THE CAPE 1860/61 REVIVAL its Fore-runners, its Run-up and Aftermath

Updated 11 July 2011

THE CAPE 1860/61 REVIVAL
- its Fore-runners, its Run-up and Aftermath into the 20th Century

Contents
Page
Preface
Main abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Role of Prayer in Revivals
2. The Role of Scripture in Revivals
3. The Word as Dynamite
4. Deterrents of Revival
5. An Early Revival Model and its Spin-offs
6. The Moravian Revival links with America
7. The 18th Century Moravian-Methodist Revival
8. The first Mini-revivals at the Cape
9. Dawn of a new Era
10. Run-up to the Second Great American Awakening
11. Some 19th Century Revivals elsewhere
12. Cape 19th Century spiritual Renewal
13. The Cape Aftermath of the 1860 Revival
14. Revivals elsewhere around the Turn of the 20th Century
15. God is still on the Throne



Foreword

It was with great anticipation that I waited for Ashley’s manuscript.  I was not disappointed. Here is some good and thorough research, a great contribution to the subject of revivals in South Africa and especially the 1860 revival.

He combined well known and newly researched information and gives us a clearer picture of the past and the golden thread of what God has been doing and the place prayer has in it.  This book will bring hope into your heart when you read what God has been doing in the history of our nation. It is an honest approach to help us see the mistakes the Church and society in general made, but also how God intervened again and again.

The word revival is on the lips of everyone these days. Much of what people today will see as revival, does not compare with the types of revival this book describes. Too often the church is satisfied with superficial manifestations. Many times the church will experience the first stirrings of revival and does not pray until revival comes in its fulness.

There is no doubt in my mind that nothing less than a deep and powerful revival in all the provinces, all the churches, will bring thorough change in our nation. There is a lack of power in the church and that lack of power can be seen in the extent in which the church influences society at the moment.

We are living in a time where we need to go beyond defending and accusing - looking for excuses and explanations.  It is time for repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, compassionate outreach and balanced Christian action, which include reaching out to the poor and needy and preaching the gospel of salvation. Love covers a multitude of sins.  It is time for intensified prayer, laying hold of God (Isaiah 64:7), raising watchmen to pray night and day (Luke 18:7; Isaiah 62:6-7; Lamentations 2:18-19), crying to God for the healing of the land and for the unsaved around us. It is time to pray until we have prayed through, until we see real revival, until the power of God is at work in the churches to the extent that pastors do not have to say “do you sense God’s presence here”, but when everyone will know it and will walk in holy fear of that presence.

Understanding history helps us to know how to go into the future. Over and over again, when God called on people to turn back to Him, He asked them to look back and see what He did in the past. What He did in the past, He can do again. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

We live in a generation that does not know the great works of God anymore. In Judges 2:10 we read: Another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel. We are now in such a time.

May God give us a revival of prayer where people will lay hold of God and His covenant promises and may we find faithfull people that will pray until we have prayed through!


Thank you Ashley for your service to the church of Jesus Christ in South Africa!

Ephesians 3:20

Bennie Mostert



Preface

Already at the early versions of this manuscript I regarded the Cape revival of 1860 as the pristine origin and forerunner of spiritual renewal that was starting to manifest itself in recent years in our country, I pray that this book might be useful as a contribution to the 150th anniversary of the tremendous spiritual revival at the Cape.
The whole Christian world is greatly indebted to Andrew Murray (jr.), one of South Africa’s greatest sons. However, the 1860 revival has probably been linked much too closely to his name. It was clearly part of a worldwide move of the Holy Spirit. Many sparks had been igniting the likes of North America from 1858, Wales and Ireland in 1859 and Australia in the 1860s. At the Cape itself, there were a few fore-runners in the decades prior to the revival and also a few other great men of God who worked alongside or closely with Andrew Murray. I try to highlight their contributions in God's special visitation of the 1860s and thereafter, especially that of Ds. Gottlieb van der Lingen.
I deem it necessary to explain in a few words what I think revival is and what it is not. Contending that revival is much more than “happy clappy” church services where people just carry on unchanged after the event, I suggest that concern to address injustice towards the poor and needy - along with compassionate sensitivity to those who are persecuted for the sake of the Gospel - could be a good litmus test to discern how deep and effective a ‘revival’ has been. Revival surely includes the spiritual awakening of church members. That is why the terms awakening (from awaken), revival (from revive) - are often used interchangeably. As the Church becomes renewed and revitalized, large numbers of unbelievers are changed and society is transformed as a result. I take for granted that out-dated traditions, which do not affect the core of biblical Christianity, will be side-lined or removed in the process.
Furthermore, revival should not be thought of as an abnormal manifestation of spiritual gifts, but rather a powerful manifestation of the normal work of the Holy Spirit, to awaken, convict, convert and confirm. (Besides remorseful repentance, revival is sometimes accompanied by unusual bodily movements and falling down. It has been suggested that this happens when the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit is so powerful that He literally overwhelms mortal flesh.) An awareness of individual and national sins, followed by confession and restitution where possible, have been important conduits of revival down the ages. A criterion of a genuine revival is furthermore that it should have a lasting effect. In the case of the great global awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, they even flowed into the next ones, respectively more than a hundred and years later.

On the national front, I speak about ‘Coloured’ people throughout this book. In a country as ours where racial classification has caused such damage, I am aware that the designation Coloured has given offence to the group into which I have been classified. For this reason, I put ‘Coloured’ consistently between inverted commas and with a capital C when I refer to the racial group. To the other races I refer as ‘Black’ and ‘White’ and 'Indian' respectively, with a capital B, W and I, the former to denote that they are not normal colours and the latter one refer to persons from Indian descent, but born and bred in this country.
For the revivals elsewhere, I have used the internet quite extensively. Because that was not my own research, I have not used footnotes there. It would have been quite difficult for me to verify them anyway. For more bibliographical detail of my own research and quotes, I refer the reader to my unpublished manuscripts Mysterious Ways of God and The Mother of the Nation, to be accessed at .

Ashley Cloete
Cape Town, May 2011


1. The Role of Prayer in Revivals

Our Lord demonstrated by his example the priority of prayer and the necessity of being in God’s presence in real worship. We read that Jesus Christ communicated with His Father constantly. Every great crisis in His life was preceded by special prayer. He spent a whole night in prayer before He gathered His disciples around Him. D.L. Moody, the great American evangelist at the end of the 19th century (Prevailing Prayer, ​​ p.12) highlighted the fact that ‘four times the answer came right down from heaven while the Saviour prayed’.1
On more than one occasion he left the masses standing, to be alone with His Father (for example Mark 6:46). Jesus modelled solitude as an important and strategic component. At five points of crisis in his life he spent time alone with the Father – before the start of his earthly ministry in the desert (Matthew 14:13); before choosing his disciples (Luke 6: 12f); when he received the news of the death of John the Baptist; after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:23).
The Master literally overturned the tables of those who would dare to defile the Temple; it had to be used as a house of prayer (Matthew 21:12, 13). He praised Mary for sitting in His presence, rebuking the zealous, diligent Martha, who surely meant to do her service ‘for Him’ (Luke 10:39-42). He encouraged his disciples, and us, to learn from Him and take His yoke upon us. As an example of prayer that is heard by God, the contrite publican is cited as an example, in contrast to the self-righteous Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14). In the teaching of the Master, for example in the Sermon on the Mount, various aspects of prayer are highlighted. In fact, prayer takes a central role in this series of teachings.

Prayer unites
A point to note in the Lord’s teaching is the corporate emphasis. In the lesson which got the name ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, we would search in vain for words like I, me, mine. Thus we read: ‘Our Father...´. ‘Your name...’, ‘Your Kingdom, ‘Your will’; ‘give us… our daily bread´ ... etc. Prayer itself unites, more than anything else. It cannot be emphasized enough that it should be our priority to counter Christian disunity with all our might, last not least through our prayers, thus following the example of our Mas­ter (John 17:11 and 17:21-23). There the master prayed among other things in his passionate intercession, the real “lord's Prayer', ‘...that they may be brought to complete unity.’ The first half of the Decalogue, the so-called Ten Commandments, refers to our relationship to the Almighty and the second half to our relationship with fellow human beings.
D.L. Moody asserted interestingly that ‘the Lord’s prayer, more properly, is the one in the seventeenth chapter of John’ (Prevailing Prayer, p.13). He went on to observe not only that ‘this is the longest prayer on record that Jesus made’ but also that ‘our Master’s prayers were short when offered in public ... Long prayers in public are too often not prayers at all’. Quite interesting is Moody’s observation that ‘… prayers that brought immediate answers were generally brief.’
When one prays regularly for someone of whom one is critical, one’s attitude to such a person is apt to change as well, apart from the fact that prayer will change that person too. Visser ‘t Hooft has put it so aptly: ‘...our participation is, in the first place, by opening ourselves through prayer... The vertical dimension is the fundamental one and determines and conditions the other dimension’ (Visser ‘t Hooft, The pressure of our common calling, 1959:81).

Nehemiah as a Model of compassionate Intercession
Nehemiah qualified for leadership through his com­passion and concern for the city of Jerusalem when he heard of its deso­late state. ‘When I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days; and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven’ (Nehemiah 1:4). We read how he prayed day and night for 4 months before asking the king’s permission to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. (Significantly, the wall was built in only 52 days!)
We are indebted to Brother Andrew, the Dutch founder of Open Doors, who highlighted – perhaps even exaggerating a bit – the value of searching and piercing questions by Nehemiah in his book Building in a broken World.

By asking the right questions
we can be led to prayerful action

The Dutch founder of Open Doors showed that by asking the right questions we can be led to prayerful action. Intensive listening creates the basis for getting involved in a meaningful way. Nehemiah displayed in his life the balance between faith and action, to be prayerfully active in the Lord’s service without becoming activist. Every step was important, from listening, waiting, prayer, repentance, organization and planning. Nehemiah did not rush into action. He allowed the message to sink in. We can only really minister into needs when we experience something of the depth of the misery in our own hearts.
But Nehemiah also demonstrated how spiritual life invariably leads to battle, to spiritual warfare of the highest order when prayer and action goes hand in hand. He did not rely on second-hand information. He went to explore for himself, discovering how the condition of the wall of Jerusalem was symptomatic of the spiritual state of the nation.
Nehemiah was very much aware of his own inadequacy. Two prayers of confession are recorded (Nehemiah 1: 5-11 and 9:6-39) in which he includes his own sin and that of his family. In chapter 6 verse 9 he agonizes in view of the opposition of enemies who opposed the building of the wall: ‘but now, o God, strengthen my hands’.

Jesus in the Mould of ancient Prayer Warriors
As a man of prayer, Jesus very much displayed his Jewish background. He will surely have known about Nehemiah’s intercession. Our Lord may have been reminded of the prayerful Nehemiah as he pondered over the special city and its religious leaders. After his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the establishment leadership was bent on silencing him, by force if need be. Instead, Jesus shut them up convincingly, answering all their questions (Matthew 21:23 - 22:45). In a (com)passionate discourse the Lord lashed out at a part of the religious establishment with the seven-fold woe: ‘Woe you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites’…: The Master would possibly have to speak to modern leaders of His Body in a similar way. Jesus ended his discourse with the compassionate divinely inspired words that appear to come directly from the throne of God: ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem…, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing …’ (Matthew 23:37).
Our Lord Jesus rose very early in the morning to pray. In Luke 6:12 it is reported how he had prayed all night. It is recorded about His agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of His crucifixion, that His sweat was like blood drops (Luke 22:44). This has precedents in the Hebrew Scriptures.2 Throughout the ‘Old Testament’ we see how God inter­vened after intercessory prayer. Abraham interceded for Lot and his family (Genesis 18:23ff). Moses was a type of Christ, prepared to sacrifice his own life: ‘...forgive their sin - and if not, then blot me out of the book you have written’ (Exodus 32:32). The fervent prayer and cries of agony to God are mentioned as the fore-runners of the deliverance of Israel from the yoke of Pharaoh (Exodus 2:23). This is also the case at the birth of arch fathers and other biblical personalities, after their mothers had been barren (Genesis 30:6; 1 Samuel 1:11). When Hezekiah called on God in desperation on his death-bed, he was given another lease of life, fifteen years extra (2 Kings 20:3, 6).
David called himself a man of prayer (Psalm 109:4). Moving confessions of Nehemiah (Chapter 1) and Daniel (Chapter 9) showed the way how intercession for the sins of one’s people could be done. Paul was also clearly someone who prayed a lot, often interced­ing for fellow Chris­tians, especially for those who were going through difficult patches. In Colossians 4:12 Epaphras is mentioned as one who wrestled in prayer, literally agonizing in prayer for fellow believers. James (5:17) makes a point to stress that Elijah was prayerful. Yet, the apostle specifically stressed that Elijah was a man just like us.
Prayer for Workers into the Harvest
The Lord exhorted the disciples and by implication also us, to pray for workers to enter the ripe harvest field (Matthew 9:38). This petition is to-day more actual than ever before. Through the increased prayer for the 10/40 window, the unchristianized geographical area of Africa and Eurasia between 10 and 40 degrees North of the equator, big areas of the world where no or little mission work has been done up to now, have now started opening up for Gospel missionary outreach. Many workers will be needed. We should take note however, that Jesus raised this clarion call of prayer for workers after He had been moved by compassion, when He saw that the multitude were like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). The need is great for missionaries who have holistic compas­sion for people, men and women who are concerned about their spiritual as well as their temporal needs.
Our prayer for the workers is very much determined by our harvest vision. If our sight is blurred by cultural, denominational, sectarian or any other prejudice, we might not even see the harvest on our door-step. In John 4 it is recorded how the disciples were so preoccupied with the temporal need for bread, that they over-looked the harvest of Samaritans. Perhaps our prayer for workers should also include the request for healing of our ‘eye defects’, our shortsightedness or even our spiritual blindness, so that we may discern what the Lord has on his heart.

United Prayer
The Scriptures attach a special significance to united prayer. A special case is mentioned in Scripture when the exiles returned to Jerusalem. There they had to discover to their dismay that those who had remained in the city had joined the detestable practices of the pagan neighbouring tribes (Ezra 9:2) and that the religious leaders had in fact led the way in the unfaithfulness to Yahweh, evident through wide-spread intermarriage. The scribe Ezra led the idolatrous backsliding Israelites through visible prostration and audible passionate confession on behalf of the nation. The assembled congregation was moved deeply. An atmosphere of remorse ensued.
Next to individual and private prayer, The Acts of the Apostles adds the dimension of corporate prayer. Jesus himself taught both tenets. He encouraged prayer that is not visible – the closet variation to be alone with the Father – but he also said ‘where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them’ (Matthew 18:20). The presence of Jesus in the fellowship of his praying disciples gives united prayer its power. Corporate prayer should ideally be ‘of one mind’. Andrew Murray (With Christ in the School of Prayer) highlighted this aspect of prayer. In this booklet he notes that the object prayed for should be a matter of distinct united desire. Down the years revivals were preceded by prayer as a rule, often because believers took the cue from the pre-Pentecost believers being together in this way (Acts 1:13).
We also discover how the element of crisis is used by God to spawn urgent prayer. With the first church this not only occurred during the days preceding Pentecost, but also when they were persecuted (Acts 4:23). God answered their united prayer miraculously in the case of Peter (12:12). Prior to this, the apostle James had been killed. Thus, even combined prayer is not always answered according to our expectations and hopes. God is sovereign.
Due to corporate and united prayer, incredible political changes have occurred in many parts of the world. Release of Chris­tians who had been imprisoned for their faith has been affected through it, but some of the persecuted were also killed, their churches and houses burned down. This has been happening in certain countries like Nigeria and Indonesia in recent times.

A close Walk with the Lord
A common element with all great reformers of the Church3 and instruments of revivals has been their close relationship with the Lord. The renowned Czech Bishop Jan Amos Comenius wrote a booklet Unum Necessarium (the one necessary thing)4 in which he suggested that Restoration and renewal of man and humanity can take place via the one necessary thing, sitting at the feet of Jesus Christ, the restorer of His Church. Possibly he wanted to highlight the choice of Mary - compared to that of her sister Martha (Luke 10:38-42), to sit at the feet of Jesus. Psalm 27:4 expresses the wish of the Psalmist as the one thing he desires - to be in God’s presence forever.
Paul, the missionary apostle, came up with a special variation of the ‘one thing’ theme, aknowledging humbly at the end of his life that he had not arrived: ‘but this one thing I do, forgetting those things are behind and straining towards what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal... (Phillipians 3:15f).

Confession as a revival Instrument
The Bible has no problem to narrate King David’s moral failures, and his penitence is highlighted. The beautiful Psalm 51 has become the example of a contrite heart ‘. Wash away all my iniquity… Against you … have I sinned…’ (verse 2-4). The ‘New Testament’ speaks the same language, namely that God forgives generously if we confess our sins. He is ever ready to purify us (1 John 1:9). Confession is an important element of prayer as a tool towards revival. The rebirth of the Jewish nation after the exile was prepared by the intercessory prayers of Nehemiah (1:6-9), Ezra (9:6-13) and Daniel (9:9-19). All three of them concentrated on the spiritual condition of the people and confession of sins. In revivals through the ages, prayer was the basis. Prayer brought about a con­sciousness of sin, which invariably led to confession and restitution. Andrew Murray stated: ‘an essential element in a true missionary revival will be a broken heart and a contrite spirit in view of past neglect and sin’ (Murray, 1901[1979]:150). The Stuttgart Confession in Germany after World War II and the Rustenburg Confession of 1990 in our own country can be noted as two examples in 20th century history where this important element of prayer spawned a turn around of the respective coun­tries.5 In the arguably most well known recent major revival in South Africa, in Kwa Siza Bantu (Kwazulu Natal), Erlo Stegen, the leader, had been going through an extended period of prayer, but the Holy Spirit could only break through when he confessed his racial pride, lacking neigh­bourly love and other sin. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the late 1990s surely was a special instrument to help heal many apartheid-inflicted wounds. In South Africa - and in the West at large - another confession would nevertheless be appropriate: confession of and repentance because of a system of economic oppression and exploitation of the poor. This is still as sinful as in the days of King Solomon. The prophet Amos discovered the terrible oppression of the poor behind the facade of affluence and great economic growth. He discerned that the extravagant lifestyle of the rich was based on exploita­tion of the poor (Amos 6:1-7).
Strategic Prayer
In all ventures, strategic prayer should take an all-important role. Not only for the present mission­aries ‘on the field’ is it absolutely indispensable that believers back home cover them in prayer. Strategic prayer for the opening up of new mission fields should also be practiced. ‘Bible tourism’ should clearly be seen as a very limited solution to bring God’s Word to China’s masses in stead of freedom of religion. Chris­tians should be taught to use ‘chain reac­tions’ of prayer, for example for visa restrictions in certain countries to be lifted so that Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists could be reached. ‘Spiritual warfare’ for the masses of the Far East should be on our prayer agenda as a matter of prior­ity. North Korea remains a major prayer challenge.
Our strategic prayers should definitely include the prophetic wish that Israel and the Jews might recognize whom they had pierced (Zechariah 12:10). In different quarters a conviction has grown that a mighty roar of evangelis­tic and missionary activity will come to pass once this hap­pens. In this regard it surely remains an exciting prospect to consider the grand job the Jews did in the first century, bringing the Gospel to remote places such as India and North West China by 61 CE.
In modern times Jewish-background believers have demonstrated how valid this principle is. The Jewish-raised Richard Wurmbrand exposed the atrocities of Communism like few others. Concerned with the possibility that Wurmbrand would be forced to undergo further imprisonment, the Norwegian Mission to the Jews and the Hebrew Christian Alliance negotiated with Communist authorities for his release from Romania. He was convinced by underground church leaders to leave the country and become a voice for the persecuted church. This he did for decades, becoming next to Brother Andrew the two main catalysts for the exposure of the true nature of Marxist Communism.6 In our own country the Jewish-background Jarrod Davidoff has been leading thousands of young people and children to Christ in his campaigns in recent months and years.
Perhaps the massive removal of the veil from the eyes of Jews coul the two eldest sons of Ishmael (Genesis 25:13). The rediscovery that Isaac and Ishmael, the two eldest sons of Abraham, buried their father together (Genesis 25:9) could be a catalyst towards reconciliation. A prophetic word could include the possibility that the religious clerics and leaders of Islam may receive special revelation of who Jesus is. Let us pray that Muslims might discover how the message of the Cross has been consistently omitted in the Qur’an. May Jews and Muslims study the Bible and discover the mystery of Christ that has been hidden for generations from their respective communities.
In the run-up to Lausanne III in October 2010 it was noted that the venue of the Congress is equidistant to the suburbs Sea Point and Bo-Kaap, respectively major strongholds of Judaism and Islam in the country. Capetonian pastors started looking if they could perhaps give input towards a confession expressing regret and offer an apology on behalf of Christians for the side-lining and persecution of Jews by Christians and that a Christian priest and other theologians from the same background misled Muhammad at the foundations of Islam.
Reverend Ken Joseph, an Assyrian believer who was born and bred in Japan, pointed out that the bulk of Christians in Iraq are Assyrians. According to him, Christian nations have a debt towards the Assyrians. There definitely is some substance to this assertion.
The prophecy of Isaiah 19:24+25 might even be an eschatological pointer towards a combination of Israel, Egypt and Assyria (Iraq) becoming a blessing to the nations. At any rate, the prayer ministry of Christians around the globe will be a determining factor within God’s sovereign will, because ‘God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son so that no one should perish...’ (John 3:16)

2. The Role of Scripture in Revivals

The prophets knew that God’s Word was the vehicle to bring His rebellious and back-slidden people back to Him. Repeatedly the divine promise is connected to obedience to the Word and its teachings on the one hand and punishment for disobedience on the other. Down the ages the preached Word was divinely used to call back-sliding Christians back to God and His ways.

The Purpose of the Scriptures
At this point the purpose of the Scriptures should be emphasized: guidance and correction. David exclaimed: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105). Paul, the apostle, advised Timothy: “Every Scripture is ... useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
Paul emphasised that the Word should dwell richly in us (Colossians 3:16). Of course, this does not mean that we have to imitate Ezekiel who literally seems to have eaten the scrolls (3:3).7 It does mean however that we may be radical. In fact, Paul encouraged us in a similar way that Christ should dwell in us and from there we must be rooted8 and established in love (Ephesians 3:17). The Word in us has the quality of purification. Therefore John can say that whosoever remains in Christ, sins not (1 John 3:6). There is of course always the possibility of lapses, when one leaves the close communion with Christ. This is the time when the enemy loves to strike, when we are overcome by sin (Galatians 6:1). There is a definite difference between wilful and accidental sinning. However, confession and the conscious refraining of sinful behaviour (Proverbs 28:13) opens a clean slate to the road of victori­ous living in the footsteps of the resurrected Son of God (1 John 1:9 ‘if we confess our sin … He … will purify us from all unrighteousness’).

The Challenge of Scripture
Obedience is honoured by God, but compromise is seen as disobedience, as sin which incurs the wrath and punishment of the Almighty. It was basically the disobedience of Adam and Eve to His Word which led to their fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The disobedience of Saul was linked to impatience when he could not wait on Samuel. This caused the divine rejection of him as King of Israel. Even sacrifice is rejected by God if it is mixed with sinful behaviour, if it is not accompanied by remorse and repentance (1 Samuel 13:12ff). Ritual animal sacrifice and all ancestry worship are regarded as watering down the Word of God, whereas the appropriate reaction should be respect for God’s Word (Isaiah 66:2,3). Jesus actually told the Pharisees that they nullify the power of the Word through their traditions (Mark 7:13).
Obedience to God’s Word is sometimes required even when it seems completely illogical. Faith, trust in God and obedience are closely linked to each other. When Abraham chose to oppose the idolatry in their home and even to leave his home region, his father Terah would have been very unhappy. Because Abraham believed, against all odds in the unseen God, it was divinely honoured - reckoned unto righteousness (Genesis 15:6). At the next major crossroad of his life, Abraham left early in the morning to sacrifice his unique, His one and only son (Genesis 22:3). Was this pre-meditated to prevent being influenced again by his wife or was it radical obedience after the earlier compromises? Abraham might even have been confused somewhat by the divine command, which would have brought him back to the level of his pagan compatriots who offered children to the idol Molog in the fire. We can only speculate what thoughts may have gone through Abraham’s mind.

God’s Moulding Process
God often uses affliction, disappointment and trials to mould us. The spiritual growth of Joseph in this regard underlines this principle. As an arrogant young man he became haughty because of the divine gift that he had received: the interpretation of dreams. After he had landed in prison and after using this gift once again in respect of the butler and baker, he seemed to have learned the lesson well. When Joseph was summoned to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh, he replied humbly: I cannot do it by myself, but God will tell you what it means (Genesis 41:16).
Psalm 66 highlights an interesting anomaly. God cannot be put in a box. God brought the Israelites through the waters of the Red Sea and he saved individuals like Lot from fire. God used destructive waters and purifying fire to strengthen and mould David – just like Abraham and the other arch fathers before him. Every follower of the Lord is treated like silver in the crucible. In Malachi 3:2 the Almighty is compared with a goldsmith who purifies the special metal from all impurities in the red-hot fire.
God had to reprimand Joseph and Moses, using exile after they had acted in the flesh. Yet, His hand was on them, guiding and chastening them through suffering. It is especially hard to witness our loved ones suffer. But then, it is so wonderful when that what Bishop Retief (Tragedy to triumph, 1994:59) calls ‘the Joseph principle’, comes into play: ‘...You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives’ (Genesis 50:19-20). In fact, earlier Joseph had said to them: ‘do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you’ (Genesis 45:5). Joseph thus was in a special way a pointer to Jesus. He was a saviour.
In the ‘New Testament’ Peter’s denial of Jesus before his crucifixion was part and parcel of the divine preparation to make out of him the rock on which the Master could build his church. Paul was a young devout Jew with a misdirected zeal when the resurrected Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). He had to be moulded and shaped before God could use him. This process covered at least twelve years. This should make us think deeply before sending young people on missionary outreaches with very little preparation.

Wrongful Enmity between the Descendants of Isaac and Ishmael
We detect the divine hand - especially in the light of the constant enmity between the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael up to this day - when we note that both Joseph and Moses were rescued by Ishmaelites. Before that the two sons had buried their father together (Genesis 25:9) – a sign of reconciliation.
The Midianite traders (Genesis 37:25, 28) who pulled Joseph out of the cistern were called the descendants of Ishmael. Moses spent the years after his flight from Egypt in Midian. This was a time when these ‘Ishmaelites’ seemed not to have been regarded as Israel’s enemies. Moses’ father-in-law Jethro was a Midianite priest with whom he co-operated without major reservations or hassles. Jethro actually ‘was delighted to hear about all the good things the Lord had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians’ (Exodus 19:9). And Moses gladly accepted the advice of Jethro to delegate the work, which had become too much for him to accomplish alone (Exodus 19:24). That the Midianites became enemies of Israel was apparently not because of their religion, but because of their idolatry. In this regard, Israel was however no better. Moses and so many prophets after him had to rebuke the Israelites on this very score.

The Father often gives us more than one Chance
To the same end of moulding, God used a worm to teach the prophet Jonah that he was selfish and without compassion towards the Ninevites. How gracious of the Father that he gives us a second chance, yes sometimes even a third and a fourth one, to bring us back to His purpose for us. The biblical condition is remorse and repentance. In 1 John 1:9 we read: If we confess ours sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
We should be thankful for the ‘great fish’ - the pits of despair and tribulation that bring us back to our senses. We should praise the Lord for the storms, the troubles that focus our faith and give us opportunity to share the Good News with those who might not be our first choice, but who are God’s challenge for us.
Jonah thought that Nineveh would have no time for God. Christians too easily assume that certain people groups are resistant to the Gospel. Jonah had to learn that it was not only the city of Nineveh that had to repent. He himself and especially his attitude to the Ninevites had to change. We as Christian Capetonians might still be very surprised by the reaction of Muslims and Jews to the Gospel if our own attitude changes to one of love, compassion and humility.

A Link between Suffering and Obedience
One of the spiritual lessons strange to the rational (Western) mind is the link between suffering and obedience. Already in the Hebrew Scriptures biblical personalities had to learn obedience, albeit often through trial and error. Biblical personalities knew that choices for God often incurred the displeasure and even wrath of their family and countrymen. When Abraham chose to oppose the idolatry in their home and even to leave his home region, his father Terah would have been very unhappy. He could even have been angry with Abraham because of this.
Similarly, Moses had to be severely reprimanded – almost becoming the victim of divine wrath because of his disobedience – after initially offering various excuses for not being able to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Furthermore, his siblings were very much upset when Moses married an African, a Cushite woman. But he had received divine confirmation for this move. He would have known that such a step of obedience was not prone to harvest elation, joy and affirmation from friends and countrymen.
To obey God, Gideon needed the cover of night to destroy the Baal idol in their home (Judges 6:27). The obedience of Daniel’s three friends to the divine command brought them literally into the fire, the furnace of a pagan King. In the case of Daniel, his faithful prayerful obedience caused him to land in the company of hungry lions.
It should be a sobering thought that one of the reasons for the anger of the Jews at the teaching of Jesus was his opposition to their proud national­ist thoughts. According to the Gospel of Luke (chapter 4), He referred positively to other nations in his sermon in the syna­gogue of Nazareth. This was obviously not to the liking of his synagogue audience. The initial excitement about the home-coming of their renowned prodigy, and amazement at the words of the son of Joseph (4:22) - turned sour when Jesus referred to the widow of Sidon, a foreigner and Naaman, the Syrian military officer.
When His followers wanted to crown Him King (John 6:15), the Master refused it, to be ultimately mockingly hailed as 'King of the Jews' with a crown of thorns. ‘Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he had to learn from experience what it was like to obey, when obeying meant suffering’ (Hebrews 5:8).
By far not everyone was spared persecution after the conscious choice of obedience. Second century martyr Bishop Polycarp became so much the model that Tertullian was led to proclaim the blood of the martyrs to be the seed of the church. The truth of Tertullian’s adage can be easily verified in the lives of people like Jan Hus from Prague, who died on the fire stake in Constance in July 1415. Of the great personalities of late medieval church history, Martin Luther was the exception rather than the rule, when he was spared the experience of the martyr’s death, but he was close enough to it. Of John Knox it is not widely known how he suffered. Even less known is the run-up to it, including Patrick Hamilton's six-hour ordeal of burning on the stake because of the inclement weather at that moment. John Wesley was beaten by ruffians that had been incited by Anglican Church leaders. More than once he was left for dead after this rough treatment.
Already as a boy, teenager and young man Count Zinzendorf was mocked and derided because of his choices for the Gospel. In stead of following in the footsteps of his late father to become an influential minister of the King of Saxony, he took it in his stride to become almost a nothing. And then he was banished for supporting refugee believers.


3. The Word as Dynamite

The Church of the Middle Ages remained in the darkness because the Word was not only obscured, but also hidden from the masses on purpose. Only priests were allowed to read the Bible. By way of contrast, in recent years we have seen how the mere translation of (parts of) the Word into the spoken language of previously unreached people groups - be it on paper or through audio tape cassettes and CDs - have changed the lives of thousands dramatically.

The Morning Star of the Reformation
The first hand-written English language manuscripts were produced in the 1380's AD by John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, scholar, and theologian. Wycliffe was well-known throughout Europe for his opposition to the teaching of the organized Church, which he believed to be contrary to the Bible. With the help of his followers, called the Lollards, and his assistant Purvey, and many other faithful scribes, Wycliffe produced many English language manuscript copies of the scriptures. They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe.
Wycliffe wanted to see his ideas actualized. His fundamental belief was that the Church should be poor, as in the days of the apostles. Whereas it would be not completely in line with the Word to make a dogma out of a statement along those lines, both in 1 Samuel 15:22f and Collossians 3:5 a link is being laid between materialism and idolatry. That the first people to oppose the theses of Wycliffe were monks of those orders that held possessions, is thus not surprising. On this basis Jan Hus aroused the rank and file Czech opposition in Prague that would ultimately lead to the start of the Moravian and bohemian opposition against the religious oppression from Rome. Another few decades further Martin Luther got the masses of German peasants on his side against Papal abuse.
Small movements in the Middle Ages Small movements in the medieval period intended to increase the availability of the Holy Bible in vernacular languages. The most well known movements were the Lollards in England and the Hussites in Bohemia. John Wycliffe and Jan Hus translated the Holy Bible into English and Czech respectively. The Lollards were the followers of Wycliffe, and the Hussites the followers of Hus. These movements were deemed to be heretical by the Papacy. Lollards and Hussites placed a great deal of emphasis upon the centrality of the gospels, which is why the availability of vernacular translations was so important. In particular the Hussites held a great deal in common with the Protestants of the 16th century.
The Word in the Run-up to the Reformation and thereafter
It belongs to well-known Church History that it was the rediscovery of the Word through people like Wycliffe and Martin Luther which caused a major wave of spiritual renewal in Europe. The role of the invention of printing was of course paramount in the disseminating of the Word. In this regard it is good to be reminded that exactly this was the motivation of Johan Gutenberg.9 When he discerned that the Christian truths were kept imprisoned in a few manu­s­cripts, he wanted to give wings to the truth. Aided by the development of mass production of the Scriptures, the special contribution of Luther to the Reformation was that he made the written Word accessible to the rank and file German follower of our Lord.

The Truth in Love
Martin Luther, on the other hand, might have fared even better if he had taken the Pauline advice more seriously to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). His courageous bold stand is laudable,10 but we should not forget that an arrogant attitude spawned rifts which caused great damage to the unity of Christianity. Luther was not even prepared to network with the Swiss Reformers.11 (Compare Luther’s attitude with the clear stand of people like Francis of Assisi and women in the Middle Ages. Even popes went to them for counsel.12) This should not be construed however as support for scripturally indefensible doctrines like papal infallibility ex cathedra (from the papal chair) or worship of Mary as the ‘mother of God’.
It has been reported that Count Zinzendorf, founder of the renewed Unitas Fratrum (Unity of the Brethren), commonly known as the Moravian Church, was getting challenged in his faith in the Holy Scriptures from a very early age. He became deeply involved with questions around the authority of God’s Word from the age of seven (Beyreuther, 1962:84). He discovered that whoso­ever is prepared to face uncomfortable questions and then take a step of faith, can only grow through it spiritually. Zinzendorf had the courage to speak bluntly of tran­scription errors, of geographical and chrono­logical mis­takes in Scripture. He saw it as no major tragedy that the apostles erred in their immi­nent expectation of the second coming of the Lord. He even proceeded to say: ‘Misunderstood prophecies can and should not be defended, but they should rather be pre-empted and acknowledged’ (Cited in Beyreuther, 1962:89).

An autocratic Missionary Pioneer
Count Zinzendorf regarded it the privilege of the pilgrim church – after they had been exiled from Saxony - to be salt - and to bless other churches. The banishment of the Moravians from Saxony contributed to the spread of the gospel in many directions. Also inside the various German states blessing was imparted, e.g. to the Lueneburg Heath in northern Germany from where a revival was ignited from 1846 -1849.
Pastor Louis (or "Ludwig") Harms was born in 1808 in the Lueneburg Heath in northern Germany. He spent much of his youth in the village of Hermannsburg where his father was a pastor of the Lutheran Church. Ludwig was a gifted preacher and teacher and attracted many. He was however treated with suspicion by Church leaders who were afraid that be was not in line with their teachings. So they kept him out of office for l4 years, and he had to work as a private teacher. Finally, in 1844, he was called to become an assistant to his ageing father in Hermannsburg. Immediately, the congregation experienced a revival. The village became a centre of spiritual renewal for a wide area. After succeeding his father in 1849 as the pastor of the Evangelical Church in Hermannsburg, Louis Harms also opened a seminary for young men eager to be trained as missionaries and to share the Gospel with those who had not heard it.
When the first group of students graduated from the seminary, Harms wanted to send them to Africa. To this end he decided to build a special ship. The missionaries sailing on the 'Candace' were to bring the Gospel to Africa, specifically to the Oromo in the south of Ethiopia. After the slave trade king of East Africa, Sultan Seyyid Said of Zanzibar, had refused them permission to land at Mombasa (now in Kenya), they returned to South Africa, starting a mission station near Greytown in Natal that they gave the name Hermannsburg. That was the first mission station of the new agency that the autocratic Ludwig Harms started, seed sowed for a revival in that region that preceeded the great 1860 awakening of the Western Cape.

An anti-Colonialist Visionary
A valid question would be: why build a special ship to reach the East African coast, when British ships went there from time to time? There were two reasons. The one was that Louis Harms did not want his mission to be associated with British colonialism. He specifically stated that one of the aims of missionary work should be to strengthen Africans to be able to withstand European colonial advances. So, for him, missionary work was to oppose colonialism. The other reason was that he wanted to send 16 men at one time and later more, and in the long run it could be cheaper to send them by their own ship. Half of the 16 he wanted to be ordained preachers, the other eight were to be lay missionaries - carpenters, builders, artisans of different trades, and farmers. Furthermore, all ordained missionaries also had to possess a profession as artisans or farmers, and would have to be used to manual labor. This reveals the special vision of Pastor Louis Harms. He wanted his missionaries not only to be preachers, but also to do development work.

Xhosa and Zulu Bible Translations We have taken note of the revitalizing power and influence of the Word. Taking this into account, we are not surprised any more that there were revivals in Kwazulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape before it broke out in the Western Cape. Dr van der Kemp, the missionary pioneer of the London Missionary Society, started with Xhosa translation attempts of Scripture at the beginning of the 19th century. John Bennie was the earliest Xhosa linguist. Associated with the Glasgow Missionary Society (GMS) in 1816, he cut short his studies and sailed to SA as a catechist on the ship Woodlark, which brought supplies for 1820 Settlers. Arriving in 1821 he brought with him a printing press. Ordained only in 1831 by the first presbytery of Kaffraria and raised to full missionary status, John Bennie was to play a lasting part in the translation of the Bible into Xhosa. In 1826 he wrote 'A Systematic Vocabulary of the Kaffrarian Language in 2 parts, to which is prefixed an introduction to Kaffrarian Grammar' - this was the first of several landmarks in grammatical and lexicographal work during the first half of the 19th century. The Xhosa 'Old Testament', mainly translated by John W Appleyard of the Wesleyan Missionary Society and Albert Kropf of the Berlin Missionary Society, was printed in sections on the missionary press at Mount Coke, a small town near King Williams Town in the Cape between 1857 to 1859. The complete Xhosa Bible had by now been translated into Xhosa. On 20 December 1835 the missionaries George Champion, Aldin Grout and Newton Adams arrived in Port Natal (present-day Durban) from Cape Town on The Dove and proceeded to the capital of Dingane at Mgungundhlovu to obtain the Zulu king’s permission to work among his subjects. The king allowed Champion and Grout to open a mission station in August 1936 on a site chosen by Dingane himself, on the Umsunduzi River. The station was subsequently named “Nginani” (I am with thee). Following the destruction of the mission station Nginani in the fighting between the Zulus and the Boers, who arrived in Natal following the Great Trek, Rev. Champion returned to the United States in 1839. He died in 1841, but not before he had done important spade work for the Zulu translation of the Gospel of Matthew that was revised by Rev. Newton Adams and published in 1848.

After four years, Ludwig Harms sent the next group of missionaries with the same boat Candace, heading for Somalia. They did not succeed in the venture but opened the way for the Swedish Evangelical Mission to attempt what he couldn't do any more. Swedish missionaries reached Mitswa (Massawa) in 1866. The second group of Hermannsburg Mission workers ultimately joined their colleagues in South Africa! However, the vision of Louis Harms for Ethiopia did not die with him. When in 1927 the doors ultimately opened, the Hermannsburg Mission did not hesitate to send their envoys - a late outcome of the vision of Pastor Louis Harms. Their work contributed to the formation of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus. And a century after his vision to use a boat to send missionaries, George Verwer started Operation Mobilisation that became known world-wide by its ships the Logos and the Doulos, to be followed by the Mercy Ship ministry of YWAM and their medical ship Anastasis.

Scripture bringing Renewal and Revival
Only in the 1960s the second Vatican Council permitted ordinary Roman Catholic church members to read the Bible for themselves. In the 1980s we saw a mighty turning to Christ in the Roman Catholic Church in South America when the rank and file church members were encouraged to read the Bible. A similar movement occurred in the Middle East in recent years. Every Muslim who has access to Internet can now read the Bible in his/her own language. This was preceded by ten years of prayer by believers around the Globe for the Muslim World.
The Word is still sharper than a double-edged sword, which can penetrate the strongest resistance; it also judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart (Hebrews 4:12; Ephesians 6:17). Thus the conversion – and rejection by his family – of Abdul, a Muslim-background believer of South Asia – spiralled almost out of control. Hundreds of thousands became Isahi Muslims, followers of Jesus. (The abbreviated version of the start to the mass turning to Christ in the Indian subcontinent can be found in The Camel, as narrated by Kevin Greeson (2006:23-30).

Obedience rather than Glamour
A feature of really great personalities is that they accept the Calvary road of difficulties and thorns without a grudge, rather than looking for quick fixes and glamour when the chips are down. At the outset of his ministry Jesus chose not to be impressed by the adulation of his Nazareth townsfolk. In stead of riding on the crest wave of praise, he swam against the stream, risking his life in the process (Luke 4:14-30). When a multitude of Jewish worshipers wanted to forcefully make Jesus their worldly King (John 6:15), he refused this elevation. In stead, he left the multitude. In the same chapter it is recorded how he responded with a hard word, after which the crowd left him en masse (John 6:66).
When Peter faintly suggested that Jesus should evade his innocent death, the Master rebuked him sternly, seeing no less than satan behind this idea (Mark 8:33). By the time of the Gethsemane struggle Jesus had obviously learned the lesson well. He was required to empty the cup, the content of which would ultimately take our Lord from the presence of His Father, so much so that he finally used the word 'forsaken'. In the agonizing prayer of the Garden, He responded thrice with ‘not my will but your will be done…’ (Mark 14:36). Jesus chose the road of suffering, to be ultimately crowned with thorns. His Kingdom is not of this world.
The line between acclamation and rejection can be very thin at times. Choosing for absolute truth often makes the difference. Compromise can sometimes prevent persecution or rejection. When Bishop Comenius had received secular recognition via the invitation to become the rector and pioneer of the newly established Harvard University near Boston in the ‘New World’, he declined, preferring to stay with his small persecuted flock in Poland.
Count Zinzendorf not only taught, but he also displayed that he was teachable. Thus he became willing to go and work in Dresden in 1721, after the godly Magister Schwedler had spoken to him (Beyreuther, 1957:231). This was really the last of places where he wanted to serve the Lord. When Zinzendorf was offered a full-time post as one of the Cabinet ministers of the Danish throne, he declined, citing his commitment to the refugees in Herrnhut as the reason. (Earlier he had aspired to go to Denmark.) He was willing to be employed in a lesser capacity, so that he would have time for free-lance religious activ­ity. He really understood the bibli­cal injunction ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness.’

Other Examples of the same Principle
Similarly, Andrew Murray declined the invitation of Dwight Moody to address the World Church and Mission Conference in New York in 1900. He was standing in the middle of the warring parties prior to the South African War with his Scottish background on the one hand but on the other hand he had an intense love for the Boers. He requested the papers that had been delivered in New York in which he discerned a lack of an emphasis on prayer and missions. In response to this lack he wrote the seminal The Key to the Missionary Problem in 1901. As the author of so many books that were known not only around the English-speaking Christian world, he was sorely missed at the conference. The Key to the Missionary Problem booklet was eagerly read as soon as it was published, igniting revivals around the globe in its wake.
In a similar way, the German martyr and pastor Dr Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned from the USA to the lion’s den of Hitler’s Nazi regime, knowing full well that he could soon be in trouble there. He was ultimately executed because of his role in a plot to eliminate the Jew hater and Nazi despot Adolph Hitler. Watchman Nee voluntarily went back into the despotism of Mao Zedong in 1949. Richard Wurmbrand on the other hand, was used by God after his release from Nicolai Ceascescu’s dictatorship to expose the cruelties of that regime.


4. Deterrents of Revival

The arch enemy has succeeded through the ages to use agents in the Church to curb or disrupt spiritual renewal. External opposition and persecution enhanced the spread of the Gospel like no other single factor. On the other hand, internal bickering and disobedience to the Word not only nullified its effect, but this ultimately all but halted the march of the Gospel to the ends of the earth during the Middle Ages.

Examples of Disobedience
Initially, God had his hand on Saul, who stood head and soldiers figurat­ively and literally above his compatriots, ‘an impressive young man without equal among the Israelites’ (1 Samuel 9:2). He was so to speak hand-picked from the insig­nificant clan of Matri from the minute tribe of Benjamin (1 Samuel 10:20). The impatience of Saul was perhaps the major difference between David and his predecessor, who tried to cover up his sin by giving others the blame. Saul had been impatient, rendering his burnt offering independently and prematurely. He was rejected because of his impatience and disobedience; he could not wait on Samuel. ‘You have disobeyed the commandment of the Lord’ (1 Samuel 13:13). Still later, he was struck, falling full length on the ground as divine punishment after he had consulted a witch, a spiritist (1 Samuel 28:20). This was symptomatic of his falling from divine grace.
The life of Saul illustrates the principle that God will find someone else to finish the task in the case of disobedience. That David came to the throne in this way is fairly well-known, but it is generally over-looked that Abraham was used in similar fashion. His father Terah remained in Haran, in contra­vention of God’s purposes (Genesis 11:31).
This message is also conveyed by Luke and Paul with regard to salvation history. God has a special pur­pose with the Jewish nation. We as Christians should however remain humble, remember­ing that we are merely the wild olive which was grafted into the real olive tree, Israel (Romans 11:17, 18).
Jonah was rebuked by God for his nationalist thinking. He had fled in the opposite direction to that which God had sent him. It is striking that in spite of his disobedience, God still used him when he testified on the boat to his faith in the unseen God. Initially it could have been fear of the wicked Ninevites which drove him to the frantic step, but the end of the story clarifies the issue: Jonah had evidently been more interested that the Ninevites should be punished, rather than that they should repent. All too often also we are tempted by this carnal trait, seeking retribution and revenge, at least occasionally.
One of the Bible’s greatest themes is that God loves the whole world - not just one group. Abraham was called to be a blessing to the nations. Jonah did not understand this and had to be reprimanded. Jonah was not alone in his thinking that the Jews were so special in God’s eyes that it excluded other peoples. Jesus corrected the congregation in Nazareth, making them so angry by his reference to the widow of Zarefath in Sidon and Naaman from Syria that they wanted to kill him. Obviously their thinking corresponded with that of Jonah.

An Invitation to Self-denial
The rebuke of Jonah was tantamount to an invitation to self-denial, so to speak a challenge to take up his cross. We note that Jesus first said ‘deny yourself’ - even before saying ‘take up your cross and follow me’ (Mark 8:34). To accept that the Ninevites could be forgiven, that God could change His mind, was obviously very difficult for Jonah to accept. Sometimes the impression has been spread that God is not moved easily; that He can just do what he likes in an authoritarian and wanton way. Jonah thought that God was bound to His original prophecy of doom. He had to learn that God was basically compassionate, that the Almighty takes ‘no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their wicked ways and live’ (Ezekiel 33:11). We compare the reprieve of David (2 Samuel 12:13) and Ahab (1 King 21:28) after they repented and humbled themselves before God. He gave them a new chance. That is the nature of God: loving forgiveness after repentance, rather than punishment for our sins. It is possibly one of the biggest aberrations of the Word that the Almighty is still regarded by some people as a wrathful and punishing deity.
Jeremiah 18:7ff possesses special actuality for Capetonians. Evangelicals who think that God is obliged to bring many prophecies over the city - without united repentance and prayer - would do well to know that the Bible forces a good rethink on the matter: ‘...And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it’.
I am convinced that if we as Western Christians are willing to repent corporately of our arrogance, conceding that we cannot put God into a box of Western Theology, we might find people from other religions more open to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (We all know that the Scriptures have actually originated in the Orient) The complete biblical message seems to be: God is loving and forgiving, he is slow to anger but there comes a time when continued sinning will call forth his wrath.13 Furthermore, the verse from Jeremiah 18 quoted above repudiates the belief that God never changes His mind. The Bible repeats more than once that the Almighty is in principle unchanging and sovereign, but not arbitrary and aloof. Compassionate and remorseful prayer moves him, especially when it is done corporately. We note for example how the Ninevites averted the destruction of their city through united repentance. In the totality of the biblical message Isaiah 57:15 puts it pointedly that the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, is also with the low and humble, giving new courage to repentant hearts.

From God one cannot flee
Jonah ultimately had to face the music: One can attempt to run away in disobedience, but so often you thentake your unresolved problems with you. From God one cannot flee. Jonah was convicted of his sin and admitted his guilt. Faced with severe judgement, he did not lose hope but cried out for mercy. He confidently confessed his belief that “Salvation comes from the Lord” and promised to make a sacrifice with thanksgiving (Jonah 2:8,9). Being an Israelite, Jonah knew that the Law of Moses required a sin offering to be sacrificed. He knew also that it provided a basis for forgiveness.
Significantly, Jonah did not jump into the water when his disobedience caught up with him. He requested to be thrown into the sea (Jonah 2:12). Thus his action became a pristine form of baptism - a voluntary decision after the recognition and confession of sins. Similarly, Jesus submitted himself to be baptised by John at the beginning of His ministry - although he was without sin. No wonder that John the Baptist was taken aback at Jesus’ request.
Jonah was the sign of someone going down into the depths and being raised to new life, an example of God’s power to raise someone from the dead. He thus typified the death and resurrection of Jesus. But Jonah was only a type. He finally died whereas Jesus did not die again after his resurrection.
The message of Jonah includes God wanting to take us out of our cosy zones. In the age of the internet we are tempted to want to do too much from our computer. In no way does this invalidate the parable of the Sower, who had to go out to sow his seed. Sometimes one feels like running away from the task at hand, just like Jonah. Then God has to whistle us back to the point of our ‘infringement’, giving us another chance.

Disobedience and Compromise as a Handicap
Biblically, compromise is regarded as disobedience, as sin which incurs the wrath and punishment of the Almighty. The Hebrew Scriptures depict more than once how defeat followed when disobedience and compromise crept in. Moses had to tell the Israelites – this is recorded in Deuteronomy 1:45 – that their tears before the Lord were of no avail. ‘He paid no attention to your weeping and turned a deaf ear to you.’ The reason for God’s refusal to listen to them was their rebellion and arrogance. Tears of frustrated foolhardiness do not move God. The downfall of Gideon (8:24) and King Asa (2 Chronicles 16:3+7) was caused by their disobedience. In both cases their exceptional feats, which had their origins in obedience, were seriously marred – all but obliterated. A very tragic case is that of the child king of Judah, Josiah. Through the godliness of King Josiah, especially after he had heard the Law read (2 Kings 22:8-20), the judgment on the nation was delayed until after his death. A prophetic word was given to him to die in peace, but through disobedience and military involvement he was slain prematurely on the battlefield. Saul is the negative example of one who went it alone, cutting himself off from correction and encourage­ment. His actions included all the elements of dishonesty and dis­obedience: improper modesty (1 Samuel 10:22), taking honour for himself, 14 impatience (1 Samuel 13:9), imposing his will on others (1 Samuel 14:24), followed by sinful independence and activism (14:.36).
Yet, also in this regard we cannot pack God neatly into a box. The Bible gives some interesting examples of disobedience to instruc­tions which are contrary to God’s will. When Jonathan inadver­tently ate honey when he was supposed to have fasted on the instruction of his father (1 Samuel 14:27ff), Saul was ready to kill his son. The soldier colleagues were not punished by God for coming up in support of the disobedient Jonathan. Likewise the soldiers who refused to kill the family of the priest Abimelech for protecting David, did not come under any divine rebuke (1 Samuel 22:17).
Christians should be guarding biblical values and basic freedoms against oppressive laws and policies enacted by their government. We should take to heart the prophetic warning given by the Lord through the prophet Ezekiel: ‘Because they had not obeyed My laws but had rejected My decrees and desecrated My Sabbaths, and their eyes lusted after their fathers’ idols. I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by’ (Ezekiel 20:24-25).  If we as a nation are not obeying God, it could become a cause of His wrath. It is much better to fight statutes that are not good and laws that are dishonouring Him.
God still warns us for not listening to Him or obeying His Word. He gave His people over to severe correction through the means of the unbearable laws of pagan nations. If we refuse to obey His Word willingly, we may later be forced to obey pagan, oppressive laws unwillingly or resist them at great cost.

Disobedience and Disunity
In the last recorded words of Jesus on earth that has been called the Great Commission, our Lord instructed his followers to go and make disciples of all nations. The first generations of the Early Church apparently took that to heart obediently, multiplying very quickly. Later generations were however more bent on planting churches and even worse - they emulated the pagans by building big cathedrals and the like. This basic disobedience to the Lord’s instruction is still with us. The basis of the original movement was a healthy prayerful unity of the Body of Christ. There was disagreement as well, but in stead of leading to internal bickering over peripheral issues, these challenges turned into stepping stones rather than ones over which one can stumble. Charles Finney reported how denominationalism actually once stopped a local revival 'When one denomination began proselytizing, the revival instantly ceased, but when the people again gave themsleves to prayer, and unity was restored, it continued in power' (Eddy, The Story of Finney's Life, p.9).

Debate and Discourse
Important advice from Paul, the apostle, which he passed on through his letters, is not to indulge in fruitless theological discussion which too often merely divides the body (for example 2 Timothy 2:14ff; 2 Timothy 6:3-6). In the first letter to the Corinthians he wrote about the wisdom of the world, which they should definitely not strive after. In the same context (1 Corinthians 1:18-21) Paul quotes Isaiah 29:14 to highlight how futile philosophy is and that God will ultimately destroy the useless learning and wisdom of the Greeks. The Fathers of the Early Church latched onto this advice. Tertullian, a jurist who joined the Christians of North Africa in 207 CE, saw philosophy as a major culprit: ‘heresies are themselves prompted by philosophy ... After Christ Jesus we desire no subtle theories, no acute enquiries after the Gospel...’?15 The very same Tertullian, a lawyer, would however mislead the Church in disobedience on this very score.
By the second century of the Common Era, Alexandria in Egypt and Antioch in Asia Minor had become the theologcal strongholds of Christianity after fierce persecution from Rome. The Gospel had been taken to Spain in the West, deep into the northern parts of Africa, to India and to the Far East.
If the Church through the ages had heeded the advice of Paul against engaging in unprofitable philosophy and discussion, a lot of tragedy could have been avoided. Here I refer not only to the many splits which account for the multitude of denominations, but especially also to the doctrinal and petty bickering of Church leaders that have been confusing Christians and other religious groups – notably Muslims - down the centuries.

Tertullian, a tragic Model
The second century North African theologian Tertullian became known for profound insights, among other things about the Trinity. His adage that martyrdom is the seed of the church has been quoted again and again. However, Tertullian also brought the element of loveless bickering into the equation like few others before or after him. He rendered the Church a disservice when he introduced the terms ‘trinitas’, ‘substantia’ and ‘personae’ - his effort to describe the Trinity, the nature of Christ and the different manifestations of God in the Son and the Holy Spirit. Tertullian’s philosophical theologising was possibly the start of the bickering that led to the Arian controversy and later led to the unfortunate quarrels around the formulation of the doctrines around the two natures of Christ and the Holy Trinity.
Henry Chadwick (The Early Church, 1967:91) notes that Tertullian’s Apology does not merely include apologetic defence of the Christian doctrine, but also ‘militant and trenchant attack on the corruption, irrationality, and political injustice of polytheistic society.’ Chadwick goes on to highlight that every page of Tertullian’s work ‘is written with the joy of inflicting discomfort on his adversaries for their error and unreasonableness,..’
The great founder of Protestantism, Martin Luther, could be typified in a similar way. The Church universal is greatly indebted to him because of his rediscovery of the priesthood of the laity, the importance that he attached to the Word and to the dictum semper reformanda - that the Church may not remain static but that we should continue to seek transformation. However, Luther's schismatic, uncompromising and unforgiving attitude completely contradicted the spirit of Christ.

Distortion of central biblical Messages16
Furthermore, the arch enemy has been succeeding to abuse mistakes of great theologians and Church leaders, to distort central biblical messages. A major aberration is still doing the rounds that the Church is said to have replaced Israel, whereas Paul clearly taught that we as Gentile Christians have been merely grafted into the true olive tree Israel (Romans 11:17,18). Another distortion happened when it was taught that the institutional Church dispenses salvation via the christening of infants. Hebrews 9:22 teaches clearly that there is no salvation without the shedding of blood. The 'New Testament' equivalent of the shedding of blood is the 'circumcision of the heart' (Colossians 2:11,12), i.e. believing in faith that the atoning death of the Lamb of God 'takes away the sins of the world' (John 1:29,36). This happened when our Lord was obedient to be made sin, to be ultimately nailed to the Cross (see 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Colossians 2:14). This was the vehicle to get 'born again' (John 3:3-16).
Whereas the persecution of the early Church brought about its rapid spread, the stopping of it ran concurrent with Emperor Constantine's paganising of the body of Christ. The heathen temple - rather than the secret catacomb and house church - became the prime model. The most central Christian doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus was highlighted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 as follows: 'if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.' Emperor Constantine paganised this doctrine when he decreed in 321 AD that Sunday, the special day of sun worship, to be a compulsory free day. In this way he put the Lord's Day as commemoration of Christ of the first day of the week in its shadow. De facto this caused the final side-lining of Jews. Christianity was regarded by Jews to be in opposition to them.
Doctrinal bickering and the use of force to bring erring believers back to the Church, were a few other tenets that ripped the Church apart. In the latter case, the abuse of Luke 14:23, ‘Force them to come in’ was an argument that paved the way for Islam to sweep through North Africa. During medieval Inquisition practices, a travesty of justice became common. Ultimately thousands of Muslims and Jews were brutally slaughtered during the Crusades. As Christians we can hardly express clearly enough our regret for these atrocities and a few others performed in the name of the Prince of Peace, our Lord and Saviour.
The biblical example of 'Jews first, and then also the Greeks' (Romans 1:16f), was practised by our Jesus and Paul, the great missionary apostle. This has however still not been discerned generally. Humble and loving Jewish evangelism could have united the Body of Christ. Acts 13:1-3 shows how the fellowship of Antioch was multi-cultural with a leadership consisting of two North Africans, the Cypriot Barnabas, the Greek background Jew and Pharisee Saul from Tarsus and Manaen the childhood companion of Herod.
The example of the Moravian missionary involvement of loving Gospel outreach to Jews in Amsterdam and in Bethlehem (Pa, USA) in the 18th century appears to have remained worldwide exceptions for centuries. Only in recent decades has there been some shift with a positive attitude by evangelicals. However, instead of being (re)conciliatory, this was often biased against Muslims and Palestinians.

To follow Christ means stepping down
Cornelius can easily be compared with the staunch Muslim or any true seeker after God. In Acts 10:4 one reads: The angel answered: Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.’ God looks at the heart. This confirms the way God looks at things, as 1 Samuel 15:22 states: God is delighted more in obedience than in burnt offerings and sacrifices. Almost simultaneously Peter’s heart was prepared by God to step down from his haughty view of Gentiles. Thrice he objected to the unclean animals, which he was required to eat in the vision. Only hereafter Peter was obedient to ‘go downstairs’ (Acts 10:20), to drop his condescending view of non-Jews, which was very common in his environment. He had to realise that the Gospel was for Gentiles too. Ever since Peter gave the example of stepping down from his condescending attitude in obedience to the command of the Holy Spirit to enter the home of the Roman soldier Cornelius, there can be no excuse for defending social barriers in the Church of Jesus Christ. Any effort in this regard would be tantamount to disobedience to the teaching of the Word.
Through the ages missionaries have understood that to follow Christ meant ‘stepping down’, being prepared to forgo privileges and being ready to be humiliated for the sake of the Lord. Unfortunately, but definitely not in the spirit of Christ - an air of heroism was attached to being sent out as a missionary. Furthermore, authors and publishers have been very selective with biographies and historiography in general. The stories of missionaries who fitted the role expectation like David Livingstone and Mary Slessor were put on a pedestal, but ‘troublesome’ missionaries like Dr John Philip, who rocked the boat of British (and South African) society by speaking out on behalf of the oppressed, were branded as ‘political.’ Similarly, South African Christian mission history displays bias against the great missionaries Johannes van der Kemp and James Read. It was not appreciated that they married slaves. In the case of Van der Kemp the age difference complicated matters, as did the immoral behaviour of Read, fathering a child outside of wedlock. Of course, the society of Jesus’ days also had a problem with the religious leader who socialized with ‘sinners’, the lower ranks of their day.

A healthy breeze of honesty Ruth Tucker has given a healthy breeze in this regard with her honesty in her book From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 2004. Thus she narrates on p.177 the special debt of Britain in the run-up to the Opium War. (1839-42). It is very sad indeed in this regard that missionaries were involved with the smuggling of opium. Roman Catholics have been very good in hiding the misdemeanours of their friars and nuns. The example that Afrikaans dramatist and poet C. Louis Leipoldt used in Die Heks, that of a 'witch' who had been sentenced to death when it was revealed that Cardinal D'Orilla had fathered her daughter may be an isolated case. Only here and there records such as this can be found, but the unbiblical expectation of celibacy for all clergy may have created a lot of bitterness against Christianity, surely a part of the unpaid debt of the Church. (In recent times sexual abuse of boys has been uncovered, with disastrous results to the reputation of the Church.)
It has perhaps not been appreciated sufficiently that real, meaningful contact between master and servant contains the seed of radical mission work. The best example in well-known mission history is probably when Count Zinzendorf ‘stepped down’ to speak to the slave Anton at the occasion of the coronation of Christian VI of Denmark in 1731. This was a case of meaningful dialogue17 because Anton, the slave, challenged Zinzendorf, the aristocrat, in no uncertain way. Zinzendorf responded positively, inviting Anton to come over to Herrnhut and repeat his challenge to the congregation that had regularly heard of the worldwide mission need before. (This had happened for example at a meeting on the 10th February 1728, when Zinzendorf especially referred to distant lands - Turkey, Morocco and Greenland. Twenty six men were hereafter prepared for missionary work, even though there was no immediate prospect to leave for some mission field.)
In Herrnhut Anton did not mince his words either. He stated unequivocally that any prospective missionary to St Thomas, the island in the West Indies from where he originated, should be prepared to become like one of them; the missionary had to be prepared to become the equal of a slave. The Moravians of Herrnhut, through their child-like faith in Jesus, accepted the challenge spontaneously. In the next few decades they left the little village in their hundreds to places all over the world. We note that the above-mentioned challenge to missions of February 1728 occurred already half a year after the widely reported revival of 13th August, 1727. Although the Herrnhut believers were apparently still very much in the revival mood, they needed the slave Anton to get them moving to the mission fields. What will be the reaction of affluent South Africans if their poor com­patriots challenge them to share their lives meaningfully, to become servants, the equivalents of slaves?18

Disobedience to the Great Commission
I deem it appropriate to repeat a warning of Andrew Murray ([1901]1979:154), namely the danger of disobedi­ence to the Great Commis­sion, the last command of our Lord Jesus. No wonder that churches which do not reach out to the lost, turn inwards and get entangled in internal quar­rels. In this regard the moral high ground of Paul, the apostle, should be noted: ‘We try to live in such a way that no one will be offended or kept back from finding the Lord by the way we act...’ (2 Corinthians 6:3). Everything which could hinder the spreading of the Gospel has to be uprooted, even in the Church.
But we can also put it positively, for example in the words of Robert Coleman: ‘Evangelism is not an optional accessory to our life ... It is the commission of the church which gives meaning to all else that is undertaken in the Name of Christ.’
Deliberately I do not make any distinction between evangelism and mission. If anybody would insist on a choice, then the priority should be on ‘making disciples’, working in depth rather than in breadth. That was the example of our Master. We have to share the Gospel with the unreached, to those nearby and those far away. The use of modern tools like the internet should be included in the process.

As Christians we should nevertheless remain humble enough to confess our collective debt because millions of Muslims have been misled. It is sad that a Christian priest was instrumental in assisting Muhammad to believe that the supernatural figure which appeared to him was identical to the angel Gabriel of the Bible. Furthermore, if we consider that the Bible speaks of arrogance (1 Samuel 15:22) and materialism (Colossians 3:5) as equivalents of idolatry, we discover that Western Protestant Christians are basically no better than any other people groups whom we would like to accuse of idolatrous practices. The appropriate attitude is repentant humility. In this regard it is apt to be remembered that the haughty and arrogant attitude of the West led China to refuse missionaries entry into their country in the 19th century.
5. An Early Revival Model and its Spin-offs

Count Zinzendorf and Dr Andrew Murray could respectively be described as spiritual giants of the 18th and 19th centuries. Andrew Murray is known to have been deeply impacted by Zinzendorf and the Moravians. Zinzendorf, born in 1700, was prayerful already from his childhood days. In an autobiographical report we hear how he would speak to the Lord for hours while he was still a toddler. ‘In conversation with him, I was very happy and thankful for what he has done for me through his incarnation’ (Uttendörfer and Schmidt, 1914:2). Already before he was three years old, he not only loved to hear about the Lord, but he started chatting to him, a practice he continued throughout his life. At this time he also started ‘preaching’. Spangenberg reports how criminally intruding Swedes were deeply challenged at heart in 1706 when the boy preacher simply continued his sermon to the unusual audience (referred to in Uttendörfer and Schmidt, 1914:6). In his late teens Zinzendorf already had a long prayer list. Erich Beyreu­ther, a German theologian and expert on the life of Zinzendorf, refers to one of these lists, which the Count changed in Paris when he was 19 years old. It consisted of five pages (Beyreuther, 1957:187). When Zinzendorf had too many other commitments on any day to complete these lists of petitions, he would use the late nights to compensate for it.

An Intimate Relationship with the Lord
Like the biblical men of prayer, Count Zin­zen­dorf had an infectious intimate relationship with his Lord. He knew that prayer means communication with God. ‘Umgang mit dem Heiland’ (communication with the Lord or better still, intimate communion with the Lord) became almost an over-used phrase in the East German village of Herrnhut. This came into being because of the compassion of the count. Zinzendorf practised this sweet relationship right to the end of his life. Thus he regarded 1754 (six years before his death) as a silent liturgical year, a year of special communion with the Lord (Spangenberg, 1971:1976). Around that time he told the children at Herrnhut: ‘I have enjoyed this close personal interaction with Jesus for fifty years and I feel the happiness’ (Lewis, 1962:23).
Zinzendorf’s ‘communion with the Lamb’ enabled him to speak so freely, intimately and wisely with everyone on these mat­ters. An indica­tion of his commitment to prayer and his broad vision comes out very clearly in a diary entry: ‘A very blessed night in which in deep humility before his pres­ence, I prayed for everyone in Herrnhut by name’ (Cited in Weinlick, 1956:90).
Significant is also that the image of ‘front soldiers’ - that included the yearning for martyrdom - went into the background in the 1740s with Zinzendorf and his close companions. They favoured of resting in the work done by Christ. Not so much their activism but their being at the feet of the Lord, next to their communion with him, became increasingly important. Brother Andrew (1981:115) actualized this position in our days in the light of religious pluralism: ‘Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is a way of life. It is walking with Jesus. I can do that in any country. I can do that under any political regime.’

Children and young People divinely used since Biblical Times
Zinzendorf discerned like few before or after him how strategic it was how children and young people have been used since biblical times. Isaac and Joseph had God’s hand on their lives since boyhood. Moses and his siblings were evidently well trained. Every Sunday school child knows the story of the birth and dedication of Samuel to the service of the Lord as a boy. However, the unknown girl in the service of the high-ranking soldier Syrian Naaman (2 Kings 5:2f) possibly does not belong to average Sunday school repertoire. But many Jewish children down the centuries will have heard of young Esther’s commitment and willingness to put her life on the line to save her people. The commitment and faith of the teenager exile Daniel with his three friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are known all around the world.
When Paul and Barnabas set out on their first missionary journey, they took the inexperienced John Mark along as their assistant (Acts 12:25, 13:5). Later Barnabas took young John Mark as his partner in mission work. This could have been just the encouragement Paul needed – he had a tiff with John Mark on their first trip - to utilize the gifts of the young Timothy, entrusting to him leadership responsibilities.
That the revival amongst the children started in the girls’ hostel of Berthelsdorf, the neighbouring town of Herrnhut, is not so surprising when one considers how Count Zinzendorf prepared it through prayer. After a visit there he complained to his wife that the nine girls there were so shallow. They would listen equally to tales of Essop than to stories about Jesus (Uttendörfer and Schmidt, 1914:28). Zinzendorf cried to the Lord on their behalf intensely. When he subsequently used a hymn about Jesus who can change hardened hearts on 26 May 1727, the Holy Spirit touched them. The next day he also sent to them Mr Krumpe, to guide them. A special role in the spiritual renewal among the Herrnhut children is to be attributed to Mr Krumpe. a faithful teacher. Jacob Liebich, one of the pupils described him as 'an upright and serious man, who had the good of his pupils much at heart.'

The Role of Children in the Herrnhut Revival
In a sense the stirring among the children could be regarded as a harbinger to the revival eruption of 13 August 1727. Susannah Kühnel, a girl of eleven, became the leader of a revival among children. Jacob Liebich, one of the pupils and a neighbour of the Kühnel family, told about Mr Krumpe and this time: 'He never failed at the close of the school to pray with us, and to commend us to the Lord Jesus and His Spirit during the time of our amusements. At that time Susannah Kühnel was awakened, and frequently withdrew into her father's garden, especially in the evenings, to ask the grace of the Lord and to seek the salvation of her soul with strong crying and tears. As this was next door to the house where we lived (there was only a boarded partition between us), we could hear her prayers as we were going to rest and as we lay upon our beds. We were so much impressed that we could not fall asleep as carelessly as formerly, and asked our teachers to go with us to pray. Instead of going to sleep as usual, we went to the boundaries which separated the fields, or among the bushes, to throw ourselves before the Lord and beg Him to turn us to Himself. Our teachers often went with us, and when we had done praying, and had to return, we went again, one to this place and another to that, or in pairs, to cast ourselves upon our knees and pray in secret." Amid the fervour occurred the events of August 13th. The children at Herrnhut were stirred. For three days Susannah Kühnel was so absorbed in thought and prayer that she forgot to take her food; and then, on August 17th, having passed through a severe spiritual struggle, she was able to say to her father: "Now I have become a child of God; now I know how my mother felt and feels.' (Hutton, ??).
Anna Nitschmann and Susannah Kühnel were two of four young girls who were extremely revived. That must be regarded as a part of the general revival. Mr Krumpe's witness contributed significantly to the revival, so that on 18 August all the girls in the hostel of Berthelsdorf prayed throughout the night (Uttendörfer and Schmidt, 1914:29). Through the testimony of Susanna Kühnel more girls came to the Lord in the days hereafter. The Count joined them (once-off or at most occasionally) for prayer on Hutberg, the nearby hill top.
Also boys were touched as the narration of Jacob Liebich testifies. By 23 August the revival had also spilled over to the boys completely, leading to the beginning of the famous 24/7 prayer that started on 27 August with 48 believers. On 29 August the girls were having a prayer meeting on Hutberg from 10 p.m. until 1 a.m. that could be heard in the town, while eight to ten boys were in prayer at another location.
In 1728, long before the actual mission work started out from Herrnhut, the young men were busy with training as ap­pren­tices and with study, prepararing for mission service. Two years later also the single sisters followed suit, congregating in a separate building.

Anna Nitschmann as an Example When the time had come to select a “chief eldress” for the women in the bustling community of Moravians at Herrnhut, four names were put on slips of paper. Quite surprisingly there was also that of Anna Nitschmann. Only 14 years old, she had already demonstrated leadership among the girls and the single women. They gathered together as usual for the drawing of lots. That was used to discern the leading of God. But she was so young! Had there been a mistake in this case?
Count Zinzendorf strongly advised Anna to refuse the daunting responsibility. But the young peasant girl respectfully reminded the aristocrat that she was accepting the appointment as from the Lord. Just as the surprising choice of the shepherd-boy David proved decisive for Israel, so the choice of young Anna would be for the Moravians. Six weeks after this election, Anna led 18 of the “single sisters” to devote themselves so thoroughly to Christ that even marriage would take second place. This commitment was a major one, signalling a serious desire to serve the Lord. This “single sisters” group would grow over the following decades, providing a stream of courageous missionaries. Later, Anna became part of the “Pilgrim congregation,” a group of spiritual warriors ready to go anywhere to spread the name of Christ. Her missions travels took her to numerous countries, also to America, where she helped in the founding of Bethlehem and Nazareth, Pennsylvania. She also ministered effectively among various 'Indian' groups there. In an era when women were not looked upon as hymn writers, Anna Nitschmann wrote more than 30 hymns that were published in the Moravians’ German hymnal. A year after Count Zinzendorf’s wife died, he asked Anna to marry him and she agreed. She was a commoner and he a noble, but within the Herrnhut community, all were equals. They married in June 1757.
Utilizing the Zeal of young People
Zinzendorf and the Herrnhut fellowship were pioneers in utilizing the energy and zeal of young people. Even before some of them came to Herrnhut, the youthful believers were fearlessly involved in the spreading of the Gospel. The 18-year old David Nitschmann, one of the clan that would impact Herrnhut intensely in the next few years, went around the Moravian environs of Kunwald with others from his age, speaking about what they had experienced, spreading the fire in this way. In 1731 Martin Linner, a seventeen year old, became the ‘Älteste’ - the elder - for the bigger boys.
Before Melchior Nitschmann was elected as one of the first four chief elders of the church, Zinzendorf had reservations. The bare-footed youngster was not even known to the Count, but he evidently had the trust of the congregants. Zinzendorf was humble enough to be the first to kiss his hand von ganzem Herzen (wholeheartedly) when he met him for the first time in his life (Uttendörfer and Schmidt, 1914:95). In 1728 Melchior Nitschmann went to Moravia with Georg Schmidt where they were arrested while they were fellowshipping with local believers. Melchior died in prison the next year.
Martin Linner, who had proved himself as very capable when he was an elder of the single men at the age of seventeen, became one of the four chief elders, although he was still in his twenties. When the Herrnhut fellowship decided to choose only one chief elder in 1730, he was chosen. In spite of his lack of formal education and experience, he impressed many. Zinzendorf reported: ‘I was ashamed like a little dog that I could not do it like him when I saw how the dear Linner preached to the Count of Lichtenstein in such godly simplicity. Never have I seen the Count more patiently and at ease as when he sat there listening to Linner. He is normally very much prejudiced against us’ (Uttendörfer and Schmidt, 1914:97). To be on the same level as the poorer brethren, Linner would never sleep in a bed. In spite of being quite sickly, he slept on the floor throughout the year, winter or summer. On 21 February 1733 he died.
Still in their twenties, Tobias Leopold and Leonhard Dober were ready to go to St Thomas as the very first missionaries. Leupold was however turned down by the lot. Two years later Tobias Leupold led a team of fourteen brothers and four sisters to the neighbouring island of St. Croix, only to die there half a year later. Leonhard Dober, who was not much older, was recalled from St Thomas to be the chief elder after the sudden death of Martin Linner, arriving in Herrnhut in February 1735.
Matthias Stach led the pioneering missionary outreach to Greenland when he was only nineteen years old, doing it so effectively that the Moravians could confidently hand the work there over to the Lutheran Church. Georg Israel, a disabled tailor, who survived a shipwreck in 1740, was given leadership responsibility for the work on the island St Croix where he died three years later, only 27 years old.
David Nitschmann, the carpenter, Dober’s eventual partner to St Thomas, spied the land, returning to Herrnhut to report what it was like. He was inducted as the first Bishop of the Moravians on 13 March 1735 before he was forty years old. After passing a theological examination in Stralsund, Count Zinzendorf became an ordained Lutheran minister in Tübingen. He was inducted as Bishop in 1737, a mere 37 years old.
The phenomenal growth of Youth with a Mission, Operation Mobiliz­ation and many mission agencies of modern times like All Nations International can be attributed to their willingness and ability to challenge and harness young people for mission work, albeit that mistakes were made – and still are - due to inexperience. But this has not deterred them to carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth. This movement is now often spearheaded by Asians, Africans and South Americans.

Suffering as a Spur to missionary Activity
In 1728 revived young men from Herrnhut moved into 8 loft rooms of the guest house, which in no time became a school for missionaries. They were not only taught in medicine, geography and languages but also about ‘the glory of the martyr’s death and the liberty of the apostles in witness’ (Uttendörfer and Schmidt, 1914:32). This was surely their strength, so that by 1737 already 56 of them were already in missionary service abroad. They grasped the message, because after 1732 generations of Moravian missionaries went out to the various mission fields, prepared to die there. It soon became customary to take your own coffin to the mission field. Many of them never returned.
The Moravian missionaries who set out after 1732, suffered ‘a thousand hardships’. Avred Gradin, who was imprisoned in St Petersburg, wrote in 1743: ‘imprisonment, persecution, shipwreck, plague, privation, death... only increased the zeal and fervour of our Brethren, whose firm resolution it was, rather to die, than to go away without fruit’ (cited by Murray, 1901:48). Their experiences read like excerpts from the Acts of the apostles.19
About two missionaries, a surgeon and a doctor - in their attempt in 1747 to reach out to the Kurds in Persia - we read: ‘Near Baghdad they were robbed and left for dead by the bandits. At Isaphan they were well received but the civil wars crushed any hopes of an immediate mission in Persia.’ One of them, Dr Hocker, proceeded like an apostle Paul of old, to learn Arabic in Cairo and then attempted to reach the Copts of Abyssinia (today called Ethiopia). The Coptic Patriarch accepted the letter that Hocker had brought from Zinzendorf which he called ‘a piece of his love to all Christians’.
Spangenberg wrote how - because of the persecution of the missionaries in Surinam - ‘the Negroes came to the knowledge that they should not look at the example of those called Christians20 but at the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Spangenberg, 1773-75 (1971):1173).

Zinzendorf as a young Reconciler
At a young age Zinzendorf found himself in ‘the lion’s den’ when he took the ministry of reconciliation seriously. As an 18-year old final year theological student he tried to act as mediator in the dispute between the feuding theological fac­ulties of Halle and Wittenberg. He came to Wittenberg with first-hand knowledge of the viewpoint of Halle where he had attended boarding school, residing with August Hermann Fran­cke. At a time when the universities of Halle and Witten­berg were at loggerheads because of their respective doctrinal positions, Zinzendorf had friends in both camps, namely those who loved the Lord. The young count had come to appreciate the merits of both universities (Weinlick, 1956:39).
Zinzendorf showed himself to be a reconciler of the first order. Beyreuther notes that the Count ‘positioned himself always there where the war front of the opposing spirits ran. That was his elementary motivation’ (Beyreuther, 1957:192). Already from his student days the only cri­terion for special friendship was someone who loved the Lord: thus he easily bridged the gap of age and confession. During his cavalier’s trip through Europe he and the elderly Roman Catholic Cardinal Noailles discovered about each other, that they ‘only wanted to love Christ and belong to him’ (Beyreuther, 1957:194). At a time when church polemics provided scandals, Zinzendorf and Cardinal Noailles set an example for all time of how missionary dialogue could be fruitful. They engaged an intense intellectual dialogue, where both tried to convince the other. This happened however in a very tactful way. No one attempted to belittle the convic­tion of the partner in any way (Beyreuther, 1957:199).

Reconciliation in the run-up to a special Revival
Zinzendorf’s role of recon­ciler was never more spectacular than in the run-up to the revival of 1727. In the first months of 1727 a major rift had been developing between the village of Berthelsdorf and the settlers of Herrnhut, the estate where the Count had allowed the Moravian and Bohemian refugees to settle. The new settlers were led by Christian David, while the Lutheran Pastor Johann Rothe of Berthelsdorf was the spokesman for the traditional church.
Hutton narrates the position as follows: ‘There was war in the camp. On the one hand Christian David called Pastor Rothe a narrow-minded churchman. On the other hand, Pastor Rothe thundered from his pulpit against the ‘mad fanatics’ on the hill. As Jew and Samaritan in days of old, so now were Berthelsdorf and Herrnhut. At this critical point Count Zinzendorf stepped in, and straightened the crooked sapling’ (Hutton, 1895:129).
How Zinzendorf achieved this was very striking. Hutton gives a hint, quoting the Count: ‘Although our dear Christian David was calling me the Beast and Mr. Rothe the False Prophet, we could nevertheless see his honest heart and knew we could lead him right. It is not a bad maxim when honest men are going wrong, to put them into office, and they will never learn from specula­tion’ (Hutton, 1895:129). Zinzendorf ‘spoke privately to the settlers, and showed them how Satan was leading them astray.’ Apart from the extended times of prayer which accom­panied them, these pastoral visits in the summer of 1727 prepared the ground for the revival that erupted on 13 August. Without the prior reconciliation the Communion service of the memorable Wednesday would almost surely have taken place in a completely different atmosphere.

Discipline in Herrnhut
Zinzendorf and his Moravians evidently had few problems on this score. Discipline was generally accepted. Obedience to God - and to the leadership - was taken for granted. Even so, it is interesting to take note how the Count, even as a teen­ager, had learned to obey authorities. His grandmother ‘knew only too good that he could keep quiet and obey’ (Beyreuther, 1965:29). As we have pointed out, the observance to the Statutes - which were accepted on May 12, 1727 – was the sound basis for the revival. Before that, the discord in Herrnhut was caused by the refugees who would not brook the discipline of the Spirit and the brotherly admonition of the helpers (Lewis, 1962:49). The role of the leader­ship in the administra­tion of discipline must be emphasized. In Herrnhut the strife could initially flourish because the local pastor, Rothe, was weak in applying discipline (Lewis, 1962:49).
We should however not think for a moment that the Brethren were easy on discipline. In fact, they were quite strict. But if any correction had to be implemented, they took their cue from Scrip­ture. The Bible was taken as guideline to resolve the differences. When someone suggested that compromise in a major dispute could avoid persecu­tion in Herrnhut, Zinzendorf dismissed it as unworthy (Weinlick, 1956:80). The Count would tackle the issue head-on, using a Bible verse on the spur of the moment.
When the Brethren were attacked corporately, Zin­zendorf encour­aged the group to examine whether there was anything to be rectified from their side. And if people needed discipline, Zinzendorf would tackle the culprits individually. But also in this regard the Count was usually self-critical. In a random sample, taken from his diary entry of July 12, 1729 we read: ‘We took stock of ourselves and told each other what yet remained to mar the image of Christ. I let them tell me first what I lacked and then I told them what they lacked’ (Weinlick, 1956:91).
Zinzendorf had patience with the erring ones, giving us an example of how people can be lovingly corrected. When the culprits brought up something which could still be used, ‘he did not throw it away but quietly cor­rected them’ (Spangenberg, 1971:280). He appeared to love the erring believers unconditionally, choosing not to remember the past.
Having apparently solved the problems of schism and disunity, the believers went on to cover other matters rather than engaging in petty doctrinal disputes. The Moravians prayed fervently for a great outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit throughout the entire world. The various groups carried on these prayers constantly for well over a hundred years. And the revival that followed in their wake had a lasting effect.
Things changed dramatically after the acceptance of the Statutes, when all members committed themselves to abide by these rules. It must be stressed that the rules were not regarded as binding legalistic laws, but rather as guidelines for living in a community of believers.

The Law of all Missionary Work
The minute Moravian congregation of Herrnhut in East Germany knew that united prayer was the law of all mission work. The origin of the ongoing prayerful revival was the Holy Spirit ministering Leviticus 6:6 to Count Zinzendorf, igniting in his heart a yearning for an altar that would be kept burning. Many individual interviews by the Count and a corporate commitment by the quarreling parties in Herrnhut on 12 May 1727 provided the solid base for the Holy Spirit to operate freely. Confession became the hall-mark of the revival fire that started on 13 August, 1727. At the communion service that day the proceedings were drowned by the tearful groans of the congregants. On the 27th of August, 1727, a prayer chain was kept going for more than a century. This prayer chain was born after a crisis of deep division and soul searching. In this way, it followed the biblical pattern of dependence on God to intervene in a crisis situation. From the outset, the Herrnhut Christians were not legalistic at all. Whosoever could not spend the whole hour in prayer, praised God in spiritual songs.
It is significant that personal confession - an issue which had often been reviled as an empty Roman Catholic ritual with little spiritual value - was also used before the celebration of the special celebration of the ‘Lord’s Supper’ on Wednesday, 13 August 1727.
It has been a modern tendency to see prayer as completely voluntary, and devoid of any sense of duty. Whereas it would surely go against the spirit of the Gospel if any coercion were used, we should keep in mind that God has blessed some element of perseverance and discipline in this respect. Without this, the Herrnhut prayer chain would never have been sustained for such a long time. After the establishment of the prayer watch in 1727 ‘every inhabitant between 16-60 years was in turn called to discharge his duty’ (Langton, 1956:73). It seems to have been regarded though as a joyous rather than an arduous duty, accompanied with the singing of appropriate hymns. The prayer chain sustained the Moravian mission work for well over a century.

Mutual Encouragement
Count Zinzendorf took seriously the provision for widows, by creating a special group for them. The community of Herrnhut was divided into little cells, into bands and choirs for the very reason of mutual encouragement and upliftment. The communication with each other and with the Lord - as they shared joy and sorrow - made out of them a radiant and loving community. By taking seri­ously the scrip­tural principle of mutual care for each other into the stat­utes of 12 May 1727, the soil for the revival was prepared. Every member of the community was required to use his gifts for the common good. Everybody received a task - for example to care for the widows, the orphans, the aged or the sick. Theodore, the widow of Zinzendorf's good friend Heinrich von Reuss, led the widows' ‘choir’ in Herrnhut. One Sunday in the year it was their special day. Zinzendorf understood this biblical principle better than most of his contemporaries. A whole series of social institutions was started. In fact, it was quite revol­utionary for those days that the Church was now told to care for those on the periphery of their society (Beyreuther, 1965:71).
There are many examples of how the Herrnhut Moravians took the mess­age of empathizing and encouragement seriously. Even the children took up the cue. After the Moravians had to leave Herrnhut - mainly because of the support the community had given to foreign refugees - they eventually landed at the Ronneburg. This was a derelict castle, which was inhabited by thieves and various other outcasts of their society. But Zinzendorf’s off-spring invited the children of the beggars and gypsies to come and join them at the table for meals.

Stepping down as a Custom?
The socialization of Count Zinzendorf with Anton was definitely not an one-off occasion. It was part of his life-style to converse with kings and slaves alike, whoever came across his path. For almost a decade the Count had been ‘on everyday terms with artisans and peasants’, confirming his instinctive conviction that spiritual gifts are independent of social rank (Weinlick, 1956:96).
Zinzendorf legally renounced his titles in the US in the 1740s because he found them an impediment among the colonists. Benjamin Franklin was present at the ceremony, which was conducted in Latin in front of the Governor of Pennsylvania. Zinzendorf was possibly the only European aristocrat in those days who socialized with 'Indians', visiting their leaders as equals.
Though Zinzendorf did not promote the abolition of slavery, inside the Moravian Church slaves were truly equal. In Bethlehem, PA, at the single sisters' house you could find a German noblewoman, a Delaware 'Indian', and an African slave sharing the same dormitory room. Where else in the world would it occur at that time? And Zinzendorf endured much criticism for allowing women to preach and to hold roles of leadership in the church.
The example of Zinzendorf was also emulated outside of Moravian confines. The Dutch missionary van der Kemp, who was no stranger to the Moravian settlement of Zeist before he came to the Cape, would be a model for contextualisation.
The German Karl Gutslaff would perfect the model, dressing himself like a Chinese national to gain entry into China. Gutzlaff started off in Indonesia after being comissioned by the Dutch Missionary Society. His strategy was to train Chinese refugees as evangelists and missionaries for entering the proud Chinese mainland. (At this time China would not permit missionaries to enter any more in the wake of the Opium War during which missionaries played a sad role, having been involved in opium smuggling. Gutslaff, who found his way to Hong Kong, later also had the vision to train nationals of that country to reach the Chinese millions in the interior.) He trained Hudson Taylor, who started the China Inland Mission. Sadly, the visionary got involved in a hoax which created a lot of hype in the West. Funds that had been sacrificailly donated for the missionary, ultimately landed in the black market opium trade (Tucker, 2004:185).

Ripples becoming Waves of Prayer
The Herrnhut Moravians exported an emphasis on prayer, causing some remarkable ‘waves’. They linked up with Theodore Frelinghuysen, who had gone to North America as a Reformed minister in 1720. The Dutch national Frelinghuysen was a man of fervent prayer. He selected lay leaders and taught them to conduct prayer meetings and Bible Study in their homes. This infuriated some church leaders but their attacks on Frelinghuysen were counter-produc­tive. Those attacks inspired Jonathan Edwards, who subsequently became the brain and inspiration of the Great Awakening in the ‘New World’.

Support for the Persecuted
The first Moravian refugees like Christian David brought with them the concern for the persecuted church in their homeland. This soon rubbed off on all the inhabitants of Herrnhut. Thus the Swedish academic Arved Gradin helped to encourage the persecuted Protestants in France en route to the Orient. Count Zinzendorf not only integrated this concern for the persecuted into the ethos of Herrnhut, but it also became part of a challenge to see to it that the Gospel would be brought to the most unreached groups in the world. This care for the under-dog permeated the life of all early Moravian settlements. It was natural that they would take it up for those people groups that were threatened with extinction like the indigenous 'Indians' in North America and the Khoi at the Cape of Good Hope. This they performed through work of social and educational upliftment rather than through political involvement.
The Herrnhut Moravians took discipline seriously. An interesting case was Georg Schmidt, who was sent to the Cape initially ‘on probation’, as punishment for a perceived serious misdemeanor. Schmidt had been imprisoned in Moravia because of his faith. After his release he was smeared and slandered. A rumour was hereafter spread that Schmidt signed a document in which he was said to have recanted to regain his freedom. It was even asserted that Schmidt returned to Catholicism. At any rate, Schmidt soon hereafter returned to the Roman Catholic regions, to encourage the Protestant believers there, risking a new imprisonment or even worse. (His companion on his previous trip, Melchoir Nitchmann, died in prison). The Count ordered that Georg Schmidt had to forego fellowship. As further punishment he was required to go to the ‘Wilden’, the resistant ‘Hottentotten’ in a solitary capacity- not in a team of at least two missionaries.
Without any apparent grudge, Schmidt accepted the gross punishment to be ‘banished’, to go to the distant Cape of Good Hope. Two weeks after his call he was already on his way to Africa.

Serious Bible Study
An example of a much better use of Scripture than false alternatives, which are sometimes derived from it, is seen in the life of Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians after 1727. From a very early age the Count was searching the Scriptures, later becoming the spearhead and driving force of the Order of the Mus­tard Seed when he was at secondary school. Here it was already clear that a missionary spirit was evolving. The choice of the name of their order has of course the biblical parable as its origin when Jesus referred to the small seed which grew into a big plant (Matthew 13:31f).
In the congregation at Herrnhut the Bible study was thorough and deep. Those brothers, who had a gift of Scriptural exposition, received full freedom. Spiritual leadership was charis­matic rather than based on formal academic training (Weinlick, 1956:87). The Herrnhut Moravians were not apologetic about it at all. When someone suggested that the group was shallow and superficial, Zinzendorf retorted in passing how eager the congregation listened to the splendid scriptural exposition of Leonhard Dober, who used the Hebrew text for this purpose although he was no academic, only a potter.
Another potter, his brother Martin, often found distinguished and learned people in his audience. How they appreciated his teaching is proved that they even went to sit next to the potter’s wheel to listen to his teaching. ‘... he might be visited by a count, a nobleman or a professor, who found him barefoot in his shop.’21 Martin Dober was also the most popular preacher at the morning devotions at 5 a.m. (Uttendörfer and Schmidt, 1914:34).
Count Zinzendorf himself set the good example to use Scripture to unite rather than divide. Thus he would use Bible verses to reconcile parties who were at loggerheads. Yet, he was humble enough to acknowledge his own limitations, by avoiding diffi­cult or controversial portions from Scripture (Weinlick, 1956:91).
Odour in stead of Aroma
Count Zinzendorf detested philosophy and what he called the bad smell of theology. He stated that ‘all the essential theology can be written with large characters on one octavo sheet’ (Cited in Lewis, 1962:15).22 Thus he was very con­cerned at the development at the Herrnhut Seminary during his absence in America, fearing that ‘the brethren would move away from simplicity, that their bishops would start filling the young people with learnedness’ (Spangenberg, 1773-1775 [1971]:1492). In one of his Fetter Lane lec­tures in London, the Count made the astonish­ing remark that the philos­ophers and theolo­gians ‘have made that which was before obscure so pitch dark that, if earlier, before hearing it explained, one did understand a little bit; now after the explanation one no longer has the slightest idea what to make of it.’ In the sentence just before this remark, Zinzendorf offers the reason that was so typical of him: ‘they have been intent on hunting for expressions outside of Scripture in order to expound... those passages of Scripture which they found obscure.’23 The Count referred to the vain quest of academic learning as odium theologicum. To put the record straight: The Bible does not teach that intellect must not be appreciated. Paul sat under the feet of the famous Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), but he only became a spiritual giant after his mental capacity came under the rule of Christ. All his feats as a Pharisee he regarded as rubbish compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ (Phillipians 3:7,8). The warning is possibly just as apt for our day and age as it was in by-gone times.

An Example of sacrificial Giving
Excitement in missionary activity can all too easily lead to us over-extending ourselves. Count Zinzendorf was a culprit in this regard. He bequeathed massive debts, which Spangenberg had to try and sort out later. But the rank and file church member also had to play a part.
At Herrnhut the members celebrated the congregation's half century jubilee in May 1772. Twenty poor single sisters there, inspired by patriotic zeal, wrote the following letter to the U.E.C., the international United Elders' Council: 'After maturely weighing how we might be able, in proportion to our slender means, to contribute something to lessen the debt on the Unity ... we have cheerfully agreed to sacrifice and dispose of all unnecessary articles, such as gold and silver plate, watches, snuff-boxes, rings, trinkets and jewellery of every kind for the purpose of establishing a Sinking Fund, on condition that not only the congregation at Herrnhut, but all the members of the Church everywhere, rich and poor, old and young, agree to this proposal. But this agreement is not to be binding on those who can contribute in other ways.' The brave letter caused an immense sensation. The spirit of generosity swept over the Church like a freshening breeze. The other members felt compelled to dive into their pockets; and the young men offered free labour in their leisure hours. The good folk at Herrnhut vied with each other in giving; and the Brethren at Philadelphia (US) competed with the Brethren at Herrnhut. In less than twelve months the 'Single Sisters' at Herrnhut raised £1,300; the total contributions at Herrnhut amounted to £3,500; and in three years the Sinking Fund had a capital of £25,000. Thus twenty 'single sisters' earned a high place on the Moravian roll of honour. At the same time, the U.E.C. were able to sell the three estates of Marienborn, Herrnhaag and Lindsey House; and in these ways the debt on the Church was gradually wiped off.
6.The Moravian Revival links with America

The Religious Society of Friends is a movement that began in England in the 17th century. Members of this movement are informally known as Quakers, a word that means, "to tremble in the way of the Lord." In its early days it faced opposition and persecution; however, it continued to expand, extending into many parts of the world.
Just like the Moravians, the Society of Friends - while always small in membership - has been veryinfluential in the history of reform. The state of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn in 1682, as a safe place for Quakers to live and practice their faith. Quakers have been a significant part of the movements for the abolition of slavery, promote equal rights for women, and peace. They have also promoted education and the humane treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill, through the founding or reforming of various institutions. Quaker entrepreneurs played a central role in forging the Indusstrial Revolution, especially in England and Pennsylvania.
An abolitionist Pioneer Anthony Benezet was born in Saint-Quentin, France, on 31 January 1713. His family were Hugenots. Because of the persecution of Protestants after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, his family decided to leave France. They moved first to Rotterdam, then to England. In 1727 Benezet joined the Religious Society of Friends. In 1731 the Benezet family immigrated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in North America.
In Philadelphia, Benezet worked to convince his Quaker brethren that slave-owning was not consistent with biblical faith. After several years as a failed merchant, in 1739 Benezet began teaching at a Germantown school. In 1742, he moved to the Friends' English School of Philadelphia. In 1750 he added night classes for black slaves to his schedule. In 1754, Benezet left the Friends' English School to set up his own school, the first public girls' school on the American continent. In 1770, he founded the 'Negro school' at Philadelphia.
Benezet also founded the first anti-slavery society, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage. Benjamin Franklin and Dr Benjamin Rush reconstituted this association after Benezet's death as the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.
After the first generation of Puritans in North America had passed away, religious fervour seems to have declined very rapidly, so that the writings of those who had seen what the churches in New England were at the beginning, are filled with lamentations over their subsequent condition, and with gloomy prognoses as to the future. As early as 1678, Dr Increase Mather reported in Prince's Christian History, Vol. I, p. 98: 'The body of the rising generation is a poor, perishing, unconverted, and (unless the Lord pour down his Spirit) an undone generation. Many are profane, drunkards, swearers, lascivious, scoffers at the power of godliness, despisers of those that are good, disobedient. Others are only civil and outwardly conformed to good order by reason of their education, but never knew what the new birth means.' By 1721 conditions were even worse. The same author reports '... having had an opportunity to converse with the first planters of this country, and having been for sixty-five years a preacher of the Gospel, I cannot but be in the disposition of those ancient men, who had seen the foundation of the first house, and wept to see the change that the work of the temple had upon it... there is a grievous decay of piety in the land, and a leaving of her first love; and that the beauties of holiness are not to be seen as once they were; a fruitful Christian grown too rare a spectacle; ... and the very interest of New England seems to be changed from a religious to a worldly one.'
The first American awakening The first American awakening began in 1720 with the preaching of Theodore J. Frelinghuysen in the area around New Brunswick, New Jersey. This became the first American spiritual revival on a significant scale. Theodore J. Frelinghuysen came to America as the pastor of four Dutch Reformed congregations. He brought what some religious authority has labelled a 'fervent piety.' It has been suggested that Frelinghuysen was trained by the Moravians, but this is very unlikely.24 His preaching carried great power. His method was to select lay leaders and teach them how to conduct prayer and Bible Study meetings in their homes. This was not the normal practice at the time, and some church leaders attacked Frelinghuysen because of his non-conforming ways. Frelinghuysen settled in New Jersey’s Raritan Valley. Rough folk with little interest in anything else than outward religious conformity populated the region. The rank and file colonist simply sought to preserve their Dutch Church as a landmark to their national cultural heritage. These colonists did not want a faith which challenged their commitment or emotions. Frelinghuysen preached an inner religion which he contrasted to their being contented satisfaction with outward rituals and tradition. Older members soon became offended with his preaching, but younger members found themselves attracted to him. As a result, controversy hit nearly every Dutch Reformed congregation in the colonies. It even influenced churches back in Holland in due course. Frelinghuysen continued his efforts until he even reached his detractors. Eventually this impacted the renowned Jonathan Edwards.
Moravian Settlements in America
After an unsuccessful attempt to establish a Moravian settlement in Georgia (1735-1740), the Moravians settled in Pennsylvania on the estate of the great itinerant British evangelist George Whitefield. Moravian settlers purchased 500 acres to establish the settlement of Bethlehem in 1741. Soon they also bought the 5,000 acres of the Barony of Nazareth from Whitefield's manager, and the two communities of Bethlehem and Nazareth became closely linked in their agricultural and industrial economy. Other settlement congregations were established in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. All were considered frontier centres for the spread of the gospel, particularly in the mission to the Native Americans. Bishop August Spangenberg led a party to survey a 100,000 acre tract of land in North Carolina, which came to be known as Wachau after an Austrian estate of Count Zinzendorf. The name, later anglicized to Wachovia, became the centre of growth for thedenomination in that region.

The special Contribution of Jonathan Edwards
The Great Awakening might have remained an oddity on the fringes of the American experience, if it weren’t for a pastor named Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758). This scholar’s openness and keen analysis made sense of this movement of the Holy Spirit, and as a result, even more lives were changed. In the process, an emerging nation found its soul. Jonathan Edwards was a preacher, theologian, and missionary to native Americans. Edwards is widely acknowledged to be America’s most important and original philosophical theologian, and one of America’s greatest intellectuals. Edwards was not a revival preacher in the usual sense, but he did promote and sympathize with the revivalists.
In 1733, a religious revival began in Northampton, Massachusetts, that reached such an intensity in the winter of 1734 and the following spring as to threaten the business of the town. In six months, nearly three hundred colonists were admitted to the church. In A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, Edwards analyzed the 1734-35 revival that swept through Northampton and surrounding towns. Soon there was a remarkable religious concern throughout the region. The untimely death of a young man in early 1734 caused many to think about their eternal destiny, and a flood of personal conversions followed. When Edwards spoke from his Northampton pulpit, he did not speak extemporaneously as did most revivalists. He took whole manuscripts into the pulpit with him. Near-sighted, he held the manuscript so near to his face that it hid him from view. He developed his sermonic themes thoroughly and listeners had to listen carefully to catch the meaning. He did not preach emotionally but he did use revival themes. He also attacked doctrines of 'easy salvation' which had afflicted New England Puritanism since the formation of the Half-Way Covenant.25 By 1735 the revival had spread - and popped up independently - across the Connecticut River Valley, extending perhaps as far as New Jersey. However, criticism of the revival surfaced, and many New Englanders feared that Edwards had led his flock into fanaticism. Over the (northern) summer of 1735, religious fervour took a strange turn. A number of New Englanders were shaken by the revivals but not converted, and became convinced of their inexorable damnation. Edwards wrote that “multitudes” felt urged - presumably by satan - to take their own lives. A suicide craze effectively ended the first wave of revival, except in some parts of Connecticut. However, despite these setbacks and the cooling of religious fervour, word of the Northampton revival and Edwards’s leadership role had spread as far as England and Scotland. But the relapse was brief, and the Northampton revival, which had spread through the Connecticut River Valley and whose fame had reached England and Scotland, was followed in 1739–1740 by the Great American awakening, distinctively under the leadership of Edwards.
Oxford's 'Holy Club'
The brothers John Wesley and Charles Wesley attended Oxford University where they formed what came to be known as 'The Holy Club.' George Whitefield joined them there in 1732. It was a religious society built around extreme discipline. Together they created a great stir at Oxford as they applied rigorous standards of discipline in Bible study, communion, prayer and fasting. To be part of The Holy Club you had to '..rise very









































early each morning, carry on rigorous devotions, At night you had to make notes in your journal, You had to fast twice a week, and you had to visit prisoners at the Oxford jail.'
One night his colleagues looked out the window. They saw Whitefield outside kneeling in prayer with his face in the dirt. It began to rain, turning dirt to mud, but he continued to pray. These young men were, not surprisingly, ridiculed and jeered by fellow students. John Wesley eventually organized the denomination that we today know as the Methodists. Charles Wesley, John’s younger brother, possessed a remarkable talent to write hymns, which eventually came to number nearly 8,000. John and Charles Wesley who were studying for ordination in the Anglican Church and would go on to found and develop Methodism.  Charles Wesley borrowed Whitefield a book by Henry Scougal called The Life of God in the Soul of Man. It changed his life and in 1735 he became what we would term today’born again’, although the term was not in use at the time. Years later, he would say, ‘Whenever I go to Oxford, I cannot help running to the spot where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me and gave me the new birth.’ Whitefield’s physical health took a turn for the worse and he left Oxford because of it. He spent nine months recuperating at home. During that time he made the acquaintance of the Anglican Bishop of Gloucester. Whitefield returned to Oxford and earned his degree in 1736. He had also become the leader of the Holy Club, as the Wesley brothers had set sail for the American colony of Georgia. Upon Whitefield’s return home, Bishop Benson ordained him as a deacon and, later on, as a priest. Of his ordination, Whitefield said, ‘My heart was melted down and I offered my whole spirit, soul, and body to the service of God’s sanctuary.’ News of Whitefield’s gift for preaching spread rapidly.  He preached his first public sermon in Gloucester a week after he was ordained. He then preached near Bristol, adopting the open-air revivalist style of his contemporary, Howell Harris. Whitefield also went to London where, at Moorfields and on Kennington Common (east central and south London, respectively), he commanded audiences of 20,000 people.
John Wesley impacted
After his ordination in England as an Anglican priest, John Wesley travelled to Savannah (Georgia) in 1735 to propagate the Gospel with his brother Charles. Soon after his arrival there, the Moravian missionary August Spangenberg challenged him regarding his assurance of salvation. He had been rattled already on the voyage to the 'New World' after they had experienced three storms at sea. Wesley's entry in his diary for Sunday, 25. January (p.26) bears witness to this. The composure and Christ-like humility of the German Moravian passengers who also went to Georgia, deeply impressed him. They performed tasks 'which none of the English would undertake; for which they desired and would receive no pay, saying it was good for their proud hearts,.. they were pushed, struck, or thrown down, they rose again and went away; but no complaint was found in their mouth...' John Wesley also noticed that they had been 'delivered from the spirit of fear, as well as from that of pride, anger and revenge.' In the interaction August Spangenberg, who later became a very influential bishop of the Unitas Fratrum, Wesley was challenged with regard to having a close relationship with the Lord.
Wesley returned to England a troubled man, depressed over his faith and his work in America. Wesley wrote in his journal (p.47), ‘I who went to America to convert others, was never myself converted to God.' Back in London, he met Peter Böhler, a young German Moravian minister, who was preparing for ministry in America. Wesley soon started teaching Böhler English. On February 17, 1738 John Wesley accompanied Böhler on a trip to Oxford. Intense discourse between the two men followed. In the entry for 18 February, Wesley (p.49) wrote: 'I conversed much with Peter Bohler, but I understood him not; and least of all when he said, 'My brother, my brother, that philosophy of yours must be purged away.'
John Wesley was greatly disappointed that his enthusiastic gospel message had been rejected by his Anglican brothers. Peter Böhler and his followers established the Fetter Lane Society in London prior to his move across the Atlantic in May 1738 for the purpose of discipleship and accountability. They met once a week for prayer and fellowship. Most of their members consisted of Anglicans. Prominent members were John and Charles Wesley as well as George Whitefield. There were also meetings in Aldersgate Street. John Wesley attended an evening society meeting there on 24 May 1738 very heavy-hearted and 'very unwillingly'. While someone was reading from Martin Luther’s Preface of his commentary on the letter to the Romans. Wesley felt that his heart was 'strangely warmed'. He describes it as follows: “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
The British Anglican missionary to the ‘New World’ realized later that it was not enough to see people saved. The new believers had to be discipled. God led John Wesley to develop a ‘method’ by which new converts could be taught to live a spiritually fruitful life after gathering them in small cells. This he had learnt from the Moravians. In many a way the Moravians had a significant influ­ence on the religious awakening in Great Britain. ‘Indeed, they were midwives to the evangelical revival and to the great Methodist movement’ (Lewis, 1962:23). With his brother Charles he hereafter set out as a rvival preacher. Anglican clergymen refused them their pulipits, whereafter they simply preached in the open from 1739.
The other great revivalist of that era, George Whitefield, was also impacted in London’s Fetter Lane. He joined the Wesleys in their open air campaigns. The Wesley brothers respected the Anglican church, going to those areas where the parish system lacked, where the new folk from the rural areas - mine workers and industrial labourers - settled. The Wesleys called their new preaching venues 'tabernacles'. Whitefield had no interest in this organisation, preferring to go to America in stead on his second trip. Yet, he was quite popular in Britain already.
John Wesley developed new vehicles for the propagation of the Gospel such as a monthly periodical and uplifting reading material. His brother Charles wrote thousands of hymns that were appreciated far outside of their circle of influence. Because of his Calvinist leaning, Whitefield could more readily link with the Presbyterians and Congregationals in Scotland and Wales. In the latter region a new group developed that called themselves Calvinist Methodists.
George Whitefield: the link between the English Revival and America As a young preacher George Whitefield began to preach with amazing success. As he preached in Bristol, Bath, and London, his popularity increased. Multitudes clamoured to hear him, for it was the common people who were most deeply affected by his preaching. At the peak of his first popularity George Whitefield surprised all by announcing his intention of going to Georgia as a missionary. In February 1738 he embarked on the first of his seven voyages across the Atlantic. His first stay in Georgia was brief. He returned to England to take priest’s orders in the Church of England and to collect money to build an Orphan House for the Georgia Mission. Jonathan Edwards got acquainted with George Whitefield as he was travelling the thirteen colonies on a revival tour in 1739-1740. The two great men of God may not have seen eye to eye on every detail - Whitefield was far more comfortable with the strongly emotional elements of revival than Edwards was - but they were both passionate about preaching the Gospel. They worked together to orchestrate Whitefield’s trip, first through Boston, and then to Northampton. When Whitefield preached at Edwards’s church in Northampton, he reminded them of the revival they had experienced just a few years before. This deeply touched Edwards, who wept throughout the entire service, and much of the congregation too was moved. Revival began to spring up again, and it was at this time that Edwards preached his most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in Enfield, (Connecticut) in 1741. This sermon has been widely reprinted as an example of ‘fire and brimstone’ preaching in the colonial revivals. It was so intense that listeners said it was as if he had opened the pit of Hell so that one could smell the smoke and brimstone. The majority of Jonathan Edwards’s sermons were not so dramatic however.
During a two-year stint in England, George Whitefield’s success as a preacher increased beyond all expectation. He was almost a phenomenon. Very soon, however, criticism began to be voiced, at first by churchmen, because of the Calvinistic tone of his sermons. When churches of the settled ministry began to be closed against him, he took to churchyards and fields. With this innovation his popularity with the masses greatly increased. So did the criticism. On the eve of his second departure for America he was a front-page controversial figure, the idol of thousands and all too often the target of unfair abuse. Word of all this reached America before his arrival, giving him the best preparation he could have asked.
Jonathan Edwards salvaging Whitefield After another brief period in Georgia, planning the Orphan House, George Whitefield had the greatest triumph of his life during his month-long tour through New England. Welcomed by ministers and officials of colonies and towns, he found shops closed and business suspended during his stays, thousands of people at his heels, and many following him to the next town. He was still only 26 years old at this time. Success had possibly come too soon. Whitefield’s Boston visit lasted 10 days. He was met on the road by a committee of ministers and led into the town. Many churches however turned him away, fearing his theatricality and emotionalism. That sent Whitefield out to the fields and streets, where even more people could now hear him. It was estimated that 25,000 flocked to one open-air service to hear him preach. With his exceptionally strong voice he also preached on the Common, ‘admired and followed beyond any man that ever was in America.’ (In the words of Benjamin Colman, a contemporary). Whitefield’s preaching stirred emotional outbursts in his hearers, and many church leaders viewed the physical and vocal excesses with suspicion. Jonathan Edwards kept his focus on the internal realities, asking: Are these people truly converted? Is the Spirit working here? In A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, Edwards offered an even-handed critique of the new movement and its emotional displays, which he called “high affections”. He went on to warn that emotional displays are not necessarily the work of the Spirit, and that the devil can counterfeit them. This was not an innovative insight but nevertheless very valuable in that context. Paul, the apostle, had already warned that satan can masquerade as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). Edwards also put pointed questions to test the spirits like ‘look at the fruit in people’s lives”, and “are they loving others? Are they serving God?” Thus one of the most gifted America minds ever gave a qualified green light to the Great Awakening. He concluded that it was a genuine work of God, but the believers just had to be careful about deception. More than any other preacher of his day, Edwards made the Great Awakening a vital, far-reaching force in America in respect of religion, socially and politically.
Assistance from Benjamin Franklin The famous Benjamin Franklin was a dear friend to the great revivalist George Whitefield. A great move of the Spirit was encouraged in Pennsylvania and financed by Franklin. Whitefield was the orator and Franklin the facilitator. George Whitefield preached to new Americans and to their slaves.  Benjamin Franklin heard him at a revival in Philadelphia and was astounded at how far Whitefield’s unamplified voice could carry. Though jealous clergymen may have not liked Whitefield, he found a lifelong friend in Benjamin Franklin. The great American published Whitefield's sermons and journals when he was not yet a famous statesman - just a normal printer. God always seems to undertake for His anointed servants to see that His Word on their lips and fire in their spirit makes it to the printed page. And God blessed Franklin's assistance to the special preacher who had to endure so much opposition from clergymen.

Whitefield among the Scum of his Society
Kingswood, a suburb of Bristol in the UK, was inhabited by coal miners and their families who were savage and ignorant. They had no house of worship. When Whitefield mentioned his intention in Bristol to head for America for the purpose of converting the 'Indians' there, someone remarked, "What need of going abroad for this? Have we not Indians enough at home? If you have a mind to convert Indians, there are colliers enough in Kingswood." (Joseph Beaumont Wakeley,The Prince of Pulpit Orators, p.92, taken from the Internet)
George Whitefield felt extreme sympathy for these coal mining folks. To him they were like sheep without a shepherd. On Sunday, February 17, 1739, he stood upon a mount in a place called Rose Green. This was his first 'field pulpit', preaching to the colliers the 'word of life.' He thought 'it might be doing the service of my Creator, who had a mountain for his pulpit and the heavens for a sounding-board; and who, when his Gospel was refused by the Jews, sent his servants into the highways and hedges.' He was fully aware of the importance of this first step. In his Journal he says, 'Blessed be God that the ice is now broken, and I have now taken the field... Some may censure me, but is there not a cause? Pulpits are denied, and the poor colliers ready to perish for lack of knowledge.' (Joseph Beaumont Wakeley, ibid, p.93)

Theological Controversy It is sad that a shadow fell over George Whitefield’s witness because of theological controversy. He became estranged from the Wesleys. Whitefield disagreed with a number of doctrinal points in John Wesley’s sermons, most especially Wesley’s understanding of new birth and salvation. From the moment of his conversion in 1735, Whitefield had been deeply convinced of the total depravity of humanity, the need for a new birth, and that only God can save. As a Calvinist, Whitefield strictly adhered to the doctrine of predestination. The Wesley brothers felt that one should be able to appeal to the free choice of the listeners. It was bad enough that George Whitefield wrote a letter to John Wesley - dated December 24, 1740 - in response to Wesley’s sermon entitled “Free Grace”. The arch enemy had free reign when it was mischievously published in January 1741, without the permission of either of the two. The entry for Sunday, February 1, 1741 in his journal (p.82) gives testimony to Wesley's effort to heal the rift: 'A private letter, written to me by Mr. Whitefield, was printed without either his leave or mine, and a great numbers of copies were given to our people, both at the door and in the Foundry itself. Having procured one of them, I related (after preaching) the naked fact to the congregation and told them, I will do just what I believe Mr Whitefield would, were he here himself. Upon which I tore it in pieces before them all. Everyone who had received it, did the same. So that in two minutes there was not a whole copy left.'
Similarly, John Wesley and Count Zinzendorf were treading dangerous territory to go public with their theological disputes. The two great men differed in yet another way. In one of the Moravian litanies Zinzendorf included the prayer that the denomination might be spared an unholy getting big.26 Wesley’s methods included growth as a specific aim. The Methodist Church became a major global denomination. The Moravian Church on the other hand remained small, albeit wielding great influence for many centuries. In various countries they handed their pioneering work to other denominations.

An outflow of the “Great” Awakening: David Brainerd The Great Awakening proved to be ambivalent: both uniting and divisive. The revivals transcended colonial and denominational barriers unprecedentedly. Theological differences ebbed away. More practical questions needed attention. The awakening also hastened the separation of church and state. Emphasis on a personal conversion meant individuals could find salvation. The awakening also led to an increased emphasis on piety and spirituality. Much of our modern understanding of piety or spirituality comes from this period and the influence of later Holiness movements, rather than God’s Word. The revival tended to improve the colonial moral conditions temporarily. The Great Awakening revived interest in missionary work. Caught up in the emotional and personal commitment to the ideals of the Great Awakening was a young Yale student, David Brainerd. He was to lead a short, yet distinguished life. Having experienced a personal religious experience at the age of twenty-one, Brainerd entered Yale with the expectation of becoming a minister. However, the radicalism associated with the Great Awakening, coupled with the rebellion of youth, led to his expulsion from Yale during his third year. Barred from Yale, and greatly disappointed that the ministry in Connecticut was closed to him, Brainerd embarked on a path of religious service that has inspired subsequent generations of Christians. In the summer of 1742 a group of ministers sitting in Danbury, Connecticut, licensed Brainerd to preach. Jonathan Dickinson, a leading Presbyterian in New Jersey, took special interest in young Brainerd. As a member of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, Dickinson was able to secure an appointment for Brainerd as a missionary to the indigenous Mohicans at Kaunaumeek. Here Brainerd embarked on what was to be his life’s work. For one year he lived alone and suffered severe privation in the wilderness of the Taconic mountains. With the success of the Stockbridge mission nearby however, the Mohican families removed to that settlement, and Brainerd directed his attention toward the Delaware 'Indians' of the New Jersey/Pennsylvania region. His example inspired Jonathan Edwards to reach out to another indigenous group.
Native American Martyrs as Gospel Seed27
The Tertullian adage w.r.t. martyrs as Gospel Seed had an interesting variation in the late 18th century among Native American Moravian converts in the latter part of the first American Awakening. David Zeisberger began as a missionary to Native 'Indian' peoples following his ordination as a Moravian minister in 1749. He worked among the Lenape (Delaware) of Pennsylvania, coming into conflict with British authorities over his advocacy of Natives’ rights and his ongoing efforts to establish White and Native Moravian communities in southern Ohio. He was soon the senior missionary of the Moravian Brethren among the 'Indians'. His relations with British authorities worsened during the American Revolutionary War and in 1781 he was arrested and held at Fort Detroit. While he was imprisoned, about 100 of his Native converts in Ohio were murdered by Pennsylvania militiamen, an event known as the Gnadenhutten Massacre.
In early March of 1782 a raiding party of 160 Pennsylvania fighters under Colonel David Williamson set off to the Moravian towns to burn them in an effort to keep the abandoned villages from being used by opposing war parties.  Contrary to some apologists of Williamson’s raid, the burning was neither organized nor sanctioned by any authority. It was an ad hoc expedition formed by local frontiersmen who wanted to destroy the villages which they perceived as bases for 'Indian' raids.
As the militia approached the mission post Gnadenhutten on March 7, 1782 they told the Christian 'Indians' that they had come to protect them and take them back to the safety of Fort Pitt. Many 'Indians' gathered together, and others from nearby Salem arrived. The militia men however accused them of taking part in the ongoing raids into Pennsylvania. Some articles of clothing taken from a massacred White family by a marauding war party and left behind at Gnadenhutten, incited the passion of the militiamen. Although the Moravian 'Indians' were well known as pacifists, and indeed had been invaluable to the American cause, the bordermen were bent on getting 'Indian' scalps and plunder. Col. Williamson held a council of his men to determine whether to take the 'Indians' back to Fort Pitt or to kill them. Records state that only 18 men voted to spare the 'Indians'.
On the evening of the 7th March, the 'Indians' spent their last hours praying and singing, knowing that their spirits would soon be in the presence of their Lord. They did not resist, they did not struggle.  The next morning the slaughter began. The women were killed in one building, the men in the other.  The old, the young and the infants were all massacred. The lists of the victims contain the names of infants and toddlers who were killed. As the victims were brought into the slaughter houses, many sang hymns, others prayed.  The Word of God was on their lips as the mallet or tomahawk crashed into their skulls.
The corpses were then heaped into the mission buildings, and the town was burned to the ground. The other abandoned Moravian towns were then burned as well. Two 'Indian' boys, one of whom had been scalped, survived to tell the story of the massacre. The blood of the Gnadenhutten martyrs was poised to be seed of the church - another awakening in America.
We will be looking in the next two chapters at the effects of the Herrnhut revival of 1727 and at developments in South Africa prior to the 1860 revival.

7. The 18th Century Moravian-Methodist Revival
In this chapter we examine early revivals in the UK as a direct fruit of the Herrnhut revival of 1727.

The Roots of Revival in Ireland
The 1859 revival in Ireland has some roots in the 18th century Moravian-Methodist revival. John Cennick (1718 –1755) was an early Methodist and Moravian evangelist. After meeting John Wesley, he joined the Methodist movement. In 1740, he became a teacher at Kingswood, England, on Wesley’s recommendation.
Baptists visiting London heard Cennick preach and invited him to Dublin in 1747. Around this time he was in the process of joining the Moravians. After quarrels with his Dublin hosts, he concentrated his attentions on Ulster, where he founded quite a few Moravian communities between 1747 and 1752 and helped to establish Evangelicalism in Ireland. A plaque on the wall of a Moravian church commemorates the arrival of John Cennick in Ballymena on 9 August 1746. The first Moravian evangelist in mid Antrim spent much time as an itinerant evangelist in England and Ireland, enduring great and often violent opposition. By the time of his early death, he had established over 40 churches.

The Run-up to the 18th Century Welsh Revival The Welsh revival's immediate beginnings are usually traced back to the religious conversion of Howell Harris at Talgarth church in 1735. While listening to the preaching of Rev. Pryce Davies on the necessity of partaking in Holy Communion, Harris came to the conviction that he had received mercy through the blood of Christ. He began to tell others about this and also started to hold meetings at his home at Trefeca near Brecon for these followers.
Griffith Jones (1684–1761), the rector of Llanddowror, is widely regarded to have been a forerunner of the Methodist movement in Wales. Through his going around to schools, he taught thousands in Wales to read the Bible and created a generation of people who would be receptive to Methodist ideas. He himself also preached in the open air as Methodist leaders would later do. In fact, the newly-converted Harris visited him for spiritual guidance and direction, and it was through his preaching that Daniel Rowland was converted and began to disseminate Methodist ideas. The other major leader of the early revival was William Williams. He was converted in 1737 as he listened to Harris preaching in the Talgarth churchyard. Rowland and Harris had been at work for some eighteen months separately before they met at Defynnog in 1737. This led to a friendship that lasted - with a ten year break in fellowship - until Harris's death in 1773. Methodist leaders met regularly to organise their work and to agree on matters of common interest. Having failed to be accepted for ordination in the Church of England because of his 'Methodist' views, he became a travelling preacher and was tireless in his determination to spread the word throughout Wales. His preaching often led him into personal danger, and he endured considerable persecution and hardship before gaining a following.
Harris and Williams undertook major preaching journeys, starting in South Wales but later venturing north. As they preached they made converts which they then gathered together into organised groups of fellowships (known as seiadau [societies] in Welsh). As more and more converts were made, more and more evangelists were also created, and by 1750 there were over 400 such fellowship groups in Wales. These groups were closely supervised by the leaders and were built up into a significant and powerful network within the Church of England.
In 1750, having fallen out with Daniel Rowland, and having been the subject of a public scandal as a result of his close friendship with 'Madam' Sidney Griffith, Howell Harris retreated to his home at Trefeca near Brecon. In 1752, inspired by the example of the Moravians, he founded a religious community there, known as Teulu Trefeca (=The Trefeca family) with himself as "father". However, Harris had not given up preaching, and resumed his former activities in 1763, after reconciliation with Daniel Rowland. Rowland concentrated his efforts on Llangeitho which became a centre for the movement. On Communion Sundays thousands of the members of the seiadau would travel there to receive the sacrament. Following the Llangeitho revival of 1762, members of the revival were often known as Jumpers on account of their habit of jumping for joy. The Welsh Methodist revival differed from the Methodist revival in England in that its theology was Calvinist rather than Arminian. At the beginning the leaders worked with John Wesley, but gradually they parted company from Wesley and became associated with George Whitefield and his patron, Selina, the Countess of Huntingdon.
The Run-up of Revival in Cambuslang (Scotland) Cambuslang is now a district in the city of Glasgow, but in the 1740s it was a community on its own. It was about five miles south west from that city. The parish minister of Cambuslang from 1731 to 1771 was William M’Culloch, a simple and earnest parish minister. There was a local dispute – it is not clear what the problem was - but it was sufficiently serious to bring some of his church elders to resign from the Kirk Session (the lowest court in the Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian Churches.). William M’Culloch was an unlikely person to have organised this remarkable event. He was a painfully slow speaker, and this partly explains why it was not until ten years after graduating that he was licensed to preach by his local presbytery of Wigton. Early on in his career as a minister, William M’Culloch had confessed to a friend that he envied those who had felt called or converted to Christ. Apart from the anarchy in the Kirk Session, there were unusual natural events happening. For example, gales of tremendous ferocity, causing extensive damage, took place around the Glasgow area in 1739. In the following year, January 1740, there was a devastating hurricane, the like of which had never been experienced there before. People were bewildered, and they were quite afraid.
William M’Culloch received many letters from New England that described events of the Great Awakening and began preaching in a tent next to the church, using letters and printed sermons from New England, detailing the extraordinary events taking place there. The lack of a minister for many years had led to a huge number of “fellowships”, or praying societies, in the parish. Now Mr M’Culloch added another ingredient — the letters and sermons from America were supplemented by sermons on his own specialist theme “Regeneration: its nature and necessity.” M’Culloch’s readings from the pulpit, along with his private conversations with concerned parishioners, laid a solid foundation for the historical events that soon followed — the extraordinary events known as the Cambuslang Work, the “work of the Lord”. In 1741, the renowned George Whitefield came to Scotland, partly to raise money for his orphanage in Georgia. His stops included Glasgow. This was attended by several of Rev. M’Culloch's congregation, who belonged to local prayer and discussion groups. They were much affected by what they heard and saw. On their return to Cambuslang they sought some spiritual help from their minister, Rev. William M’Culloch. William M’Culloch had been in the habit of preaching outdoors, in the nearby gorge, because of the poor state of repair of the church. Towards the end of January 1742, two men, Ingram More, a shoemaker,, and Robert Bowman, a weaver, went through the parish, and got about 90 heads of families to sign a petition to the minister, requesting him to give them a weekly lecture. Thursday evening was set for this. The first two lectures passed off as expected, and only a few persons came back to the manse for further prayer and discussion. However, on Monday 15 February, all the fellowships in the parish turned up at the manse and spent several days praying and discussing, marvelling at the great events that were being reported from England and America.
Strange Behaviour
On Thursday 18 February 1742, the weekly lecture proceeded as usual, though it was noticed that the congregation were paying particular attention to the detail of the sermon. However, when the minister finished his last prayer by asking "Lord who hath believed our report; and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? where are the fruits of my poor labours among this people?", several people cried out publicly in response - an event rare in Scottish worship. Afterwards, some 50 people came back in anguish to the manse, expressing a strong conviction of sin and fearing dreadful punishment in the next life. Then such a great influx of people to Cambuslang followed that the minister started giving daily sermons and instruction. This lasted for about seven or eight months.
The Cambuslang Work, or ‘Wark’ in the Scottish language, (February to November 1742) was a period of extraordinary religious activity. The event peaked in August 1742 when a crowd of some 30,000 gathered in the ‘preaching braes’ - a natural amphitheatre next to the Kirk (church) at Cambuslang - to hear the great preacher George Whitefield. It was intimately connected with the similar remarkable revivalist events taking place throughout Great Britain and its American colonies and in New England, where it is known as the Great Awakening.
George Whitefield in the Mix George Whitefield was invited by the Associate Presbytery of the Seceeders to come to Scotland, in the hope that he would strengthen their cause. They expected Whitefield to confine his preaching to their own churches, but Whitefield couldn’t in all conscience meet their request. When M’Culloch invited him to come and assist him at Cambuslang, he couldn’t refuse. He arrived at Cambuslang on Tuesday, the 6th of July 1742, at midday. Whitefield must have been tired from travelling, but on that same day he preached at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, at 6 o’clock in the evening and at 9 o’clock at night. At about 11 o’clock that summer night, there were scenes of uncontrollable distress. A description given at the time said that it was like a battle field. Many were carried to the manse like wounded soldiers. M’Culloch himself preached until one o'clock in the morning; and then he tried to persuade the people to depart, but his pleas went unheaded. Praise and prayer were heard in the fields throughout the night.
The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was observed on Sunday the 14th of July in a field near the church. According to the number of tokens handed in, it was estimated that about 1700 people took communion, and that the gathered congregation numbered about 20,000. So impressive was the sacramental occasion, that it was suggested to the Kirk Session that another Communion be observed as soon as possible. This was agreed to by the Kirk Session, which appointed the 15th of August for the purpose. The crowds that gathered for the second sacramental occasion were greater than ever. It was said at the time, ‘none ever saw the like, since the Revolution in Scotland, or even anywhere else at any sacramental occasion.’ From near and far people flocked to Cambuslang. They came from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Irvine, Stewarton and many other places, also from England and Ireland. Worship began at 8.00 a.m. on Sunday morning, and the last table was being served at sunset. Whitefield preached to the people in the churchyard at 10 o’clock that night. It was noticed by people who were there, that when the great evangelist was serving the tables, he appeared to be almost carried away in ecstasy. Services were again held on Monday with large crowds attending and well over twenty ministers and preachers present.
Amazing Grace 'Amazing grace, how sweet the sound...' Thus begins one of the most beloved hymns of all times. The author of the words was John Newton, the self-proclaimed wretch who once was lost but then was found, saved by amazing grace. On a homeward voyage, while he was attempting to steer his slave trading ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he was to refer to later as his 'great deliverance.' He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, "Lord, have mercy upon us." Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him. By 1755, after a serious illness, he had given up seafaring forever. During his days as a sailor he had begun to educate himself, teaching himself Latin, among other subjects. From 1755 to 1760 John Newton was surveyor of tides at Liverpool, where he came to know George Whitefield. Newton became Whitefield's enthusiastic disciple. During this period Newton also met and came to admire John Wesley. Newton's self-education continued, and he learned Greek and Hebrew. He decided to become a minister and applied to the Archbishop of York for ordination. The Archbishop refused his request, but Newton persisted in his goal, and he was subsequently ordained by the Bishop of Lincoln and accepted the curacy of Olney, Buckinghamshire. Newton's church became so crowded during services that it had to be enlarged. He preached not only in Olney but also in other parts of the country. In 1767 the well-known poet William Cowper settled at Olney, and he and Newton became friends. Cowper helped Newton with his religious services and on his tours to other places. They held not only a regular weekly church service but also began a series of weekly prayer meetings, for which their goal was to write a new hymn for each one. They collaborated on several editions of Olney Hymns, which achieved lasting popularity. Composed probably between 1760 and 1770 in Olney, "Amazing Grace" was possibly one of the hymns written for a weekly service. Through the years other writers have composed additional verses to the hymn, which came to be known as "Amazing Grace" and possibly verses from other Newton hymns have been added.
Possible Influence from the Cape Ds. Helperus Van Lier, the great Cape Reformed minister from 1786, sent his testimony in the form of six letters to Rev. John Newton. It was originally written in Latin and translated by the poet William Cowper. The story of the influence of divine grace in Van Lier's life seems to have made a lasting impression on Newton, who belonged to the inner circle of (slave) abolitionists. Van Lier’s humility came through when he insisted that a pseudonym Christodulus (slave of Christ), and not his own name, should be used on the publication of his letters to Rev. Newton. In 1780 Newton left Olney to become rector of St Mary Woolnoth in London. There he drew large congregations and influenced many, among them William Wilberforce, who would become a leader in the campaign for the abolition of slavery.
Fighting Social Evils What had triggered the Moravian missionary movement in the first place – the conversation of Count Zinzendorf with the Caribbean-origin slave Anton at the coronation of King Christian VI – would have an interesting follow-up. The conversion of the former brutal slave ship owner John Newton, who subsequently wrote Amazing Grace was followed by William Wilberforce the British evangelical parliamentarian. Wilberforce became a stalwart towards the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807 and slavery in general. Furthermore, the research of Bishop August Spangenberg, who had started off with missionary work among the slaves of Georgia and who died in 1792, would be the seed for the epoch-making book of William Carey that would lead to the modern missionary movement. The monumental An enquiry into the obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathen singularly ushered in missions like no other work before it.

Effects of the Awakening in Britain
One of the big effects of a spiritual awakening in Britain among evangelicals at the end of the 18th century around was deepened interest and sympathy with the poor, the suffering and the people that lived on the periphery of society. The story of the abolitionist movement around the Clapham Sect of London, with William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson so prominent, is well known.
Elizabeth Fry (née Gurney) (21 May 1780 – 12 October 1845) was a major driving force as a dedicated Christian and philanthropist behind new legislation to make the treatment of prisoners more humane, and she was supported in her efforts by the reigning monarch. At the age of 18, young Elizabeth was deeply moved by the preaching of William Savery, an American Quaker. Motivated by his words, she took an interest in the poor, the sick and the prisoners. She collected old clothes for the poor, visited those who were sick in her neighbourhood, and started a Sunday school in the summer house to teach children to read. The combination of evangelism and social upliftment was characteristic of the types of initiatives that started in those days. The lasting work of the Salvation Army that was started through the labours of William and Catherine Booth towards the end of the 19th century is a well-known example.
A good Example of apologetic Literature
The Moravians were also pioneering the publication of useful evangelistic literature. The most striking book, and the most influential of the late 18th century, was August Spangenberg's Idea Fidei Fratrum; i.e., Exposition of the Brethren's Doctrine in 1778.
Spangenberg's object was twofold. On the one hand, he wished to be true to the Augsburg Confession; on the other hand, he would not allow doctrine that was not clearly supported by Scripture. The book used almost entirely in Scriptural language. The conventional phrases of theology were purposely omitted. In spite of his adherence to the orthodox faith, the writer never used such phrases as Trinity, Original Sin, or Sacrament. He deliberately abandoned the language of the creeds for the freer language of Scripture. The strength of the book was its loyalty to Holy Scripture; its weakness its lack of original thought.
For many years this treatise was highly valued by Moravians. Its influence in Germany was great, soon translated into English, Danish, French, Swedish, Dutch, Bohemian and Polish.
8. The first Mini-revivals at the Cape

The Cape Colony prior to the 1860 Revival was a spiritual wilderness. In the first 150 years of Dutch rule only five congregations had been established, all within a 130 Km radius of Cape Town. Most of the colonists had no access to pastoral guidance or opportunities for religious services. During the very formal church services the average member of the congregation struggled to understand the high Dutch of the pulpit. Without the ability to pray from the heart, the colonists resorted to following fixed formulas and jargon, interspersed with often repeated expressions they had heard others using.

Moral Degradation at the Cape
Strong drink played a central role in the popular culture and leisure of the working population of the Mother City. Dutch sailors had a reputation in Europe for being heavy drinkers. The widespread alcoholism in Cape society has its early roots not only on the wine farms of the free burghers and other colonists, but even further back.
The situation was only checked to a large extent by the pious French Huguenots who arrived from 1688. The renowned Cape church historian Johannes Du Plessis (1911: ?) described the situation picturesquely: ‘During the dark days of spiritual declension… deeds of individual charity on the part of the pious Huguenots towards the stricken natives stand out in bold relief.’ They brought with them divine blessings because some of them had been Jews.28
Early evangelistic Beginnings in the Mother City
Sometimes the impression is given that revival is completely divine intervention, with little or no contribution from man’s side. The first serious effort of swimming against the stream of racial and religious prejudice in the 18th century at the Cape is said to have been that of Ds. Henricus Beck, a Groote Kerk minister and previously the second minister to the persecuted French Huguenots. He preached to the first group of refugees to the Cape on alternate Sundays in French and Dutch. It has been reported that Ds. Beck evangelized the slaves at the Cape – many of them Muslims - after his retirement in 1731.
A group of evangelical Christians gathered around Beck. His pioneering labour provided the foundation for the ministry of the first missionary to South Africa, the dynamic German Moravian missionary Georg Schmidt, who started lively Christian groups soon after his arrival in July 1737. We saw in chapter 5 how he, a product of the Herrnhut revival of 1727, had been banished to the Cape.

Against all Odds
A basic objection to the German missionary was that he had no relationship to the Dutch Reformed Church. Gerdener highlighted Schmidt’s reactions to these ‘whisperings’ that were intended to halt his work, a response that was so typical of that generation of Moravians: ‘More than ever Schmidt sought the guidance of the Lord of the harvest and declared that this guidance demanded that he should not only continue but renew his efforts with even greater vigour’ (G.B. A. Gerdener, Two Centuries of Grace, 1937:20) .
Schmidt however refused to be side-tracked through conversions among the colonists, preferring to go to those people who had not heard the Gospel at all. He toiled hard among the resistant indigenous Khoi, initially without success. Schmidt gradually overcame the ‘apathy of his flock’ with ‘labour of love and patience of hope’. It was however no cakewalk in the light of the growing opposition to his work. In the beginning of 1742 Schmidt was very frustrated and despondent after the years of toil with so little to show for it. He wrote to Zinzendorf that he intended to return to Europe, partly because of the indolence of his folk, and partly because he did not receive helpers.
But then the fruit came in the form of the first converts. Schmidt came to the Mother City to greet his friend and benefactor, the German Captain Johannes Rhenius, who was about to leave the country into retirement. On his arrival in the Mother City, he heard that his Moravian missionary compatriots David Nitschmann and the medical practitioner Dr Eller were on the ship ‘Marquetta’, which was expected en route from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), from where they had been deported. In their assessment of his work the local colonists told Nitschmann and Eller that Schmidt had accomplished in three and a half years ‘what others would not have affected in thirty years’ (Du Plessis, 1911:56).
The visit to the Mother City with Willem, a convert, resulted in an unprecedented interest among colonists and officials. During this visit to the Cape, Schmidt picked up a letter of ordination from Count Zinzendorf. The Count encouraged him in the letter to baptize his converts ‘where you shot the rhino’, (hippo?) that is at the river (Krüger, 1969:31).29 In March 1742 he thus at last had the authority to baptise suitable candidates. On his way back to the Overberg, Schmidt baptized his convert in or at the Sergeant’s River, giving him the name Josua. Four more baptisms followed soon thereafter, including that of two females.
Among the five baptised in running water there was a strong-willed female convert, Vehettge Tikkuie, who got the name Magdalena at her baptism. In the conversion and baptism of Vehettge Tikkuie there was a clear supernatural element. Schmidt gave the intelligent Khoi woman the name Magdalena, surely hoping that she would spread the news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ like her biblical namesake. This she definitely did. She had been exceptional any way, progressing quickly from the Dutch ABC manual, to read the New Testament in that language (Bredekamp, 1987:138).

A huge Problem at the Baptism of Khoi believers
When Schmidt mentioned the baptisms in passing to the new commander of the military post of their region, a chain reaction followed. The baptism of the five Khoi believers caused a huge problem among the Reformed clergymen at the Cape. Schmidt was harassed and asked to leave because he had not been 'properly' ordained. The three Dutch Reformed dominees at the Cape, Le Seur (Groote Kerk), Van Gendt (Stellenbosch) and Van Echten (Drakenstein), referred to Schmidt rather scathingly in a letter to their church authorities in Amsterdam as ‘deeze zoogenaamde hottentots-bekeerder’ (this so-called Khoi converter), who pretended to convert ‘de blinde Hottentotten’ (Dreyer, 1936:196f). They complained that the converts were not sufficiently instructed and that Schmidt was not ordained properly. The clergymen furthermore objected because Count Zinzendorf had no authority in the territory of the DEIC, to ordain by post and without the laying on of hands. They referred to Zinzendorf’s letter of ordination in very disparaging terms. Their real problem comes through in the sentence ‘ook mogen geen bejaarden worden gedoopt, dan in de kerken voor de gantsche gemeente’ (my italics, Dreyer, 1936:196f). They could not palate that Schmidt had baptized in a river and not in a church. Schmidt was regarded as a threat to the colonial Church. He felt obliged to leave, hoping to get a Dutch Reformed ordination in Holland, which would have enabled him to return to the small flock he had to leave behind in the Overberg. Pressure was thus successfully exerted by the three Cape ministers to get Schmidt sent back to Germany.

Impact of Schmidt’s Converts
Schmidt evidently impacted the lives of his Khoi congregants in Baviaanskloof (later renamed Genadendal) quite intensely. His prayerful example continued to influence events at the Cape long after he had been all but forced to leave. (It has been reported that Schmidt continued to pray for his Khoi flock without a shepherd in Africa until old age in the East German village of Niesky, where he went to be with his Lord in August 1785 ‘with a prayer for South Africa on his lips’.)
The seed that Schmidt had sown at the Cape during his stint of not even seven years germinated - both in the Mother City and in Baviaanskloof, the later Genadendal. Schmidt was said to have been ‘a man of strong faith and a prayer warrior’ (Schmidt, L.R., Afrika en die Evangelie, Genadendal, 1937). Apparently this example rubbed off on his converts, e.g. on Vehettge Tikkuie, who received the name ‘Magdalena’ at her baptism. Khoi Christians reported that she was often found on her knees in prayer. On top of this, she taught the believers from the copy of the ‘New Testament’, which she had received from Georg Schmidt before his (en)forced departure. On Sundays ‘de oude Lena’ would walk to the pear tree where Georg Schmidt had preached, to read the ‘New Testament’ and pray with her folk. Almost 50 years after Schmidt had left, Khoi witnesses said that they came together at her home every evening where she prayed with them. If one takes the finance minister of Ethiopia mentioned in Acts 8 as the absolute first indigenous evangelist, we can now say that Magdalena was definitely the first of Sub Saharan Africa. But she also became the first known indigenous female church planting evangelist of all time.
How powerfully Schmidt had been evangelizing, is further evidenced by the actions of Hendrik Cloete, the owner of Groot Constantia, who had been impacted as a juvenile under Schmidt’s ministry in 1738 (Kruger, 1966:51). When three new Moravian missionaries arrived in 1792, Cloete supported them against the Cape church people when certain colonists used flimsy reasons to attack the mission endeavour. In February 1796 there was another threat of a physical attack and a rumour that the Khoi would be driven from Baviaanskloof. Firm reassurances from Major-General James Craig, the British military Commander, who appeared ready to use military force, kept the colonists at bay. Ds. Michiel Christiaan Vos, who became the minister for Swartberg (Caledon), brought about some change in the views and attitudes of the colonists of the vicinity. Hendrik Cloete was one of ‘a host of well-wishers’ in Cape Town. He travelled all the way to Baviaanskloof ‘and by his kind mediation procured some relief for the Brethren from obnoxious Government regulations.’(Du Plessis, 1911:71).
Quite soon after the arrival of the dynamic Ds. Helperus van Lier at the Cape in 1786, the legacy of Schmidt penetrated when Van Lier was present at the deathbed of another convert of the missionary pioneer. He saw how the Khoi believer died ‘in volkome rus en vrede van sy siel en in vertroue op die Here.’30 It made such a deep impression on Van Lier that he mentioned this in one of his letters to his uncle, Professor Petrus Hofstede. The latter was an influential academic in Rotterdam, who was at that stage still an opponent of the Moravian brethren. Van Lier became a major instrument not only in getting Moravians misssionaries back to the Cape in 1792 through letters, but he was also instrumental in sowing the seed for the first mini-revival at the Cape.31

Revival and Warfare
A missionary prayer circle of about 60 people got off the ground around the above-mentioned evangelical group who committed themselves in an organized way to weekly prayer (later twice a week) for the outreach to the ‘heathen’ and the slaves. The influence of the Moravians operated at these prayer meeting because Van Lier saw to it that the Idea Fidei Fratrum of kort begrip der christelijke leer in de evangelische broedergemeenten (1778) by Bishop Spangenberg - and other writings of the Moravians, including reports of their mission work around the world – were read at these prayer meetings (Krüger, 1966: 48).
Van Lier continued to lobby for missionary action, pleading for the establishment of a Dutch missionary society, for the admission of missionaries to the colony and urging the Moravians to re-enter the field. According to him, three enterprises were called for: ‘One among the Hottentots in the Colony, one among the Bantu in the East, and one among the indigenous peoples to the North’ (Du Plessis, 1911: 63f). Van Lier possibly had some indirect influence on the founding of the London and Rotterdam missionary societies in 1795 and 1797 respectively. What a joy it must have been to welcome the three Moravians to his table after returning from sick leave, but his days were numbered. Tragically, Van Lier was not around to see the actual founding of the first missionary society in the world outside of Europe at the Cape in April 1799. Van Lier had already died of tuberculosis in March 1793 at the age of only 28.
One wonders what could have happened at the Cape if similar consistent prayers had been offered as was the case in the German congregation at Herrnhut on behalf of the Moravian settlement in Baviaanskloof to which three new missionaries returned in 1792. Supernaturally Khoisan converged on the settlement that was renamed Genadendal. Soon the mission station became quite sizeable in terms of population, second only to the Mother City. Catherine Pik’s recollections at Genadendal in 1808 illustrate how many were divinely drawn to the settlement. One of the inhabitants recalled: ‘I remember what my late father used to say, exhorting us children to take notice and follow those people who would once come from a distant country, and show us Hottentots a narrow way, by which we might escape from the fire, and the true Toiqua (= God)’.
The colonists were not enchanted by this migration to Baviaanskloof, as the same Khoi person narrated: ‘the farmers were angry, and told us that they meant to sell us as slaves. But I remembered my father’s words, and would not be prevented from moving to Baviaanskloof’ (cited in Elbourne, 1992:12).

The second Cape Mini-Revival
The spiritual hunger of the Khoi at Genadendal, the present name for Baviaanskloof, has been attributed to the prayers of the Americans during their second great awakening (e.g. Terhoven (1989:153). The 24-hour prayer watch of the Moravians in Europe and America, together with the faithful prayers of Georg Schmidt until the time of his death, and those of his convert Magdalena in Baviaanskloof - will have been at least as contributory.
It is interesting to note that the three Genadendal missionaries - Kühnel, Marsveld and Schwinn - recorded in their diary the story of a man who ‘dreamt that three would come to teach them... They (the Khoi) say that they spoke about it often because they very much wished for it to happen’ (Bredekamp and Plüddeman, 1992:134).
Khoi came to Baviaanskloof, desiring to know more,
wanting to accept the Lord into their lives
In the diaries of these three missionaries one reads again and again of Khoi coming to them, desiring to know more, wanting to accept the Lord into their lives, wishing to be baptized. Evidently the Holy Spirit had prepared these people through dreams and visions. On a daily basis the new Genadendal missionaries were overwhelmed by questions such as ‘What must I do to be saved? (Viljoen, 1993:221). It is striking that those who came to faith in Christ also sought protection against satanic forces (Bredekamp, Flegg and Plüddeman, 1992:155).
People came to Baviaanskloof from everywhere, drawn to the mission station as if by a magnet. Some of those from the Cape testified to the obvious: ‘... this is God’s work, no one can hinder it though many are trying’ (Bredekamp, Flegg and Plüddeman, 1992:252).

A Cape spiritual ‘Revolution’
Dr van Lier was appointed as the third minister of the Groote Kerk. He found fertile ground among a group of Christians at the Cape, including a group of pietist Lutherans, who were the spiritual descendants of those believers who had been impacted by the short stint of Georg Schmidt. As a result of the vision of the young reformed pastor, about 60 Christians in Cape Town and its surroundings set aside one day in the week as early as 1788. They congregated in this way for the religious teaching of ‘the heathen’ at the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht32 on the corner of Long and Hout Streets.
A spiritual ‘revolution’, in which the Lord used Dr van Lier, was the change in the attitude of many White believers towards slaves and other people of colour. In those days slaves were initially not allowed near the entrance of the church after the closing of services and they were punished if they dared to attend the funeral of one of the colonists. Prejudice against missionaries was still prevalent when Van Lier arrived, but the youthful minister dared to challenge the church through his fiery sermons and personal example. The young dominee literally caused an ecclesiastical revolution at the Cape by shortening the duration of sermons and the length of his prayers during church services. He also increased house visitation. Believers were encouraged to get involved with the spreading of the Gospel. The historian Theal reports that when Van Lier was in the pulpit, people hardly dared to sleep in church because ‘at times it seemed as if he would jump from the pulpit’ (Theal. 1907:311). Furthermore, his preaching was full of earnest appeals and ‘…women were often moved to tears, and sometimes fell into hysterics’. Van Lier was very zealous, spending much of his time visiting people from door to door ‘...holding prayer meetings and encouraging works of benevolence’.
Cape Town evangelicals were among the worldwide leaders in this regard at that time - not far behind the Moravians of Herrnhut in Germany and Bethlehem (Pennsylvania, USA). A local newspaper, the Zuid-Afrikaansche Tijdschrift, reported in 1824: ‘When people in many parts of Europe were still discussing whether slaves and heathen should believe and whether they could be taught, they had already started with that work in this Colony’.
Van Lier was a great visionary, seeing the need for learning the heart language of the people to be reached with the Gospel. He was one of the first to start learning Malayu, the trade language, with the object of reaching out to the Cape Muslim slaves. And he apparently already had a vision to incorporate young people in church and mission work.

A Cape Minister with a Heart for Slaves and Khoi
Ds. Michiel C. Vos, a young dominee from the Cape, cannot be regarded as one of Van Lier’s ‘trophies’. He had been called by God independently as a juvenile after wrestling with God in prayer in such places as the stone quarry at the foot of Signal Hill. His ‘heart was grieved at the neglect of the immortal souls’ of the Cape slaves. As an orphan with a sizeable inheritance, he had a yearning to study theology. To this end he resorted to the unusual step of getting married to a lady, arranging that he would leave after two years of marriage to go and study in Holland, 'dat het mij toen meer om het ambt ban een evangeliedienaar, dan wel om eene vrouw te doen was' (Vos, Merkwaardig Verhaal aangaand het leven en lotgevallen van Michiel Christiaan Vos, 1867:23).
In March 1794 Ds. M.C. Vos returned from the Netherlands. There he had been touched anew by the Holy Spirit to return to his home country to minister to the slaves and the Khoi. Ds. Vos took up the legacy of Dr van Lier.33 At his first sermon on 4 May 1794 in Roodezand (Tulbagh) he caused a stir, highlighting that the Gospel was meant 'voor alle creaturen', heathens and slaves included (Vos, ibid, 1867: 113). He would have special services for them on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. His influence was soon felt all over the Western Cape. In the Mother City itself, Mechteld Smit(h), a widow who had been discipled by Van Lier, was performing a similar role to that of Magdalena Tikkuie in Genadendal. God used her - along with Ds. Vos as the main role players - to advance the evangelical cause.
The visit to Baviaanskloof by Ds. Vos in January 1797, taking along Machteld Smith and other mission friends, caused a marked changed of public opinion. A few weeks later, farmers told the Moravian brethren in Baviaanskloof of a revival there, spawned by this visit.

Start of the SAMS
Mechteld Smit(h) was to become a powerful instrument in God’s hand at the Cape and at Berthelsdorp, the mission station of the London Missionary Society (LMS) where the great Dutch missionary Dr Johannes van der Kemp and others did phenomenal work.) The colonist farmers, who a few years prior to this had been ready to attack and destroy the mission institution, now asked for permission to attend the worship at Baviaanskloof. They even requested that one of the missionaries should come and live among them. (Twenty five years later this was fulfilled, leading to the establishment of the mission station Elim that became the southern-most village of the continent in due course.) Some farmers introduced family prayers for the whole community on their farms, which caused the Khoi to prefer them to other employers. The South African Missionary Society (SAMS) was formally constituted in 1799. The first missionaries of the SAMS at the Cape were significantly not ordained in the Groote Kerk or even in Stellenbosch, but in Roodezand (Tulbagh) where Ds. Vos was the minister. It comes therefore as no surprise to find that a Cape missionary was inducted there on 3 October 1799 in the home of Mechteld Smit(h), in the presence of forty-seven SAMS members.

Mini Revivals in Roodezand and Bethelsdorp
Karel Schoeman highlights the contributions of unsung heroes and ‘also rans’ in his book The Early Mission in South Africa (Pretoria, 2005). There one can read about the special contributions of Yda de Jongh, a house servant of Ds. M.C. Vos and about a young soldier John Irwin. Ds. Vos had left the Cape in 1802. Yda and Harmen Voster, a missionary and a widower, who married in that same year, assisted Mechtelt Smit(h) to keep the evangelical fire burning in Roodezand. Despite this, the young missionary volunteer John Irwin found the Christians there ‘in a cold and indifferent state’ a year later (Schoeman, 2005: ??). He had hoped to join the London Missionary Society (LMS) work in Bethelsdorp, but he was refused passage by Governor Janssens on board of one of the ships to Algoa Bay. There the city of Port Elizabeth later developed. In stead, he went to Roodesand where God used him powerfully, notably among children and young people, so that a mini revival erupted there. Harmen Voster reported the following in 1803, referring to the activity of John Irwin: ‘many young people among the Christians ... were entirely converted by an English missionary who came ... to pay a visit to the pious Mrs Smith. They wept and cried, What shall we do to be saved’ (Schoeman, 2005:31). Voster's report is confirmed in a letter written by Mechtelt Smit to the missionary Kicherer, who was in Holland at this time. She wrote: 'in onze heidensche gemeente is mede een algemene opwekking'34 People from a cross section of the community, young and old including the top layers and children are mentioned by name.
A mini revival around October 1814 at the distant mission station Bethelsdorp 800 Kilometres away probably had little influence on matters in the Western Cape.35 James Read reported in a letter dated 10 October 1814: ‘A work has begun among us which appears to me like a dream’ (Schoeman, 2005:208). James Read went on to enumerate the conversions and baptisms that had been taking place since his return to the mission station. The role of local people of colour appears to have been noteworthy. Both Cupido Kakkerlak, a devout Khoi believer and Andries Pretorius, who proudly noted in his testimony that he was a ‘Bushman’, have been singled out as committed believers who displayed dignity as assistants to missionaries later. In his letter Read wrote furthermore: ‘Our Brother Pretorius is also most zealous; sometimes he spends the whole night in exhortation, as likewise brother Cupido.’ Schoeman (2005:208) also notes: ‘The Pretorius family also played a prominent part in this great revival...’ Quoting from the diaries of the Bethelsdorp missionaries, Schoeman (2005:208f) quotes the entry for 26 October 1814: ‘Last night our young people were together until morning, praying and praising God with hymns. Old and young went even at midnight to one another’s kraals...’

God’s Reply to the Attack of the Colonial Church
Jacob Abraham De Mist, an influential Freemason, arrived in February 1803 as governor on behalf of the ‘Batavian Republic’,36 clearly seeing a threat in the expanding missionary activities. Subsequent opposition to missionary work by De Mist turned out to be a blessing in disguise. First of all, directors of the SAMS opened their homes for the teaching of slaves. The directors and members led in religious services. The directors also started to collect Christian books and Bible commentaries, establishing a library for the use of the workers. Some of them, like P. le Roux, became personally involved, and finally they started to train slaves for missionary work.

Ripple Effects of early missionary Work
Ripple effects of early missionary work were discernable all over the Cape Colony. In the case of the other indigenous Cape people group, the San, called the Bosjesmannetjes, divine intervention was no less spectacular. In order to reach the people described as a race that stood ‘at a lower stage socially and religiously than any other race upon the surface of the globe’ (Du Plessis, 1911:104), God initially used a devout colonist, the excellent field-cornet Floris Visser. He was described by the church historian Du Plessis (1911:102) , as ‘a man of character and piety, whose custom it was, even when journeying, to gather his companions and then to offer prayer and sing a psalm both morning and night.’
The San people were deeply impressed by the devotion of Visser and his fellow Boers. Soon they expressed an earnest desire to get to know the God of the Dutchmen. Visser promised to assist them, suggesting that they go to Cape Town to present their request there for a teacher or missionary. Two ‘Bushmen’ and a Koranna, two of whom had been given the rather derogatory Dutch names ‘Oorlams’ (cunning) and ‘Slaparm’ (weakling), arrived in Cape Town at the very time that the first four missionaries of the LMS landed on the shores of Table Bay. This can be regarded as the primal beginning of the significant work for which Robert Moffat was to become known throughout the British Empire.

Missionary Diamonds formed
Dr Helperus van Lier, the mission-minded minister of the Groote Kerk, suggested three forays of missionary endeavour. One of these was outreach to the Eastern Cape. Dr van der Kemp, leader of the first four LMS pioneers, led this attempt. In no time mastered the difficult Xhosa language, ministering to the Ngika (Gaika) tribe. From this tribe at least two missionary diamonds were formed out of oppressive colonial history.
One of the most memorable of these diamonds formed, was the influence of missionary work on Ntsikana. Born in 1780, he was said to have heard a sermon by Dr van der Kemp as a child.37 Around 1815 Ntsikana, already a married man, became a Christian, starting an evangelistic ministry immediately thereafter. He commenced by conducting two daily meetings in his homestead where there was singing, praying and preaching. Ntsikana composed at least four hymns, the first Christian ones in Xhosa although he could neither read nor write. Imbibed by the Spirit of Jesus, he was a rebel in the best sense of the word. He had a special ability to bring about change, filling old concepts and images with new content, to lead his people in the new faith. Ntsikana’s pacifist advice to his folk was however rejected by many, including Ngika, their chief. It was felt that the source of his advice was a new strange God, not their traditional one.
Xhosa-speakers from the Eastern Cape became inhabitants of Genadendal (formerly Baviaanskloof) during this period. In 1809 Lt.-Colonel Richard Collins, was given authority to stamp British authority on the region. In order to achieve this, he thought that Blacks should be pushed back across the Fish River. Those Blacks, who wanted to remain in the Cape Colony, should be directed to a Moravian settlement. The callous Collins even recommended that the mission station Bethelsdorp should be broken up since it was ‘designed for the benefit of the Hottentots rather than that of the Colony’ (Cited in Walker, 1964:149).
A Gaika woman, whose husband had deserted her,38 was the other missionary 'diamond'. She was among the first Blacks to be settled in Genadendal. There this woman, who later got the name Wilhelmina, became a follower of Jesus.39
In Genadendal the missionary spirit took hold of Wilhelmina. Soon she urged the Genadendal Moravians to start independent work among her own people. Wilhelmina was appointed as nursemaid to the children of the missionaries. She also assisted with the teaching of the little ones at the ‘Kindergarten’ of Genadendal, setting out to teach the missionaries’ children the fundamentals of her language, so that they could later bring the gospel to her people. Johann Adolph, the son of Johann Gottlieb Bonatz, one of her pupils, later became one of the pioneers among the red blanketed pagan Xhosa in the Ciskei.

The Impact of an Earthquake
At the turn of the 19th century the Church and the colonists at the Cape were by and large disinterested in reaching out in love to the slaves. But God intervened - surely because of the prayers of the faithful few elsewhere.
God sometimes appears to use natural disasters supernaturally to shake people out of their indifference and lethargy. An earthquake on 4 December 1809 at the Cape caused not only an 8-day revival and a significant increase of evangelicals, but it also imparted a new urge towards missionary work among the slaves.
The city was shaken as if
by the fury of a giant hand
During the earthquake not a single person was killed, but the people fled in fear and watched horrified as the city was shaken as if by the fury of a giant hand.
The Methodist military officer Kendrick wrote on 20 November 1810 that it was the greatest thing that could have happened. Soldiers and civilians turned to God in prayer and pleaded for mercy. Many persons were led to think seriously about the salvation of their souls. A weekly prayer meeting was started by them every Saturday evening, in addition to the monthly one, which continued for many years. Kendrick mentions revivals at Cape Town and at Wynberg. By 1812 there were 142 men in the Methodist Society, ''all of whom experienced the love of God shed abroad in their hearts’ (W. Gordon Mears, Methodism in the Cape: an Outline, 1973:8).
The earthquake shook the South African Missionary Society (SAMS) in many a way. Jacobus Henricus Beck, a Cape colonist who had joined the SAMS, was deeply touched by the disaster. Before long he was on his way to the Netherlands, Scotland and England for theological training. Later he became the first pastor of the congregation formed at the ZA Gesticht.
Another Cape colonist who was deeply affected by the earthquake was Martinus Casparus Petrus Vogelgezang. He was a teacher, who also received missionary training. Later he became a powerful preacher and church planter at the Cape where he started the first denominationally independent church, after having been turned down as a candidate for the ministry.
Preaching from his shoemaker’s shop in
Bo-Kaap, Martinus Vogelgezang brought the
Gospel to the slaves with unprecedented zeal.
Undeterred by the rebuff from the big church at the Cape, Vogelgezang preached the Gospel among the slaves with unprecedented zeal. He initially operated from his shoemaker’s shop in Rose Street, part of present-day Bo-Kaap. That he gained the respect of his ecumenical contemporaries is demonstrated by the fact that various ministers of other denominations were present at his ordination in February 1839 in the Union Chapel on Church Square. These included Dr John Philip and Rev. Robert Moffat of the London Missionary Society. In the course of a few years the zealous Ds. Vogelgezang planted a few churches, bringing the Gospel also to the Muslims with much authority and conviction.

Indigenous Helpers used
Bishop Hallbeck came to Genadendal in 1817. He was quick to act on the suggestion and the encouragement of the British visitor La Trobe to send a party of missionaries to the Eastern Cape. This happened in 1818. The party included Genadendal-trained artisans and the Xhosa woman Wilhelmina, apart from four German missionaries. Schmitt, their leader, appealed for people to come and help with the missionary effort at Witte River, where elephants, rhinoceros, buffaloes and other beasts abounded in the surrounding hills. The missionary spirit of Herrnhut prevailed at Genadendal where there were now some outstanding Khoi and Xhosa believers. At the end of that year (1818) sixty-eight people had moved to the Witte River. The Moravian mission station started there was called Enon. Wilhelmina married Carl Stompjes, a Khoi believer, in Enon.
A decade later Richard Bourke, the acting Governor, was visiting Hemel en Aarde, an asylum for lepers in the Overberg between present-day Caledon and Hermanus. After calling Bishop Hallbeck to Caledon,he requested the Moravians to instruct the Tembu’s in the Eastern Cape. This resulted in a personal visit to Enon. From there he took along another missionary and three men to explore the region. In Somerset East they were encouraged by the intercession of Rev. George Morgan40 for the success of their venture.
At the visit to Bawana, the Amahlala chief (Bawana reigned over about one thousand families) Hallbeck was aware that Bawana had no longing for the Gospel at all and that the Government supported the project mainly for political reasons. He argued that the persecutions which the Amahlala had experienced, might give the missionaries access to other Tembu tribes. It was decided that missionaries from Enon could take a few artisans with them to assist in the erection of a mission station. This happened at short notice. Among the pioneering group to be sent was Wilhelmina Stompjes, who regarded the mission as a call from the Lord. She would have preferred to bring the Gospel to her own people, the Xhosa’s, but even so it was for her the fulfillment of a long-standing desire. Also in the group there was as second interpreter Daniel Kaffer, the first Black to be baptized at Genadendal in 1808. He was a Tembu, who had been enslaved by the Portuguese in his youth. After the slave-ship on which he was travelling had been captured by the British, he was set free in Cape Town from where he proceeded to Genadendal, and from there to Enon.
More inhabitants of the Moravian stations later followed the first party, responding to the call to spread the Gospel. At the end of the first year, thirty people from the western settlements formed the nucleus of the new station, which was named Shiloh. Seed had thus been sown in Genadendal in preparation of the revival in the Eastern Cape forty years later.
9. Dawn of a new Era

When the pastor of Caledon, Rev. George Thom, was due to go on home leave in 1821, Lord Charles Somerset commissioned him to recruit teachers as well as young Scottish pastors for the Cape. Dr Thom managed to recruit 11 evangelical pastors from Scotland. The very first among them to have offered his services was Andrew Murray sr. Because he had been recruited quite early, he was able to spend ten months in Holland to learn Dutch.
The work of Z.A. Gesticht flourished despite a significant simultaneous turning to Islam from the side of the slaves at this time. Under Reverend Beck a living ecumenical spirit prevailed. The missionary ‘Genootschap’ enjoyed the support of all the church and mission agencies at the Cape. Since 1824 the directors invited the ministers of all the congregations to become honorary members. Nobody refused. Their stance was not founded on window dressing, but was based on sound biblical principles. Thus the secretary Metelerkamp uttered his conviction at the welcoming of honorary members on 20 May 1824 that the Kingdom of God can only be credibly extended on the foundation of unity of Christians according to John 17. Missionaries were also encouraged to come to the Mother City to meet other spiritual leaders. It has been suggested that the Gesticht fellowship ‘was probably one of the reasons why the Dutch Reformed Church decided at their first Synod in 1824 to begin mission work…’ (Elfriede J.Strassberger, The Rhenish Mission Society in South Africa, 1969:6).

Scottish Ministers at the Cape After failing to recruit Dutch clergy, Lord Charles Somerset, the Cape governor, set out to counter the Dutch church influence by bringing in Scottish Presbyterian pastors. In this endeavour he succeeded quite well. By 1837 twelve of the twenty two Dutch Reformed ministers at the Cape were Scots. The likes of the prayerful Andrew Murray, father of the famous namesake, effectively curtailed Somerset’s well-meant but bigoted nationalism. Due to their influence, the Cape became possibly the first bilingual society outside of Europe. In 1822 Andrew Murray (sr.) arrived in Cape Town accompanied by Dr Thom and some of the other recruits, His marriage to the sixteen-year-old Maria Stegmann of Cape Town in 1825 would also aid his settling-in process. In the rural Karoo town of Graaff Reinet where he ministered, he prayed faithfully for revival in his church for 38 years.
Shortly after Andrew Murray (sr.) married Maria Stegmann, her mother died. The couple left her young brother, Georg Wilhelm Stegmann (affectionately known as Willie), deprived of both his mother and sister. Because he fretted for Maria, the Murrays agreed to raise him and oversee his education. When the time came for him to attend secondary school, Andrew (sr.) sent him to his brother John in Scotland. There Willie came under the influence of several renowned revival preachers. Andrew and Maria Murray also sent their two sons John and Andrew to study in Scotland where they graduated with M.A. degrees in 1845. Thereafter they left for Utrecht for theological studies and to learn cultured Dutch. While completing their studies, they met two other theological students from the Cape with whom they would become bosom friends. They were Jan Neethling, who arrived in 1846, and Nicolaas Hofmeyr, who arrived a year later. Jan Neethling would strengthen his friendship with the Murray brothers by marrying their sister Maria.
It can be argued quite convincingly that Dr Philip, the London Missionary Society (LMS) superintendent, probably went overboard in his exaggeration of the oppression and treatment of farm workers and slaves. From the opposite angle a similar thing unfortunately seemed to have happened with Dr Andrew Murray, the next great theologian at the Cape. Andrew Murray (jr.) was an important catalyst of the theological position which caused apartheid politicians to be very selective, stating for instance that they abhor people who make politics under the guise of religion. (In this warped thinking, White preachers who abused the pulpit to support apartheid, were supposedly thought to be blameless.)

Cape Churches work together
A lone exception to the racial arrogance of the early 19th century was the Zuid-Afrikaanse Gesticht. Lutherans, Reformed believers and other Christians worshipped together with the common goal to reach the spiritually lost with the Gospel. The efforts of missionaries led to the increased networking of the Cape churches around the time of the slave emancipation in December 1838. The cordial harmonious relationship among churches seems to have continued for quite a few years. A special feature of the Cape missionary effort at this time was the apparent lack of denominational rivalry.

The special Contribution of Willie Stegmann Willie Stegmann returned to the Cape after completing his theological training for the Lutheran Church overseas. His first congregation was the Lutheran fellowship in Strand Street. Soon after his ordination as a Lutheran minister, Stegmann not only felt the need to do something for the slaves, but he also started with a related ministry in Plein Street in the Mother City. House services were held at the house of a Mrs. de Smidt. In his diary Stegmann mentioned that he learned there to speak 'met groot vrymoedigheid'' (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.34). 41
When the Presbyterian Dr James Adamson asked to join him in the outreach to the ‘Coloureds’ towards the end of 1838, he gladly obliged. A special event to highlight the emancipation of the slaves was organized at the Scottish Church, as St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Green Point was generally known. The two of them wet about it to invite all and sundry to the special service on Friday 1 December 1838 to celebrate the emancipation of the slaves in the British Empire. According to Stegmann, his missionary activity started on that day. A revival-like situation arose with quite a few Muslim slaves starting to become followers of Jesus.
Stegmann subsequently became a regular preacher at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Green Point. There Adamson would preach in English in the morning and Stegmann in Dutch at the late afternoon service. A serious rift developed at St Andrew’s in the course of which Dr Adamson was 'as't ware verplig' (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.35), more or less forced to leave the church. After the arrival in 1842 of a new minister, Rev. George Morgan, the split widened, leading to the formation of a predominantly slave congregation in a former theatre that got the name St Stephen’s, led by Ds. Stegmann and assisted by Dr Adamson. In due course he built up a large ‘Coloured’ congregation there. Because he had the Lutheran congregation to care for - in addition to St Stephen’s - he invited young teenage males from the Groote Kerk to help him evangelize his ‘Coloured’ flock. In due course they too were also not only brought into the kingdom via his anointed preaching but also enthused for evangelism and missionary work. A localized awakening broke out at St Stephen’s on 5 November 1843 which did not last very long. Four services were held every Sunday with Ds. Stegmann and Dr Adamson serving at two apiece, starting with the exposition of the Psalms at 8.00h. On top of this there was also Sunday School at 14.00h.

An awsome Foursome develops
Nicolaas Hofmeyr and Jan Neethling were two young men who got converted under Willie Stegmann’s preaching. By the time they started studying in Utrecht, they were fiery evangelicals who had also embraced Stegmann’s missionary zeal. When they teamed up with Andrew and John Murray, it was not long before the foursome had established an inseparable bond of friendship. God would use this mutual support group in the coming revival. These four stalwarts would also become pillars of strength to initiate missionary work from the Dutch Reformed Church. They also played a significant role in the start of the Kweekschool, a theological seminary in Stellenbosch in 1859.
In the ministry of Willie Stegmann his heart for the lost shone through, especially for the Muslims.

Racial Prejudice infects the Church
Church leaders at the Cape were generally not only infected by racial prejudice themselves, but they appear to have been spreading it as well. Even though a separate school for colonist children had been started in 1663, there were still slave and Khoi children in all the schools at the Cape until 1876.
The germ of racial arrogance spread via a complete
identification of the Church with Israel
The germ of racial arrogance seems to have been spread via a complete identification of the Dutch colonists with Israelites. The so-called replacement theology that regarded the Church as the new Israel was generally taught or erroneously implied. The indigenous population was equated with the Philistines, to be conquered or eliminated rather than evangelized. The Khoi-San were in their eyes merely “Hottentotten’ and ‘Bosjesmannetjes’, ‘Wilden’ which could be hunted down like game. Slaves were semi-people, just a small step above the other indigenous human beings. All this added to the racial superiority which Europeans had already been displaying with respect to all races other than White. This made missionary work superfluous. The one-off instruction of Jesus - not to bring the Gospel to Samaritans and Gentiles (Matthew 15:24; Matthew 10: 5-6) - became the norm. The Great Commission of Jesus, to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20), was completely ignored.
Just like the Jewish racial prejudice, which did not discern that the issue at the heart of the divine prohibition of racial mixing was idolatry, the Dutch Colonists regarded it as a divine injunction to keep themselves separate from the ‘heathen nations’, to subdue and enslave them rather than evangelize them.

Renewal curtailed by religious Pride and Racism
At the 1829 Cape Dutch Reformed Church synod it was nevertheless decided that all church members would be admitted to communion ‘without considering colour or background’, but also that race was not even to be a subject for deliberation at a synod. Instead, it had to be seen as ‘een onwrikbaar stelregel’, a steadfast rule based on the Word of God (Dreyer, 1936:316). No person should be barred on racial grounds.
At the time of their emancipation in 1838, the slaves were however still more or less rejected at the big Cape churches, but mixed congregations started in different places. The abolition of slaves in 1834 seems to have been a big catalyst in this regard. This has been highlighted in the article by Richard Watson in Kronos 31 (Journal of Cape History, November 2005) that he gave the title 'I Will Gather All Nations and Tongues': Christian Missions and Racial Integration in the Cape Colony in the Aftermath of Abolition. In the case of the LMS missionary John George Messer in Uitenhage, he could note with some measure of satisfaction that 'it is particularly interesting to see a church of Christ gathered together of Hottentots, Bootschuanes, Bushmen and apprentices from so many nations as Madagascar, Javanese etc.etc.' (cited in the article of Watson, p.112). When Rev. Elliot went there in 1838 he mentioned however separate meetings, possible one in English and one in Dutch, but also a united weekly prayer meeting.
The Methodists had a racially mixed congregation as early as 1835 in Sydney Street Onderkaap (the later District Six). Rev Barnabas Shaw of the Wesleyan Mission in the city noted that the chapel congregation in the afternoon was 'embracing persons of all colours and of almost every age' (cited in the article of Watson, p.112). In 1854 it is recorded that there were 200 Whites and 150 ‘Coloureds’ on its roll.42 That this racial breakdown is specifically mentioned, suggests that the apartheid spirit could have expanded significantly somewhere between 1837 and 1854.
The racial prejudice was decreasing at this time. After visiting a mixed Rhenish congregation in Tulbagh in 1840 two Quakers, Backhouse and Walker referred to 'a pleasing evidence of the unreasonable prejudices'. Backhouse was so much encouraged by developments at this time that he jotted down: 'The day may not be distant when ancient wrongs shall be forgotten; when the man of European extraction shall give the hand of fellowship to the Hottentot, the Caffer, the Bechuana, or the descendant of the emancipated slave...' (cited in the article of Watson, p.113 and 114).

Disunity hinders Revival
A sad occurrence of carnality among local pastors in 1842 could have been a catalyst to racial separation. Dr James Adamson and the German Ds. Georg Stegmann were distinctly different from racist contemporary colonists and clergymen. They were possibly valued especially by people of colour. The Centenary Record of St Andrew’s (p.28) mentions ‘the unsatisfactory arrangement’ as a reason for the discontent that developed after Rev. George Morgan, successor to Dr Adamson, joined the mission to the slaves. Haasbroek (1955:82) , a Dutch Reformed Church historian, highlighted the concrete reason for the discontent - the slaves were not happy with Rev. Morgan. This was exploited by Stegmann.
During Dr Adamson’s absence in Scotland, Stegmann officiated at both the Lutheran and Presbyterian churches. The German was fluent in the Dutch language and consequently took a more active role in the teaching and preaching activities at St Andrew’s Mission. As the new incumbent minister, Rev. Morgan wanted to preach on every alternate Sunday at the better-attended evening services, but Ds. Stegmann was unwilling to share the pulpit with him in this way. He appears to have been unreasonable, insisting on officiating at all the evening services of St Andrew’s. Morgan promptly refused Stegmann permission to continue preaching there (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.34),
The split that occurred at St Andrew’s in 1842 was clearly the result of personal rivalry between Stegmann and Morgan. At a time when the missionary work started to flourish, a rift reared its head in the St Andrew’s Church.
After Dr Adamson’s return from overseas, he sided with Stegmann in the dispute. By this time meetings and school classes for slave children were held at the old theatre, the Komediehuis in Bree Street. (Adamson had brought along some funds from Britain for the purchase of the building, augmented by contributions from local Christians. Yet it was a major answer to prayer and relief to all and sundry when they could pay 500 pounds stirling towards the building.)
On 20 April 1842 a ‘vergadering van ontevredenheid’ (a meeting of dissatisfaction) took place at the former theatre. Stegmann implored the big slave audience to return to the Scottish Church, but only one person responded positively. The rest refused. He had however caused much of the discontent himself.
The former theatre hereafter functioned as a separate church for freed slaves. This angered the colonists tremendously. Hearing that slave children were being taught in the building complex enraged the colonists. So many of them were still illiterate themselves!! The angry Whites pelted the building at Riebeeck Square with stones. Hence the church got the name St Stephen’s, named after the first Christian martyr who was stoned to death.

A Revival smothered
Ds. Davie Pypers, whose call to St Stephen’s in Bo-Kaap in 1956 was soon followed by compassion for the Cape Muslims, describes Stegmann as fiery in spirit, powerful in the Word and a hero in prayer. Stegmann has also been typified as a man ‘met gebedsworsteling en herlewingsgees’.43 (Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.36). This is illustrated by words from Stegmann’s diary: ‘Oh, how heavy does the case of the poor deluded Mohammedans hang on my mind... oh Lord, how long shall they continue in darkness ... open the door, send out Thy servants.’ (cited in Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.36).
Apparently Stegmann had some notion of spiritual warfare. It is reported that the conversion of souls was the primary goal of his ministry, and that he was a ‘warrior of God and an attacker of the strongholds of Satan.’ (cited in Die Koningsbode, Desember 1958, p.3?). The Lord used Stegmann’s powerful preaching to convict the congregation on 5 November 1843 in such a way that a church member, evidently overpowered by the Holy Spirit, exclaimed aloud towards the end of the sermon ‘Lord, have mercy’ and fainted. A hush fell over the church and soon the whole congregation burst out in tears in a typical revival scenario. Stegmann was quite self-critical when the near-revival appeared to have been smothered a few months further on. He took part of the blame when he conceded in August 1844 with regard to the spiritual warfare: ‘What a havoc Satan has been making in poor St Stephen’s lately, so that with my own inward corruption and the perverse walk of many... I am ready to sink down.’
Stegmann and Adamson hereafter established a number of mission endeavours in and around Cape Town, forming a loose union called the ‘Apostolic Union.’ It seems that Stegmann and Adamson did not discern the feasibility of confession on behalf of the churches for the treatment meted out to slaves in the decades immediately prior to and coinciding with the start of their ministry. That could have arrested the back-sliding into old patterns of racial arrogance. Of course, such a confession should ideally be based on genuine remorse and a sense of the weight of guilt towards God. Instead, pragmatism caused a deep dent in Andrew Murray’s legacy. As a poorly formulated motion put forward by no less than the pioneer Rev Andrew Murray (sr.) at the Dutch Reformed Church synod of 1857, racial separation was accepted because of the ‘weakness of some’.

Turn of the Tide in favour of Biblical Christianity
The South African branch of the Evangelical Alliance was the first outside Europe. This was the start of a worldwide movement. Cape Evangelicals assembled in Cape Town in 1842 to work out a strategy to reach the lost of Southern Africa. Gerdener records how ‘concerted action had arrived.’ Denominational co-operation at the Cape had few equals world-wide, forming a powerful bulwork against liberalism which reared its head at the Cape already in the 1850s. South Africans were among the world leaders in church co-operation when the Evangelical Alliance was formally started in 1857 in Cape Town. In fact, at this occasion the founders declared that an Evangelical Alliance existed in the Mother City in all but name already in 1842. The South African Evangelical Alliance thus functioned long before it kicked off formally in England and six years before it started in Germany. Pastors of different churches had a weekly prayer meeting a few years after the slave emancipation. When the Jewish background Dutchman Ds. Frans Lion Cachet started serving at St Stephen’s in 1858, a pastors’ breakfast had been operating, where the ministers at the Cape rotated the hosting of the event every fortnight. Significantly, Cachet met the prominent Black Presbyterian minister Rev. Tiyo Soga at one of these occasions. Rev. Soga would assist Cachet to get ordained. Raving about these pastors’ breakfasts, Ds. Cachet recorded for the sake of his compatriots in Holland: ‘May we have something of this nature in the cities of our fatherland; how the brothers would learn to understand and value each other’ (Cachet, Vijftien Jaren, 1875:14).
The beginning of the Evangelical Alliance in Cape Town led indirectly to the opening of the Stellenbosch DRC Kweekschool in 1859. At this occasion Professor N. Hofmeyer complained that no effort was made to bring all Christian leaders of the country together. A committee organized a conference fairly quickly.

Whites clamouring to listen to a Black Preacher
Cape Town had a rare experience that contradicted the general racial arrogance and prejudice in September 1860, when Whites were clamouring to get a seat in church to listen to a Black preacher. The occasion was the visit of Rev. Tiyo Soga, the country’s first ordained Xhosa,44 who accompanied a British royalty, Prince Alfred, from the Eastern Cape by boat to the Mother City. Arriving on Saturday, 15 September 1860, the Presbyterian pastor preached to overflowing congregations in the chapel at Caledon Square in the morning the following day, and in the evening at St Andrew’s. Rev. Soga made a deep impression everywhere that he went. Rev. W. Thomas, his host during his stay, was the minister of the church at Caledon Square. Rev. Tiyo Soga preached at various other venues, for example at the Dutch Reformed Church in Wynberg. Rev. Thomas gave the following glowing testimonial: ‘I know not how it was, but the presence of our friend ever suggested to me the names of Cyprian, Tertullian and Augustine and others of North Africa., embalmed in the memory as among the noblest men of the primitive Church, and as the first-fruits unto God of the rich harvest which this continent has yet to produce’ (Chalmers, 1878:215).

Early Stirrings in the Eastern Cape and Natal
The idea is widespread that the revival which erupted in the Western Cape in 1860, marked the first stirrings of the South African revival. But it started earlier, in 1857, in KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape. Bennie Mostert (2010:29) made an interesting observation about a sovereign move of God, noting that the revival among the Zulus in 1857 started at precisely the same time as the revival in New York. 'There is no
way that the missionaries among the Zulus could have had any knowledge of the revival in New York.' Some missionaries that experienced the 1857 revival in New York did however come back to resume their work in Zululand and amongst the Xhosas. Joseph Jackson, a Methodist minister, testified: '...the Spirit fell upon them in such an overpowering manner that they could not depart, but continued in prayer until the break of day.' (cited by Mostert, 2010:29). Rev. Aldin Grout wrote from Zululand: 'We are witnessing a shaking of the dry bones in the Esdumbini Valley ... several young men came to say ... your preaching has touched our hearts, we have decided to abandon heathendom and serve the living God.' (cited by Mostert, 2010:29). I suspect that Rev. Grout was also reaping the harvest of seed sown over many years. On the website of the African National Congress the following is mentioned about his influence:' 'The intimacy between Rev. Aldin Grout and the local Zulu community turned Groutville into a Christian community. Initially the number of African converts was small. But the intimacy of the pastor and the community gave the latter an opportunity to inspect and assess it over an indefinite period. Thus an increasing number came to accept western Christianity. Those who did not do so, appreciated its value and respected it. And perhaps more significantly, neighbouring Zulu chiefs allowed the development of this new Christian society among their people. The revival amongst the Zulus resulted in extraordinary praying, tremendous conviction of sin, immediate conversions and enthusiastic evangelistic outreach.
In 1856 a 12-year-old Xhosa girl started to prophesy that all animals must be destroyed and all
food be consumed. On 18 February 1857 a miracle would happen: cattle would come out of the ground,
food pits would suddenly be filled, dead warriors would arise and all the tribes of Africa would drive the
Europeans into the sea.
The Xhosas acted on these prophesies and the result was mass starvation and many among them died. Families killed one another for food. Clans of thousands of people were nearly wiped out. This situation created an unprecedented openness for the Gospel.

Revival among Zulus and Tswanas45
In Natal on the east coast there was a Zulu revival that touched nearly all mission stations manned by American missionaries. On Sunday evening, 22 May 1859, at the close of a service the Holy spirit came upon the Zulus with such power that they prayed all night. The news spread far and wide among the Zulus, producing extraordinary praying, and vigorous evangelistic outreach.
Some 300 Kilometers to the west revival came to different tribes. Daily prayer meetings, morning and afternoon, went on for weeks.

A Pivot in a world-wide Move of God
Although not generally acknowledged, a pivot in the world-wide move of God was Rev. William Taylor. He taught in a school in rural Virginia before being accepted in 1843 by the Baltimore Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a candidate for the ministry.
In 1849 Taylor was sent as one of the first two Wesleyan missionaries to California where he became known in the frontier town of San Francisco for his forceful street preaching, and for his work among seamen. When a seamen’s ‘bethel’ was burned down in 1856, Taylor was given leave by the California Conference to raise money for the building debt. He was personally liable. In 1857-61 he conducted religious revivals in mid-western and eastern America. Known as ‘California Taylor’, he attracted many by his ‘almost vehement nervous energy’ and by his informal ‘Yankee’ preaching.
Whilst preaching in Canada, Taylor was told of Australia as a likely field for evangelism and, after travelling to Great Britain, Palestine and Egypt, he arrived in Melbourne in June 1863, igniting fires of revival ‘down under’. He also visited other Victorian towns, generating an outburst of religious exaltation in the colony.

The Revival in KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape
God chose to use Rev. William Taylor in the Eastern parts of South Africa that was invaded by hordes of beggars in the wake of the killing of cattle of 1857. He went there after ministry in other continents. He travelled on horseback from town to town and God granted special favour with many conversions among the English-speaking churches. The first real revival movement began among the Xhosa-speakers. Taylor used a highly gifted interpreter, a young chief called Charles Pamla (Duewel, 1995:176), travelling through the Transkei and Zululand to preach the gospel. The Xhosas gave Taylor a name meaning 'The blazing Firebrand' (Duewel, 1995:177). As a method, he would call for a moment of silent prayer and then asked seekers to come forward after preaching. When Taylor left, Pamla took those sermons and preached them from kraal to kraal. As a result, revival came to those regions, especially amongst the Xhosas. Through these two men revival was brought to many places in KwaZulu Natal and the Eastern Cape in 1858. At Healdtown several hundred in the chapel fell on their knees crying, sobbing and groaning over their sins. The news about the revival in the Eastern Cape spread and thousands came to the meetings. Many came under deep conviction of sin, followed by joyful praise when they broke through in deliverance and assurance of salvation. Under the preaching, people would fall on their faces and start to cry out for mercy.
In this period revival broke out in Grahamstown. Almost all the local churches were affected. Large crowds came to church every night. Soon the whole area, even up to Port Elizabeth and East London, was affected. People of all races were impacted. If there was not a building available, people would meet in the open. Missionaries in the Transkei reported that thousands of Xhosas turned to the Lord. One mission reported 600 new members within one month and crowded church meetings. Black and White together were feeling the presence of God.
One of the results of this revival was a strong interest in missions. Missionaries travelled as far as the old Rhodesia46 and Zambia to preach the gospel. Revival fires also started to burn in Botswana. These revival stirrings amng the Southern African Blacks occurred quite a few months before the Dutch Reformed Church was impacted.

Pioneers of Devotional Printing
The Moravians discerned the power of the written word and the Bible in particular. The Count Zinzendorf had been reading the history of the Bohemians and Moravians, knowing that they were pioneers of devotional printing. The Moravian Brethren were a Protestant church that sprang from the Unitas Fratrum (1457), Jednota bratrská. It was founded by the followers of a South Bohemian religious reformer, Peter of Chelcice. These Brethren were even more radical than the celebrated Czech reformer John Hus.
Stepping in the footsteps of their refugee ancestors from Central Europe, the Moravians pioneered devotional printing wherever they started missionary work. The earliest printing in America was done on a Moravian press. Johann Brandmüller, minister at Friedenstal (a subsidiary of Nazareth) turned out the first round of printing - not in German or English, but in Delaware - owing to Moravian mission work with Native Americans in the region.
Also at the Cape the Moravians pioneered with the printing of religious material at Genadendal.
10. Run-up to the second Great American Awakening

A few dynamic personalities kept the revival flame burning when there was merely a flicker discernable around the world by 1830. The classical 'tongues movement' actually could be said to have preceded the birth of the Pentecostal movement by over seventy years. As early as 1830, Scottish Presbyterian minister Edward Irving and a group of English Evangelicals predicted the restoration of tongues (as well as other gifts of the Spirit) as signs of the end of the age.
On April 20, 1830, in the first recorded instance in modern times, James MacDonald spoke in tongues, and his twin, George, interpreted: "Behold, he cometh-Jesus cometh-a weeping Jesus." Edward Irving later broke away from the Presbyterian Church to found his own sect, which he subsequently named the Catholic Apostolic Church.
The practice of "tongue speaking" spread rapidly to various branches of the "Holiness movement". This movement grew out of the more traditional Wesleyan Methodist churches, and eventually Wesley's teaching of a 'second experience of sanctification' or 'second blessing' (subsequent and distinct from the
first experience of conversion) would be evolved into the classical Pentecostal concept of 'Baptism in the Holy Spirit.'
Charles Finney as a Vanguard Charles Finney can be regarded as a vanguard of the revival of the mid-19th century. The highlight of Charles Finney's evangelistic ministry was the 'nine mighty years' of 1824 to 1832, during which he conducted powerful revival meetings. In addition to becoming a popular Christian evangelist, Finney was involved with the movement for the abolution of slavery in America, denouncing it frequently from the pulpit. In 1835, he moved to Ohio where he became a professor and later president of Oberlin college from 1851 to 1866. Oberlin became a vanguard to end slavery and was among the first American colleges to co-educate Blacks and women together with White men.
Beginning of the US Holiness Movement
In 1835 Phoebe, wife of a physician Walter Palmer and her sister Sarah Lankford, began women’s prayer meetings each Tuesday afternoon with Methodist women. Two years later, Phoebe Palmer became the leader of the meetings, which were referred to as the Tuesday Meeting for the Promotion of Holiness. The meetings were held in the Palmers' home. Beginning in 1839, men were allowed to attend the meetings. Among these men were Methodist bishops, theologians, and ministers. That women were thus presiding over influential men was still quite revolutionary for the time.
Phoebe Palmer and her husband Walter became itinerant preachers as they received more and more invitations from churches, conferences, and camp meetings. Although Walter Palmer spoke at these meetings, it was Phoebe who was better known. She played a significant role in spreading the concept of Christian holiness throughout the United States and the rest of the world. She wrote several books, including The Way of Holiness, which became a foundational book in the Holiness movement. This renewed interest in holiness eventually influenced the Methodist Church nationwide. Word of these successful prayer meetings inspired similar gatherings around the country, bringing Christians of many denominations together to pray. Phoebe soon found herself in the limelight—the most influential woman in the largest, fastest-growing religious group in America. At her instigation, missions began, camp meetings were organized, and an estimated 25,000 Americans got converted.

Prayer Seed of the American Revival Already since 1804 believers were praying in Boston for revival. Two decades later renewal took place in the Park Street congregation under the preaching of Dr Sereno Dwight, the great-grandson of Jonathan Edwards. In 1840 Christians of Boston prayed for revival once again. This time there was immediate results in the congregation. There was a sudden increase of membership, but after about four years the prayer meetings stopped. Two years later later the Old South Church in Boston started praying seriously for revival. William Miller, a New England farmer, had captured nationwide attention with his prediction that Christ would return on October 22, 1844. When nothing happened, many abandoned their faith. In 1856 the Old South Church in Boston engaged in a quarterly day of prayer and fasting. In due course hundreds were praying. Believers of the Old South Church in Boston had been praying for about eight years when in 1857 their faith in God was profoundly strengthened. Before the resulting prayer awakening, there had been a major spiritual decline. Churches were sliding downhill. Thousands of Americans were disillusioned with Christianity.
Finney and Revivals
In 1856 revival broke out in Rochester (New York) when Charles Finney conducted a campaign there. There the place was shaken to its foundations. Twelve hundred people united with the churches of the Rochester Presbytery. All the leading lawyers, physicians, and businessmen were saved. Forty of the converts entered the ministry, and the whole character of the town was changed. As a result of that meeting, revivals broke out in 1,500 other towns and villages. In the same year God used Finney also in Boston, where he preached predominantly in the Park Street Church. Finney was known for his innovations in preaching and religious meetings, such as having women pray in public meetings of mixed gender. He also developed the “anxious seat” (a place where those considering becoming Christians could come to receive prayer). Finney’s presentation of the gospel message reached thousands and influenced many communities. Over 500,000 people responded to his public invitations to receive Christ. Finney was personal, homespun, dramatic, and forceful, and his revival lectures are still studied by Bible-believing preachers, teachers, and evangelists. Under his ministry more than 80 percent of his converts stayed true to God even after 20 years. No other evangelist even came close to this success rate. There was something very special about this man and his message.
A Blind Hymn Writer of Note
Hymn writers played a special role in revivals. Count Zinzendorf was a prolific hymn writer with a special gift to dictate hymns as they were sung. The prodigious Anna Nitchmann, who became his second wife, also wrote 30 hymns. The hymn 'Sonne der Gerechtigkeit' (Son of Righteouesness) was written by Christian David, who felled the first tree for the erection of Herrnhut. This hymn is still a favourite in German-speaking countries.
As a hymn writer during the American awakenings, Fanny Crosby (1820 – 1915) - arguably the greatest English hymn writer in the history of the Christian Church - deserves special mention. Frances Jane Crosby usually known as Fanny Crosby, was best known for her Protestant Christian hymns. Blind for all of her life, Fanny Crosby, witnessed over 8,000 of her poems set to music and over 100,000,000 copies of her songs printed. As many as 200 different pen names, including Grace J. Frances, were given to her works by hymn book publishers, so that the public wouldn’t know she wrote such a large a number of them. Fanny Crosby produced as many as seven hymn-poems in one day. On several occasions, upon hearing an unfamiliar hymn sung, she would inquire about the author, and find it to be one of her own!
Born in a one-story cottage, her father, John, was never to be remembered by Fanny, for he died in the twelfth month of her life. When Fanny was six weeks old, she caught a slight cold in her eyes. The family physician was out of town. Another country doctor was called in to treat her. He prescribed hot mustard poultices to be applied to her eyes, which destroyed her sight completely! It was later learned that the man was not qualified to practice medicine, but it was too late to prosecute him – he had left town and was never heard from again. Fanny never felt any resentment against him, but believed it was permitted by the Lord to fulfill His plan for her life. Her wise mother set about immediately to prepare her daughter for a happy life, in spite of this great handicap.
Ira Sankey did more than any other single individual to popularize and immortalize Fanny Crosby’s songs. The great crowds who thronged the Moody-Sankey revivals sang her songs until they became part of the heritage not only of that generation, but also translated into many languages and sung around the world ever since.

North America Prior to the 1857-1858 Revival In the twelve years before the Second Great Awakening47 (also known as: The Revival/Awakening of 1857-1858; The Prayer Revival; and The Businessmen’s Revival), the religious life in America was on a decline. It was a time of prosperity, and people were seeking riches rather than God. The churches were losing people, and worldliness was creeping in. A number of Christians who had become concerned over the materialism that pervaded the land, and the fact that the young were growing up without God, began to pray that God would break the love of money over people’s lives and send another revival to the nation. “Concerts of Prayer” began to spring up throughout the United States of America and Canada. This materialism was broken in many lives by the Bank Panic of October 1857. Due to the long, hard winter of 1856-1857, transportation and trade transactions were delayed. The spring brought some relief, but by the end of summer, businesses had begun to collapse. Before September, the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company of Cincinnati, with a branch in New York City, failed, causing a shock to public confidence. Some banks refused to redeem their promissory notes, while others suspended operations altogether, including eighteen of New York City’s leading banks. On the 14th of October, 1857, the extensive banking system of the United States collapsed. A far-reaching disaster brought ruin to hundreds of thousands of people in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and the industrial centres of the nation. The panic caused rich men to go broke literally overnight. Suicide and murder increased, as well as the number of unfortunate women who roamed the streets in the cities.
Conditions in the UK: the beginning of the YMCA Terrible conditions were found in places all over Britain around 1850. The effect of the revival under the Wesleys and George Whitefield was almost nil. Growth of the railroads and centralization of commerce and industry brought many rural young men who needed jobs into cities like London. They worked 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week. Far from home and family, these young men often lived at the workplace. George Williams, born on a farm in 1821, came to London 20 years later as a sales assistant in a draper’s shop, a forerunner of today’s department store. He and a group of fellow drapers organized the first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) to substitute Bible study and prayer for life on the streets. The YMCA was founded in London, England, on June 6, 1844, in response to unhealthy social conditions arising in the big cities at the end of the Industrial Revolution (roughly 1750 to 1850). The YMCA idea, which began among evangelical men, was unusual because it crossed the rigid lines that separated all the different churches and social classes in England in those days. This openness was a trait that would lead eventually to include in YMCAs all men, women and children, regardless of race, religion or nationality. Also, its target of meeting social need in the community was highly appreciated from the start. By 1851 there were 24 Y’s in Great Britain, with a combined membership of 2,700. That same year the 'Y' arrived in North America: It was established in Montreal on November 25, and in Boston on December 29. The idea proved popular everywhere. In 1853, the first YMCA for Afro-Americans was founded in Washington D.C. by Anthony Bowen, a freed slave. The next year the first international convention was held in Paris. At the time there were 397 separate Ys in seven nations, with 30,369 members in total. (Andrew Murray became God’s instrument at the Cape when the Young Men’s Christian Association was started in 1865.)
Start of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) The movement that resulted in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) began in England in 1855 in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and the Crimean War. It was founded through the convergence of social activist Lady Mary Jane Kinnaird’s General Female Training Institute, and committed Christian Emma Robarts’ Prayer Union. The YWCA sought to be a social and spiritual support system for young English women. Due to the nature of Kinnaird’s interest in work abroad and the expansiveness of the British Empire, the initiative spread rapidly to western and northern Europe, India and the United States.
Pastor Theodore Cuyler – a Revival fore-runner
Theodore Cuyler graduated from Princeton Seminary in 1846, and after entering his first pastorate in Burlingham (New Jersey) witnessed a remarkable revival. In 1853 Cuyler moved to New York City into the Market Street Dutch Reformed Church, where he was instrumental in another revival.
On the subject of being prepared and watchful for a coming revival, Theodore Cuyler writes, 'One day the wife of one of my two church elders came to me in my study, and told me that her son had been awakened by the faithful talk of a young Christian girl, who had brought some work to her husband's shoe store. I said to the elder's wife: 'The Holy Spirit is evidently working on one soul, let us have a prayer meeting at your house tonight.' We spent the afternoon in gathering our small congregation together, and when I got to her house it was packed to the door. I have attended thousands of prayer meetings since then, but never one that had a more distinct resemblance to the Pentecostal gathering in 'the upper room' at Jerusalem. The atmosphere seemed to be charged with a divine electricity that affected almost every one in the house. Three times over I closed the meeting with a benediction, but it began again, and the people lingered until a very late hour, melted together by 'a baptism of fire. 'That wonderful meeting was followed by special services every night, and the Holy Spirit descended with great power.' The latter revival was an illustration of the truth that a good work of grace often begins with the personal effort of one or two individuals. The Burlingham awakening began with the little girl and the elder's wife. We must never despise or neglect 'the day of small things.' Every pastor ought to be constantly on the watch, with open eyes and ears, for the first signs of a special manifestation of the Spirit's presence to work alongside God.
The Start of Renewal in Fulton Street, New York In the middle of September 1857, Jeremiah Lanphier, a 48-year old businessman began passing out handbills in New York City that read: “How often shall I pray? As often as the language of prayer is in my heart; as often as I see my need of help; as often as I feel the power of temptation; as often as I am made sensible of any spiritual declension, or feel the aggression of a worldly, earthly spirit . . . In prayer, we leave the business of time for that of eternity, and intercourse with God.” On the reverse side of the flyer he invited believers to attend a weekly prayer meeting every Wednesday from noon until 1 o’clock in the North Dutch Reformed Church on the corner of Fulton and William Streets. ‘This meeting is intended to give merchants, mechanics, clerks, strangers and businessmen generally an opportunity to stop and call on God amid the perplexities incident to their respective avocations. It will continue for one hour; but it is designed for those who find it inconvenient to remain more than 5 or 10 minutes, as well as for those who can spare a whole hour. Necessary interruption will be slight, because anticipated. Those in haste often expedite their business engagements by halting to lift their voices to the throne of grace in humble, grateful prayer.’ Shortly before noon on September 23 he opened the doors of the church. Out of a population of over a million, only one man showed up for the beginning of the meeting – Lanphier! At 12:30, he heard the footsteps of one man climbing the stairs. Within a few minutes, a total of six men had joined Lanphier to pray. The next Wednesday brought 20; the third week the prayer-meeting was attended by between 30 and 40 men. The meetings were so encouraging that it was decided that they should meet daily. The next day, the crowds had again increased. By the following Wednesday, October 14, over 100 attended. Many came under conviction of sin.
Revival in Hamilton (Canada) By 1857, prayer movements were growing in Ontario. In August or September, Walter and Phoebe Palmer, a Methodist physician and his wife from New York, came to hold what turned out to be very successful meetings. Returning to the States, they were delayed in Hamilton. On 8 October, the next day, the Methodist ministers convened a prayer meeting at which sixty-five people attended. The greater number of these people pledged themselves to pray for an "outpouring of the Holy Spirit." That night, Phoebe Palmer felt that God was about to move. On the evening of the 9th October, a larger crowd met in the basement of the John Street Methodist Church. Twenty-one people were converted.
The following meetings were made up mostly of exhortations and testimonies. Many testified of conversion, while those who were already Christians testified to an entire dedication of heart and life to Christ.
The New York Christian Advocate and Journal reported on November 5, 1857, about the 'Revival Extraordinary' in Hamilton in Canada West, where twenty to forty-five professions were being made daily, and one hundred were made on the previous Sunday. They wrote:
'The work is taking its range . . . persons of all classes. Men of low degree and men of high estate for wealth and position; old men and maidens, and even little children, can be seen humbly kneeling together, pleading for grace. The mayor of the city, with other persons of like position, are not ashamed to be seen bowed at the altar of prayer beside the humble servant.'
The spontaneous revival in Hamilton soon swept the entire community and a large part of the nation. All denominations reported a rise in membership over the following years.
The Canadian Awakening of 1857 sparked the Third Great Awakening in the United States.



11.Some 19th Century Revivals Elsewhere

In this chapter we shall be looking at revivals elsewhere that have impacted the Cape revival of 1860 in some way. One of the sparks that finally ignited the Cape revival of 1860 originated n Scotland. A Scottish aristocrat named Robert Haldane (1764-1842) sold his castle n 1797, left the Church of Scotland and travelled around Scotland preaching. In December of that year he joined his brother and some others in the formation of the 'Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home', in building chapels or 'tabernacles' for congregations, in supporting missionaries, and in maintaining institutions for the education of young men to carry on the work of evangelization. He also initiated a plan for evangelizing Africa by bringing over native children to be trained as Christian missionaries.
The Haldane Revival In Robert Haldane became concerned with the evangelisation of Europe. A passion found him in the city of Geneva in 1815. Robert Haldane was sitting on a park bench by the lake of Geneva one day when he got into a conversation with some university students. They were studying for the ministry, but they were clearly not converted. Haldane invited them to his flat in the old city, not far from the great church once pastored by John Calvin, where they participated that winter in what we would call a Bible Study. Haldane taught them from the book of Romans, on which he would eventually write a great commentary. The following year Robert Haldane visited the continent, operating first at Geneva and afterwards in Montauban. He lectured and interviewed large numbers of theological students with remarkable effect; among them were César Malan, Frédéric Monod and Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné. This circle of men spread the revival of evangelical Protestant Christianity across the continent of Europe, impacting France, Germany (Die Erweckung) and the Netherlands (Het Réveil). Through conversion and missionary impetus the effects of this revival were felt as far afield as Italy and Hungary.
Each of those young men was soundly converted through that study and became an effective leader in the revival that followed. These men were so effective in this work that a professor in the university named Monsieur Cheneviers later wrote to Haldane to ask what it was that had gotten into these young students, what had so profoundly transformed them and made them such effective Christian workers.
Haldane answered in a letter that is now part of his commentary. He said it was a study of the last verses of Romans 11, particularly verse 36, in which God is pictured as his own last end in everything he does; 'for from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.' He said it was understanding that 'the manifestation of the glory of God is the great end of creation, that he has himself chiefly in view in all his works and dispensations, and that it is a purpose in which he requires that all his intelligent creatures should acquiesce, and seek and promote it as their first and paramount duty.'
It seldom happens that a great work in which co-operated effort is required, that the same family which produced the originator should also produce the effectual seconder of the movement. From this general rule the family of Haldane of Airthrey is an honoured exception; for while Robert was building churches over the whole extent of Scotland, his younger brother, James, was ably preparing the way by preaching in its most destitute localities, and reviving that religious spirit which had sunk for years into cold apathy and indifference.
The Haldane Revival had impacted Scotland by the 1840s deeply when it was marred by theological controversy. By this time it had however already also influenced Holland intensely where Jewish background Isaac da Costa was to carry the baton of the Réveil, the spiritual renewal that swept through Europe in response to the Enlightenment.

Haystack Prayer Meeting
The Cape revival of 1860-61 has a direct link to a revival in North America in 1858-59. That revival in turn has origins in what was called the Haystack Prayer Meeting. Five Williams College students met in the summer of 1806, in a grove of trees near the Hoosic River, in what was then known as Sloan's Meadow, and debated the theology of missionary service. Their meeting was interrupted by a thunderstorm and the students took shelter under a haystack until the sky cleared. In 1808 the Haystack Prayer Group and other Williams students began a group called 'The Brethren.' This group was organized to reach out to those who were not Christians. In 1812, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (established in 1810) sent its first missionaries to the non-Christian world, to India. During the 19th century, it sent missionaries to China, Hawaii, and other nations in southeast Asia, establishing hospitals and schools at its mission stations. Many of its missionaries undertook translation of the Bible into native languages, and some created written languages where none had existed before.
The New York Revival takes off By mid-February 1858, the North Dutch Reformed Church on the corner of Fulton and William Streets. was holding three simultaneous prayer meetings - standing room only on three floors. This caused editor James Gordon Bennett to begin writing about the prayer meetings in his New York Herald. Soon, his rival, Horace Greeley gave friendlier editorials in his New York Tribune. In April, Greeley dedicated an entire issue to the revival. Other papers across the nation quickly followed suit. In a two-column editorial on March 20, the New York Times reported about the revival: 'The great wave of religious excitement which is now sweeping over this nation, is one of the most remarkable movements since the Reformation . . . Travelers relate that on cars and steamboats, in banks and markets, everywhere through the interior, this matter is an absorbing topic. Churches are crowded; bank-directors’ rooms become oratories; school-houses are turned into chapels; converts are numbered by the scores of thousands. In this City, we have beheld a sight which not the most enthusiastic fanatic church-observances could ever have hoped to look upon; we have seen in a business quarter of the City, in the busiest hours, assemblies of merchants, clerks and working-men, to the number of some 5,000 - gathered day after day for a simple and solemn worship. Similar assemblies we find in other portions of the City; Hundreds of people who had always spent their nights so to speak in the gates of hell came to the prayer meetings that had begun in the evenings. Thousands forsook crime and became devoted followers of Christ. Crime and vice drastically declined. Wealthy people generously helped the poor whom they regarded as their brothers and sisters. A theatre is turned into a chapel; churches of all sects are open and crowded by day and night.' Throughout 1858, people were assembling every night for prayer in great cities and small towns all over America. In fact, you could travel by horse and buggy from Omaha, Nebraska to Washington, D.C. and expect to find churches packed for prayer wherever you might stop for the night.
The Revival in the UK The 1859 revival was one that affected virtually the whole of the UK. In terms of the actual numbers converted¹ it was probably the greatest revival ever to have transpired n the UK. Liverpool was one of the centres of this revival. Very few people are aware of the extent of the 1859 revival . It is sometimes referred to as 'the forgotten revival' or 'the layman’s revival.' News of the North American revival soon hit the UK. The first place to be affected was Ulster, and a mighty revival hit that region in 1859 with somewhere around 100,000 people converted, which as a percentage of the people in that country was quite staggering. About the same time and quite independently Wales also was affected and a revival brought again around 100,000 people to Christ. The revival arrived in Scotland in the north of the country and as time went on it spread down south, until it arrived in England. Around 300,000 people were converted in Scotland. The revival in Ulster, Wales and Scotland, however, was somewhat different in character to that of most of England. In the former the revival was more spontaneous, and most of the conversions occurred during the year of 1859. In England, however, the initial move was not quite as dramatic as in the former two parts of the country, but within two years something different happened which resulted in large numbers of people coming to Christ. God raised up a large number of evangelists who travelled the length and breadth of the land preaching the gospel, and many thousands of people were brought into the kingdom by this means. By 1864 no less than 600,000 people were converted in England, bringing the total in the UK to over one million people. Even parts of Southern Ireland were affected by the revival, including Dublin, Cork, and Kerry. The latter place was most blessed and the move there was known as "The Kerry Revival." Even ships travelling from Dublin to Holyhead were influenced by the move, with revival services being held on board, and many people being converted.
Revival in Ulster
The revival in Ulster made a greater impact on Ireland than anything known since the Roman Catholic friar Patrick brought Christianity there.48 The ‘beginning’ of the revival in Ulster is traced back to four young men that committed themselves to pray for revival. They started to pray in September 1857, and by the end of that year converts started to increase.
When churches in Ireland heard about the revival in New York and other places in the USA, many ministers and Christians felt a deep hunger for God and began to pray with new earnestness. At the general assembly in Dublin in 1858, the Presbyterian Synod devoted two sessions to revival. Two men were appointed to go to New York to observe the work and bring back a report. When the two men returned, their report brought an even greater hunger for revival. Through the work of God in the hearts of four new converts who were moved to seek God in prayer, 100 000 people came to Christ in one year. This is the extraordinary story of this stirring, reviving and outpouring of the Spirit of God that came to be known as 'The 1859 Ulster Revival.'

Vessels Chosen and Prepared
The beginning of this revival can be traced to the parish of Connor in Co. Antrim. Not far from Ballymena is a small village called Kells God. James McQuilkin overheard a Mrs. Colville (a Baptist missionary from England) talk to a lady about knowing she was saved. Thinking that this lady had a lack of theological learning, he quizzed her whether she was a Calvinist. She responded by saying: 'I do not care to talk on mere points of doctrine. I would rather speak of the experience of salvation in the soul. If one were to tell me what he knows of the state of his heart towards God, I think I could tell him whether he knows the Lord Jesus savingly.'
This brought James McQuilkin under deep conviction of sin. He was cut to the heart and led into long weeks of agony as he wrestled over his spiritual condition before God. Finally he found Christ, salvation, peace and forgiveness. Immediately he began to witness to others around him and the news spread in Kells that this man who was once known for his love of this world, now loved Christ and His Word. One of his friends Jeremiah Meneely (or Jerry as he was well known) was a faithful church goer but lacked a sure knowledge that his sins were forgiven. He sought out James. After a long conversation Jerry found himself in a state of seeking God. As he read the Bible one day wrestling over these things and confused in mind, the Spirit spoke clearly a scripture to his heart. He slapped his knee exclaiming, "I see it now" and arose assured that his sins were forgiven and that his name written in heaven. Around the same time McQuilkin led two other young men to Christ, Robert Carlisle and John Wallace. This was God's raw material to work with.
In their winter of 1858/1859 prayer intensified and more prayer meetings and prayer groups sprang up. It is said that by the time the revival came to Ulster, there were 104 prayer groups all over the city, praying in effect almost night and day for revival.

The Ulster Revival takes off
On the 14th March 1859, James McQuilkin organised a mass prayer meeting. About 3,000 people came, standing in the rain and mud, gripped by the power of the Holy Spirit. A layman began to preach. About 100 people fell prostrate in the mud, surrendering to Christ. The fires of revival spread to other places in the district. People were meeting in kitchens, barns, churches, schoolhouses, fields and on roadsides. There were all-night meetings of prayer and weeping. People forsook farm work and business and crowded into meetings.
In April 1859, during a busy market day in the town Ballymena, a man in his thirties suddenly fell to the ground and, for about ten minutes, kept on calling out, “Unclean, unclean ... Lord have mercy on me, a sinner!” A holy fear of God came over the people. By 17 May the whole town was in the grip of the Holy Spirit’s convicting power.
Men who didn’t care before broke down and sobbed like children. Churches were overcrowded, families prayed together, while people from all classes and ages were seeking the Lord. Prayer meetings sometimes carried on all through the night. There were strong physical manifestations which led to the salvation of many people.
Even ships passing those regions experienced the presence of God and many sailors came under conviction of sin. The revival spread all over the country. In Belfast a large distillery closed and the whiskey trade started to fall. Pubs closed down. Race courses drew fewer people. Crime was reduced tremendously. Throughout Ulster judges often had no cases to try and many times there were no prisoners in custody.
Revival came to Ballymena ‘suddenly’. Crying and prayers filled the streets and most houses. Some, under deep conviction of sin, did not sleep for many nights. Twice a week there were large mid-day prayer meetings and people from all denominations attended them. On one occasion 5,000 met for prayer in a quarry. Children 10-12 years of age were saved, and prayed with great power for unsaved adults. People were amazed at the prayers of these children. They organised their own prayer meetings.

Effect of the Ulster Revival
Criteria of a genuine revival are the depth and duration of it. The closing of pubs and 'the establishment of greater sobriety and temperance' was proof of the former. Mr. Macartney, a Justice of the Peace and at one time Member of Parliament for Antrim, witnessed that in certain parishes 'the use of ardent spirits was almost entirely abandoned.' (Cited by William H. Harding, THE ULSTER REVIVAL OF 1859, taken from the Internet) Rev. William Arthur, noting how the Boyne anniversary passed in a peaceful way that astonished the most sanguine, described the effect as 'the most striking effect produced upon national manners, in our day, in these islands, by the sudden influence of religion. I saw people coming away quietly, in streams, from a fair, where before they would have been reeling by dozens. I heard masters tell of the change in their men, boys of that in their comrades; I heard gentlemen, doctors, merchants, shop-keepers, tailors, butchers, weavers, stone-breakers, dwell with wonder on the improvement going on among their neighbours. I knew the people and I believed my own eyes.'
The Presbyterian Church of Ireland, fifty years later, testified in solemn and moving terms 'to the grandeur and greatness of the movement, acknowledging a very large accession to the membership, reckoned by many thousands, an overflowing stream of candidates for the ministry, a development of Church extension, the creation of a new spirit of Christian liberality, and a forward movement in home and foreign missionary enterprise.' (William H. Harding, THE ULSTER REVIVAL OF 1859, taken from the Internet).
Revival in Northern Ireland
Revival broke out in Belfast in June 1859. The Spirit inspired ordinary laymen to start preaching and day and night they visited people who were convicted of sin. On 29 June there was a very large open-air meeting in the Botanic Gardens in Belfast: 40,000 people attended. Children even climbed into the trees so that they could see and hear. The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church led the service and asked the people not to resist or grieve the Holy Spirit, but to ask unceasingly, urgently and expectantly that he would descend on them so that many people would be converted. Deep conviction of sin caused many people to literally fall down on their faces and beg for God’s grace. Children started forming groups and prayed for the crowds. Many of these children were from the poorer section of society.
After this meeting, church services were packed daily. Often it was impossible to dismiss services and people only went home in the early hours of the morning. A pastor described how some people 'felt the pains of hell' as they were convicted by the Holy Spirit. That was followed with great joy and outpourings of love as the Holy Spirit gave assurance of salvation and many cried out, 'How I wish I could tell you about Jesus’
love. I would take sinners in my arms, if I could, and lay them at His feet.' Also here there were conversions of people across the boundary lines of society. Learned people and wealthy business people experienced the same conviction of sin that farmers and ordinary labourers did.
At one occasion a meeting was attended by 20,000 people. All over Belfast meetings were held for both children and adults. One church reported that 40 prayer meetings had been started amongst their members. People’s lives began to change: There was a drastic decrease in prostitution as many prostitutes were saved. People started working responsibly with their money and began saving again. Political protest demonstrations ceased for the time being. Many factories closed temporarily so that workers convicted of sin could deal with that, because they could not continue working in any case. People were starting to grow and mature spiritually and answers to prayer were reported every day. There were spiritual bands and singing groups all over. Pastors ministered to crowds gathering in the streets.
In Coleriane a boy came under such conviction of sin that the principal of the school sent him home, together with another boy. On their way they passed an empty house and went inside to pray. After the young boy became certain of his salvation he immediately said, 'I must go and tell Mr. X.' As he entered the school grounds, he said to this teacher, 'Sir, I am so happy; I have the Lord Jesus in my heart.' The whole school heard
what had happened to him – suddenly one boy after the other excused themselves from the classroom. Very soon scores of young boys were kneeling all over the playground, wrestling with God. The young boy that was converted first went to these boys and started praying with them. Heart-rending cries were heard as the boys were convicted of their sins and asked for forgiveness. Children in the classrooms heard this and went
down on their knees, also starting to cry for mercy. The girls in the girls’ school nearby heard the boys crying out to God and also started crying out to Him, confessing their sins. Adults hearing the crying children rushed to the school, where many of them were convicted of their own sins and found salvation. The result was that some 100,000 people joined Belfast churches in 1859.

The Revival Arrives in Liverpool Rev. J White, a minister in Ulster, was greatly used in the revival in Carrickfergus, and his brother Rev. Dr. Verner M. White, the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Islington, Liverpool, came back from visiting him to describe his experiences over there. In the summer of 1859 he held a gathering in the Common Hall, Hackins Hey, at the request of the Liverpool YMCA, to give an account of the revival. This became the origin of a great awakening in Liverpool. Many people were stirred up to earnest prayer at this time. By September 1859 special revival services were being held with inter-denominational co-operation. Meetings multiplied, both prayer gatherings and meetings for spreading information, and towards the end of the year a weekly revival prayer meeting was decided upon by a united gathering of ministers. Richard Weaver, with inter-denominational backing, began to hold evangelistic services at which numbers of people were converted. In 1860 great congregational prayer meetings began in all denominations, as well as united gatherings. The Adelphi Theatre, for example, was opened for united evangelistic services. James Caughey, who was greatly used in Liverpool in 1842, came back to Liverpool at this time and was particularly used to bring many people to Christ in the Methodist churches. In 1860 alone some 1,800 people were added to the roll of the Wesleyans in Liverpool. In 1861 numbers of evangelists were raised to preach the gospel in the city. E Payson Hammond, an American evangelist, visited Liverpool addressing large gatherings with hundreds of people responding to the appeal. Similarly, the American J W Bonham also held successful meetings in Bootle and Liverpool. A famous American female evangelist, Phoebe Palmer, who had been greatly used by God to light revival fires around USA and had come to England with her husband Dr Walter Palmer for a rest, were immediately caught up in an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit, and saw hundreds of conversions.
The Liverpool Prison A clergyman by the name of Rev. John Baillie visited the Liverpool prison and addressed the women inmates for about 45 minutes on the revival. He then asked them if they meant to turn their backs that night coldly on Jesus. He gave them two minutes to consider their answer. Before the two minutes had expired one of them cried out, "Oh Jesus, I’m lost for ever," and fell prostrate on the floor. Others immediately cried out and in a few minutes everybody was sobbing in intense anguish. He felt that he could say and do nothing, as the Lord had taken the whole thing into his own hand. He had to leave and in about two hours he called at the Prison, and found that they had continued in that state for nearly that whole time, until they went to bed. One of them, who had before been seeking Jesus, found Him in the interim and had been speaking to others about Him. As time went on, the effects of the revival were being increasingly felt. Writing in The Revival, William Lockhart, who had experienced the revival in Scotland, wrote in August 1861 that he was not altogether encouraged by the progress of the revival in Liverpool, compared to what was happening in other parts of the UK. But writing to the same paper eight months later in April 1862 his tone was quite different. He noted that the work was deepening and widening in Liverpool. Two years later he took the bold step of hiring the Hengler’s Circus in Newington, Liverpool for the purpose of taking services there. A great work of God was accomplished in that place,
The 1859 Prayer Revival in Wales
Wales is a nation that experienced many revivals. There had been a revival in 1739, 'the great revival' in 1760, and a few other other visitations (e.g. in 1791, 1817, 1840, 1848). During the 1850s however, the Church in Wales felt the need for a new awakening. In private prayer, family worship and congregational meetings people were praying for revival. When the revival eventually came in 1859, it was like the 1857-1858 revival in America; a revival of united prayer.
God used two ministers to ignite the flame of revival through their preaching: Humphrey Jones and David Morgan. Humphrey Jones came from America where he was greatly influenced by the writings of Charles Finney. For six months God used him in a special way and there was great anointing on his preaching. Even at 5h00 in the morning people were crowding the chapel in Tre’rddol. The streets were lined half a mile (ca. 800 metres) in all directions with people coming to listen. Revival broke out in village after village where he preached.
The children started their own prayer meetings and prayed fervently. Everywhere people experienced the terror of God’s presence. In some meetings the Holy Spirit came like a mighty rushing wind. In February 1859 the Spirit came in mighty power. Many were saved daily and daily prayer meetings started. One minister reported 650 new converts. Some new believers literally leaped for joy.
Reverend David Morgan was greatly challenged by Humphrey Jones. For three months Morgan and Jones ministered together. God used David Morgan in a special way. Wherever he went, the Spirit was poured out and people were converted. Notorious criminals came to church in their hundreds. The revival in Wales spread not so much by preaching as by prayer. Repentant prayer was a hall mark. In Anglesea it was reported that 'at times it seemed it was raining tears' (Duewel, 1995:167) and a report in a church magazine reported among other things about hardened ungodly people bathed in tears. The report concluded as follows: 'God in His grace, has done more within the past two weeks in this part of the country than had been accomplished for an age previously' (Duewel, 1995:170).

Revival in Scotland 1860
When the news of the American revival (1857-1859) reached Scotland, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland came together to give thanks to God for what was happening across the ocean and to plead with God for a similar outpouring of His Spirit on Scotland. The second Sunday in July 1860 was set aside as a day of prayer for revival. The news spread quickly. Apart from the 1,205 Presbyterian prayer meetings, praying for revival, there were also 129 new interdenominational prayer meetings per week. The prayer burden deepened when the Scottish people heard that God had visited Ulster in Northern Ireland with revival. Crowds of up to 20,000 came to listen to speakers telling of the revival in other countries. The subject on everyone’s lips was revival.
In many places the crowds were so big that the churches were too small. Then people started to come to the Lord in growing numbers. In some places as many as 500 people stayed behind to be helped. There were no great preachers, advertising or any organising. The revival spread to the Orkney Islands and Shetland. Even five years later, the Presbyterian Church reported that the revival was still continuing. Many ‘good Christians’ realised that goodness is not enough, and turned to Christ, the Crucified One.
Others turned from sinning openly to lives of holiness, some weeping with joy for sins forgiven.

The Jamaican Revival of 1860
The Jamaican churches heard about the revival in New York in 1857-1859 and began praying for a similar outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Jamaica. As people prayed, anticipation of an imminent revival heightened. By 1860, most Christians believed God would send them revival by year’s end, but none anticipated the intensity of the showers of blessing they were about to receive.
The revival started in a Moravian chapel in September 1860. During a Friday morning service the revival broke out when a boy was praying and the whole church was gripped by the power of God. A young girl began to pray and then the Spirit came like a mighty rushing wind. Strong men fell on their knees, trembling and being shaken as if by an unseen hand.
Prayer meetings sprang up in several communities. The tide of evil was stopped. People accustomed to cursing now started to call on the Name of the One they used in vain. The revival spilled over to other denominations: Anglicans, Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists and Presbyterians. Preachers travelled to different places to preach and even before they started to preach, people came for prayer and help. One missionary preached in Bethel Town and suggested a dawn prayer meeting. Five hundred people came. The Spirit was poured out and a mighty work of God followed. In the Mount Carey chapel a service was held and 1,200 people attended. Many crowded outside the door and 3,000 unsaved came under deep conviction of sin in that community.
The Methodists reported that by 1863 the revival fires were still burning. Sales of Bibles increased. Church membership was rising sharply all over the island. Rum shops and gambling houses closed, marriages were restored and prodigal children returned home. It purified the churches, thousands got converted and churches were crowded. It also enraged those ungodly people who didn’t want to humble themselves before God. The nation of recently liberated slaves had discovered their real liberty in Christ, and most of them chose not to return to the bondage from which Christ had set them free.


12. The Run-up to the Cape 19th Century Renewal

Both Count Zinzendorf and Andrew Murray were men of prayer. The full extent to which Andrew Murray was influenced by the Moravians during his study stint in the Netherlands is not known, but with Zeist being only 10 kilometres away from Utrecht where he and his brother John studied for two years from 1845, it is highly probable that there were some links.49 In a letter of 14 November 1845 to his father from Utrecht, he wrote: ‘I have been led to surrender myself wholly to Christ’ (Du Plessis, 1919:57). But he had been deeply influenced by the story of the 1727 revival. Evidence of the profound effect can be found in his booklet 'The Key to the missionary Problem'.

Unity of Believers turn the Tide
Commonalities of a special work of the Holy Spirit had been manifesting themselves at the Cape that were similar to those that occurred in Herrnhut (Eastern Germany) in the run-up and during the revival of 1727. (We noted earlier how dissention among the believers around peripheral doctrinal differences between May 1727 and 13 August of the same year caused a serious disruption. This drove a significant kernel of prayer warriors around Count Zinzendorf to their knees.)
The same common elements had also been present in the Cape’s earlier revivals of 1809 and 1838. At first there was confusion, followed by unexpected divine interventions. As noted before, there was the effect of the December 4, 1809 earthquake. In 1838 the pending emancipation of the slaves caused tremendous turmoil, becoming one of the causes of the Great Trek. Many Dutch colonists left for the interior. The unity of followers of Jesus - across church and nationality barriers - turned the tide however once again.

Divine Elements
Dr van der Kemp blazed a trail for a better understanding between the Dutch Reformed Church and the missionaries when he stuck to his calling to the indigenous, refusing to become the pastor of Graaff-Reinet. In a compromise, his colleague Aart A. van der Lingen, who had been refused permission by Dutch governor De Mist to work among the slaves at the Cape - became the Graaff-Reinet minister as a compromise. Hereafter various missionaries sent out by the London and Rotterdam Missionary societies ended their days as pastors of Dutch Reformed congregations, blessing that church with an evangelical stamp of commitment to the Word of God. At the same time the gulf between the pastor of the White church and the mission churches was somewhat lessened and the negative vibes of the colonists towards the missionary from abroad decreased.
It has been reported that Dr Murray’s father, Rev. Andrew Murray (sr.), prayed for revival in his congregation every Friday evening since 1822. By 1860 he would thus have prayed faithfully for 38 years. Every Friday night he spent several hours in prayer.
Another divine element to prepare the revival was ironically the Anglicization attempt by the Cape government at the time. In addition to the scorn heaped on locally spoken Dutch by English speakers, Afrikaners themselves were inclined to use derogatory terms to describe their vemacular. They would often refer to it as a hotnotstaal (Hottentot Language) and Kombuis Hollands (Kitchen Dutch). Olea Nel (2008) succintly showed how God used Ds. Gottlieb van der Lingen, the son of a London Missionary Society (LMS ) missionary pioneer, as a divine local instrument after he had been appointed to the parish of Paarl in 1832. The majority of its White inhabitants there were descendants from the French Huguenots who fled France because of religious persecution. This gave the Berg River Valley of the Paarl region a spiritual head-start over other Cape areas. By the time Gottlieb van der Lingen arrived, there was no less than eight Dutch private schools plus a small English public school in the valley.

Ds. Van der Lingen - A staunch Supporter of Missions
On the mission front, matters looked equally bright. As early as 1801 the Zuid~Afrikaansche Zending Genoootschap (South African Mission Society) had started work in Wagenmakersvallei (Wagonmakers Valley, later changed to Wellington) to the north of Paarl. Their work was complemented by the Paarl Missionary Society that was established in 1819. Van der Lingen, who was a staunch supporter of missions, was able to build on the excellent foundations already laid in this way. While studying in Holland as the son of pioneer Cape missionaries, he was impacted by the German Karl Gutzlaff, who would pioneer of missionary work in China (Gerdener, 1951:??)
Although the mission societies acted independently of the DRC, the congregation of Paarl nevertheless gave liberally towards the establishment of mission chapels and religious houses where the Gospel was preached and Scripture taught. By 1843, seven such establishments had been erected for 'Coloureds' within the boundaries of the parish.

Promoter of Christian Education and Dutch Culture
Meanwhile, Van der Lingen had also been busy promoting Christian education in his parish. Due to his firm conviction that schooling was the responsibility of the Church, he set about finding funds for a number of Church schools. Unfortunately, the Cape Administration would not subsidize them because the language medium of instruction in these schools was Dutch. It was their requirement that all instruction should take place in English. Worse still, the state educational system did not allow for Dutch to be taught as a subject.
With the theological institutions in Holland churning out liberal preachers, spiritual deadness was infecting the churches in the Cape. Ds. van der Lingen energetically promoted Christian schools, but was frustrated when not a single church congregation responded to his offer to help establish Christian education in their area!
Van der Lingen vocalised his disdain for an education system that ignored the plight of most of its White children because they were of Dutch descent. He also pointed out the ridiculousness of a system that forced children to be instructed through a language they neither understood nor spoke. Although he had every intention of making sure that the parish of Paarl had sufficient Dutch schools and teachers, he was at a loss to remedy the situation in the hinterland.
While a handful of church schools had been established in large towns, they tended to be run by sextons and church readers who were not really suited to the task. There was also another problem. The few church schools that did exist were too far away for farm children to attend. Their parents, therefore, continued to favour their own private schools that they arranged and paid for amongst themselves. As education was not a high priority for these parents, they considered their children's education done once they had acquired sufficient reading and writing skills to pass the Dutch Reformed Church catechism.

A Fighter for the Preservation of Dutch Culture
During a visit to Cape Town around 1849, Van der Lingen woke up to the fact that Afrikaners in that city were not only losing their ability to speak Dutch at a rapid rate, but were also embracing state-sponsored education through the medium of English. For these Afrikaners, it was the only way for their children to acquire a free education. Another benefit was that the aquisition of a high standard of English would insure that their children would no longer be subjected to constant scorn and ridicule because they could only speak their 'vulgar vernacular' Afrikaans.
Van der Lingen took fright at the extent of the Anglicization process. He realized the implications for country regions, where about 70% of Afrikaners could no longer speak Dutch and would one day undoubtedly go the way of their city relatives. He therefore resolved to make Paarl a centre of Christian orthodoxy and Dutch culture in an effort to raise his congregation's self esteem and so halt the Anglicization process.
Gottlieb van der Lingen was also God’s instrument and catalyst for De Gereformeerde Kerkbode, which later became Die Kerkbode, the official mouthpiece of the Dutch Reformed Church. He furthermore
hoped that his example of making Paarl as an educational centre would be followed by other congregations. His efforts did not go unnoticed by other progressive clergy, who wanted other congregations to follow Paarl's example.
At the DRC Synod of 1852, a motion was duly passed requiring each congregation to build a day school that would be supervised by their church council. And because of Van der Lingen's excellent track record in promoting education in his own parish, the Synod appointed him Procurement Officer.

Preserver of a Remnant
Van der Lingen set about recruiting teachers from the Netherlands during the early 1850s. Their task would be to impart a love for Dutch culture and social norms. In 1852, Van der Lingen's vision for Paarl entered a new phase. It came about because of his increasing dread that the acquisition of English could bring with it the liberal values of the British. But this is not all that he feared. He also feared that English would replace Dutch as the language of the Church and if this would happen, it could lead to the abandonment of the orthodox faith. Van der Lingen went however overboard with his zeal in fightiing the British, losing the support of many Afrikaners who sympathised with the cause. (During his early years in Paarl anger abounded in the run-up to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834 and the pending emancipation on 1 December 1838.) This can be regarded as a blot on the copy book of the great Dutch Reformed minister who had been such a great supported of missions when he came to the Strooidak (Straw Roof) church of Paarl. His fear was so great that he claimed a promise from God based upon Genesis 45:7, pleading with God to preserve a remnant of Dutch believers in Paarl as a legacy for posterity (Nel. 2008:58).
The seed Van der Lingen sowed in opposing the Anglisation of Cape society had dire results. But God divinely over-ruled Van der Lingen's bigoted and nationalistic vision. Instead of safeguarding the culture of the elite, two of the recruited Dutch teachers, Arnoldus Pannevis and Cornelis P. Hoogenhout, became staunch fighters for the Bible in the vernacular of the poor. That would ultimately become the language Afrikaans.

Fight against Liberalism
Theological liberalism threatened to stifle the effect of the 1860/1 revival. Ds. Gottlieb van der Lingen, who saw this danger already in the 1840s, found great support in the fight against theological liberalism from the Dutch Reformed colleagues at the Kweekschool of Stellenbosch, who encountered the liberal onslaught in Holland during their studies there. In this venture they were ably supported by the moderator of the 1862 Synod, Andrew Murray. By this time the liberals had the upper hand in a society where theological issues were publicly debated. In his profound book The Afrikaners, Hermann Giliomee (2003:208) noted that they had in their camp De Onderzoeker, a religious and social periodical, and a lively newspaper, Het Volksblad. The dull Volksvriend, which the conservatives established in 1862, was no match. It all changed from 1863. In a stroke of brilliance, Professor N.J. Hofmeyr had appointed his nephew Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr as editor at the end of the previous year. The gifted seventeen year old greatly improved the news coverage, championing the orthodox cause unprecedentedly and addressing other burning issues like Dutch culture and nationality. He took over De Zuid-Afrikaan in 1871 and by 1880 had assumed the leadership of the first Afrikaner political organisation, the Afrikaner Bond. He had by this time deservedly earned the affectionate nick name 'Onze Jan' (our Jan). In due course the scales tipped the other way.
By the mid-nineteenth century many Afrikaners considered the traditional Calvinist religious practice that got linked to the liberal theology as 'unemotional and routine to the point of being frigid' (Giliomee,2003:208). The 1860/61 revival changed this when a pronounced evangelicalism rose in response, personified by Andrew Murray. The church leadership seized the opportunity to channel some of the new energy released, introducing special services and Sunday schools for children and founding working groups for women and children to raise funds for mission projects. Liberalism was given a body blow – though not yet final – by the mid-1870s.

Reports of Northern Hemisphere Revivals
The revivals of 1858 in the United States and 1859 in Northern Ireland were reported in the Dutch Reformed journals. A little book on “The Power of Prayer” by Andrew Murray (??) was published. Individuals and prayer groups in various places across South Africa began to pray specifically for revival.
The younger Andrew Murray appears to have at least matched his father as a prayerful minister of the Word. The secular Dictionary of South African Biography, Volume 1 (p.578) wrote: ‘The golden ray of prayer illumined all he did...He believed that nothing that was amiss and demanded correction could not be corrected or endured by prayer.’ This is confirmed when one takes a closer look at the titles of his over 240 books. There one finds titles like De Kracht des Gebeds (1860), Pray without ceasing (1898) and The Prayer Life (1912).

Studies in Scotland and Holland
Andrew Murray (jr). and his brother John were in Scotland in 1843 when a controversy between moderates and strict Calvinists erupted there. John and Andrew Murray aligned themselves to the evangelicals of the Réveil, the spiritual renewal that swept through Europe in response to the rebellion of the Enlightenment and its pinnacle, the French Revolution. The spark for the movement came from Geneva where the Scot Robert Haldane had Bible Studies with other theological students.
After graduating from Marishal College50 in 1844, the two Murray brothers went to Utrecht, Holland, for the purpose of further study in theology and getting fluent in the Dutch language. Religious life at this time in the Netherlands was at a low ebb and rationalism had crippled many of the pulpits and seminaries. Much like the Wesley brothers and the Holy Club at Oxford, John and Andrew joined a zealous group at the college called “Sechor Dabar” (Remember the Word), which had been founded by Isaac da Costa. God had been using Isaac da Costa, a Jewish-background believer, mightily in the Dutch revival when the church was spiritually almost dead. The Murray brothers were instrumental in starting a missionary circle called Eltheto. Its extension was a monthly journal, which would contain extracts on the work of God throughout the world. In Holland they found like-minded brethren, warm fellowship, and true missionary zeal. During a vacation from their classes, the brothers visited Germany, where they had the opportunity to meet Pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt. This remarkable man of God had been divinely used to bring revival to Möttlingen in Germany’s Black Forest. The revival there was marked by extraordinary manifestations of deliverance and healing the sick through prayer. Andrew thus saw first-hand the ongoing work of God’s power in his own time. The two Murray brothers were ordained in The Hague on Andrew’s twentieth birthday. They left soon afterwards to begin their work in South Africa.

The Boy Preacher
When he was twenty years old, Andrew looked much younger than his age. An old Dutch farmer was once heard to say, “Why, they have lent us a girl to preach to us.” Nevertheless, in spite of Andrew Murray’s fragile appearance, there appeared to be no end to his endurance and zeal. He would often go out for weeks at a time on horseback to hold devotional meetings for the Boers (Dutch-speaking South African farmers). These spiritually hungry farmers would come from literally hundreds of miles to listen to the ‘boy preacher’. A temporary church of reeds would be quickly erected and then surrounded by hundreds of big Dutch farm wagons. It was during such ministry ventures, that the young Andrew Murray began to give expression to the fire and fervency so often associated with his classic writings on prayer and the deeper life.

Great Cape Dutch Reformed Clergyman
While Andrew Murray was still in Bloemfontein, his first congregation, he got involved in the negotiations towards independence between the British government and the Dutch colonists for the independence of the Boer Republic of the Orange Free State, the Bloemfontein Convention of 1854. Subsequently he travelled to the UK where he attempted to recruit missionaries and preachers to come to Southern Africa. The general unwillingness everywhere strengthened the idea of getting a seminary started at the Cape.
The great Ds. Gottlieb van der Lingen, the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Paarl, had one weakness which influenced him too much – his passionate love for Dutch culture. It is not clear in how far Ds. Gottlieb van der Lingen was reacting to the anglicizing policies of Lord Charles Somerset and his successors. Van der Lingen went however completely overboard, even going so far as to propose that Dutch professors at an envisaged seminary should not only teach solely in Dutch, but they should also be restricted to conversing in the language in their homes (Nel, 2008:63).
Olea Nel pointed out how God overruled the laudable but carnal efforts of the Dutch Reformed clergymen through the revival that was to follow in the years after 1860.
Rev. John Murray ultimately became a co-founder of the Kweekschool, the Dutch Reformed Seminary at Stellenbosch in 1859. At this occasion Professor Nicolaas Hofmeyr complained that no effort was made to bring all leading Christians of the country together. When Ds. Jan Neethling arrived in Stellenbosch to take a post as pastor of the local Dutch Reformed Church a year earlier, this was the beginning of what became known affectionately as the triumvirate - ‘a tribute to the harmonious way they tackled religious and educational ventures as a coordinated threesome’ (Nel, 2008:64).
Two of the triumvirate, Nicolaas Hofmeyr and Jan Neethling, ably assisted by Andrew Murray (jr.), already had a big hand at the synod of 1857 in swinging the mood for missions after a very sombre report had been delivered.

Cape Efforts to stimulate Revival
As early as 1847 the Dutch Reformed Church Synod recommended that communal prayer meetings be held at least once a month in every congregation. But they were very poorly attended. Before the opening of the Seminary in Stellenbosch Ds. Gottlieb van der Lingen, the minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Paarl, warmed up to the idea of and yearning for revival after he had made a detailed study of past revivals. Reports were also coming in from the British Isles. He had been rather sceptical of the early reports from America that he claimed to be nothing more than ‘church and spiritual quackery’ (cited in Nel, 2008:73). Also at Presbytery level he shared his heartfelt longing for this blessing, vocalising in 1858: ‘Oh, if it would behove Him to pour out the Spirit of brokenness in prayer and the Spirit of Godly peace as … in North America’ (cited in Nel, 2008:74).

A Call to Prayer
A call to prayer on behalf of the South African Evangelical Alliance was issued in August 1859 by Ds. Abraham Faure (DRC), Rev. George Morgan (Presbyterian) and Rev. James Cameron (Methodist): ‘… a revival in our faith is necessary... that the gift of the Holy Spirit is promised in answer to prayer are truths that are clearly taught in Scripture.’ (Cited in F.J. Liebenberg, www.sjibbolet.org.za/herlweing_in_sa.html). The three pastors invited their minister colleagues to preach a series of sermons on the character of God, the role of the Holy Spirit and the need for both corporate and private prayer for the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit. ‘We earnestly beseech you to faithfully and fervently pray one hour every week - with others, or alone that God by His Grace may visit our land and give us the blessing of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.’ An 85-page book entitled ‘The Power of Prayer’ was widely circulated throughout 1859. Several articles on prayer and revival were published in De Kerkbode and De Wekker.
Apathy Challenged
The effect of these efforts was very limited because the material was not read by the rank and file church member. While many of the pastors were enthusiastic about prayer and revival, the average person in the pew remained disinterested and unresponsive. Yet, God’s spirit worked in diverse ways, such as at one of the quarterly visits of Ds. William Robertson to Montagu, where there was as yet no resident Dutch Reformed minister. At his visit around May 1859 he shared about the revival in America.51 Thereupon a prayer meeting was established there, which however never exceeded three persons prior to May 1860. The weekly prayer meeting in Worcester similarly seldom had more than three or four participants. Brandt (1998:57) mentions a group of intercessors in Worcester at this time. A dedicated intercessor from this group ‘treaded a footpath to a hill outside the town to pray more effectively.’ A committee organized a conference fairly quickly. Delegates from the Dutch Reformed, Congregational, Lutheran, Methodist, Moravian and Presbyterian Churches converged on Worcester in 1860 for the epoch-making conference. Worldwide it was one of the first of its kind. In April 1860, the conference on revival was held in Worcester. Three hundred and seventy preachers and laymen from different denominations attended. The conference can be regarded as the immediate run-up to the revival. Just fifty days later, those churches that sent delegates, experienced a deep move of the Holy Spirit.
The Eruption of the 1860 Cape Revival
A significant contribution to the 1860 Worcester revival came from the nearby town of Rawsonville. From approximately 1850 onwards, two ladies in this town had been praying regularly for revival. In Montagu, another Boland town of the region not very distant from Worcester, three believers came together for early Sunday morning prayer from the beginning of January 1860.

How the 1860 Revival started
Montagu was the first place to experience spiritual renewal under Rev. James Cameron, a Methodist minister. A prayer revival began in the Methodist Church where meetings were held every night and on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, sometimes as early as 3.00 a.m. People who had never prayed before, began to pray. Young and old cried to God for mercy and continued until midnight. Dutch Reformed people left their own prayer meetings, they crowded into the Methodist Church.
After the big interdenominational conference of April in Worcester, people flocked to the early morning prayer meetings there. By May 1860 there were three prayer meetings taking place every day. There was also great conviction of sin and confession. People came from Worcester, Wellington and Paarl to observe and experience the phenomenon. Within a matter of weeks the whole town was revived. For weeks, the village of Montagu experienced great conviction of sin. Strong men cried to God in anguish. Six prayer meetings were going on throughout the village. The report reached Worcester, and prayer meetings began there as well. Whole families, both European and native African, were humbled before God.
He noted that the Worcester ministerial predecessor of Andrew Murray (jr.) also prayed for revival when the great theologian was not yet spiritually ready. Prior to his arrival in Worcester, Andrew Murray wrote in a letter to his brother: ‘My prayer for revival ...is so much hampered by the increasing sense of unfitness for the work of the Holy Spirit... Pray for me, my dear brother’ (Brandt, 1998:57).

Sparks igniting a Revival
At the big Worcester conference of April 1860, the Presbyterian Dr James Adamson set the tone with a report at the Conference of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in America, including the conditions for revival. Rev. Andrew Murray (sr.) was so overawed by the topic that he burst into tears. A passionate prayer by his son and namesake stirred the hearts of many, so much so that it has been suggested that this was regarded as a spark that triggered the revival.
The fervent prayer of a young farm girl
provided another spark to ignite the revival
The fervent prayer of a young ‘Coloured’ girl from a Hex River farm provided another spark. During a prayer meeting in Worcester, while the 15-year-old girl prayed, crying out “O, how I love Jesus!”, they heard the sound of thunder and the building started to shake. All congregants began to pray simultaneously. When the great Andrew Murray was still stalling, expecting things to proceed in a more traditional manner, an outsider had to warn him not to resist the work of the Holy Spirit. Each one seemed so burdened by his load of sin that they continued to call upon God for forgiveness and cleansing with an intolerable weight of guilt, sin and shame. The movement of 1860 stirred every part of the community and soon it was widespread. All races, even on remote farms, experienced conversions.
Prayer meetings started in many towns with people from all races crying out to God not to pass them by. The revival spread out to other parts of the Cape Province, the Free State and Transvaal. In Calvinia for instance, there was no minister at the time and ministers tried in vain for several years to start prayer meetings. Within weeks several prayer meetings started, also on remote farms, none knowing about the divine movement in other places.
Another special Worcester Event
Andrew Murray was inducted in Worcester on 27 May 1860. Soon thereafter the revival broke out in full force. The role of young people has to be singled out. In fact, it was in the youth meeting in the church hall where an unnamed ‘Coloured’ teenage girl dared to call for a song before her prayer, as was the custom. After a racially prejudiced hesitation, which would have been typical for the age, Ds. J.C. de Vries, the youth minister, allowed her to go ahead. During her prayer, a sound came from afar, getting increasingly louder until the building felt as if it was shaking. Everybody hereafter seemed to have prayed simultaneously, almost oblivious of the other participants. Rev. Andrew Murray, who was called to come and listen to the ensuing noise, had great trouble in bringing order to the chaos.
Each person seemed so burdened by his load of sin that they continued to call upon God for forgiveness and cleansing with an intolerable weight of guilt, sin and shame. While the young people of the Dutch Reformed Church knelt in earnest prayer, one of the church elders passed by. Hearing the noise, he ran to fetch their new pastor. When Andrew Murray entered wearing his clerical robes, he found the room alive with spontaneous prayer. The young minister was clearly agitated. He paced the room, calling loudly, “People, silence!” But the prayer did not stop. Murray shouted again, “People, I am your minister, sent from God! Silence!” It was as if no one heard him. Everyone continued praying, calling on God - in some cases rather frantically or hysterically. Murray directed the leader to call a hymn. No one sang the song. The young people, traditionally obedient and respectful, could not be silenced. Prayer continued unabated. Andrew Murray then proclaimed, “God is a God of order, and here everything is confusion!” With that, he left the room.
Despite Andrew Murray’s intervention, the revival continued. Spontaneous prayer gatherings occurred nightly. Simultaneous intercession replaced refined traditional prayer. Fervent prayer gatherings continued into the early hours of the morning. As the people dispersed, they sang joyfully in the streets. Larger facilities were needed to accommodate interested people.

Help Arrives
Soon hereafter, Andrew Murray led a Saturday evening meeting. He read from Scripture, spoke a few words, and offered a prayer. He then opened the meeting for others to pray. An observer records, ‘During the prayer which followed this, we heard again the same sound in the distance. It drew nearer and nearer and in a sudden moment the whole gathering was praying....Mr Murray descended from the platform and again moved up and down among the people, trying to quiet them’. The pastor sought to restore order. Andrew Murray was not yet ready to accept this phenomenon as the Holy Spirit’s work. However, at this juncture, the Lord intervened to assist Murray. That evening a stranger had been standing at the door, observing the meeting. As Andrew Murray sought to use his authority to silence the prayer, the stranger tip-toed forward, touched the clergyman gently, and said, ‘I think you are the minister of this congregation. Be careful what you do, for it is the Spirit of God that is at work here. I have just come from America, and this is precisely what I witnessed there’.

Andrew Murray joins the Revival
These events are special, for Murray’s father had prayed for 38 years for revival in his congregation of Graaff Reinet. The younger Murray echoed those prayers. His sermons had been bemoaning the deadness of the Church. He preached about the Spirit. Yet, when the Spirit brought revival, Andrew Murray did not recognize it. He even sought to quench the Spirit’s move. Was it because the Spirit’s manifestation did not match his preconceived theological concepts? Or, as one writer suggests, ‘Could it be that his ego was hurt because the moving of the Spirit had not happened as a result of his own preaching?” Was he offended “that he had not been present...to guide it’ (Choy, 86)?
The encouragement of the visiting stranger was what Andrew Murray needed. At last he recognized that the Spirit was in control. There was no need for human restraint. From that time, Andrew Murray joined the revival whole-heartedly and he was greatly used. The lives of many were permanently transformed. Soon there were prayer meetings every evening.
The meetings started with a long silence. After one or two prayers, everyone would pray simultaneously. Sometimes the prayer meetings would go on until 3.00h the next morning. The hall began to become too small. They moved the meetings to the school hall, but they outgrew it when many came even from the countryside to attend the meetings. Christians committed their lives to the Lord.
From Murray’s own congregation in Worcester, fifty young men offered themselves for the ministry of the Word. Previously it was almost impossible to find men for the work. That event was a watershed in Andrew Murray’s ministry. He learned that the Spirit, just like the wind, blows where it wills (John 3:8). We cannot dictate the Spirit’s move. Rather, in co-operation we must yield to the Spirit. We cannot engineer revival, nor can we manipulate the Spirit. The lessons that Andrew Murray learned from this experience permeated all of his subsequent teachings and writings in books such as The Spirit of Christ and The Full Blessing of Pentecost.

An Eyewitness Account
One of the pastors who experienced the revival, Servaas Hofmeyr, the Dutch Reformed minister of Montagu, was inducted there on 29 September 1860. He, the younger brother of Ds. Nicolaas Hofmeyr, wrote: ‘Before the days of Revival the situation of our congregation was lamentable. Love of the world and sin; no earnestness or heartfelt desire for salvation; sinning and idleness were the order of the day for most … when the Lord started to move among us. How intense were the prayers for revival and the cries for mercy! ‘I am lost!’ cries one here, ‘Lord, help me!’ cries another. Anxious cries were uttered, heart rendering testimonies of conversion were heard. Visions were seen … Corporate prayer, even behind bushes and rocks, on mountains and in ravines, men, women, greyheads, children, gentlemen, servants all kneeling on the same ground crying for mercy. And none of this was expected by anyone, nor prepared by anyone, nor worked up, or preached by anyone. It was all the Spirit of God, and not for a few hours or days, but for months.’ (Cited in Nel, 2009:95)
Farm Workers impacted
The movement of 1860 stirred every part of the community and soon it was widespread. Amongst the first to be impacted by the revival were the 'Coloured' farm workers near Worcester. A written account of these farm workers described them as:  ‘debased and shriveled with drink and drunk all day long, sullen wretched creatures…’ It was this least expected quarter that the revival hit most powerfully. Even on remote farms people experienced conversions. A group from Worcester went out to tell of God’s dealings. Prayer meetings started all over the district with people of all races crying out to God not to pass them by. Prayer meetings were overflowing and full of fire and zeal. Early in the morning and late at night people would come singing to God’s house. Repentance, renewal and rebirth followed. Devotion was deepened, vision widened. Cases of heartfelt conversion occurred daily. What was very special about the Worcester events was the divine correction in respect of societal prejudice and a departure from the revivals in the Northern hemisphere, when those in the church environment were awakened first. God seemed to want to teach the Cape Church that he also wanted farm workers and those on the outskirts of the Church to enter the fold. ‘God chose to bless those on the fringe of society who had most likely not been baptized or even entered a church’ (Nel, 2008:86).
Revival Fires spread from the Boland
Hettie Bosman, a teacher from the Karoo, was visiting Worcester. She had been praying for revival for years. During a special prayer meeting she fell unconscious and was carried to the parsonage where Andrew Murray prayed for her. She rose with an extraordinary experience of joy. Later she married Alexander McKidd, a pioneer missionary, taking revival with her to the mission field. A hunger for revival broke out in all directions. The Stellenbosh Seminary, started by John Murray and Nicholas Hofmeyr in 1859, could hardly cope with all the new students after the revival. Missions and evangelism commenced and within ten years after the revival had started in Worcester, the Dutch Reformed Church had more than 12 mission stations established in and beyond the Cape Colony.
It is striking that the Worcester revival spread from the conference of Christian leaders to different church backgrounds. Within months the move of God spread to Wellington, Swellendam and even to Cape Town, more than 100 Kilometres away. The next year the revival also moved eastward across the Karoo and to the Northwest as far as Calvinia. Fifty days later, the churches which had sent delegates to the Worcester conference, experienced the special move of the Holy Spirit.
The Evangelical Alliance called for a week of prayer between 5 and 13 January 1861. During this week the Cape was on its knees as never before. In response, God sent a new wave of blessing thereafter.
Revival moved to Beaufort West with a tremendous force in January 1861. Prayer meetings, often lasting all day, were held four times a week and meetings were held everywhere on the Lord’s day, in homes, under a tree, at farm houses. The church was too small for the crowds. God’s grace was flowing so widely that farmers in the remotest areas were touched. The revival spread to other towns in no time, even to Bloemfontein - many hundreds of Km away. Missionary activities arose like mushrooms. It was reported how a man of Calvinia left his home, supported by other Christians, to go and live among the Coloureds so that those ‘neglected’ folk could also hear the gospel.
In Calvinia Ds. Nicolaas Hofmeyr and Rev. van der Rijst, a missionary, had been praying for revival for years. While Ds. Hofmeyr was the minister, he could not motivate his congregation to attend prayer meetings. During his 6-year ministry there, he could not persuade a single parishioner to attend a prayer meeting at the newly built church. Not even once! In addition to the resistance to prayer he also battled against an intense opposition to missionary work.
At the revival, however, the Holy Spirit swept away even fierce resistance. Spontaneous prayer meetings started in the congregation, growing as a movement without the help of the clergy. In Calvinia, a town in a rural area, there was no minister at the time, but for several years ministers had tried in vain to start prayer meetings there. Within weeks, several prayer meetings started, even on remote farms, none knowing about the other, yet they shared the blessing of revival.
In the Cape Town City Bowl the Dutch Reformed Church penetrated into the fisherman families of Roggebaai near to Green Point, where they opened the second church school on 15 April 1861.



13. The Cape Aftermath of the 1860 Revival

The 1860 revival effected ripples all around the country. In Paarl Ds. G.W. van der Lingen had been longing for revival. In the beginning of 1861 there were some signs of the work of the Holy Spirit in the congregation. Increasingly congregants started to attend prayer meetings. Just prior to Pentecost Sunday 1861, the Strooidak church engaged in 10 days of prayer, just as the early church did in Jerusalem, awaiting the Lord’s promise of the power of the Holy Spirit. We shall now examine the events there more closely as a special example of the effect of the revival on a community.

Revival finally breaks out in Paarl
In October 1860 a revival broke out among the less affluent church members in Klein Drakenstein, mentioned in Het Volksblad of 25 October 1860. Ds. van der Lingen speaks of 'exceptional manifestations' which he found rather perplexing. During the last weeks of 1860 a move of God's Spirit became evident in the prayer meetings of the Strooidak DRC church. Paarl had also decided to heed the call of the Evangelical Alliance to participate in a corporate prayer week in January 1861.
Already before that week the Holy Spiit moved among young girls who responded to an invitation to come and listen to anecdotes about the Worcester revival the previous year. When the speaker recalled the events, highlighting the role of young people, the meeting 'burst into simultaneous prayer' (Nel, 2008:135). During the following week, the movement gained momentum amongst the rest of the young people.
Sometime during this period, Ds. Van der Lingen visited a prayer gathering in Klein Drakenstein where the meeting was particularly unruly due to heightened excitement. Everyone prayed aloud simultaneously and some fell down in a faint. Despite him calling the meeting to order, no one took any notice. He therefore decided to nip this unwanted behaviour in the bud via a sermon the following Sunday. Unfortunately, he lapsed into some questionable scaremongering. During his sermon, Van der Lingen claimed that he did not consider the exaggerated manifestations he had witnessed in some places to be the work of the Holy Spirit.
This impassioned plea had the desired effect. Despite the great prayer movement that was being ushered in, the meetings were nevertheless orderly.

Prayer Meetings continue to flourish
When January Week drew to a close, all those who had taken part felt the urge to continue to meet for communal prayer. The crowds that had streamed to the prayer gatherings started to increase daily, as did the places allocated for prayer.
The increasing attendance of prayer events coincided with an exceptional interest in worship services. The role of Ds. van der Lingen in the awakening is significant, operating on the periphery and insisting that he needed to step aside, to let God speak through His Holy Spirit. While he had done little by way of organizing prayer meetings himself, the fact that his congregation had done so on their own accord had made a deep impression on him. In one of their prayer initiatives, he was requested to speak at the conference of the Evangelical Alliance on 16 and 17 January, 1861. The gist of his address at this occasion - repeated in English the following day and performed on his behalf by Andrew Murray - was that revival should not be expected to emanate from pastors, but from the Holy Spirit after persistent prayer.

A clear Link to Missions
During the 1858 revival in England no less than Charles Spurgeon, who was to become known as the prince of preachers, was impacted. He built his Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1859. One of the outgrowths of the 1858/9 revivals was a renewed interest in missions. Hudson Taylor launched his China Inland Mission as a result of that awakening.
An interesting view expressed at the 1860 conference in Worcester was: ‘the home of every Christian should be a mission station’. The revival of 1860 had a clear link to missions in its aftermath. A special innovation – worldwide perhaps a first – was that the conference was conducted in two languages on alternate days, Dutch and English. Hereafter such conferences with delegates of 5 denominations plus mission societies were held at different centres. The first missionary conference took place in Genadendal in 1865 where 20 participants of the Rhenish, Berlin, London, Dutch Reformed and Moravian groups gathered. In 1872 Andrew Murray suggested regular missionary conferences with all churches and missionary societies. Such conferences took place in alternate years at different centres of the Western Cape until the South African War.
As a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Wellington (South Africa), Andrew Murray had a vision of winning Africa for Christ. This vision motivated his desire to pray and live a life that was totally surrendered to God. In his book With Christ in the School of Prayer, Murray presents New Testament teaching on prayer and encourages the reader to move past simplistic prayers that are ineffectual. He longed that the Church would know that God rules the world by the prayers of His saints, that prayer is the power by which Satan is conquered.' He believed that through prayer the Church on earth has tremendous authority even over heavenly powers. Firmly living from this belief, Murray inspired the Church to access the powers of heaven through prayer and to bring the Gospel to the world through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Murray's words were great seeds planted in the history of the prayer movement. Much fruit would be seen in following generations. His personal vision of 'Africa for Christ' would eventually become the mission statement for the Transformation Africa prayer movement. The most glorious result of the 1860 revival was the post-revival missionary drive; an upsurge of missionary zeal and missionaries that travelled as far as Zambia and Zimbabwe (then called Rhodesia) to preach the gospel and establish mission stations. The Holy Spirit made believers aware of their Christian responsibility towards their domestic servants and farm workers and they responded actively by giving liberally for outreach programmes. Per capita, South African Christians gave more to missions than any other country in the world in that specific period. Within 10 years, twelve mission stations were established in and beyond the Cape Colony, in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, and as far as the Sudan.

From Paarl to the Nation
On 6 February 1861 Ds. Van der Lingen arranged a special meeting of approximately 100 prayer leaders of his Strooidak (Straw Roof) congregation - including women and children - to discuss their concerns. After experiencing the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit and His quickeniing power, the congregation was fearful that His presence would decrease over time and finally stop. They wanted, therefore, to find ways of preserving and spreading the blessing. They also sought a means by which the extravagant manifestations still prevalent in some public prayer gatherings could be stopped.
At Van der Lingen's suggestion, it was decided to divide each district into small cell groups that would aim to meet as often as possible. In conjunction with this new approach he developed a set of guidelines that covered topics for discussion and prayer. By this means, he hoped to give everyone the opportunity to pray in public and to claim God's promises in even greater blessing.
However, by the month of May, there was once again a hankering for the congregation to come together for communal prayer to plead for a special blessing. It would appear that by this time the vision of cultivating God's presence was beginning to dim in some quarters.

Prayer Gatherings resume for Pentecost
In one of the cell groups, Gideon Malherbe, a son-in law of Ds. van der Lingen, came up with the suggestion that the cells should combine each evening for communal prayer during the ten days between Ascension day and Pentecost. They intended to follow the example of the first Christians who had met regularly for prayer while waiting in Jerusalem to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Just like them, they too would plead down the promise of the Father.
Without seeking Van der Lingen's approval or participation, this cell group published an invitation in De Kerkbode for all existing prayer groups in Paarl to participate in corporate prayer between 9 and 19 May, 1861. Van der Lingen was at first reluctant to join meetings. There was a gradual built-up of expectation during that week, mingled with cries for mercy. But he not only finally relented but he also became God's anointed vessel of blessing on Pentecost Sunday, 1861.
The prayer meetings of May 1861 were well attended. On Pentecost Sunday there was a great expectancy. They were not disappointed. During the afternoon service there was a powerful presence of God when Rev. van der Lingen prayed. Subequently, a special revival broke out. A year later it was Ds. van der Lingen himself who suggested that the congregation should meet for communal prayer during the ten days between Ascension Day and Pentecost. When this news began to spread to neighbouring congregations, they too decided to follow Paarl's example. Over the next few years more and more congregations would join in. As a direct result, the 1867 Dutch Reformed synod advised all congregations to conduct 10 days of prayer in the run-up to Pentecost every year. The tradition became a major blessing to the nation. The Pinksterbidure would impact Afrikanerdom for many decades. Many Afrikaners look back to some Pentecost prayer season as the time when they were converted.

Revival in the Cape Mother City
Like Zinzendorf, the founder of the renewed Moravian Church, Andrew Murray had a great love for and interest in children. The very first book he wrote was Jezus de Kindervriend (1858). The fame of Dr Andrew Murray started as the minister of the Groote Kerk in the Mother City from 1864. His booklet Abide in Christ, which was originally written in Dutch, a daily devotional for a month, was meant as a manual and guide for the many converts in Worcester, when Murray saw them becoming gradually less committed. Within four years, more than 40,000 copies were sold. However, he only published a translation of it eighteen years later, the first of his English books. Andrew Murray would impact the Christian world like few before or after him. The pattern of 31 or 52 chapters (intended respectively for daily use during a month or once a week for a year) was a favourite with him, a model that was to be emulated by many to this day for devotional diaries or prayer books. Abide in Christ is said to have started a revival in China.
In February 1865 Andrew Murray started with services in Roggebaai every Thursday evening with a ‘full house.’ On the other side of the Groote Kerk, he pioneered services in a house in Van de Leur Street in District Six. Soon a parish of the mother church was started in Hanover Street, at that time called Kanaalstraat, where race and class discrimination sadly started to play a role. The ‘Dreyerkerk’ as the church became known later, was obviously intended for poor Whites and ‘Coloureds’. Nevertheless, especially for the parishes of Roggebaai and Hanover Street, ‘the services could not be long enough in duration.’

A Backlash and more Revival Ripples
Satan had to react, trying to split the church. An unbiblical theological liberalism had been infiltrating South Africa in the 1850s. This happened amongst other things when a book De Moderne Theologie appeared, written by Ds. D.F. Faure, the founder of the Free Protestant Church. Andrew Murray replied in 1868 with a series of thirteen sermons.
Great rejoicing greeted the revival in Heidelberg, Cape. ‘Such a ministry of prayer, compassion and concern for others prevailed that in 1868 a second revival hit the area, a third revival in the 1870s, a fourth one in 1884 and a fifth one under (the inspiration of) Andrew Murray in 1889.’ This pattern of repeated revivals appeared in congregation after congregation from Cape Town to Zoutpansberg in the north (near to present day Zimbabwe) for half a century. In one town after the other the revival broke out: Swellendam, Tulbagh, Ceres, Robertson, Villiersdorp and many more. Many of the English denominations also experienced revival.

The Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism
In her book South Africa’s Forgotten Revival, Olea Nel pointed to the birth of Afrikaans in a very positive way as an outcome and fruit of the 1860 revival. That is somewhat one-sided. The idolising of Afrikaans and the rise of Afrikaner Nationalism were two less glorious indirect results of the revival.
Arnoldus Pannevis, a Dutch school teacher who came to the Mother City in 1866, noticed that the people at the Cape were speaking a language which was quite distinct from Dutch. He was driven by a passion to see the Bible translated into the language spoken by the people. However, he was met with derision for his idea to have the Bible translated into a patois, a kombuistaal.52 Pannevis’ plea with the British and Foreign Bible Society was flatly refused: ‘We are by no means inclined to perpetuate jargons by printing them.’ Pannevis taught at the Paarl Gymnasium, the pet of Ds. Gottlieb van der Lingen, an ardent proponent of Dutch culture.
After an acrimonious internal struggle at the ‘Strooidak’ (Straw Roof) Dutch Reformed congregation of Paarl, where two parties disagreed around various issues, Ds. Stefanus Johannes du Toit was called to the new congregation that was formed in the wake of the disagreement among local believers. A former pupil of Arnoldus Pannevis, Du Toit had just finished his theological studies in Stellenbosch. Among the members of the new Noorder Paarl congregation there was an extraordinary number of poor people, many of them ‘Coloureds’ (Giliomee, 2003:215).

Idolizing of Afrikaans
At a time when race hardly played a role, the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) was founded there for ‘true’ Afrikaners, Ds. du Toit defined them as those with an Afrikaans heart. (Du Toit, the driving force of the first movement for the propagation of Afrikaans, also discerned those with an English and those with a Dutch heart.) Ds. S. J. du Toit was joined in this venture by the Dutchman Casparus P. Hoogenhout in the founding of the GRA. When the GRA discovered that an Afrikaans Bible would be useful for Whites as well, Pannevis’ idea suddenly was good enough to pursue. The Genootskap’s official mouthpiece, Die Patriot, written in Afrikaans, gave the fledgling language a decisive push. Ds. Du Toit left the Cape in 1882 to head the education department of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, later known as the Transvaal. At this time he described Afrikaners as all those of predominantly Dutch or Huguenot descent, thus excluding not only all people of colour, but also the British background South Africans and the German Lutherans. On an ideological and spiritual level Ds. S. J. du Toit pushed the language movement into an exclusivist direction. This had a tragic by-effect. Afrikaners would make an idol out of Afrikaans, even building a monument for it in Paarl.
The brilliant ‘Onze Jan’ Hofmeyr, who started the Afrikaner Bond in 1881, was alienated by this exclusivist trait propagated by Du Toit. He preferred an organisation that would unite Afrikaner and English farmers. He could however not stop or even retard the downward spiral of tension between Brit and Boer that would culminate in the South African War. (The spark of the war was the Jameson Raid, that was spawned by envy and greed of British Imperialism.)
Intensification of Revivals Everywhere people were not ashamed to testify about their salvation and that they were Christians. Suddenly there was a new concern for the lost and an upsurge of people that wanted to go to the mission field. A clear proof of the genuineness of any revival as something that has not been hyped up by men is that it should have a lasting effect. What has been hailed or heralded as revival has all too often petered out within a short time, sometimes even after a few days or weeks. The Cape revival that started in May 1860 was the real thing, actually intensifying in certain places like Montagu. By the beginning of May 1860 a spirit of prayer had saturated that community to such an extent that the designated places of prayer became too small and new venues were used. Furthermore, it was taken from there to other towns and people from elsewhere came to witness what God was doing there. And it did not wave after a short while but increased in intensity.
Extension of Foreign Missions One of the very first missionary extensions of the Cape Revival was the outreach to the Zoutpansberg region. Two of the eleven missionaries recruited in 1860 by Rev. William Robertson were willing to serve as missionaries beyond the Vaal River. They were Alexander McKidd, a Scot and Henri Gonin, a Swiss. The former married Worcester's Hettie Bosman. Robertson was a conspicuous absentee of the Worcester conference.
Andrew Murray roped in Paul Kruger, who later became the President of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, (later renamed Transvaal), to get permission from African chiefs to establish mission farms. Initially Andrew Murray did not succeed, The McKidds and Gonins had to wait on God to open the doors. In May 1863 they received permission, called by the Buys clan, the descendants of the outlaw Coenraad de Buys, a Boer who had assimilated with the Xhosa in the frontier wars53 ((De) Buys, who had Khoi and Xhosa wives, gathered his extended family together with allies from the Khoi, Oorlams Afrikaners, Basters and Xhosa. He welded these into powerful raiding parties.European missionaries became his target.) In particular, the invitation of the Buys clan which enabled the McKidds and Gonins to start missionary work on their property was thus a significant turn around, an answer to prayer.
That region was, however, notorious for the outbreak of fever. Hettie McKidd was affected, passing on in May 1864. The Mission Board immediately sent Stefanus Hofmeyr, a young man, to assist Alexander McKidd. Born in Cape Town, Stefanus Hofmeyr went to school there and later became a farmer in the Cape Province. In 1863 he qualified as a teacher of religion in Stellenbosch and in 1864 became a missionary in the Soutpansberg region in the far northern Transvaal among the Vhavenda. However, only three months after Hofmeyr's arrival there, Alexander McKidd also died of fever.
When Swiss missionary Henry Gonin arrived in Rustenburg in 1862 to establish a DRC station in the area, he encountered ex-slaves in Rustenburg. Henry Gonin faithfully served at Paul Kruger's farm near Rustenburg until his death in 1911. The ex-slaves of the region were a tragic result of the practice of commando's. What started as revenge raids for the stealing of cattle and the attempt to recover them, evolved into a practice to 'apprentice' children and other people they had taken captive. The effect of this was a glorified form of renewed slavery.
A Pioneer South African missionary
Stefanus Hofmeyr was the first South African-born "foreign" missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). In 1866 he was ordained as a missionary (not minister) in Cape Town before returning to Soutpansberg, where a church revival from 1875 to 1877 led to rapid growth in the congregation. Because of ill health Hofmeyr returned to the Cape Province between 1887 and 1889. During this time he wrote Twintig Jaren in Zoutpansberg (1890). He established several mission stations and outstations, and his work laid the foundation for what later became the Northern Transvaal region of the DRC in Africa. He also had an abiding interest in the Black people north of the Limpopo (in the present-day Zimbabwe) and sent some of his own Black evangelists there. Out of these efforts was born the Mashona Mission of the DRC.
Diverse Ventures Andrew Murray founded the Bible and Prayer Union in 1883. The main object of this venture was to encourage members of his church in Wellington to read the Scriptures daily and to pray regularly for specific causes. One of the first books of Andrew Murray to be translated into English was With Christ in the School of Prayer.54 In 1904 he founded another prayer union, which was open to believers who had pledged themselves to devote at least a quarter of an hour daily to praying for others and also for the furtherance of the Kingdom. Significantly, the Bible verses he referred to in this booklet were taken from the Gospels. Following in the footsteps of the disciples, every chapter closes with a prayer that is preceded with the words ‘Lord, teach us to pray’. A whole chapter is devoted to what has been dubbed ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, and which Andrew Murray called the model prayer. He stresses the Fatherhood of God in this prayer, proceeding to write a full chapter on ‘The infinite fatherliness of God’. (In modern times Floyd McClung highlighted this divine aspect with his well-known booklet The Father Heart of God). Andrew Murray changed the course of the Church in the twentieth century with two booklets in 1901 and 1911, after discerning the lack of an emphasis on prayer at two world conferences respectively in New York (1900) and Edinburgh (1910).
Andrew Murray had no inner peace to attend
a Global Missions’ Conference in New York
Prayer as a special Key
Dr Andrew Murray put in practice what he had taught about ‘waiting on the Lord’ when he was invited to be a speaker at the World Missions’ Conference in New York in 1900 - billed as the biggest ever to be held. (At this time the effect of the Enlightenment and Rationalism had significantly diminished the belief in supernatural phenomena such as the Holy Spirit.) Andrew Murray had no inner peace about going to New York, not even after the organizers tried to use his famous friend Dr Dwight Moody to entice him. (Dr Moody invited Andrew Murray to join him in outreaches in the USA after the World Missions’ Conference in New York). He was not to be swayed. Dr Murray felt morally bound to stay with his people because of the South African War (1899-1902).55 We may safely surmise that Murray was sensitive to the Holy Spirit, only wanting to have complete peace about any matter.
Murray’s subsequent absence at the conference ironically became the biggest driving force of missions in the 20th century. After he had received the papers and discussions at the conference, Murray jotted down what he thought was lacking at the event. The result was a booklet that he gave the title The Key to the Missionary Problem. This booklet had an explosive influence on the churches in Europe, America and South Africa. In the booklet Murray referred prominently to the 24-hour prayer watch initiative of the Moravians, calling seriously for new devotion and intensive prayer for missions. Murray stated powerfully that missionary work is the primary task of the Church, and that the pastor should pursue that as the main goal of his preaching. These sentiments were repeated in a small booklet that he called Foreign Missions and the week of Prayer, January 5-12, 1902 - saying that ‘missions are the supreme end of the church’ and 'Nothing but continuous prayer will solve the missionary problems of today (p.6). He furthermore suggested: ‘To join in united prayer for God’s Spirit to work in home churches a true interest in, and devotion to missions (is) our first and our most pressing need.’ Andrew Murray knew that he had an uphill task, conceding: ‘This preaching of contrition on account of our lack of obedience to Christ’s great command will be no easy thing’.
Andrew Murray proposed that the subjects for the January 1902 week of prayer, issued internationally by the council of the Evangelical Alliance, should deal exclusively with the relationship of the Church to the Great Commission. His proposal was however only adopted and carried out in South Africa.

No Sacrifice too great
Dr Andrew Murray chose the dictum of Paul, the apostle, with regard to sacrifice, writing: ‘The urgency of the case is extreme. No sacrifice can be too great if we can only get the Church, or the more earnest part of it, to take time and wait unitedly before the throne of God, to review her position, to confess her shortcoming, to claim God’s promise of power, and to concentrate her all to His service.’ It seems that Andrew Murray took evangelistic involvement as a given, that he did not see any reason to distinguish between (local) evangelisation and (foreign missionary endeavours. I tend to agree. C. T. Studd, the founder of WEC International, was also deeply impacted by the dictum of Paul. No Sacrifice too great... became the motto of the mission agency.
Dr Alexander Maclaren, a contemporary British church leader, dared to suggest that the booklet The Key to the Missionary Problem contained ‘the key to most of our problems, and points to the only cure for all our weaknesses’ (Du Plessis, 1917:391). The well known Bible teacher Dr F.B. Meyer forecast after reading the booklet: ‘If it were read universally throughout our churches… I believe it would lead to one of the greatest revivals of missionary enthusiasm that the world has ever known.’ That indeed was what happened, although the booklet was by far not read universally.
It is surely no mere co-incidence that revivals broke out in different parts of the world in the years hereafter - in such divergent countries as Wales, Norway, India and Chile.56 (The effect of the 1904 Welsh revival on Korea has been highlighted by Patrick Johnstone. That country is fast becoming the biggest missionary sending nation of the world.57)
In South Africa the influence of Murray’s books was profound. In the course of 1902 the Boer War ended. Many soldiers came to the Lord. 150 young men - many returning from various military camps where they had been prisoners of war - declared themselves ready to go forth as missionaries after the necessary preparation, to ‘labour for the conversion of the heathen of Africa’ (Du Plessis, 1917:392). A Boer missionary institute was started at Worcester, which could be regarded as ‘an indirect result of the concert of prayer to which the Dutch Reformed Church was roused’ through the influence of The Key to the Missionary Problem (Du Plessis, 1917:392).

God is a God of Missions
One of the classic statements of the early 20th century was that ‘God is a God of missions.’ Andrew Murray wrote powerfully about the influence of prayer on missionary enterprise in his monogram The Kingdom of God in South Africa (1906), ending with the words: ‘Prayer is the life of missions. Continual, believing prayer is the secret of vitality and fruitfulness in missionary work. The God of missions is the God of prayer. The work of missions is above everything a work of prayer’. He furthermore emphasized that mission work is not only the foremost object of the church, but that every believer should participate in it.
Possessing the gift of an orator, and speaking furthermore at the right season, as well as using the right word, Andrew Murray succeeded in ‘opening up the larger view and kindling the nobler emotions’ (Du Plessis, 1917:470). Dr Murray was used in this way by God to get missionary endeavour as a worldwide priority, an important spur to the conference at Edinburgh in 1910. In turn, this conference can be regarded as a forerunner of the World Council of Churches. (An interesting fact is that William Carey had proposed a hundred years earlier for a missions’ conference to be held at the Cape of Good Hope.)58

Revival and the Keswick Convention
The lessons learned during the Cape revival helped prepare Andrew Murray for his future role in the influential Keswick movement. Andrew Murray attended the Keswick Convention for the first time in 1882. In 1895, he was asked to speak at both the Keswick and Northfield Conventions. Murray was warmly received at these conferences and was later responsible for bringing the Keswick movement to South Africa. The Keswick Convention was itself the indirect fruit of the wonderful season of awakening in England, America and South Africa. The revival touched at least four different continents, bringing with it a renewed faith and vision for personal holiness and the Spirit-filled life. It was this liberating message that soon became synonymous with Andrew Murray’s personal ministry.
The birth of the Keswick Convention united the emerging European holiness movement. Thereby it helped to channel the fire and energy of what became known as the “Third Great Awakening”.  However, the Keswick Convention did much more than merely unify and preserve the remaining fruit of this great revival. With a clear call to personal holiness through faith in Christ, the Keswick movement helped to prepare a new generation for the next move of God.
Those attending the conventions were always strongly encouraged to embrace a lifestyle of holiness, unity and prayer. In the 1902 Keswick Convention, five thousand Christians agreed to form home prayer circles for a worldwide outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of these Keswick praying bands was no doubt realized through the Welsh Revival of 1904/5. R. B. Jones, Jessie Penn-Lewis, and F. B. Myer all considered the Keswick Convention as one of the hidden springs of the Welsh revival. Through the biblical teaching of men like Andrew Murray, J. Elder Cumming, Evan Hopkins, F. B. Myer and many others, thousands of Christian workers and missionaries were empowered and purified to enter a new millennium of global harvest. James Hudson Taylor, A. T. Pierson, Samuel Zwemer and many other missionary mobilizers regarded the Keswick Convention as one of the finest 'hunting grounds' for the best missionary recruits. Here again we find it to be true, that the influence of one generation’s Spirit-filled ministry often waters the seeds that would become the next generation’s harvest.

Prayer as the Basis of Revivals
Through-out his book The Key to the missionary Problem Andrew Murray men­tions prayer as the major single factor with the potential to change the world. If Andrew Murray states over and over again that the problem is a personal one, he also opines clearly the personal element. We have this key in our hands: ‘We feel that our only hope is to apply ourselves to prayer. Prayer, more prayer, much prayer, very special prayer should first of all be made for the work to be done in our home churches on behalf of foreign missions’ (Murray, 1901[1979]:147). With regard to the latter, the Herrnhut congregation of the 18th century was exemplary. As the missionaries faithfully sent reports of their work on the various mission fields, the church prayed for them meticulously.
About the priority of the work of the Holy Spirit and the power of prayer, Murray continues a few pages further: ‘And yet, it is only when they have first place and everything else is made subordinate to them, that the Christian life will be truly healthy’ (Murray, 1901[1979]:150). But he knew that he had an uphill task, conceding: ‘This preaching of contrition on account of our lack of obedience to Christ’s great command will be no easy thing’ (Murray, 1901[1979]:155).

The Gospel in unfamiliar Ways The Salvation Army was welcomed with a force opposition in the Mother City. On 4 March 1883, Major and Mrs Francis Simmonds, together with Lieutenant Alice Teager, ‘opened fire’ in Cape Town. Initially vilified by Cape society, young ruffians would for example turn up in droves to their services, merely to disrupt them. The newspaper The Lantern, which usually protected the values of the lower middle-classes, bemoaned in its 10 March 1883 issue that the new group was bringing the Gospel to the streets in unfamiliar ways, ‘degrading the dearest sensibilities of the Christian Faith and of the Christian names to the commonest and vulgarest of music-hall tunes, the women glib in blasphemy and mouthing in illiterate dialect the most daring orations to appropriate music-hall gesture and demeanour’. Band members were arrested by the police and town councillors suggested that their open air services should be ruled a breach of peace. But they continued undeterred until deep into the 20th century with open air services on the Grand Parade and in Adderley Street, followed by a march to the citadel in Vrede Street. A pattern of internal bickering by religious leaders and denominational rivalry has been plaguing the Mother City ever since, grieving the Holy Spirit and preventing a spiritual breakthrough. Luckily there was also another side of the coin, which however took decades to come into its own: low-key ecumenical co-operation and mutual support.
Nationalism
Antagonism between Boer and Brit flared up significantly after the discovery of diamonds and gold in the second half of the 19th century, leading finally to the South African War (1899-1902). Dr Andrew Murray (jr.) not only spear-headed the DRC (Dutch Reformed Church) missionary effort to other parts of Africa in the last quarter of the 19th century, but he also played a big role in mediation between the Afrikaner leaders and the British government. This could not prevent the further rise of Afrikaner nationalism which ultimately led to the apartheid government of 1948. Dr Andrew Murray (jr.) had been spreading - possibly unintentionally – the unqualified teaching of political non-involvement. He did not seem to have had a vision to speak up on behalf of the people of colour during the preparations for the National Convention that saw all people of colour politically excluded in the arrangement at the formation of the Union of South Africa. African nationalism gave rise to the founding of the (South) African National Congress, which itself was a contradiction in terms.59
In recent months we have been witnessing a much better alternative. Pastor Errol Naidoo and his Family Policy Institute with it extreme proximity to Parliament, has been actively engaging in discussions with politicians, backed by the prayer movement.

Learning from our Forefathers!
Andrew Murray became arguably South Africa’s foremost theologian of the 19th century. He discerned the danger of a fading of the effects of the 1860 revival, which led him to write one of his most important works, Blijf in Jesus (later translated as Abide in Christ). Andrew Murray unquestionably was a man of rare gifts and deep spiritual insight, yet he almost quenched a genuine revival. He was raised in a home where his father had faithfully prayed for almost 40 years for revival. Nevertheless, for a short time Andrew stubbornly opposed the long-awaited answer to his father’s prayers. As a boy he had delighted in the revival ministry of William C. Burns and while in Germany, he witnessed the miraculous ministry of Pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt. Yet, when personally confronted with revival manifestations in his own church, he opposed them.
Andrew Murray’s experience warns us not to be dogmatic about what is of the Spirit and what does not fit the bill. He expected things to proceed in a more traditional manner. An outsider had to warn him not to resist the work of the Holy Spirit.
We too might have our own conceptions about how the Spirit should manifest itself. As believers, we also have our 'norms' of Christian practice and worship. New forms of expression can make us uncomfortable. We may quickly condemn an unfamiliar practice as of the flesh and not of the Spirit. In rash judgement, we risk repeating Andrew Murray’s experience in his encounter with the Holy Spirit. Let us heed the biblical warning Do not quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19). We must be willing to learn from the experiences, insights, and errors of our spiritual forefathers, to be prepared for the next move of God.
The application for revival is clear. If Satan is duplicating the outward signs of the Holy Spirit’s presence, or if others are mimicking it, we should not try to put a stop to any of these displays in case we crush the legitimate work of the Holy Spirit as well. Rather, we should leave it to God to discern the true fruit and to burn what is not of everlasting worth on the Day of Judgment. George Whitefield, the famous revivalist, interpreted this passage in a similar way. When Wesley criticised him for allowing unruly manifestations, his answer was: ‘If you try to stamp out the wildfire and remove what is false, you will equally and simultaneously remove what is real.’60
14. Revivals around the Turn of the 20th Century

The Third Great Awakening was a period of religious activism in American history in the latter part of the 19th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong sense of social activism. It gathered strength from the theology that the Second Coming of Christ would come after mankind had reformed the entire earth. The Social Gospel movement – to care for the social needs as a matter of priority, even to the point of neglect of spreading the Gospel - gained its force from this awakening, Worldwide there was also a major increase of members within denominations and a dynamic explosion of so-called faith mission agencies.
Dwight L. Moody -an 'unlikely' Christian In April 1855 Dwight Moody was converted to evangelical Christianity when his Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, talked to him about how much God loved him. His conversion sparked the start of his career as an evangelist. However, his teacher described him 'unlikely' ever to become a Christian of clear and decided views of Gospel truth, still less to fill any extended sphere of public usefulness. Kimball also said: 'I have seen few persons whose minds were spiritually darker than was his when he came into my Sunday School class...' How wonderful that God views people so differently. Moody's first efforts gave no indication whatsoever of what was to come. In the spring of 1857, he began to minister to the welfare of the sailors in Chicago's port, then gamblers and thieves in the saloons. A witness of his efforts recalled: 'I saw the man (Moody) standing up with a few tallow candles around him, holding a negro boy, and trying to read to him the story of the Prodigal Son and a great many words he could not read out, and had to skip. I thought, 'If the Lord can ever use such an instrument as that for His honor and glory, it will astonish me'. As a result of his tireless labour, within a year the average attendance at his Sunday school was 650, while 60 volunteers from various churches served as teachers. In June 1871, Moody met Ira D. Sankey, the Gospel singer, with whom he soon partnered.
D.L. Moody in England
Frederick Brotherton Meyer (April 8, 1847 – March 28, 1929) was a contemporary and friend of Dwight Moody. He was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England. In 1872 he pastored Priory Street Baptist Church in York. While he was there he met the American evangelist Dwight L. Moody, whom he introduced to other churches in England. The two preachers became lifelong friends. Author of numerous religious books and articles, he was described in an obituary in the Daily Telegraph as The Archbishop of the Free Churches. F.B. Meyer was part of the Higher Life Movement and was known as a campaigner against immorality. He preached against drunkenness and prostitution. He is said to have brought about the closing of hundreds of saloons and brothels.
On this trip to England in the Spring of 1872 D.L Moody became well known as an evangelist. He preached almost a hundred times and came into communion with the Plymouth Brethren. On several occasions he filled stadiums of 2,000 to 4,000 capacity. In the Botanic Gardens Palace, a meeting had between 15,000 to 30,000 people. This turnout continued throughout 1874 and 1875, with crowds of thousands at all of his meetings. The famous London Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, invited Moody to speak and promoted him as well. When he returned to the United States, crowds of 12,000 to 20,000 were just as common as in England. Northfield became an important location in evangelical Christian history in the late 19th century as Moody organized summer conferences which were led and attended by prominent Christian preachers and evangelists from around the world.
A Stimulator of Prayer
Edward McKendree Bounds (August 15, 1835(1835-08-15) – August 24, 1913(1913-08-24)) was an author of eleven books, nine of which focused on the subject of prayer. In this capacity he played an important role in keeping the revival flames burning in the US, plus an influence around the english-speaking world. Because he was a pastor at a congregation in the recently formed Methodist Episcopal Church, South, his name was included in a list of 250 names who were to take an oath of allegiance and post a $500 bond. Edward Bounds saw no reason for a U.S. Citizen to take such an oath, he was morally opposed to the Union raising funds in this way, and he didn't have the $500. Bounds and the others on the list were arrested in 1861 by Union troops. Bounds was charged as a Confederate sympathizer, held with other non-combatants in a Federal prison in St. Louis for a year and a half. Upon his release as a prisoner of the Union army, he felt compelled to return to war-torn Franklin and help rebuild it spiritually. There he became the pastor of the Franklin Methodist Episcopal Church. His primary method was to establish weekly prayer sessions that sometimes lasted several hours. Bounds was regionally celebrated for leading spiritual revival in Franklin and eventually began an itinerant preaching ministry throughout the country.
A gifted Hymn Writer and Music Teacher Philip P. Bliss was one of the greatest hymn writers of all time. During the summer of 1869, Philip Bliss happened to pass by a church one evening where Dwight L. Moody was having a Gospel Campaign. He decided to go in and listen to the message. That evening, D. L. Moody was without a musical director, and the singing from the audience was rather poor. However, Philip’s voice rang out above the others to such an extent that it attracted the attention of Moody, who sought out Bliss and urged him to come to his Sunday evening meetings and help with the singing. This he did. In 1873, D. L. Moody wrote to Bliss from England, and then later from Scotland, urging him to become his music director. Bliss declined. Not long afterwards, though, he did decide to commit himself to full-time evangelistic ministry.
Philip Bliss joined Major D. W. Whittle, a popular evangelist of the day, and a preaching/singing team was born that would long be remembered, even after both had passed from this life. Their first gospel meeting was held in Waukegan, Illinois, on March 24-26, 1874. It was during this meeting that Philip Bliss sang one of his most famous hymns - Almost Persuaded - which had a tremendous effect upon the crowd. Someone present would later write that the Holy Spirit seemed to fill the hall when Bliss sang that particular hymn. The day after the meeting, when Bliss reflected upon how powerful the impact was upon the audience, he knelt in prayer and vowed to God to surrender everything so that he might serve Him fully. The Story of the American Hymn records about Almost Persuaded: ­ 'it is said to have brought far more souls to Jesus Christ than any other song he ever composed'.
Systematic Outreach to the Unchurched
The Protestant mainline churches were growing rapidly in numbers, wealth and educational levels. They were throwing off their frontier beginnings, becoming centered in towns and cities. Intellectuals and writers such as Josiah Strong advocated a muscular Christianity with systematic outreach to the unchurched in America and around the globe. Others built colleges and universities to train the next generation. Each denomination supported active missionary societies, and made the role of missionary one of high prestige.
After the American War of Independence Dwight L. Moody made revivalism the centre of his activities in Chicago by founding the Moody Bible Insitute. The hymns of Ira Sankey were especially influential at this time. Across the nation ‘drys’ were now propagated, the prohibition of alcohol. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union mobilized Protestant women for social crusades against liquor, pornography and prostitution. It also sparked the demand for woman suffrage - that females would also be allowed to vote. All the major denominations supported growing missionary activities inside the United States and around the world.
The Cambridge Seven
Having been accepted as missionaries by Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Mission seven young Cambridge students were scheduled to leave for China in early February 1885. Before leaving, the seven held a farewell tour to spread the message across the country — it was during this tour that someone dubbed them The Cambridge Seven. For the next month, the seven toured the University campuses of England and Scotland, holding meetings for students. The record of their departure is recorded in 'The Evangelisation of the World: A Missionary Band. It became a national bestseller. Their influence extended to America where it led to the formation of Robert Wilder's Student Volunteer Movement. All seven had become born-again Christians and were moved by their beliefs to go to China in 1885 to spread these beliefs and to help the local population; most remained in or connected to missionary work for the rest of their lives. They were greatly influenced by Taylor's book China's Spiritual Needs and Claims Inland Mission. After their acceptance into the China Inland Mission, the seven toured England and Scotland, preaching and appealing to their listeners to follow their example and follow Christ. The most famous of the seven was CT Studd, who proceeded to establish the Heart of Africa Mission, that ultimately became - after a few name changes - World Evangelisation for Christ (WEC). The conversion and example of the seven young men was one of the grand gestures of 19th century missions. Though their time together was brief, they helped catapult the China Inland Mission from obscurity to 'almost embarrassing prominence', and their work helped to inspire many recruits for the CIM and other mission societies. In 1885, when the Seven first arrived in China, the CIM had 163 missionaries; this had doubled by 1890 and reached around 800 by 1900 — which represented one-third of the entire Protestant missionary force.
The Student Volunteer Movement
In 1877, a student department of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) was formed to direct efforts more specifically toward Christian work on college and university campuses. Luther Wishard, the first collegiate secretary of the YMCA, had a great personal interest in foreign missions, and his influence did much to tilt the student YMCA in that direction. On the theological seminary scene, efforts were underway by 1879 to form a permanent system of inter-seminary correspondence on the subject of missions. To this end, the Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance was established in 1880 which had annual conventions until 1898 when its work was merged with that of the Student Volunteer Movement and inter-collegiate YMCA.
The first unofficial group of student volunteers for foreign missions was formed in 1888 at Princeton College. Five students, including Robert Wilder, drew up and signed a declaration of purpose which read, 'We, the undersigned, declare ourselves willing and desirous, God permitting, to go to the unevangelized portions of the world.' Calling themselves the Princeton Foreign Missionary Society, these students met regularly on Sunday afternoons at the home of Robert Wilder's father. In 1885, Luther Wishard discussed with evangelist Dwight L Moody the possibility of holding a Bible study conference for undergraduate students. Moody agreed to the proposal, and in July 1886 two hundred and fifty-one students from eighty-nine colleges and universities met together for nearly a month. Although Robert Wilder had graduated from Princeton in 1885, and was no longer an undergraduate student, Luther Wishard, knowing of Wilder's missionary interests, specifically invited him to the Northfield conference. The Northfield Conference was designed to provide for Bible study, evangelistic addresses, and discussion of methods for YMCA college work. Although several of the 251 delegates had come to Northfield already committed to a missionary vocation, missions were scarcely mentioned from the platform during the first two weeks of the conference. Those interested in missions met daily for prayer, led by Robert Wilder. They spread their concern for missions by word of mouth among the delegates. Two missionary addresses were given outside of the conferences formal programme, the first by Arthur T. Pierson and the second by William Ashmore, an American Baptist missionary to China. John Mott descirbed the impact of Ashmore's address twenty-five years later: 'He presented missions as a war of conquest and not as a mere wrecking expedition. It appealed to the strong college athletes and other fine spirits of the colleges because of its very difficulty. They wanted to hear more about it. The number of interviews greatly multiplied.
The official Missionary Arm of the YMCA and YWCA
By July 1888, at the YMCA student conference at Northfield, it seemed clear to interested parties that the student missionary thrust needed some organization. Much of the original zeal had subsided, and where it still survived, it displayed itself in new organizations. These tended to be separate from the existing religious societies of the colleges and sometimes in competition with them. In the summer of 1888 the volunteer movement adopted as its official name the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions and took as its slogan 'the evangelization of the world in this generation.' Questions regarding the relation of the student volunteers to existing student Christian groups, particularly the YMCA and YWCA, had been in the air since the fall of 1886. In early 1889 it was proposed that the Student Volunteer Movement be designated as the official missionary arm of the YMCA and YWCA.
Missionary Recruitment It was decided to form a deputation of volunteers to visit colleges across North America in an attempt to extend the influences of the Northfield missionary movement. The model for this deputation was the Cambridge Seven, a group of prominent British university students who had decided to become missionaries to China following the evangelistic campaign of Dwight Moody at Cambridge University in 1884. Members of the Cambridge Seven, travelling throughout Britain and the United States, had had considerable impact on various campuses.
Two Special Recruits
'No one through all the centuries of Christian missions to Muslims has deserved better than Samuel Zwemer the designation of Apostle to Islam.' These are the words of the great mission historian, Kenneth Scott Latourette, in the introduction to a biography of Zwemer.
Zwemer professed his personal faith in Jesus Christ on March 9,1884, and he soon became active in the campus mission group at Hope College, the school he attended in HoIland, Michigan. In 1887, Robert Wilder visited Hope College as representative of the Student Volunteer Movement, and Zwemer responded to Wilder's appeal for missionaries.
After completing his undergraduate work at Hope College, Zwemer went to New Brunswick Seminary in New Jersey for theological studies. Like Hope College, New Brunswick was (and is) owned by the Reformed Church in America. While at seminary, Zwemer joined with two other students, James Cantine and Philip T. Phelps, and a professor of Old Testament who had been a missionary in Egypt, John G. Lansing, to plan a mission to Muslims. The Lord led them to focus on Arabia, the centre of the Muslim world and the most difficult place to conduct Christian missions.
In view of the general hostility of Muslims toward Christianity and the difficulties involved in a place like Arabia, it was not surprising that they could not find a mission agency that would sponsor them. So in 1888, while still in school, they decided to form a new agency, which they called the Arabian Mission, under which they could be sent. Zwemer was heard to say, 'If God calls you and no board will send you, bore a hole through the board and go anyway.' An entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with enormous faith, vision, and energy, characterized Zwemer throughout his life. He was indeed turned down by the American Missionary Society, which resulted in him going overseas alone.
In 1890, having finished his seminary education and being ordained, Zwemer sailed to the Middle East, where he joined Cantine in Beirut for the study of the Arabic language. Phelps stayed in the United States as treasurer and fundraiser of the mission. From Beirut, Zwemer and Cantine went to Cairo, Egypt, where they joined Professor Lansing and laid plans for the exploration of Arabia and nearby countries for mission openings. After extensive investigation they settled on Basrah, sixty miles above the Persian Gulf on the combined waterways of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. He founded and edited the publication The Moslem World for 35 years. According to Ruth A. Tucker, Samuel Zwemer's converts were 'probably less than a dozen during his nearly forty years of service' and his 'greatest contribution to missions was that of stirring Christians to the need for evangelism among Muslims'.

The Torrey/Alexander Combination
When Dr R A Torrey and Mr Charles Alexander first came to Britain to conduct revival missions, their visit created comparatively small comment, for they were little known in this country at that time. Three years later, however, they were household names throughout the length and breadth of Britain, and universally recognised as the successors of Moody and Sankey. Torrey and his associates had been praying for revival for three years, until one night he was led to pray that he himself might go round the world preaching the gospel. Shortly afterwards this came about and he commenced on a world-wide tour that would eventually bring over 100,000 people into the kingdom.
Torrey and Alexander first arrived in Britain in January 1903 to take a mission in London, and were met by a number of well-known people including Lord Radstock and F B Meyer, it was a hugely successful mission. After taking other missions they returned to America in June of that year. Three months later, in September 1903 they again came to Britain and commenced their labours first of all in Birkenhead, where they conducted a four-day mission (see next chapter) and then crossed the river to Liverpool where they remained for three weeks. A little over a year later Liverpool enjoyed the unique distinction of a second visit from them for a much larger evangelistic campaign, in fact the largest the country had ever experienced up until that time. The small red Alexander Hymns booklet became known worldwide in evangelical circles and its hymns and choruses translated into various languages.61
Sports Stars turning into Evangelists
The most famous of the Cambridge Seven was CT Studd. He had been a cricket world record holder for batting before. He donated a vast sum to the Salavation Army before joining the Cambridge Seven. After returning from missionary work in China, he started the Heart of Africa Mission, that ultimately became World Evangelisation for Christ (WEC). Billy Sunday (1862-1935), was a professional baseball player from 1883 to 1891 for Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia teams. He was converted through the street preaching of Harry Monroe of the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Billy Sunday left a $5,000 a year salary as a baseball player for $84 a month in a ministry position with the YMCA. He was an evangelist from 1893 to 1935. It is estimated that over 300,000 people made decisions to receive Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord as a result of his preaching.
Early 20th Century Revivals around the World The early years of the 20th century witnessed a number of revivals around the world. It is impossible to understand these revivals apart from their roots in the Holiness Movement which had developed in the late 19th century. Of course, the issue of 'holiness' was not new. John Wesley advocated 'entire sanctification' and 'Christian perfectionism' in his Plain Account of Christian Perfection. The idea that 'sanctification' could be instantaneously experienced subsequent to conversion was a Wesleyan norm. Testimonies to 'experiences of sanctification,' abounded during the 19th century. Phoebe Palmer regularly held meetings for the promotion of holiness and was the first to use the phrase 'baptism of the Holy Spirit' to describe the experience of 'entire sanctification.' Charles Finney also embraced the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification and his Oberlin presidency successor, Asa Mahan, begin to teach the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a baptism of holiness. The Holiness Movement was nurtured and matured by a variety of ministries so that, by the turn of the century, America (especially) was awash with hundreds of holiness groups. Between 1893 and 1900, twenty-three new denominations arose out of this movement. A passion for more power, more holiness, more evangelistic success and a greater outpouring of the Spirit took a hold of the church. This was the background of the Evangelical and Pentecostal revival movements of the early 20th century.
In 1900 a revival broke out among South African Boer soldiers, who had been captured by the British and transported to various British colonies. At the conclusion of the war, in 1902, they returned to South Africa and the revival returned with them. Gypsy Smith reaped a great harvest there in 1904.
In Japan, during 1900, the church doubled in size as revival swept through many ailing churches. In 1902, Torrey and Alexander conducted meetings in Melbourne, Australia, resulting in over 8,000 converts. This news spread like wild fire, igniting a passion for prayer and a fresh expectation for God to work in similar ways everywhere. In 1904, Torrey and Alexander were in Cardiff, Wales and, in the light of a minimal response to the Gospel, they called for a day of prayer and fasting. Suddenly things changed dramatically and thousands were converted during the next 12 months.
Another Welsh Revival with Pentecostal Ramifications
Alongside and mixed with the political and cultural history of Wales is a stream of Christian history and spiritual revival beginning in the third century and continuing to the present day. The 19th Century saw Christmas Evans, the one eyed preacher of Anglesey, John Elias, Thomas Charles and hundreds more. They were unsung heroes who under God transformed and changed a whole nation into one of the most Christian countries in the world by the end of the Century – so much so that the little nation became known as ‘The Land of Revival’ – Land of Song.
The 1904 Welsh Revival brought in an extra 100,000 new converts according to the estimates of the time, and a movement that quickly spread to the four corners of the World. Yet, that great move of the Spirit had very small beginnings. These beginnings didn’t always involve the great preachers of the day, but instead included for instance a young teenager from New Quay, Cardigan – Florrie Evans – who in a youth meeting in February 1904 declared publicly that she loved the Lord Jesus with all her heart. With these words the Spirit seemed to fall on the meeting and the fire quickly spread to other young people in the Cardiganshire area.
In the years preceding the Welsh Revival which broke out in November of 1904, there were very definite signs of coming glory, especially in the 10 months leading in to it. There were many who were soaked in prayer and who had a living expectation that they were on the verge of great revival. A number of hungry saints had read Andrew Murray’s book With Christ in the School of Prayer.

Seth Joshua, a pioneering Welsh Evangelist
Seth Joshua, pioneer Evangelist for the Calvinistic Methodist Forward Movement, was mightily converted back in 1882 at a Salvation Army meeting when he knelt at an old wooden seat and cried unto God for forgiveness and salvation. Those were days when Salvationists had invaded the valleys with a revival spirit. They held open-airs and the salvation lasses played their tambourines amidst testimonies and shouts of "hallelujah." The CM Forward Movement had been founded by denominational leaders as an aggressive attempt to reach the Welsh communities which were unmoved by the power of the Gospel. The Forward Movement certainly carried something of the spirit of those Salvationists and so did Seth.
Those who knew him called him a ‘Man of God’ for he was wholly dedicated and consecrated unto God. He was a man that God could use. He was not bound by typical trends of religion or tradition. For some time he had been greatly concerned about the emphasis on education rather than an emphasis on a real spiritual experience and walk with God as the singular qualification for ministry. He continued with a deep burden and prayer laid upon him by God that He would '...take a lad from the coal-mine or from the field, even as He took Elisha from the plough, to revive His work.'
In September 1904 Seth Joshua was addressing a Convention which included these young people at Blaenanerch just 5 miles north of Cardigan. Seth himself had been praying for years that God would raise up a young man from the pits to revive the churches – little did he know that on Thursday September 29th 1904 his prayer was to be answered in a life changing experience for a 26 year-old student with the name of Evan Roberts.
Evan Roberts – God's special Welsh Revival Instrument
Evan Roberts was born and raised in a Welsh Calvinist Methodist family in Loughor, on the Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire border. As a boy he was unusually serious and very diligent in his Christian life. He memorised verses of the Bible and he attended the Moriah Chapel, a church about a mile from his home very regularly. Even at 13 years of age he began to develop a heart for a visitation from God. He later wrote: 'I said to myself: I will have the Spirit. And through all weathers and in spite of all difficulties I went to the meetings… for ten or eleven years I have prayed for revival. I could sit up all night to read or talk about revivals. It was the Spirit who moved me to think about revival.'
After working in the coal mines and then as a smithy, he entered a preparatory college in 1903 at Newcastle Emlyn, as a candidate for the ministry and he was 25 years old. In September 1904, aged 26, Evan Roberts moved to w:st="on"Newcastle Grammar School for preliminary studies. It was here that he would have a meeting with God that would be as significant as Moses meeting God at the burning bush. It was at this time that Evan Roberts sought the Lord for more of His Spirit. He believed that he would be baptised in the Holy Spirit and sometimes his bed shook as his prayers were answered. The Lord began to wake him at 1.00 am for divine fellowship, when he would pray for four hours, returning to bed at 5.00 am for another four hours sleep. He had held back for years in stepping forward for ministerial training because he knew well how such theological schools had killed the spirit of many. Prior to the revival, academic qualifications and learning came to be more emphasized for the ministry than a spiritual life and fervency. Eventually he was recommended for the ministry by Moriah Chapel in 1903. George Muller’s writings on faith and prayer left quite a mark upon him in his walk with God. In these days as he prepared for ministry he was praying much in faith that God would baptise him with the Holy Spirit.
Evan Roberts believed in the depravity of man’s heart, the eternal punishment of Christ rejecters and in the miracle working power of God to save sinners through the atoning blood of Christ. He preached obedience, holiness and subjection to Christ.
Initially he was deeply depressed over the state of the church generally as it was a sad failure in comparison to Scripture. But one night while trying to prevail with God in prayer and before breaking through, he fell asleep. In the middle of the night he awoke suddenly with unspeakable joy in the very presence of Almighty God. For four hours he spoke to the Lord face to face as a friend would.  From that moment he knew God was going to work in the land. A similar burden of prayer came to him every night for the next 4 months. praying for the previous 11 years that God would send revival to Wales and for 13 years for a personal filling of the Holy Spirit. Through a vision he received, Evan Roberts believed that God was going to win 100,000 souls. In response to a further vision, he returned home in Loughor from Newcastle Emlyn where he had been enrolled in a Bible College.

Seth Joshua in Newcastle Emlyn
When Seth came to Newcastle Emlyn to hold a campaign, the Principal of Evan Roberts’ school encouraged all the boys to attend the meetings. At these meetings Evan was much impressed with the fervour and message of the preacher as he sat night after night intently listening to this messenger from God. The campaign ended without any unusual manifestation or sign that God was about to do a great work. Seth Joshua thought the ground seemed hard and the people unresponsive. Even Evan found his own heart to be somewhat hard and cold. The Evangelist moved on to his next place, a small neighbourhood on the coast of Cardigan Bay, but there were some very definite workings of God in the hearts of the people. A group of the students from the Grammar School made plans to travel to these meetings with Evan among them.
On a day of prayer and fasting Evan Roberts received an anointing of the Holy Spirit with great power, in a meeting conducted by Seth Joshua. Here the Welsh Revival began. It was Sept the 22nd, 1904. He visited a meeting where Seth Joshua was preaching and heard the evangelist pray 'Lord, bend us.' The Holy Spirit said to Evan, 'That’s what you need'. After the first early morning meeting Seth Joshua prayed asking God to 'bend them'. This prayer became Roberts’ prayer in a powerful way. Now he prayed 'bend me Lord' with all his heart. Soon this would become the prayer of a nation. In the next morning meeting young Evans fell upon his knees and then lay prostrate asking God this one thing “bend me, bend me”. Evan experienced a powerful filling with the Holy Spirit. 'I felt a living power pervading my bosom. It took my breath away and my legs trembled exceedingly. This living power became stronger and stronger as each one prayed, until I felt it would tear me apart. My whole bosom was a turmoil and if I had not prayed it would have burst…. I fell on my knees with my arms over the seat in front of me. My face was bathed in perspiration, and the tears flowed in streams. I cried out “Bend me, bend me!!” It was God’s commending love which bent me… what a wave of peace flooded my bosom…. I was filled with compassion for those who must bend at the judgement, and I wept. Following that, the salvation of the human soul was solemnly impressed on me. I felt ablaze with the desire to go through the length and breadth of Wales to tell of the saviour.' That day the old Evan died, he became a new man, another man. It was a virtual baptism of fire in which God did bend him. These meetings continued for several days with other young friends having similar experiences. Evan was now given over to prayer for a great spiritual awakening in w:st="on"Wales. It became impossible for him to carry on his studies. He asked God for others who were filled with fire who would stand by him in the task ahead, they were soon given to him. He made initial plans to step out in faith with this little band in evangelistic labourers from county to county but it seems the Lord restrained him from such.

Start of Evan Roberts' Ministry
One of the nights Evan and Sidney Evans were up in the middle of the night travailing in prayer for souls when their hostess came and rebuked them for the noise at such an unusual time.
During his first few meetings the heavens opened. God's presence seemed to fill the air. Many were prostrated with conviction, others cried for mercy and many were so filled with the Spirit they pleaded with the Lord to stay His hand. Soon the revival spread to other places in South Wales. Teams of young people assisted preachers like Roberts, Sydney Evans, Seth Joshua, Joseph Jenkins and R. B. Jones. The revival then took hold in North Wales. Within six months 100,000 had come to Christ! The Welsh Revival was soon the main topic of conversation throughout the Christian world. Wherever the news went it seemed to cause passionate prayer and began to ignite revival fires everywhere. Christians across Great Britain turned to prayer and church membership increased throughout the land.
This was a Revival with youth on fire – young men, yes and women. After the first stirrings amongst the young women of New Quay, young women continued to play a part in the Revival work – young Florrie went on a team to North Wales with her friend Maud – others used their voices as instruments of God’s message and amongst the most well known was Annie Davies Maesteg who accompanied Evan Roberts on his missions. Yes, a storm had hit the churches yet for so many it was a storm of love and power which completely transformed their lives. People were changed in so many ways. The crime rate dropped, drunkards were reformed, pubs reported losses in trade. Bad language disappeared and never returned to the lips of many – it was reported that the pit ponies failed to understand their born again colliers who seemed to speak the new language of Zion – without curse and blasphemy – even football and rugby became uninteresting in the light of new joy and direction received by the converts. Colliers and tin-men of the working classes expressed their joy in so many ways. But perhaps the song that captures what most of these felt was a song sung by Sam Jenkins a tin plate worker from Llanelli – a song translated at the time from English to Welsh – Can y Rebel 'Am Achub hen rebel fel fi' - 'For saving an old Rebel like me'.

A Welsh Revival Effect62
The Revival storm that hit the hills and valleys of Wales in the dying months of 1904 soon became a hurricane that affected the world. Visitors from France, Turkey, the U.S, to name but a few came to visit and as they caught the flame they passed it on to new countries. Welsh communities throughout the world felt the effects and news of God’s powerful work soon had many other churches praying that God would visit then as well – the Khasia Hills in India being a perfect example of prayer answered. 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. Internationally, evangelical Christians took this event to be a sign that a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of Joel 2:23–29 was about to take place. At the turn of the 20th century many Welsh Presbyterian missionaries were serving in the hills of Assam (India). From 1903 a Khasi (tribal area) church at Mawphlang (Central Assam) began a Monday evening prayer meeting to seek the Outpouring of the Spirit. In 1904 these prayer meetings intensified in fervency. Near the end of that year the Khasi Christians heard that revival had come to their mother churches in Wales. The reports brought more hunger for revival. What was special here was the participation of young people and children.
At the beginning of 1905 the Khasi Christians decided to have prayer meetings every night until God would send revival. On the first Sunday in March 1906 there was an unusual sense of the Spirit's presence, with prayer, tears, and praise. During a presbytery meeting soon afterwards someone stood up during a service when the minister was about to pronounce the benediction, praying fervently. Thereafter men and women began to call out to God, nearly all wept. More people streamed into the building, praying into the night. For eighteen months people gathered there daily as they continued to pray for revival. Of course, revival had already broken out at the church. From there it spread to the northeast of the country.
In the Khasia revival movement, God particularly blessed, used and used children. Young evangelists would be the order of the day in the region. 'Crown Him Lord of All' became the top hit of the region in due course. They would sing that hymn over an hour for at least an hour. At a village known to be the most difficult, the Gospel went very deep. A boy from this village was asked how many services they were having on Sunday. “Only one,” the boy replied, “because that one lasts all day.”

A cold Shower on Revivalism The story of Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival of 1904-5 is one of the most thrilling, but also one of the most sad and sobering in all revival history. On the one hand we see one hundred thousand souls in Wales coming to Christ in just nine months, from November 1904 to August 1905. This was the beginning of a world-wide revival that ushered hundreds of thousands more into the Kingdom of God. On the other hand, we see Evan Roberts, the principle revivalist of this move of God, becoming deceived, deluded and finally suffering a nervous breakdown which took him out of the public limelight to live the life of a recluse. Furthermore, the fruits of the revival in Wales (fortunately not world-wide) were soon lost through criticism, fears of deception and a Welsh theology which suppressed the assurance of salvation. Within a generation there were no signs that a revival had ever occurred. The revival spread like wildfire all over Wales. Other leaders also experienced the presence of God. Hundreds of overseas visitors flocked to Wales to witness the revival and many took revival fire back to their own land. But the intense presence began to take its toll on Evan. He became nervous and would sometimes be abrupt or rude to people in public meetings. He openly rebuked leaders and congregations alike. There are some important lessons for 21st Century Christians to learn. Though he was clearly exercising spiritual gifts and was sensitive to the Holy Spirit, Evan Roberts became unsure of the 'voices' he was hearing. The he broke down and withdrew from public meetings. Accusation and criticism followed and further physical and emotional breakdown ensued. Understandably, converts were confused. Was this God? Was Evan Roberts God’s man or was he satanically motivated? He fell into a deep depression and in the spring of 1906 he was invited to convalesce at Jessie Penn-Lewis’ home at Woodlands in Leicester.
Some Lessons to learn It is claimed that Mrs Penn-Lewis used Evan’s name to propagate her own ministry and message. She supposedly convinced him he was deceived by evil spirits and, over the next few years co-authored with Evan Roberts War on the Saints, which was published in 1913. This book clearly delineates the confusion she had drawn Evan into. It left its readers totally wary of any spiritual phenomena of any kind or degree. Rather than giving clear guidelines regarding discerning satanic powers, it brought into question anything that may be considered, or that might be described, as Holy Spirit activity. Within a year of its publication, Evan Roberts denounced it, telling friends that it had been a failed weapon which had confused and divided the Lord’s people. The public excitement of the Welsh Revival had died down by 1906 – Evan Roberts went to Leicester to recuperate – the newspapers went back to politics and other things but for many, the honeymoon of these 2 years developed into a lasting and loving relationship with a risen Christ that continued a lifetime. In asking one elderly revival convert in the 1980s as to whether the revival stopped in 1906, she answered: 'it's still burning within my heart … it had burned for over 70 years.' Furthermore, the revival fire of Wales had already sent sparks across the oceans, e.g. to North America!
Penticostalism - An after-shock of the Welsh Revival
Almost no country in the world was excluded from the effects of this incredible revival. Many nations around the globe received new power from on high, a new passion for prayer and for the lost. Hundreds of thousands came to the Lord. The United States of America 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.
No one could have imagined that this was the beginning of the greatest and most effective missionary movement that the world had ever seen. It marked the birth of Pentecostalism, once called 'the third force in Christendom.' Some would argue that, 100 years later, it has grown into the largest and most powerful force of all Christendom.

Origins of the Pentecostal Revival
Charles Fox Parham (1873 -1929) was an American preacher who was divinely used in the formation of Pentecostalism. He journeyed throughout the United States visiting various Christian utopias and Bible centres in an effort to identify a community which replicated the Apostolic experience of the New Testament Church. One stop on this spiritual odyssey was Frank Sandford’s commune in Durham, Maine called Holy Ghost and Us Society. Sandford’s work, which he founded in 1894, emphasized missionary work, sanctification, divine healing, and eschatology. This must have resonated deeply with Charles Parham, who had left the Methodist Episcopal Church to pursue these selfsame teachings.
In 1898, Parham moved his ministry to Topeka, Kansas, starting a healing home there. Parham decided to examine the latest truths restored by the latter day movements. He took a sabbatical from his work at the healing home in 1900 and visited various movements. While he saw and looked at other teachings and models when he visited the other works, most of his time was spent at Sandford's work in Ontario, Canada. When Parham returned from this sabbatical, those left in charge of his healing home had usurped the authority. Rather than fighting for control, Parham started Bethel Bible School in Topeka, operating the school on a faith basis. Not charging for tuition, he depended on God to supply the needs of the school.
Prior to starting his Bible school, Parham had heard of at least one individual in Sandford's work who spoke in tongues. He had also come to the conclusion that there was more to a full baptism than others acknowledged at the time. By the end of 1900, Parham had led his students at Bethel Bible School through his understanding that there had to be a further experience with God. When classes were finished at the end of December, Parham left his students for a few days, asking them to study the Bible to determine what evidence was present when the early church received the Holy Spirit. The students had several days of prayer and worship, and held a New Year's Eve "watch-night" service at Bethel (December 31, 1900). The next evening (January 1, 1901) they also held a worship service, and it was that evening that Agnes Ozman felt impressed to ask to be prayed for to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Immediately after being prayed for, she began to speak in what they referred to as 'in tongues', speaking in what was believed to be a known language.
A special Son of Slaves One of Parham's students was William Seymour, an Afro-American who was born as the son of slaves in Centreville (Louisiana). As a grown man he attended the newly formed Bible school founded by Charles Parham in Houston (Texas) in 1905. It was here that he learned the major tenets of the Holiness Movement. An interesting snippet of information is how God overlooked the prevailing racism that was practised at the Bible School. Because of the strict segregation laws of the times, Seymour was forced to sit outside the class room in the hall way. The humble servant of God bore the injustice with grace. Seymour must have been a man of keen intellect. In just a few weeks, he became familiar enough with Parham's teaching that he could teach it himself. Parham and Seymour held joint meetings in Houston, with Seymour preaching to Black audiences and Parham speaking to the White groups.
Human Spadework of the Azusa Street Revival Frank Bartleman studied at Temple College and was licensed to preach by Temple Baptist Church, Philadelphia. He remained a Baptist until he joined the Salvation Army in 1897 at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Around the end of 1900 he pastored a Methodist congregation but soon left them to join Alma White and the Pillar of Fire Holiness Church in Denver, Colorado. There Bartleman continued the work that became his lifelong mission – working with down-and-outs, alcoholics and wayward girls, mostly in inner city rescue missions. Vinson Synan (in the introduction to the 1980 re-publication of Bartleman's Azusa Street – the Roots of Modern Day Pentecost) suggests that 'in many ways, Bartleman's entire life has been spent in preparation for reporting the Azusa Street meeting... His journalism not only informed the world about the pentecostal movement, but ina large measure also helped to form it.' From Frank Bartleman's report, an important ingredient of the run-up to Azusa was spiritual renewal at the Lake Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church of Pasadena (California), in conjunction with the local branch of the Peniel Mission in the first half of 1905. Other fuel was supplied by reports of the Welsh Revival. At a report on April 8, 1905 by F.B. Meyer, a renowned evangelist in his own right, Frank Bartleman was intensely moved: “My soul was stirred to its depths' (Bartleman, 1980[1925]:7). 'Peniel Boys', among them Edward Boehmer and Amil Allen, were active in Lake Avenue, Pasadena at the Methodist Episcopal Church where 'in two weeks time two hundred sould knelt at the altar, seeking the Lord' (Bartleman, 1980[1925]:7) a the beginning of May, 1905. Bartleman himself distributed a tract of G. Campbell Morgan on the 'Revival in Wales' widely as well as selling S.B. Shaw's booklet 'The Great Revival in Wales.' Joseph Smale, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Los Angeles, went to Wales personally in order to witness the revival. During this time Bartleman and the Peniel boys went there frequently with him to help 'fan the flame'. Upon Pastor Smale's return to Los Angeles, he attempted to ignite a similar event in his own congregation. 'Workers were coming in from all parts, from various affiliations, uniting their prayers with us for a general outpouring. Smale's attempts were short-lived, and he eventually left First Baptist Church to start the First New Testament Church, where he continued his efforts. During this time however, other small-scale revivals were taking place in different places. Reports of speaking in tongues, supernatural healings and significant lifestyle changes accompanied these revivals. As news spread, evangelicals across the United States began to pray for similar revivals in their own congregations. At this time Frank Bartleman wrote down similar thoughts that Andrew Murray had penned in The Key of the Missionary Problem, but he was probably not influenced by the Scottish South African. In fact, he said: “I received from God early in 1905 the following keynote to revival: 'The depth of revival will be determined exactly by the depth of the spirit of repentance.' And this will hold true for all people, at all times.” He also emphasised the need for the unity of believers in a similar way. He did witness to correspondence he engaged in with Evan Roberts in Wales.
Run-up to the Azusa Street Revival
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on a small group of believers in Topeka, Kansas, on January 1, 1901, gave birth to the modern Pentecostal movement. Pentecostals generally trace their heritage to Charles Parham's Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas, where Agnes Ozman began to speak in "tongues" in 1901 when hands were laid on her. Parham has been discredited because of doctrinal heresies that he dissseminated. Yet, William J. Seymour, the one-eyed 34 year-old son of former slaves, was a student of Charles Parham in 1905. Initially an interim pastor of a small holiness fellowship in Houston, Texas. Neely Terry, an Afro-American woman who attended a small holiness church pastored by Julia Hutchinson in Los Angeles, made a trip to visit family in Houston late in 1905. While in Houston, she visited Seymour's church, where he preached the baptism with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, and though he had not experienced this personally, Neely Terry was impressed with his character and message. Once home in California, Terry suggested that Seymour be invited to speak at the local church. Seymour received and accepted the invitation in February 1906, and he received financial help and a blessing from Parham for his planned one-month visit. Although he did not receive the gift of glossolia (speaking in tongues) immediately, Seymour developed a belief in speaking in tongues as a confirmation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He later moved to Los Angeles to minister in churches. As a consequence of his new found Pentecostal doctrine he was removed from the parish to which he had been appointed.
William Seymour arrived in Los Angeles on February 22, 1906, and within two days was preaching at Julia Hutchins' church at the corner of Ninth Street and Santa Fe Avenue. During his first sermon, he preached that speaking in tongues was the first biblical evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. On the following Sunday, March 4, he returned to the church and found that Julia Hutchins had padlocked the door. Elders of the church rejected Seymour's teaching, primarily because he had not yet experienced the blessing about which he was preaching. Condemnation of his message also came from the Holiness Church Association of Southern California with which the church had affiliation. Seymour and his small group of new followers soon relocated to the home of Richard and Ruth Asberry at 214 North Bonnie Brae Street. White families from local holiness churches began to attend as well. The group would get together regularly and pray to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. On April 9, 1906, after five weeks of Seymour's preaching and prayer, and three days into an intended 10-day fast, Edward S. Lee spoke in tongues for the first time. At the next meeting, Seymour shared Lee's testimony and preached a sermon on Acts 2:4 and soon six others began to speak in tongues as well, including Jennie Moore, who would later become Seymour's wife. A few days later, on April 12, Seymour spoke in tongues for the first time after praying all night long. News of the events at North Bonnie Brae St. quickly circulated among the African American, Latino and White residents of the city. For several nights, various speakers would preach to the crowds of curious and interested onlookers from the front porch of the Asberry home. Members of the audience included people from a broad spectrum of income levels and religious backgrounds. Hutchins eventually spoke in tongues as her whole congregation began to attend the meetings. Soon the crowds became very large and were full of people speaking in tongues, shouting, singing and moaning. Finally, the front porch collapsed, forcing the group to begin looking for a new meeting place.
Relocation to Azusa Street The group from Bonnie Brae Street eventually discovered an available building at 312 Azusa Street, which had originally been constructed as an African Methodist Episcopal Church in what was then a Black ghetto part of town. A newspaper referred to the downtown Los Angeles building as a "tumble down shack". Since the church had moved out, the building had served as a wholesale house, a warehouse, a lumberyard, stockyards, a tombstone shop, and had most recently been used as a stable with rooms for rent upstairs. The only sign that it had once been a house of God was a single Gothic-style window over the main entrance. Discarded lumber and plaster littered the large, barn-like room on the ground floor. They held their first meeting on April 14, 1906. Frank Bartleman recalled that 'Brother Seymour generally sat behind two empty shoe boxes, one on top of the other. He usually kept his head inside the top one during the meeting, in prayer. There was no pride there.... In that old building, with its low rafters and bare floors...' (
The Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, California began with a meeting on April 14, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915. The revival was characterized by ecstatic spiritual experiences accompanied by speaking in tongues, dramatic worship services, and inter-racial mingling. The participants received criticism from secular media and Christian theologians for behaviour considered to be outrageous and unorthodox. Seymour not only rejected the existing racial barriers in favor of unity in Christ, he also rejected the then almost-universal barriers to women in any form of church leadership. The second floor at the now-named Apostolic Faith Mission housed an office and rooms for several residents including Seymour and his wife Jennie. It also had a large prayer room to handle the overflow from the altar services below. By mid-May 1906, anywhere from 300 to 1,500 people would attempt to fit into the building. People from a diversity of backgrounds came together to worship: men, women, children, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, rich, poor, illiterate and educated. People of all ages flocked to Los Angeles with both scepticism and a desire to participate. The intermingling of races and the group's encouragement of women in leadership was remarkable, as 1906 was the height of the 'Jim Crow' era of racial segregation.63 Furthermore, it transpired fourteen years prior to women receiving suffrage in the United States. Thus the Azusa Street Revival can also regarded as a beach head for racial equality.
A cold shower on the Azusa Street Revival was a complete rupture between Seymour and Parham in October 1906 after perceived negative messages of Parham and expulsion from the Azusa Street fellowship. He had been invited to preach there. Nevertheless, the current worldwide Pentecostal and charismatic movements are generally agreed to have grown in part from William Seymour's ministry and the Azusa Street Revival.
Spread of the Pentecostal Revival
Knowledgeable Pentecostals like Dr David du Plessis emphasised the leadership of the Holy Spirit rather than human beings in the movement in the 20th century, akin to the first century when this has been the force to bring the gospel to the ends of the known world. The spread of the Pentecostal Revival is humanly speaking also greatly indebted to the journalistic ministry of Frank Bartleman. His personal diary and regular reports in the holiness press constitute the most complete and reliable record of what actually happened in Los Angeles from 1906-1909. Furthermore, his writings in various periodicals and newspapers carried the message of Pentecost around the world, igniting fresh fires of the Spirit. Thomas Ball Barratt was a British-born Norwegian pastor and founder of the Pentecostal movement in Norway. In 1905, as head of the Methodist City Mission in Oslo, Barratt travelled to the US with the aim of raising funds to build new premises in Oslo. He was baptised in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues in November 1906 while staying in New York, after hearing news of the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. He returned to Norway in December 1906 without funds or church support. Nevertheless, starting in 1907, he held revival meetings in Oslo which attracted international attention, and he became one of the prime movers of the Pentecostal movement in Europe. Lewi Pethrus from Sweden and Alexander Boddy from England came to Oslo, and became convinced of the divine origin of the movement. They became leaders of the Pentecostal movement in their respective countries. The Azusa Street Revival is considered by historians to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century.
Longterm International Impact of the Pentecostal movement One of the most spectacular blessings of the Pentecostal movement was inroads into the Catholic and Anglican churches in the 1970s which brought spiritual renewal in its wings. In 1978 over 10,000 Caatholics gathered in St Peter's Cathedral in Rome to celebrate the Pentecostal season. Pope Paul VI gave his endorsement to the movement. At the climax of the service thousands spoke and sang in tongues. Three years later a similar service was conducted in the Canterbury Cathedral. Archbishop Coggin addressed a conference there, speaking in glowing terms of the renewal in England.
One of very few countries worldwide that was not significantly touched by the Pentecostal movement is Germany. This is possibly the result and aftermath of the Berlin Declaration of 1909, in which evangelical Christians of the Pietist 'Gemeinschaftsverbhe nde' – believers in the Lutheran State Church that congregated separately a second time on Sundays – clearly distanced themselves from the Pentecostal movement. In fact, in the Berlin Declaration of 1909 followers of Jesus were advised to stay clear of the Pentecostals because speaking in tongues was demonic, having many elements in common with Spiritism. The Germans in the the Pentecostal movement replied on 15. September 1909 with the Mülheimer Erklärung. The rift since that time between Pentecostal free churches and other Evangelicals was only resolved in 2009 through a common declaration, stating that the historical documents have no meaning in the present era.
Correction of societal Deficiencies Just like in biblical times, all the characteristics of vibrant mission work resulted - including a correction of societal deficiencies. First century Jewish society knew gross inequality between master and slave and intrinsic discrimination before the Antioch multicultural fellowship became the model for the 'NT' church. Similarly, God deemed it fit to use the one-eyed Afro-American outsider – quite literally when William Seymour was not allowed to sit among the other participants of Charles Parham's Bible School - to be the divine correction to the American racist discriminatory society of his day. By 1914 many ministers and laymen alike began to realize just how far-reaching the spread of the revival and of Pentecostalism had become. Concerned leaders felt the desire to protect and preserve the results of the revival, by uniting through cooperative fellowship. In April 1914, about 300 preachers and laymen were invited from 20 states and several foreign countries for a General Council in Hot Springs, Arkansas to discuss and take action on these and other pressing needs. American racial and cultural norms at the time, such as Jim Crow laws, deeply affected such cooperative fellowship of the early movement. It excluded many Afro-American Pentecostal leaders such as Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the predominantly African-American Church of God in Christ. Bishop Mason credentialed the first ministers of this cooperative fellowship that called themselves Assemblies of God. In the 20th century the denomination grew into an international giant with leaders from the third world like the Korean Rev. David Yonggi Cho coming into their own. The World Assemblies of God Fellowship is a group of national Christian denominations, which together form the world's largest pentecostal body.
The Pentecostal Revival coming to South Africa
God used the American Negro William Seymour at the famous Azusa Street Pentecostal revival to bless the world. Ripples of that revival found their way also to the Cape via John Lake. In April 1908, Lake and his family left for South Africa. Though they had no visible means of support, they were miraculously provided for every step of the way. And thus began a tremendous revival, with mighty healings, miracles and deliverances, which was to profoundly impact the African continent for years to come, even long after Lake was gone. The Black church that was started by a missionary couple in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, was soon attended by Whites after one of the servants had been healed under the powerful ministry of John Lake. ‘Similar miracles followed and before long, Black Africans found themselves standing around while their White employers were blessed’ (Du Plessis, 1977:106). The Bree Street Tabernacle in Johannesburg grew out of that ministry. That became the pristine beginnings of the Apostolic Faith Mission Church, led from 1914 to 1943 by Petrus le Roux, the first missionary protégé of Andrew Murray. The mainline churches gave free publicity to the work, by preaching against it. In 1913, following the tragic death of his wife, John Lake returned to America, but by this time the torch had also been passed on to Elias Letwaba and others in Africa, and the work went on from there, in great power. The faith healing ministry at the Bree Street Tabernacle of Johannesburg brought another Cape-born giant into the frame on the long run. After the father of David du Plessis, had been healed, the family moved out of the DRC. David, who had been born at a place called Twenty Four Rivers near Cape Town in February 1905 among a community of Christian believers that grew out of a revival led by a Norwegian evangelist (Du Plessis, 1977:7). The birth of David was wrought by prayer as his father narrated: ‘Before he was born, his mother and I prayed every day, ‘Lord, give us a son for our first born, and we promise we will bring him up for your service’ (Du Plessis, 1977:42). After declining a serious offer in politics and a lucrative one in business to remain the obedient ‘donkey’ of the Lord, David du Plessis ultimately became the national secretary of the Pentecostal denomination for many years. Petrus Le Roux was his President until 1943. Almost single-handedly David Du Plessis put the denomination on the church map when he started the AFM Bible School with 16 students. After only a few years, he had trained 50 committed men. David du Plessis was later to be called Mr Pentecost.

Local or regional Awakenings in the 20th Century During the rest of the 20th century there were no similar revivals with a global impact but local or regional awakenings like the one in Natal among the Zulus and in Indonesia saw thousands coming to Christ. The next great evangelist with an influence that touched World History was Dr Billy Graham. He was hired as the first full time evangelist of the new Youth for Christ International (YFCI), which was co-founded by Torrey Johnson and evangelist Charles Templeton. Around the turn of the millennium there were quite a few individuals that could be singled out like the German Reinhardt Bonnke. This is now the age of modern technology. Yesteryear it was Transworld Radio and the Jesus Film of Campus Crusade, that has been dubbed into many languages, Today it is the Alpha Course and the More than Dreams DVD, along with the House Church Movement and the Internet that bring millions into the Kingdom of our Lord.


15. God is still on the Throne

Power-seeking, greed, avarice, lust prostitution and finally the South African War, also called the Anglo-Boer War followed the money accrued from gold and diamond digging. The whole nation suffered. On the spiritual front it seemed as if the Church had been inflicted a blow from which she would never recover. However, throughout the hostilities of the South African War, people were praying especially the Dutch women (Terhoven, 1984:94). While hundreds of men were being captured as prisoners, thousands still met for prayer. Such a revival was experienced in prisoner of war camps that, after repatriation in 1904, 175 men immediately reported for training as missionaries.
A special feature of the 1860 revival and thereafter, was its impact on later generations. The missionary zeal created a new problem – a grave financial deficit. The general Mission Committee of the Dutch Reformed Church issued a request for ‘universal prayer’ on Pentecost Sunday, 7 June 1908. This request had formidable results. The response on the sermon of Dr Andrew Murray in Wellington on that day was that the church council resolved three days later to invite delegates to a conference. The assembly that congregated there in August 1908 exercised a far-reaching influence. A Laymen’ Missionary Union was established that was not only instrumental in working swiftly to wipe out the debt but they also launched a ‘Missionary Crusade’. Spearheaded by Dr Andrew Murray, representative ministers visited large centres in every part of the country. In his book School des Gebeds (School of Prayer) he expressed his longing that the Church would know that ‘Prayer is the power by which Satan is conquered and that by prayer the Church on earth has disposal over the powers of the heavenly world.’

Cape Revivals into the 20th Century
At a Christian Endeavour service in Villiersdorp on 23 July 1905, about 130 young people were suddenly gripped. Such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit took place that the whole company became acutely aware of the presence of God and his holiness. Hundreds of nominal Christians were transformed into fearless witnesses. The revival transformed the local KJV, the Young People’s Church Society, which soon became a mission band with 62 members. One of them, Karl Zimmerman, became a missionary in Nigeria. On 7 August 1905, the KJV of Villiersdorp visited Franschhoek, telling a filled church what had happened in their town. Concern and spiritual hunger developed with prayer meetings springing up here, there and everywhere.

Revival Prayer Seed germinates
An interesting prophecy was given during the revival emanating from Hermannsburg situated in the Lueneburg Heath of northern Germany. It stated that the light of the Gospel would not only go out from Europe, but that missionaries from Africa would bring it back to Europe. The community subsequently built a ship, sending missionaries to East Africa. Unable to get entry into Ethiopia, they settled in the northern part of Kwazulu Natal where the Hermannsburg Mission was started in 1854. The prophecy is fulfilled in our day and age. During the revival in Kwasiza Bantu thousands of Zulus not only came to the Lord, but some of them went in teams to Germany (Info taken from Jericho Walls Daily Prayer Guide, December 15, 2009). Via marriage to German nationals, Africans have been impacting the country of Martin Luther in a quiet and unobtrusive but significant way in recent decades.
Many churches have been planted in Europe in recent years by believers from Africa. One of the biggest is one in the Ukraine, where a Nigerian pastor has been God’s special instrument.

Erection of Signs
The expression ‘the erection of signs of the coming kingdom of peace’, which appears to have been coined by the Moravian Bishop Comenius centuries ago, has received a new actuality in the light of renewed tension around Jerusalem. Christians all over the world are challenged to seek God’s face for inven­tive means to usher in the return of our King. We in South Africa could even set the pace through our special blend of people groups. World evangelization remains the sign par excellence to be erected, something which Jesus himself used as a sign of the end times (Matthew 24:14).
Let us pray that new vigour might erupt from followers of Jesus, so that the remaining ‘closed’ countries may be unlocked for the penetration of the Gospel, so that ‘Bible tourism’ might become superfluous and missionaries can be sent to these countries in stead. The commitment of the Koreans to prayer is definitely an example to Christians all over the world.

The Praying Hyde It was to the Punjab of the Indian subcontinent that John Nelson Hyde (1865-1912), the son of an Illinois Presbyterian minister, felt led to begin his lifetime of missionary endeavor. John Hyde's prayer life ranks in a league with the prayer lives of Andrew Murray, George Mueller, and Charles Finney. He came to be called 'Praying Hyde' for his passionate prayers to reached lost souls. Hyde came to believe that God was calling him to India. He departed in 1892 to preach in the Punjab. As he was partially deaf he struggled to learn the native languages. To the dismay of mission authorities, he devoted most of his time to Bible rather than language study, displaying the withdrawn intensity of a visionary rather than the engaging demeanor of the traditional missionary. In time, however, Hyde gained a certain fluency, though he never lost his zeal for Scripture. With periods of outright persecution by natives, and few, if any conversions, Hyde began leading his fellow missionaries in intercession for India. So deep was his call to prayer that by 1899 he began spending entire nights face down before God. Starting in1904, Indian Christians and western missionaries gathered for the first of an annual series of conventions at Sialkot in what is today Pakistan. To support this time of spiritual renewal, John Hyde and his friends formed the Punjab Prayer Union, setting aside half an hour each day to pray for revival. The results of their prayers were plainly seen at the Sialkot Convention as a special anointing fell upon those gathered. Year by year the prayer union fasted and prayed, and at each convention a growing urgency for evangelism and intercession filled each attendee. John Hyde emerged as the prayer leader, and all were amazed at both the depth of his spiritual insight, and the ferocity of his burden for India. In 1908 he told the conference his dream that there would be one conversion a day. Before the next convention John Hyde had prayed more than 400 people into God's kingdom, and when the prayer union gathered again, he doubled his goal to two souls a day. Eight hundred conversions were recorded that year, and still Hyde showed an unquenchable passion for lost souls. At the 1910 convention, those around Hyde marvelled at his faith, as they witnessed his near violent supplications, "Give me souls, oh God, or I die!" Before the meeting ended, John Hyde revealed that he was again doubling his goal for the coming year. Four souls a day, and nothing less. During the next twelve months John Hyde's ministry took him throughout India. By now he was known as "Praying Hyde," and his intercession was sought at revivals in Calcutta, Bombay, and other large cities. If on any day four people were not converted, Hyde said at night there would be such a weight on his heart he could not eat or sleep until he had prayed through to victory. The number of new converts continually grew.
Andrew Murray’s Closing Days
In 1904 Andrew Murray founded the Prayer Union, which was open to believers who had pledged themselves to devote at least a quarter of an hour daily to praying for others and also for the furtherance of the Kingdom.
Andrew Murray ended his life on earth on 18 January 1917 in typical fashion, praying and urging others to pray. Few men have ever impacted more people for the cause of the Spirit-filled life than Andrew Murray. He was undoubtedly the Church’s most prolific writer on the subject of prayer and the Deeper Life, publishing over 240 books and monograms between 1858 and 1917. Several of his pen fruits have been translated into as many as fifteen different languages. Soon after the Christian Literature Society for China translated Dr Murray’s book, The Spirit of Christ into Chinese, revival reportedly broke out in Inland China. Even today his writings are still shaping the way multitudes of hungry Christians think about prayer and the Spirit-filled life.
The Cape was used by God to establish missionary endeavour as a worldwide priority, an important spur to the conference at Edinburgh in 1910, which in turn could be regarded as a forerunner of the World Council of Churches. (An interesting fact is that William Carey,64 whose ministry ushered in the modern missionary movement, had proposed a hundred years earlier that a missions’ conference should be held at the Cape of Good Hope.) It is thus fitting that a global missions conference of the Lausanne Committee took place in here in Cape Town. The vibes sent out from that event indeed erected more than one sign, the most representative major Christian event ever with a cross section of participants - young and old, females treated as equals also in sharing the Word! It would be wonderful if it could usher in the coming of our Lord in an unprecedented way.

Prayer Ripples into the 21st Century It is quite spectacular that two and a half centuries after the revival in Herrnhut, the waves of prayer could be rekindled by the visit to Herrnhut in East Germany of a group of 19 intercessors in February 1993 (Goll, 2001:17). This was followed by the movement of prayer watches across the globe since 1999, including 24-hour watches across South Africa. A week apiece in different towns started on 9 May 2004 in the Moravian Church of District Six, Cape Town. (That building survived the apartheid demolition of churches in the former slum area merely because it had been declared a historical monument.) Every week a different South African city or town prayed for a full year - in some towns around the clock, 24 hours a day.

Lasting Results of Confession
The prophet Amos highlighted the exploitation of the poor as grave sin in God's eyes. Archaeological excavations of biblical times have been depicting the disparate housing. The excavations mirror very much present-day South Africa: beautiful big houses clearly separated from the densely built smaller houses of the poor. Unless we confess and repent from these wicked sinful ways corporately, the present violence and crime might turn out to be child’s play compared to what we could expect. The apocalyptic future which the South African Prime Minister, Mr John Vorster, foresaw in November 1974, has become a scary possibility: too ghastly to contem­plate. Riot-like behaviour in recent times as a result of poor service delivery show that we are sitting on a time bomb that could explode any day. We must realize that the racist pass laws of the past extremely disrupted family life in the Black communities. The Group Areas Act was the main culprit in uprooting stable ‘Coloured’ communities. This caused a slide towards anarchy and lawlessness, towards violence and crime. The Church is partly to blame because violence was exonerated. Biblical­ly sound confession could and should be the vehicle to arrest the rampant emotional and physical violence. The weed of a senseless boycotting culture of the apartheid era has germinated. The fruit is evident when a callous attitude is evident among striking workers displayed no regard to life. People died in mid 2010 because of a lack of medical facilities and those who preferred to work have to fear for their lives.65
Andrew Murray once pointed out: ‘Contrition comes before restoration and renewal’ (Murray, 1901, [1979]:154). If the church repents by corporately confessing the sins of the fathers - also the near condoning of certain forms of violence by some church leaders in the apartheid era - we may be sure that God is ready to forgive and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9) - I believe God also wants to forgive collectively. That belongs to the nature of God if we confess our sins.
How an imminent bloodbath was averted in South Africa should never be forgotten. A major turn-around happened in South Africa through the St James Church (Kenilworth, Cape Town) massacre of 25 July 1993, after which many people came into the kingdom of Jesus. The stark reality and sheer brutality of civil war were indeed too ghastly to contemplate! The turn around was achieved through countrywide prayer that was supported by Christians from other countries in an unprecedented way - a concerted effort. Joint prayer would be crucial for tapping the resources effec­tively towards recruiting a new stream of missionaries from South African soil.
Chris­tians are always challenged to emulate Jesus in their prayer life, so that the crime and violence may be stopped; that the situation might be turned around to one where benevolence and mutual sharing become the order of the day. I surmise that the arch-enemy is trying to use crime and violence to cripple the economy, so that missionaries cannot be sent out on a big scale. Nevertheless, our fear that township violence could spill over into more affluent residential areas may never be the main motivation for prayer. The Lord’s exhortation to pray to the Lord of the harvest... is a much better spur. I dare say that a Biblical widespread revival, which would thrust out new workers into the worldwide harvest, is apt to take care of the seemingly never-ending cycles of (gangster) violence and crime. The precedent in this regard is the revival in England when anarchist conditions were turned around, predominantly because of the spiritual renewal of the society. This was the result of the preaching of George Whitefield and John Wesley.

The ‘unpaid Debt of the Church?
The Church universal would do well to take heed of Patrick Johnstone’s advice: ‘Courses on prayer to be incorpor­ated into required curricula of Christian seminaries, colleges and schools’ (Johnstone, 1993:620). Rarely-found prayer courses are generally still only an elective. On the other hand, an over-emphasis on academic degrees and accreditation has been detrimental to or retarding spiritual prowess. This has thankfully been off-set by church-based Bible Schools from which many missionaries went forth. More change in this regard could deeply affect the Church and the progress of world evangelization. God has given Capetonian Christians a special chance to impact the most populous country of the world. Not only has there been a significant influx of Chinese to South Africa (especially to Cape Town), but some of them have also been impacted after attending churches to get in contact with local people and to improve their English. Confession for the side-lining of Jews and for the reasons behind the expansion of Islam globally and nationally has hardly been addressed as yet. The establishment and spread of Islam can actually be dubbed the ‘unpaid debt of the church.’66 A promising start was made with the recon­cili­ation walk in the Middle East in commemoration of the start of the first crusade 900 years ago in 1996, but it was not followed up.
The rejection of slaves by the Church in the colonial days assisted the establishment of Islam at the Cape. The general haughty attitude and rude behaviour of slave owners towards their workers at this time was a further boon for that religion. Apartheid legislation, that was linked to the Church and Christianity, led to Bo-Kaap becoming an Islamic stronghold. It also caused the religion to be spread throughout the Western Cape.
United prayer could result in many Muslim background followers of Jesus to be sent from Southern Africa to Islamic countries of West and North Africa. Some of the traders and refugees originated from there. In turn, this may spiral off some Arab-speaking new believers going as missionaries to the Middle East. In fact, the mere factual situation that individual Christians from mission-minded congregations have been seriously praying for the Muslims, might still result in some of them being called to serve the Lord in an Islamic country. A new situation has arisen in recent years with scores of Arabic-speaking Muslims from Sudan and Chad having arrived in Cape Town. It would be completely in character for God to see some of these sojourners impacted and going to North Africa and the Middle East. Is not that what happened at Pentecost?

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