Revivals of the Past

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http://www.cnnw.com/articles/articles05-05-1.html

When the Spirit fell on the Rose City -- Portland's famed 1905 revival remembered a century later
By JOHN FORTMEYER
CNNW publisher

PORTLAND - Envision a typical busy workday in the Rose City's downtown core suddenly coming to a halt at midday. Thousands of employees and customers alike stream out of Nordstrom, NikeTown, the KOIN Center, and hundreds of other businesses and make their way to the Keller or Schnitzer auditoriums or any number of other venues. They go with a single-minded purpose.

To spend time hearing about Jesus Christ. To listen to His Word. To devote their hearts to God.

Sound improbable or impossible? Change the names of the businesses and the meeting locations to what they were 100 years ago, and you have a true story that took place in Portland, Oregon in 1905.

It happened that spring, an outgrowth of a worldwide revival that began in Wales, and it is more than well documented. A Portland woman, Hildene Westerlund, today readily shares the newspaper clippings of that era that she has collected. She contacted Christian News Northwest in hopes of reminding readers that the events of a century ago indeed took place in a city not known today for its devotion to Jesus.

"Army of Christians Marches About City," proclaimed the top of the Oregon Journal newspaper's front page of Friday, March 31, 1905. "At Midnight Nearly Ten Thousand People, Singing Hymns, Proclaim the Power of Revival."

The Page 1 story detailed that it was "the unique night of Portland's history - a shaking up such as the town had never known before."

In a front-page editorial of that same issue, Edgar Hill of the Journal stated that the demonstration by the city's believers was "the most impressive evidence of the strength, unity and aggressiveness of Christ-ianity in Portland that could possibly have been given ... The city is in the throes of a religious upheavel such as it has never known in all its history."

And the fervor continued. Five days later, on April 5, the Journal's front page headline was "City Asks for Grace." The accompanying story told how daytime business came to a literal standstill in the city while masses of people elbowed into four of the city's largest auditoriums, or stood outside - as thousands did. Largest gatherings were at the Marquam Grand Theater.

"To the Christian the services were, as (visiting evangelist) Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman put it, "a foretaste of heaven," reported the newspaper. "To the outsider they formed a marvelous exhibition of what an old-fashioned religious revival can accomplish when once it is in motion.

"Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Christian, believers and unbelievers, met together and sang together."

Revival historian J. Edwin Orr records that in Portland, 240 major stores closed from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day to enable people to attend prayer meetings. The store owners signed an agreement so that no one would cheat and stay open.

Portland was not the only location in the United States touched by God' s Spirit in an unusual way in 1905. For example, at Yale University, 25 percent of the student body was enrolled that year in prayer meetings and in Bible study. In Atlantic City, N.J., out of a population of 50,000, there were only 50 adults left unconverted, according to the city's clergy.

According to Orr, the Welsh revival began as a movement of prayer and swept through Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, North American, Australia, Africa, Brazil, Mexico and Chile.

The Portland outpouring, while seen as a sovereign move of God, was assisted by the presence in the city of a team of evangelists led by Chapman, a New York Presbyterian. Among his group of 21 "moral crusaders" who arrived on the Southern Pacific railway were John P. Hillis, Rev. Henry Ostrom, Clarence B. Strause, R.A. Walton, W.E. Biederwolf, J.L. McComb, Charles Stelzle and Fred Butler. Many of them had been influential in a similiar move of God in Denver, Colo., and they came to Portland with great expectations of something similar happening here.

"Famous Revivalists Come to War with Flesh and Devil," headlined the Journal on March 22, upon the evangelists' arrival. The subhead read, "J. Wilbur Chapman Urges People to Get Ready to Be Saved."

The meetings were held in a wide range of denominational churches locally, including First Presbyterian, Centenary Methodist, Sunnyside Congregational, Calvary Baptist, Forbes Presbyterian Salvation Army and more. The newspaper reported that at least 50 churches throughout the city flew huge banners to indicate their support in the evangelistic effort.

"Chapman Campaign for Souls is in Full Swing," proclaimed the March 24 edition of the Journal's competition, The Oregonian.

In preparation for the evangelists' meetings, about 100 cottage prayer meetings were held in the home of some prominent Portland residents.

Considering the heavily secular nature of today's daily newspapers, a scan of the headlines in Portland's newspapers published during the revival meetings clearly shows a different attitude prevailing in the 1905 newsrooms regarding the things of God.

"Revival Spirit Spreads Over City," "Fighting the Devil," "Say Goodbye to God and You Surely Die," "Religion Vital as Blood in the Veins," "With Help of God Will Follow Jesus," "World Revival is Now at Hand" "Men and Women Go Weeping to Altar" "What Salvation Means to People," "Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out," and "Bible's Message to the Everyday Man" were just a few examples of the dozens of newspaper articles that outlined the revival 's day-to-day events.

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http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/churchandministry/churchhistory/FOR_LaymansPrayer.aspx

Layman's Prayer Revival
By Scott Ross



CBN.com – Walk through the streets of any large city and you will hear the sounds of busy activity. But imagine the streets of New York City, Pittsburgh, our nation's capital, as well as major cities along the eastern seaboard silent everyday at noon as people join together to pray.


