The 1904 Welsh Revival and the emergence and growth of 20th- Century Pentecostalism - Good news?!
Can you imagine the newspapers being full on with reports of revival? The Evening Express and the Evening Mail in Wales dated 16th January 1905 had a caption at the top of the page – REVIVAL EDITION. This huge broadsheet newspaper filled its pages with reports of the impact of the revival from all over Wales and beyond!
At the beginning of the 20th century God raised up a young man in Wales from the coalmine and the blacksmith’s to preach the cross of Christ. Evan Roberts was born on 8th June 1878, the ninth child of Henry and Hannah Roberts. His mother Hannah bore fourteen children – seven sons and seven daughters. From the age of four Evan loved reading, the outdoors and boxing. He started work down the mine at 12 years of age. Eventually becoming a union man, keen to represent his workmates with management. It is understood that he became a believer before his 13th birthday and regularly attended Moriah Calvinistic Methodist chapel . He took his Bible with him everywhere. The influence of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism contributed significantly to his spiritual growth, as exemplified by his reading of the Outlines of Theology by A.A. Hodge. He preached his first sermon on the Sunday evening of 18 December 1903 on Luke 9:23, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’ After an intense encounter with the Holy Spirit in the spring of 1904, his passion and commitment to prayer increased and Evan became aware that the Holy Spirit was beginning to fall on young people gathering nearby. He was anticipating going to Newcastle Emlyn to prepare for the ministry at the college. Yet he apparently expressed that he was dreading going, “for fear I should lose the four hours with God every morning”. Kevin Adams records that:
“Evan Roberts’ launch from Loughor, in mid November 1904, led to weeks of intensive evangelistic activity in the mining valleys of South Wales. Without a planned itinerary, he sought to be open to the Spirit’s guidance, and visited scores of Valley churches with his message of the transforming power of the cross of Christ and the joy of the Holy Spirit”
“Being an instant media celebrity he was regularly mobbed by crowds of the interested and curious, all seeking to see and hear the young revivalist at first hand. Even a rumour of his arrival was a stir.”
The rest is revival history. So it is claimed that over 90,000 people were added to the churches in Wales towards the end of 1904 and in a very short period of time.
In 1927 God called a very competent young Welsh medical doctor to return to Newcastle Emlyn, abandoning a successful career in London - Dr David Martyn Lloyd Jones. He wrote frequently and spoke passionately about revival:
“The moment revival breaks out, the crowds will come, I assure you, it will not cost you a penny. I am speaking to the church that is spending thousands of pounds on advertising to try and attract the outsider. The moment you get Revival the newspapers will report it. Their motive, of course, will be quite wrong. They will do it because they do not like it, because they think it is ridiculous, because they think that people have gone mad, or they are drunk. It does not matter. They will give it free advertisement. And the crowds will come to see what is happening, as they did on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. What fools we are!”
From the Valleys of South Wales to LA
Frank Bartlemann reports ‘How Pentecost came to Los Angeles’. He heard F.B. Meyer describe the great revival that was going on in Wales, after having visited and met Evan Roberts. He recounts how his soul was stirred to its depths and promised God that he should have full right of way with him if he could use him. He was also impacted by S.B. Shaw’s little book “The Great Revival in Wales”. This book impacted him greatly and set him on fire giving him a burden for revival. He went on to sell copies of S.B. Shaw’s little book among the churches. God used this to promote faith for a revival spirit. He met Pastor Joseph Smale from First Baptist Church Los Angeles who had also visited Wales and Evan Roberts. He too was on fire to have the same visitation of blessing come to his church in Los Angeles. Bartlemann wrote to Evan Roberts in Wales, requesting prayer for California. Roberts replied:
“My dear brother in the faith: Many thanks for your kind letter. I am impressed of your sincerity and honesty of purpose. Congregate the people together who are willing to make a total surrender. Pray and wait. Believe God’s promises. Hold daily meetings. May God bless you, is my earnest prayer. Yours in Christ, Evan Roberts”
Bartlemann was much encouraged to know that they were being prayed for in Wales. Subsequently in 312, Azuza Street Los Angeles began a revival between 1906 and 1909 led by William J. Seymour, a black Holiness preacher from Texas. This revival launched Pentecostalism into a world wide movement. The first people impacted by this revival were poor and disinherited people from established churches. Mostly from Methodist and Holiness movements that had flourished in the 19th century. The Pentecostal movement soon spread far beyond its ‘Holiness’ routes to nearly every Protestant denomination in America and began to form new churches.
Tony Cauchi, Librarian for the Revival Library sets out the context of the stimulus that the Welsh revival provided across Europe and in the United States:
“In Scandinavia a current revival was fanned into a mighty blaze, as a result of the Welsh Revival. Germany was similarly affected as the flame spread across Europe. Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Balkans and Russia experienced awakenings. The United States felt the after-shock of the Welsh Revival in almost every place. Prayer, conviction and conversion spontaneously occurred, resulting in unusual church growth. In 1906 the modern Pentecostal Movement was born in Azusa Street, in Los Angeles, after a succession of local revivals through 1905. News of the Welsh Revival encouraged more prayer and suddenly the Holy Spirit descended. Daily meetings were held for the next three years. Visitors flocked there to catch the power of the Spirit and they were not disappointed.”
