Welsh Revival Facts and Fallacies — J. Edwin Orr

You understand that if this were the year 1999, everyone would be excited about the year 2000. It was the same during 1899, the beginning of the 20th century. Across the Atlantic, the Methodists announced a 20th century forward movement.

The Failed Expectations of the Twentieth-Century Forward Movement

They decided to win 2 million souls to Christ. They raised 20 million dollars to do it. And they said in an editorial, it was believed with a better knowledge of how to work, and a feeling that it was a church-wide movement, a great religious awakening might be secured at the opening of the 20th century.

You say, what happened? After three years, they confessed that very little gain in membership. One Methodist said, God, wait until we got our project out of the way, and then he allowed us to have revival.

The Baptists were having Baptist advance all over the world. There was an interest in the 20th century. In fact, in the United States, they launched a new magazine called the Christian Century, because they felt sure the 20th century would be the century of Christian triumph.

They didn't know that there would be two blood-letting world wars, that there would be two major revolutions, the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution, that there would be the great economic depression.

They didn't know all that. The Lord, of course, knew. In 1899, the deeply spiritual people engaged in prayer. There were all-nights of prayer at Moody Bible Institute. There were special prayer meetings at the Kazakh Convention.

There were 10 ,000 people in prayer circles in Melbourne. There were prayer meetings in the Middlebury Hills in India. Everywhere, people were praying for a spiritual movement in the 20th century. Now, this was also true of Great Britain.

Wales' Prayer for a Spiritual Revival

There was a special burden in Wales. David Howell, dean of the Cathedral of St. David's, declared, this is my last message to my fellow countrymen. He was dying of cancer, I think. The chief need of my country and my dear nation at present is a spiritual revival through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

In June 1900, the moderator of the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales, now called the Presbyterian Church of Wales, insisted that revival was the great need. And, until met, all effort to supply every other need were in vain.

I once spoke to a breakfast of ministers, a breakfast meeting. I tried to get involvement by asking, what do you think is the great need today? One man spoke up. He said, surely it's the Great Commission to preach the gospel to every creature.

I said, what is your work? He said, I'm a missionary on furlough. I said, anyone else got a suggestion about the great need? Someone said, well, it's Sunday school work. If we don't capture the next generation, we're lost.

Has anyone else got a suggestion? One man said, surely it must be the training of the ministry. If we don't train them right, we're going to lose our leadership. Another man said, well, I think you're all missing the boat.

The big menace of today is the drug traffic. Drug addiction, you have no idea what it's like. He was connected with Teen Challenge. So I took all these different needs. One man said, well, we need money.

We can't do any of these things without money. So stewardship is what we need. So I collected about a dozen different suggestions. Nearly all were interested in that particular field. I said, well, now, do you think, for instance, if we raise enough money, we could take care of the training of the ministry, or if we had successful Sunday schools, that that would take care of the drug problem.

They said, not quite, no. These are separate problems. I said, do you think there's anything that would meet them all? They said, no. I said, well, yes, there is. When there comes an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there's no lack of money in the church.

When there comes a great revival, the missionary societies are embarrassed of so many candidates for the mission field. When a great revival comes, you find all the theological schools are crowded with candidates, deeply spiritual candidates of that.

So Evan Phillips was right. Revival is a great need. Of course, it depends what you mean by revival. I would say the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the whole body of Christ is the great need. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones once said to me, if you're interested in the beginning of the Welsh revival, get the records of the church at New Quay in Cardigan.

Which I did. The pastor of that church was Joseph Jenkins. He was a Keswick man. He said to his Christian Endeavor Society one Sunday morning, what does Jesus Christ mean to you? They were a little embarrassed.

It was a very personal question, but one young man said, Jesus Christ is the hope of the world. He said, no, no, I don't mean that. What does he mean to you? A girl who had only been converted three weeks, Flory Evans, my name, said, I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart.

It was so heartfelt that there was a sense of the presence of God there. Joseph Jenkins formed that group of young people into a team and took them around with him preaching. He preached, they testified.

