Evan Roberts in the Land of Revivals: HIRD

Evan Robert in the land of Revivals

By Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

How might Canada be different if ten per cent of Canadians entered into the Kingdom of God in the next two years? That’s what happened in Wales, the land of revivals and song. Evan Roberts, the spiritual father of the 1904 Welsh Revival, worked from age 12 to 23 with his father Henry in the coal mines. He had visitations from the Holy Spirit, showing all Wales being lifted up to Heaven.  For several months before the revival broke out, Evan would be taken up into the heavens every night where he would commune with God.  Evan began to ask God to give him 100,000 souls, something that occurred during this revival. During this awakening, ten per cent of the Welsh people were ushered into the Kingdom.  Revival historian J Edwin Orr says that 150,000 became members of local churches in Wales, with 250,000 becoming born again.

Prayer was the very breath of Evan’s soul.  He seemed to be constantly praying. The prayer that Evan received from his mentor Rev Seth Joshua was “Bend me, bend me, bend us.” He urged total abandonment to the will of God.  As one participant commented, “Did we not hear him time and again praying the words “Empty me! Fill me! Use me” until they became part of our thinking?” Whenever the Holy Spirit came upon Evan in a revival meeting, his face was transformed, bringing a radiant smile and shining eyes.

The four "points" of Evan’s revival message were:

1. Confess all known sin, receiving forgiveness through Jesus Christ

2. Remove anything in your life that you are in doubt or feel unsure about

3. Be ready to obey the Holy Spirit instantly

4. Publicly confess the Lord Jesus Christ

Evan became perhaps the most famous man in the world at the time. Even the future UK Prime Minister, Lloyd George, vouched for the genuineness of Evan Roberts and the Welsh revival. Evan was present at only about 259 of the tens of thousands of Welsh revival meetings that took place.  The chapels were often so crowded that Evan often had to climb over people’s shoulders just to make it to the pulpit. Participants said that it was not the eloquence of Evan Roberts that transformed people —it was his tears. People were standing for hours in the cold, wintry air hoping that by someone leaving the church, they could push in to witness the scenes that were taking place inside.  Troubled by both the adulation and criticism, he wouldn’t announce his meetings in advance. He wanted Jesus, not himself, to be the focus. Sometimes he would go to a revival meeting and then refuse to speak, instead praying silently before leaving.  Evan said “I am not the source for this revival. I am only one worker in that which is growing to be a host. I am not moving the hearts of men and changing their lives; but ‘God is working through me”.’ 

From the very beginning of the revival, there was a strong sense of conviction of sin, with wrongdoing publicly confessed. Instead of sports, the hot topic in the pubs was about Evan Roberts and the revival. Drunkenness was cut in half, causing bankruptcies in many pubs.  Crime was cut in half. Former houses of prostitution turned into homes of heavenly singing, encouraging their former customers to go to the revival meetings. The Bible Society in Wales could not keep up with the request for their bibles. People began to pay off their bad debts. Some of the toughest characters in the Welsh valleys were converted. Pit-ponies could no longer understand the miners' commands as they had stopped cursing the ponies. The police, often having no one to arrest, would come to the revivals to sing in quartets. In one court case, the prisoner came under conviction, confessing his sins. The judge then preached the gospel to him, and the jury spontaneously broke out into Welsh revival singing.

Just like with the 1970s Jesus movement, most of the Welsh revival leaders and participants were very young.  The revival services were marked with informality, laughing, crying, dancing, joy, and brokenness.  Many of these youth did spontaneous Jesus marches, singing songs and visiting the pubs to invite people to the revival.  No one bothered about the clock. People often stayed until two to three am in the morning, and then marched through the streets singing hymns.  A participant, David Matthews commented, “When I left the heavenly atmosphere of the church for home, I discovered that it was five in the morning! I had been in the house of God for ten hours — they passed like ten minutes!”  

