Great Awakenings in American History Part 4 — J. Edwin Orr

Great Awakenings and Prayer for Revival

I always counted it a privilege to come and minister at Lake Avenue Church, ever since I came to live in this general neighborhood. If this were 1999, there would be a great deal of excitement about the coming 21st century.

Everyone and his brother would be having special meetings for the 21st century. You'd have 21st century crusades and 21st century stewardship and 21st century missions and so forth. Now can you understand that in 1899, Christians were excited about the coming of the 20th century?

Praying for a Christian Century

And in fact were praying that the 20th century might be a century of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. There is a well-known Christian journal of more liberal theology called the Christian Century. It was founded at that time and they gave it the title the Christian Century because they felt quite sure that the 20th century would be the Christian century.

Of course they didn't know what the Lord knew, that there would occur two of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world, and a great economic depression, and two if not three major revolutions. They didn't know that.

But the Lord knew. Now you can understand then that at the very beginning people were praying for the revival to come in the 20th century. At Moody Bible Institute they were having all nights of prayer.

At the Keswick Convention in England. I found in my research that way up in the hills of India in the Nilgiri Hills they had special meetings of ministers and missionaries to pray for a revival throughout India.

It seemed to be part of the pattern all over the world, whether at home or on the mission field, Christians were praying for a revival in the 20th century. I made another interesting discovery. The two main topics of scripture study at that time were on the person of the Holy Spirit and in 1 John chapter 1.

You may wonder why, but that's the chapter that contains the verse, if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. A very significant verse in the coming of revival.

The Worldwide Scope of the 1905 Revival

Now revival came in the 20th century and it was the most extensive of all the revivals. I mentioned that the 1858 revival was the most approved, most unanimously welcomed. But the movement of the 20th century turned out to be the most extensive.

It affected Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Disciples, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and Reformed Churches and other evangelical bodies throughout Europe and North America and Australasia and South Africa and the daughter churches on the mission fields throughout Asia and Africa and Latin America.

By the way, Dr. Paul Ramsey, a very famous Princeton professor, made a statement some years ago in writing a preface to Gabriel Vahanian's book on the death of God. He said that every great revival in the past 300 years had revived less and less of Christendom and each such revival was less and less an enduring revival.

I would say the very opposite. I did write to Professor Ramsey and asked him on what criteria he made this judgment. I never got an answer. They don't answer these questions. When I come to write a book on revival, giving the whole breadth, I think I'll take him up.

It's worth taking up. But that's the impression that people have been given, that these great revivals are the thing of the past, that they don't happen anymore. I still remember a student at Chicago asking Professor William Warren Sweet, why don't we have these great revivals nowadays?

He said, why don't we have dinosaurs? The climate has changed, but I find that the Holy Spirit works in the same way. The pattern is found in the first two chapters of the Acts. Now, why did this great revival of 1905 occur at the time it did?

I came across a very interesting paragraph in the official biography of Wilbur Chapman, the great evangelist. His biographer said in review of these very years, God in gracious providence was reaping a spiritual harvest before he permitted the outburst of revolutionary forces.

The harvest is gathered before the field is doomed to death. This has happened internationally and nationally. It's very interesting that revival has begun in Korea before Korea has faced trouble. Now, the story of the 1905 revival is a very fascinating one.

The Welsh Revival Begins Among Young People

I had a letter just two days ago from a well-known congregational pastor, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel, since retired. He said to me once, if you're interested in the Welsh revival, get the records of the church at Newquay in Cardigan.

I found that about ten months before the outbreak of the great revival in Wales, a local revival began in a church in Cardigan. The minister was Joseph Jenkins, who was what we call a Keswick man. Most people in America have heard the word Keswick, but they only have a vague idea what it means.

The Keswick Convention is committed to a view of holy living, which might be summed up in a word, a crisis with a view to a process. Protestants tend to be divided at this point. They either believe that sanctification is a second work of grace, as the Methodists and Nazarenes and Salvation Army do, or else they believe it's growth and grace, as the Baptists and Congregationalists and Presbyterians do.