Seth Joshua and the Early Welsh Revival

The great evangelist of Wales at that time was Seth Joshua. He wasn't the only one. I never met Seth Joshua, but I know his son, Peter Joshua, who's retired in Southern California. Must be about 87 years of age.

He told me that his father went to Newquay to hold a preaching mission. I went up to Aberystwyth. People ask me, where do you get your facts? I look for them. I find Seth Joshua's diaries in the archives of the National University of Wales.

19th September, 1904. Revival is breaking out here in greater power. The young are receiving the greatest measure of blessing. They break out into prayer, praise, testimony, and exhortation. 20th. I cannot leave the building until 12 and even 1 o 'clock in the morning.

I closed the service several times. It would break out again, quite beyond human control. Peter Joshua told me, my dad would say to the young people, young people, it's three minutes to 12. Tomorrow's another day.

Let's have the benediction. And he would pronounce the benediction, and they just ignored it, went on singing or testifying or praying. Then he would say, it's away after 12. Tomorrow's another day. And someone would point out, Mr. Joshua, it's already tomorrow.

He went from there. By the way, he had 40 conversions in that little week of meetings, but he felt that there's a real movement of the Spirit of God. He went from there to Newcastle, England, where there was a training college, there where Evan Roberts was studying for the ministry, 26 years of age.

He'd been a coal miner. In fact, his father was badly injured in the mines. Evan Roberts was 12. He was a big boy, so he took his father's place. Not the same job, but his first job was opening and closing the steel doors.

Evan Roberts' Spiritual Preparation

He was a godly young man. I tried to find out his lifestyle from his diary. He had prayed for revival for 13 years. On Sunday, he went to church twice on Sunday. He taught Sunday school. He went to Bible class.

On Monday, he went to prayer meeting. On Tuesday, he went to a mission service. On Wednesday, he went to a midweek service. On Thursday, he went to a temperance meeting. On Friday, they had class meetings.

I've been asked many times in the United States, what did he do on Saturdays? He didn't say. But of course, knowing the life of the poor, I know what he did on Saturday. Saturday night was bath night.

They used to get the big galvanized iron tub in front of the kitchen fire. In those days, we only heated one room in the house, and each member of the family had the use of the room to perform their ablutions.

My American friend said, you mean they only took a bath once a week? I said, only if it was necessary. I said, only if it was necessary. The way, before the rise of Karl Marx, they didn't call the people the proletariat.

They called them the great unwashed. Well, Seth Joshua told the students what God had been doing down in U .K. The students petitioned the principal, Evan Phillips, to close down the school for a week and go to Blaenannerch, where Seth Joshua was preaching.

They were hoping to see the same sort of thing there. And Principal Evan Phillips said, you learn more in one week of revival than three years of theological study. So off they went. They had crowded evening meetings, but on the mornings at ten o 'clock they had some day meetings only attended by the nice old ladies of the parish, because most people at school couldn't go, most people at work couldn't go, there were no babysitters in those days, but those were the praying women, the older ladies with more time on their hands.

So we had theological students and praying women. It was there that, on a Thursday morning, that Seth Joshua moved, gave a moving prayer. Oh, our glued polygny. Oh, Lord. Evan Roberts felt he had reached the crisis of his spiritual experience.

He wanted to pray publicly, but he waited and waited, and then he went forward. The verse that moved him was that verse, God showed his love to us, that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.

Then a wave of peace flooded his soul. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. It was not a glossolalic experience, so far as I know, but he said, I felt ablaze with a desire to go through the length and breadth of Wales to tell of the Saviour.

And had it been possible, I was willing to pay God for the privilege of doing it. Actually, he withdrew his savings from the post office to form a team of his friends. He said to Sidney Evans, his roommate, who afterwards married his sister, went to India as a missionary, he said, do you think God could give us a hundred thousand souls?

Now, one of my students at Fuller came to me and said, I'm going into evangelism. Do you think God could give me a hundred thousand souls? I put it down to enthusiasm. Evangelism is hard work. Yet, about a hundred thousand people were converted in the next five weeks.

