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What we need is a fresh vision of the Cross. And may that mighty, all-embracing love of His be no longer a fitful, wavering influence in our lives, but the ruling passion of our souls.
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Evan Roberts |
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I have found what I believe to be the highest kind of Christianity. I want to give my life, God helping me, to lead others, many others, to find it. Many have found it already, thank God, and they are doing what I am doing, in a large or little way, as God gives them light. And that is all there is to the revival, and all there is to me, my friend.
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Evan Roberts |
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for Roberts talks chiefly of God's love and of the great joy of living in obedience to that love.
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Evan Roberts |
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Evan Roberts speaks: "Let us see what God's Spirit will do for us in a quiet meeting. It did wonderful things at Lougher when no one sung or spoke." A few moments later all are kneeling in five minutes of silent prayer. The crowded room is still except for quick gasps of sobbing breath from those who are deeply moved. Here and there a half audible voice is mumbling inarticulate prayer. Deeper yet grows time silence and more impressive. Wrin..
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Evan Roberts |
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Personally, I think I have never met a man who appealed to me as being so completely consecrated to his cause as this young man of twenty-six years, trained in the colliery and at the "smithy." When one thinks of it, no young man of his years and native environment could have endured against so strong a tide of personal success unless he had an enduring grip upon mighty moorings."
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Evan Roberts |
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The vision is passing out into virtue, and men are paying their debts, and abandoning the public-house, and treating their horses well. Oh, my masters! Did you say the next Revival would be ethical? It is that, because it is spiritual, and you will never get an ethical revival except in this way.
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Evan Roberts |
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Begin to try and teach along that line; instead of treating our congregations as congregations to be instructed ever in holy things, treat them as men and women that are to be persuaded to holy things, and consecration, and Jesus Christ.
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Evan Roberts |
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I have tried to talk out of the tremendous sense that God is abroad, and I talk out of the desire that I cannot express--that somewhere, some when, somehow, He may put out his hand, and shake this city for the salvation of men.
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Evan Roberts |
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Why should I teach when the Spirit is teaching? What need have these people to be told that they are sinners? What they need is salvation. Do they not know it? It is not knowledge that they lack, but decision--action. And why should I control the meetings? The meetings control themselves, or rather the Spirit that is in them controls them.
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Evan Roberts |
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But one night, after I had been in great distress praying about this, I went to sleep, and at one o'clock in the morning suddenly I was waked up out of my sleep, and I found myself with unspeakable joy and awe in the very presence of the Almighty God. And for the space of four hours I was privileged to speak face to face with Him as a man speaks face to face with a friend. At five o'clock it seemed to me as if I again returned to earth.
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Evan Roberts |
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The story of the very first outbreak of the Revival traces it to the trembling utterance of a poor Welsh girl, who, at a meeting in a Cardigan village, was the first to rise and testify. "If no one else will, then I must say that I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart."
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Evan Roberts |
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There are no advertisements, no brass bands, no posters, no huge tents.
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Evan Roberts |
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There was absolutely nothing wild, violent, hysterical, unless it be hysterical for the laboring breast to heave with sobbing that cannot be repressed, and the throat to choke with emotion as a sense of the awful horror and shame of a wasted life suddenly bursts upon the soul.
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Evan Roberts |
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Now, what effect is this work producing upon men? First of all, it is turning Christians everywhere into evangelists.
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Evan Roberts |
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I have called Evan Roberts the so-called boy preacher, because he is neither a boy nor a preacher. He is a tall, graceful, good-looking young man of twenty-six, with a pleading eye and a most winsome smile. If he is a boy, he is a six-foot boy, and six-footers are usually past their boyhood. As he is not a boy, neither is he a preacher. he talks simply, unaffectedly, earnestly now and then, but he makes no sermons, and preaching is emphatic..
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Evan Roberts |
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The revival is borne along upon billowing waves of sacred song. It is the singing, not the preaching, that is the instrument which is most efficacious in striking the hearts of men.
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Evan Roberts |
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What is the character of this revival? It is a Church revival. I do not mean by that merely a revival among church members. It is that, but it is held in church buildings. Now, you may look astonished, but I have been saying for a long time that the revival which is to be permanent in the life of a nation must be associated with the life of the churches.
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Evan Roberts |
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soul has been concerned with the spiritual condition of the believers present, in their relation to God. Get the Church right with God, and then He will work through the Church on the unsaved. "Bend the Church, and save the world," is the watchword of this revival."
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Evan Roberts |
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There is in this revival a deep current of reality; when anything unreal creeps in, the power stops.
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Evan Roberts |
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A cynical, indifferent critic watching any one of these meetings would be forced to admit that the young man is sincere to the core; that he descends to no trick of gesture or word or act; that he is straightforward and simple to the last degree; that he does not try to force people against their will, and yet that in some way he draws all before him, not to himself, but to the Spirit of Whom he is the avowed disciple.
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Evan Roberts |
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There is nothing to which the most fastidious could object; men and women, old and young, take part, but there is no confusion, and when feeling is overpowering there is deep silence; but the tears are tears of joy, for it is of Calvary we sing and to Calvary we look. There are two things that used to be indispensable to us which we can do without now--a clock and an organ.
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Evan Roberts |
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And Evan Roberts, I believe, has said that he is glad that this is the case, for it proves that it is not Roberts, the man, his magnetism, or his personality that is so great an influence, but rather the Spirit at work in the meetings.
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Evan Roberts |
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He has something of the same feeling about the hymn singing, I am told. Much as he loves it himself, and music is in him to his very fingertips, be feels--I judge both from the hearsay and from watching him break into the midst of the singing when, in a way they have in Wales, they repeat over and over the same stirring melody--that too much singing moves only surface emotions and takes the congregations' mind from the deeper influence of p..
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Evan Roberts |
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Striking evidence of the effect of the revival in the villages surrounding Wrexham was given at the Wrexham County Petty Sessions last week, when the magistrates, who generally sit for two or three hours, concluded their business in an hour. There was not a single case of drunkenness to be tried. The coal miners working in the Rhosddu colliery sing hymns in descending the pit, and in ascending after their work. They also spend part of the t..
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Evan Roberts |
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The people are the meeting, not the preacher, once his short talk is ended, though his spirit remains to fire them to congregational rather than individual leadership.
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Evan Roberts |
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We've prayed for this awakening," cries a workman at one meeting. "We've seen the devils worst often; but now, at last, we are seeing Christ's best."
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Evan Roberts |