The Greatest Revival — J. Edwin Orr

Commitment and the Power of the Holy Spirit

I propose to divide my time in two this evening. First of all, to talk about what God has done in one of the great spiritual awakenings, and then to take the remainder of the time to deal with the doctrine of revival.

What's on my heart is to speak on commitment. I believe in the gifts of the Spirit, I believe in the filling of the Spirit, I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, but sometimes I shudder when I hear people talk about this unrelated to commitment.

In other words, people who think they can have the power of the Holy Spirit without living holy lives. To me, that's a contradiction in terms. Now, so far as revival is concerned, in this country there have been some great awakenings.

1725, time of Whitefield and Wesley, somewhat before their actual experience. Then 1792, following the American Revolution. There was a resurgence in 1830. Probably the most wholesome of all awakenings was 1858.

The Spiritual Awakenings Leading to 1905

And then in 1905, probably the most widespread of all awakenings. So, I'm going to put it up to you, what you want me to talk about. I couldn't speak on all six movements. I can speak on the revival of 1858, if you wish, or the revival of 1905.

So, which will it be? Many would like 1905. Many would like 1858. I think 1905 has the edge. But, you see, I have another idea. There's a big church, a dynamic church in the San Fernando Valley, and they asked me to come and speak on revival.

So, now I've given them at least six lectures on revival, and they've been videotaping it. So, maybe this will lead to another opportunity. Who knows? All right. You can understand that in the year 1899, people were excited about the coming of the 20th century.

There were all nights of prayer at Moody Bible Institute. There were great prayer meetings at the Keswick Convention in England. There were prayer meetings in India, in the Nilgiri Hills. There were prayer meetings in Wonsan in Korea.

There were 10 ,000 people in prayer circles in Melbourne in Australia. Christians were somewhat excited about the coming 20th century. If this were the year 1999, everyone would have a program or a project for the year 2000.

There's no doubt about that. However, some people went about it in different ways. The Methodists announced a forward movement. They raised $20 million, and they announced they were going to win 2 million people to Christ.

They said, with a better knowledge of how to do it, and the fact it was nationwide, they thought they could secure a great awakening at the beginning of the 20th century. One Methodist, by the way, said, God waited until we got our project out of the way before he sent revival.

That more often happens. The Baptists had Baptist advance. At each denomination, the Presbyterians were engaged in a great program of evangelism. People were very hopeful. In fact, they started a new magazine called The Christian Century.

Today, it's a very liberal journal. It's the liberal equivalent of Christianity Today. But they were so convinced that the 20th century was going to be the great Christian century that they named this magazine after that.

Of course, they didn't know that there would be two bloody world wars, that there would be two great national revolutions, one in Russia, one in China, that there would be a great economic depression, that there would be moral deterioration.

They didn't know all that. So they talked about the Christian century, the 20th century. By the way, you may wonder what happened to that great program the Methodists had. They had, I think it was about 18 ,000 professed conversion.

Thank God for that. But you're disappointed when you're aiming at two million. In the meantime, people were praying in other parts of the world. One day I was talking to Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. I wonder if you know the name.

Chuck Smith says he owes a tremendous amount to that man who died a few months ago. Martin Lloyd-Jones was a close friend of mine. He was pastor of the Westminster Chapel near Buckingham Palace. He said to me, if you're interested in the story of the Welsh Revival, get the records of the church at Newquay in Cardigan.

And I did. The pastor of that church was the Reverend Joseph Jenkins. He was what we call a Keswick man. Keswick is spelled K-E-S-W-I-C-K. Most Americans don't know what that means. Some of you know that this summer Chuck Smith spoke at the Keswick Convention.

I heard him twice. He was very nervous about culture shock. I just told him, look, one rule you must remember. Try and avoid slang. For instance, it's all right in Costa Mesa to say, then the Lord said to me, hey man, you can't do that.

But in England, I said, the Lord doesn't say, hey man. How would a crowd at Calvary Chapel feel if an Englishman said, then the Lord said to me, I say, old boy. It just doesn't sound right. So there was Chuck trying hard to conform.

