Preparing for revival

Many must have prayed for revival in Wales. Evan Roberts prayed for countless hours, but with no evident response. "I prayed and prayed," he said, "but nothing seemed to give me relief." Then one night, he was wakened at one o'clock in the morning.

"I found myself with unspeakable joy and awe in the very presence of the Almighty God. For the space of four hours I was privileged to speak face to face with Him as a man speaks face to face with a friend. At five o'clock it seemed to me as if I had again returned to earth.

"Every morning for three or four months always I enjoyed four hours of that wonderful communion with God. I cannot describe it. I felt it and it seemed to change all my nature. I saw things in a different light, and I knew God was going to work in this land, and not in this land only, but in all the world."

He had a crisis experience with the Holy Spirit during a meeting in the chapel at Blaenannerch. "I felt a living force come into my bosom. It held my breath and my legs shivered. . . The living force grew and grew. I was almost bursting. . . What bothered me was God commending His love.

"I fell on my knees with my arms over the seat in front of me, and the tears of perspiration flowed freely. I thought blood was gushing forth. . . For about two minutes it was fearful. I cried 'Bend me. Bend me. Bend us' . . . What bent me was God commending His love and I not seeing anything in me to commend.

"After I was bent a wave of peace came over me. . .  As they sang, I thought of the bending at the Judgment Day, and I was filled with compassion for those who would be bent on that day, and I wept."

Evan Roberts was a changed man. He wrote to a friend: "I have received three great blessings. First, I have lost all nervousness. Second, I can sing all day long. Some physical impediment obstructed me before. And third, I have gone as hard as flint. Thanks be to God, what an easy thing it is to thank now."

He asked his friend Sidney Evans: "Do you think it is too much to ask God to give one hundred thousand in Wales?"

It was not presumption. So many people were converted in the months of revival.
      

Four conditions for revival

It is said that Evan Roberts prayed for 11 years that revival would come to Wales. When he was 26 and had been for two months in Newcastle Emlyn preparing for the ministry, the former coal miner went to see the principal.

"Mr Phillips," he said, "I can't concentrate on my studies. A voice keeps telling me I must go home to speak to the young people. Is that the voice of the Spirit or the voice of the devil?" The principal was wise enough to recognise the call. "You can have a week off," he said.

When he arrived home, his parents were surprised. "Why aren't you at your studies? Have you been sent down? Are you in trouble?" "No," he said. "I've come home to speak to the young people." "What young people?" "The young people in the church." "We were in church yesterday, and we didn't hear an announcement." "No, the minister doesn't know yet."

He spoke to the minister, who suggested the Monday evening prayer meeting. The minister told the meeting: "Evan Roberts believes he has a message for you. Those of you who want to hear it can stay behind after the meeting." Seventeen people stayed behind.

Said Roberts: "I have a message for you from God. First, you must confess any known sin to God, and put any wrong to man right. Second, you must put away any doubtful habit. Third, you must obey the Spirit promptly. Fourth, you must confess Christ publicly." Sixteen people responded.

The minister asked Roberts to speak again on Tuesday evening, on Wednesday evening, on Thursday evening. . .  Finally, he said "If I can make it right with the principal, will you stay and speak for another week?" Roberts stayed for another week. Then the dam broke. Revival came.

You must confess any known sin to God, and put any wrong to man right.

You must put away any doubtful habit.

You must obey the Spirit promptly.

You must confess Christ publicly.

 How about those for conditions for revival?
    

A time for change?

Are you a Christian? Then there's something dreadfully wrong with you. You're unthinking; you're unscientific; you can't see how badly Christianity botches morality. You represent a deeply defective culture that's been getting all the most important things wrong for a hundred generations.

Did you know that?

 So says an American writer, tongue in cheek no doubt, but illustrating a point. The Christian is the odd man out in society, the barrier to scientific advancement, the hindrance to human enjoyment. Or so they would have us believe.

When they start calling good evil, and evil good, watch out.

