06-Chapter One

The 1904 Revival

1904

According to J. Edward Orr, former professor of Awakenings at Fuller Theological Seminary, history’s greatest revival took place at the beginning of the twentieth century, including the Welsh Revival, the Azusa Street Revival, the Korean Pentecost, the Manchurian revival and the Mizo Outpouring.

CHAPTER ONE The 1904 Revival

"A blaze of evening glory at the end of the Great Century,” is the way the revival at the beginning of the 20th century has been described by J. Edwin Orr and "the most extensive evangelical awakening of all time." Depending upon one’s ethnic and evangelical background, aspects of this revival have become legends of one’s heritage. It has been estimated more than five million people were won to Christ within a two year period.

Moody Bible Institute in America and the Keswick Convention in England called their respective nations to prayer for revival as their nineteenth century came to a close. The large prayer movement organized by these ministries was matched by an even larger, apparently unconnected movement of prayer world-wide. On mission fields as far away as India, the Far East, Africa and Latin America, missionaries and national churches began praying for revival in their respective lands. Most of those praying had never seen revival on the mission field, many had never experienced revival themselves. They prayed that God might do for them what they had read in the stories of history’s great revivals. In response to this prayer movement, the first manifestations of revival began among Boer prisoners of war in Bermuda and Ceylon. The Prisoner of War Revival was characterized "by extraordinary prayer, by faithful preaching, conviction of sin, confession and repentance with lasting conversions and hundreds of enlistments for missionary service." With the return of the prisoners after the Boer War, revival swept through South Africa during an economic depression. A Japanese awakening began in 1900 as part of a decade-long intensive evangelistic campaign. Campaign organizers had called the evangelical church to prayer as preparation for the intensive evangelistic effort. This resulted in an awakening among the people living in Japanese cities. The total membership of the churches almost doubled within the decade, despite the interruption of a war with Russia four years into the campaign. The Torrey/Alexander evangelistic team was surprised to find a wide-spread prayer movement during their highly successful evangelistic campaign throughout Australia and New Zealand. The campaign produced more converts for the churches than ever before experienced by the churches of that region. When evangelist Wilbur Chapman replaced Torrey, revival continued. Gipsy Smith saw the same results during his mission of peace in South Africa. The South African Awakening under Smith’s ministry was so significant that Gipsy extended his ministry in that nation. But the greatest manifestation of the 1904 Revival was yet to come. A young man felt impressed by God that revival was coming to his native Wales. He told a friend, "I have a vision of all Wales being lifted up to heaven. We are going to see the mightiest revival that Wales has ever known—and the Holy Spirit is coming soon, so we must get ready." He claimed God would give him "a hundred thousand souls" if he would organize a preaching band to travel across the nation during the coming revival. The student gathered together several friends who agreed to be part of his team, but the revival itself began in a meeting conducted by a young evangelist alone.

During a meeting on October 30, 1904, Evan Roberts was impressed to return home for a week of ministry among the youth in his home church. The next day he boarded a train for Loughor. That evening, he conducted his first meeting after the regular prayer meeting. He told the seventeen people gathered of his vision and urged them to declare their faith in Christ publicly. Although the initial response was slow, eventually all present gave their testimony. Throughout the week, Roberts conducted meetings each evening calling the youth to deal with sin, renew their obedience to God, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and publicly declare their faith in Christ. Meetings typically ran three to five hours.

Within a week, the "youth" meetings had begun to attract parents impressed with the changes they saw in their children and the Moriah Chapel was filled to capacity. On November 9, the English language newspaper in Cardiff announced, A remarkable religious revival is now taking place in Loughor. For some days, a young man named Evan Roberts, a native of Loughor, has been causing great surprise at Moriah Chapel. The place has been besieged by dense crowds of people unable to obtain admission. Such excitement has prevailed that the road on which the chapel is situated has been lined with people from end to end. . . . His statements have had the most stirring effects upon his listeners. Many who have disbelieved Christianity for years are returning to the fold of their younger days. One night, so great was the enthusiasm invoked by the young revivalist that, after his sermon which lasted two hours, the vast congregation remained praying and singing until two-thirty in the morning. Shopkeepers are closing early in order to get a place in the chapel, and tin and steel workers throng the place in working clothes.

Although Roberts became the acknowledged leader of the Welsh Revival, the revival itself extended far beyond his own ministry. Churches were filled for two years across the entire nation. As Roberts had predicted, a hundred thousand converts were added to the church. The use of alcohol in Wales dropped by fifty percent resulting in the bankruptcy of many taverns. Crime was reduced to the point judges in many jurisdictions were presented with white gloves indicating there were no crimes of violence to be tried that day. In various communities, police became unemployed when they were no longer needed. In the coal mines, mules refused to respond to converted miners who began treating the animals with respect and stopped using foul language.

News of the revival encouraged those praying for revival throughout Great Britain to intensify their efforts. The Archbishop of Canterbury called for a national day of prayer. When one bishop told of confirming 950 converts in a single country parish church, thirty others declared their support for the revival. Outside the Anglican church, Protestants in England increased by ten percent in 1903-1906. Revival also swept through Ireland and Scotland.