Too good to be true? It happened in the 1850s and it all started at the Fulton Street Church in New York City.

In 1857, the leadership of the Fulton Street Church in New York City saw a sharp decline in church attendance. They tapped Jeremiah Lanpher to lead the effort to reach the unchurched of the city. Lanpher was a former merchant with no formal theological training. He wasn't sure how to proceed, so he organized a noonday prayer meeting. He printed up notices and handed them to anyone who would take one. On the day of the meeting, Lanpher waited.

Jeremiah Lanpher announced he was a city missionary and there was going to be a prayer meeting. No one showed up and he began praying. Twenty minutes later he heard someone coming up the stairs and that first time maybe two or three joined him. The next time someone joined him and then the room was filled. And so he went from one room to two rooms to three rooms and he went to the church sanctuary.

In the following months, noonday prayer meetings sprung up all across the city. In fact, many factories blew the lunch whistle at 11:55 a.m., giving workers the chance to rush to the nearest church to pray for an hour. Churches of all denominations were filled with people praying on their lunch break. This caught the attention of the media.

The Layman's Prayer Revival had the motivation that we must pray one hour. Jesus said, 'Could you not tarry with me one hour?' And they wanted to go pray during their lunch hour so there was fasting and great prayer. The editor of the Herald Tribune was looking out of his window at a few minutes before twelve and he was shocked to see men running from their places of business, bumping into one another and within a minute they all disappeared into churches. And he said what's going on? So he sent a reporter down to see what it was and he said, 'they are all praying.'

The next day he got all of his reporters together, put them on horses to cover the whole city. They came and said there must be fifteen thousand people. So he began to write stories, and then before you know it, there were twenty-five thousand. The more stories he wrote the bigger the meeting got. And he put them on horse to cover the whole city and they came back and they said there must be about forty thousand men praying through the lunch hour. What's happening here? Because New York was center of the world at that time, all over America, in Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, people would read the New York papers and then revival began to break out.

Prayer meetings organized by lay leadership spread like wildfire across the United States. By 1859, more than one million unchurched Americans were won to Christ. God was pouring out His spirit, preparing America for one of its darkest chapters in history.

The layman's prayer revival took place two years before the Civil War. And think of all of the thousands men who were slain and cut down in battle. The only positive thing we can say is that many of them knew the Savior before they went into that battle.

Imagine if we all took an hour out of our busy lives to pray -- what could happen?

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An Entire City Paused For Prayer - Denver Post/January 20, 1905


"For two hours at midday all Denver was held in a spell. The marts of trade were deserted between noon and two o'clock this afternoon, and all worldly affairs were forgotten, and the entire city was given over to meditation of higher things. The spirit of the Almighty pervaded every nook. Going to and coming from the great meetings, the thousands of men and women radiated this Spirit which filled them, and the clear Colorado sunshine was made brighter by the reflected glow of the light of God shining from happy faces. Seldom has such a remarkable sight been witnessed - an entire great city, in the middle of a busy weekday, bowing before the throne of heaven and asking and receiving the blessing of the King of he Universe."

Can history repeat itself? The answer is a resounding - YES!

Jonathan Edwards led a prayer effort in New England in 1735 that history now recognizes as "The First Great Awakening" in America.

A Baptist minister, Isaac Backus, had an encounter with the Holy Spirit that left this impression upon him: "There's only one power on earth that commands the power of heaven - prayer." He then wrote a Plea for Prayer for Revival of Religion. In it he pleaded for each pastor in America to set aside the first Monday of every month to open their churches and pray for revival in America which at the time was in a spiritual slump. The result, the great revival of 1800. (Gasper River, Kentucky - 11,000 flock to prayer and repent birthing America's first Camp Meeting; Cane Ridge Camp Meeting - 25,000 gathered while many pastors used cut down trees, stumps and flatbed wagons for pulpits)

The revivals of 1857 and 1904 were also turning points for our nation spiritually but what about now? Can another revival with this type of magnitude hit America? My answer, absolutely! Not only is it possible but depending on the hunger of God's people for His presence, the upcoming outpouring of the Holy Spirit can be larger than any of the others combined! Not only that but a world-wide outpouring that could usher in the second coming of Christ. It all depends on our faith, desire, believe and persistence to petition the altar of God will our prayers for His presence.

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Heirs of a Haystack
By David L McKenna

They huddled under a haystack. Ordinarily the five college students met under the protective branches of a large maple tree and under the cover of night to read the Word of God, confess their sins, sing a song of forgiveness and pray for revival on their campus. Even the minutes of their meetings were kept in secret.

Tonight was different. The small, beleaguered company had been driven from their secret sanctuary by thunder that drowned out their prayers, lightning that crackled around them and rain that drenched them to the skin. An old barn with the comfort of a haystack became their refuge. There, with the storm symbolizing the hostility of their campus against them and their faith, they intuitively knew that their moment had come. God would answer their prayers. With the mysterious wind of his Holy Spirit, he would bring convicting and cleansing power to Williams College, a school founded through spiritual revival but now a seedbed for sin and skepticism. A Great Awakening was on the way!

