Anticipating the Twentieth Century: Faith and Expectations

We shall divide our time, as we did in other evening meetings, between a testimony of what God has done in the past and a message from His word. Now you can understand, when the year 1899 came, everyone was talking about the twentieth century. There had been forty years of steady expansion of the Church. Most people thought the twentieth century was going to be a century of triumph. In fact, they started a magazine called The Christian Century. It is a very liberal magazine today, but it showed something of the attitude of people.

Now, of course, if this were the year 1999, everyone would have some kind of program arranged for the year 2000. This was happening in the United States. For instance, the Methodists launched what they called the Twentieth Century Forward Movement. They decided they were going to go all out in preparation for a great awakening. Their objective was the winning of two million souls. They raised twenty million dollars to do it, and an editorial in the Christian Advocate said it was believed, with a better knowledge of how to work and a feeling that it was a Church-wide movement, a great religious awakening might be secured at the opening of the twentieth century.

The second largest denomination, the Baptists, had a great Baptist advance program. The Presbyterians formed an evangelistic commission. Dr. Wilbur Chapman was chosen as the recognized leader, and by 1902 the Presbyterians had fifty-six evangelists, ranging the country, twelve hundred Presbyterian ministers united in prayer for revival. But it didn't come that way through organization. Some Methodists said, God waited until we got our program out of the way, then He sent the revival. Well, did they get any kind of results? Yes. I jotted down the figures here. After three years' promotion, the Methodists confessed very little gain in membership—fifteen thousand or something like that, not two million.

Now revival came in a different way entirely. In 1899 there were all-nights of prayer at Moody Bible Institute. There were all-days of prayer at the Keswick Convention in England. There were prayer movements in India. The missionaries in Korea met for prayer. And it was in response to the prayer movement, rather than the organizational movement, that the revival came. God is sovereign. He chooses to move where He chooses. And He chose a little country, Wales, on the western flanks of England, to begin a work that amazed the world.

Now Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, famous pastor of the Westminster Chapel, told me once, if you're interested in the Welsh revival, get the records of the New Quay congregation in Cardigan. I find the minister there was the Reverend Joseph Jenkins. He was what was called a Keswick man—perhaps you've heard that word, K-E-S-W-I-C-K. Most Americans pronounce that Keswick, but the W is silent, it's Keswick. Some Americans say to me, well, what's a Keswick man? The Keswick Convention stresses holy living, out-and-out commitment to the Lord. But their position is a sort of halfway house between the Wesleyan view of crisis and the Calvinistic view of a process—a crisis with a view to a process. Joseph Jenkins was Presbyterian, but as I say, he was a Keswick man.

He said to his young people one Sunday, What does Jesus Christ mean to you? They were embarrassed. Now, they were godly young people, they always opened their meeting with singing and prayer, but the Young People's Society was really the church youth club. That's where boy met girl, that's where the young people went for picnics and so forth. A social organization as well as a Christian one—perhaps you could say a social organization with a Christian veneer. He said, What does Jesus Christ mean to you? There was a long hesitation, then a young man said, Jesus Christ is the hope of the world. No, he said, I don't mean the world. What does He mean to you? There was dead silence, and then a girl called Flory Evans, just three weeks converted, spoke up and said, I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart. She said it so sincerely there was a hush of God in that meeting. That was the beginning of the Welsh revival.

Joseph Jenkins organized the young people into a team, and he went around preaching with them, testifying. Mrs. Jessie Penn Lewis wrote to the Life of Faith, a magazine in London, to say that a cloud no bigger than a man's hand had arisen in Wales. Now the leading evangelist of Wales was Seth Joshua. His son is a good friend of mine, he's in his late eighties, retired in Southern California, an American Presbyterian minister. His father was a stated evangelist of the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales, now known as the Presbyterian Church of Wales. He was having meetings here, there, and everywhere, he was a man of God with great power in his life. But he went down to Newquay, where the young people had been stirred.

