The Canadian Revival - Part 3 — Bill McLeod

Revival’s Impact on Families and Church Leaders

A book about it called The Afterglow. He just laid his heart on the table and tells how God broke his heart and then three months later or so broke his wife's heart and she got straightened out with God and he said on the telephone three months later, our home was like heaven.

It wasn't like that before. Anyway, God was working in people's hearts and evangelists, missionaries, Sunday school teachers, Sunday school superintendents, leaders. I think one of the reasons why so many ordinary people responded was because the leaders were responding.

Leaders Finding Honesty and Restoration

Three preachers came to see me before one of the meetings and they said, God has shown us how wicked our hearts are. We can't even preach again. If God doesn't do anything in us, all of us are leaving the ministry.

I said, don't leave the ministry. Just get honest with God. You ask God to search your heart, we'll pray for you. And all three of those men met with God. And I just want to tell you something about one of these men.

He went back to his church and shortly after he led a fellow to Christ who had just come from Scotland, an electrician, and so this electrician paid for this brother, this preacher who was going to quit the ministry, he paid for him to fly to Scotland and gave him a list of his relatives to go and visit and try and win him to Christ.

And he went over there and led 15 of this guy's relatives to Christ in Scotland. This is one of the side things that happened. By the way, this will be interesting probably to you also. In the first year after revival in Western Canada, the Alliance Denominator reported 100 increase in the number of souls saved in that 12-month period to any previous year.

Revival’s Measurable Effects on Evangelism and Giving

One of the Baptist group reported for the first time in their history they went over the top in meeting their financial budget. They'd never done that before. The Western Tract Mission, which had headquarters in Saskatoon and had some 3 ,000 tract distributors around the continent, but few in foreign countries, they reported almost a 300 increase in the number of tracts distributed in that 12-month period after revival.

So it had an impact on the people in many, many different ways. Then we had a fellow in our church. He was originally from Russia, came over when he was 14 with his dad. He escaped from Russia under communism.

Revival Producing Compassionate Ministry

I think his father was dead at this time. He was now a grown man and married. And God touched his life in the revival. And he got involved in sending carloads, that's boxcar loads of clothing and food to people in Russia.

And I talked to him quite recently and asked how many cartons. Like these cartons are the size of a boxcar. And he had sent, I think he said, 24 cartons to Russia so far. And it cost about, I think, $10 ,000 to send one.

And people were helping him. He had not been involved in anything of this nature before revival, but he got launched in this at that particular time. Then Gordon Bailey, I must tell you about Gordon. He was a member of our church for six years.

He'd been a cowboy. He'd worked as a body shop worker and was, at that time, at the time of the revival, he was employed, I think, as a cattle inspector for the Saskatchewan government. Anyway, he'd been a Christian for six years, never tried to win a soul to Christ.

Gordon Bailey’s Confession and Reconciliation

He was always in church, usually in prayer meeting, but nothing beyond that. And then one Sunday morning, God had been speaking to him, and he came to the front of the congregation, and he stood by the communion table, and he said something like this.

He said, you know, I've been a Christian for six years. I've never tried to win a soul to Christ. He said, I've been sitting in the back pew because I hate some of you people. I've been shooting arrows of hatred at the backs of your heads.

I don't want to do that anymore. I want to be forgiven. Can you forgive me? Well, the heads were nodding up and down, and the tears were flowing. Then he said, I want to be right with God. And so I asked my deacons to take him into my office and pray with him, and they did.

And he went home, and here's what he did when he got home. Listen carefully, because the Bible twice says in James 4 and 1 Peter 5 that if you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, he will exalt you, he'll lift you up in due time.

So Gordon got home, and he got his wife and his three kids and set out four chairs, and he asked each child to forgive him for being such a poor Christian and such a poor father, and he asked his wife to forgive him for being such a poor husband.

He told me, he said, you know, Pastor, it was the hardest thing I ever did in all my life, but I felt I had to do it to be honest with God and to be honest with them. How did God respond to that? That very night after he did this, he was working in the barn.

The Holy Spirit’s Empowerment for Soul-Winning

He had heard of Black Angus cattle, about 50 cattle, and he was working in the barn, and here's what he told me. I heard this numbers of times because he traveled with me on occasion and gave his testimony in meetings before he began conducting meetings of his own.

But he said that night he was working in the barn, and he said, when God the Holy Ghost filled me from top to toe, he didn't speak in tongues, he didn't have any ecstatic experience of that kind, but he knew that the Spirit of God had filled him.

He began soul winning, and the next nine months he led 30 people to Christ. Then he started getting invitations to speak on weekends in churches, and one year speaking on weekends, he had spoken 105 times in different churches in western Canada.

Then he started getting invitations from the United States. He only had, I think, grade 8 education and no time in Bible college. He didn't read a book on how to do it. He just had a meeting with God and got his sin cleaned up and began walking with God.

He had meetings in Vancouver. He told me the power of God was so strong he was almost afraid to say anything or do anything because God was working so powerfully, just breaking people. And then he was in meetings one time, he told me, he gave an invitation and two men came forward.

He dismissed the congregation, went into a back room to pray with these men, came out 30 minutes later, the whole congregation was still sitting there. Nobody had left. They were all under conviction of sin.

And so he counseled the whole congregation as one person, and people were kneeling, crying, and seeking the face of God. And the hand of God was just on this man. As a cattle inspector, he loved it because he was with men all the time, and so he had many opportunities for sharing the gospel.

Evangelism Among Cowboys

On one occasion he was asked to speak at an international gathering of cowboys, I think in Calvary. And they had a Sunday service for cowboys. Had Gordon as a speaker. They had a couple of tents set up where counseling could be done for people that responded.

So many cowboys wanted to be saved they couldn't even handle it. But nothing like this had happened before. But remember the promise, if you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, whatever he asks you to do, not what someone else asks you to do, what he asks you to do, you do that, you humble yourself, and God will exalt you.

He'll pick you up. He'll lift you up. He'll give you a ministry of whatever kind. I mean, Gordon wasn't in full-time ministry, but he's doing more than most people in full-time ministry, just on Sundays.

Revival Calling People into Full-Time Service

And then people were called into full-time service. Before the revival, I had a young man as an assistant in Saskatoon. And after he'd been there a short while, it seemed he was not fitting in too well.

We found it hard to figure out. And finally, the deacons and I had a meeting. We decided that we should probably ask him to resign, which we did, and he did. And he left, didn't create any fuss or anything, he just left.

And then several years went by, and one night after the revival, he phoned me long distance and said, God showed me last night I'd never been born again. And he said, Can I come to Saskatoon? And so we told him to come.

I got some men together, and we knelt with him in the office. I'll never forget that. He knelt there, Dennis Johnson. And we all prayed for him, and then he prayed, and he was praying, and suddenly he just wept and he cried, God is real!

God is real! He kept hollering, God is real! God is real! And he's still walking with God. And so things like this were happening. In some cases where liberal preachers found Christ in some of these meetings.

And there were people coming and saying, My priest is in the meeting tonight, he's wearing other clothes. He doesn't have his frock on, but he's here. And so things like this were happening. I remember a lady, she was a Roman Catholic, and high up in the Catholic Church that is, she was in education.