The time was 1806, when our American ancestors struggled to establish the democracy that had been won in the War of Independence. The place was Williams College in Massachusetts, where Christian students had to meet in secret in order to avoid public ridicule. The people were a non-descript band of five students, who seemed to be too serious for their own good. As unlikely as the time, place and people may seem, one of the Great Awakenings in American history can be traced back to 1806 at Williams College when a thunderstorm drove five students to prayer while huddled under a haystack. In fact: American history can be written through its Great Awakenings.

The First Great Awakening:
Fueling Our Freedom

Whether they knew it or not, the students under the haystack were the heirs of an earlier awakening in our history before independence from England. Although the colonies of New England had been founded by Puritans, who led a disciplined life and shared a biblical vision for their new homeland, the natural erosion of sin and self-interest took its toll. Spiritually, the oncoming generation assumed that their salvation was secure no matter how they lived. Socially, a combination of political oppression, personal degradation and philosophical skepticism led the nation into a wilderness of despair. Notes of hope had a hollow ring, and the future boded worse than the tormented past.

Out of that wilderness came a prophetic voice. The Reverend Jonathan Edwards, a Puritan preacher in the tradition of John the Baptist, put out a call to personal repentance which eventually cost him his pulpit. Edwards's sermon "Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God," preached at Enfield, Connecticut, in 1741, still serves not only as a model of empowered preaching but also as a turning point in the history of Great Awakenings. With an eloquence honed by the Holy Spirit, Edwards depicted hell so vividly for his hearers that sinners, by eyewitness report, hung onto the pews with whitened knuckles for fear of sliding into the flames of hell that very moment! Revival followed, not just on the confession of sin, but on the promise of joy that Edwards also preached. He reported hundreds of conversions sealed by public confession among the churches of New England.

Awakening spread, however, under the impetus of a 23-year-old itinerant preacher from England named George Whitefield. Fresh from the experience of the Evangelical Awakening in England where he had convinced John Wesley to take the open fields for his preaching, Whitefield traversed the colonies - against the opposition of the Anglican clergy - to take the gospel to unchurched people. Benjamin Franklin, though an avowed deist, became a fast friend of Whitefield. Almost in awe, Franklin estimated that Whitefield's voice had the volume and the resonance to reach 30,000 people in the open fields. More amazingly, Benjamin Franklin built Whitefield a "preaching house" in Philadelphia, which gave him a pulpit for evangelism outside the Anglican Church. The "preaching house" later became the first building for the University of Pennsylvania.

For us, however, it is even more notable that Whitefield had been a member, with John and Charles Wesley, of the Holy Club at Oxford University in the early 1730s. And although the Holy Club never left England, it is fair to say that this small group of Christian students had a share in the beginnings of the First Great Awakening in American history through the agency of its alumnus George Whitefield. Thousands were converted under his preaching. He became identified with Jonathan Edwards as one of the New Lights, who spoke prophetically of political freedom from the oppression of England, as well as the spiritual freedom from the slavery of sin.

The First Great Awakening came to its culmination when religion served as the vehicle for a moral consensus which could not tolerate the heavy hand of George II, king of England. A Great Awakening fueled our freedom, and the revolution that followed forever changed the course of our history.

The Second Great Awakening:
Ensuring Our Democracy

Spiritual awakenings usually take a full generation to work themselves through to a new moral consensus out of which social transformation is born. Likewise, the turn of just one generation under the catalyst of speeding social change can undo the moral consensus and kill the vitality created by a spiritual awakening.

The worst happened after we won our independence in 1776 and wrote our Constitution in 1879. In the aftermath of revolution, out forefathers forgot the spiritual roots from which their freedom sprang. Instead of returning to the biblical vision of the moral community which Governor Winthrop proclaimed to the Pilgrim band in a sermon just before they left the Mayflower, the new generation of Americans identified with the seething caldron of infidelity and deism in prerevolutionary France. To say the least, the future of American democracy teetered in the balance, with the scales tipped toward anarchy.

Colonial colleges, in particular, took the brunt of moral corruption and philosophical despair. Harvard, Princeton and Yale, schools which were founded to prepare Christian leaders in religion, government and medicine, became seedbeds of atheism and anarchy. One historian of American higher education likened the climate of the college dormitories to "secret nurseries of every vice and the cages of unclean birds."

Blasphemy followed heresy. In one college, students performed a mock communion with a parody of the sacred ritual at the chapel altar. In another, a deck of playing cards fell out of a hole cut in the pages of the president's Bible as he stood to address the students. In still another college, the students organized a drinking society with the name H.E.O.T.T. in parody of Isaiah's promise, "Ho, everyone that thirsteth." No wonder that any student who professed to be a Christian became the target for open ridicule and subtle discrimination. Quite in contrast with the evangelistic beginnings of the colleges, small bands of Christians now met in secret to pray.

