In this sermon, Evan Roberts and his brother Dan return home and find their mother weeping because she feels spiritually inadequate compared to her sons. They pray and sing hymns together, and that night at a meeting, a breakthrough occurs. Evan Roberts is so passionate about preaching that he is willing to pay God for the privilege. He seeks guidance from Principal Phillips and is encouraged to follow the voice urging him to speak to young people. The sermon emphasizes the importance of commitment to living a holy life and the need for the power of the Holy Spirit in conjunction with this commitment.

I propose to divide my time in two this evening. First of all, to talk about what God has done in one of the great spiritual awakenings, and then to take the remainder of the time to deal with the doctrine of revival. What's on my heart is to speak on commitment. I believe in the gifts of the Spirit, I believe in the filling of the Spirit, I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit, but sometimes I shudder when I hear people talk about this unrelated to commitment. In other words, people who think they can have the power of the Holy Spirit without living holy lives. To me, that's a contradiction in terms. Now, so far as revival is concerned, in this country there have been some great awakenings. 1725, time of Whitefield and Wesley, somewhat before their actual experience. Then 1792, following the American Revolution. There was a resurgence in 1830. Probably the most wholesome of all awakenings was 1858. And then in 1905, probably the most widespread of all awakenings. So, I'm going to put it up to you, what you want me to talk about. I couldn't speak on all six movements. I can speak on the revival of 1858, if you wish, or the revival of 1905. So, which will it be? Many would like 1905. Many would like 1858. I think 1905 has the edge. But, you see, I have another idea. There's a big church, a dynamic church in the San Fernando Valley, and they asked me to come and speak on revival. So, now I've given them at least six lectures on revival, and they've been videotaping it. So maybe this will lead to another opportunity. Who knows? All right. You can understand that in the year 1899, people were excited about the coming of the 20th century. There were all nights of prayer at Moody Bible Institute. There were great prayer meetings at the Keswick Convention in England. There were prayer meetings in India in the Nilgiri Hills. There were prayer meetings in Wonsan in Korea. There were 10,000 people in prayer circles in Melbourne in Australia. Christians were somewhat excited about the coming 20th century. If this were the year 1999, everyone would have a program or a project for the year 2000. There's no doubt about that. However, some people went about it in different ways. The Methodists announced a forward movement. They raised $20 million, and they announced they were going to win 2 million people to Christ. They said with a better knowledge of how to do it, and the fact that it was nationwide, they thought they could secure a great awakening at the beginning of the 20th century. One Methodist, by the way, said, God waited until we got our project out of the way before he sent revival. That more often happens. The Baptists had Baptist advance. At each denomination, the Presbyterians were engaged in a great program of evangelism. People were very hopeful. In fact, they started a new magazine called the Christian Century. Today, it's a very liberal journal. It's the liberal equivalent of Christianity today. But they were so convinced that the 20th century was going to be the great Christian century that they named this magazine after that. Of course, they didn't know that there would be two bloody world wars, that there would be two great national revolutions, one in Russia, one in China, that there would be a great economic depression, that there would be moral deterioration. They didn't know all that, so they talked about the Christian century, the 20th century. By the way, you may wonder what happened to that great program the Methodists had. They had, I think it was about 18,000 professed conversion. Thank God for that. But you're disappointed when you're aiming at two million. In the meantime, people were praying in other parts of the world. One day I was talking to Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. I wonder if you know the name. Chuck Smith says he owes a tremendous amount to that man who died a few months ago. Martin Lloyd-Jones was a close friend of mine. He was pastor of the Westminster Chapel near Buckingham Palace. He said to me, if you're interested in the story of the Welsh Revival, get the records of the church at Newquay in Cardigan. And I did. The pastor of that church was the Reverend Joseph Jenkins. He was what we call a Keswick man. Keswick is spelled K-E-S-W-I-C-K. Most Americans don't know what that means. Some of you know that this summer, Chuck Smith spoke at the Keswick Convention. I heard him twice. He was very nervous about culture shock. I just told him, look, one rule you must remember. Try and avoid slang. For instance, it's all right in Costa Mesa to say, then the Lord said to me, hey man, you can't do that. But in England, I said, the Lord doesn't say, hey man. How would a crowd at Calvary Chapel feel if an Englishman said, then the Lord said to me, I say, old boy. Just doesn't sound right. So there was Chuck trying hard to conform. But most people still don't know what the Keswick Convention is. The Keswick Convention is a conference for the deepening of the spiritual life. It is a school of holiness, holy living. And you know that the Wesleyan view of holiness is that of a crisis of commitment. The Methodists talk about the second blessing. On the other hand, the Calvinist view is growth and grace. And the Keswick view is a crisis with a view to a process. In other words, that you do have a crisis of commitment when you say, Lord, you can have all there is of me. And then you grow in grace after that. Now, Joseph Jenkins spoke to his young people one Sunday morning. And he said, what does Jesus Christ mean to you? They were embarrassed. They were decent church young people. They always began the meetings with prayer. They loved to sing. The Welsh can sing all right. They had Christian functions. They also had picnics and tennis and things like that. But it was really their Christian social club where boy met girl and that sort of thing. So they were embarrassed. Joseph Jenkins said again, what does Jesus Christ mean to you? And finally, one fellow said, Jesus Christ, the hope of the world. That's not what I mean. He said, what does he mean to you? There was dead silence. And then a girl, Flory Evans, who had been converted only three weeks, spoke up and said, I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart. And she said it so sincerely. There was an immediate hush of the sense, the presence of God in that meeting. The result was a revival, a local reviving among those young people. Joseph Jenkins formed them into a team. He went out preaching and took them with him to testify and to sing. And Mrs. Jessie Penn Lewis wrote to the London magazine, The Life of Faith, and said, there's a cloud no bigger than a man's hand rising in Wales. That was 1904. Seth Joshua was the leading evangelist of Wales, a Presbyterian. By the way, his son is retired, living at Port Wynemy around the California coast, Peter Joshua. He's almost 90. I know him quite well. His father went and had a campaign, what they call over there a mission, in that church at Newquay. And he was amazed at the power. I have read his diary. It's in the National Archives of Wales, University of Aberystwyth, in his own handwriting. And it simply tells of his experience. 