As predicted by Evan, the Welsh revival had a worldwide impact, birthing over 30 revivals around the world, including in China, Korea, India, East Africa, and the 1906 Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles, impacting hundreds of millions. At one meeting, all Evan said was ‘let us pray’, before revival broke out. As with the later Korean revival, the Welsh all prayed simultaneously. This revival of love gave Evan the ability to sing all day. The first Welsh revival team was five teenage girls who would sing about God’s love at the revival meetings.  The love song of the Welsh revival was the song “Here is love vast as the ocean”.  Evan told the reporters, “I preach nothing but Christ’s love”.

Because Evan seldom ate, slept and rested, he soon succumbed to the pressure of his rigorous schedule, and, in 1906, suffered a physical and emotional collapse, the first of his eight nervous breakdowns. The doctor told Evan after his nervous breakdown that if he ever preached again, he would die.  He then moved to England, living in virtual seclusion until he died.  Sadly, Evan refused to see his family when they visited, only returning to Wales upon the death of his father in 1928. While there for his dad’s funeral in Loughor, Evans spoke a few sentences and a "mini-revival" sparked.  Evan Roberts died in 1951 at age 72.

Imagine what God might do in Canada, if we like Evan Roberts bent our will to God’s will for our nation? Bend us, Lord! Bend the Church in Canada!

Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird

-co-authors of ForBetter, For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship

-an article previously published in the June 2019 Light Magazine

George Whitefield: Waking Up to the Fire of Christ -HIRD

George Whitefield: Waking up to the Fire of Christ

By Rev. Dr. Ed &Janice Hird

-an article previously published in the April 2019 Light Magazine

When is the last time that your pastor had to be hoisted, like George Whitefield, through a window into your crowded church building, because there was no other way in?  The Rev. George Whitefield took part in a Great Awakening that is still impacting many congregations today.  Charles Spurgeon called Whitefield “all life, fire, wing, force.”

After being ordained at age 21, Whitefield was accused of driving fifteen people mad in his first sermon.  His Gloucester Bishop Benson ironically said that he wished that the madness might not be forgotten before next Sunday.  The so-called madness was actually people waking up to the life-changing love of Christ.  In his 34 years of ordained ministry, Whitefield preached more than 18,000 sermons to around ten million people.  Dr. Thomas S Kidd holds that “perhaps he was the greatest evangelical preacher the world has ever known.” Because of his speaking gift, Whitefield’s nickname was the Seraph (type of angel).  He was once described by UK Prime Minister Lloyd George as the greatest popular orator ever produced by England.  David Hume, a famous agnostic commented that “Mr Whitfield is the most ingenious preacher I ever heard. It is worth going twenty miles to hear him.” The famous English actor David Garrick held that Whitefield could “make men weep and tremble by his varied utterances of the word ‘Mesopotamia’.” (the ancient land that Abraham came from)

While in Oxford, he became close friends with John and Charles Wesley who helped him in the spiritual disciplines. After reading the book The Life of God in the Soul of Man, Whitefield became convinced that good works would not earn him heaven: “God showed me that I must be born again....” Experiencing the new birth gave him a fresh love of the beauty of spring: “At other times, I would be so overpowered with a sense of God’s Infinite Majesty that I would be compelled to throw myself on the ground and offer my soul as a blank in his hands, to write on it what he pleased.” The new birth became the heart of an unprecedented evangelical revival. 

Whitefield accepted the Wesley’s invitation to join them as missionaries in Savannah, Georgia. He waited however for months to sail to Georgia with his patron General Oglethorpe.  During this delay in England, tens of thousands came to hear him preach about the new birth.  After passionately preaching outside to 10,000 miners in Kingswood near Bristol, he wrote: “The fire is kindled in the country; and, I know, all the devils in hell shall not be able to quench it.”  Whitefield became the Billy Graham of the 17^th century, preaching that all people need to be born again.  He was very countercultural, doing the unthinkable thing of preaching in fields, without notes, to tens of thousands. In 17^th century England, sermons were only supposed to be given inside church buildings. In 17^th England, because of the fear of revolution, the worst thing you could be accused of was enthusiasm. Whitefield sought to reach the heart as well as the head, saying that many people “were unaffected by an unfelt, unknown Christ.”