But most people still don't know what the Keswick Convention is. The Keswick Convention is a conference for the deepening of the spiritual life. It is a school of holiness, holy living. And you know that the Wesleyan view of holiness is that of a crisis of commitment.

The Methodists talk about the second blessing. On the other hand, the Calvinist view is growth and grace. And the Keswick view is a crisis with a view to a process. In other words, that you do have a crisis of commitment when you say, Lord, you can have all there is of me.

Joseph Jenkins and the Awakening Among Welsh Young People

And then you grow in grace after that. Now Joseph Jenkins spoke to his young people one Sunday morning. And he said, what does Jesus Christ mean to you? They were embarrassed. They were decent church young people.

They always began their meetings with prayer. They loved to sing. The Welsh can sing all right. They had Christian functions. They also had picnics and tennis and things like that. But it was really their Christian social club where boy met girl and that sort of thing.

So they were embarrassed. Joseph Jenkins said again, what does Jesus Christ mean to you? And finally one fellow said, Jesus Christ is the hope of the world. He said, that's not what I mean. And he said, what does he mean to you?

There was dead silence. And then a girl, Florrie Evans, who had been converted only three weeks, spoke up and said, I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart. And she said it so sincerely. There was an immediate hush of the sense of the presence of God in that meeting.

The result was a revival, a local reviving among those young people. Joseph Jenkins formed them into a team. He went out preaching and took them with him to testify and to sing. And Mrs. Jessie Penn Lewis wrote to the London magazine, The Life of Faith, and said, there's a cloud no bigger than a man's hand rising in Wales.

That was 1904. Seth Joshua was the leading evangelist of Wales, a Presbyterian. By the way, his son is retired, living at Port Wynemy around the California coast. Peter Joshua, he's almost 90. I know him quite well.

His father went and had a campaign, what they call over there a mission, in that church at Newquay. And he was amazed at the power. I have read his diary. It's in the National Archives of Wales, University of Aberystwyth, in his own handwriting.

And it simply tells of his experience. 19th September. I tried to close the service several times last night, but it went on beyond human control. Peter Joshua told me that his father would say, now young people, it's three minutes to twelve.

Tomorrow's another day. Let's have a benediction and go home and we'll meet again tomorrow. And they had a benediction and a slight pause and then somebody got up and prayed. And the meeting went on. When he said, now young people, I said, tomorrow's another day.

Somebody said, it's already tomorrow. He had the greatest campaign of his life up to that time. He went from there to a college, Newcastle Emlyn College, where young Presbyterians trained for the ministry.

Evan Roberts’s Prayer for Revival

And there he told of the revival, the local revival, at Newquay in Cardigan. Now among the students was Evan Roberts, a coal miner, 26 years of age. I knew him quite well. Of course, I didn't know him then.

I knew him 30 years later. Evan Roberts was a very committed Christian, a very spiritual man. I have read his diaries. Right away back, he said he'd been praying for revival for 11 years. I found that he went to church twice on Sunday.

He also went to Bible class and to Sunday school. On Monday, he went to a prayer meeting. On Tuesday, a mission service. On Wednesday, midweek service. On Thursday, a temperance meeting. On Friday, class meetings.

I could find no record of what he did on Saturday night. But knowing what the country was like in those days, Saturday night was bath night. Those houses of the poor didn't have bathrooms. So it meant each member of the family got the galvanized iron tub out before the kitchen fire.

And each person had the use of the kitchen to wash off the grime of the week. So no meetings on Saturday. Now, Evan Roberts was electrified with the news of the revival. He'd been praying for revival.

Now it seemed as if it was at hand. The students petitioned the principal of the college to close down classes for a week and let them attend Seth Joshua's next week of meetings in a town called Blaenannach, much closer to the college.

Principal Phillips said something very wise. He said, you learn more in one week of true revival than a year of theological study. So the whole body of students went off to these meetings. The evening meetings were well crowded, but the morning meetings not so well crowded because in those days young mothers couldn't get babysitters.

People who were at work had to stay at work and those who were in school were in school. And so all you had on the mornings at 10 o 'clock were the nice old ladies of the parish and the students. But of course, you know, generally speaking, the nice old ladies are the most praying group of the church.