19th September. I tried to close the service several times last night, but it went on beyond human control. Peter Joshua told me that his father would say, now young people, it's three minutes to twelve. Tomorrow's another day. Let's have a benediction and go home and we'll meet again tomorrow. And they had a benediction and a slight pause and then somebody got up and prayed. The meeting went on. When he said, now young people, I said, tomorrow's another day. Somebody said, it's already tomorrow. He had the greatest campaign of his life up to that time. He went from there to a college, Newcastle Emlyn College, where young Presbyterians trained for the ministry. And there he told of the revival, the local revival, at Newquay in Cardigan. Now among the students was Evan Roberts, a coal miner, 26 years of age. I knew him quite well. Of course, I didn't know him then. I knew him 30 years later. Evan Roberts was a very committed Christian, a very spiritual man. I have read his diaries. Right away back, he said he'd been praying for revival for 11 years. I found that he went to church twice on Sunday. He also went to Bible class and to Sunday school. On Monday, he went to a prayer meeting. On Tuesday, a mission service. On Wednesday, midweek service. On Thursday, a temperance meeting. On Friday, class meetings. I could find no record of what he did on Saturday night. But knowing what the country was like in those days, Saturday night was bath night. Those houses of the poor didn't have bathrooms, so it meant each member of the family got the galvanized iron tub out before the kitchen fire, and each person had the use of the kitchen to wash off the grime of the week. So no meetings on Saturday. Now, Evan Roberts was electrified with the news of the revival. He'd been praying for revival. Now it seemed as if it was at hand. The students petitioned the principal of the college to close down classes for a week and let them attend Seth Joshua's next week of meetings in a town called Blinenach, much closer to the college. Principal Phillips said something very wise. He said, You learn more in one week of true revival than a year of theological study. So the whole body of students went off to these meetings. The evening meetings were well crowded, but the morning meetings not so well crowded, because in those days, young mothers couldn't get babysitters. People who were at work had to stay at work, and those who were at school were in school. And so all you had on the mornings at ten o'clock were the nice old ladies of the parish and the students. But of course, you know, generally speaking, the nice old ladies are the most praying group of a church. And it was there that Evan Roberts entered into a new experience with God. Seth Joshua closed his meeting by praying in Welsh, Oh Lord, bend us. The Welsh word bend is much more forceful than the English word. You know the chorus we used to sing, Spirit of the living God, fall fresh in me, melt me, mould me, fill me, use me. The word bend is like what a potter does to the clay on the wheel. Shape, shape me. Bend me to your will. And Evan Roberts went forward with great tears and brokenness to pray, Oh God, bend me. It's very interesting that Joseph Jenkins, the man with the Keswick convictions, was there and wasn't impressed. He said one young man, probably neurotic, was carried away by his emotions. On the other hand, Seth Joshua said one young man was deeply stirred. Well, Evan Roberts went back to college, but he couldn't concentrate on his studies. He said to Sidney Evans, his roommate, Do you think God would give us 100,000 souls? He was so determined that they would see that Wales is a small country, the population of the country, perhaps 300,000. But, excuse me, not 300,000, two and a half million, two million, about two and a half million in those days. A small country. If anyone said to me I'm praying for 100,000 souls, I'd put him down as an enthusiast. But Evan Roberts took all the money he had in his savings account to try and start a team to begin preaching. He said he was prepared to pay God for the privilege of preaching. So often today we find people who make a fuss about the amount of money they're paid for their services. It was quite the opposite with Evan Roberts. He was prepared to pay the Lord for the privilege. But he couldn't concentrate. He went to Principal Phillips and he said, I keep hearing a voice that tells me I must go back and speak to our young people. Mr. Phillips, he said, is that the voice of the spirit or the voice of the devil? And Mr. Phillips said, the devil never gives orders like that. You can have a week off. So he took the train home. His parents were surprised to see him. They said, why are you not studying? Are you in trouble? No. Actually, he said, I've come back to preach to the young people. They said, what young people? He said, our young people. They said, we were in church on Sunday and the pastor didn't announce it. Evan said, the pastor doesn't know yet. So he went along and told the pastor, I want to speak to the young people. Now, what would you do if you're a pastor of a church and some young fellow went off to Bible school for two months and came back and announced he wanted to preach? He didn't want to hurt Evan Roberts' feelings. More, he didn't want to hurt the congregation's feelings. So he said, how about speaking for us on Monday night? He didn't even let him speak to the prayer meeting. He announced to the prayer meeting, our young brother Evan Roberts feels he has a word for you if you care to wait. I suppose after they'd finished their prayers, they were ready to go home. But when they noticed him standing there, they all knew him. He had been brought up in the church. Seventeen people waited to hear what he wanted to say. But how different it was. He said, I have a message for you from the Lord. First, you must confess any known sin to God and put any wrong done to man right. Second, you must put away any doubtful habit. Third, you must obey the Spirit promptly. And finally, you must confess your faith in Christ publicly. By ten o'clock, all seventeen had responded. The pastor was so pleased. He asked Evan Roberts to speak at the mission service on Tuesday, the midweek service on Wednesday. On Thursday, the temperance meeting was converted into a general meeting. And on Friday, they brought all the classes together. But on Sunday, some visiting clergyman came by appointment. And Evan Roberts sat with his family in the pew. But at the end of the evening service, the people got up and said, we want Evan Roberts to speak to us again. So they had an after meeting. The minister said, if I make it right with the principle, would you stay for another week? So he stayed on for another week. Then the meetings got hard. You know, I've always said, when the Lord begins to work in times of revival, the second party to be revived is the devil. When Christians are bickering among themselves, or taken up with their own pleasures, the devil thinks it's a good time for him to have a vacation in Las Vegas. But when Christians wake up, he wakes