search

Crowding around the house

I may be wrong because memories tend to get mixed, but I think it was that same night that something else happened. As the meeting closed and the people began to move towards the doors, the congregation, with few exceptions, began to follow Evan, who was already on his way to Sunnyside. As he entered the house and went to his room, the hundreds from the meeting crowded round the house. My uncle stood in the doorway, wondering what to do with them.

One man spoke for them all: would Evan Roberts just come out and speak to them? There was no disorder, but an eager, hopeful expectation that could be felt. My uncle went to Evan's room and told him what the people wanted. Evan shook his head and said he could not do that - he was not given freedom, he was not free.

When the parents of Mrs. Bethan Lloyd-Jones heard of the outbreak of revival in Wales, they sent their children to relatives in the area that they might experience something of this move of God. In 1987 Mrs. Lloyd-Jones recorded for EN her recollections of that time . . .

'Maggie', said my father to my mother in the late spring of 1904, 'I'm determined that we should send Ieuan and Bethan down to Newcastle Emlyn - now, at once.'

Dr. Douglas Johnson, known as DJ, was born on December 31 1904. Because he was so self-effacing, few people realise just how important he was for the revival of evangelicalism in the last century, and how much we owe to his work. He was quietly behind many important developments that we take for granted.

The 1920s were the heyday of a thoroughgoing liberalism that had captured theological education and not only the student Christian movements, but much of the leadership of the churches in Britain. It was the lowest point of the status of biblical evangelicalism for over 100 years. Any confidence in the authority and reliability of the Bible was treated with scorn by many.