Keswick believes in both. They believe in a crisis with a view to a process. In other words, a Christian must come to a place in his life where he says, Lord, you're of all of me, there is. Then he really grows in grace after that.

Joseph Jenkins was a Keswick man. He was greatly concerned over the spiritual life of his young people. One Sunday morning he said to them in their meeting before church time, What does Jesus Christ mean to you?

These were decent young people, but their meeting was more a social gathering. Oh yes, they sang hymns and prayed, read the scripture, but it was their social focus. And they were embarrassed with the question.

Finally one boy spoke up and he said, Jesus Christ is the light of the world. Jenkins said, that's very nice, but that's not what I mean. What does he mean to you? In that meeting there was a girl called Flory Evans who had been converted only three weeks.

And she said, fervently, I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart. And immediately a hush fell in that group. In fact that was the beginning of a revival among the young people. And Joseph Jenkins formed them into teams and traveled around with them giving testimony as he preached.

And Jesse Penn Lewis wrote to the Life of Faith in London and said, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand had arisen in Wales. That still wasn't the public side of the revival. I wonder if anyone here knows a Presbyterian minister, Dr. Peter Joshua?

Yes, someone does. He's spoken at Fuller Samuel many times. He's retired, living in Port Wynemy. He is the surviving son of a famous Presbyterian evangelist called Seth Joshua. Seth Joshua was what we call the stated evangelist of the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales.

Some Fuller students think I'm joking when I speak of the Calvinistic Methodists, but the Calvinistic Methodists were the followers of George Whitefield. He was a Methodist, but he was a Calvinist. They are now known as the Presbyterian Church of Wales, but they were known in those days as the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales.

Evan Roberts and the Four Calls of the Revival

Seth Joshua went down to Newquay in September of 1904 to conduct what the British call a mission. We would call it a campaign. A week of meetings. I've read his diary, you'll find his diary in the National Archives of Wales in Aberystwyth.

Nineteenth, he said, revival is breaking out, especially among the young. He said, last night I closed the meeting several times, but it went on without any help from me. In other words, he pronounced a benediction and the young people just went on praising the Lord and praying and so forth.

He couldn't close the meeting until one o 'clock in the morning. There they were having a renewed revival. He went from there to Newcastle Emlyn College, where the students studied for the Presbyterian ministry.

At that college were two students who were roommates. One called Evan Roberts, a coal miner, 26 years of age. His roommate was Sidney Evans, who afterwards married his sister. Seth Joshua told the theological students what had happened in Newquay.

They were so excited, they asked the principal permission to close down classes so that they could go to Seth Joshua's next meetings in a Welsh town called Blaenannach. They had good evening meetings, the church was crowded, but at ten o 'clock in the morning the attendance wasn't so good, because the women and children didn't have babysitters in those days, and only elderly women who could take the time off in the morning came to the meetings.

Maybe a dozen or two dozen elderly women and a couple of pastors and these theological students. But it was in that meeting that Seth Joshua prayed in Welsh, O our glued pligny, O Lord bend us. The Welsh word bend is much more significant than the English word.

Evan Roberts was in that meeting, and he went forward of his own accord and knelt at the front with great agony and tears, praying, O God bend me. He knew that the spiritual crisis of his life had arrived.

I talked to a professor, a Russian by the way, whom I met at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina, who said he saw the tears on that chair. Now Evan Roberts went back to college, but he found it very hard to study Greek under these circumstances.

And finally he went to Principal Phillips and he said, I want to go home. I keep hearing a voice that says, you must go home and speak to the young people. Mr. Phillips, he said, is that the voice of the spirit or is that the voice of the devil?

And Principal Phillips says, the devil never gives orders like that. So you can take a week off. So Evan Roberts took a train back home, went to see his parents. They said, what are you doing home? We thought you were studying for the ministry.

Their first thought was that he had been expelled. Oh no, he had come to preach for the young people, where? In our church. But we didn't hear about it. Well the minister hasn't asked me yet. So he went to see the minister.

Now I wonder what Pastor Ortland would do if some zealous youngster here went to Moody Bible Institute and after eight weeks came back and said he wanted to hold a campaign. I think the pastor would be careful not to hurt his feelings, but he'd be even more careful not to hurt the people's feelings.