Recently I have been studying the subject of revival; listening to tales of things that have happened during such times, particularly during the 1904 Welsh revival, when churches were packed to suffocation daily, tavern keepers went bankrupt and thousands of lives were transformed.

 The revival started in South Wales. I have been in the chapel in Loughor where Evan Roberts worshipped and where the revival largely began. It spread throughout Wales.

In Anglesey, in North Wales, a policeman was standing on duty outside a courtroom. He heard the sound of singing inside the court. He went in to see what was happening. The accused had broken down, confessed he was a sinner and asked his lawyer not to defend him any more. The judge adjourned the court.

"Now," he said to the accused, "may I speak to you, not as a judge, but as a Christian? You have sinned against society, but first, let me tell you how to get right with God." The accused was converted to Christ then and there. The jury burst into a spontaneous Welsh hymn of praise, and the policeman joined in.

Lord, revive us again!
   

Where the flames of revival once burned

Wales is a beautiful country with a remarkable Christian history. For years I have thrilled to exciting stories of bringing Bibles to Bala.

I have marvelled at tales of some of the great preachers. (Thomas Charles heard Daniel Rowland preach on Heb 4:15. "I had such a view of Christ as our High Priest, of His love, compassion, power, and all-sufficiency, as filled my soul with astonishment - with joy unspeakable and full of glory," he said. "My mind was overwhelmed and overpowered with amazement. . . I could not believe for very joy. The glorious scenes that opened to my eyes will abundantly satisfy my soul millions of years hence in the contemplation of them. Often walking in the fields I looked up to heaven with joy and called that my home, at the same time ardently longing for the appearance of the glorious Saviour to take me forever to Himself.")

I have been inspired by tales of the Welsh revival in the early 20th century, when miners sang hymns as they worked, public houses closed for lack of business, young people held meetings every night lasting for hours and something like 150,000 were converted and added to the churches.

I have been blessed by tales of how Rees Howells and his team of 120 prayer warriors prayed for victory detail by detail three times a day through the Second World War, being rewarded with miraculous answers to prayer.

It was all brought back to my mind by a news item. One of the earliest Bibles published in Welsh, translated by Bishop William Morgan in the 1580s, has been purchased, largely by the National Trust, and delivered to the house where he was born, near the village of Penmachno, in Snowdonia.

In 1563 Parliament was prevailed upon to pass a law requiring that the Bible and Prayer Book be translated into Welsh by 1567. The New Testament and the Prayer Book were translated by that time, largely the work of William Salesbury, but the translations were flawed.

William Morgan appears to have taken it upon himself to translate the whole Bible from its original languages around 1578. It took him nine years. His Bible was a superb translation, and was commonly used until the late 20th century. It set the standard for the Welsh language, much as the King James Version did for English.

To my mind, it doesn't seem long since there was a Bible on the Welsh dresser in almost every farmhouse in Wales - but churchgoing has considerably decreased in the principality, particularly among young people.  One commentator dared to suggest that before we've done there might not be more churchgoers in Wales than an average attendance at Chelsea's football stadium at Stamford Bridge.

Is it possible that the flames of revival could burn again right across the nation?

A tale of Evan Roberts

We were invited to a wedding in South Wales. The friends who invited us kindly arranged two nights' accommodation for us so that we could travel down one day, spend the following day at the wedding, and drive home the day after that.

All we were told about the church building where the wedding was to take place was that it had been borrowed for the occasion and that it was within walking distance of the place where we were staying.

On the morning of the wedding, we walked to the church. When we arrived I discovered, to my delight, that it was the very place where the Welsh revival began. It was the chapel where Evan Roberts, the young man so wonderfully used in the revival, used to worship.

Some time later, friends offered us their house in South Wales for a week's holiday. We weren't able to go at the time originally suggested, so it was some weeks later we took up the offer. On our journey down, it came time for a break, and we couldn't find a motorway services open. It was uncanny. Until eventually we came to a motorway services near Cardiff that we wouldn't have visited otherwise.

On the car park were a number of cars with fish emblems on the back, and we got chatting to the occupants. It turned out they were all going to a week's convention in a large tent in the grounds of Swansea University. "You must come," they said. We were staying quite near Swansea, so we spent four or five evenings at the convention and enjoyed some great meetings.