Evan Roberts Returns Home to Preach

Evan Roberts went to Principal Phillips and said, Mr. Phillips, I can't concentrate. I keep hearing a voice that tells me I must go and speak to the young people back home. Mr. Phillips, is that the voice of the Spirit or the voice of the devil?

And Principal Phillips said wisely, the devil never gives orders like that. You can have a week off. So he went down home to Loughborough near Gorsimon. His parents said, are you in trouble? Have you been sent down?

Who knows? I've come to preach to the young people. They said, we were in church on Sunday, there was no announcement made. He said, Mr. Morgan doesn't know yet. Mr. Morgan wasn't quite happy with the suggestion.

Imagine Prince coming to BBI for two months and then going and telling your minister, I've come back to preach. He said, how about speaking on Monday? He didn't let him speak to the prayer meeting. He said to the prayer meeting, after they've done their praying, ready to go home, he said, our young brother Evan Roberts feels he has a word for you if you care to wait.

Seventeen waited. But Evan Roberts had a most direct manner. He paced up and down until they were seated. Then he said, I have a message for you from God. You must confess your own sin and put any wrong done to man right.

You must put away any doubtful habit. You must obey the Spirit promptly. You must confess Christ publicly. Now, the meetings were not big. Evan Roberts, in faith, wrote to the editor of a big paper and said, we are on the eve of a great and grand revival, the greatest the world has ever seen.

Do not think that the writer is a madman. On Saturday night, he spoke on Be Filled with the Spirit. The meetings were getting bigger and bigger. On Sunday, a visiting clergyman came by appointment and Evan Roberts sat with his family in the pew.

But the paper rose up Sunday evening and said, we would like to hear from Evan Roberts again. And so, Mr. Morgan said, if I make it right with Principal Phillips, will you stay for another week? Then the meetings got hard.

I suppose Satan realized there was something happening and now there was opposition. In fact, the meeting was so hard on Wednesday, he said, we will pray all night if need be. And he meant it because at three o 'clock in the morning, his mother got up and left the meeting.

He followed her to the door. He said, are you going home, mother? She said, son, the meeting is hard. The people are tired. You are stubborn. And she went off. He said, don't go, mother. But she went.

Evan and his brother Dan went home at daybreak, went to bed to catch up and sleep. At ten o 'clock they heard weeping when downstairs there was Mrs. Roberts sitting in front of the kitchen fire, weeping over the fact that her sons were more spiritual than she was.

They prayed with her and it was that evening that the break came. People say, what do you mean, the break? I've read the Welsh papers of that time, little snippets of church news. The Reverend Peter Jones has just been appointed chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's.

Mowbray Street Methodist Church has had a very interesting sale of work. But then a headline, great crowds of people drawn to Lochor. Congregation stays till 2 .30 in the morning. A remarkable religious revival is now taking place in Lochor.

For some days a young man named Evan Roberts had been causing great surprise in the Mariah Church there. The place has been besieged by dense crowds of people unable to obtain admission. Such excitement has prevailed that on the road, that the road on which the church is situated is crowded from end to end.

Ended by saying, the vast congregation remained praying and singing till 2 .30 in the morning. Shopkeepers are closing early. In order to find a place in the church tin and steel workers throng the place in their working clothes.

The Revival Spreads Across Wales

Now the news was out. I suppose every praying woman in Wales called in her neighbours to pray. Many were on their knees for a long time because of distress and agony of soul. Western Mail sent down a reporter to report on what he saw.

I'm sure he was an Englishman. He wrote the report instead of the set order of proceedings everything was left to the spontaneous impulse of the moment. We would say it was spirit directed. At 4 .25 the gathering dispersed but even at that hour the people were reluctant to go home.

This is how I know he's an Englishman. He said, I felt that this was no ordinary gathering. Very interesting that at the same time precisely a Baptist pastor called R .B. Jones was holding a meeting in Thrill in North Wales when the prayers of the people overwhelmed the preaching.

The revival went like a flood over Wales. And most people jump to conclusions and say well then, Elvin Roberts became the Billy Graham of Wales. No, he was not of the sort. He wouldn't even advertise his meetings.