And so the pastor said to Evan Roberts, how about speaking for us on Monday night? There's a prayer meeting on Monday night. He didn't ask him to speak at the prayer meeting, but he said to the people at prayer, our young brother Evan Roberts feels he has a message for you if you care to wait behind, meaning it's up to you.

And 17 people waited behind. I wonder why they waited. I can almost see them getting up to go and then seeing Evan Roberts standing there and they all knew him, they didn't want to disappoint him. So they waited behind.

Instead of preaching, he spoke directly from the Lord. He said I have a message for you from the Lord. You must confess any known sin to God and put any wrong done to man right again. In the second place, you must put out of your life any doubtful habit.

He said you must obey the Holy Spirit promptly. You must confess your faith in Christ publicly. Those became the four points of the Welsh revival. Nobody ever suggested you had to do that for revival, but those were the messages that Evan Roberts gave.

By 10 o 'clock, all 17 had responded. The pastor was so pleased, he said, would you speak tomorrow night at the Mission Church? He had them speak on Wednesday at the midweek service. On Thursday, they had a temperance meeting, but they converted it into a general meeting.

On Friday, they had a class meeting, Calvinistic Methodist style, they converted that into a general meeting. No meeting on Saturday. On Sunday, a visiting clergyman preached and the pastor said I'd love to give you the pulpit, but Evan Roberts said I understand, he just sat in the congregation.

But after the evening service, the people demanded an after-meeting and had Evan Roberts preach again. Then the meetings got hard. I think it was a Wednesday, at three o 'clock in the morning, Evan Roberts' mother got up and left the meeting.

At midnight, sensing the meeting was hard, Evan Roberts said we're going to pray all night if need be, and he meant it. But his mother didn't agree with him, and she left the meeting. He followed her to the door, he said, are you going home, mother?

She said, son, these people are tired, and the meeting is hard, and you are stubborn, and these people have to work in the morning. So she went on home. Evan and his brother Dan got home at daybreak, went to bed to catch up on their sleep.

Ten o 'clock in the morning, they heard someone weeping and came downstairs. The mother was sitting by the fireside with her Bible on her lap. She felt she had grieved the Holy Spirit. So they prayed with her, and they sang a hymn together, and that night the break came.

The Revival Spreads Across Wales

Now you might say, what do you mean, the break? Well I've read the Welsh newspapers of that period, little snippets of what I call ecclesiastical news. The Reverend Peter Jones has just been appointed chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's.

Very interesting, but not earth-shaking. Then it said Mr. and Mrs. John Johnson have volunteered for service in India under the Baptist Missionary Society. Then it said Butte Street Methodist Church has had a very interesting rummage sale, and so on.

Then suddenly a headline, great crowds of people drawn to Lochor. That was Evan Roberts' hometown. And it said for some days now, a young man called Evan Roberts, a native of the place, had been causing great surprise.

In fact, the main road that ran from Flemethly through to Swansea, right past that church, was packed from wall to wall. People trying to get into the church. Said that shopkeepers were closing early to find a place in the church, and steel workers were coming directly from work in their dungarees.

And now the news was out. Newspapers always like a story, so they sent a reporter down from Cardiff, and he described this remarkable meeting. He said it didn't end till 4 .25 in the morning. Even then the people didn't seem to want to go home because they were standing around in the road discussing what was now the most important thing in their life.

And then a very British remark, he said, I felt that this was no ordinary gathering. On Saturday, every grocery shop in that area was emptied of groceries by people coming to the meetings. On Sunday, every church was packed.

Evan Roberts wouldn't announce where he was preaching. In fact, he'd just go from one church to another, he'd just go all morning, like the church would be full from early daybreak, and he would just go from one church to another.

Then after the revival began sweeping Wales, he couldn't do that, he couldn't go to all the churches, he just went wherever he felt led. Now here's the significant thing. The very day that break occurred in South Wales.