And it was there that Evan Roberts entered into a new experience with God. Seth Joshua closed his meeting by praying in Welsh, O our glued pligny, O Lord, bend us. The Welsh word bend is much more forceful than the English word.

You know the chorus we used to sing, Spirit of the living God, fall fresh in me, melt me, mould me, fill me, use me. The word bend is like what a potter does to the clay on the wheel. Shape, shape me.

Bend me to your will. And Evan Roberts went forward with great tears and brokenness to pray, O God, bend me. It's very interesting that Joseph Jenkins, the man with the Keswick convictions, was there and wasn't impressed.

He said one young man, probably neurotic, was carried away by his emotions. On the other hand, Seth Joshua said one young man was deeply stirred. Well, Evan Roberts went back to college, but he couldn't concentrate on his studies.

He said to Sidney Evans, his roommate, do you think God would give us 100 ,000 souls? He was so determined that they would see that Wales is a small country, the population of the country, perhaps 300 ,000.

But, excuse me, not 300 ,000, 2 .5 million, about 2 .5 million in those days. A small country. If anyone said to me I'm praying for 100 ,000 souls, I'd put them down as an enthusiast. But Evan Roberts took all the money he had in his savings account to try and start a team to begin preaching.

He said he was prepared to pay God for the privilege of preaching. So often today we find people who make a fuss about the amount of money they're paid for their services. It was quite the opposite with Evan Roberts.

He was prepared to pay the Lord for the privilege, but he couldn't concentrate. He went to Principal Phillips and he said, I keep hearing a voice that tells me I must go back and speak to our young people.

Mr. Phillips, he said, is that the voice of the spirit or the voice of the devil? And Mr. Phillips said, the devil never gives orders like that. You can have a week off. So he took the train home. His parents were surprised to see him.

They said, why are you not studying? Are you in trouble? No. Actually, he said, I've come back to preach to the young people. I said, what young people? He said, our young people. They said, we were in church on Sunday and the pastor didn't announce it.

Evan said, the pastor doesn't know yet. So he went along and told the pastor, I want to speak to the young people. Now, what would you do if you're a pastor of a church and some young fellow went off to Bible school for two months and came back and announced he wanted to preach?

He didn't want to hurt Evan Roberts' feelings more. He didn't want to hurt the congregation's feelings. So he said, how about speaking for us on Monday night? He didn't even let him speak to the prayer meeting.

He announced to the prayer meeting, our young brother Evan Roberts feels he has a word for you if you care to wait. I suppose after they'd finished their prayers, they were ready to go home. But when they noticed him standing there, they all knew him.

He had been brought up in the church. 17 people waited to hear what he wanted to say. But how different it was. He said, I have a message for you from the Lord. First, you must confess any known sin to God and put any wrong done to man right.

Second, you must put away any doubtful habit. Third, you must obey the Spirit promptly. And finally, you must confess your faith in Christ publicly. By 10 o 'clock, all 17 had responded. The pastor was so pleased.

He asked Evan Roberts to speak at the mission service on Tuesday, the midweek service on Wednesday. On Thursday, the temperance meeting was converted into a general meeting. And on Friday, they brought all the classes together.

But on Sunday, some visiting clergymen came. By appointment. And Evan Roberts sat with his family in the pew. But at the end of the evening service, the people got up and said, we want Evan Roberts to speak to us again.

So they had an after meeting. The minister said, if I make it right with the principal, would you stay for another week? So he stayed on for another week. Then the meetings got hard. You know, I've always said, when the Lord begins to work in times of revival, the second party to be revived is the devil.

When Christians are bickering among themselves, or taken up with their own pleasures, the devil thinks it's a good time for him to have a vacation in Las Vegas. But when Christians wake up, he wakes up too.

The Breakthrough in Evan Roberts’s Home Church

So the meetings got hard. On Wednesday night, Evan Roberts said, at three o 'clock in the morning, we're going to pray all night if need be. At three o 'clock, his mother got up to leave the meeting. He followed her to the door.

He said, mother, are you going home? She said, son, the people are tired. And the meeting's hard. And you're stubborn. He said, don't go, mother. But she went. She thought if his own mother couldn't speak to him, who could?

