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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.
Introduction to Revival
Series J. Edwin Orr
Introduction to Revival - given on February 1983
| Sermon ID | 11613742330 |
| Duration | 54:26 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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