Could you imagine during Mission England Billy Graham refusing to tell people where he was preaching? That's the difference between revival and evangelism. It doesn't depend on an individual. Elvin Roberts went to a meeting once crowded with 2 ,000 people.

They were glad to see him. He began in his Welsh way. Most of his preaching was in Welsh. Do you really believe the promises of God? A great cry of Amen. And he said to them, Would you agree that a promise made by the Lord Jesus is especially precious?

A great cry of Amen. Some shouted, Arabendo Goran. On his head be the crown, crown him. He said, Do you know one that says where two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst? A great cry of Yes, Yes.

Do we have two or three here tonight? A great roar of laughter. Is Jesus here? Yes. I asked you, Is Jesus here? They all shouted, Yes. He asked a third time and they all roared, Yes. Then said Elvin Roberts, You don't need me.

He put on his hat and coat and he went to another meeting. I asked the man that told me that. Then what happened? He said, We all realized that Jesus was there and we all began to talk to him. That was a feature called simultaneous audible prayer.

But Elvin Roberts wasn't the only preacher. I mentioned Seth Joshua. He was at Amman Fort, 20th of November. This has been one of the most remarkable days of my life. Even in the morning a number were led to embrace the Savior.

In the afternoon the blessing fell on scores of young people. In the evening the crush was very great to get into the church. At seven o 'clock a surging mass filled the Christian temple. Crowds were unable to obtain entrance.

The Holy Spirit was indeed among the people. Numbers confessed Jesus, but it was impossible to count. This was like a tide that filled all the churches. I had a friend, H .J. Galley. When I met him he was pastor of William Chapel in Bath.

He said he had just graduated from Spurgeon's College and was in his first little church in London when the English newspapers reported the Welsh revival. He thought, this I must see. He sent a telegram to an ex-classmate.

Meet me off the London Express. I think the time was Rhonda. There was Williams with a shining face and Galley said, is this real revival? Now a Welshman can't answer directly. Galley has to give you a poem.

He said, it is the gate of heaven to our souls. Well, said Galley, I've travelled a long way. I'd like to hear Evan Roberts preach. Where is he preaching? He said, I don't know. Isn't he the leader of the revival?

No. Oh, he said, the newspapers have got it wrong. No, no, he said the Holy Spirit leads the revival. He said, look brother Galley, Evan Roberts just might show up at my church tonight. On the other hand there are a thousand other churches he might be at.

But he said the Lord will be there. Oh, said Galley, you're having special meetings too? He said, my church has been packed for six weeks. You mean the other churches are using your church for united meetings?

No, he said, the Anglican church, every church from the Anglican church to the Salvation Army is packed. Galley said, how do you keep up with the preaching? Williams laughed, he said, I hadn't thought about it.

I haven't preached for six weeks. Well, he said, who preached last night? I can't remember them all, about 17 people I suppose. Including a little boy of 12 and an old granny of 78. Galley said, when do you hold the meetings?

He said, six to midnight. I said, what? He said, six hours? He said, I mean six in the morning to midnight. He said, first we went on all night. But the people do need to have some rest so we close the church at midnight and we open again at six.

He said, not the same people. No, he said, we get coal miners coming just before their early shift and during the mid morning we have housekeepers who slip away and at noontime all sorts of people in the afternoon school children, but the evening from six to midnight would be packed with everyone.

By the way, during the Welsh Revival there were no separate meetings. No young people's meetings, no old people's meetings, no women's meetings, no boy scouts, nothing. The whole body of Christ was in the church and the young people were as much caught up as the older people and vice versa.

That was the Welsh Revival. About 100 ,000 people were converted and added to the churches. J. B. Morgan wrote a book to debunk the Revival five years later it was called The Welsh Religious Revival, A Retrospect and a Criticism.

Assessing the Revival's Lasting Results

His major criticism there were two criticisms, one was there was too much emotion the other was, of the 100 ,000 who joined the churches in the Revival after five years only 75 still stood. Only. It wasn't 100 ,000 that he said, he said 80 ,000 joined the four major non-conformist denominations.