I have read his diary in the archives of the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. There you'll find he tells of how he visited Newquay in September of 1904. It was quite an unexpected sort of thing. I made some notes from his diary, 19th of September, revivalists were breaking out here in greater power, the young are receiving the greatest measure of blessing. They break out into prayer, praise, testimony, and exhortation. I cannot leave the building until twelve, and even one o'clock in the morning. I closed the service several times, yet would break out again, quite beyond human control. Peter Joshua, his son, told me, my dad would say, now, young people, it's three minutes to twelve, tomorrow's another day, let's pronounce the benediction and go home, tomorrow's another day. He'd pronounce the benediction, there'd be a short silence, then somebody would either announce a hymn or start praying, and the meeting went on again. Then he'd say, now, young people, it's after twelve, tomorrow's another day, and someone would say, this is tomorrow already.

Beth Joshua went from there to the Newcastle Emlyn College, where a Welshman trained for the Presbyterian ministry. The principal was a man called Evan Phillips. There was a student there, a coal miner, twenty-six years of age, Evan Roberts. I knew Evan Roberts, I met him thirty years later, of course. But he was a big fellow at the age of twelve, his father was badly injured in the mines, so to earn money he took his father's place. So he was a coal miner from the age of twelve. But at the age of twenty-six he decided to study for the ministry. I've read as much as I can of his diary. All his life he was interested in revival. For eleven years, he said, he had prayed for revival. On Sunday he went to church twice, he went to a Bible class and to Sunday school, he taught Sunday school. On Monday he went to a prayer meeting, on Tuesday to a mission service, on Wednesday to the midweek service, on Thursday a temperance meeting, on Friday to class meetings. I never found out what he did on Saturday, but I can guess—bath night. Back in those days, each member of the family would take the galvanized iron tub in front of the kitchen fire and perform his ablutions. That's right. Did you know that Queen Victoria in Buckingham Palace didn't have a bathroom? You say, what did she do? They say she used perfume. But when I was a lad growing up in Ireland, and some Canadians told me it was the same in Nova Scotia, Saturday night was bath night. Every week we took a bath, unless we didn't need it.

When Evan Roberts heard of the breath of revival at Newquay, he was electrified. Seth Joshua had morning meetings at ten o'clock and evening meetings at eight o'clock. The evening meetings were packed, but the morning meetings were not so. In those days there were no babysitters. People at work, people at school, and young mothers simply couldn't come to meetings, so the only people who were there were the old ladies of the parish and the theological students. The theological students, when they heard from Seth Joshua what was happening, petitioned the principal to close down classes and let them attend Seth Joshua's next campaign. It was in one of the morning meetings when Seth Joshua prayed in Welsh, O God, bend us, and Evan Roberts went forward and prayed with great agony, O God, bend me. The Welsh word bend is a stronger word than the English word. It really means to shape, the way a potter shapes the clay. You know the way we sing, melt me, mould me, fill me, use me? That's the kind of idea, bend me. One of his slogans was, bend the Church and save the world.

Now when he went back to theological college, he found it rather hard to study. He said to his roommate, Sidney Evans, do you think God could give us 100,000 souls? Now if a Fuller Theological Seminary student came to me and said, I'm going to evangelism, you think God would give me 100,000 souls next year? I would put that down to enthusiasm. I wouldn't pour cold water on them, but I think there's an eager beaver. Yet in the next five months, in a movement that Evan Roberts was greatly used in, more than 100,000 outsiders in Wales joined the Churches. Evan Roberts said he felt ablaze with a desire to evangelize Wales. He had been saving money for 14 years. He drew $1,000, like $10,000 a day, and he said he was prepared to pay God for the privilege of working for Him. He was going to use this money to organize a team of young evangelists. He went to the principal of the college and said, I can't concentrate. I keep hearing a voice that says you must go back and speak to the young people in the church.

Phillips, is that the voice of God or the voice of the devil? And Principal Phillips said very wisely, the devil never gives orders like that. You can have a week off. So he went back. When he arrived home, his parents said, why aren't you studying? Are you in trouble? No. Well, why are you home? He said, I've come to preach to the young people. What young people? Our young people. They said, we were in church on Sunday and no one mentioned this. He said, the minister doesn't know yet.