On his way to Georgia, Whitefield had such a strong voice that when the two other ships travelling with them drew close, he was simultaneously able to preach to all the people on the three ships. At a time when travel was precarious, Whitefield had seven visits to America, fifteen to Scotland, and two to Ireland.  Whitefield was the best-known person to have travelled extensively in the thirteen American colonies.  By 1740, he had become the most famous man in both America and Britain, at least the most famous aside from King George II.  Reminiscent of the Beatles, he was the first ‘British sensation.’ 

Whitefield was radically generous even to a fault.  Wherever revival meetings took place, Whitefield received offerings, including from Benjamin Franklin, to help with the most famous orphanage in North America, Bethesda in Savannah, Georgia.  After Benjamin Franklin scientifically established that Whitefield was able to preach to 30,000 without a microphone, he became his publisher, and a close friend and ally. Between 1740 and 1742, Franklin printed forty-three books and pamphlets dealing with Whitefield and the evangelical movement.  He even built Whitefield a building for preaching that became the University of Pennsylvania.  That is why there are statues of both Franklin and Whitefield as co-founders of the University of Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin commented: “It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or 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.”

The Bishop’s Commissary (superintendent), Alexander Garden, in Charleston was offended by Whitefield’s article challenging slave owners over mistreatment of slaves, and by Whitefield’s preaching both in other parish areas and among other denominations. Garden declared that the slave owners were going to sue Whitefield for libel. During his sermon, Garden attacked Whitefield, and refused him communion.  Then he dragged Whitefield into an ecclesiastical court, trying to defrock him.  Jonathan Edwards of Northhampton, a co-leader in the Great Awakening, wrote: “Whitefield was reproached in the most scurrilous and scandalous manner...I question whether history affords any instance paralleled with this, as so much pains taken in writing to blacken a man’s character, and render him odious.” Whitefield did not let criticism stop him, saying “The more I am opposed, the more joy I feel.”  

On a Sunday morning in Philadelphia, Whitefield preached to perhaps 15,000 people.  Then, he attended an Anglican Communion service where Commissary Cummings publicly denounced him and his followers. Whitefield followed this right after with preaching a farewell sermon to an outdoor assembly of 20,000.  The relentless pace was brutal to Whitefield’s health. At another time in Boston, “Whitfield was running himself ragged and becoming extremely ill, violently vomiting between sermons. He was feverish, dehydrated, and sweating profusely.”

During his four years away from England, the Gentleman’s Magazine and other English newspapers listed George Whitefield as having died.  He changed so many lives that even the English upper classes began to give Whitefield a hearing.  Lord Bolingbroke, after hearing Whitefield at Lady Huntington’s place, wrote: “Mr Whitefield is the most extraordinary man of our times. He has the most commanding eloquence I ever heard in any person...” One Anglican minister claimed that Whitefield had set England on fire with the devil’s flames. Whitefield countered. “It is not a fire of the Devil’s kindling, but a holy fire that has proceeded from the Holy and blessed Spirit. Oh, that such a fire may not only be kindled, but blow up into a flame all England, and all the world over!”

Dying at 55, Whitefield had been used to set many people on fire with love for Christ.  He memorably prayed: “O that I could do more for Him! O that I was a flame of pure and holy fire, and had a thousand lives to spend in the dear Redeemer’s Service.” Whitefield was passionate about awakening to the new birth.  We in Canada also need to wake up to the fire of Christ. We too need to recapture the priority of the new birth. Have you, like Whitefield, awoken yet to the new birth?

Rev Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

Co-authors of ForBetter, For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship