Those who have a form of godliness but many times deny the power, many, many times through history, it was God-fearing people that had grown cold that God came to.

They had a knowledge of the scriptures, but they didn't know God, and God came to, and God used it and changed them. A couple lessons I would like to consider in closing, just kind of a summary, is the first one, Charles Finney, one man full of the Holy Spirit, what God could do with, who wasn't even a believer when he started.

None of us are, but the way God got a hold of him, within weeks he was preaching. Jeremiah Lamphere, one man gathering others together for prayer and how God used that. I'd like to think about the Welsh Revival and how perseverance in prayer for 13 years without giving up, believing that God would come through.

The Need to Continue Pressing In after Revival

And then I'd like to think about the Lancaster Revival and the importance of continuing. No, it was a great thing God did in Lancaster in the 1950s, but the meetings all stopped, everything stopped, and everybody went back to their work.

And I believe there was a lot more that could have happened in Lancaster in 1950. The church was already in bad shape at that time, and it did not stem the tide drifting out to sea. So let's leave God, do everything he wants to do, pray for everything he wants to do, and then leave him do it.

And then China today is the opposite of Lancaster. China today, they put no limits on God. In fact, if you go over there and you can only preach 45 minutes, you can't preach in many of their churches.

They have five, six hour meetings. That's normal Christianity for them, and they just let God do what he wants to do, and let us do that. I'd like to close with reading 2 Chronicles 16, verse 9. Before I read that, I also wanted to mention one more thing when I talked about Jonathan Goforth.

Personal Revival as the Foundation for Corporate Revival

It's also, we can never expect corporate revival if we're not first, like these men walking in personal revival. That's how these men walked. They knew God for themselves. They walked with him, and then they expected that God would come down and visit others and do the same for them.

2 Chronicles 16, verse 9. I'm going to stop reading there. You know, you might think, who am I? What can I do? Don't think that way. Evan Roberts was a very young man, a young teenager, when God put on his heart to start praying for revival.

When the revival actually came, he was in his early 20s, but he had already been praying for 13 years. God used old blind ladies to begin, in the revival in the Isle of Lewis, to begin gathering together and praying into the night, sometimes once or twice a week.

Old ladies who couldn't do anything. They thought they couldn't do anything, but they knew how to pray, and they pressed in, and they prayed until God came. So none of us has an excuse to say, what can I do?

One man, the quote's been said, I believe it was John Knox, one man with God is a majority. And yet, isn't it amazing how when revival comes, how the one thing he does is answer the prayer of John 17, and making his body, it's no longer about one man.

In fact, many times those details even get lost in history. God remembers them. They get lost in history, but it is about God glorifying himself in the church.