up too. So the meetings got hard. On Wednesday night, Evan Roberts said, at three o'clock in the morning, we're going to pray all night if need be. At three o'clock, his mother got up to leave the meeting. He followed her to the door. He said, mother, are you going home? She said, son, the people are tired, and the meeting is hard, and you're stubborn. He said, don't go, mother. But she went. She thought if his own mother couldn't speak to him, who could? So she made her little protest and went home. Evan and his brother, Dan, got home at daybreak, went to bed to catch up and sleep. At ten o'clock in the morning, the herd, weeping, came down to the kitchen and found the mother sitting by the fire, weeping because her sons were more spiritual than she was. They prayed with her. They sang a hymn together, and that night in the meeting, the break came. You say, now what do you mean, the break? Well, I've read the newspapers of the period. Each had little items of news. The Reverend Peter Jones has just been appointed chaplain to the Bishop of St. David's. Interesting, but not earth-shaking. Mowbray Methodist Church has had a very interesting rummage sale. Things like that, you know. Then suddenly a headline. Great crowds of people drawn to Lochor. He said, for some days now, a young man named Evan Roberts, a native of the place, was causing great surprise in the Moriah Church. So great was the excitement that the main road between Swansea and Llanelli was packed from wall to wall, people trying to get into the church. Shopkeepers were closing early to find a place, and miners and steel workers were coming directly from work in their dungarees. And now the news was out. The Western Mail, the largest newspaper in that part of the country, sent down a reporter to study this. He was greatly taken with this strange service. He said, there seemed to be no order of service. But he said, the meeting closed at 4.25 in the morning, and even then people seemed reluctant to go home. As he started to walk back to Llanelli, he left a big crowd outside the church all still engaged in an animated conversation. Then there was a very British remark. He said, I felt that this was no ordinary gathering. Well, on Friday, I suppose every praying woman in Wales was praying for the conversion of her loved ones. On Saturday, every grocery store in that industrial valley was emptied of groceries, people coming to the meetings. And on Sunday, every church was filled. Now, we are so conditioned in this country in terms of mass evangelism that we would assume that Evan Roberts then became the Billy Graham of Wales. Nothing of the sort. He wouldn't even announce where he was preaching in advance. I attended the last Graham crusade in Greater Los Angeles. Billy Graham was speaking to 40,000 a night. If on Tuesday night he had said, don't come here tomorrow night, go to your own midweek service, and you pastors who don't have one open up because these people are coming. Supposing some pastor who didn't have a midweek service decided he better open up, otherwise the church would be disgraced. What would he tell his custodian? The custodian would say, well, how many do you expect, sir? How many would they expect? If you had taken the 40,000 and divided it by the 5,000 sponsoring churches, it would have meant eight people per church. They could all have sat in the front row. Now, that's mass evangelism at its best. It doesn't compare with the movement that would fill every church every night because that's what happened. I had a friend, Dr. Merton Lewis. He died about the age of 80. He told me he was seven when the revival reached the Ronda Valley. His father was a coal miner, came home at three in the afternoon from the early shift, took a bath, put on his Sunday clothes, said, come, Mother, we're going to the church. When they got to the big church, it was packed at four in the afternoon. The meeting seemed to be running itself. There was no room for anyone, but they saw a mother with young children, they made room for her. At seven, unexpectedly, Evan Roberts arrived. The meeting was so crowded, he had to climb on the bench and walk on the men's shoulders up the aisles until he climbed up over the front of the pulpit. He said one word in Welsh, three words in English, Gwydion, let us pray. And immediately, all 1,800 began to pray. I said to Merton Lewis, now what kind of prayer? Was it an ejaculatory prayer? You know the way you go to meetings where some people are saying amen, amen, amen, hallelujah, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. No, no, people, each was praying his own prayer. He said you could hear them if you listened. One man would be praying, oh, God, just give me another chance, I'll put things right. And some mother would be praying, Lord, my boy hasn't written to me since he went to Liverpool. And some young fellow would be promising to go to the mission field. One man took his elbow and hit Mr. Lewis and said, would you stop praying and tell me how I can become a Christian? At 10 o'clock, Evan Roberts left the meeting. The family with whom he stayed said he prayed all night. But at two in the morning, Mr. Lewis said, come, Mother, we'd better get the children to bed. One child had fallen asleep, the other was toppling over. They walked home in the drizzle. It was so close to daybreak that Mr. Lewis slept in the rocking chair from three until about 5.30, then went off at six in the morning to the early shift. Came back, took a bath and put on his Sunday best and said, come, Mother, we're going to the church and went back to the same meeting running full tilt. Now you might say that's incredible. Have you ever heard of the Asbury College revival in 1970 when the chapel of Asbury College was filled night and day for a week? That happened in 1950 at Wheaton College. It's happened in many places. Now that's within a college. But could you imagine a community like that? Because the churches of Wales were filled each evening for about 18 months. It was a remarkable movement. When I said Evan Roberts wouldn't announce where he was preaching, I remember one occasion reading where he went to a big church between 2,000 and 3,000 people packed in. He began in his fervent way, how many of you believe the promises of God? A great roar of amen. He said, would you agree with me that one made by the Lord Jesus is especially precious? Yes. He said, do you know one that says where two or three are gathered in my name, and there am I in the midst? Yes. He said, do you believe it? Yes. Where is Jesus now? Somebody shouts, here. Do you really believe it? Yes. Then he said, you don't need me, and he put on his hat and coat and went to another meeting. Now I asked the man who told me that who was there, then what happened? He said, we all suddenly realized that Jesus was there. The Welsh revival was like a vast prayer meeting. You might say, didn't they study the Bible? Didn't they have preaching? Oh yes, there was more preaching in the Welsh revival than before or after, but mostly it was prayer and testimony in which the word came alive to them. About a hundred thousand were converted and added to the churches. I don't know how many more were converted who were already church members. When a man is a member of a church and gets truly converted, he doesn't resign and join again. So the statistics don't show converts among members. But a hundred thousand outsiders joined the churches. It's interesting, in view of the criticism of evangelism today, people claiming that the number who actually persevere is very low, to notice that a man wrote a book to debunk the Welsh revival, five years after the crest of the revival. His major complaint was that after five years, of the hundred thousand who joined the churches, only 75,000 still stood. Now, I wondered if that was a fair statistic. Actually, what the man did was he showed that a hundred thousand had joined the churches. And he showed that five years later, 25,000 had left the churches. But which 25,000? You know, when Chuck Smith, in a weak moment, won some hippies to the Lord, 33% of his congregation left. They said, if they stay, we'll go. And perhaps the Welsh revival was such that it poured such new life into the churches, some of the older members couldn't take it. Not only that, of course, but Wales is a poor country, and there was steady emigration to Canada and the United States, especially Pennsylvania and the coal mines, and to New Zealand and Australia, all around the world. And then I think J.V. Morgan, who wrote the book, sort of gave the game away. He said many were lost to the mission halls and the Pentecostals. What a way to be lost. You see, they didn't want to go back to the old form. They were under these freer meetings. However, the social impact of the revival was astounding. Drunkenness was cut in half. I got the figures for the county of Glamorgan, the most populous county in which Cardiff is situated. The number of arrests for drunkenness fell from about 10,000 a year to 5,000 a year. But there was a wave of bankruptcies. Isn't that an interesting study? How could a religious revival cause bankruptcies? Most of those who went bankrupt were owners of taverns, couldn't sell their booze. Crime was diminished. In the British system, they have quarter sessions for criminal cases. Local judges deal with minor cases, but they save up the serious cases, murder and embezzlement and robbery and rape and so forth, for the quarter sessions. In county after county, the judge was presented with white gloves. Not a case to try. No rapes, no robberies, no murders, nothing. There were emergency meetings in some of the district councils to discuss what to do with the police, now that they were obviously unemployed. I found one case where they sent for a sergeant to the police and asked him, what do you do with your time? Now, I don't know what it's like in Orange County, but I live up in the west side of Los Angeles, and if you had a prowler and called the police station, they would say, look, we're too busy to send anybody out for that. Not unless it's something very serious. They're so busy. You know that in California, if a person commits a murder this month, it may be 12 months before he's tried, because the calendar is so crowded. So this sergeant said, well, before the revival, we had two main jobs. One was to prevent crime, and the other was to control crowds, football games, and market days, and that sort of thing. Since the revival, there's practically no crime, so we just go with the crowds. The counselor said, what do you mean you go with the crowds? Do you mean you take all your time directing crowds to churches? No, no, he said, you know where the crowds are. They're in the churches, all right. But he said, we have 17 police in our station, but we've got three good quartets, and if any church wants a quartet to sing, they just notify the police. We're ready. They weren't wasting their time. Now, in 1974, that's 70 years after the revival, a Welsh journalist, who obviously wasn't alive at that time, wrote three articles ridiculing the revival. He said, Evan Roberts was an immoral man. The whispers of many women in his life. He said, his sermons were so aphrodisiac, was the word they used. He so inflamed his congregations that they poured into the churchyards, and when the women became pregnant, they blamed it on nightingales. When I read that, having known Evan Roberts as a spiritual man, a man so chaste, the world wouldn't understand him anyway, I wrote to the editor, and I said, you haven't heard the last of this. So I flew from California at my own expense, and I got a friend of mine to arrange for meetings in Bangor, Aberystwyth, Swansea, and Cardiff, the four university cities. There I challenged them. Now this article said that a certain historian had said that the Welsh Revival had increased illegitimacy. I found it wasn't an historian, it was a Baptist minister living in Birmingham. So I called him, I said, did you say that the Welsh Revival increased illegitimate births? Yes, I said that, my mother told me that. I said, how would your mother know? Well, he said, she knew of a girl that got into trouble. I said, in the meetings? I said, were you at Billy Graham's campaign in Haringey? Yes, he said, I traveled up to see it. I said, could you imagine someone interrupting and saying, Dr. Graham, there's a girl getting into trouble in the fifth row. How ridiculous can you be? Oh, he said, I don't mean in the meetings, I mean, because of the excitement of the times, perhaps some girl was a little careless or carried away. But I said, for every, if there were any, for every girl that was careless, perhaps there were a thousand that quit fooling around because of what was being preached. Yes, he said, but that wouldn't show in the statistics. I said, well, you've got a point there. Then I thought, it would. I took a train up to London and I went to Somerset House in the Strand where they keep the records of births, deaths, and marriages and there's a section on illegitimate births. County by county, town by town. I found that in the county of Radnor, illegitimate births dropped 44% in one year. In Meryneth, the same. In Glamorgan, 8%. But in every Welsh county, the figure dropped. I can tell you, I felt like Samson with a jawbone of an ass. I slew a thousand critics. We ended up in the biggest church in Cardiff, standing room only, hundreds turned away. The Lord Mayor was there in his regalia and I felt after I'd finished, like looking up to heaven saying, well, Evan, I hope I did a good job because Evan Roberts was my friend. There were even slowdowns in the coal mines. You'd think that's another strange one. How could a religious revival cause a strike? It wasn't a strike, just a slowdown. So many Welsh coal miners were converted and stopped using bad language that the horses that dragged the coal in the mines couldn't understand what was being said to them. I thought that was a tall tale of the revival, but I was able to document it. Archdeacon Wilberforce made that statement in Westminster Abbey. And Merton Lewis, whom I mentioned, said, my dad told me that. He said, we call those men that work the horses holliers. And apparently they had a reputation like the mule skinners of Tennessee. When men work with mules they tend to swear. And these men working with horses, most of these horses were blind, of course, working in the dark. Working with these horses they would swear like troopers at them. Merton Lewis said his father told him that there was one hollier, a foul-mouthed man that was converted. He talked to the horses. Come on, Betsy. Come on, girl. Come on. You know I can't swear at you. Come on. And the horse couldn't understand it. It just laid its ears flat, you know, couldn't understand. He said, well, I can't cuss you, but I can pray for you. So he said, Lord help this young brute. And so transportation slowed down until they learned the language of Canaan. That was the Welsh Revival. It swept England, every county. It swept Scotland, took Motherwell outside Glasgow. The streets packed from wall to wall. And after the excitement died down, seven churches and four public halls packed nightly. It broke out in Northern Ireland. The Revival simultaneously broke out in Norway under Albert Lunde. I preached for Albert Lunde. He was called the Evan Roberts of Norway, but he was not a bit like Evan Roberts. Evan Roberts was a mystic. Albert Lunde was a converted Norwegian seaman. They're not very mystic. The Revival swept Sweden. One of the leaders was Prince Oscar Bernadotte, the brother of the king. I remember praying with him in his palace in Stockholm thirty years later. When the Revival swept Denmark, the Danish Lutheran Home Mission said there hasn't been a winter like it since Christianity came to the Vikings. The Revival swept Germany. It broke out in India, China, Burma, Korea, phenomenally in Korea. It broke out in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, even in North Africa. It broke out in Brazil. It broke out in Mexico. It broke out in Chile. You say, what about the United States? I made a study of the subject of Revival for years, and I did not know that the Revival of 1905 had affected the United States in any way. I had heard that in 1906, about the time of the San Francisco earthquake, there was an extraordinary little prayer meeting in Azusa Street in Los Angeles that resulted in the explosion of the Pentecostal movement. But although I knew that Azusa Street people talked about the Welsh Revival, I knew that in the Welsh Revival there was no speaking in tongues. And I didn't know if there was any connection between the two. One day, I was up at Simpson College in San Francisco looking through the archives, old magazines, of Christian Missionary Alliance. 1906, January, reviewing the previous year, it said, 1905, the year of the Holy Ghost. I thought, what are they referring to? I got Moody Monthly. And in Moody Monthly, reviewing the previous year, it said, Mr. Moody, before he died, that was 1899, said, I would like, before I go hence, to see the whole Church of Christ quickened as it was in 1858, and a wave going from Maine to California to sweep thousands into the Kingdom of God. Then it said, Mr. Moody did not live to see this in the flesh, but the revival has come. In Atlantic City, the ministers reported of a population of 50,000. There were only 50 adults left unconverted. In Paducah, Kentucky, the pastor of the First Baptist Church took in a thousand new members in two months and died of overwork. An old man, Dr. J.J. Cheek. In Denver, on the 20th of January, 1905, every school closed. Every church was filled at 10 o'clock in the morning for prayer. At noon, every downtown theater and hall. The Colorado legislature closed. Denver hadn't seen a winter like it before. In Portland and Oregon, 200 major stores closed from 11 to 2 each day for prayer. Here in Los Angeles, you know that when it rains, it really rains heavily. But 4,000 Christians marched through the streets at midnight and picked up all the drunks and prostitutes and took them to a meeting at midnight meeting, they called it, what was then the Grand Opera House. There was revival everywhere. And it was on the back of that worldwide general revival that the Pentecostal movement had its opportunity. But of course, that's a story in itself. Well, I've spoken for 45 minutes on this subject. Let's take any questions you have in mind. I read Charles Finney's book on revival. He started off with saying that revival is just a new obedience to God. And he spoke about confessing your sins and calling us to the Holy Light. And I'm very interested in your feelings about that. Well, the question of Finney's interpretation God used Finney greatly in a time of revival. For instance, I had a friend in Glendale, California, W.P. Nicholson. And he was used of God to bring the greatest revival in Ireland in modern times, 1921. Now, he couldn't stand choirs. He called them the Devil's War Department. He wouldn't have a campaign choir during his campaigns, nor would he let a congregational choir sing. For some reason or other, he didn't like choirs. But you couldn't say that the Lord blessed him because of that. In other words, the Lord allows us to have our idiosyncrasies. You know what I mean? Like, for instance, take the San Fernando Valley. Jack Hayford is charismatic. John MacArthur is dispensationalist. The Lord's blessed them both. Now, at that particular point, they can't both be right, can they? But the Lord has blessed them. So I would say the Lord allows us our idiosyncrasies. Now, the point is this. As far as revival, there are different views. Of course, the word is badly misused in this country. I saw a sign outside a church in the San Fernando Valley that said, Revival every Monday. What they do during the rest of the week, I wouldn't be sure. But in Burbank, five miles away, I saw another sign that said, Revival every night except Monday. When I was lecturing at Baylor University in Texas, a pastor, a Baptist pastor and a waker said to me, Brother, oh, we had a revival here last fall. Nobody got revived. So I said, run that past me again. He said, I said that we had a revival last fall and nobody got revived. I said, then you didn't have a revival. Oh, but we did. He told me the name of the evangelist. He told me the name of the song leader. Apparently, you can't have a revival without a song leader. But you can't have a revival quote, unquote, without the Holy Spirit. But not without a song leader, apparently. He told me how much money they had spent in advertising. But he said, we never got off the ground. When I was at Asbury College, a Methodist said to me, Brother, oh, you warm my heart. I've been here through three revivals. I said, tell me, were they structured, organized? No. He said, last time, in 1970, he said, we just had our revival and nothing happened. The students got desperate and began praying all night and then the Lord sent us a revival. I said, well, you better say that again. He said, well, we just had our, oh, he said, I see what you mean. He said, I mean, we just had our annual series of meetings. He called it a revival, whether there's a revival or not. Well, Finney said, you're quoting Finney, he did say it's a new obedience. That's certainly true. But he said, revival is nothing more than the right use of the appropriate means. In other words, if you do certain things, you'll get certain results. Now, it's true that in any congregation of God's people, if any congregation of God's people suddenly were to live up to the light that they have, they would have a measure of revival. But it wouldn't be a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit everywhere. It would be limited to that group. I'm speaking about these outpourings of the Spirit. Now, Jonathan Edwards said, revival is the work of God. Finney said, in his writings, revival is something for man to do. What does the scripture say? Wilt thou not revive us again? Thou. Revival thy work, O Lord, in the midst of the years, and in the New Testament, times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. Now, it's true that those who know the word will always receive blessing by a new obedience. It's certainly true. But when it comes to