George Jeffereys was the founder and leader of the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance. Together with older brother Stephen, George was converted on November 20th, 1904. George worked at the Co-operative stores. He suffered poor health including a speech impediment and the beginnings of facial paralysis. Stephen Jeffreys was a coal miner for 24 years and played in the flute band at Silo independent chapel, Maesteg. He and his brother were both initially opposed to Pentecostalism when it was introduced to Wales early in 1908. Stephen’s son, Edward, was baptised in the Spirit and spoke in tongues while on holiday, and uncle and father sought the experience. George was baptised by immersion in the Llynfi River in April 1911. He was also baptised in the Spirit and healed. Joining a small group of Pentecostals he began preaching. George and Stephen Jeffreys founded the Elim Pentecostal church and were considered England’s greatest evangelists since Wesley and Whitfield.
Upon returning from Canada in 1924 Stephen Jeffreys was engaged as an evangelist. Subsequently the newly formed Assemblies of God of Britain and Ireland invited him to hold meetings and for the next three years he traveled extensively. Jeffreys was used to establish or strengthen assemblies. In Sunderland mounted police were needed to control the crowds that gathered when he visited. He established many churches and inspired others to do the same. He was attacked by a hostile media, which he ignored, and went on preaching.
The Apostolic Church was established in 1916. The founders were the brothers Daniel Powell Williams and William Jones Williams. Both were converted in the 1904 – 05 Welsh Revival. Daniel was converted under the ministry of Evan Roberts. They were associated with the Apostolic Faith Church (the original AFC Bournemouth!) Founded by W.O. Hutchinson in Bournemouth in 1908.
Stanley H. Frodsham the author of ‘With Signs Following’, records how God answered the prayers of the heart hunger of those days. From 1907 until 1914 he reports a steadily rising tide of this outpouring of the Holy Spirit. There did seem to be an apparent lull during the period of the Great War. Although George Jeffereys was still being used mightily to see churches planted in Northern Ireland during this period. Subsequently however in the 1920s revival fires were rekindled!
Frodsham reiterates how “From Wales God raised up two brothers (George and Stephen Jeffreys) who have been wonderfully used of God in the Pentecostal work in the British Isles. George Jeffereys, the younger of the two while yet in his teens, began preaching the full gospel. The campaigns held by George Jeffereys packed some of the largest halls in the British Isles, including the historic hall of St Andrews, Glasgow, with a seating capacity of 4,500, the Guild Hall of Plymouth, which accommodates nearly 4,000; and the Royal Albert Hall of London, which accommodates 10,000. Each Easter three meetings had been held in this great hall and at each meeting the building has been filled to capacity. One Easter 1000 were baptised in water. At a testimony service given Albert Hall Exeter, 1933, to quote the account given in the Daily Express: “Of those who testified there was 72 guaranteed cures of cancer and malignant growths; 20 had been crippled; 17 had been blind; 70 have been afflicted with stiff muscles or uselessl limbs; and 18 had been deaf.” By 1935 George Jeffereys led a World Revival Crusade after his successful campaigns in Switzerland and the Middle East in 1935. George Jeffereys ministered to no less than 49 gigantic gatherings in the Royal Albert Hall, London. Brighton, Portsmouth and Bournemouth were also impacted significantly by the Jeffreys.
The Following is a Newspaper clipping from the Bournemouth Times and Directory, by special reporter, Marion Hall:
‘If I had gone to the big tent – where principal George Jeffereys has been holding revival and healing meetings – to scoff, I should certainly have remained to pray. But I did not go to scoff, I went to see if the wonderful cures of which I had heard were really taking place, and to decide – if I could – whether they were true, as some said, to hysterical excitement, or to something much greater and more permanent in its effects. I went, I saw, and I was conquered…... The gift of sight to a boy, so I was told – was born blind, was conferred at the same meeting; and I was given the particulars of the healing of a severe long-standing case of spinal trouble by the grateful patient himself. Cases of cancer, goiter, rheumatism, nerve trouble, curvature of the spine, hereditary deafness, asthma, and numerous others have been cured at other meetings’
In Operation World Jason Mandryk records that “Pentecostals sprang out of early 20th-century revivals. Their growth is spectacular - from virtually no Pentecostals in 1900 to over 177 million in 2010. Pentecostals are by definition evangelical”.
J. Nelson Parr highlights the prominence that was given in this Pentecostal revival to the atoning blood of Christ, in song, prayer, and preaching and an amazing love for the Word of God.
The brief overview above has taken us from Welsh Calvinistic Methodism to worldwide Pentecostalism. Many would draw attention to ‘strange fire’ manifestations that occur in such times as if they are typically representative of a revival or a movement. This sounds like Tom Jones rendition of ‘Mama told me not come’, when he sings ‘I see so many things I never seen before - don’t know what it is, I don’t wanna see no more’.
Test the spirits 1 John 4: 1-6 Do not quench the Spirit 1 Thess: 5:19
Yet, whenever revival has occurred it is common to read of extraordinary manifestations. Adam Clark wrestled with this issue; “Nature will always, and Satan too, mingle themselves as far as they can, in the genuine work of the Spirit, in order to discredit and destroy it. Nevertheless in great revivals of religion, it is almost impossible to prevent wildfire from getting in among the true fire.” Listen to how John Wesley prayed after revival had died out for a period of time: “Oh, Lord, send us the old revival, without the defects; but if this cannot be, send it - with all its defects. We must have revival.”
“For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this city”
The first five photographs are images from The Evening Express and the Evening Mail in Wales dated 16th January 1905 REVIVAL EDITION.
The book with the front cover George Jeffreys A Ministry of the Miraculous is written by Ernest C. Bolton and the Elim Publishing Office and is a copy signed by George Jeffreys In the Lord and the Foursquare Gospel.
A revealing indicator of the theology of any church or denomination is it’s hymnody. The booklet Hymns and Choruses provides significant testimony to the beliefs of the founders of Elim.
Colin Mitchell
