In our Book of Remembrance, we must record the wonderful revivals that God has brought to our nation: direct acts of God, unmerited, except for the prayer God has called forth from his people. Times of revival come when there is a need for the Church to wake up, but the fruit of revival has often spread outside of the walls of churches and impacted entire communities or even the whole nation.
Peter called such events times of refreshment: “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19).
The Power of God’s Spirit
Charles Gardner's articles over recent weeks have reminded us of the 1904 revival in Wales, which began in a chapel in Loughor. Evan Roberts cleared the room of those whom he judged lacked faith. Remaining was his youth group whom he called to prayer and when a young girl called out heavenwards, "Lord Jesus, I love you", the revival began which touched the nation.
Evan Roberts' last revival meeting, Anglesey 1905.
Meeting after meeting brought needy people to listen to the Gospel message and a spirit of repentance swept through local congregations. It was said that men were convicted of sins as “small" as having a packet of cigarettes in their pockets. One community had a police force with so little to do as a result of the revival that they formed a choir. Miners went to and from work singing hymns and the chapels were filled by whole communities Sunday after Sunday.
An earlier revival in Wales, which followed the Methodist revival in England, saw towns and villages renamed with biblical names - such is the power of God's Spirit to convict, call to repentance and bring new life, hope and vitality to both Church and nation.
It was said of the revival, led by Whitfield and the Wesley brothers and which broke out at a time of moral, social and political decline in Britain accompanied by corruption in the churches, that in spite of all this:
…a religious revival burst forth at the close of Walpole's administration, which changed after a time the whole tone of English society. The Church was restored to life and activity. Religion carried to the hearts of the people a fresh spirit of moral zeal, while it purified our literature and our manners. A new philanthropy reformed our prisons, infused clemency and wisdom into our penal laws, abolished the slave trade, and gave the first impulse to popular education.1
Times of revival come when there is a need for the Church to wake up.
These are examples of God's grace and goodness to our nation. Thank you Lord!
Revivals have often touched individual communities, such as in the Hebrides in the mid-20th Century. There was also a revival in easterly Lowestoft in the 1920s, which we now feature in greater detail thanks to John Quinlan.
Dr Clifford Denton
A Forgotten Revival
Back in 1921, a revival took place in Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth, on the east coast of England, involving London Road Baptist church (which my family attended for a while when I was a child), Bethel (a fisherman’s mission/fellowship that has all but disappeared), Christchurch (the most easterly church in Britain where Barbi and I were married) and St John’s Church (a large building that I watched being demolished).
Thanks to the herring fishing industry of the time, the revival was also along the Scottish Eastern coastline from Wick to Eyemouth.
Below I have taken extracts from a paper entitled ‘Revivals in Scotland in the 20th Century’.2
Revival broke out in East Anglia in 1921 through the ministry of Rev Douglas Brown from Balham, S London who visited Lowestoft in Suffolk in Feb 1921. At the same time a mission was going on in Cairnbulg in Aberdeenshire led by Pastor Fred Clarke. This lasted 4 months and many young people aged 16-18 were saved. They would pray freely in public even kneeling down on the roads to hold impromptu prayer meetings…
…The Scottish fishing community followed the herring, so in the Autumn of 1921 as in every year whole families were in Yarmouth and Lowestoft for the end of the fishing season – thousands of them. The schools were flooded with Scottish children. 1921 was a very bad year for fishing, remembered as a year of misery. However God used the bad weather to make sure his harvest was available. The Scots were hanging around in Lowestoft and there was little to do. God prepared whole communities to receive His revival fire and take it back to Scotland with them.
…Jock Troup was 25 in 1921. He was a huge, bull necked cooper (barrel maker) from Wick (in North Scotland). In Oct 1921 he began to hold open air meetings in Lowestoft. As he preached people began to fall to the ground in conviction of sin. Jock soon began to preach full time. Whole families in Yarmouth who had come from Portknockie, Cullen and Findochty were converted in Yarmouth. Jock would preach to cinema and theatre queues and crowds as they left the pubs at closing time. While he was in Yarmouth he had a vision of a man in Fraserburgh praying for him to come there. He left immediately and when he got there he met a group of men from the Baptist Church who had just had a meeting where they had decided to send for him. Among them was the man he had seen in his vision! Jock began to preach holding open air services in Saltoun Square. Hundreds came. Five weeks of constant reaping followed. By December both the Baptist and Congregational Churches were too small for the crowds coming.
Thousands along both the east coasts of England and Scotland were saved through this revival.
These are examples of God's grace and goodness to our nation. Thank you Lord!
Survival and Revival
I am sure that we’d all love to be involved in such a tremendous turning back to God, but this is something that cannot be manufactured or replicated. It is a move of God’s grace and mercy. I am put in mind of part of the Jonah story:
Jonah began his entry into the city [of Nineveh – capital of Assyria] and had finished only his first day of proclaiming “In forty days Nineveh will be overthrown”, when the people of Nineveh believed God… (Jonah 3:4-5)
There was a great turning to God in this Gentile city but it was apparently limited to that generation for, in the next generation, pagan Assyria came and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, taking them into exile.
It is a bit under a century since the revival in Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth, and it is all but forgotten. The question was considered in the article quoted above as to why the revival was limited. The answers:
1. There was a deep division between the fishing and farming communities so the revival did not penetrate inland.
2. The fishing community lived in awareness of danger and death so the eternal was more real to them.
3. God used un-ordained men like Jock Troup...The traditional churches did not approve of un-ordained men preaching. They saw them as un-educated and over-emotional.
4. God’s people seem to be able to forget a move of God very quickly.
Would God in grace and mercy grant a fresh revival in this part of East Anglia? Such a thing would be wonderful and I know that folks in various congregations continue to pray for such a move of God.
I have joined in with some of these times of prayer. However, back in June 2002, God turned my prayer for revival into an immediate prayer for survival. In 2003 when Clifford Denton and I were seeking God with no agenda, it was impressed on us to prepare for hard times. Recently it has been impressed on us to continue what we started back then…
John Quinlan
References
1 Green, JR, 1874. A Short History of the English People. Macmillan, p736. See also this previous article on Prophecy Today.
2 Revivals in Scotland in the 20th Century. Part 1 – 1905 and 1921-23. Oasis Church, Perth, Scotland.
