Before I go into more detail on what we are seeing and hearing in the counties of Fermanagh and Tyrone, let me talk about “revival”.

Forty years ago I studied and read the books on the lives of Charles Finney, John Wesley, Evan Roberts, and about the 1859 revival in Ireland. I had already spent four years on the mission field and God called me back to my home church in Fermanagh that was not preaching the Gospel and where there was neither hunger nor evidence of spiritual life at the time. He called me to pray for this part of Northern Ireland where the 1859 revival had not reached. It was dry … dead and very ‘crusty’.

I read those accounts of the moves of God through the early revivalists, and my heart was hungry, on fire with a passion that God would “do it here”. I prayed day after day and often in the night when the Spirit of God would wake me with a burden about the church or people in it and for the surrounding villages where my family lived at the time.

I read of people hearing Finney preach and how they would “fall down”, “cry out”, “weep” and “bellow” as the conviction of the Spirit of God came upon his audience. I read of George Whitefield preaching in the open air to thousands up and down England and Wales and in the USA, and how churches were visited by the power of God with people crying out and weeping. I read of Finney reaching up to 500,000 people, who came to Christ under his ministry.

On one occasion Finney went to a cotton mill in New York State and a worker in there made fun of him. The noise of the machinery was so great Finney could not preach. He merely looked at the woman laughing at him with much “burden of soul” and the woman was so upset that a thread broke in her hands. Soon she was overcome by the Spirit of God as were other workers in the factory. As literally hundreds of workers came under conviction and wept, the owner of the factory ordered that the mills be shut down as it was “more important that souls be saved than the factory run”. Finney had not yet preached! They allowed him to preach to all the staff in a big room when the machines were turned off and a powerful meeting ensued with every worker being saved within the factory within days … 3,000 workers!

In other moves of God there are stories of people driving into towns where revivals were taking place, and, just entering town they would come under the conviction of the Spirit of God, pull over and seek God, and then go into town to find churches where they could find peace with God.

Many of these revivals would experience unusual and outstanding moves of God that would cause people to cry out, weep, wail and howl as if in pain, which of course they were, as they were experiencing the realisation of their lost condition and saw their state before God. People would often fall over. Some would be unconscious for hours. Others even for days.

In the next post I will talk of one of my favourite stories and another amazing move of God.