Into this climate of corruption God called Timothy Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards, to be the president of Yale in 1795. Fearlessly, Dwight chose his first baccalaureate sermon to invite all students to an open forum on the Christian faith. After hearing their attacks, he followed with a chapel series in which he spoke the "truth with love" - so much so that one-half of the Yale student body professed Christ before the year was out. One by one, spontaneous stirrings of the Spirit took place on college campuses.

Williams College, however, remained a hard-core center for heresy, blasphemy and ridicule - until the five students prayed under a haystack in 1806. With the mystery of the wind, the Spirit of God swept over the campus bringing repentance and redemption to scores of students who, in turn, took the witness of revival from campus to campus, church to church and city to city until "Awakening" became the watchword for the struggling nation. No one contests the genuine nature of that movement as infidelity gave way to vigorous faith and deism when bankrupt against the revelation of a personal God who loves and redeems all humankind.

Francis Asbury stands in rugged contrast to the image of the scholarly president of Yale or one of the cultured priests of the Anglican Church. Sent to America by John Wesley with the mandate "Offer them Christ," Asbury took his charge seriously by becoming a traveling Methodist preacher on the fast and ever-moving Western frontier. Enlisting impassioned and unusually unlearned men, he created a mobile system of circuit-riders. Pastors on horseback, these men made the frontier their parish, establishing evangelistic outposts with camp meetings that reached thousands of people at a time.

Although Francis Asbury died in 1816, the momentum of his ministry was carried on by such a rough-and-tumble circuit rider as Peter Cartwright. In the book The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan Hatch describes the genius of Asbury on the frontier as leading a "military mission of short-term agents" - itinerant preachers armed with the gospel. Critics of Asbury scoffed when he built a church for Methodists, saying that the movement could be "contained in a corncrib." Late they had to eat their words. Between 1820 and 1830 alone, Methodism doubled in size to become one of the most formidable forces for spiritual regeneration and social reform on the American frontier.

Once again, the ideals and morals of the American people were turned upside-down. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French historian who chronicled our history in his classical work Democracy in America, expressed serious doubts that democracy could survive in the American experiment because freedom requires a moral base. He observed what we must not forget: Democracy depends on a moral foundation of revealed truth mediated through religious institutions.

In 1831 de Tocqueville visited the United States to observe first-hand our experiment in democracy. He found a transformed nation. The moral foundations of revealed truth were strong and the religious institutions were vigorous - evidence of a Great Awakening. At a barn-raising in Pennsylvania de Tocqueville saw the symbol of transformation. Neighbors from far and near voluntarily came to help another neighbor build a barn in one day. In the evening, they celebrated their achievement with supper and song. To de Tocqueville, the event represented democracy at its best. He went home to write, "America is a nation with the soul of a church." What began on a college campus became the energizing force that transformed a nation. It took a Great Awakening to ensure our democracy.

The Prayer Revival of 1858

After the Great Awakening at the turn of the nineteenth century, another generation passed and America was in trouble again. As the new nation grew by spreading south and west, the unity of the 1820s was torn apart by the deepening hostility between the industrial North and the agricultural South. Slavery became the issue of freedom on which our democracy would again rise or fall. Not since the tumultuous days preceding the Great Awakening of the 1740s had the division been deeper and the conflict more volatile. The threat of secession by the southern states in the nineteenth century more than matched the threat of those who sided with the English king in the eighteenth century.

An expanding network of intercessory prayer among businessmen, particularly in cities such as Philadelphia and New York, is usually cited as the source of the 1858 revival. Skeptics, of course, suggest that the fervency of the prayers equaled the panic over a crumbling economy which threatened to bankrupt their businesses and lower their quality of life. Such skeptics fail to recognize the extension of those prayers beyond individual self-interest. Out of those prayer groups came the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), an organization founded to take the gospel to the campuses of the developing system of state universities and to serve the social, educational and spiritual needs of young men in the burgeoning cities of the nation.

Again, the stir of awakening on college campuses preceded the revival of 1858. In the 1840s Charles Finney, an educator-evangelist, spoke as the president of Oberlin College, where students were in the midst of a campus revival. President Finney, not unlike Timothy Dwight of Yale, used the chapel platform to condemn the institution of slavery as antithetical to the spiritual freedom that the students found in Christ.

The message and the spirit of revival sped from campus to campus and fueled the abolition movement with biblical meaning and evangelistic fervor. If a revival requires social reform to qualify as an Awakening, the Emancipation Proclamation leaves no doubt about the lasting impact of the Great Awakening that began on a college campus in the midst of revival. Gilbert Barnes, an historian of the anti-slavery movement, concludes: "In leadership, in method and in objective, the Great Revival and the American Anti-slavery Society now were one."

The World Missions Movement

In the 1890s another turn of the generations brought with it another time of decline and conflict in American culture. While we euphemistically remember the Gay Nineties as a decade of hedonistic happiness, the truth is that we were a troubled people.

A second line of spiritual movement can be drawn from campuses in England to America in the 1890s and on into the twentieth century. In 1882 D.L. Moody spoke at Cambridge University in England. The evangelist might have been disheartened by the ridicule he received from the student body, but out of that meeting seven students responded to the call to give themselves wholly to the will of God.

Gathering together, they called themselves the Cambridge Seven and can rightfully be linked with the Holy Club, the Haystack Prayer Meeting and the YMCA of earlier years. God answered their prayers by a visit of his Spirit, who gave them a vision of the unevangelized world and its multiplied millions. Providentially their vision connected with students at twenty state university campuses in the United States who had also banded together in prayerful submission to the Holy Spirit.

As their forces converged and connected with students on other campuses, the Student Volunteer Movement came into being as the forerunner for such groups as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the Student Mission Association. The list of student leaders who came out of a revival spirit on those campuses reads like a "Who's Who" of world missions: John R. Mott, E. Stanley Jones, Robert Wilder, Samuel Zwemer and Robert Speer. No one laughed when they spoke of their watchword, "The evangelization of the world in this generation."

Mott himself wrote, "Next to the decision to take Christ as the Leader and Lord of my life, the watchword has had more influence that all other ideals and objectives combined to widen my horizon and enlarge my conception of the kingdom of God." His words were backed by the evidence that the watchword served as a motivating and mobilizing vision. To him and his college friends goes the credit not only for offering Christ to millions of people overseas but also for breaking the protective isolationism of America by the 1890s by making the connections with spiritual awakening around the world.

The Welsh revival in 1904 is the best example. When the Spirit of God moved through the masses of that nation of poor and illiterate miners, the conversions were so complete that the pit-ponies in the mines did not respond when given orders without the profanity of their masters. Even more notable, the Welsh revival illustrates the fact that whenever there is a true spiritual awakening, the leaders and the people become advocates for the poor by founding institutions to serve them and initiating legislation to protect them.

What conclusion can we draw from this hasty journey through two centuries of awakenings in American history? In the beginning we learned that the history of America can be written through the turning points of spiritual awakenings. Now we know that those awakenings often began and came full cycle among Christian students on college campuses. Especially in the Great Awakenings in the closing decade of each century, college students led the way in moral reform and world evangelism.

Is it too much to expect that God will pour out his Spirit on all flesh in the 1990s? Will he begin with Christian students on the college campus? Will he bring the stirrings of the Spirit which we have seen in the last half of the twentieth century into the full cycle of a Great Awakening?

Reprinted with permission from the author from The Coming Awakening, by David L. McKenna, (InterVarsity Press,
http://forerunner.com/forerunner/X0596_Heirs_of_a_Haystack.html

http://forerunner.com/forerunner/X0582.html

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Revival - Yale College
By Jay Rogers

In the 1700s, the First Great Awakening came to an end because of the influx of rationalistic thinking from Europe in the form of literature. Revival waned because books containing the philosophy of the Enlightenment were disbursed on the college campuses by the ton. Books containing rationalistic principles which mocked the Bible, such as Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, were given out to the students for a few pennies. If the students wouldn't buy them they would be given to them for free.

Dr. Timothy Dwight, then the President of Yale College, described the literature as "the dregs of humanity vomited on us ... the whole mass of pollution emptied on this country."

The effect on U.S. colleges was disastrous. Students looking for an excuse to rebel against Christianity embraced rationalism. Bible colleges became centers of skepticism. Students formed societies calling themselves by the names of the French philosophers of the Enlightenment. In radical movements, similar to the 1960s, students took control of entire campuses. Students held mock communion services. One group forced the resignation of a Bible college president. Another group attempted to blow up a campus building.

But God had a surprise in store. Timothy Dwight, the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, became the president of Yale in 1795. Under his administration the whole moral and religious atmosphere of the college was changed for the better.

He met the students on their own ground and in a series of frank discussions in the classrooms treated subjects such as "The Nature and Danger of Infidel Philosophy," "Is the Bible the Word of God?" He gave a notable series of lectures in which he grappled with the principles of deism and materialism. Soon he had the admiration of the students and in 1802 a revival began in which a third of the student body professed conversion, to be followed at frequent intervals by other awakenings.

Dartmouth, Williams and Amherst colleges experienced similar spiritual awakenings while the movement spread to other parts of the United States. The "Infidel Movement" was checked and the resulting awakening became the impulse for the founding of numerous academies and colleges

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Don’t Give Up On America!

History provides hope for another spiritual awakening in the U.S.
A Message by Dr. Dale A. Robbins


Today we face what seems to be a hopeless condition in America. Gross immorality has engulfed the land. Crime has taken over the streets. Sexual promiscuity and perversion fills our society. Drunkenness and drug abuse is everywhere. God has been rejected by most of our citizens -- virtually kicked out of our government and our schools. A few years ago, Billy Graham issued a profound warning, that “If God doesn’t soon bring judgment upon America, He’ll have to go back and apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!”1


How far it seems that the United States has drifted from its rich religious heritage. But many may not realize, that despite our nation’s Christian beginnings, in only a few short years after it’s founding it had already declined to a level of moral decadence and depravity that would rival today’s sad condition.