So she made her little protest and went home. Evan and his brother Dan got home at daybreak. They went to bed to catch up and sleep. At ten o 'clock in the morning, they heard weeping. They came down to the kitchen and found the mother sitting by the fire, weeping because her sons were more spiritual than she was.

They prayed with her. They sang a hymn together. And that night in the meeting, the break came. You say, now, what do you mean, the break? Well, I've read the newspapers of the period. Each had little items of news.

The Reverend Peter Jones has just been appointed chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's. Interesting, but not earth-shaking. Mowbray Methodist Church has had a very interesting rummage sale. Things like that, you know.

Then suddenly a headline. Great crowds of people drawn to Lochor. He said, for some days now, a young man named Evan Roberts, a native of the place, was causing great surprise in the Mariah Church. So great was the excitement that the main road between Swansea and Llanelli was packed from wall to wall.

People trying to get into the church. Shopkeepers were closing early to find a place. And miners and steel workers were coming directly from work in their dungarees. And now the news was out. The Western Mail, the largest newspaper in that part of the country, sent down a reporter to study this.

He was greatly taken with this strange service. He said, there seemed to be no order of service. But he said, the meeting closed at 4 .25 in the morning. And even then, people seemed reluctant to go home.

As he started to walk back to Llanelli, he left a big crowd outside the church, all still engaged in animated conversation. Then there was a very British remark. He said, I felt that this was no ordinary gathering.

The Social Transformation of the Welsh Revival

Well, on Friday, I suppose every praying woman in Wales was praying for the conversion of her loved ones. On Saturday, every grocery store in that industrial valley was emptied of groceries, people coming to the meetings.

And on Sunday, every church was filled. Now, we are so conditioned in this country, in terms of mass evangelism, that we would assume that Evan Roberts then became the Billy Graham of Wales. Nothing of the sort.

He wouldn't even announce where he was preaching in advance. I attended the last Graham crusade in Greater Los Angeles. Billy Graham was speaking to 40 ,000 a night. If on Tuesday night, he had said, don't come here tomorrow night.

Go to your own midweek service. And you pastors who don't have one, open up, because these people are coming. Supposing some pastor who didn't have a midweek service decided he better open up, otherwise the church would be disgraced.

What would he tell his custodian? The custodian would say, well, how many do you expect, sir? How many would they expect? If you had taken the 40 ,000 and divided it by the 5 ,000 sponsoring churches, it would have meant eight people per church.

They could all have sat in the front row. Now, that's mass evangelism at its best. It doesn't compare with the movement that would fill every church, every night, because that's what happened. I had a friend, Dr. Merton Lewis.

He died about the age of 80. He told me he was seven when the revival reached the Ronda Valley. His father was a coal miner. Came home at three in the afternoon from the early shift, took a bath, put on his Sunday clothes, said, come, Mother, we're going to the church.

When they got to the big church, it was packed at four in the afternoon. The meeting seemed to be running itself. There was no room for anyone, but they saw a mother with young children. They made room for her.

At seven, unexpectedly, Evan Roberts arrived. The meeting was so crowded, he had to climb on a bench and walk on the men's shoulders up the aisles until he climbed up over the front of the pulpit. He said one word in Welsh, three words in English.

Let us pray. And immediately, all 1 ,800 began to pray. I said to Merton Lewis, now, what kind of prayer? Was it ejaculatory prayer? You know the way you go to meetings where some people are saying, amen, amen, amen, hallelujah, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

No, no, people, each was praying his own prayer. He said, you could hear them if you listened. One man would be praying, oh, God, just give me another chance, I'll put things right. And some mother would be praying, Lord, my boy hasn't written to me since he went to Liverpool.

And some young fellow would be promising to go to the mission field. One man took his elbow and hit Mr. Lewis and said, would you stop praying and tell me how I can become a Christian? At 10 o 'clock, Evan Roberts left the meeting.

The family with whom he stayed said he prayed all night. But at 2 in the morning, Mr. Lewis said, come, mother, we'd better get the children to bed. One child had fallen asleep, the other was toppling over.

