It really is the knowledge of prayer that has been disappearing, along with other spiritual positions. Because I feel that oftentimes you can preach on a theme today, The phrases that we employed years ago, like going through with God, which perhaps are colloquial and not known outside of Northern Ireland, but there was a time in Northern Ireland that you knew exactly what that meant. It meant that utter yielding of yourself to the Lord.
And how often in Dr. Paisley's early ministry, early as far as my acquaintance with him was concerned, we're talking about the 60s, how often he would have preached on such a topic as going through with God. That was an essential part of being a Christian, yielded utterly to the Savior. And every mission Dr. Paisley had, and he had mission after mission after mission, he always started out with Monday night he would deal with Christians being backslidden. Tuesday night he would deal with surrender to God. And then on the Wednesday night he would preach about the fullness of the Holy Ghost. and make an appeal for people to come forward.
And in my experience, in the many, many missions, because I oftentimes drove them there, you would have seen on the Wednesday night droves of people brokenly. And I can still, if I only could transfer the pictures that are in my mind to a camera or a computer, I'd be able to share with folk the view of me looking out on a congregation, hundreds of people, of all age groups, and many times he would bring folk to the front and they were of all ages, brokenly weeping and acknowledging that they were not where they ought to be with God, and crying unto him for restoration. That's what made his missions.
Because then he began to preach the gospel in the following nights with a whole band of people that now were right with God and on fire. and full of the Holy Spirit and to hear those people pray in the prayer meetings before the mission was a blessing in itself and little wonder there were the results in the meetings that Dr Paisley then went on to conduct given such a start to the mission as that and across the country I really do believe that one thing happened principally and that was people were brought to a relationship with God, Christians that is, where they could really pray, where they could really pray.
These impromptu videos were taken at my request when I last visited with Rev Ivan Foster in 2014. My own personal prayer life being so shaped by this man, I sought to capture some of his thoughts on the vital discipline of prayer.