Sermon Illustrations

Dr. A. T. Pierson says that there has never been a revival in any country or locality that did not begin with united prayer. I have already described the First Great Awakening and how God responded to prayer. Let me now give you some more examples. By the middle of the 19th Century the country was corrupt again. It was divided over slavery and it had forgotten God because it had become so wealthy. Jeremiah Lampheer began a small prayer meeting in Manhattan. The next week there were 14, then 23. By February of 1858 every church and every public building were occupied by noon prayer meetings. One reporter could only get to twelve meetings and counted 6100 men. Ten thousand per week were being converted in New York. One million were converted in a year.

By the turn of the century the country was again in need of revival. This time the prayer efforts were worldwide - Chicago, Melbourne, India and Korea. But it began in Wales. One hundred thousand were converted. The first year of the revival, there were no cases for the judges to try; police were out of work; taverns went bankrupt; illegitimacy dropped 44%; and production slowed in the mines because the mules could not understand the cleaned up speech of the workers. That revival of 1904 spread to England, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,...

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