They walked home in the drizzle. It was so close to daybreak that Mr. Lewis slept in the rocking chair from 3 until about 5 .30, then went off at 6 in the morning to the early shift. Came back, took a bath and put on a Sunday best.

And said, come, mother, we're going to the church. And went back to the same meeting, running full tilt. Now, you might say that's incredible. Have you ever heard of the Asbury College revival in 1970, when the chapel of Asbury College was filled night and day for a week?

That happened in 1950 at Wheaton College. It's happened in many places. Now, that's within a college. But could you imagine a community like that? Because the churches of Wales were filled each evening for about 18 months.

It was a remarkable moment. When I said Evan Roberts wouldn't announce where he was preaching, I remember one occasion reading where he went to a big church, between 2 ,000 and 3 ,000 people packed in.

He began in his fervent way, how many of you believe the promises of God? A great roar of amen. He said, would you agree with me that one made by the Lord Jesus is especially precious? Yes. He said, do you know one that says where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst?

Yes. He said, do you believe it? Yes. Where is Jesus now? Somebody shouts, here. Do you really believe it? Yes. Then he said, you don't need me. Then he put on his hat and coat and went to another meeting.

Now I asked the man who told me that who was there, then what happened? He said, we all suddenly realized that Jesus was there. The Welsh Revival was like a vast prayer meeting. You might say, didn't they study the Bible?

Didn't they preach? Oh yes, there was more preaching in the Welsh Revival than before or after. But mostly it was prayer and testimony in which the word came alive to them. About 100 ,000 were converted and added to the churches.

I don't know how many more were converted who were already church members. When a man is a member of a church and gets truly converted, he doesn't resign and join again. So the statistics don't show converts among members.

But 100 ,000 outsiders joined the churches. It's interesting in view of the criticism of evangelism today, people claiming that the number who actually persevere is very low, to notice that a man wrote a book to debunk the Welsh Revival, five years after the crest of the Revival.

His major complaint was that after five years, of the 100 ,000 who joined the churches, only 75 ,000 still stood. Now, I wondered if that was a fair statistic. Actually, what the man did was he showed that 100 ,000 had joined the churches.

And he showed that five years later, 25 ,000 had left the churches. But which 25 ,000? You know, when Chuck Smith, in a weak moment, won some hippies to the Lord, 33 of his congregation left. They said, if they stay, we'll go.

And perhaps the Welsh Revival was such that it poured such new life into the churches, some of the older members couldn't take it. Not only that, of course, but Wales is a poor country, and there was steady emigration to Canada and the United States, especially Pennsylvania and the coal mines, and to New Zealand and Australia, all around the world.

And then I think J .V. Morgan, who wrote the book, sort of gave the game away. He said, many were lost to the mission halls and the Pentecostals. What a way to be lost. You see, they didn't want to go back to the old form.

They were under these freer meetings. However, the social impact of the Revival was astounding. Drunkenness was cut in half. I got the figures for the county of Glamorgan, the most populous county, in which Cardiff is situated.

The number of arrests for drunkenness fell from about 10 ,000 a year to 5 ,000 a year. But there was a wave of bankruptcies. Isn't that an interesting study? How could a religious revival cause bankruptcies?

Most of those who went bankrupt were owners of taverns, couldn't sell their booze. Crime was diminished. In the British system, they have quarter sessions for criminal cases. Local judges deal with minor cases, but they save up the serious cases, murder and embezzlement and robbery and rape and so forth, for the quarter sessions.

In county after county, the judge was presented with white gloves. Not a case to try. No rapes, no robberies, no murders, nothing. There were emergency meetings in some of the district councils to discuss what to do with the police, now that they were obviously unemployed.

I found one case where they sent for a sergeant of the police and asked him, what do you do with your time? Now, I don't know what it's like in Orange County, but I live up on the west side of Los Angeles.

And if you had a prowler and called the police station, they would say, look, we're too busy to send anybody out for that. Not unless it's something very serious. They're so busy. You know that in California, if a person commits a murder this month, it may be 12 months before he's tried, because the calendar is so crowded.

So this sergeant said, well, before the revival, we had two main jobs. One was to prevent crime and the other was to control crowds, football games and market days and that sort of thing. Since the revival, there's practically no crime.

So we just go with the crowds. The counselor said, what do you mean you go with the crowds? Do you mean you take all your time directing crowds to churches? No, no. He said, you know where the crowds are.

They're in the churches, all right. But he said, we have 17 police in our station, but we've got three good quartets, and if any church wants a quartet to sing, they just notify the police. We're ready.

Defending the Revival’s Moral Fruit

They weren't wasting their time. Now, in 1974, that's 70 years after the revival, a Welsh journalist, who obviously wasn't alive at that time, wrote three articles ridiculing the revival. He said, Evan Roberts was an immoral man.

The whispers of many women in his life said his sermons were so aphrodisiac, was the word they used. He so inflamed his congregations that they poured into the churchyards and when the women became pregnant, they blamed it on nightingales.

When I read that, having known Evan Roberts as a spiritual man, a man so chaste, the world wouldn't understand him anyway. I wrote to the editor and I said, you haven't heard the last of this. So I flew from California at my own expense, and I got a friend of mine to arrange for meetings in Bangor, Aberystwyth, Swansea, and Cardiff, the four university cities.

There I challenged him. Now, this article said that a certain historian had said that the Welsh revival had increased illegitimacy. I found it wasn't a historian, it was a Baptist minister living in Birmingham.

So I called him, I said, did you say that the Welsh revival increased illegitimate births? Yes, he said, I said that, my mother told me that. I said, how would your mother know? Well, he said, she knew of a girl that got into trouble.

I said, in the meetings? I said, were you at Billy Graham's campaign in Haringey? Yes, he said, I travelled up to see it. I said, could you imagine someone interrupting and saying, Dr. Graham, there's a girl getting into trouble in the fifth row?

How ridiculous can you be? Oh, he said, I don't mean in the meetings, I mean because of the excitement of the times. Perhaps some girl was a little careless or carried away. But I said, for every, if there were any, for every girl that was careless, perhaps there were a thousand that quit fooling around because of what was being preached.

Yes, he said, but that wouldn't show in the statistics. I said, well, you've got a point there. Then I thought, it would. I took a train up to London and I went to Somerset House in the Strand where they keep the records of births, deaths, and marriages.

And there's a section on illegitimate births. County by county, town by town. I found that in the county of Radnor, illegitimate births dropped 44 in one year. In Marynith, the same. In Glamorgan, 8%.

But in every Welsh county, the figure dropped. I can tell you, I felt like Samson with a jawbone of an ass. I slew a thousand critics. We ended up in the biggest church in Cardiff, standing room only, hundreds turned away.

The Lord Mayor was there in his regalia. And I felt, after I'd finished, like looking up to heaven and saying, well, Evan, I hope I did a good job. Because Evan Roberts was my friend. There were even slowdowns in the coal mines.

You'd think that's another strange one. How could a religious revival cause a strike? It wasn't a strike, just a slowdown. So many Welsh coal miners were converted and stopped using bad language that the horses that dragged the coal in the mines couldn't understand what was being said to them.

I thought that was a tall tale of the revival. But I was able to document it. Archdeacon Wilberforce made that statement in Westminster Abbey. And Merton Lewis, whom I mentioned, said, my dad told me that.

He said, we call those men that work the horses holliers. And apparently they had a reputation like the mule skinners of Tennessee. When men work with mules, they tend to swear. And these men working with horses, most of these horses were blind, of course, working in the dark.

Working with these horses, they would swear like troopers at them. Merton Lewis said his father told him that there was one hollier, a foul-mouthed man that was converted. He talked to the horses. Come on, Betsy.

Come on, girl. Come on. You know I can't swear at you. Come on. The horse couldn't understand. It just laid its ears flat. You know, it couldn't understand. He said, well, I can't cuss you, but I can pray for you.

So he said, Lord, help this dumb brute. And so transportation slowed down until they learned the language of Canaan. That was the Welsh Revival. It swept England, every county. It swept Scotland, took Motherwell outside Glasgow, the streets packed from wall to wall.