In North Wales, in a town called Rhos, Dr. R .B. Jones, a very famous Baptist preacher, was conducting a week of meetings and was drowned out by simultaneous audible prayer. The response to his preaching was so great that people began to call upon the Lord for mercy for their sins, and the volume of prayer became so great they couldn't hear the speaker, so it dissolved into a prayer meeting.

And now it became simultaneous all over Wales. I want you to understand this, because this is one of the remarkable things about revival, that there's a generality. It's never tied to any one man's ministry, there's always a generality.

It may raise up a great figure like Moody, but in its initial stages it's an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh. I had a friend with whom I was staying when I was a boy preacher, his name was H .J. Galley.

He had just graduated, he told me, from Spurgeon's College when he read in the newspapers of the Welsh Revival. He thought, this I must see. He sent a telegram to one of his seminary classmates telling him, meet me off the London Express tomorrow.

When he alighted at Rondra, there was Williams with a shining face. So Galley said, is this really revival? And Williams said in an enthusiastic way, it is like the gate of heaven to our souls. Well, said Galley, I've come a long way, I'd like to hear Evan Roberts preaching.

Where is he preaching? He told me he was quite taken aback when Williams said, I don't know, he doesn't tell anyone. But, said Galley, I thought he was the leader of the revival. Oh no, the Holy Spirit is.

Yes, said Galley, we always say that. Nobody says he really is. Look, brother Galley, he said, Evan Roberts might show up in my church tonight, but there's only one chance in a thousand. But the Lord will be there in great power.

So Galley said, you're having meetings too? He said, my church has been packed for six weeks. He said, you mean the other churches are using your churches for United Meetings? He said, every church in Rwanda is packed.

Galley said, when do you have the meetings? He said, we start at six, and we close at midnight. He said, that's six in the morning, and we close at midnight. He said, not the same people. Oh no, he said, first we have minors going on shift.

Mid-morning we have housekeepers, noon a United Meeting, afternoon schoolchildren. But from six p .m. to midnight, the place will be packed. Galley said, how do you keep up with the preaching? And Williams laughed.

He said, I haven't preached for six weeks. He said, I don't need to preach. He was more there like a coach, if you know what I mean, coaching the others as it were. So Galley said, who preached last night?

Well, he said, I didn't keep track of it. You couldn't keep track of this. About seventeen people, I suppose, including an old granny of seventy-eight and a boy of twelve. Now this was what was happening all over Wales.

Not only in that time, but in town after town, all over Wales simultaneously. It can be documented. Not only where Evan Roberts was, but whether he was there or not. I can document these things. On one occasion, he arrived at a big church where they were expecting him.

But they were glad to see him, of course. There were between two and three thousand people in the church. So they asked him to say a word. He began by saying, How many of you believe the promises of God?

Great roar of, Amen! He said, Would you agree with me that a promise made by the Lord Jesus is especially precious? Yes, yes. Do any of you remember a verse that says, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst?

Amen! Do you believe it? Yes, yes. Great roar from the crowd. Do you really believe it? Yes. They were going to convince him that they believed it. He said, Then is Jesus here? And they all shouted, Yes, Amen!

Then said Evan Roberts, You don't need me, so he put on his hat and coat and went to another meeting. Well, what did they do, sing a closing hymn and go home? No, the meeting went on until two o 'clock in the morning.

Well, maybe not two, it became a rule after a while, no meetings after twelve midnight. But the meeting went on till midnight. I have a friend, a Congregational preacher called Merton Lewis, he lives in Birmingham, if he's still alive, he must be about seventy-eight.

Simultaneous Prayer and Lay Participation

He told me when he was a boy of seven, the revival came to his hometown. His father was a miner, he came home from the early shift at three in the afternoon, took a bath, put on his Sunday clothes, and said, Come, Mother, we're going to the meeting.

When they got to the meeting, the big church was packed out at four o 'clock in the afternoon. They couldn't get in, but when they saw a mother with children, they made room for her. Evan Roberts came at seven o 'clock that evening.

The church was so packed, he had to walk on the shoulders of the men to get into the pulpit. Climbed up over the pulpit, he got up and said one word in Welsh, Gwelyon, that's three words in English, Let us pray.

And immediately all eighteen hundred people began to pray. I said to Merton Lewis, Well now, was it just ejaculatory prayer? You know, when you go to some meetings where they all say Jesus, Jesus, amen, hallelujah, you know the way they keep murmuring while somebody else is praying.

No, each person was praying his own prayer. One man would be praying, Oh God, give me another chance. Lord, give me another chance, I'll put things right. And perhaps a mother was saying, Lord, my son, my son.

And perhaps a theological student was saying, Lord, I'll go to the mission field. I don't want a big church. I'll go to the mission field. And so on. One man said, Would you stop praying and tell me how I can become a Christian?

That's what was happening. They never heard another word out of Evan Roberts. Now, of course, these meetings were described by those who were outsiders as noisy. Everybody praying, of course, sounded noisy.

But at ten o 'clock, Evan Roberts left the meeting. It took him quite an effort to get out, as it did to get in. The family with whom he stayed said he prayed all night. But Merton Lewis told me that his father, about two o 'clock in the morning, said, Come, Mother, we must get the children to bed.

So they forced their way out, had to walk home in the drizzle, put the children to bed, but Merton Lewis's father slept in the rocking chair until daybreak, went to the mines, came back at three in the afternoon, took a bath, put on his Sunday clothes, and went back to the same meeting going full tilt.

Now, can you understand what I mean by something unusual in times of revival? Well, you've heard of this sort of thing at Asbury College or sometime back at Wheaton College. But can you imagine this happening in the majority of churches in Pasadena?

Because that's what happened in Wales. R .B. Jones was preaching. Every minister was, of course, his own evangelist. At the same time, they couldn't keep up with all-day meetings, so whoever was raised up with God preached.

Some people say there was no Bible teaching in the Welsh revival. It's quite true that most of the time was taken by testimony, confession, prayer, and singing. But the amount of preaching during the revival was ten times as much as before the revival.

The social effects were astounding. Drunkenness was cut in half. I have the records of arrests for drunkenness for five years. And for about three years after the revival, they stayed cut in half. There was a wave of bankruptcies all over Wales due to the revival.

Tavern after tavern couldn't pay for its booze and went bankrupt. Sometimes the churches very gleefully bought out the tavern and used it as a youth club. David Lloyd George, who became Prime Minister of Great Britain later, said that the total sale of liquor in his hometown on Saturday night, the drinking night of the week, was fourpence ha 'penny, nine cents.

The Swansea police in Swansea, the industrial city of South Wales, said on New Year's Eve the drinking night of the year, there were no arrests for drunkenness at all. I found in Radnorshire and Marianthshire, within a year of the beginning of the revival, the illegitimate birth rate dropped 44 percent.

It didn't drop as low as that in Glamorgan, it only went down 8 percent, but even 8 percent is a very significant drop. District councils met to discuss what to do with the police now that they were unemployed.

In fact, in one district council where I had the records, some councillors suggested we must dismiss half of the police force. And a minister who was a councillor said, that's not very fair to men who have dedicated their lives to the protection of the community.

So they sent for the sergeant of the police. And they said, Sergeant Roberts, what do you do with your time now? Well, he said, before the revival we had two main functions. One was to prevent crime, and the other was to control crowds.

You know, like a football game on Saturday and so forth. He said, since the revival there's practically no crime, so we go with the crowds. They said, what does that mean? Well, he said, you know where the crowds are.

We have 17 police in our station. We've got three policeman's quartets. If any church wants a quartet, they just call the police. I came across a case of a policeman on the island of Anglici, on duty outside a courtroom, I suppose, to prevent any unauthorized flight from the courtroom.

When he heard a burst of singing from the courtroom, rushed in to see what had happened. The prisoner at the bar had broken down and wept and confessed he was a sinner. The judge took his gavel and suspended the court for the moment, and the judge said, I would like to speak to you as a Christian man.

The judge pointed the prisoner to the Lord. The prisoner accepted Christ as Savior. The jury burst into one of those great Welsh hymns, and the policeman stayed and added his bass to the choir. In court after court, judges were presented with white gloves.