According to the late church historian, J. Edwin Orr, in the post Revolutionary War years, drunkenness was of epidemic proportions — of a population of four million, three hundred thousand were considered drunkards. Bank robberies occurred daily. Street crime, rape and murder was rampant and citizens were afraid to go out of their homes at night. Profanity was the worst imaginable, shocking in its filthiness.


The spiritual climate of the nation was disparaging. The Presbyterians met in general assembly to deplore the ungodliness of the country. Both the Methodists and Baptists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Lutherans and Episcopalians were struggling, and even considered a merger for the sake of survival. Episcopal Bishop of New York, Samuel Provoost, had confirmed no one for so long that he quit the ministry. Samuel Shepherd, a pastor in Lenox, Massachusetts, said that he had not taken one young person into church membership in sixteen years.


A poll at Harvard revealed that there was not one believer in the entire student body. At Princeton, only two believers were discovered among the students. Christianity was generally ridiculed. A mock communion was conducted at Williams College; Anti-Christian plays were performed at Dartmouth; In New Jersey, a Bible was taken from a Presbyterian church and burned in a public bonfire. Christians were such a minority on campuses that they met in secret and kept minutes in code so they wouldn’t be caught or persecuted.


The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote that the Church was “too far gone ever to be revived.” Kenneth Scott Latourette, the Church historian, said, “It looked as though Christianity were a waning influence, about to be ushered out of the affairs of men.” Indeed, it appeared that the church in America was an endangered species. By all indications, the nation had rejected the Christianity of their forefathers — sin and moral decay flourished. But something incredible occurred which changed what seemed to be an impossible situation. A revival of prayer erupted that changed the destiny of our nation.


The awakening of prayer seemed to first begin in the British Isles. In 1792, just a year after the death of John Wesley, a renewed spiritual hunger and revival began to take hold in Great Britain. John Erskine, a minister in Edinburgh, Scotland, wrote a little book on prayer which stirred the hearts of people, and sent a copy to the famed New England theologian, Jonathan Edwards. He along with another New England preacher, Baptist Pastor Isacc Backus, were instrumental in arousing a national interest to pray. In 1794, the spiritual climate in America was at its worst when Backus called upon the ministers of every American church to unite in prayer for the nation. God was with these efforts, and churches of every denomination responded to the national appeal. Soon, a network of prayer meetings emerged across the country, coordinated to pray in unison, beginning on the first Tuesday of January, 1795, and once each quarter thereafter.


Predictably, as people sought God, signs of revival began to be seen. It was first evident in New England, sweeping through Connecticut then on to Massachusetts. In Logan County Kentucky, where sin was somewhere on the scale of Sodom and Gomorrah, a Presbyterian minister, James McGready, held unified prayer meetings every third Saturday and at sunrise on Sundays. In a letter he wrote that most of the winter of 1799, was spent weeping and mourning with the people of God. Finally in the summer of 1800, great camp meeting revivals swept Kentucky and Tennessee, then burst over into North and South Carolina and swept the frontier.


Some years ago, I visited Cane Ridge, Kentucky where one of these great camp meetings converged for six days in August of 1801. It was here that the Christian Church denomination, as well as other fellowships, marked their origin. The historical placards described how over twenty thousand persons, from all over the country, came together almost intuitively, without any promotion or organized campaign.


At night, the hills and fields of the sparsely populated Bourbon County glimmered with torches as far as the eye could see, as smaller cells of hundreds gathered simultaneously around bonfires to hear rousing sermons by any one of dozens of preachers until the late hours. Spiritual fervor was intense. The distant sounds of revival were heard in every direction from the bonfire gatherings. The hollows and ridges echoed with the barely audible, medley of preaching, repentant weeping and joyful praises. This was typical of the great American revival spawned through prayer, which restored America’s spiritual soul and brought God’s blessing for about a hundred years.


Yes, today America looks hopeless. It appears morally and spiritually bankrupt. But as we have discovered, there is always hope if God’s people will come together and pray. God has salvaged our nation before, and can do it again. As Matthew Henry once wrote, “When God intends great mercy for his people, he first of all sets them praying.”


Let’s not give up on America, but let us embrace God’s great promise of prayer: He said, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14).

http://www.victorious.org/prayamer.htm

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http://www.welshrevival.com/lang-en/1904history.htm

History

Wales… CYMRU… a small land of hills, mountains and once industrial valleys. A nation proud of its history and determined to guard its own unique inheritance. A people with their own culture with many still speaking its own distinct tongue – Welsh – or ‘Cymraeg’ as the ‘Cymro’ or Welshman might say. A land littered by castles and forts – remnants of battles of independence with their Anglo Saxon neighbors.



Daniel Rowlands Howell Harries
But alongside and mixed with the political and cultural history of the nation is a stream of Christian history and spiritual revival beginning in the third century and continuing to the present day. A history with its own unique spiritual heroes Saint David and the Celtic Church – William Morgan with his translation of the Scriptures into the Welsh language – Howell Harries and Daniel Rowlands contemporaries and co-workers with Whitefield and Welsey in the 18th Century Methodist Revival accompanied by William Williams Pantycelyn, the Welsh Charles Wesley – who provided the spiritual sound track with his unique hymn writing ability.