When the minister, Mr. Morgan, heard this, he was a little nonplussed. What would you say if some student went from this congregation to Moody Bible Institute or some theological college and came back after three months and said, I've come to preach? The minister didn't want to hurt his feelings, but he didn't want to hurt the congregation's feelings either. So he said, how about speaking for us on Monday? That was the prayer meeting night. He didn't ask him to address the prayer meeting. He simply told them after the prayer meeting was over, our young brother, Evan Roberts, he has a word for you if you care to wait. Put the onus on them. I suppose they were ready to go home, but they all knew Evan Roberts had grown up with him. So seventeen waited.

But what a message! His mode of preaching was quite different. Welsh people are great orators, but Evan Roberts was more like a telegram boy. He said, I have a message for you from God. You must confess any known sin and put any wrong done to man right. You must put away any doubtful habit. You must obey the Spirit promptly. You must confess your faith in Christ publicly. And by ten o'clock, all seventeen had responded. The minister was so pleased, he said, would you go to the mission service tomorrow night with me? He spoke at a midweek service. On Thursday they converted the temperance meeting into a general meeting, and on Friday they brought all the classes together and the church was quickly filling up. It was a big church, Moriah Church.

On Sunday another minister had come to preach by arrangement, so Evan Roberts sat with his family in the pew. But the people got up in the evening meeting and said, could we have an after-meeting with Evan Roberts? So the minister said, if I make it all right with your principal, could you stay for another week? It was during that week that the break came. You might say, what do you mean, the break? I've read the Welsh newspapers of the time. There were little snippets of church news. Editors know that church people read their paper and like to be mentioned occasionally. For instance, the Reverend Peter Jones has just been appointed chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's. The Mowbray Street Methodist Church has had a very interesting sale of work, that's a rummage sale, and so on. Then suddenly a headline, great crowds of people drawn to Lochor. Congregation stays till 2:30 in the morning. Said a remarkable religious revival is now taking place in Lochor. For some days now a young man named Evan Roberts, a native of the place, has been causing great surprise in the Moriah Church. The place has been besieged by dense crowds of people unable to gain admission. Such excitement has prevailed that the road in which the church is situated has been lined with people from end to end. It concluded by saying shopkeepers are closing early in order to get a place in the church, and steel and metal workers throng the place in their working clothes.

On the 11th of November 1904, this Moriah Church was again overcrowded with more than 800 people overflowing into the old chapel. Many were on their knees for a long time. Now a reporter had arrived from Cardiff, and his report was given wide circulation. He said instead of a set order of proceedings, everything was left to the spontaneous impulse of the moment. We would say the Holy Spirit was directing the meeting. At 4:25 in the morning, the gathering dispersed, but even then the people didn't seem to want to go home. As I left to walk back to Llanelli, I left dozens of them still on the road discussing what was now the most important subject of their lives. Then a very, very British comment. He said, I felt that this was no ordinary gathering. I suppose every praying woman in Wales thought there was revival coming and got in her neighbors to pray.

On Saturday the 12th, every grocery store in that industrial valley was emptied of groceries, people coming to the meetings, and on Sunday every church was packed. It broke like a flood all over Wales. It's interesting, the same week in North Wales, a Baptist minister, R.B. Jones, was preaching in the town of Rhyl, when the crying of the people and their prayers drowned out his preaching. And now there's a flood of revival all over Wales. Now most Americans are so conditioned to think of revival in terms of mass evangelism, they would assume then Evan Roberts became the Billy Graham of Wales. Nothing of the sort.

I had a good friend, H. J. Galley, who had just graduated from Spurgeon's College in London and had his first church in the metropolitan area. He read in the English newspapers of the revival in Wales. He thought, this I must see. He sent a telegram to a classmate saying, meet me off the London Express at twelve noon tomorrow. And when he got there, there was his Welsh friend with a shining face. Galley said, is this truly revival? And Williams said, it is a gate of heaven to our souls. Well, said Galley, in a practical way, I've come a long distance, I'd like to hear Evan Roberts preach. Where is he preaching? Williams said, I don't know, he doesn't tell anyone. But I thought he was the leader of the revival. Oh no. He said, you mean the newspapers have it all wrong? Well, he said, God signally uses him, but the Holy Spirit is the leader of the revival. Galley said, don't we always say that? He said, Brother Galley, we mean that. Look, Brother Galley, there are about a thousand churches in South Wales. Evan Roberts might show up at my church tonight. But if he doesn't, the Lord will be there in mighty power. Oh, said he, are you having special meetings? He said, my church has been packed for six weeks. You mean the other churches in town are using your church for united meetings? He said, every church in town, from Anglican to Salvation Army, is packed. He said, when do you have the meetings? Six to midnight. What, he said, from six to midnight? He said, I mean from six in the morning to midnight. He said, not the same people? Oh no, he said, first of all, we get minors before they go and shift. These mid-morning housekeepers, noon a united meeting, the afternoon schoolchildren. But from six until midnight, the place will be packed with everyone.

By the way, during the Welsh revival, there were no separate meetings. No young people's meetings, no old people's meetings, no children's meetings, no special meetings. The whole church was filled with all the people, young and old, and everyone, I was going to say enjoying it, moved by it. Galley said to Williams, how do you keep up with the preaching? He said, what do you say? How do you keep up with the preaching? Six hours every evening? He said, I haven't preached for six weeks. He had become the coach, not a player. So Galley said, who preached last night? Oh, maybe seventeen people, including an old granny of seventy-eight and a boy of twelve.

This was what was happening in Wales. Someone asked me if I knew Merton Lewis. He died in his eighties, Welshman, been over here. Merton Lewis told me he was only seven when the revival hit the Rhondda Valley. His father was a coal miner. His father came home from the early shift at three o'clock, been up from the jobs at six in the morning, took a bath, put on his Sunday best—he always dressed to go to church in those days. He said, come, Mother, we're going to the church. Four o'clock the place was packed. They couldn't find a seat, but when they saw a mother with three little children they made room for her. Evan Roberts arrived unexpectedly at seven in the evening. The church was so crowded he had to climb on a bench and walk on the shoulders of the men in the aisles, then climb up over the front of the pulpit. He couldn't get around any other way. He got up and he said one word in Welsh, three words in English, Gwelyon. Let us pray. And immediately all eighteen hundred people began to pray.

I said to Merton Lewis, was it an ejaculatory prayer? You know, you go to a meeting, you hear some people saying, Jesus, Jesus, amen, amen, Lord, Lord, Lord. No, no, he said it wasn't. Everyone was praying his own prayer. He said one man was praying behind me, oh God, give me another chance, I'll put things right if you just give me another chance. And someone else saying, Lord, I'll go to India, I won't argue anymore. And some other was praying for her son in Liverpool. This went on for hours. One man took his elbow and hit Mr. Lewis Sr. and said, would you stop praying and tell me how I can become a Christian? I can't stand this anymore. At two o'clock in the morning, Mr. Lewis said, come, Mother, we've got to put the children to bed. One child had fallen asleep and all of us tottering over.

They walked home in the drizzle, put the children to bed, but it was so close to daybreak. Mr. Lewis sat in a rocking chair by the fire and dozed until it was time to go to work. He came back at three in the afternoon and said, "Come, Mother, let's go to the meeting." They went back to the same meeting, still going full tilt. He said, "That's incredible. Did you ever hear about the Asbury College revival? When the chapel at Asbury College was filled night and day? Well, could you imagine that happening in every church in a country? Because the churches of Wales were filled every night at least for 18 months."

I attended the last Graham crusade in Los Angeles, 40,000 a night. If Billy Graham had said, "Don't come here tomorrow night, go to your own church, midweek service, and you pastors who don't have one, open up, these people are coming," supposing a pastor who didn't have a midweek service went to his custodian and said, "We're expecting some people tonight for a meeting." The custodian said, "What for?" "Well, a devotional meeting. Would you get the church ready?" "How many do you expect?" If you had taken the 40,000 and divided that by the 5,000 sponsoring churches, you would have had eight people per church, and they all could have sat in the front row. How could you compare mass evangelism at its best with the movement of the Holy Spirit that filled every church? That's what happened in Wales. A hundred thousand outsiders joined the major denominations. Another hundred thousand were converted who were already church members. When a man is a member of a church and becomes converted, he doesn't resign and join again. His pastor notices the difference, all right, but he doesn't resign and join again, generally speaking.

