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Monday, November 02, 2009

American Church History 101

Like all major revivals and awakenings, the stirrings of the Spirit began with prayer in a tense situation in 1857. Gold, banks, railroads, and industrial plants had hearkened the golden age of American prosperity. "The great panic which broke out in Wall Street, October 12, 1857, was the handwriting on the wall. . . . Banks failed, business houses closed, railroads went into bankruptcy, and all business was at a standstill." Out of this chairos situation, the Lord was about to move powerfully on America again.

His move was a spontaneous, ecumenical, lay-led prayer meeting movement led by an unknown inner city missionary in New York. Daily prayer meetings swept over New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and New England. Then the prayer fever swept into the South and west to Texas. Prayer for the nation, its leaders, and personal concerns were the rage and immediately reaped a harvest of souls in the North, continuing to win people to Christ later in the South.