“I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” — Joel 2:28
Background
By the end of the nineteenth century, the Welsh church was strong on the outside and cold within. The chapels of every denomination were full; the pulpits were less and less able to give a word of life.
Between 1903 and 1904, a few Welsh ministers began to pray for a new revival. Joseph Jenkins (1859–1929), a Calvinistic Methodist minister at New Quay, experienced what he himself called a “baptism with the Holy Spirit” in late 1903 and began leading his congregation — especially the young people — into deeper consecration. At the same time, Seth Joshua (1858–1925), a Presbyterian evangelist of the Forward Movement, had been traveling for years across Wales praying for a national spiritual awakening. (Revival Library — 1904–1905 Welsh Revival)
The Keswick Convention’s “deeper life” message had crossed into Wales from England; the Llandrindod Wells Convention (1903–1904), which Jessie Penn-Lewis (1861–1927) helped to establish, became the crucible in which Welsh ministers were brought into deeper surrender. (Revival Library — Penn-Lewis and the 1906 Welsh Revival)
What happened
February 14, 1904 — At a young people’s meeting at New Quay, fifteen-year-old Florrie Evans (1884–1967) stood and said, “I love the Lord Jesus Christ with all my heart.” Eyewitnesses said the effect was “as an electric shock upon the congregation.” This is commonly counted as the spark of the revival. (Revival Library — 1904–1905 Welsh Revival)
September 29, 1904 — At a convention at Blaenannerch in Cardiganshire, Seth Joshua prayed, “O Lord, bend us.” A twenty-six-year-old former collier and student for the ministry named Evan Roberts (1878–1951) fell to his knees, perspiration and tears mingling, crying, “Bend me! Bend me! Bend us!” He later described it: “A wave of peace flooded my bosom.” (Christian History Institute — Evan Roberts)
October 31, 1904 — Roberts, sensing a clear leading from the Lord, left Newcastle Emlyn ministerial school and went home to Loughor. He told his mother: “There will be a great change in Loughor in less than a fortnight. We are going to have the greatest revival that Wales has ever seen.” (Counseling One Another — The Four Points)
November 2, 1904 — At a young people’s meeting at Moriah Chapel in Loughor, Roberts laid out his “Four Points”:
- Confess all known sin — past sins must be dealt with and cleansed.
- Remove everything that is doubtful from your life and forgive everybody — no one excluded.
- Obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit — instantly, totally, unquestioningly.
- Confess Christ publicly.
By the end of that first week some sixty to one hundred and seventeen people had come to the Lord. By November 11, Moriah Chapel was packed with over eight hundred. Meetings ran eight or nine hours, often into the early morning — no preacher, no announced order, no sermon. Hymns rose unbidden; William Rees’ “Dyma gariad fel y moroedd” (“Here is love, vast as the ocean”) became the revival’s anthem, sung even by miners deep in the pits. Public confession, spontaneous prayer, and singing took the place of the pulpit. Women, young people, miners — the ones who normally had no voice — were the voices. (Christian History Magazine — “Lord, bend us”)
Key figures
- Evan Roberts (1878–1951) — born in Loughor; coal miner from age 11 for twelve years, then a blacksmith apprentice; from age 13 had prayed daily for revival. The most public face of the awakening. (Evan Roberts — Wikipedia)
- Joseph Jenkins (1859–1929) — Calvinistic Methodist minister at New Quay; pre-Roberts initiator.
- Seth Joshua (1858–1925) — Presbyterian evangelist of the Forward Movement; the prayer “O Lord, bend us” came from his lips.
- Florrie Evans (1884–1967) — the fifteen-year-old girl whose simple testimony lit the fuse.
- R. B. Jones — Welsh Baptist preacher whose work in North Wales paralleled Roberts’ in the south.
- Jessie Penn-Lewis (1861–1927) — Welsh Methodist writer and Keswick speaker; the revival’s chief chronicler; later co-author with Roberts of War on the Saints.
Outcome and impact
In less than nine months, about 100,000 came to the Lord in Wales; some estimates run as high as 150,000, with around 80% still walking with the Lord decades later. (Evan Roberts — Wikipedia) (Christian History Institute)
Welsh society changed visibly:
- Taverns went broke. (Christian History Institute)
- Drunkenness convictions in Glamorgan dropped nearly fifty percent between 1902 and 1907. (1904–1905 Welsh Revival — Wikipedia)
- Magistrates were handed white gloves — the courtroom symbol of no cases to try. (Christian History Magazine)
- The pit ponies in the coal mines “had to be retrained to understand the commands of kindness that replaced curses and blows” — because the miners had stopped cursing. (Christian History Institute)
By the end of 1905, Welsh church membership had risen from 48.9% to 56% of the population. (1904–1905 Welsh Revival — Wikipedia)
The fire crossed the ocean
News of the revival, carried by the Western Mail and by Penn-Lewis’ weekly reports in The Life of Faith, traveled the world in months:
- India — Pandita Ramabai at the Mukti Mission near Pune, hearing reports from Wales, called her widows and orphans to prayer. In June 1905 the Mukti Revival broke out. (EBSCO Research — Welsh Revival Spreads Pentecostalism)
- Korea — the 1907 Pyongyang Revival (the “Korean Pentecost”).
- United States — the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 in Los Angeles, led by William Seymour. Frank Bartleman, eyewitness chronicler of Azusa, wrote: “The present world-wide revival was rocked in the cradle of little Wales. It was brought up in India, following; becoming full-grown in Los Angeles later.” (Revival Library — Welsh Revival and Azusa)
Aftermath
By the spring of 1906, Roberts collapsed. A controversial Liverpool campaign, a public attack by Rev. Peter Price in the Western Mail, and the long exhaustion of the work all weighed him down. He moved to Leicester and lived for years in the home of the Penn-Lewises, largely in seclusion, devoting himself to intercessory prayer. (Evan Roberts — Wikipedia)
In 1912, Roberts and Penn-Lewis co-authored War on the Saints. In the preface they described the book as “a testimony against the outbreak of demons upon the spiritual Church, which followed the outpouring of the Spirit of God in Wales.” The book remained controversial — Roberts later distanced himself from parts of it — but it became a foundational work on spiritual warfare. (Jessie Penn-Lewis — Wikipedia)
Roberts lived quietly in Brighton from 1921, returned later to Cardiff, and went to be with the Lord on January 29, 1951.
Connection to the Lord’s recovery
The Welsh Revival is one of the most important spiritual lines that flowed into the Lord’s recovery. The line is not abstract — it has specific names and specific books.
The line passed through Margaret E. Barber (1866–1930) into China. When young Brother Watchman Nee was a new believer in Foochow (Fuzhou), this English missionary became his spiritual mentor. Barber herself had been deeply shaped by the Welsh and Keswick streams. Once she judged Brother Nee “mature enough,” she opened her library to him and put into his hands the writings of:
- Jessie Penn-Lewis (the chief chronicler of the Welsh Revival)
- T. Austin-Sparks (later co-laborer with Penn-Lewis in the Overcomer testimony)
- D. M. Panton, Robert Govett, G. H. Pember, Andrew Murray, F. B. Meyer
- Madame Guyon, Fénelon, Brother Lawrence (the Catholic mystics)
- Darby and the Brethren writers
(Margaret E. Barber — Wikipedia) (A Sweet Savor — Watchman Nee)
Brother Watchman Nee
Brother Watchman Nee called the 1904 Welsh Revival “the greatest known revival in church history.” He read everything he could find about Evan Roberts and the Welsh awakening. His magazine The Christian and his 1928 magnum opus The Spiritual Man drew heavily on Penn-Lewis’ Soul and Spirit and the experience of Roberts. Brother Nee held that Roberts and Penn-Lewis had recovered the truth of spiritual warfare to the church — War on the Saints underlies entire sections of The Spiritual Man. (Watchman Nee — faithsaves.net)
When Brother Nee visited England in 1933, he went in person to the Honor Oak Christian Fellowship in London to meet T. Austin-Sparks — the same Austin-Sparks who had stood with Penn-Lewis in the post-revival intercessory ministry. Brother Nee’s own paper The Open Door was modeled on the format of Penn-Lewis’ The Overcomer and Austin-Sparks’ A Witness and A Testimony. (BDCC — Watchman Nee)
Brother Witness Lee
Brother Witness Lee placed the Welsh stream within what he called the “inner life group” — the line that runs from the Catholic mystics through William Law, Andrew Murray, Penn-Lewis, and Austin-Sparks, and was carried through Margaret Barber to China, where Brother Watchman Nee took it up. He said plainly: “Many portions of The Spiritual Man, which was written by Brother Nee, are translations of her [Penn-Lewis’] books.” (Ministry Samples — The Influence of the Inner Life Group)
The spiritual line is therefore clearly traceable: Welsh Revival (1904) → Penn-Lewis and Austin-Sparks (The Overcomer) → Margaret Barber (Foochow) → Brother Watchman Nee → Brother Witness Lee.
Cautions left behind
Honestly looked at, the Welsh Revival left two cautions that cannot be ignored:
The collapse of the revival. Roberts’ personal breakdown, and the drop of Welsh church membership back to pre-revival levels by 1909, are sobering things to hear. Without sustained shepherding, without proper church life and the building up of the Body, no revival — however great — can last. Brother Nee drew from precisely this lesson when he later spoke of the building up of the church. (1904–1905 Welsh Revival — Wikipedia)
War on the Saints controversy. The line between true and counterfeit spiritual experience was a lesson the revival paid heavily for. The later weight given in the Lord’s recovery to the discernment of spirit and soul grew out of exactly this soil.
Significance
The visible effects of the Welsh Revival lasted less than a year. But it put some things back at the center of the church —
A schoolgirl’s simple sentence, “I love the Lord Jesus”; a preacher’s kneeling cry, “Bend me”; a Welsh hymn rising up in the depths of a coal pit; a willingness to obey the Spirit “instantly, totally, unquestioningly.”
More than that, it passed the torch to the next runner. Margaret Barber’s bookshelf — those pamphlets from Penn-Lewis, the issues of The Overcomer — became the groundwork for Brother Watchman Nee’s writing of The Spiritual Man, his teaching on the discernment of spirit and soul, and the practice of spiritual warfare. The Chinese church of the early twentieth century took its heat from the small flame in Wales.
“Here is love, vast as the ocean, Loving kindness as the flood, When the Prince of life, our Ransom, Shed for us His precious blood.” — William Rees, “Dyma gariad fel y moroedd,” the hymn of the Welsh Revival