Providence, as some people used to call Him, had so wonderfully arranged the details of our holiday that not only that: on the Wednesday afternoon of our week's holiday there was a meeting at the chapel where Evan Roberts used to worship to mark the 100th anniversary of the Welsh revival. We went along.

There were people there from all over the place. There was no one there who actually remembered the revival 100 years before - although there was a 100-year-old man in the meeting - but there were people whose parents had been involved in the revival.

It was at that meeting that I heard a story about Evan Roberts I had not heard before.

An old retired minister told how his mother had been one of the young women who went round the churches with Evan Roberts, taking the revival with them. One day, when the old minister was four years old, a knock came to the door of the farmhouse where they lived. The four-year-old boy ran to open the door. A man was standing there.

"The man smiled at me," he said. "I will remember that smile as long as I live. He said to me - in Welsh - 'Is your mother in?' I didn't reply. I turned and ran into the farmhouse to my mother and said 'Mother, Jesus Christ has come.'"

The man of course was Evan Roberts. The boy didn't know who it was. He had no idea. But the man had such a presence about him that the little lad thought it was Jesus.

What a story.

How times change!

John Wesley was the founder of Methodism; he and his brother Charles were the spiritual fathers of the Methodist movement. Both shared God's love for the Jewish people and believed the many Bible promises that the Jews would be restored to their promised land (including the area known today as the West Bank and East Jerusalem).

They instructed the Methodists that they must speak tenderly to the Jewish people. The softest and gentlest prayers from Christians are the key, they said, for God to bring life from the dead to Israel, and through them to the church and the whole world.

Charles Wesley, who had an almost incredible gift for writing hymns, some of which, like "And can it be that I should gain," "Hark the herald angels sing" and "O for a thousand tongues to sing" are still in use today, wrote hymns about God's heart for the Jewish people and about those Bible promises.

One says, in part:

Of all the ancient race
Not one be left behind,
But each, impelled by secret grace,
His way to Canaan find.

We know it must be done,
For God hath spoke the word:
All Israel shall the Saviour own,
To their first state restored;
Rebuilt by his command,
Jerusalem shall rise;
Her temple on Moriah stand
Again, and touch the skies.

Send then thy servants forth,
To call the Hebrews home;
From East, and West, and South, and North,
Let all the wanderers come;
Where'er in lands unknown
The fugitives remain,
Bid every creature help them on,
The holy mount to gain.

On June 30 this year the UK Methodist Conference discussed Israel. It was asked to approve the Kairos Palestinian document, written by Palestinian Christians,
which says that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity.

It says "fundamentalist Bible interpretation" supports unjust political options with regard to the Palestinian people, is used to deprive Palestinians of their rights in their own land, and brings death and destruction. It calls for liberation of Palestinian territories from Israeli occupation, which, it says, severely restricts religious liberty, disregards international law and violates human rights.

It claims that there would be no Palestinian resistance if there were no occupation, and that if Israel ends the occupation, there will be security, justice and peace. The Israeli occupation, it says, is an evil which must be resisted. Resistance in the face of the Israeli occupation is a right and duty for the Christian.

The conference decided to boycott all goods and services produced in Judea and Samaria (what today's media call the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the conference calls "illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories") and to encourage Methodists across Britain to do the same.

The Methodist Conference has never previously issued a boycott against a country. It is not now issuing a boycott against any other country. Just Israel.

The conference also called for a full arms embargo on both sides in the conflict. The secretary of the World Council of Churches, Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, wrote to congratulate the Methodists on their decision.

If the Wesley brothers came back to the Methodist Conference, they wouldn't recognise it.

I am grateful to Avner Boskey, a theologian and director of Final Frontier Ministries, for pointing out Charles Wesley's hymns about Israel's restoration. In an attempt to draw a comparison between the revival spirit which accompanied Methodism's beginning and the state of the Methodist church today, he says:

Who will intercede with the God of Jacob so that "Ichabod" will not be written over the archways and entranceways of the churches of the United Kingdom?

