Do it again, Lord!

At the Global Advance Pastor's Forum in Big Cedar Lodge near Branson, I just sat spellbound as Dr. Roy Fish shared about the "Layman's Prayer Revival of 1858". (I know; I know, some of you are thinking what could be more boring than a history lecture from 150 years ago! If you only knew...)

According to Dr. Fish, that era was much like our own, with materialism and moral decay threatening to destroy American society from within. But a convert of Charles Finney named Jeremiah Lamphere invited businessmen from New York City to join him for a noon prayer meeting on April 23, 1858. He actually prayed alone for the first half-hour, before 5 other businessmen trickled in to the church where he met. By the time it was over, 18 months later:

• there were 150 such prayer meetings around New York City, with 50,000 praying daily
• 25,000 businessmen were converted in NY City, and 65,000 others were saved there
• From NY City, it spread eventually throughout the USA
• In Trenton, NJ, 1700 were converted in one Methodist Church & 5,000 total in the city
• When the revival reached Kalamazoo, MI the leader of the daily prayer meeting read a prayer request that was handed in "from a praying wife, asking prayer for her unsaved husband" and immediately a man jumped to his feet with tears and said, "that's me - my wife has been praying for me to get saved", then another and another, until 5 men were standing, claiming to be the one....and 400 were converted in one week!
• When it reached Chicago, a young man who had just moved there wrote his mother not to worry about him, because he was attending a wonderful prayer meeting every day. Soon he asked to teach a Sunday school class at his church, only to be told that there was a waiting list of willing teachers - but that if he would bring his pupils to church, they'd let him teach. He started that next Sunday with 14 street urchins...a year later there were 600 of them...the following year is was 1,200, and thus began the public ministry of D.L. Moody!
• People from every walk of life were affected: in Philadelphia, 1500 firemen were converted (35 prayer meetings were conducted in 5 fire stations every week!); so many sailors in the US Navy got converted that 2 Christian newspapers began publishing just for sailors!
• Population of the USA at that time was 30 million people; one million of them were converted during this Layman's revival in a year-and-a-half!

As Dr. Fish said of Jeremiah Lamphere, "somebody just has to start something!" - and I say, "Do it again, Lord!"