He assumed that the Church of England was not affected. He was quite wrong. I have the figures from the Church of England there were at least 100 ,000 in the Church of England the number of confirmations doubled that's what an Anglican does when he's converted, he wants to be confirmed.

So I decided to make a study of this. 75 still stood. There's a book published I don't know if you have it in your library by Curry, Gilbert and Horsley on church statistics in Britain since they were kept.

The methods go all the way back to John Wesley. The Church of England only since 1882. But you can get those figures. I discovered that the churches in the height of the Revival gained 20 on average and five years later they had lost 2%.

Wales is a poor country doesn't have rich soil, a lot of rocks there they have coal mines too but it's seasonal employment in the sense that sometimes it's good sometimes it's not good. Welsh people migrate to Glasgow and Liverpool and Birmingham and London, Bristol they go to Canada and Pennsylvania you'll find them in Australia, New Zealand which might account for some who were not any longer in the roles of the churches but J. B. Morgan gave the game away he said many were lost to the Pentecostals and to the mission halls.

There was a multiplication of mission halls. Some of the churches tried to go back to their formal ways and the people who had been converted in the Revival didn't like formalism. They liked free meetings so they'd start mission halls in which they could do as they pleased and then of course the Pentecostal movement began about 1907 of some of those, for instance, Donald Gee was converted under Seth Joshua he was a friend of mine.

George Jeffries was converted about that time. I might mention one thing however a professor in the States, University of Georgia quite a famous man, stated that speaking in tongues came from the Welsh Revival to Azusa Street but I thought it was the other way around so he said, well, I was told that many people who had never spoken in Welsh before, had spoken Welsh during the Revival.

I said, that's right but they were from bilingual families. For instance, there are people in Wales today perhaps the mother speaks Welsh, the father speaks English and they use English in business come home, the mother speaks to them in Welsh, they reply in English.

The beautiful the Welsh language is in decline. Numbers of speakers are getting less and less, unfortunately. But these people in the meetings were so caught up with the spirit of the meetings. The preaching was in Welsh, the singing was in Welsh.

They just spoke in Welsh, but of course they knew what they were saying. And I don't consider that speaking in tongues. So Vincent Simon said to me, when did speaking in tongues begin in Wales? I said, well on the 23rd of December, 1907 in the home of Thomas Maddock Jeffreys a place called Wan Llywyd, about 8 .30 in the evening.

I said, beyond that I wouldn't care to commit myself. He said, how do you know? I said, Donald G. told me and it came through the visit of A .H. Post from Azusa Street. Now Evan Roberts did write to Azusa Street.

You see, the relation of Pentecostalism to the Welsh revival was, to put it this way out of the Puritan movement came the Baptist movement but not all the Puritans were Baptists. Out of the worldwide revival of 1905 came the Pentecostal movement.

But not all those who were revived became Pentecostal. Let me use the American expression, just the eager beavers. Well, that revival had social impact that was astounding. Drunkenness was cut in half 1904 there were 10 ,000 arrests for drunkenness in Glamorgan a great seaport place Cardiff, and also a great industrial area and people drink.

But the number was cut in half within a year. However it caused a wave of bankruptcies. Many of the taverns couldn't sell their booze, went bankrupt. The churches would take over the taverns and turn them into youth clubs or board them up.

Crime was cut down so much that many judges were presented with white gloves. Not a case to try. You say, why white gloves? I don't know what the significance would be except that you can take a white glove and rub it on a slate and you don't get any mark.

If there's nothing on the slate no robberies, no burglaries, no rapes, no murders, nothing. District councils had emergency meetings to discuss what to do with the police now that they were unemployed.

The Revival's Social Effects on Crime and Policing

There was one district council I forget which county it was in where they discussed reducing the police by 50 And one of the councillors said, that's not fair. These men have dedicated their life to public service.

Why should we penalize them. Because we're having a revival. They sent for the sergeant of police and asked him, what do you do with your time? The sergeant said, well, before the revival we had two main jobs.

One was to prevent crime, the other was to control crowds at football games, market days, that sort of thing. But he said, since the revival there's no crime so we just go with the crowds. The councillor said sharply, what do you mean you just go with the crowds?

The councillor, he said, you know where the crowds are? Every church that's built. But he said, they don't need police assistance, do they? But he misunderstood, he said, we have 17 police in our station but we've got three of the finest men's quartets you could know.

And if the church wants a quartet to sing they notify the police. There was a policeman standing outside a courtroom in Anglesey when he heard a burst of singing in the courtroom so unusual to hear anyone sing in a courtroom.

He rushed in, he found what had happened. The prisoner in the dock had broken down and wept, confessed that he had committed the crime asked his defender not to defend him anymore. The judge took his gavel and adjourned the court.

He said, young man, I would like to speak to you as a Christian. You have offended society but you have offended almighty God and I want to tell you how you can be right with Him. The young man was converted in the dock and the Welsh jury burst into great hymn of praise and the policeman stayed and added his bass to the choir.

They had a praise service for about an hour. That's what was happening in Wales. There were slowdowns in the coal mines though he said, how could a revival cause a strike? Not a strike, just a slowdown.

Mervyn Lewis, Birmingham, he's dead and gone now told me that his father told him that what they called the holliers the men that operated the horses were the most profane men in Wales over in the States.

They called them muleskinners and mules were very hard to handle and of course he got cussed out all the time. But so many Welsh coal miners were converted and stopped using profanity that the horses couldn't understand what was being said to them and transportation slowed down until the horses learned the language of Canaan.

Mervyn Lewis told me that his father saw one of these holliers who couldn't get the horse to respond. He was used to being cussed at. He said, come on Betsy, come on girl. And the horse laid his ears flat.

Then he said, you know Betsy, I can't cuss you anymore he said, but I can have a word of prayer. So he takes off his hat and he asks the Lord to help this dumb beast understand what he was saying. That happened in the mines of Wales in 1974.

Defending Evan Roberts Against False Accusations

I was speaking at Moody Bible Institute. I remembered that the pastor of the 4th Presbyterian Church in Chicago was a Welsh orator. I've clean forgotten his name, a very typically Welsh name. He married the daughter of one of my good friends, J .W. Owen of Heath Presbyterian Church who had been a missionary in China.

I hadn't seen him for a long time, so I went over to bring me an acquaintance and I found this man rather disturbed. He said, what do you think of this? He showed me three articles in the Western Mail written by a man called Tom Jenkins.

And I was outraged, I could hardly believe my eyes. It said, Evan Roberts was an immoral man. There were whispers of the many women in his life. His preaching was pure aphrodisiac. He so inflamed his congregations that they poured into the church yards.

And when the women became pregnant they blamed it on nightingales. And it quoted an historian saying that the Welsh Revival had raised illegitimate children. It raised the illegitimate birth rate and that the illegitimate children were called the children of the Revival.

I wrote to the editor of the Western Mail. I said, you haven't heard the last of this. I said, I intend to raise this at the next conference at Oxford University. I was writing a notepaper which had us as sponsors the Archbishop of Canterbury and outstanding leaders of every denomination.

So he must have taken notice of the letter he wrote back, I ended up with a real dig at him. I said, this man is dead and gone now. He's been cruelly slandered. Where is your British sense of fair play.

And that got under his skin. He replied, we'd be glad to publish three articles from you. The fee will be £40. That meant it was a bona fide offer. It was and I wasn't satisfied, I got in touch with Davy Davies Principal of the South Wales Baptist College.

He said to me, well Edwin, this is just froth. I said, I'm not a drinking man, but I was in the Air Force. I know what you do with froth. First thing a man does when he gets a tankard of beer. He blows the froth off, and I intend to blow this off.

I went across, Davy Davies arranged for me to speak in Bangor, Aberystwyth, Swansea and Cardiff, in the college towns of the University of Wales. We ended up with a great rally in the haze in Cardiff.

Admission by ticket owners, the Lord Mayor was there in his regalia. Hundreds were turned away and I really felt that I was Samson with the jawbone of an ass slaying a thousand. I tried to find, I said, who was the historian who said that the illegitimate birth rate went up.