these unusual movements of the Holy Spirit, I think they're sovereignly the work of God. Why? Well, the Lord Jesus was asked by his disciples, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? He said, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has kept under his own authority, but you will receive power. God doesn't give us either a blueprint or a timetable. You see, actually, revival is the relationship of a believer with the Lord. Now, supposing a husband and wife were not getting along too well, and the wife said, you shamefully mistreated me. Finally, the husband said, all right, I'll concede that. Now, I promise you, from the 25th of November, which is our wedding anniversary onwards, I'll treat you right. What would the wife say? She'd say, what's wrong with treating me right right now? So, you can't say, on the 25th of November, we're going to have a revival. It's a relationship with God. That's my view. Yes? Actually, the book was called Full Surrender, and I'm just updating it. I've added one chapter with which to begin, a chapter on repentance, and because of some of the problems of the charismatic issues, I've added a few points to my chapters on the work of the Holy Spirit. So, it's just now a matter of finishing the editing of it and getting a publisher. But I'm going to change the title. Full Surrender is an old-fashioned term. I'd like to call it something like decisive commitment, because I believe that the commitment isn't bit by bit. It has to be decisive. You mentioned mystic. What would you define as being a mystic, and would there be an advantage to our spirituality if we were to follow that path? There are people who are mystic who are not Christians. There are mystics among them, Muslims, and people who live in another, you know, are otherworldly. So, it's an advantage in some cases. Evan Roberts, when I met him first, 1934, I believe it was, I thought, what a strange man. His eyes looked straight through you. He had a gift of discernment. Perhaps some in today's charismatic movement would say it was the word of knowledge, but he would stop a meeting and say, your troubles began when you forged a signature two years ago, and the man got up and ran as if the police were after him. Evan Roberts was quite otherworldly, but there are some people who, shall we say, cultivate a mystic attitude. I mentioned the man that got so greatly used in Norway that the Norwegian parliament passed special legislation to allow Lutheran laymen to conduct Holy Communion because the ministers couldn't keep up with it. That was Albert Lunde, and he was the most un-mystic man I could think of. I'm just a little curious. Okay, the last few years there's been this big surge in just Christianity getting involved in everything, and then, like, you know, Calvary Chapel was just, you know, this big thing between them, and then the charismatic movement in the Catholic Church and stuff. Do you think that all this could be a revival, or do you think it's just going to move fast? Undoubtedly, if you want my view, this perennial movement of perennial revival at Calvary Chapel, God is sovereign in these ways. I'm quite sure that if twenty years ago somebody looked around for someone to lead a movement like this, they wouldn't have picked Chuck Smith. But God did. And it's almost been like a demonstration of what God can do. On the other hand, we'd be kidding ourselves if we suggested this is like the revivals of the past. I was talking to George Gallup the other day. He told me the number of people in the United States who claim to be quote, born again, unquote, has risen from 46% to 53% of the population. A majority. Yet he said crime is at an all-time high, immorality is gross, business integrity has dropped. The Wall Street Journal last summer, summer of 1980, had an editorial in which they said this is the first evangelical awakening that has had no effect upon the morals of the nation. There's something wrong. And I find that, for instance, I was brought up a Baptist, but my father and mother were very friendly with George Jeffries, the great evangelist in Britain who founded the Elam Pentecostal denomination. I've always been taught to believe in the gifts of the Spirit, but I shudder at the way some people manipulate them. I was talking to a friend of mine. He said he was at a big gathering and there were some brethren there that wanted to straighten them out about something. I think it was over the shepherding issue, you know, it's called the shepherding issue and so forth. And somebody got up and gave a word of prophecy. Behold I the Lord thy God am speaking in the midst of thee and behold my servant Patrick has done wonderful things for which he will receive his reward. But he has many things yet to learn if he will learn to listen. I said to him were you impressed? He said not a bit. I figured if that was the Holy Spirit speaking he would know that my name is not Patrick. That's my nickname. There was somebody claiming to speak in the name of almighty God using the first person singular. That's sacrilege. Yet I know certain determined people get their way that way. I believe in the gift of prophecy and I rejoice. For instance, Chuck Smith told me that when he came to this little church with less than a hundred members somebody got up and a word of prophecy predicted this. That's a word of prophecy. But what about this cheap substitute for it? I remember I was preaching in Riga, that's now Soviet Latvia, when a woman was prostrated, slain in the spirit, some people would say. I'd never seen it before, certainly not in my preaching. I was going to say I didn't do it, I didn't do it. I won't go into the details, but the woman was under conviction of sin and couldn't take it, cracked up, carried out. But I know a certain couple today traveling around in a very popular ministry and the success of their ministry is judged by the number of people slain in the spirit in their meetings. And yet their friends will tell you that one will give a push and the other will trip him. They call that being slain in the spirit. I'm not afraid of the gifts of the spirit, but I shudder at the manipulation that goes on. So that, remember I said when there's revival, the second party to be revived is the devil? You get so shocked sometimes when you find men who claim to be something special with God and their home lives are not right. No, I would say that what's happening today is that there are demonstrations of genuine revival in certain places. But I think that quite a number of churches in the United States are not being revived. And some denominations are actually losing. I think of one major denomination that has lost more than a million and a half members in the past ten years. And that denomination So I don't think we're anywhere near where we were in 1905. Now, for instance, some of my Campus Crusade friends have said to me, don't you think this is the greatest day of student opportunity ever? Well, I have to point out when Kenneth Scott Latourette, the great church historian, was a freshman at Yale in 1905. He said that one quarter of all the students at Yale were enrolled in prayer meetings and Bible studies. I live next door to UCLA. 36,000 students. Would you tell me that 9,000 of them are enrolled in prayer meetings and Bible studies? So when people are asking me, are we now in the midst of a great revival, I would say compared with what? I would say these are great days of great opportunity. But it looks as if there is new life in certain sectors of the church. For instance, I think there are 180 Calvary chapels now and there are certain other groups growing rapidly. But there are some denominations that are in the doldrums. Whereas in these great times of revival, all God's children are revived. All that name the name of Christ in sincerity. Yes? I'm not asking for a program or some technology for revival, but what would be some practical contemporary suggestions you might have for us availing ourselves for a revival person and then we're back, how could we affect other people around us? I think, I'll put it this way, if we agree that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the work of God, and if we agree that revival is the work of God with the response of believers, involving both God and believers, then what we can do is to pray and to proclaim the word. And I can't think of a better promise than if my people called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. It will affect the community. It's bound to. What's happening in Korea? Is there some revival? The revival in Korea broke out in 1947. The movements in Korea today are what you might call post-revival, kind of what we'd call a people movement. I call it a folk movement, but the church growth people would call it a people movement. The difference is that the churches in Korea have been so indoctrinated in prayer meetings and revival that it's not like some people movements. For instance, sometimes a whole tribe will say, we want to become Christians and they don't know who Jesus Christ is even. Whereas in Korea, when they feel their need, they immediately have prayer meetings. They get up at 4.30 in the morning to pray. But what's going on in Korea today, I think, is a people movement, the turning of a whole nation towards God. I think Christians now number about 33% of the population. However, there's a great revival going on in Nagaland. I was in Nagaland in April this year, and Billy Graham was there in 1972. No Westerner was allowed in since. In fact, Mrs. Gandhi said that we can't refuse Billy Graham permission to visit the Baptist in Nagaland without India's image being damaged. So they let Billy Graham in for two days. I was able to get in this year. I found that after the Billy Graham meetings, which were more like a rally, you know, they started prayer meetings for revival all over Nagaland. And then they had counseling training in anticipation of a movement. And then they had evangelistic meetings, but in 1976 came the outpouring of the Holy Spirit quite unexpectedly in a little place called Wamekin. Spread like wildfire. And they've taken in about 100,000 outsiders into church membership this past five years. In other words, they've taken in as many in these past five years as had been taken in in 100 years. And that means that maybe 200,000 believers in a population of 600,000. I preached about 50,000. Now they have all the problems. For instance, during the revival, there were boys of 12 who prophesied. Now you've parents putting their boys of 12 up to it saying, you say that, son. You know, to get their way in a church meeting. You had people who danced for joy. Now you have people who say, unless you dance for joy, you don't have it. And there are some of us temperamentally not that way. Some people weep easily and some people laugh easily. And I'm an unemotional type, but I have deep feelings just the same. But in Nagaland, they asked me to come to hold meetings for them because of the problems they were facing. In other words, when the devil finds he can't stop revival among God's people, what he does is he goes behind the horse and hits it with a thorn stick to make the horse rear and gallop. And the devil tries to stampede revival movements. I read in a biography on things, not as an autobiography, some statistics about revival in New York City. And the statistics, I went to the library and checked out what the population was in New York City at that time and it almost matched it. As far as from your own studies, is that accurate? What statistics? You see, I was speaking at San Jose at the great conference of prayer with Bill Bright and other people present and one speaker got sort of carried away. He said, think of Finney's revival at Rochester, that's Rochester, New York, in which quarter of a million people were one for Christ. And people said, amen, amen. So afterwards, I said to him, brother, that poses a problem for me. He said, what is that? I said, well, the population of Rochester was 10,000. Now, in the 1970s, people can fly in by jet for a huge explosion or something like that, but not in those days. It took them days to get anywhere by horse, horse and buggy or even by train or in the canal. He said, thank you, brother. You're the historian. I'll go and check my figures. He came back and said, you were right. It was only 100,000. I said, that's still a problem to me. Now, why do people say uncritically all over the United States there were 100,000 people converted in Finney's revival at Rochester? Well, I find that in Finney's autobiography, speaking of the revival in Rochester in the winter of 1830, 1831, he says, this was the efficient instrument in the hands of God in bringing about the greatest revival until then known in this country, in which 100,000 joined the churches. He gave the impression that because of the revival at Rochester, there was a revival throughout the country in which 100,000 were converted. When I did my research, I found the revival began in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in May, about eight months before that, and spread all over the country. And in Finney's movement in Rochester, there were about 1,000 converts, of whom I think 550 joined the Presbyterian churches. He was a Presbyterian minister. So that people believe what they want to believe. I have had people come to me and say, If Finney was alive then you weren't. Well, that's certainly true. But now Finney says in his autobiography that the only part of the United States not touched by the revival of 1858 was the South, because of slavery. I've read the newspapers. You can find the revival swept across the South, black and white, from Richmond to Galveston. Finney was completely wrong, yet he was alive right then. And how he could say it, he was trained as a lawyer to sift evidence, how he could say it while it was happening, I don't know, except he was such an abolitionist. He hated slavery so much he made up his mind in advance. God couldn't bless them down there. Just as today, if a person is thank God, in a country that's so needy, there'll be some people saying, that's not fair. God shouldn't send a revival there. Whereas actually the spiritual state of the churches in South Africa is far, far higher than Australia, maybe because of their problems, because when people face problems they tend to be more serious about their spiritual life. So when people ask me about statistics, for instance, I saw in an article the other day, I made a note, I was going to write to the man if I got time to do it, that in Finney's ministry there were two and a half million conversions. I want to know where he got the figure. Somebody else said to me recently, is it not true that Finney had the highest percentage of perseverance of all evangelists? I said, where did you get that? He said, I read that in a