God on Campus by Sheppard Trent;Greig Pete;

Author:Sheppard, Trent;Greig, Pete;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2010-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

From Wales to the World

I felt ablaze with a desire to go through the length and breadth of Wales to tell of the Savior. . . . I was willing to pay God for doing so.

—Evan Roberts

While the movement at Yale might be traced to the early-morning prayer and Bible study led by William Borden, the privileged son of an American millionaire, the central figure in the 1904 awakening in Wales, a movement of truly global proportions, was a twenty-six-year-old student named Evan Roberts, the son of a Welsh coalminer. Evan left school at age eleven and worked in the mines with his father for more than a decade. Convinced his nation was in dire need of spiritual transformation, he returned to school in his mid-twenties to pursue an education in theology.

In September 1904, early in his studies, Roberts heard minister Seth Joshua pray aloud in Welsh, “Plyg ni, O Arglwydd,” which is translated, “Bend us, O Lord.” Desperate for a closer walk with God, Evan Roberts cried out in response, “Bend me, O Lord!” Shortly later, in the same meeting, Roberts experienced what he described as a baptism of the Holy Spirit: “I fell on my knees with my arms over the seat in front of me,” he explained, “and the tears freely flowed.”

Two months later, Evan Roberts returned to his hometown and told his story. Young people especially responded to his testimony at first, but soon, according to Jessie Penn-Lewis, who witnessed the awakening, “The whole community was shaken. Meetings lasted until four in the morning,” she explained. “[H]undreds of colliers and tinplate workers were transformed. The men went straight to chapel from the mills.” Remarkably, within six months the Welsh Revival resulted in more than one hundred thousand people deciding to following Jesus.

The effect of the national awakening produced striking social transformation as well as supernatural phenomena. Among the coal miners, harsh profanity was so radically diminished that there were reports of pit ponies needing to be retrained, apparently because the animals were unaccustomed to being treated with such kindness. In several places, local judges were presented with white gloves, as there were no crimes to be tried. In the region of Cardiganshire, an Anglican vicar distinctly heard the sound of singing in the air, as if the atmosphere itself was somehow charged with the presence of God. In another instance of phenomena and song, a young woman was converted in a meeting as she listened to the performance of a soloist in French, although the rest of the congregation was hearing the same song in their native Welsh.

What started as a local movement in Wales soon became a global trend of prayer and transformation as stories of the awakening spread. Similar instances of revival occurred in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India and Korea. In the United States, college and university campuses were especially impacted. Reports of student conversions flowed in from Cornell and Rutgers, Mississippi State and Baylor, Stanford and Trinity, as well as numerous other campuses across the country.

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