Arthur Wallis

Arthur Wallis

3 Sermons
Arthur Wallis (1922 – 1988) was a British preacher and Bible teacher whose itinerant ministry and writings significantly influenced the evangelical house church movement and sparked renewed interest in revival and fasting within 20th-century Christianity. Born in Dublin, Ireland, to Reginald Wallis, a convention speaker and author, and Mary Wallis, he faced a spiritual crisis at 18 following his father’s death in 1940. Educated at Monkton Combe School near Bath, he attended Sandhurst and served in the Royal Tank Regiment during World War II, surviving a severe wounding at the Anzio Bridgehead in 1944—an event that led him to question his military service and solidify his call to ministry. After the war, he married Eileen Hemingway in 1949, with whom he had one son, Jonathan, and embraced full-time Christian work. Wallis’ preaching career took off after a 1951 baptism in the Holy Spirit, shifting him from his Plymouth Brethren roots toward a charismatic emphasis on revival, prayer, and the Holy Spirit’s work. His visit to the 1949 Lewis Revival inspired his seminal book In the Day of Thy Power (1956), a study of revival dynamics that became a classic, later abridged as Rain from Heaven. He authored other influential works, including God’s Chosen Fast (1968), a definitive guide on biblical fasting praised by John Piper, and The Radical Christian (1981), earning him the title “architect” of the British house church movement. Traveling widely to the USA, Australia, and New Zealand, Wallis cared for his ailing mother for five years before his death in 1988, requesting only “fruit in people’s lives” as his memorial.
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