book. Well, Martin Lloyd-Jones mentioned in one of his writings that Finney turned to what they called perfectionism, holiness teaching, because he was so dissatisfied with the carnal lives of so many who professed conversion. Now, what is the actual case? Probably truth in both. It was about the time people did a little serious research. That's the way I feel about it. Now, please don't take this as any denigration of Finney, but in certain circles it's an inerrancy debate. The inerrancy of Finney. Well, now, shall we take a little break and then I would like to give you a message on the... Somebody asked me, what do you do to prepare people's hearts for revival? What do you preach and so forth? All right. The trouble is people get interested in this subject. The meeting tends to go on beyond planned times. All right. I'm going to be as concise as I can. In 1935, I was preaching in the Moody Church in Chicago for Dr. Harry Ironside. He told me an interesting story. He said that in Arizona, a Hopi Indian was giving testimony. He said, Before I get converted, I go to town on Saturday night and get drunk and my big black dog bite everybody. Then he said, Jesus Christ come into my life. He'd give me a great big white dog, big white dog, love everybody. But he said, Now I have two dogs and they fight. A chief in the front seat said, Her, which dog winning? The brave thought it over and answered very honestly, Whichever one I say sick'em to. When I first heard that story, I thought how true that is. I remember as a teenage Christian, sometimes I fed the white dog. I went to church twice on Sunday without being told to go, went to Bible class as well as Sunday school, went to the midweek prayer meeting, went to the missionary meeting, gave out hymnbooks. I even went to a bakery and bought pastries slightly damaged at half price and distributed them to the poor in the slums. That was my social service. That was something for a teenager. But then sometimes I was feeding the black dog, ran around with the gang on Saturday night, kept bad company, shared improper conversation. I was feeding the black dog. Now our Nazarene friends teach that you can shoot the old black dog dead, but they admit that you can raise another black pup. So what can we say about the old black dog, in other words the carnal nature? Your biggest enemy is not the Communist Party. Your biggest enemy is you. Now our salvation is threefold. We have been saved. We are being saved. We shall be saved. All three tenses are used in Scripture. But there are three theological aspects, past, present, and future. We are justified. We are sanctified. We shall be glorified. Perhaps I should say for this audience, we have been justified. We are being sanctified. We shall be glorified. Now, regarding the second sanctification, there's much controversy. I was speaking at Queensland Bible Institute in Brisbane, in Australia. I asked the question, what do we mean by sanctification? A young lady got up and said, sanctification is moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, growth in grace. I said, thank you. Any other definition? A young fellow stood, I could see he was going to contradict her. He said, sanctification is the deeper blessing. I said, any other definition? Another young man rose up with a big Scofield Bible under his arm and thus fortified. He said, every believer is sanctified. In one minute, I'd heard three apparently contradictory definitions of sanctification or holiness. In reverse order, those who say that all believers are sanctified, I call that positional, that's their position. Those who claim that sanctification is a crisis in the Christian life. And those who say that it's simply growth in grace. If you want names to attach to it, John Darby. Anyone ever hear of John Darby? John Darby was a founder of the so-called Plymouth Brethren, Christian Brethren. He stressed the privilege of the believer. John Wesley, he stressed the second blessing, so-called. John Calvin, growth in grace. I call it positional sanctification, critical sanctification, and progressive sanctification. Now I'm not going to deal with the Roman view. No doubt when Mother Teresa of Calcutta dies, she'll be canonized, she'll be made a saint. They have a certain procedure, they'll even have a devil's advocate to try and find out if there was any scandal in her life, in which case she will not be canonized. In other words, the Roman medieval tradition, sainthood is something special. Another test is, have any miracles been wrought in this person's name since? But that's not the scriptural definition. The word saint is used of every believer. So, let's consider, then, does the scripture teach what we call positional sanctification? Yes, indeed. And it's not too hard to find. Paul, the apostle, wrote to the Corinthian church, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and Sophon is our brother, to the church at Corinth, sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. But what sort of people were the Corinthian believers? Drunk at the Lord's table, could you imagine it? Fanaticism in their meetings, immorality in their congregation. They were not all guilty of it, but they were too tolerant of it. Yet Paul calls them saints. That was their position. I once heard Harry Ironside say, every time the Bible says something about our position in Christ, it adds something about our condition. The Los Angeles police found a young fellow drunk in the gutter. They locked him up, they went through his pockets to see who he was, and found he was the son of a millionaire from New York. They sent a telegram to New York police and the father telegraphed the money to fly the boy back. What was the position of the young man? A wealthy heir. What was his condition? Just like a drunken bum. That's why after writing that wonderful opening to the epistle to the Ephesians of all the privileges of a Christian, his eye became blind. why Paul, the prisoner of the Lord, begged you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith you are called. Every time the Bible speaks of our position, it adds a word about our responsibility. All right then, what do we mean by critical sanctification? I was speaking once in a free Methodist church. Then one woman raised her hand and she said, does that mean those people that get sanctified and go around criticizing everybody? I said, no, that's critical of criticism. I mean critical of crisis. In other words, there's a turning point in the Christian life. Some people say, well couldn't you be at that turning point on the day of your conversion? Well, I've never known of anyone that way. It's true that people have a period in their Christian life called first love when you do anything for the Lord. But what generally happens? After about six months, you as a new Christian find that certain Christians do certain things you think they shouldn't do. But they tell you nobody's perfect. And then after about a year, you find yourself doing things that you shouldn't do, and you say nobody's perfect. In other words, you put up with it. And it takes you some time before you realize that your number one enemy is not the Communist Party or the drug culture. Your number one enemy is you, no matter who you are. Now, is there any critical sanctification taught in scripture? Let me quote a verse that's well-known. Romans 12 and 1. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is a reasonable service.