And after the excitement died down, seven churches and four public halls packed nightly. It broke out in Northern Ireland. The Revival simultaneously broke out in Norway under Albert Lunde. I preached for Albert Lunde.

He was called the Evan Roberts of Norway, but he was not a bit like Evan Roberts. Evan Roberts was a mystic. Albert Lunde was a converted Norwegian seaman. They're not very mystic. The Revival swept Sweden.

One of the leaders was Prince Oscar Bernadotte, the brother of the king. I remember praying with him in his palace in Stockholm 30 years later. When the Revival swept Denmark, the Danish Lutheran Home Mission said there hasn't been a winter like it since Christianity came to the Vikings.

The Revival swept Germany. It broke out in India, China, Burma, Korea, phenomenally in Korea. It broke out in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, even in North Africa.

It broke out in Brazil, it broke out in Mexico, it broke out in Chile. You say, what about the United States? I made a study of the subject of Revival for years, and I did not know that the Revival of 1905 had affected the United States in any way.

I had heard that in 1906, about the time of the San Francisco earthquake, there was an extraordinary little prayer meeting in Azusa Street in Los Angeles that resulted in the explosion of the Pentecostal movement.

But although I knew that Azusa Street people talked about the Welsh Revival, I knew that in the Welsh Revival there was no speaking in tongues. And I didn't know if there was any connection between the two.

The Worldwide Spread of Revival

One day I was up at Simpson College in San Francisco looking through the archives, the old magazines of the Christian Missionary Alliance. In 1906, January, reviewing the previous year, it said, 1905, the year of the Holy Ghost.

I thought, what are they referring to? I got Moody Monthly. And in Moody Monthly, reviewing the previous year, it said, Mr. Moody, before he died, that was 1899, said, I would like, before I go hence, to see the whole Church of Christ quickened as it was in 1858, and a wave going from Maine to California to sweep thousands into the Kingdom of God.

Then it said, Mr. Moody did not live to see this in the flesh. But the revival has come. In Atlantic City, the ministers reported of a population of 50 ,000. There were only 50 adults left unconverted.

In Paducah, Kentucky, the pastor of the First Baptist Church took in 1 ,000 new members in two months and died of overwork. An old man, Dr. J .J. Cheek. In Denver, on the 20th of January, 1905, every school closed.

Every church was filled at 10 o 'clock in the morning for prayer. At noon, every downtown theater and hall. The Colorado legislature closed. It said, Denver hadn't seen a winter like it before. In Portland, in Oregon, 200 major stores closed from 11 to 2 each day for prayer.

Here in Los Angeles, you know that when it rains, it really rains heavily. But 4 ,000 Christians marched through the streets at midnight and picked up all the drunks and prostitutes and took them to a meeting, a midnight meeting they called it, in what was then the Grand Opera House.

There was revival everywhere. And it was on the back of that worldwide general revival that the Pentecostal movement had its opportunity. But of course, that's a story in itself. Well, I've spoken for 45 minutes on this subject.

Revival as God’s Sovereign Work

Let's take any questions you have in mind. Yes?

I read Charles Finney's book on revival. He started off with saying that revival is just a new obedience to God. And he spoke about confessing your sins and calling us to a holy life. I'm very interested in your feelings about that.

Well, the question of Finney's interpretation, God used Finney greatly in a time of revival. For instance, I had a friend in Glendale, California, W .P. Nicholson. And he was used of God to bring the greatest revival in Ireland in modern times, 1921.

Now, he couldn't stand choirs. He called them the devil's war department. He wouldn't have a campaign choir during his campaigns, nor would he let a congregational choir sing. For some reason or other, he didn't like choirs.

But you couldn't say that the Lord blessed him because of that. In other words, the Lord allows us to have our idiosyncrasies. You know what I mean? Like, for instance, take the San Fernando Valley. Jack Hayford is charismatic.

John MacArthur is dispensationalist. The Lord's blessed them both. Now, at that particular point, they can't both be right, can they? But the Lord has blessed them. So I would say the Lord allows us our idiosyncrasies.

Now, the point is this. As far as revival, there are different views. Of course, the word is badly misused in this country. I saw a sign outside a church in the San Fernando Valley that said, Revival every Monday.