Christmas Evans
The 19th Century saw Christmas Evans the one eyed preacher of Anglesey, John Elias, Thomas Charles and hundreds more – Heroes who under God transformed and changed a whole nation into one of the most Christian countries in the world by the end of the Century – so much so that the little nation became known as ‘The Land of Revival’ – Land of Song.

Of course, each Revival had its own emphasis and its own distinctives and each one its own special hymn or hymns, that seemed to sum up the experience of the move of God in the lives of the nation. A favourite of both the National Revivals of 1859 and 1904 was the hymn Y Gwr Wrth ffynon Jacob”. The Man at Jacob’s Well – its popularity due probably to the fact that its truth could easily be repeated and enjoyed in the last few lines.


A century ago Wales experienced the last National Religious Revival, a revival that brought in an extra 100,000 new converts according to the estimates of the time, and a movement that quickly spread to the 4 corners of the World. Yet that great move of the Spirit had very small beginnings. Beginnings that didn’t always involve the great preachers of the day – erudite and educated as they were, but instead included, for instance a young teenager from New Quay, Cardigan – Florrie Evans – who in a youth meeting in February 1904 declared publicly that she loved the Lord Jesus with all her heart. With these words the Spirit seemed to fall on the meeting and the fire quickly spread to other young people in the Cardiganshire area.
Seth Joshua
In September of the same year, an Evangelist Seth Joshua was addressing a Convention which included these young people at Blaenanerch just 5 miles north of Cardigan. Seth himself had been praying for years that God would raise up a young man from the pits to revive the churches – little did he know that on Thursday September 29th 1904 his prayer was to be answered in a life changing experience for one 26 year old student, Evan Roberts.


Evan Roberts

Evan Roberts was born in 1878 in the small town of Loughor in Glamorgan, just 7 miles away from Swansea. Having left school at 11, he worked with his father at the colliery until he was in his early 20s – he then for a short time became a Blacksmith’s apprentice with his uncle in Pontarddulais.

For years Evan had been a faithful member of Moriah Calvinistic Methodist church at Loughor, he was a Sunday School Superintendent, a consciencious reader of the main theological works of his day, and more than that he had been praying for revival for over 11 years. Having been converted as a young teenager, he continued to pray regularly that God would visit again the nation in Revival Power. Determined to do his part, he felt compelled to go into the Calvinistic Methodist Ministry and on September 13th 1904 he became a pupil of the Newcastle Emlyn Grammar School to prepare for Trefecca Theological College


It was only 2½ weeks after arriving that he found himself at Blaenanerch – and at a crossroads in his spiritual experience. A spiritual experience which would lead him back to the young people of his own church Moriah Loughor where he shared his experience and encouraged them to be open to God’s Spirit. Within two weeks the Welsh Revival was national news and before long, Evan Roberts and his brother Dan and his best friend Sidney were travelling the country conducting Revival Meetings and they were meetings with a difference. Meetings which broke the conventional and bi-passed the traditional – often the ministers just sat down unable to preach or even to understand what storm had arrived in their usually sedate temples.
Sidney Evans
This was a Revival with youth on fire – young men, yes and women. After the first stirrings amongst the young women of New Quay, young women continued to play a part in the Revival work – young Florrie went on a team to North Wales with her friend Maud – others used their voices as instruments of God’s message and amongst the most well known was Annie Davies Maesteg who accpomanied Evan Roberts on his missions.

Yes a storm had hit the churches yet for so many it was a storm of love and power which completely transformed their lives.


Annie Davies

People were changed in so many ways. The crime rate dropped, drunkards were reformed, pubs reported losses in trade. Bad language disappeared and never returned to the lips of many – it was reported that the pit ponies failed to understand their born again colliers who seemed to speak the new language of Zion – without curse and blasphemy – even football and rugby became uninteresting in the light of new joy and direction received by the Converts.

Colliers and tin-men of the working classes expressed their joy in so many ways – so many original prayers


But perhaps the song that captures what most of these felt was a song sung by Sam Jenkins a tin plate worker from Llanelli – a song translated at the time from English to Welsh – Can y Rebel “Am Achub hen rebel fel fi” - "For saving an old Rebel like me".
The Revival storm that hit the hills and valleys of Wales in the dying months of 1904 soon became a hurricane that affected the world. Visitors from France, Turkey, the U.S, to name but a few came to visit and as they caught the flame they passed it on to new countries. Welsh communities throughout the world felt the effects and news of God’s powerful work soon had many other churches praying that God would visit then as well – the Khasia Hills in India being a perfect example of prayer answered.

The public excitement of the Revival had died down by 1906 – Evan Roberts went to Leicester to recuperate – the newspapers went back to politics and other things but for many, the honeymoon of these 2 years developed into a lasting and loving relationship with a risen Christ that continued a lifetime.

In asking one elderly Revival convert some years ago as to whether the Revival stopped in 1906, she answered – its still burning within my heart – it’s never been extinguished – it had burned for over 70 years.

