I saw a sign outside a church in the San Fernando Valley which said, Revival every Monday. What they do during the rest of the week one can only conjecture. Five miles away in Burbank I saw a sign that said, Revival every night except Monday. I wondered if some evangelist was moonlighting. I was lecturing at Baylor University when a Baptist pastor and waker said to me, brother, oh, we had a revival here last fall and nobody got revived. I said, run that past me again. He said, we had a revival here last fall and nobody got revived. I said, then you didn't have a revival. Oh yes, we did. He told me the name of the evangelist, the name of the song leader. He told me how much money they put out in publicity. But, said he, we never got off the ground. This must be the only country in the world where a non-event can be an event, provided you mean well. I was lecturing at Asbury College, a Methodist college in Kentucky, and an old professor said, Brother Orr, you warm my heart. He said, I have seen three revivals here. I said, tell me, were they organized? Oh, no. He said, matter of fact, the last one, 1970, the president had left town. The president was a good friend of mine, so I said, maybe he ought to leave town oftener. But he said, well, the students had just held their revival, and nothing happened. And they were so disappointed, they started praying half the night, and then the Lord sent revival. I said, you better say that again. You say they had just held a revival and nothing happened and the Lord sent a revival? I see what you mean. In this country the word revival is misused. A Pentecostal evangelist whom I have not met sends me his literature from Texas, and recently I got a letter which said that Brother Grant, I think was his name, had gone to San Antonio to hold a revival, and to everyone's surprise, a real revival broke out. Now what did he mean? I'm afraid we can blame this confusion somewhat on a very godly man, Charles Finney. Phinney said, Revival is nothing more than the right use of the appropriate means. Now this was in contrast to Jonathan Edwards, who said, Revival is a work of God. But the result was a lot of men without the power that Phinney had in his ministry have used the word cheaply for any kind of effort. And we need to straighten out definitions first of all. That's what I propose to do, so that during the week, when I talk to you about the great awakenings, the mighty revivals that have come from God, you'll understand what we're talking about. As far as revival is concerned, it must have a biblical basis for us to understand. The Apostle Peter said on the day of Pentecost, this is that which was spoken of by the Prophet Joel. It shall come to pass after us, saith God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams." And the quotation ended with the words, They that call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. The Apostle Peter applied these words to the events of Pentecost. Think of what happened. 120 believers who had been scared for their own lives became bold, and overnight became 3,120. That's what Dr. Donald McGavin calls very satisfactory church growth. Now what was the secret? The Apostle Peter said, this is what was predicted by the prophet Joel, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. Now when Peter said at Pentecost, the promise is to you and to your children, to them that are far off, to as many as the Lord our God shall call, was he referring to the promise of a Savior? No. The promise of the Messiah runs throughout the whole of the Old Testament. He was referring to the promise of the Holy Spirit. You'll find throughout the Old Testament promises of a new day. You see, before these events of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit had come only upon individuals. We call them prophets. The Hebrew word for prophet is the word nabi. It means an effervescent one, one who overflows, one who simply must speak. but they were individuals. And Joel said the time is coming when God will pour out his spirit upon all sorts of people. And the apostle Peter applied this to what was happening at Pentecost. Now you may object and you may say, but it was Peter who did the preaching. True, what you read is what Peter said, but it doesn't mean he was the only actor in this great drama. If Peter said, this is that which was spoken of by the Prophet Joel, I will pour out my spirit upon your sons and your daughters, that must have been happening. In other words, all 120 must have been busy in the work, because these odd pourings of the Holy Spirit are always marked by generality. I was talking to the President of the graduate school of one of the biggest colleges in the United States by telephone, long distance, the other day. I mentioned that I was researching the 1858 Revival. By the way, during the 1858 Revival, the Academy of Music Hall in Washington D.C. was packed every day with 5,000 men at prayer. So my friend, The president of the graduate school said, who started that? Was that Moody? I said, Moody didn't start any revival. It was the revival of 1858 that started Moody. There's all the difference in the world. Now, there may be controversy as to what we mean by revival. You know, some people use the word for a week of meetings. Someone said to me today, oh, you mean like a week of meetings in August the way they have in Kentucky? That sort of thing. But no, others use the word revival when we talk about the Welsh revival, about the Westland revival, about an Anglican revival, and so on. The word is used very ambiguously. Not only that, but there's a controversy about the theology. Jonathan Edwards said revival is the work of God. Finney said revival is something for man to do. And there's a difference there. So I think we ought to try and solve the problem and make sure what we're talking about And we start with that word, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and I ask you a question. Is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit the work of God or the work of man? Well, the Lord Jesus answers that for us. The wind blows where it lifts, you can't tell where it's coming from, where it's blowing to. So it is with the Spirit. There is not any organization under heaven that can organize an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Imagine if World Vision were to announce that on the 15th of November 1983 they have organized an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. You can organize a crusade, you can organize a picnic, you can organize all sorts of things, but you cannot organize the work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, that is the work of God. You cannot see the wind, but you can see what the wind does. And you can always see the effect of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon his children. The first thing is in the reviving of the church. You say, what do you mean the reviving of the church? Every great awakening, every great revival has been marked by an intense spirit of prayer. Jonathan Edwards wrote a book If my memory serves me right, the title was A Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Extension of Christ's Kingdom According to Scriptural Promise and Prophecies Concerning the Last Days. That was just the title, not the book. Dressed the very first point about revival, a humble attempt to promote explicit agreement and visible union of all God's people in extraordinary prayer. What did he mean by that? Do you remember ten years ago we had an evangelistic program throughout the United States called T73? It took its name from the key bridge on the Potomac. Some godly man said, we ought to get together and try and win America for Christ. Who knows, we may have a great awakening. I was asked by friends, what do you think of this? I said, any church that puts anything into it will get something out of it. But I don't think we get a great awakening that way. However, their attitude was this. We evangelicals don't agree among ourselves. So, you Southern Baptists, you do your thing. You Missouri Lutherans, you do your thing. You Presbyterians, do your thing. The Pentecostals will do your thing, but we'll all do it together. And who knows who may see a great revival? Well, we saw a great campaign, not a great revival. Why? There was no explicit agreement and visible union of God's people in extraordinary prayer. A. T. Pearson once said, there has never been a great revival in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer. That doesn't mean that people become disloyal to their own convictions. It doesn't mean that a Presbyterian becomes any less attached to the Westminster Confession, or an Episcopalian to the Thirty-Nine Articles, or whatever. But it means we're willing to pray together because our need is general. Have you ever, when you thought of the pornography we face, the immorality, the gross murders? Why, in California we've just had one man arrested who not only murdered people but had sex with dead bodies. When you realize the filth we're up against, sometimes you feel you can't do anything, you're helpless. It's too much for any one church or any one denomination. It's time for God to move. But then it's also time for us to ask God to move. Therefore all these great movements have begun in prayer. Now we have the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the work of God. But the reviving of the church is also the work of God with the response of his people. They can refuse to be revived. They can turn their backs upon God. But it is his work Now why do we have so much controversy over the word revival? The word revive was already in the English Bible when we got our translation. You know, revive thy work, O Lord, it was there. It's defined as the act of reviving, the state of being revived, restoration to life, strength, consciousness, etc. That's the way the word is used in all senses. If you talk about a revival, of a Shakespearean play, you mean a play that has not been used for some time, you bring to life again. That is understood. If you find a man's body in the creek and the doctor says he's been dead five days, you can't revive him, but if he's got a pulse, you use artificial respiration to revive him. That's the meaning of the word revive, to bring to life again. Now that word revive was in of the Scriptures from the beginning, but the word revival came into the English language in 1702. It was defined as a general awakening of or in religion, and evangelical religion was understood because the word was not used by our Roman Catholic friends or Greek Orthodox or Jewish or Muslim. It was definitely an evangelical word. Of course, it could have been applied to witchcraft. We can talk about a revival of witchcraft, But generally speaking, the