GREAT THEMES OF REVIVAL

Revival Fire Workshop

SESSION II

I. THE NEARNESS & ACCESSIBILITY OF GOD

A. In Prayer – The cry of the confident

 Charles Spurgeon
In 1854 he was called to be pastor of New Park Street Chapel, London, and very soon people
all over the country were talking of the wonderful “Boy Preacher”. His sermons began to be
printed and were read all over the world. For forty years he preached to immense audiences
and won tens of thousands of souls to Christ.

In his autobiography Spurgeon reveals the secret of his amazing ministry. “When I came to
New Park Street Chapel, it was but a mere handful of people to whom I first preached; yet I
can never forget how earnestly they prayed. Sometimes they seemed to plead as though they
could really see the Angel of the covenant present with them, and as if they must have a
blessing from Him. More than once, we were all so awestruck with the solemnity of the
meeting that we sat silent for some moments while the Lord’s power appeared to
overshadow us; and all I could do was to pronounce the benediction, and say ‘Dear friends,
we have had the Spirit of God here very manifestly tonight; let us go home and take care not
to lose His gracious influences.’

“Then down came the blessings; the house was filled with hearers and many souls were
saved. I always give all the glory to God, but I do not forget that He gave me the privilege of
ministering from the first to praying people. We had prayer meetings that moved our very
souls. Every man seemed like a crusader besieging the New Jerusalem. Each one appeared
determined to storm the Celestial City by the might of intercession; and soon the blessing
came upon us in such abundance that we had not room to receive it.”

 Charles Finney
“While I was in Boston on one occasion, a gentleman stated that he had come from the
capital of Nebraska and he had found prayer meetings established throughout all the vast
extent of country over which he had travelled. Think of that – a region of 2,000 miles along
which the hands of the people were lifted up to God in prayer! From north to south, till you
come within the slave territory a great and mighty cry went up to God that He would come
down and take the people in hand and convert souls; and He heard and everybody stood
astounded.”

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  The Great Revival of 1857-1858 was a revival of prayer. Men met to pray and pour out
their hearts desires to God. But prayer, true prayer is altruistic. Men do not pray for
themselves and themselves alone. Their hearts become burdened for the needs of others,
particularly the wayward and the sinful. Requests for the united prayers of God’s people
came pouring in the noon meetings for the conversion of a father, a husband, for a prodigal
son or daughter, for those who had wandered far from God. To pray and not to work is
impossible, for faith must manifest itself in deeds. By invitations to the noon prayer meetings,
by personal conversation and in other ways efforts were put forth to persuade men to repent
and accept the gospel with results which were truly amazing. During several weeks when the
revival was at high tide it was estimated that fifty thousand persons weekly were converted
to God. The total number of conversions ran into the hundreds of thousands and by some
has been estimated at one million.

B. To “All Flesh” – The Ministry of the Body

1. Ministry of the Body
 Lay movements within Roman Catholic tradition
 Lay leadership in Protestant Revivals – Waldenses, Lollards, Moravians, 1857-
58 Revival, 1904 Welse Revival
 Role of Women: Catherine Booth, Phoebe Palmer, Aimee Semple McPherson
 Inclusion of children: D.L. Moody
 Breakdown of social/economic division – Holiness/Pentecostal Revival

2. Missionary impetus
 Moravians, William Carey, Booths, Moody, Cambridge Seven, J. Hudson
Taylor, J. Goforth

C. The Experience of God’s Presence

1. One of the key features of Revival is the tangible manifestations of the
Presence of God
 North Hampton – J. Edwards – “In the Spring and Summer of 1735 the town
seemed to be full of the presence of God.”
 The 1857-58 Revival

It was a laymen’s movement. It began with a layman in New York City. It was
taken up by laymen everywhere and enlisted their hearty cooperation and
support. So unusual a feature could not fail to attract attention and arouse a
widespread interest. Incidentally the revival served to stimulate the laymen
to an interest in the general work of the Church, the Sunday school and the
Young Men’s Christian Association.

Similar stories could be told of the 1858 American Revival. Ships they drew
near the American ports came within a definite zone of heavenly influence.
Ship after ship arrived with the same tale of a sudden conviction and
conversion. In one ship a captain and the entire crew of thirty men found
Christ out at sea and entered the harbor rejoicing. Revival broke out on the

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 battleship “North Carolina” through four Christian men who had been
meeting in the bowels of the ship for prayer. One evening they were filled
with the Spirit and burst into song. Ungodly shipmates who came down to
mock were gripped by the power of God and the laugh of scornful was soon
changed into the cry of the penitent. Many were smitten down and a
gracious work broke out that continued night after night till they had to send
ashore for ministers to help and the battleship became a Bethel.