A man called J. V. Morgan wrote a book to debunk the Welsh Revival five years later. His major criticism was of the, in round figures, 100,000 who joined the churches five years before in the excitement of the Revival. After five years, only 75,000 still stood. Now if you study church growth figures, you'll find that the most optimistic estimate they gave of perseverance in the evangelism today is about 25% in the best campaigns, and one that they criticized rather strongly, they said 3%. But even then, I don't know where he got the figures, all he did was he took the figures of those who joined the major denominations, took their membership, and then compared it with five years later. I think there was about a 20% increase the first year and then about 5% loss at the end. But Wales was a poor country and Welsh people were emigrating to Pennsylvania and to Australia and New Zealand and elsewhere, to Liverpool and Birmingham and London. And then J. V. Morgan gave the game away. He said many were lost to mission halls and to the Pentecostals. What a way to be lost. In other words, some churches went back to their formal ways and the people converted in these meetings looked for other fellowship.

The social impact was astounding. Now in 1974, 70 years afterwards, I visited a very famous Presbyterian minister in Chicago. I was preaching at Moody Bible Institute. Nearby is Fourth Presbyterian Church. The minister there is a great orator, Elam Davies. I knew his wife, she was the daughter of one of my good friends and sponsors, so I went to visit them. He said, "Look at this." Someone had written three articles in the Welsh Western Mail in Cardiff attacking the Welsh Revival of 70 years before, especially attacking Evan Roberts. It said he was an immoral man. There were whispers of the many women in his life. They said his preaching was so aphrodisiac that he so inflamed his congregations that they went out to the graveyards and when the women became pregnant they blamed it on nightingales. It said that a historian has said that the Welsh Revival increased illegitimate birth rate in Wales. I felt my indignation rising.

My friend Elam Davies is much more liberal in his theology than I am, but he said, "I felt bad about this. I met Evan Roberts once. He was a man of God. I decided to do something about it. I wrote to the editor. I said, 'You haven't heard the last of this.'" He wrote back. I ended the letter by the way, "Where is your British sense of fair play?" You can get under an Englishman's skin at that point. He wrote back, "All right, fair play is fair play. You write three articles, we'll publish your three articles." I got in touch with a friend of mine, the Reverend Davies, principal of the South Wales Baptist College. He said, "What can you do with froth?" I said, "I'm not a drinking man, but in the Air Force I know what men do with froth. They blow it off, and I intend to blow this off."

So I went all the way at my own expense. Davies arranged meetings for me in Bangor, Aberystwyth, Swansea, and Cardiff. We ended up in the biggest church in Cardiff, admission by ticket, hundreds turned away, the Lord Mayor there in his regalia, and I felt like Samson with the jawbone of an ass slaying a thousand. I said, "Who said that it increased illegitimate birth rate?" Turned out, not an historian, but a Baptist minister in Birmingham. So I called him. "Did you say that?" He said, "Yes. My mother told me that." I said, "How would your mother know?" "Well, she knew a girl that got into trouble during the revival." I said, "In the meetings?" "Oh, no, no. I mean, you know, the excitement of the time, and maybe some girl was careless." But I said, "Maybe for every girl who was careless, if there were any, perhaps a thousand girls decided to quit fooling around. Actually, the number of marriage ceremonies went up during the revival. That sometimes happens in times of revival. People get married. But I said, I can't argue with anecdotes. Because I said if girls quit fooling around, it wouldn't show in the statistics." "That's right. These are never reported."

Then I had an idea. "Oh, yes, but they are, indirectly." I went up to London, got all the figures, births, deaths, marriages, illegitimate births. Every big town, every county. I discovered in Radnorshire, the illegitimate birth rate dropped 44% in one year. In Marinershire, the same. In Glamorganshire, only 8%. Evan Roberts was a man of God. He was so chaste, so pure, that the world couldn't understand a person like that. He was so dedicated to God. Drunkenness was cut in half. I have the figures from the chief constable. Cut in half, the number of arrests for drunkenness. But there was a wave of bankruptcies. You say, how could a revival cause bankruptcies? The taverns went broke all over the place. Couldn't sell their booze. Judges were presented with white gloves. Not a case to try.

I don't know what it was like in Maryland, but in California, if someone commits a murder, it may be a year before he appears in trial. There are so many cases on the calendar. But in Wales, when the judge would arrive, the chamberlain would say, "Pray, rise, for his majesty's judge, the Honorable Trevor Jones." Everyone would stand up. The judge would come in, in a gown, like an American judge, but also with a wig, like a British judge. Take a seat. Say, "Pray, be seated." Then the chamberlain would get up and say, "Your Honor, there are no cases 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. Some were in favor of economizing and said, "If we don't need them, let's cut their salaries." They sent for a sergeant of the police in one particular place and said, "What do you do with your time?"

I don't know what it's like here in the Washington area, but if I were to call the police in Los Angeles and say, "There's a prowler around," they'd say, "We're sorry, we're too busy. But let's know if anything happens." They don't have time for you. But this sergeant said, "What do you do with your time?" "Well," he said, "before the revival, we had two main jobs. One was to prevent crime, the other to control crowds at football games, market days, that sort of thing. Since the revival, there's practically no crime. So we just go with the crowds." "Counselor, what do you mean you go with the crowds?" "Well, counselor, you know where the crowds are? They're packing every church." "Well, what do you do, direct traffic to the churches?" "Oh, no," he said, "we have 17 police in our station. We've got three trained quartets. If any church wants a quartet to sing, they notify the police."

There was even a slowdown in the coal mines. You say, how could the revival cause a strike? Not a strike, slowdown. So many Welsh coal miners were converted and stopped using bad language that the horses that dragged the trucks in the mines couldn't understand what was being said to them. You can bear me out on that. Mervyn Lewis told me that his father heard ungodly men. Mervyn Lewis said the Welsh, what do you call, they called them hauliers. That's like a mule skinner, like the Kentucky mule skinners, very profane, swearing at the horses and mules and so forth. And he said one took off his hat and said, "Come on, Betsy, come on, girl." And the horse didn't understand the order. The horse laid its ears flat. He said, "Come on, Betsy, you know, I can't cuss you out anymore. Please, Betsy." Then he said, "Well, I can't cuss you, but I can pray for you."

And he took off his hat and asked the Lord to help this dumb beast understand. But the traffic slowed down until they learned the new language.

Now, when I was growing up, I saw lots of articles that said, why didn't the Welsh Revival affect England, Scotland, and Ireland? Why didn't it spread? Martin Lloyd-Jones, that famous Welshman, said, I didn't know the Welsh Revival had any effect outside Wales, but it swept the British Isles. They called a meeting of the bishops of the Church of England. Thirty bishops came. First to speak was the Bishop of St. Asaph's. He said, Fathers and Brethren, I've just come from Oswestry, that's a Western English town, where in a single church I confirmed 950 new converts. The bishops voted in favor of the Revival.

When the Revival broke out, for instance, in the Midlands, they ran rail excursions to the prayer meetings. Whenever the Revival broke out in Uneaton, Birmingham people could travel from Birmingham to Uneaton and back again before midnight at a shilling. The Revival broke out in Scotland, Motherville near Glasgow. The streets packed from wall to wall, and after the excitement died down, seven churches, four public halls packed every night. The Revival broke out, first of all, among the Methodists in Lurgan in Northern Ireland, then affected the Presbyterians.

The Revival broke out in Norway. I knew the man that God used there, a man called Albert Lunde. Bishop Berggrav, the famous Norwegian bishop, told me, the greatest movement I ever saw was 1905 in Oslo. So great was the Revival in Norway that the Parliament passed special legislation to allow licensed Lutheran laymen to conduct Holy Communion, a thing that only the clergy can do, because there were so many converts, the clergy couldn't keep up with it. The Revival broke out in Denmark. The Danish Home Mission said it was the greatest witness when Christianity came to the Vikings. Broke out in Sweden. One of the leaders was Prince Oscar Bernadotte, the brother of the king. I met him also, prayed with him. Same Revival swept Finland, Germany. Broke out in France. Broke out in India. In India, the number of Christians increased 16 times as fast as the number of Hindus, proportionately, for ten years.

