The United States, 1857. Slavery, rebellion
and rumors of war. In 3 years, Americans
would turn on each other and make history. But yet, in New York City
in 1857, Americans were about to ride a
brand new revival history. The date was September 23 rd. A Christian layman named
Jeremy Lanphier held his first businessmen
prayer meeting. That same week, meetings
begin in dozens of places around the nation. Only 6 men attended
Jeremiah's first meeting. 2 weeks later, the
stock market crashed. Thousands of families
lost everything they had. This birthed one of the
greatest spiritual awakenings the world has even seen. Week by week, the tiny
lunchtime prayer meetings grew larger and larger and
larger and by December, Jeremiah's 6 men had
become 10 thousand men and they met not every
week, but every day. The New York newspapers
took notice and when words spread
to other cities, spontaneous revival broke out
across the country. In Cleveland and in St. Louis,
thousands of people packed downtown churches and theaters, 3 times each day just to pray. In Chicago, churches had
to have waiting lists for people wanting to teach
Sunday School and all across America,
pastors were baptizing 20,000 new believers every week. Revival would hit over 50
nations around the world changing how people
lived their lives. And in England, entire
towns were converted. Some towns disbanded their
police force because of the lack of crime. So many people came to Christ. Churches had to hold
services outside just to accommodate the crowd. Truly, the world had never
seen anything like this before. Godly men like Jeremiah
led God create a Global Prayer Revival. It changed the course of
history and now people need to know, can history be repeated? ♪♪ Genesis 26:18 tells us "Isaac dug again the
wells of Abraham." In every generation, there
have been revivals, massive moves of the Spirit that changed the
course of history. In every revival, there
were believers like you who chose to answer the call to become the one in their
generation. Discover your call to be the
one in your generation. We are about to take you face to face with history. ♪♪ Welcome to Revival Radio TV, I'm your host, Pastor
Gene Bailey. And I'm here
again, Linda Lane. What's your name again? Doug Bonner and
Pastor Greg Stephens.
- Ha ha! - Thank you, guys
for being here. Pastor Greg, I want to
start off today, talking to you about a subject because you're the senior
pastor of a church and as a pastor, how
important really is prayer in the Church? - It's the power plant. Explain. - It's what drives the
engine of the church because prayer is
not mumbo jumbo. It's communication
with your Father. - That's right. - Exactly. - And if there is no
communication in that body of believers
with the Father, corporately or individually, how strong can you be? - Yea. - It's true. - And you said it exactly. It's communication with
the Father, communication with Heaven,
whether it's for your own
personal, I need healing or
direction, guidance. It's the pipeline. Imagine if I had a loving
relationship with my wife and I do. - Yea, glad to hear that! But I never speak
to her,
- Oh, my word! - I never communicate
with her. I never whisper
sweet nothings in her ear except for Sunday morning. - Yea. - You see what I mean? If there is no... We go sing love songs on Sunday
morning but all week long, we've been distanced
from one another. - Uh-huh, - It's vital. - It's vital. So as we talked about
prayer and revivals and stuff, you can't go far
in your study of revivals until you hit the Great Prayer
Revival of 1857, that's what we are talking
about today. Now we've touched on
this before, right Linda? - We have. You know with Jeremy Lanphier, what he did,
starting in New York. So let's kind of, really quickly
kind of recap that because since we've
done that program, we've discovered so much
more that happened so...But for those who
missed that, tell us again what happened with Jeremy Lanphier, Great
Prayer Revival. - Well, basically, on
September 23, 1857, he started a Noonday
Prayer Revival in New
York City - Right, - and what was so
amazing about it was, it only had like 6 people
that showed up and he had been asked to do this
prayer meeting. He'd gone through, he
distributed brochures
everywhere. - Yes, because if I remember
the story correctly., he actually distributed
20,000 brochures at his own expense. Used up all the money he had a whopping 6 people come. - Ha ha. Yes. - And he was not a preacher. He was a businessman. - Right. - But the next week, he had
20 and for the next couple
of weeks, it just incrementally increased to the point that he had
daily prayer meetings and it was huge. I mean, he was having
hundreds come in, but it didn't start with him. It went back before that
and he actually... You know, we all have a season
of prep before God says, "Here, go for it". And even though he had you
know, such a small number
on his first time, his season of prep was
under Charles Finney's, Boston, Friday night meetings. It was under--South Carolina had John L.Giradeaux and this was from
South Carolina. This guy could have
been a pastor anywhere. He had the ticket, he had the
charm, he had the credits, - He doesn't take a really
good picture though. - Ha ha, yea. - And the thing is that he chose
to go to a church in South
Carolina that had 48 church members. It was before the Civil
War and they were black slaves but they were very
special because as they were having their
services and their prayer time, it's started with
the prayer for them. - Right. - The Spirit of God landed
on him one night and he said, "This is it, we are here.
This is our moment". So for the next 8 weeks,
every night, he has services and it didn't
matter your economic level, it didn't matter your gender,
they showed up. 1,500 to 2,000 people a night
and of that, among those people was Jeremiah Lanphier and
so it was really exciting to just discover that gem and then he went back into
what was going to be his life in New York City and you know,
he took revival with him. - So before we go any
further with that, Doug, I know I'm asking the Brits
something about America. - Oh, this is not good. - But in that and we just... You mentioned something before
we went on the air, about-- when I looked back at Jeremy
Lanphier and what he did with his prayer meeting, it was from 12 o'clock to
1 o'clock every day... - Yea. - What did he tell people
that they had to do? - They had a rule and you
must not break this rule. It's the "5 minute rule" because they wanted
to give as many people an opportunity to pray
so it was a poster. It was the "5 minute rule"
and people were invited to come in the businessmen lunch hour. Now his background was
a businessman and he realized all these
people in New York, Fulton Street is where it is. I mean today, that street
is in the shadow of the World Trade Center.. - Right. And so, he would pull out
all these bills and these businessmen
had started to show up and something happened in
the business world of... Actually, the whole world
actually at that time... There was a big big
crash...It was akin to 2008 and with no bail out. - Right. - And so all these businessmen
would just pile into these
prayer meetings. They had 10,000 every day
attending prayer meetings. One of the newspapers,
they took a reporter and a buggy and he rushed to as many of
these as he could get to. He got to 12 and there
were many many more. He counted 6,000. So people instead of
turning to despair, were turning to God. It was called in some
places a "year of grace". In the financial world,
it was a year of panic. - Right. - But an interesting thing
was, it was not headed up by a big evangelist
or a big name... - Yes, the "No Name" revival. - Yea. I mean, there was one lady,
she traveled from the west part of the country in
those days on a train to 14th street and she
said this, "It was a never-ending
continuous prayer meeting". She would come to one
station and stop there. There is a prayer meeting on the
train platform. On the train! People were praying everywhere. - Now Greg, Pastor Greg? - 1857? - 1857. - Now isn't that like where we
are supposed to be? - Yea. Sure. - We got open communication
to God like you talked about... - Yea, - So but now, interesting thing,
Greg in that is that, correct me if
I'm wrong here, they couldn't--When we say
prayer, that we're gonna have
a prayer meeting or prayer revival meeting, typically what happens
nowadays is that you get there and you go to the
church and the meeting... Someone gets up and
preaches for an hour. - Right, oh yea. - You know, and then there
if you're lucky at some point, not lucky but...If
there is some point, somebody eventually prays
and that may be it and we call it a prayer meeting. That's not a prayer meeting. But that wasn't the way
it was there, was it? - Back in the day, they used to just hang
on and hold... Brother Hagin said it this way. "Pray until you
get the release". - Right. - In your spirit. And you pray the Word and you
pray until you get that release And the old-timers,
they did that. I call it, hanging
on to their horns. "Horns of the altar",
- Yes. - And amazing things
would happen. There is a great story
here of--A prayer request was put in an envelop and
handed and they would be opened so a prayer
request comes up and says, "I'm a Christian, I'm
praying for my unsafe husband and please, pray for him". But things would happen in
these prayer meetings that you would not expect
so a man gets up. A big burly guy and says, "I think I'm that man and
please pray for me". He sits down and someone
else gets up and goes, "No, I'm sure I'm that man". 5 or 6 people just--that was in
a prayer meeting in Kalamazoo and as a result of
that, 600 people who got saved. who would have
heard such a thing. It's a prayer meeting. The people would come and
there is no much preaching in these at all,
it's just prayer. - Right. - And people actually, they
preferred to go to a prayer
meeting then to a preaching meeting. - True, yea. - Well in New York City, the
businessmen gathered and they rented a theatre. And
many of the prayer meetings, it was very mal-oriented but
in this prayer meeting, they allowed any gender,
any color to speak and
participate and so because they were hoping
that they'd actually get some of these streetwalkers
and so on, you know, get them into this and
get them saved and so basically, in one of these
meetings, a gentleman stands up and he's a sea
captain and he said that his ship had
been shipwrecked and for 4 days, he was
lashed to a ship and and he said, finally he
said, "God, if You save me, I'll serve You". And so here he was giving
testimony in the meeting and he ended up saying, "And
now it's my quest to pray that all my shipmates
would also find Christ". And so and later on, he's going
out of these same harbor, okay? New ship and they are having
these prayer meetings on the
ship. 5 ships coming in, I've
been hit with conviction. They ended up 10 mile
perimeter of America and they just got landed
with conviction. And they started
at 5 ships accounted that we are holding daily prayer
meetings as well. - And the newspapers just
caught on to this and that helped to spread,
really, the revival and they focused on
Jeremiah Lanphier in Fulton Street and so
his name--That's why it always comes up but it's
spread over, I mean to Northern Ireland, to South Africa, all different places. - 7 different nations, wow! - But before we get into
all that, because I know
we're international but before we get into
the international part, so Greg, we've got people
praying, we've got people
every day and you know, what's
happening, while we don't... Usually the words
prayer and revival, you don't usually hear
those together because you usually kind of
think, well they pray and the
revival comes. - Right. But it really was a blending. There was revival...I'm
telling you, when people stands up in the
middle of the meeting and go, "Oh, that's me! That's a revival, that's a
refreshing and a renewing that something is going on. So we've got this whole
thing happening but there is the date. Why is it that's
called September 23rd? - See that's what...You
guys were talking about. I'm basically seated quiet
thinking about this because I'm going through
the history timeline here. We just passed the Gold Rush of 1849...and we are in 1857, it's just
prior to the Civil War. President Buchanan is there. Buchanan is a bachelor, the only
bachelor president we ever had, 15th president
of the United States and he's an interesting guy. The only guy from
Pennsylvania but his parents are Ulster Scots
from Ulster, Ireland and you just mentioned Ulster. - Um. Huge revival there,
huge, huge... - At the same time? - Yep. - All of these things, you're
telling me happened on the 23rd? - Tasmania had a revival,
Transylvania which would
undergo 5 nations and ended up been
Hungary...been called "hungry", Ulster's revival... We had South Africa
with the Zulus. We had, gosh, there were 8
different ones that we ended
up having. Canada, I mean, we've
got Caughey who is - All across Canada. - Yea. - Yea, but on this date, I
mean there is history that says on that date,
things were happening? - Okay, I got it.
- Yea. - 1857 is the
Gregorian calendar. That's our calendar,
it's not God's calendar. - Uh-uh.
- Um - So what is it? - September Tishri
15th, it's the code. - Ah! - This is the Feast of
Tabernacles. - We didn't expect to find this
and when we started running
across diaries and it said, the South
African revival happened on the exact day as the
Noonday Prayer Revival. Then I started looking at all
these other places I'd found looking for that same thing to
see if that existed and we found
it in 8 countries. - Okay, now I've got...chilly
willies on me because the Feast of Tabernacles is one
of the appointed feast of God. He said, "These are my
feast, my appointed times and it's right after
the Day of Atonement. Atonement was for the Jews. Atone for their sin for
the year. Feast of Tabernacles is
the atonement for the nations. - Oh, my word. - Wow... - When the Jewish people
would atone for the nations and bring them
in, it's the wave offering. It's what we refer to as
Palm Sunday sometime and the reason they got so
upset at Jesus is because it was happening
at the wrong time. It's happening at Passover
instead of Tabernacle or Booths or Sukkot. It's when they
lived...Till this day, they make a little
booths for themselves. It's the Atonement
of the Nations. It's the washing of the water. There is a water blessing
that the priest would do and Jesus stands up in Jerusalem
at this time and He says, "I'm this living water. If you drink of me, out of your
belly will flow a living water" and so now we got
these revivals breaking out. Now I want to know why, I want
to know if it's Jubilee year, well I've got to look that up. - Quickly, you said 8 nations. So America, Canada, Ireland, - Tasmania, Transylvania, - Which is basically Hungary. - Yea... - South Africa,
- South Africa. So there are actually
records that go back and say, "On this date,
something happened". - Yea. Well, people are all excited
because in 1857, they didn't know what
was going on. In fact, even here in the United
States, before, just before
that as a prep, New Orleans, I guess Jesse
Duplantis would say "N'aw-lins" but basically in New
Orleans and in Nashville and there were several
other towns that were considered Southern towns, they had this revival that
was happening as well but it's like when the Noonday
Prayer Revival happened-- and see, the thing is it
didn't just happened with
Jeremiah. Down the street, you have the
YMCA that was setting up this. You had the Businessmen
that were renting this theater. Everybody just--There
was a spirit of prayer and this desire for this meeting
that just came out of nowhere and you had obviously Finney
that was preparing. You had the South Carolina
revival that something happened. But it was just like it
just--It was like the Spirit of God just moved
over the earth and this just happened and... - So what happened in
South Africa? - Well, there was in 1856,
there were a bunch of people who were prophets
and they were tribal connected and so it wasn't like what
we think as prophets where it's godly. They were ungodly, they
were giving out prophecies that were intended to harm
the people and so this one 16-year-old girl, she
tells this long prophecy about, "Oh, the sun is
gonna turn this color and if you kill your animals,
if you destroy your grain, the British - who were
occupying that area - would be driven to the sea". So they do it. - Ha ha. - Sorry Doug. They do it and the problem is
they starved and it was horrid. They started
eating each other. Some of the people ran to
the missionaries in that area to their missions...ran
to basically the government said you know,
eventually we will get around... you know how government
move slower. - Sure. - Well when it came to
the missionaries, they gave them food, they gave
them a new start in life but they also gave them Jesus
and the revival was huge. It broke the tribal's
structure in that area. - And you have to almost
sometimes go to that region to understand
how strong the tribal structure, how deep that goes because
that is for that to be broken, that is huge. I mean it really
really is huge. What was going on over in
your neck of the woods? - Well, I was there just a
couple of months ago in
Northern Ireland - I thought you meant
you were there in 1857... - Ha ha... - 1857 that's right. My little time warp there and even today, it's an enclave
of evangelical Christians. That's an 150 years on
but it began...I mean, there were people who were
praying but it broke out through exactly
what you were saying it was that "one person" and
that one person was a
young man called James Maclurcan and he
got saved through one person who was a
missionary from England, who had gone to Northern Ireland
and had left back Mrs. Colville, I
believe, a failure. And she only won one
person to the Lord. That "one person" was
a straight Calvinist. He was born saved and she
convinced him he needed a
relationship with God. He led 3 of his other friends to
the Lord and these 4 people
were a bit bored. They hadn't got anything to do so a pastor says, "Guys,
do something! Please do something". So they said, "We will get
the old school house and we will just get people in
to pray and read the Bible". And so they just started
and more people came and then all of a sudden,
there were hundreds of people and then the old school house is not big enough so they
moved it to another place. But it was happening a lot
through the youth and even
the children. Now when it got really
big, all the big churches and evangelical auditoriums were filled with people
who were praying and preaching. But it's so interesting
that they recognized that God would use the children
and a great story there. This man called
Henry Montgomery. Now he wrote a book called
The Children of '59 and he tells his story. Amazing. I mean just think about it. He's a 12 year-old boy and
his daddy just takes him around all these revival
centers and these churches. It was 6 o'clock in
the morning, not in the evening. He's at a prayer meeting and
there is a great quiet and
hush there and this 13-year-old boy is
led up to the pulpit. He's got no shoes on his
feet and young Henry, he's just transformed because
this boy gives an impassioned plea for people
to give their life to God. There were prayer meetings that
would happen among the children. - Right. You were showing me a
picture in this book. - Oh, tremendous, absolutely
outstanding of all the children. Of course I lost
my place here now. All the children. Here we go. Just a great story there. Okay, here is a
wonderful illustration. A young boy, he's told to
remain at home because the family is going to a
prayer meeting and so his mom gets back in the
evening and she says, you know, "Little Johnny,
how was your day"? Thinking "Well, I
played in the mud". He didn't say that. He said, "I had a fine day. Some friends came over and
we had a prayer meeting on the side of the road". He's 8 years old. - Wow. - And then there is a pastor. He founds out that 30 of
these 8 and 9 year-olds had been meeting for like 3 or
4 days now for prayer and they would pray for their
unsaved friends and the church elders were not
afraid I mean to pluck these young ones up and
put them in the pulpit. - True. - Interesting. And that's huge again that
they were not afraid to put a child in the pulpit. - Uh huh... - True. - Yea, yea. - Especially there. - Another things that we saw
with revivals like with Ulster, it came in and there was
this wave of the Spirit of God that did something...You know, touched the heart of the
people and then there would be a second wave
that would come through. They sent Doctor Gibson
and reverend William McClure to check out the
American Revival and when they came back, that's
when the revival just exploded. France had the same thing
where they basically had the revival started in
1857 at the time period, it went through the elite
of Paris and it was instrumental
and what brought Paris and all the leadership there into their first ever
democratic election, from being you know,
royal, king...king leadership. They sent someone
too, you know, reverend Monod to America
and he takes it back and they have revival that
goes all the way through literally an
awakening in France. - Now doesn't it not sound
familiar with Azusa street how they were doing that? -Yea. - Remember how they
came to Azusa... "He's the same yesterday,
today and forever". - Yea. - "And the Lord, God
changes not". - And you know what? These guys that we've
spoken about before were influential in
their writings and this gentleman here,
in his writings... He had the orphanages in
the 1800's and so people would get these and get
hungry and get free and wonderful things
you know just started to happen. - This was a Scottish
evangelist, Robert Haldane and he just--he wasn't involved
in the UK side of things and he went to Geneva,
Switzerland just to a
town there, you know a little
school where they were 25 people learning about God and when they had the desire
to do something for God. So he found out that 16 of
them were not saved so he began holding weekly
meetings in his home to talk to these guys
about the Lord and 16 of them accepted Christ. 4 of those guys and they
created a network that would go on and become
called "Le Réveil", and there was a German version
and there were a Swiss version and it would give Germany
30 years of revival and it would
impact France so hugely. But basically one guy,
he just--he wasn't even in those places for very long,
just a few months out of his
whole life and it transformed
those nations. - All over, it's this...It's
not just one person, it's one person and then one
person and then one person ...and then one person. So everyone could
be that one person. It's exactly what
you've been saying, Gene. - Yea, the ability. So, what do you think, Pastor
Greg with this prayer revival... What did America get from this? Listen and you
mentioned it earlier. We are on the heels
of the Civil War. We are on the beginning
of the Civil War. This is just prior to... - Right. - We have 1415 banks go
belly up... - And see, that's what it's
interesting because if you read Buchanan.
Buchanan... was very much against us
having financial reserves in America. - Why was he against it? - I don't know. - He just didn't think... - It's just a crazy
thing, isn't it? - I mean, beginning
of the year... - You may have a
quote on that. - Yea, oh yea. I mean, beginning of
the year of that Great Revival was the year
of the financial... - And we've got gold
from the Gold Rush... - Yea, yea so he said in
his Inaugural Address that he was embarrassed
by having too much of a surplus and yet, 9 months
after that, it's all gone. - I can't prove this. I'm just going from my
gut here, Pastor Gene. - Yea. I think it got us
Abraham Lincoln. You know, every week we
come here guys, and we talk about
revival history and listen, the
reports come in really from all
over the globe. People that watch us
every week that are so interested in
what God is doing, not just through history but doing now in
revivals. I've had Greg, we've
have pastors come up
and talk about, "Hey, thanks for doing
our research for us". - Ha ha. - You know, we are
preaching it. Listen, I just want to
tell you, thank you all for supporting the Believer's
Voice of Victory network because of what you do, allows us to bring this
program to you every week. And I just want
to say thank you. Keep your support coming. And we will see you next time, right here, on Revival Radio TV.