 Welsh Revival
William T. Snead, the famous London editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, thought
by some to be the most powerful man in Britain, visited the revival. Here are
excerpts of his impressions when interviewed by the London Methodist
Times on his return:

“Well, Mr. Stead, you’ve been to the revival. What do you think of it?”

“Sir,” said Mr. Stead, “the question is not what I think of it, but what it thinks
of me, of you, and all the rest of us. For it is a very real thing, this revival, a
live thing which seems to have a power and a grip which may get hold of a
good many of us who at present are mere spectators.”

“Do you think it is on the march then?”

“A revival is something like a revolution. It is apt to be wonderfully catching.”

It may be difficult to imagine the intense power and supernatural conviction

that marked this revival. Later, the interviewer asked Stead:

“You speak as if you dreaded the revival coming your way.”

“No, that is not so. Dread is not the right word. Awe expresses my sentiment
better. For you are in the presence of the unknown… You have read ghost
stories and can imagine what you would feel if you were alone at midnight in
the haunted chamber of some old castle and you heard the slow and stealthy
step stealing along the corridor where the visitor from another world was said
to walk. If you go to South Wales and watch the revival you will feel pretty
much like that. There is something there from the other world. You cannot
say whence it came or whither it is going, but it moves and lives and reaches
for you all the times. You see men and women go down in sobbing agony
before your eyes as the invisible Hand clutches at their heart. And you
shudder. It’s pretty grim I tell you. If you are afraid of strong emotions, you’d
better give the revival a wide berth.”

 This strange sense of God may pervade a building, a community or a district

and those who come within its spell will be affected. At the beginning of the
1904 Awakening near the town of Gorseinon a revival meeting was in
progress throughout the night. A miner, a somewhat hardened notorious
case, returning from his shift about 4 a.m. saw the light of the chapel and

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 decided to investigate. As soon as he opened the chapel door he was
overwhelmed by the sense of God’s presence and exclaimed, “Oh, God is
here!” He was afraid either to enter or depart and there on the threshold of
the chapel a saving work began in his soul.

D. Experienced in Dramatic Physical Manifestations of the Holy Spirit

1. Fainting, shouting, crying, shaking, laughing, jerking
 “(these) extraordinary view of divine things and religious affections were
frequently attended with very great effects on the body.” - Jonathon Edwards
charged with fostering enthusiasm he pointed to the fruit:

a) Aversion to judgmentalism
b) Quickened conscience

 Perhaps the most common sign in times of revival has been the
prostration of convicted souls. It was common in the Wesley-Whitefield
Revivals. Lady Huntingdon wrote to Whitefield regarding the cases of crying
out and falling down at the meetings and advised him not to remove them,
as had been done, for it seemed to bring a damper on the meeting. She
wrote, “You are making a mistake. Don’t be wiser than God. Let them cry out;
it will do a great deal more good than your preaching.” Wesley in his journals
dated July 7th, 1793, recorded a conversation with Whitefield on this subject,
whose objections were evidently founded on misrepresentations of fact.
“But the next day he [Whitefield] had an opportunity of informing himself
better; for no sooner had he begun…to invite all sinner to believe in Christ,
than four persons sunk down close to him, almost in the same moment. One
of them lay without either sense or motion. A second trembled exceedingly.
The third had strong convulsions all over his body, but made no noise unless
by grins. The fourth, equally convulsed called upon God with strong cries and
tears. From this time, I trust we shall all suffer God to carry on His own work
in the way that pleaseth Him.”

 At George Whitefield’s first sermon a crowd of 300 heard him and 15 were,
said the presiding Bishop, “driven mad”.
 The Cane Ridge Revival
Barton Stone, at the invitation of Daniel Boone, preached and served at the
Cane Ridge Meeting House in Bourbon County. Stone was so overwhelmed
by the Red River Revival that he went home in May, 1801, called for a similar
meeting in Cane Ridge, “which was attended with blessing”. A second
meeting in August was then called; to the utter astonishment of all, over
20,000 people arrived for the six-day camp meeting! It was an incredible
event, for this was the sparsely populated frontier. Among the thousands
converted was James B. Finley, who later became a Methodist circuit rider.
He wrote:

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 “The noise was like the roar of Niagra. The vast sea of human beings seemed
to be agitated as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers all preaching at one
time some on stumps others in wagons and one standing on a tree which
had, in falling, lodged against another. Some of the people were singing,
others praying some crying for mercy in the most piteous accents, while
others were shouting most vociferously. While witnessing these scenes a
peculiarly strange sensations such as I had never felt before came over me.
My heart beat tumultuously, my knees trembled, my lips quivered and I felt as
though I must fall to the ground. A strange supernatural power seemed to
pervade the entire mass of mind there collected. I stepped up on a log where I
could have a better view of the surging sea of humanity. The scene that then
presented itself to my mind was indescribable. At one time I saw at least five
hundred swept down in a moment as if a battery of a thousand guns had
been opened upon them and then immediately followed shrieks and shouts
that rent the very heaven.” (Mendall Taylor, Exploring Evangelism,. P. 142).

The American frontier was set ablaze. The Presbyterians and Methodists
immediately caught fire and then the flame broke out among the Baptists in
Carroll County on the Ohio River. Great personalities emerged from this
awakening. Men like Peter Cartwright, Charles Finney and the Methodist
circuit riders.

 Frontier Revival – 1780’s

Barton Stone described one meeting – Cumberland Gap, Kentucky: “There on
the edge of the prairie, multitudes came together. The scene was now and
passing strange. It baffled description. Many, very many fell down as men
slain in battle and continued for hours together in an apparently breathless
and motionless state.”

E. Widespread Intense Hunger for the Bible

1. Bible translation, teaching, small groups, schools and educational facilities
2. Availability of the Bible to the common man
 Waldenses, Lollards, Reformers, Methodists, Pietist, Missionary movement
 Ulsta Revival 1625

“Preaching and praying were so pleasant and hearers so eager and greedy
that no day was long enough nor any room large enough to answer their
strong desires and large expectations.”

F. Intense Joy & Worship

 “Through the efforts of Luther and others the reformation was borne from place to
place on the wings of song.”
 The Great Awakening

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 Of his [George Whitefield] labors in Philadelphia Benjamin Franklin, who computed
that he could be heard by more than thirty thousand persons in his open air services,
gave the following report: “The multitude of all sects and denominations that
attended his services were enormous. It was wonderful to see the change soon made
in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless and indifferent about
religion it seemed as if all the world was growing religious; so that one could not walk
through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families in
every street.

 Jonathan Edwards description of the Revival

“The person felt a great delight in singing praises of God and Jesus Christ and longing
that this present life may be as it were one continued song of praise to God. There
was a longing as one person expressed it ‘to sit and sing this life away.’”

 The Welsh Revival 1904 – Evan Roberts

Spontaneous prayer meetings

Joyous song

The characteristics of brokenness and praise dominated the awakening. When a man
asked Evan if the revival would come in London, he smiled and said, “Can you sing?

G. Ministry Gifts of the Holy Spirit

1. Prophetic Gifts
 Columbia to Scottish Clans (521-97)
“His capacity for discernment was unusual. Only a glance was needed for him
to read a person through and through. He could detect the possibilities of any
who might be made useful instruments of the gospel, however common their
appearance.

 Savonarola prophesied to his generation:

a) Renewal of the Church
b) Judgment on the nation
c) These things would happen soon!

 Charles Finney wrote in his autobiography: “For some twelve years of my

earliest ministry, I wrote not a word; and was commonly obliged to preach
without any preparation whatever, except what I got in prayer. Oftentimes I
went into the pulpit without knowing upon what text I should speak or a word
that I should say. I depended on the occasion and the Holy Spirit to suggest
the text and to open up the whole subject to my mind; and certainly in no
part of my ministry have I preached with greater success and power. If I did
not preach from inspiration I don’t know how I did preached. It was a
common experience with me that the subject would open up to my mind in a

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 manner that was surprising to myself. It seemed that I could see with intuitive
clearness just what I ought to say; and whole platoons of thoughts, words
and illustrations came to me as fast as I could deliver them.

2. Miraculous Gifts
 Early Pioneers: Patrick, Columba, Boniface, etc.
 Alexander Dowie 1900 –

Father of healing revivalism

 F.F. Bosworth, Healing Evangilist 1910 –

 John G. Lake
Africa

Spokane, Washington – 100,000 healings in five years

 Britain – Stephen and George Jeffries

Smith Wigglesworth 1920’s – 1930’s

Maria B. Woodworth – Etter Ludwig 1876-1920’s

 U.S. Aimee Semple McPerson – Foursquare Church – 1912-1944

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