word revival is a New Testament word. You say, is it in the New Testament? Its synonym is there, times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. The word revivalism made its appearance in 1815, and the word revivalist in 1820. Revivalism means the state or form of religion characteristic of revivals, as previously defined, and a revivalist is one who promotes produces or participates in religious revival. Now you'll find this is true also in foreign languages. The German word for a revival is Erweckung, which means awakening. The French word for revival is the word Reveille, which means, like our word Reveille, it means to wake up again. It's the same as the word revival. The Scandinavian word in all three languages is Wechselse, The Portuguese word down in Brazil is reavivamento. But in every case it means the coming of life again to people who have already possessed life. Now this is standard in all our dictionaries, in all our encyclopedias, but in American dictionaries since 1930 you get a choice. A, revival It means an awakening in or of religion, be also a week of meetings especially in the South. Now supposing you live in New Zealand, do you have to go South to get a revival? It's an illogical use. And yet people use it all the time. Now what about the Bible? The word that's translated revival And there are two words translated revival, one is chadash and the other is chaya. Chadash means to revive, to renew or restore or repair, and chaya means to bring back to life again. The word has never been used except for people already in relationship to God. Therefore it is not right to use the word revival as far as evangelism is concerned. Evangelism is trying to win outsiders to Christ. Therefore we see the Holy Spirit is outpoured, that's the work of God, the Church is revived, that's the work of God with the response of believers. But we have to go a little bit further than that. I used to hold the view, revive the Church and win the world. There's some truth in that. I took a team of evangelists to New Zealand and Australia. We held 105 campaigns. We wanted to reach the people down there, so we had an Episcopal evangelist. He was an evangelist of the Brotherhood of St. Andrews of the Episcopal Church in America. We had a Presbyterian. We had a Methodist. He is now Speaker of the House in the Australian Parliament. He was at the presidential prayer breakfast recently. And I'm a Baptist minister by ordination. We also had Corrie Ten Boom. I take it you understand her, know who Corrie Ten Boom is. She was my associate for three years. Now we adopted as our slogan the evangelization of the world through the revival of the church. And there's truth in that. Get a church on fire for God and you'll win somebody to Christ. But is there the whole truth there? When the apostle Peter stood at Pentecost and preached, and 120 believers became 3,120, what was the secret? You say, well, Peter was filled with the Spirit, he preached the word. Yes, but even the martyr was filled with the Spirit and preached the word. And instead of adding 3,000, they murdered him on the spot. I began to realize from that, I used to think John Wesley was such a genius of an evangelist, that when he began to preach, strong men who never darted the church door would break down and weep. But the more you read about John Wesley, the more you find he was a rather stuffy high churchman in those days. He became a great evangelist, but he was very stuffy at the beginning. What was the secret? The Holy Spirit, who was poured out upon Wesley and Whitfield and the other members of the Holy Club and other Christians in Britain at that time, was also poured out upon the people. That's something we seem to miss entirely these days. Even in the charismatic movement, the concern is not so much for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the people as an infilling of the Holy Spirit for each individual Christian. We need to pray that the Holy Spirit may be poured out upon the masses. After all, the scripture says, when he has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Have you ever tried to convict someone of sin? Stop a man in the streets of Washington and try and convict him of sin. He will tell you where to go very quickly. How is it then in times of revival, people come running to God? It's because the Holy Spirit is poured out upon them and makes them hungry. So I find that not only do we have an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the reviving of the church, but the awakening of the people, the people among whom we labor. Then the revived church engages in evangelism and teaching. There's the great commission. Whoever will preach the gospel, teach the commandments. The best definition of evangelism that I know was coined by a dear friend of mine who died just two years ago, Canon Max Warren of Westminster Abbey. To evangelize is so to present Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit that men may come to put their trust in him as Savior and to serve him as Lord in the fellowship of his church and the vocations of the common life. That's to evangelize. We evangelize inquirers We teach disciples, those who wish to follow. Then by many or by few, we engage in the reforming of society. Every great awakening has been followed by some great social reforms. But notice I said by many or by few. John Wesley's mother, Susanna, lived at a time when slavery was legal. But so far as I know, she never said a word about it. Why? Well, the woman had twenty children. Twenty! She prayed with each child each day. There was a fire at Epworth Rectory, and as soon as the fire alarm was sounded, she lined them all up and counted them, there were only nineteen. And John Wesley was left upstairs there, and they got him down very quickly. He always called himself a brand from the burning after that. So Susanna Wesley had plenty on her hands. I would say if Susanna Wesley did nothing more than give the world John Wesley, Charles Wesley and Samuel Wesley, that would have been a life work. But now John Wesley was quite different. Long before his time he wrote a pamphlet, Thoughts on Slavery, in which he denounced slavery as a sin against God and a sin against man. But you see, John Wesley had more time. He had a very unhappy marriage. I remember once speaking at a Methodist conference, and I said, I wish you Methodists had the zeal of your early founder. He used to get up at four o'clock in the morning and travel long distances with the gospel. And one Methodist minister said, if I had a wife like John Wesley's wife, I'd get up at four o'clock in the morning too, and travel long distances with the gospel. See, God knows to whom he gives the work. There was one little hunchback in Yorkshire, during what we call the Second Awakening, decided to serve God in Parliament. His name was Wilberforce. He went into Parliament and fought the slave trade until he persuaded the British Parliament to abolish the slave trade and use the Royal Navy to hunt them down. That was just as much a call from God as to become an evangelist like William Carey in India. Now you might say, is there any priority here? Well, perhaps in one way. We're all called to preach the gospel. I put it this way. You don't need to be a Christian to engage in social reform. I knew Frank Laubach. He was called Mr. Literacy. Put out the principle, each one teach one, he taught people to read and write by the thousands and then by the millions. Became a consultant of governments. Last time I saw him was just before he died, I spoke with him and Stanley Jones at Asbury College. But on the other hand, when I was in the People's Republic of China last year, I had to admit that the Communists have done a good job in teaching the Chinese masses to read and write. You don't need to be a Christian to teach people to read and write. So while God calls us to social action, inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me, visit the prisoners and the sick and so on, while God calls us to do it, it's a commended ministry. I'll put it this way, if we don't do it, somebody else will. But if we don't preach the gospel and teach the commandments, nobody else will. Therefore, we should remember our priority. The reason I deal with this subject is, you can't get anywhere today until you understand what you mean when you say you're praying for revival. In Griffin, Georgia, recently I met a man. I said, you know, the country is such a mess, we ought to pray for revival. Yes, he said, but closer to the time. I said, what do you mean by that? Well, he said, we always hold our revival in August, so why start praying about it until July? You mention a revival to some churchmen that think you mean some kind of high-pressure, hot gospel type of rally or something like that? No, no. What do we mean? We mean an outpouring of the blessed spirit of God upon his children, regardless of their denomination. And that's happened time and time again in the history of this country. Each evening, I'm going to tell you what God has done for America. I wrote to an outstanding historian, a church historian, not far from here. I said, Can you give me any clues on the great revival that swept the United States in 1905? He wrote back and said, I've never heard of such a movement. I doubt very much if such a movement could occur in the 20th century. I just went ahead with my research and published my book. Do you know that during 1905 the Ministers Association of Atlantic City reported of a population of 60,000 there were only 50 adults left unconverted? Do you know that during the 1905 awakening 200 major stores in Portland, Oregon, closed each day from 11 to 2 for prayer. Do you know that the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Paducah, Kentucky, an old man, Dr. J. J. Cheek was his name, took in a thousand new members in two months and died of overwork? And the Southern Baptist said, what a glorious way to go. Yet the average American, and I'm going to say this strongly, the average church historian, the average minister of the gospel, never heard of the revival of 1905. So who do you mean Azusa Street? Azusa Street was 1906. There were 120 people in that little room on Azusa Street, but in 1905 more than 2 million Americans were revived. and yet people have never heard us, the general awakening. I think conditions are so deplorable that we need to pray that God will visit his people again. Will thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? I want to give a message from the Word, but that will come a little bit later. Dr. J. Edwin Orr, speaking on the topic, The Role of Prayer in Spiritual Awakening. This presentation was recorded at the National Prayer Congress in Dallas, Texas, during October of 1976. We present to you now, Dr. J. Edwin Orr. Dr. A. G. Pearson once said, There has never been a spiritual awakening in any country or locality that did not begin in united prayer. I'd like to talk to you today about what God has done through concerted, united, sustained prayer. Not many people realize that in the wake of the American Revolution there was a moral slump. Drunkenness was epidemic. Out of a population of 5 million, 300,000 were confirmed drunkards. They were burying 15,000 of them each year. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. For the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid to go out at night for fear of assault. Bank robberies were a daily occurrence. What about the churches? The largest denomination at that time was the Methodists, and they were losing more members than they were gaining. The second largest was the Baptists. They said they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians met in General Assembly to deplore the ungodliness of the country. The Congregationalists were strongest in New England. Take a typical church. The Reverend Samuel Shepard of Lennox, Massachusetts said in 16 years he had not taken in one young person into fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing they discussed uniting with the Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Bishop Samuel Provost, quit functioning. He had confirmed no one for so long, he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, Bishop Madison, and he said that church is too far gone ever to be redeemed. Voltaire said Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years' time, and Tom Paine preached this cheerfully all over America. In case you think it was the hysteria of the moment, Kenneth Scott LaTourette, the great church historian, said, it seemed as if Christianity were about to be ushered out of the affairs of men. The churches had their backs to the wall. It seemed as if they were about to be wiped out. How did God change that situation? It came through the concert of prayer. I must go back a little. There was a Scottish Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh called John Erskine. He wrote a memorial, he called it, pleading with the people of Scotland and elsewhere to unite in prayer for a revival of religion. He sent a copy of his little book to Jonathan Edwards in New England. That great theologian was so moved he wrote a response which got longer than a letter and finally he published it as a book. If my memory serves me right, the title of the book was as follows, A Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom. That was the title of the book, not the book itself. Nowadays, titles are often unrelated to contents. If you study weather, you're interested in meteorology, you don't read Gone with the Wind, it has nothing to do with weather. But in those days, a title was more like a synopsis of what was in the book. But don't miss the message of the title, a humble attempt, that was New England modesty, to promote explicit agreement and visible union of all God's people in extraordinary prayer for the revival of religion and the extension of Christ's kingdom. That's what's missing so much from all our great evangelistic efforts. We must have explicit agreement and visible union of God's people in extraordinary prayer. Now this moment began in England. through William Carey and Andrew Fuller and John Sutcliffe and others. They started what the British called the Union of Prayer. And the year after John Wesley died, the Second Great Awakening began and swept Great Britain. There isn't time to give you the details of that. But in New England there was a man of prayer named Isaac Backus, a Baptist pastor. And in 1794, when conditions were at their worst, he sent out a plea for prayer. Take the colleges at that time. They took a poll at Harvard, and they discovered not one believer in the whole student body. They took a poll at Princeton, a much more evangelical place. They discovered only two believers in the student body, and only five that didn't belong to the filthy speech movement of that day. Students rioted They had a mock communion at Williams College. They had anti-Christian plays at Dartmouth. They burned down Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced the resignation of the president of Harvard. They took a Bible out of a Presbyterian church in New Jersey and burned it in a public bonfire. Christians were so few on campus, they met in secret like a communist cell and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know what they were doing to persecute them. Isaac Bacchus addressed his plea for prayer to ministers of every Christian denomination in the United States. The churches knew their backs were to the wall. The Presbyterian synods of New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania adopted it for all their churches. Bishop Francis Asbury adopted it for all the Methodists. The Baptist associations and the Congregational, the Reformed and the Moravians all adopted it until America, like Britain, was interlaced with a network of prayer meetings. They set aside the first Monday of each month to pray. It wasn't long before the revival came. It broke out first of all in Connecticut, then it spread to Massachusetts, entirely without extravagance or outcry. Every report mentions this. However, there were some differences. When the movement