Who will get up on the wall and pray that vintage evangelical fire, courage and commitment to biblical truth will again fall in power upon the pulpits and conference podiums of England?

Who will again raise up a Wesleyan standard of burning love, tender intercession, courageous vision and meaningful practice towards the Jewish people and their regathered state?

All right, who?

Let's dare to hope

Life is cheap on Britain's streets. There aren't enough prisons to hold all the prisoners. The land is awash with drugs. The Government is mired in sleaze. The rate of unwanted teenage pregnancies is out of control. There is an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases. Each year the number of abortions beats the previous year's record.

Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, appealed in the Daily Mail a couple of weeks ago for England to wake up and remember how Christianity has been at the heart of the history of this nation.

Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, said in the Sunday Telegraph: "It is time for a movement of Christians that will put the Christian case vigorously in public debate, that will remind the nation of its Christian heritage, that will make a difference where there is human need and, yes, that will commit itself to prayer in schools, hospitals, prisons, workplaces, Parliament and the streets so that people may experience again the blessing of God on this country."

Eighty Christian leaders met recently in the House of Lords to consider the moral and spiritual implications of the financial crisis. They felt strongly that the financial situation is primarily the result of the pursuit of moral choices and values that do not accord with the word of God; that God is calling all churches in Britain to a season of prayer and fasting for the nation; and that the Christian church should reach out to those who are already suffering as a result of the financial crisis.

Today, this very day, Christian leaders are meeting in Westminster to seek God for the way forward. It was hoped to have a thousand Christian leaders present.

A series of seven prayer nights have just been held across London to pray for the capital and the nation.

Can it be that something is beginning to happen? Turn off the television for a minute. Switch off the news bulletins on the radio. Listen carefully. Can you hear a rustling in the undergrowth?

Can it be that God is not finished with the homeland of John Wesley, George Whitefield, William Carey, David Livingstone, Florence Nightingale, Lord Shaftesbury and William Wilberforce?

Millions of Christians are not yet marching in Britain's streets. But then, it might not take millions. The Bible is full of stories of a valiant few who, under God, "subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens."

Can it be that the tide is beginning to turn?

Pray with me and dare to hope.

A tale of Bury Bob

Stacksteads, near Bacup in Lancashire, England, is not, if it will forgive me for saying so, the most imposing of places. But it once had a revival.

Sam Chadwick, born in 1860, was later principal of Cliff College and president of the Methodist Conference. He was brought up in a tiny, two-roomed house in Back Hammerton Street, Burnley. He was converted to Christ when he was 10 years old. He had little education - he started work when he was eight years old - but felt a call to preach, and studied all the hours he could find.

His biography tells how his first appointment was as lay evangelist at Stacksteads Methodist Church, where he upset all the local brewers with his temperance preaching.[1]

Living in Stacksteads was a man named Robert Hamer, known to everyone in the town as Bury Bob. He was a notorious drunkard. It was said he had committed every crime in the book except murder, and it was only by God's grace he hadn't committed that. He had fought a bulldog with his hands tied behind his back, worried rats with his teeth, eaten glass, swallowed knives, smashed furniture, wrecked public houses, mauled policemen and fought all comers.

One day he walked into a meeting and signed the pledge (a pledge, that is, to abstain from alcohol). The next Sunday he was converted to Christ. The following morning he arrived early at the quarry where he worked and told the men one by one as they arrived what had happened to him.

The men laughed and jeered all week (something they wouldn't have dared to do before), until Friday. On Friday, a huge piece of rock trapped his finger. Before he knew it, he let out a great oath. The men laughed. "Ah," they said, "where's your religion now?" To their surprise, he fell to his knees and with the blood dripping off his elbow, cried out loud to God for forgiveness until peace came. When he got up, every man was standing with his cap in his hand.

The following Sunday the town turned out to see Bury Bob go to church. In the following weeks and months, hundreds were converted to Christ.

[1] Norman G. Dunning. Samuel Chadwick. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933.