That Revival broke out in China. In Korea, it was phenomenal. I think I mentioned that once before about the phenomenal awakening that happened in Korea. The Korean churches—by the way, the biggest prayer meeting I think I've attended was Yongnak Presbyterian Church in Seoul. Thousand people in a prayer meeting? Do you know how many churches in the United States have a thousand people in the prayer meeting? That came out of that Revival. In Japan, the churches increased 62.5% in one year. The same Revival moved Australia and New Zealand. It moved East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, South Africa. The Revival broke out in Brazil, in Chile, in Mexico. And it swept this country from coast to coast. It broke out in the Maritimes of Canada.

I asked Dr. Oswald Smith, my senior colleague, what do you know about the Canadian Revival of 1905? He said, never heard of it. I said, come now. I said, first Baptist church in Winnipeg was turning away 2,000 in the snow. By the way, in Winnipeg, snowfall like this doesn't keep people from church. They have snow on the ground for four months, as you know, so they're sort of used to it. Oswald Smith said, I never heard of it. I said, what year were you converted? He said, 1905. He was converted in that Revival.

The Revival broke out in this country, first of all, when news of the Welsh Revival was on the front pages of so many newspapers. All the ministers of New York City got together in the Marble Collegiate Church to discuss what to do when the Revival came. All the ministers of Chicago got together in the First Methodist Church in the Loop in Chicago, the same thing, Pittsburgh, Louisville, St. Louis, Denver, everywhere. They're all electrified. Revival is coming. And it, first of all, broke out in Pennsylvania, in Wilkesbury, in a Welsh church, and it spread to Scranton. Then it broke out in Schenectady. I've read the newspapers. The Schenectady Gazette ran a column. You know the way in a smaller town, like a city like Harrisburg, they have an obituary column. They can't keep up with obituaries in Los Angeles or New York, too many. But in a smaller town, the older people, the first thing to do is to look at the obituary column and see what one of their friends has passed on. Well, in Schenectady, they ran a column called Yesterday's Conversions. If you want to know who had been converted yesterday, there he was, chief of police just converted and so on.

The Revival swept Pennsylvania. The Methodists had 6,000 on probation in Philadelphia. The Revival broke out in New York. In the Calvary Methodist Church, they took in 384 one Sunday morning, mostly heads of families. Revival in Brooklyn, Baptist Temple, 500 joined the Church one day. The Revival swept New England. Broke out all over the place. Paducah, Kentucky, pastor of the First Baptist Church was a Dr. J.J. Cheek, an old man. Took in 1,000 new members in two months and died of overwork, and the Southern Baptist said, what a glorious way to go.

Revival in Denver broke out in January. The Colorado Legislature closed down, all schools closed, 10 o'clock, all churches filled. At noon, every theater downtown filled with business people praying. They said Denver never had a winter like it. The Revival broke out in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle—a sweeping revival, yet I never heard of it myself, and only discovered the clues about ten years ago. I wrote this book on the revival of 1900 onwards. Why has it not been remembered? I suppose one of the reasons would be that World War I broke out ten years later, and that was such a trauma for the human race. The British lost a million men. The French lost more than the British. The Germans lost more than the French. The Russians lost more than the Germans. And it was such a trauma that people forgot what had gone before. Like if we had in Los Angeles a great earthquake, nobody would remember the Redskins visiting Pasadena. They'd remember the earthquake, not the Redskins visiting Pasadena. So maybe that's one reason why it was forgotten. But that was the worldwide awakening, I say, of 1905, in our own century.

Now, I wish in some ways that this series of meetings were going on, and I'd be able to bring you right up to date and tell you of modern movements in our own time, but this will be my last little talk on what God has done. Stuart Hamlin says, it is no secret what God can do. What he's done for others, he'll do for you. What he's done before, he can do again.