Well it turned out to be a minister in Birmingham. I called him. I said, did you say that? He said, yes. I said, how did you know that? He said, my mother told me that. I said, does she keep statistics?

Well she knew a girl who got into trouble. I said, in the meetings, and did you go to Haringey? He said, yes, I went once I went up to hear Billy Graham. I said, could you imagine someone calling out, Dr. Graham stopped the meeting.

There's a girl getting in trouble in the fifth row. Oh no, he said, I don't mean that, I mean in the excitement of the times perhaps some girl was careless, and I can't argue with anecdotes perhaps for every girl that was careless, if there were any careless a thousand stopped fooling around but he said, that wouldn't have shown the statistics.

I said, you're quite right, non-pregnancies are never reported and I thought, indeed they are, indirectly I took a train back to London, went to the Strand went to Somerset House, got the records of births, deaths and marriages.

A whole section on illegitimate births. The number of illegitimate births was increasing all over Britain at that time. But I found that in Radnorshire and Marinershire the illegitimate birth rate dropped 44 in Glamorgan, 8 with a significant drop.

Yet they lied about Evan Roberts. You know, of course, they always watch evangelists or people in the public eye. Billy Graham will never counsel with a lady alone in the room. If someone closes the door, he'll have the door open or have somebody in there, why?

Well, you know, they could stage a scene, couldn't they? They could send some prostitute in there to make an exhibition of herself and then take pictures of Billy Graham. He's very careful. They were after Evan Roberts like that.

The worst that they got on him was that one of the girls of the quartet from Newquay had washed his socks and that caused some clucking among the old hens. When I finished in Wales, 1974 I just looked up to heaven and I said well, Brother Evan, if you're watching, I'm glad to have done it to clear your name.

Martin Lloyd-Jones called me and said, thank you, Edwin. The only thing I'm dismayed is that I had to come from California to do it. One of the troubles about the Welsh revival is most of the reports by evangelicals are effusive.

Gushy, hallelujah, what a revival. Whereas the enemy wrote objective reports they would nail down things that they would want to object. That's why I believe in objective reporting so that the record stands clear.

The Revival Beyond Wales

Well now, on to deal with the fallacy. As I grew up in the United Kingdom I heard times without number. Why did the Welsh revival not affect England. I've already mentioned that but I find them quite mistaken.

The Methodists in Bootle in Lancashire reported a marvellous awakening in the year of 1905. 700 conversions. The town of Wigan aflame the Holy Spirit descending on crowds of more than 5000 in the greatest movement ever known at the time.

This was followed by a great movement in Accrington. In Liverpool proper there was simultaneous audible prayer. Great movement in Manchester revival in the churches, evangelism outside their walls. Gypsy Smith had a great meeting for drunks and prostitutes at midnight.

Blackpool. Charles Barraclough led a movement in that resort town. The Bishop of Dorking went to the Welsh revival incognito and was so enthused he went back to his former parish to tell the Anglicans what he had seen.

Revival began in January and ran through unabated month of February. Hundreds converted, great movement in Birkenhead across the Pennines in Yorkshire. The first outbreak of revival apparently was in Hull.

By March of 1905. The enthusiasm was so increased that it was called a converting furnace. A great awakening began in Halifax. In Sheffield it was said the city of steel has caught the fire. That was an expression from Wales, catching the fire.

2000 people were interceding with God for revival in Bradford. Then came a great movement in the Holy Spirit. Blessings unknown since the visit of John Wesley Guiseley, there was a movement in Yorkshire in which a tenth of the population was converted.

Great movement in Leeds. There was a Methodist preacher there called Samuel Chadwick. His church was open night and day just as in Wales. Great revival swept York. Cathedral cities are always difficult but great revival in York.

The revival swept Northumberland and Durham. There was a tiny little village in Durham 450 conversions reported. But in Bishop Auckland, a bigger town the town hall and the drill hall were overcrowded.

They used the churches as inquiry rooms. Glorious after-meetings in all the churches. John McNeill, the Scottish evangelist had a standing room only in Durham, not a cathedral city. Spencer Walton found Sunderland ripe for blessing.