But in that church, in the year 1949, there was perhaps the most important prayer meeting that this church can look back upon. And in many ways, the most important prayer meeting in the life of the young Ian Paisley and a few others who were with him. I think, Dr. Paisley, that's your starting point, and we'll let you take it from there.
Yes, well, I believe that that is a right starting point. Of course, all of us believing in sovereign grace know that grace is everlasting and this matter started in the counsels of God and from all eternity. And that, of course, brings great joy and strength to us in the battle that we're dealing with a God who is eternal. and with the mind of a God that is also eternal.
I suggested to some young men that we should meet and have a time of prayer. And we did meet. And at that meeting, there was a very much younger John Douglas there. He was a boy amongst us. He was like the apostle John amongst us. He had been my first convert in the Ravenhill Church, the first person I led to the Lord after my ordination in 1946. Another young man called Welsh, James Welsh. And there was, of course, myself and another young man who had been miraculously converted a few months before Bob Scott from the Shankill Road. So the four of us met for prayer, and as we continued in prayer, we discovered that this was no ordinary prayer meeting, that our hearts were being made bare to the light of God.
And what we saw in our hearts was a hideous demonstration and manifestation and revelation of our own absolute sinfulness, of the holiness of God, which was a burning and shining light, and of the necessity of us being right with God through the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus. As we continued in prayer, the exceeding sinfulness of sin became as a matter of terror to us all. The light of God's holiness shone with fear into our hearts. And yet there was a yearning in our hearts that we could be supplied with such power that we could go forth and preach the gospel and see hundreds and thousands of souls converted to Christ.
Halfway through that night, John had to go home because he was a boy and his mother demanded that he be in at a proper time. It was now the early hours. So we had to go home and explain to his mother why he was out to the early hours of the morning. We continued in prayer. The tide ebbed and it flowed. At times it was flowing with such power that it was almost uncontainable. At other times it seemed to ebb and it seemed that the sun that had risen was going to set, but not so. And we continued on that whole night on through the next day to the next evening.
And at that time, a sense of the fullness of God caught hold of our souls. And the sweet assurance that all that we long for our eyes would see and we would behold a manifestation of the power of God and we would see sinners gloriously converted to Christ. I could say many more things about that prayer meeting, but I think that is enough.
In this clip, Dr Paisley recounts the 36-hour prayer meeting that catapulted the Free Presbyterian Church into a new era of explosive growth in the 50s and 60s.