reached the frontier in Kentucky, those people were really wild and irreligious. Congress discovered that in Kentucky there hadn't been more than one court of justice held in five years. Peter Cartwright, a Methodist evangelist, said that when his father settled in Logan County, it was known as Rogue's Harbor. If someone committed a murder in Massachusetts or a robbery in Rhode Island, all he needed to do was to get across the Alleghenies. The decent people in Kentucky formed regiments of vigilantes to fight for law and order. They fought a pitched battle with the outlaws and lost. There was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian minister called James McGrady, whose chief claim to fame was that he was so ugly he attracted attention. Nowadays you have to be good looking to get attention. But McGrady was so ugly that people stopped in the street and said, what does he do? They said he's a preacher. Then they reacted and said, a man with a face like that must have something to say. McGrady settled in Logan County, pastored three little churches. He said in his diary that the winter of 1799 for the most part was weeping and mourning with the people of God. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah. But McGrady was such a man of prayer. Not only did he have the concert of prayer every Monday, the first Monday of the month, but he got his people to pray for him at sunset on Saturday evening and sunrise on Sunday morning. In the summer of 1800 came the great Kentucky Revival. 11,000 people came to a communion service. McGrady hollered loud and long, anyone come and help me? So Baptists and Methodists came, and the great camp meeting revivals began, and swept Kentucky and Tennessee, and then burst over North Carolina and South Carolina, and swept the frontier. That was the turning point. Out of that second great awakening, after the death of Wesley, came the whole missionary movement, all the missionary societies. Out of it came the abolition of slavery. Out of it came popular education. I could mention so many social benefits as well as evangelistic drive. More than 600 colleges in the Middle West were founded by revivalists. Now, conditions deteriorated in the middle of the 19th century. Why? Sounds familiar. The country is seriously divided over the issue of slavery, just like the Vietnam War. Second, people making money hand over fist. And when they do, they turn their backs upon God. But a man of prayer, Jeremiah Lanphier, started a prayer meeting in the upper room of the consistory building of the North Dutch Reformed Church in Manhattan. He advertised a prayer meeting. Only six people out of a population of a million showed up. But the following week there were fourteen, and then twenty-three. Then they decided to meet every day for prayer. Then they filled the Dutch Reformed Church, then the Methodist Church on John Street, then Trinity Episcopal Church at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway. By February of 1858, every church and every public building in downtown New York was filled. Horace Greeley, the famous editor, sent a reporter with horse and buggy racing around the prayer meetings to see how many men were praying. In one hour he could only get to 12 meetings, but he counted 6,100 men. And then the landslides of prayer began. People began to be converted, 10,000 a week in New York City. The movement spread throughout New England. Church bells would bring people to prayer at 8 in the morning, 12 noon, 6 in the evening. The revival went up the Hudson, down the Mohawk. For example, the Baptists had so many people to baptize, they couldn't get them into their churches. They went down to the river, cut a big square hole in the ice, baptized them in the cold water, and when Baptists do that, they really are on fire. When the revival reached Chicago, a young shoe salesman went to the superintendent of the Plymouth Congregational Church and asked if he might teach Sunday school. The superintendent said, I'm sorry, young fellow, I've got sixteen teachers too many. but I'll put you on the waiting list." The young man said, I want to do something now. Well, he said, start a class. How do I start a class? Get some boys off the street. Don't bring them here. Take them out into the country and after a month you can have control of them. Bring them here, they'll be your class. He took them to a beach in Lake Michigan and he taught them Bible verses and Bible games and then he took them to the Plymouth Congregational Church. The name of the young man was Dwight Lyman Moody and that was the beginning of his ministry that lasted 40 years. For instance, Trinity Episcopal Church in Chicago had 121 members in 1857. 