Europe also experienced an unusual movement of God in response to news of the Welsh Revival. The revival begun under the ministry of Albert Lunde in Norway was later described by Bishop Berggrav as "the greatest revival of his experience." That revival spread through Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Lutheran’s described the revival as "the greatest movement of the Spirit since the Vikings were evangelized." Germany, France and other European nations were also touched by the revival. When news of the Welsh Revival reached America, there was a similar response. Ministers gathered in various conventions to prepare for the coming awakening. In Philadelphia, Methodists soon reported having 6101 new converts in trial membership. The pastors of Atlantic City churches claimed there were only fifty unconverted adults left in that city. On a single Sunday in New York City, 364 were received into membership and 286 converted to Christ. The revival also swept through the South. First Baptist Church in Paducah, Kentucky, added a thousand people within a couple of months. Across the Southern Baptist Convention, baptisms increased by twenty-five percent in a single year. In the mid-west, Methodists reported "the greatest revivals in their history." Every store and factory in Burlington, Iowa, closed to allow employees to attend prayer meetings. When the mayor of Denver declared a day of prayer in that city, churches were filled by ten o’clock. At 11:30, virtually every place of business in the city closed as 12,000 gathered for prayer meetings in downtown theatres and halls. Every school in town and the Colorado State Legislature closed for the day.

In the west, united meetings attracted 180,000 people in attendance. By midnight, the Grand Opera House in Los Angeles was filled with drunks and prostitutes seeking salvation. In Portland, Oregon, the entire city virtually shut down between 11:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. for noon hour prayer meetings. A similar movement occurred throughout Canada. Churches of various denominations, both urban and rural, organized prayer meetings and evangelistic campaigns. Thousands gathered nightly during Torrey/Alexander campaigns in major Canadian cities including Winnipeg and Toronto. Among the converts of Torrey’s Toronto meetings was a young man named Oswald J. Smith who later became "the greatest missionary statesman of the twentieth century."

News of the Welsh Revival also encouraged those praying for revival in India to increase their efforts. The resulting revival touched every province in that nation. The Christian population increased by seventy percent during the Indian Revival, sixteen times as fast as the Hindu population increased. In many places, meetings lasted five to ten hours.

Missionaries in Burma reported an "ingathering quite surpassing anything known in the history of the mission." Two thousand Karens were baptized in 1905, ten times the usual number. In a single church, 1340 Shans were baptized in December.

Korea experienced three waves of revival in the first decade of the new century, the best known being the 1907 Korean Pentecost. Church membership quadrupled in the decade. One of those touched by the Korean revival was a Canadian missionary serving in China. Jonathan Goforth returned to Manchuria as a carrier of revival. The national awakening which followed doubled the Protestant population of that nation to a quarter of a million people, despite the persecution surrounding both the Boxer Uprising and 1911 Revolution.

Revival swept through the island nations of the Pacific. In Indonesia, 100,000 evangelicals in 1903 became 300,000 strong within the decade. On the island of Nias, two-thirds of the population was converted to Christ. In Malagasia, Protestant church membership increased by sixty-six percent during the revival.

While the revival had limited effect in South America, both Brazil and Chile were exceptions to the rule. The growth of the evangelical church in those nations began during the revival and continued uninterrupted throughout the century. Approximately 100 years later, both nations boasted more evangelicals than Roman Catholics attending church in the Catholic nations.

According to the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, "more progress had been made in all Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century than experienced hitherto." From 1903 to 1910, Protestants living in the African continent increased from 300,000 to 500,000. Still, the full impact of the Welsh Revival in Africa was not known. As revived missionaries made their way to Africa, the growth rate of the African evangelical church continued to be twice that of the general population for a half century. As noted earlier, news of the Welsh Revival encouraged many in Southern California praying to intensify their efforts. In 1907, a small church in Los Angeles saw the crowds grow in their meetings until the converted house they met in collapsed. They moved into a vacated Methodist church on Asuza Street. During the revival which followed, people began speaking in tongues. The Asuza Street church quickly became a revival center attracting Christians from around the world. The Pentecostal movement was born and became the largest growing Protestant movement of the century. Religion writers voted the Asuza Revival as one of the 100 most important religious of the Millennium. The First World War probably robbed the 1904 Awakening from having as full an impact on society as might have otherwise been realized. Still, the revival was not without an impact. It began to shape the morality of a generation. The changed lives of converts resulted in reductions in crime, drunkenness, and gambling, along with increases in honesty, truthfulness and chastity throughout Great Britain. A wave of morality in America followed the awakening producing a revival of righteousness which culminated with the passing of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages. Throughout the nation, political reform was effected as corrupt district attorneys, mayors, governors, senators and assemblymen were replaced with those perceived as honest.

Missionaries touched by the revival established schools and hospitals on their various fields. The number of pupils attending Christian schools in India doubled in the two decades following the revival. Ninety percent of all nurses were Christians, most trained at mission hospitals. In China, missionaries laid the foundation of that nations education and medical systems. The same was true in many nations throughout the African continent.

In the Year of Our Lord 1904