Evan Roberts > Quotes

“What we need is a fresh vision of the Cross. And may that mighty, all-embracing love of His be no longer a fitful, wavering influence in our lives, but the ruling passion of our souls.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“Why should I teach when the Spirit is teaching? What need have these people to be told that they are sinners? What they need is salvation. Do they not know it? It is not knowledge that they lack, but decision—action. And why should I control the meetings? The meetings control themselves, or rather the Spirit that is in them controls them.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“But one night, after I had been in great distress praying about this, I went to sleep, and at one o’clock in the morning suddenly I was waked up out of my sleep, and I found myself with unspeakable joy and awe in the very presence of the Almighty God. And for the space of four hours I was privileged to speak face to face with Him as a man speaks face to face with a friend. At five o’clock it seemed to me as if I again returned to earth.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“for Roberts talks chiefly of God’s love and of the great joy of living in obedience to that love.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“Evan Roberts speaks: “Let us see what God’s Spirit will do for us in a quiet meeting. It did wonderful things at Lougher when no one sung or spoke.” A few moments later all are kneeling in five minutes of silent prayer. The crowded room is still except for quick gasps of sobbing breath from those who are deeply moved. Here and there a half audible voice is mumbling inarticulate prayer. Deeper yet grows time silence and more impressive. Wrinkled faces are upturned, and unseeing eyes look upward. Heads are bowed in folded hands. Shoulders are convulsed with emotion, and lips are moving from which no sound comes. Still the preacher gives no sign. Gradually a single low voice is heard in all parts of the chapel, singing sweetly the hymn, “Have you seen Him?” in Welsh. For an instant there is time stillness of listening with bated breath; then slowly other voices join in singing until the building rings with thrilling melody. It is as if they have burst from prayer into song. And this is a scene of the revival which so respected a paper as the Lancet, evidently without investigating it except through time reports of the sensational papers and its own prejudice, calls “a debauch of emotionalism,” “a hysterical outburst,” marked with “scenes of disorder.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“Begin to try and teach along that line; instead of treating our congregations as congregations to be instructed ever in holy things, treat them as men and women that are to be persuaded to holy things, and consecration, and Jesus Christ.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“I have tried to talk out of the tremendous sense that God is abroad, and I talk out of the desire that I cannot express—that somewhere, some when, somehow, He may put out his hand, and shake this city for the salvation of men.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“Personally, I think I have never met a man who appealed to me as being so completely consecrated to his cause as this young man of twenty-six years, trained in the colliery and at the “smithy.” When one thinks of it, no young man of his years and native environment could have endured against so strong a tide of personal success unless he had an enduring grip upon mighty moorings.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“The vision is passing out into virtue, and men are paying their debts, and abandoning the public-house, and treating their horses well. Oh, my masters! Did you say the next Revival would be ethical? It is that, because it is spiritual, and you will never get an ethical revival except in this way.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“I have found what I believe to be the highest kind of Christianity. I want to give my life, God helping me, to lead others, many others, to find it. Many have found it already, thank God, and they are doing what I am doing, in a large or little way, as God gives them light. And that is all there is to the revival, and all there is to me, my friend.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“Now, what effect is this work producing upon men? First of all, it is turning Christians everywhere into evangelists.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“A cynical, indifferent critic watching any one of these meetings would be forced to admit that the young man is sincere to the core; that he descends to no trick of gesture or word or act; that he is straightforward and simple to the last degree; that he does not try to force people against their will, and yet that in some way he draws all before him, not to himself, but to the Spirit of Whom he is the avowed disciple.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“And they do say that the publicans (saloon keepers) are closing,” says a bent little man with a black beard, in a train to Landore, and certainly many drinking places that were crowded are empty,”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“We’ve prayed for this awakening,” cries a workman at one meeting. “We’ve seen the devils worst often; but now, at last, we are seeing Christ’s best.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“There is in this revival a deep current of reality; when anything unreal creeps in, the power stops.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“There is nothing to which the most fastidious could object; men and women, old and young, take part, but there is no confusion, and when feeling is overpowering there is deep silence; but the tears are tears of joy, for it is of Calvary we sing and to Calvary we look. There are two things that used to be indispensable to us which we can do without now—a clock and an organ.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“The pit ponies, like the American mules, having been driven by oaths and curses since they first bore the yoke, are being retrained to do their work without the incentive of profanity.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“The revival is borne along upon billowing waves of sacred song. It is the singing, not the preaching, that is the instrument which is most efficacious in striking the hearts of men.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“And Evan Roberts, I believe, has said that he is glad that this is the case, for it proves that it is not Roberts, the man, his magnetism, or his personality that is so great an influence, but rather the Spirit at work in the meetings.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“The vast congregations were as soberly sane, as orderly, and at least as reverent as any congregation I ever saw”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“The horses are terribly puzzled. A manager said to me, “The haulers are some of the very lowest. They have driven their horses by obscenity and kicks. Now they can hardly persuade the horses to start working, because there is no obscenity and no kicks.” The movement is characterized by the most remarkable confessions of sin, confessions that must be costly.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“There was absolutely nothing wild, violent, hysterical, unless it be hysterical for the laboring breast to heave with sobbing that cannot be repressed, and the throat to choke with emotion as a sense of the awful horror and shame of a wasted life suddenly bursts upon the soul.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“He has something of the same feeling about the hymn singing, I am told. Much as he loves it himself, and music is in him to his very fingertips, be feels—I judge both from the hearsay and from watching him break into the midst of the singing when, in a way they have in Wales, they repeat over and over the same stirring melody—that too much singing moves only surface emotions and takes the congregations’ mind from the deeper influence of prayer and close communion with God. He believes completely in the efficacy of prayer, and he has for many years spent a considerable amount of time daily upon his knees.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“In this village I attended three meetings on Sunday two and a half hours in the morning, two and a half hours in the afternoon, and two hours at night, when I had to leave to catch the train. At all these meetings the same kind of thing went on, the same kind of congregations assembled, the same strained, intense emotion was manifest. Aisles were crowded. Pulpit stairs were packed and, mirabile dictu! two-thirds of the congregation were men and at least one-half young men.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“There are two essential functions to the Christian priesthood: The first is eucharistic, the giving of thanks; the other is intercessory, praying. That is all. That is going on. The Church everywhere singing and praying and offering praise, and pleading with God. Every meeting is made up almost exclusively of these things.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“But for the most part revivalism means a spiritual awakening, the conversion of individuals who, from living in indifference or in vice, turn from their evil ways and lead new lives in which, however imperfectly, they endeavor consciously to follow Christ.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“It was a meeting characterized by a perpetual series of interruptions and disorderliness. It was a meeting characterized by a great continuity and an absolute order.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“What is the character of this revival? It is a Church revival. I do not mean by that merely a revival among church members. It is that, but it is held in church buildings. Now, you may look astonished, but I have been saying for a long time that the revival which is to be permanent in the life of a nation must be associated with the life of the churches.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“There is less drinking, less idleness, less gambling. Men record with almost incredulous amazement, how one football player after another has foresworn cards and drink and the gladiatorial games, and is living a sober and godly life, putting his energy into the revival.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses

“None of the hundreds of dramatic scenes that have occurred in these meetings have come while Roberts has been talking. They have come afterwards and often a considerable time afterwards.”
― Evan Roberts, The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses