This introduction to revival and his personal testimony, from atheist to revivalist, is an excerpt from Ian Hall’s book, Times of Renewal: A History and Theology of Revival and Spiritual Awakenings (Encourage Publishing, 2024).

Revival is a major topic of interest in the Christian world today. Newspaper and magazine articles, both religious and secular, sporadically feature reports from every inhabited continent bringing news of a revitalization of the spiritual life of the church. For some three years in the mid-nineties, an obscure Toronto Charismatic Church became the surprising venue for hundreds of thousands of visitors from virtually every country around the world, because Revival, or at least “a refreshing”, was reported to be occurring there. As interest waned a northwest Florida Pentecostal Church claimed the spotlight for some two years. Then in 2008 a central Florida church briefly seized the Christian world’s attention. Most recently in February 2023, has come the news of a fresh awakening at several Christian Colleges and Universities in the USA and in other countries. In 1996 the American Assemblies of God renamed its “Signs and Wonders” Conference in Springfield, Missouri, “Revival Now”. What does it all mean?

The Significance of Revival. For some, Revival is an arcane topic of interest only to religious zealots longing for the good old days of the Nineteenth Century. When our world is about to self-destruct in sociological and economic chaos, the study of Revival seems as helpful as meditating during an earthquake would be. Nevertheless, from very different theological perspectives William G. McLoughlin (1922–1992) and Timothy L. Smith (1924–1997) rooted historical revitalizations of society in religious revivals.¹

The Definition of Revival. In North America in particular, revival is used in two different ways. Webster’s Dictionary defines revival as “an awakening, in a church or community, of interest in and care for matters relating to personal religion; (and) a service or a series of services for the purpose of effecting a religious awakening.”⁴ We may therefore speak of a revival in the older and more widely used sense of a spiritual awakening affecting a whole community. We may also speak of a revival in the peculiarly American sense of a type of evangelistic crusade that is intended hopefully to revitalize the believers and to awaken the surrounding community.

This American usage of revival is usually traced back to the teaching of Charles G. Finney (1792–1875), the renowned nineteenth century revivalist. He asserted that:

“A revival is the result of the right use of the appropriate means. The means which God has enjoined for the production of a revival, doubtless have a natural tendency to produce a revival. … A revival is as naturally a result of the appropriate means as a crop is of the use of its appropriate means.”⁵

By linking revival to “the right use of the appropriate means” Finney taught that revival is the result of something that we do. He did, however, acknowledge that, of themselves “means will not produce a revival, we all know, without the blessing of God.”⁶ Nevertheless amongst his followers, revival came to be used for the means themselves, not solely for the intended result of those means.

If these variant usages are not clearly distinguished, we may encounter such confusing comments as: “We had a revival, but nobody was revived,” or, “We had a revival in our church, and, in the middle of it, God sent us a revival.” If our terms are not clear, our language confuses rather than communicates our meaning. Dr. J. Edwin Orr (1912–1987), the renowned revival scholar, told of passing a church in southern California that advertised: “Revival – every night except Monday.” At the same time a neighboring church was advertising: “Revival – every night except Friday.” Orr wondered why one could not have revival on a Monday and the other could not have revival on a Friday. Could the Lord be too busy to be present every night? Or, were the believers too busy with other things to be revived every night?

Although the term Revival may suggest a scheduled Revival Crusade to the American mind, our use is in the sense of a quickening or renewing by the Holy Spirit of the spiritual life of the believers, individually and as the Body of  Christ in a given community, which prompts a return to New Testament Christianity. Thus, Orr defined an Evangelical Awakening, his preferred term for an authentic revival, as:

“An Evangelical Awakening is a movement of the Holy Spirit bringing about a revival of New Testament Christianity in the Church of Christ and its related community. Such an awakening may change in a significant way an individual only; or it may affect a larger group of believers; or it may move a congregation, or the churches of a city or a district, or the whole body of believers throughout a country or a continent; or indeed the larger body of believers throughout the world.”⁷

Orr’s definition most precisely describes what has happened in the historical revivals of Christianity, and corresponds with my personal experience of the work of God.

A Personal Journey in Revival. I became a Christian believer through a life-transforming spiritual encounter with God in the city of Kingston-upon-Hull in England on Wednesday, November 27, 1957. A young man, David King, had been witnessing to me, a young atheist, about his Christian faith. In an attempt to demonstrate the falsity of his belief in the existence of God, I agreed to pray a simple prayer: “God, be merciful to me a sinner.”⁸ Although at first nothing happened, which is precisely what I expected, on the third time of repeating that prayer I suddenly became conscious of an unseen presence, whose overwhelming holiness exposed the sinfulness of my heart. The intensity of that experience humbled me in repentance and awakened me to the reality of God.

Shortly afterwards David recommended to me a book by a Scots revivalist, Duncan Campbell (1898–1972),⁹ which gave me a clearer perspective on my own experience, and also aroused in me a lifelong interest in Revival. In the summer of 1959, I read in a Christian paper an advertisement for a preaching convention in the nearby city of Sheffield, at which the main speaker would be the same Duncan Campbell. Although the convention was only a week away, I resolved to go and the pastor of the host church offered to accommodate me in his home. To my delight I discovered that Campbell was also staying in the same home. To sit across the kitchen table from this venerable Man of God after church each night until the early hours of the morning and to hear him describe the revivals in the Hebrides Islands in 1949 and 1957 was like heaven to me.

Although I entered the Christian ministry the next year with the full expectation that God would surely send another revival, it was not until August 4, 1974, that that expectation was realized in my experience. For the previous five years I, together with my wife, Sheila, had been pastoring a struggling Elim Pentecostal Church in Ryde, Isle of Wight, with modest success. Unexpectedly in the morning service a very refined older lady in the congregation spontaneously began to sing in the Spirit. Quickly the singing spread until the whole congregation had joined in this “song without words.” That marked the beginning of a remarkable thirteen months of spiritual awakening, which by the time it ended, had transformed virtually every congregation on the island, resulting in, among others, the proliferating of interdenominational prayer groups in every parish on the island and the doubling of church attendance.¹⁰

News of what had occurred on the Isle of Wight began to spread and as a result Edwin Orr invited me to teach in the “Oxford Reading and Research Conference on Revival” at Regents Park College, Oxford in July, 1977, so beginning an association that lasted until Orr’s death almost ten years later. Orr’s encouragement prompted me to turn my interest in Revival into an intense study and careful analysis of the whole subject, resulting in a series of lectures delivered each year at North Central Bible College (now North Central University), Minneapolis, Minnesota, throughout the 1980s, and in many churches, conferences, seminars, and other Bible Colleges in the U.S.A. and Europe. This present volume on the History and Theology of Revival and Spiritual Awakenings is based upon those lectures, augmented by additional research and further experiences of Revival, which occurred during my pastoral ministry in the London borough of Ilford, and in my ministry as a missionary-evangelist in Germany and Romania.

Although I have tried to be as accurate and comprehensive as possible, so much new material has recently been brought to my attention by the many friends who have provided encouragement and advice that I am increasingly aware that “the half has not been told.” My appreciation for all who have contributed news and views on this topic cannot be adequately expressed, especially to my wife, Sheila, and to our son, Jonathan. All errors and omissions are solely my own.

As the church enters its third millennium, there is apparent not only an increasing sense of apprehension and anticipation, but also a great hunger for personal and corporate revival in the Body of Christ worldwide. I pray that this volume in some small way will help inspire faith and expectancy for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our day.

PR

This is an excerpt from Ian Hall, Times of Renewal: A History and Theology of Revival and Spiritual Awakenings (Encourage Publishing, 2024). Used with permission.

PneumaReview.com interview with Dr. Ian Hall about Times of Renewal

For the Table of Contents from Ian Hall, Times of Renewal, see this link.

Notes

1 W.G. McLoughlin: Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607 – 1977 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1978); T.L. Smith: Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York, NY: Harper, 1957).

2 Matthew 28:19, 20; Mark 16:15.

3 K.S. Latourette: A History of the Expansion of Christianity (Exeter, U.K.: Paternoster, 1971 edn.) 7 volumes.

4 New Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language (New York, NY: Delair Publishing, 1981), 822.

5 C.G. Finney: Revivals of Religion (London, U.K.: Morgan and Scott, 1913, second edition), 5 (emphasis original).

6 Ibid.

7 J.E. Orr: The Eager Feet: Evangelical Awakenings, 1790 – 1830 (Chicago, IL: Moody, 1975), vii.

8 Luke 18:13.

9 D. Campbell: The Price and Power of Revival (London, UK: Parry Jackman, 1957).

10 Minutes of the Ryde Ministerial Fraternal, July 17, 1975.

Editor’s note: This academic paper by Peter Althouse, whom Jürgen Moltmann described in his autobiography as one of “the younger theologians of the Pentecostal movement,” investigates the roots of the Keswick movement and its influence on Pentecostalism.

1. Introduction

The first Keswick Convention convened in June 1875, when a few hundred men and women gathered in the Northwestern British town of Keswick for a series of Bible studies, addresses and prayer meetings designed to promote “practical holiness.”¹ This convention was directly influenced by Robert Pearsall Smith, a Quaker glass maker with Holiness leanings who, with his wife Hannah Whithall Smith and Presbyterian friend W.E. Boardman, conducted a series of meetings in 1873 in an effort to foster a “higher Christian life” for both clergy and lay-persons. In August 1874, R.P. Smith, Theodore Monod, Otto Stockmayer, Evan Hopkins, Asa Mahan and W.E. Boardman conducted a conference at Oxford, one which had significant influence on the later Keswick conference. Finally, just a month prior to the Keswick conference Smith, Hopkins, Mahan and Monod conducted a meeting in Brighton with the same goals in mind. T.D. Harford-Battersby and Robert Wilson then invited the Smiths to Keswick to conduct a “Union Meeting for the Promotion of Practical Holiness,” but just before the conference Smith withdrew from the meeting for reasons shrouded in mystery. The leadership of the first Keswick Convention consequently fell to Battersby.²

The Keswick Convention was evangelical in its orientation,³ but unlike the American revivalism which influenced it, Keswick would more accurately be defined as a renewal movement. Keswick, while meeting annually to this day, had not formed an “official” theology, had not schismed into a new denomination and, like its first meeting, consisted of an interdenominational constituency with its own organizational structures.⁴ Yet the Keswick movement was an important development in the history of British Christianity, particularly in its validation of a Christian life of holiness for those who were uneasy with Wesleyan perfectionism. It had significant influence as well, specifically in its impact upon the development and tensions within American Pentecostalism as Keswick theology was reintroduced into North America.

More generally, the Keswick movement was impacted by two streams of theology: the “new light” and New School Calvinism of American revivalism, particularly in the figures of Charles G. Finney and Asa Mahan of the Oberlin school and Wesleyan perfectionism particularly in the Holiness movements. Yet, in the interplay of Wesleyan and Calvinist theological streams, tensions existed, particularly in the doctrine of sanctification. J. Robertson McQuilkin, a Keswick scholar, has pointed out that Keswick was accused by Presbyterian minister B.B, Warfield of teaching perfectionism of the Wesleyan kind⁵ and from the other side, H.A. Baldwin, a Free Methodist minister, objected to Keswick holiness when he commented “‘Keswickism’ is described as ‘one of the most dangerous enemies of the experience of holiness…for they give us to understand that such a thing as the entire eradication of the carnal nature from the soul is an impossibility in this world.”⁶ This friction was due, in part, to the diversity of leadership. While the leadership of the Keswick conferences was dominated by evangelical Anglicans and American revivalists, there were some Wesleyans in the group. However, modern scholarship generally agrees that the Keswick view of sanctification had more of a Reformed view.

This paper will argue that the Keswick understanding of sin and sanctification did in fact adopt a “New School” Calvinist view distinct from the Wesleyan perfectionist view, even though there was a definite interplay of Wesleyan perfectionism in both New School and Keswick thought. Furthermore, this understanding had a direct and divisive impact on the formation and development of American Pentecostalism. This position will be argued by first examining the theological environment of Wesleyan Holiness and American Revivalism’s understanding of sin and sanctification as a prolegomena to the Keswick Conferences. Second, the Keswick view will be examined with its distinctiveness from its forbearers. Finally, the implications that the Keswick view had on the formation and development of American Pentecostalism will be examined, particularly in the sanctification controversy of 1910 centred around the theological distinctions of William Durham. At the same time, it will be argued that the very seeds of the controversy were in place at the very onset of the Pentecostal movement in 1900/1908 and that this was part of the reason for the formation of the movement.

II. The Perfectionism of Wesleyan Methodism and the Holiness Movement

John Wesley’s theology of salvation, as it related to his understanding of sin and sanctification, has had significant impact upon Protestant Christianity (including the Keswick movement) for the past two centuries. Unlike subsequent Wesleyan and Pentecostal movements which understood elements of salvation as stages of Christian experience, i.e. conversion, perfection as the “second blessing and/or baptism of the Holy Spirit, Wesley understood salvation as moments or dimensions of faith. Thus conviction of sin, repentance, justification and sanctification were dimensions of salvation which spanned across the life of the Christian.⁷ Wesley preached that

Falling Under the Power of the Spirit

John Arnott at the Toronto Airport Christian outpouring (circa 2002)

The phenomenon of falling under the power of the Spirit occurred in the revivals of Jonathan Edwards. His assessment was that a person may “fail bodily strength” due to fear of hell and the conviction by the Holy Spirit or due to a “foretaste of heaven.”[1] John Wesley recognized falling to the ground as a manifestation from God, and records many such instances in his ministry. In fact, George Whitefield criticized Wesley for permitting the phenomena until it began happening in his own meetings.[2] The Kentucky revivals of 1800-1801, which involved Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, was replete with similar demonstrations.[3] In the early 1800s, the revivals led by Methodist circuit riding preacher Peter Cartwright (who was converted in the Kentucky revivals) were often accompanied by people falling under God’s power, including some Baptists.[4] Finney’s ministry also frequently manifested fainting or swooning, what he called “falling under the power of God.”[5] The Welsh revival of 1859 was accompanied by swooning as “waves of power often overwhelmed” people.[6] In the 1860s, Andrew Murray’s church started to speak out against people who began to shout and cry and swoon in a revival in his church, until a visitor from America told him about similar manifestations in American revivals.[7] Decades before holiness evangelist Maria Woodworth-Etter’s involvement in the Pentecostal revival, many people in her meetings fell under the power of the Spirit, including Carrie Judd (Montgomery), an early leader in the C&MA.[8] Moody’s associate R.A. Torrey testified of people falling under the power of God due to conviction of sin.[9] Torrey himself fell under power of the Spirit when baptized with the Holy Spirit.[10] Presbyterian missionary Jonathan Goforth makes reference in his book By My Spirit to the phenomenon occurring in his revivals.[11]

Instances of falling under the power of the Spirit also occurred periodically at C&MA meetings for two decades before Azusa Street. In 1885 A.B. Simpson, the founder of the C&MA, received what we would call today a “word of knowledge” that someone was resisting the Lord. A woman responded, saying it was her. She came forward, and as Simpson anointed her for healing, she was overcome, falling under the power of the Spirit seemingly unconscious for about half an hour, and she received a healing.[12] In 1897 at a joint C&MA/Mennonite camp meeting in Allentown, Pennsylvania, C&MA General Field Supt. Dean Peck preached six services in three days and described: “At service after service . . . I saw people fall as dead under the power of God.” He said it was a genuine revival from God and talked about such things happening among the Methodists 50-60 years ago, but are not frequent now because many revivals are of human manufacture.[13] Manifestations of falling also occurred during the 1907 revival at Simpson’s Gospel Tabernacle, apparently with his approval.[14] Presbyterian Greek professor T. J. McCrossan, who joined C&MA in 1923, while serving as interim president of Simpson Bible Institute, wrote in his book Bodily Healing and the Atonement: “Hundreds are healed, who do not fall under this power, because they simply trust God’s promises; and it is the prayer of faith that heals. Going under this power seems, however, to bring an extra spiritual blessing. . . . This power is not hypnotism. . . . This is not devil power.^”[15] McCrossan spoke out of the experience of his own life, for not only did he frequently assist Charles Price in laying hands on the sick with people falling, but he himself fell under God’s power and was enraptured with visions when he was baptized in the Spirit in 1921 through Price’s ministry.[16]