Not a case to try. No rapes, no robberies, no murders. No embezzlements. Nothing. Sounds incredible. Profanity was reduced everywhere. In fact, there was a slowdown in the coal mines. He said, well, how can a religious revival cause a strike?

Not a strike. Actually, the management and the miners on each shift would meet for a prayer meeting. They allowed the miners to have prayer meetings on company time, because the production rate was up so much.

But so many Welsh coal miners were converted and stopped using bad language that the horses that dragged the trucks and the mines couldn't understand what was being said to them. And transportation slowed down.

First time I heard that story, I thought it was a tall tale of the revival. I can document it. Archdeacon Wilberforce referred to this in Westminster Abbey, and Merton Lewis told me, yes, he said, my father told me about it.

In fact, his father told him that there was one profane haulier, they called him, the man that operated the horses. He had just been converted. And the horse didn't understand him. And finally, he said, come on, Betty.

I can't swear at you. Come on now, girl. Come on. Come on, Betty. Betty couldn't understand. Betty just put her ears flat, you know. So the miner took off his hat and he said, well, I can't swear at you, but I can pray for you.

So he prayed, Lord, help this dumb beast to understand. There was no question about this. This was in all the newspapers, everywhere. They admitted that the ethical results of the revival were just astounding.

Revival in Britain, Europe, and America

Martin Lloyd-Jones said to me, I didn't know the Welsh revival affected England. I saw in Christianity Today an article by a friend of mine in which he mentioned again why didn't the Welsh revival touch England.

It swept all over England. The Archbishop of Canterbury called for a day of prayer. The Bishop of London laid aside his miter, cope and staff and went out preaching the gospel in the Church of England throughout London.

Cosmo Lange, who became Archbishop of Canterbury later, preached in St. Paul's Cathedral on oil for your lamps. Thirty English bishops met to discuss what was to be the attitude of the Church of England to the revival.

The first speaker was the Bishop of St. Asaph's. And he said, Fathers and Brethren, I have just come from Oswestry in Shropshire, that's in England, where in a single parish church I confirmed 950 new converts.

The bishops voted in favour. The Midland Railway ran excursions to Nuneaton, to the prayer meetings, that's near Birmingham. In Motherwell in Scotland, near Glasgow, the streets were packed from wall to wall, and when the excitement of the revival died down a bit, seven churches and four public halls were packed nightly.

The revival broke out in Lurgan in Ireland, so it became general. Except that in England, Scotland and Ireland, nothing happened that surpassed what happened in Wales. Wales seemed to be the demonstration model.

And after a while the newspapers took it as nothing new. But I can give you, there's a place called Kirkby Stephen up in what's now called Cumbria in England, not far from Keswick, where they had a big political rally.

And two members of Parliament came up to address this huge rally, and they called on someone to lead in prayer, but whoever it was got carried away, and it became a wonderful prayer meeting, but they never did hear the political speakers.

It just became a religious meeting. This revival swept Norway, under the leadership of Albert Lunde, whom I knew and for whom I preached. I knew Evan Roberts too, in the thirties. In fact, the revival in Norway was so great that the Norwegian Parliament passed special legislation to permit laymen to offer Holy Communion to the converts.

The clergy couldn't keep up with it. The revival broke out in Sweden. In Denmark, the Lutheran Home Mission, Indre Mission, reported that they hadn't had a winter like it since Christianity came to the Vikings.

I remember, to my great surprise, seeing in a German textbook that God graciously revived his people in Germany before those dark days of World War I. The revival broke out in Imperial Russia, under a man called Fettler, who was a student at Spurgeon's College and went back to Russia.

Great revival in 1905 in St. Petersburg. Now, you know, of course, this news was bound to reach the United States. It was in every newspaper. I found out some interesting things. For instance, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Methodists had a Methodist forward movement.

The Baptists had a Baptist advance. The Congregationalists had their movement. Everyone was going to do something for the Lord at the beginning of the twentieth century. I found from the Methodist figures that they were going to win two million souls to Christ and they raised a fund of twenty billion dollars to do it.

But nothing much happened. They had a few thousand converts. One Methodist said, God waited until we got our project out of the way and then he sent us the great revival. Because the revival came in 1905.

The 1905 Revival in the United States

For a long time I've studied the subject of revival, and in fact people used to refer to my writings on the subject, but I didn't know about this revival until maybe seven years ago now. I was reading through some files of the Christian Missionary Alliance weekly.

Now called The Witness, I think. In which in January of 1906, surveying 1905, it said, 1905 has been the year of the Holy Ghost. What are they referring to? Then I discovered that everywhere in the United States there was revival in 1905.

Yet I wrote a book in 1965 for Professor F .F. Bruce in a series in Church History in which I said that although Wales had the great revival in 1904, there was nothing significant in 1905 in the United States.

This isn't true. What happened was, all the Protestant ministers of New York City got together in the Marble Collegiate Church to discuss what to do when the revival came. All the ministers of Chicago got together in the First Methodist Church in the Loop.

The same thing happened in St. Louis, in Louisville, in Cincinnati, in San Francisco. Everywhere in the country, they had meetings of ministers to discuss what to do. I noticed an interesting thing. The Southern Baptist said, we are, as usual, doing the inconsistent thing.

We read that the Welsh revival was born in prayer and has no machinery. So we get all our machinery working in order to have revival. That's the American response. If they heard of a great revival beginning, let's say in Scotland or New Zealand or something like that, then they'd try to form committees to organize it here.

It doesn't come that way. It actually broke out in Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania. Anyone here from Pennsylvania? Do you know where Wilkesbury is? The letter of people of Welsh extraction there, who had worked in the mines, began in a little Baptist church of Welsh-speaking people who were excited by the letters they were getting from Wales.

The pastor in one month baptized 127, mostly men. It spread from Wilkesbury to Scranton. When it reached Philadelphia, the Methodist alone had 6 ,000 on trial membership. That means new converts. It broke out in Pittsburgh, Newcastle.

It jumped to Schenectady. I've got a very good friend there. I shouldn't have mentioned it because I can't remember his name. McKill. He never heard of this. Yet when I was looking up the Schenectady papers to see if I could find any trace of the revival, I found the Schenectady Gazette was running a column called Yesterday's Conversions.

If you want to know who was converted yesterday, they had a special column in the paper. When the revival reached New York City, before 2200, in Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church, they took in 384, mostly heads of families.

When the revival reached the Brooklyn Baptist Tabernacle, 500 waited behind for counsel. One meeting. The revival swept New England like a tidal wave. It broke out everywhere. For instance, in Atlantic City, the ministers reported of a population of 60 ,000.

To their knowledge, there were only 50 people left unconverted. That doesn't mean the whole population was converted in the revival, but it meant so many were converted that to their knowledge there were only 50 adults holding out.

It swept the South. First Baptist Church in Paducah in Kentucky received a thousand new members in two months. The pastor was an old man, Dr. J .J. Cheek, and he died of overwork. And the Baptist said, a glorious ending to a devoted ministry.

They said that the revival rolled through Houston like a tidal wave. In Chicago, the ministers got together and arranged a central clearinghouse prayer meeting. The ministers all met at 10 o 'clock in the morning to discuss what was going on.

And one after another would report simply, My church has never seen such a blessing as we're having today. And they were getting converts as well as seeing the church members revived. In Lansing, in Michigan, a Methodist church reported 700 converts, of whom a certain number joined the church.

This is what struck me. They claimed 700 converts, of whom 740 joined the church. They must have picked up 40 in the way or something to the membership meeting. But they said, this is no guesswork. I think it was the 20th of January, 1905, that the mayor of Denver called for a day of prayer.

At 10 in the morning, all churches were filled. At noon, all the theaters were filled. Every school was closed. The Colorado legislature closed. And they said Denver never saw a winter like it. The only man I ever met or ever heard of this was Joshua Gravitt of Denver.

He was pastor in Galilee Baptist Church, long since dead and gone. In Portland, in Oregon, 240 department stores signed an agreement among themselves to close each day from 11 to 2 for prayer, so that nobody would cheat, to allow their employees and customers to go.