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On May 12, 1727, Zinzendorf addressed the community for three hours on the blessedness of Christian unity. The people sorrowfully confessed their past quarreling and promised to live in love and simplicity. Herrnhut became a living congregation of Christ. The entire summer of 1727 was a golden one at Herrnhut as the community worked together in peace and love. There was eager anticipation that more was to come.

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A turning point
On August 5, Zinzendorf and fourteen of the Brethren spent the entire night in conversation and prayer. On August 10th, Pastor Rothe was so overcome by God's nearness during an afternoon service at Herrnhut, that he threw himself on the ground during prayer and called to God with words of repentance as he had never done before. The congregation was moved to tears and continued until midnight, praising God and singing.

The next morning, Pastor Rothe invited the Herrnhut community to a joint communion with his nearby congregation at Bethelsdorf on Wednesday evening, August 13. Count Zinzendorf visited every house in Herrnhut in preparation for this Lord's Supper. The exiles, gathered at Herrnhut, had come to a conviction of their own sinfulness, need, and helplessness. During the service, they made many painful prayers for themselves, for fellow Christians still under persecution, and for their continued unity. Count Zinzendorf made a penitential confession in the name of the congregation. The community united in fellowship. Count Zinzendorf looked upon that August 13th as "a day of the outpourings of the Holy Spirit upon the congregation; it was its Pentecost."

Yes, for 100 years!
Like the first Pentecost, men and women would move forth with the gospel from Herrnhut to the uttermost parts of the earth. Two weeks after the revival, twenty-four men and twenty-four women of the community covenanted together to spend one hour each day, day and night, in prayer to God for His blessing on the congregation and its witness.

For over 100 years, members of the Moravian church continued nonstop in this "Hourly Intercession." All Moravian adventures were begun, surrounded, and consummated in prayer. They became known as "God's Happy People." They launched a missionary society in a time when Protestant missions were unknown. The first missionaries, two young men, declared their willingness to become slaves if necessary to reach the slaves in the West Indies with the Gospel. Within fifteen years of the revival, the Moravians at Herrnhut had established missions in the Virgin Islands, Greenland, Turkey, the Gold Coast of Africa, South Africa, and North America. They endured unspeakable hardships. Many died in difficult circumstances. But as fast as they died, others came forth to take their places.

An unquenchable flame
The eighteenth-century revivals in America and England were influenced by the Moravian mission and prayer movements. Peter Boehler, a Moravian missionary in England, counseled John Wesley, later leader of the Revival in England, leading to his conversion. Wesley wrote of Boehler, "Oh what a work hath God begun since his coming to England! Such a one as shall never come to an end, till heaven and earth pass away!" --but that's the subject of our next issue.

A new phenomenon
The noted historian, Kenneth Scott Latourette, said of the Moravians: Here was a new phenomenon in the expansion of Christianity, an entire community, of families as well as of the unmarried, devoted to the propagation of the faith. In its singleness of aim it resembled some of the monastic orders of earlier centuries, but these were made up of celibates. Here was a fellowship of Christians, of laity and clergy, of men and women, marrying and rearing families, with much of the quietism of the monastery and of Pietism but the spread of the Christian message as a major objective, not of a minority of the membership, but of the group as a whole.
http://chi.gospelcom.net/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps037.shtml

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It may come as surprise that when Yale University was founded on this day, October 16, 1701, it was by Congregationalist ministers unhappy with the growing liberalism at Harvard. It wasn't called Yale then, of course, but rather the Collegiate School. The ministers donated forty books and declared their objective, that "Youth may be instructed in the Arts and Sciences who through the blessing of God may be fitted for Publick employment both in Church and Civil State."

The huge campus of today, with over one hundred buildings was not conceived. In fact, the first classes were held in the residence of Rev. Abraham Pierson, its first rector. Not until 1745 was the school moved to New Haven and renamed Yale.

The name change was in honor of Elihu Yale, a successful merchant who made a donation of goods valued at $2,800. This was equivalent to the annual income of about fourteen medical doctors. The purpose of the renamed school was "To plant and under ye Divine blessing to propagate in this Wilderness, the blessed Reformed, Protestant Religion, in ye purity of its Order and Worship."

Students were required to "live religious, godly and blameless lives according to the rules of God's Word, diligently reading the Holy Scriptures, the fountain of light and truth; and constantly attend upon all the duties of religion, both in public and secret." Prayer was a requirement. Furthermore every student was instructed to "...consider the main end of his study to wit to know God in Jesus Christ" and "to lead a Godly, sober life."

For many years these high ideals were followed. One faculty member wrote around 1800, "It would delight your heart to see how the trophies of the cross are multiplied in this institution. Yale College is a little temple: prayer and praise seem to be the delight of the greater part of the students."

But fathers cannot ensure the fidelity of their sons. Today Yale's original ideals have faded. The school is a liberal institution with utterances and actions that are politically correct. One suspects that students are less likely to pray persistently than to engage in political protests.
http://chi.gospelcom.net/DAILYF/2001/10/daily-10-16-2001.shtml

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"Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before You!"
(Isaiah 64:1)