Jessie Penn-Lewis

Jessie Penn-Lewis

22 Sermons|1 Books|2 Images
Jessie Penn-Lewis (1861–1927). Born Jessie Elizabeth Jones on February 28, 1861, in Neath, South Wales, to Elias and Heziah Jones, Jessie Penn-Lewis was a Welsh evangelist, author, and key figure in the Keswick and Welsh Revival movements. Raised in a Calvinistic Methodist family—her grandfather a minister and her mother active in temperance—she was frail, possibly with tuberculosis, and homeschooled until 12 due to a “lively mind.” At 19, she married William Penn-Lewis, a civil servant, on September 15, 1880; they had no children. Converted on New Year’s Day 1882, she joined the YWCA, growing its Richmond branch from 6,900 to 13,000 attendees by 1896. Influenced by Evan Hopkins, Andrew Murray, and Jeanne Guyon, she embraced the Cross’s centrality after a 1892 epiphany on Romans 6, shifting from seeking Spirit baptism to union with Christ. A prolific speaker, she addressed thousands at Keswick Conventions, the 1903 Llandrindod Wells Convention she helped found, and globally in Russia, Scandinavia, India, Canada, and the U.S., including Moody Bible Institute and Nyack Missionary Institute. During the 1904–1905 Welsh Revival, she chronicled events for The Life of Faith and supported Evan Roberts, though his later collapse led to her controversial book with him, War on the Saints (1912), attributing some revival phenomena to Satan. She authored over 30 books, including The Word of the Cross (1903, translated into 100 languages), The Pathway to Life in God (1895), and The Magna Charta of Women (1919), defending women’s ministry. Founding The Overcomer journal in 1908, she died on August 15, 1927, in London, saying, “The Cross is the way to victory over all that is of the evil one.”
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