1860, 1400, this was typical of all the churches. More than a million people converted to God out of a population of 30 million in one year. And that revival jumped the Atlantic, broke out in Northern Ireland, in Scotland, in Wales, in England, South Africa, South India, anywhere there was an evangelical cause, there was a revival, and its effect was felt for 40 years. It began in a movement of prayer, it was sustained by a movement of prayer. Now that movement lasted a generation, but at the turn of the 20th century, there was need of awakening again. There were special prayer meetings at Moody Bible Institute, at the Keswick Convention in England, in Melbourne, in the military hills of India, at Wonsan in Korea. All around the world, people were praying that there might be another Great Awakening in the twentieth century. Now, some people tell me we're in the midst of a Great Awakening today. I certainly believe that the tide has turned. I certainly believe that were on the move again, but I don't think we've reached anywhere like what God has done in the past. Let me give you two examples. First of all, take student world. One of the leaders of the revival of 1905 was a young man called K.S. LaTourette, who became the famous professor Kenneth Scott LaTourette. He said when he was at Yale in 1905, out of the student body, 25% were enrolled in prayer meetings and Bible studies. I live next door to UCLA. There's a population there of 36,000. I don't believe there are 9,000 enrolled in Campus Crusade, InterVarsity, Power & Light Company, and the other evangelical groups. Or in all the church groups put together. We haven't reached that yet. As far as the churches are concerned, the ministers of Atlantic City reported of a population of 50,000 in Atlantic City, there are only 50 adults left unconverted. Take Portland, Oregon, 240 department stores closed from 11 to 2 each day for prayer, signed an agreement among themselves so that no one would cheat and stay open. Take First Baptist Church Paducah, Kentucky, the pastor was an old man, Dr. J. J. Cheek, and he said, as he was committed to the revival, he was going to win souls to Christ. He took in a thousand new members in two months and died of overwork. And the Southern Baptist said, a glorious ending to a devoted ministry. That's what was happening in the United States in 1905. But how did it begin? Well, most people have heard of the Welsh Revival, which began in 1904. It began as a movement of prayer. I knew Evan Roberts personally. Of course, I met him thirty years later. But he was devoted to God and was a man of prayer, praying for revival in Wales. Seth Joshua, a Presbyterian evangelist, came to the Newcastle Emlyn College where Evan Roberts was studying for the ministry. Evan Roberts was 26, he had been a coal miner. The students were so moved that they asked if they could go to his next campaign, so they cancelled classes and went to Blannernurch. It was there that Seth Joshua prayed, O God, bend us. And Evan Roberts went forward and prayed with great agony, Oh God, bend me. He couldn't concentrate on his studies. He went to Principal Phillips, the principal of his college, and said, I hear a voice that tells me I must go home and speak to our young people in my own home church. Mr. Phillips, he said, is that the voice of the devil or the voice of the spirit? And Phillips answered very wisely, the devil never gives orders like that. You can have a week off. He went back home to Lochor and announced to the pastor, I've come to preach. The pastor wasn't at all convinced. But he said, how about speaking at the prayer meeting on Monday? He didn't even let him speak to the prayer meeting. He said to the praying people, our young brother Evan Roberts feels he has a message for you if you care to wait. 17 people waited. Evan Roberts said to them, I have a message for you from God. You must confess any known sin to God and put any wrong done to man right. Second, you must put away any doubtful habit out of your life. Third, you must obey the Spirit promptly. Finally, he said, you must confess your faith in Christ publicly. And by 10 o'clock, all 17 had responded. The pastor was so pleased, he said, how about speaking for us at the mission service tomorrow night, midweek service Wednesday night? He preached all week. They asked him to stay for another week, and then the break came. You say, what do you mean, the break? I've read the Welsh newspapers of the period. In them were little snippets of ecclesiastical news. The Reverend Peter Jones has just been appointed chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's. Very interesting, but not earth-shaking. And then it said, Mowbray Street Methodist Church had a very interesting rummage sale. But then suddenly a headline. Great crowds of people drawn to Lochor. They said for some days a young man named Evan Roberts was causing great surprise. The main road between Furnessley and Swansea on which the church was situated was packed from wall to wall, people trying to get into the church. And people were closing shops and stores early to get a place in the church. Now the news was out. They sent a reporter down and he described what he saw. He said it was a strange meeting. It closed at 4.25 in the morning and then the people didn't seem to be willing to go home. He said that the people were still standing outside the church talking about what had happened. And then a very British summary, he said, I felt this was no ordinary gathering. The news was out, next day every grocery store in that industrial valley was packed out, people buying groceries, people would come to the meetings. On Sunday every church filled. And it went like a tidal wave over Wales. I can tell you so much about it. There were 100,000 people converted in that movement. Five years later, a man called J.D. Morgan wrote a book to debunk the revival. His main criticism was that of the 100,000 that joined the churches in the five months of the excitement of the revival, after five years only 80,000 still stood. Only 80,000. But the social impact was astounding. For example, judges were presented with white gloves. Not a case to try. No rapes, no robberies, no murders, no burglaries, no embezzlements, nothing. The district councils had emergency meetings to discuss what to do with the police now that they were unemployed. In fact, they sent for a sergeant of the police and said, what do you do with your time? He said, well, before the revival we had two main jobs. One was to prevent crime, the other to control crowds as at football games but since the revival started there's practically no crime so we just go with the crowds a councillor said, what does that mean? well he said, you know where the crowds are they're packing the churches but how does that affect the police? well he said, we have 17 police in our station but we have 3 quartets and if any church wants a quartet they simply call the police station that revival swept Wales Drunkenness was cut in half. There was a wave of bankruptcies, but nearly all taverns. There was even a slowdown in the mines. You say, how could a religious revival cause a strike? It didn't cause a strike, just a slowdown. So many Welsh coal miners were converted and stopped using bad language that the horses that dragged the trucks on the mines couldn't understand what was being said to them. And transportation slowed down for a while until they learned the language of Canaan. When I first heard that story I thought it was a tall tale, but I can document it even from Westminster Abbey. That revival, for instance, affected moral standards also. I discovered through the figures given to me by the British government experts, that in Radnorshire and Marinershire, the illegitimate birth rate dropped 44% within a year of the beginning of the revival. So great was the impact of that movement. That revival swept Great Britain. It broke out in Norway. It so moved Norway that the Norwegian Parliament passed special legislation to permit laymen to conduct Holy Communion because the clergy couldn't keep up with the number of converts who wanted to take Holy Communion. It swept Sweden and Denmark and Germany, Canada from coast to coast, all of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, West Africa, North Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Chile. I could talk, well in fact I teach a course on this. I have a, here's the interesting thing, until 1973 no one ever knew about the extent of that revival until I published my book The Flaming Tongue. And it began through a movement of prayer. It began with prayer meetings all over the United States, and soon there came the Great Time of Harvest. So what's the lesson we can learn? It's a very simple one. It's that familiar text. If my people called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. What's involved in this? God expects us to pray. But we must not forget what Jonathan Edwards said. when he said to promote explicit agreement and visible union of all God's people in extraordinary prayer. What do you mean by extraordinary prayer? When you find people getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning to pray, or having a half-night of prayer till midnight, that's extraordinary prayer. When they give up their lunch time and go and pray at a noon-day prayer meeting, that's extraordinary prayer. But it must be united and concerted. It doesn't mean that a Baptist becomes any less of a Baptist, or an Episcopalian is less loyal to the Thirty-Nine Articles, or the Presbyterian turns his back on the Westminster Confession. Not at all. But they recognize each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, and they're prepared to pray together in concerted prayer that God may hear and answer. We haven't reached that stage yet. This National Conference on Prayer is unprecedented in some ways. It's a sign of the direction in which we're moving. It's what I call extraordinary prayer. But you folk who are here, those who listen to my voice, must take it back to your churches, and when they're prepared to set aside time to pray for a spiritual awakening, that's when God is going to answer. Now some people say that means then it's up to us. Oh no, we can't say that either. Matthew Henry said, when God intends great mercy for his people, he, first of all, sets them a frame. Even God is sovereign in this matter. But we must respond. He has chosen never to work without our cooperation. So whether your interpretation of revival is Calvinistic or Arminian, it's a very simple thing. You must pray. Then God will work. May God help us so to pray. Amen. We are asking everybody here at the School of Prayer for putting out a message on the internet to go worldwide to ask everybody if they would remember to please pray every first Tuesday of every month. Pray for a revival worldwide that will last for years and a great awakening. First the church members have to be affected and then the awakening will be those who are not within the church. These prayers have been going up for many years from people like Leonard Ravenhill. Richard Owen Roberts has been doing this for a group of men for over 25 years. We just ask that we would pick up the torch worldwide and start to pray, start to wrestle, start to fast, however it is that you can, to pray that God will bring down a revival and a great awakening through His Spirit. And then please ask your prayers in Jesus Christ's name. Thank you.