All right. All right, today we're going to look at Anabaptist history, revival history among the Anabaptists. Now, I have—I'll give my bias. I'm a student of revival. I believe in revival, and I like to study it. I like to look at the way God has revived the church. Here's my general theology on revival. I believe that in the book of Acts, God poured out His Spirit in Pentecost, and the church was created. In Acts chapter 2, that happened.
Also, in Acts chapter 4, when the church said they prayed, God did that again. But in each of the cases, the Pentecost, the revival at Pentecost, was the birth of what? The church. What? The church. The birth of the church. And I believe that when revival truly brings forth the fruit of what it was supposed to do, then you're going to have the birth of a called-out people—there you go—being a church. And I believe that's in its complete fruit. It doesn't always do this.
I still believe many times God pours out a revival on a people that doesn't always bring about the complete fruit. But nevertheless, I believe in revival. I've studied revival history. I've been to Loughor, Wales, and seen the Welsh revival. I've slept in Evan Roberts' house and been there. And I've studied the Welsh revivals and revivals like that. And even there, with that revival, I'm reminded that I read a sermon, a Keswick sermon, written 10 years after the Welsh revivals, and R.A.
Torrey is preaching at Keswick in England. And he's saying there, the revival in Wales is gone 10 years later. And so a lot of times these revivals come, and again, it doesn't produce the called-out people that I believe is the whole purpose of a Pentecost experience that God is wanting to pour out on His church. The saddest thing about Anabaptist revivals is that no one's telling the story. You understand, evangelicals are not going to tell our story. The Catholics are not going to tell our story.
And although the evangelicals are probably the best people for giving out literature and telling their books and things like that, they're not going to tell these stories. And the sad thing about it is I believe, as I've done study with revival amongst the Anabaptists, that some of the most profound and some of the most lasting revivals in church history have been amongst the Anabaptist people.
And so I just think we need to keep that in mind, that I think it's a crying shame that even amongst our own people, a lot of this history is virtually unknown. And so I would like to change that today and tell the people, tell our history, the revival history among the Anabaptists. All right. Let's start right from the beginning.
From the very first day, you remember in Zurich, we've gone through this whole five weeks in Zurich, and after they were finally kicked out and said, "You've got to get out of the country," they met there at whose house? Felix Manz's mother's house and had a prayer meeting there. And when they were there, the Hutterian Chronicles records that this is what broke out in that very first meeting. It says, "One day when they were meeting," this is January 21st, 1525, "fear came over them and struck their hearts.
They fell on their knees before the Almighty God in heaven and called upon Him who knows their hearts. They prayed that God grant it to them to do His divine will and that He might have mercy on them. Neither flesh and blood nor human wisdom compelled them. They were well aware of what they would have to suffer for this." And then it says, "The Spirit of God moved upon them to," George Blaurock asked Conrad Grebel to baptize him, and that was the start of the Anabaptist movement in its typical way we explain it.
From then, do you remember what happened? That next day, that fire spread to the little city of Zollikon. And there at Zollikon, there was instant response to the gospel. People were baptized that very day. And it seemed like the entire town got revived. If you recall, one of the different things they talked about in those days was they had daily communion. They met, what was it, three or four times a week, and God was reviving an entire town of going out and spreading the word.
Conrad Grebel, do you remember, he left there almost three days into the revival, went out to St. Gall, and in St. Gall, he began to preach there. Do you remember what happened there from our lectures? At St. Gall, he began to preach there, and an entire town that for centuries had had a ritual and tradition on Easter morning of going out in a procession turned in their idols and things and ended up all going down to the river. And what I have here, 500 were converted and baptized in the river on Easter morning.
Following that, the next few days, 300 more were converted, and Balthasar Hubmaier's church baptized by Wilhelm Reublin. So already, the revival was beginning to pass through a lot of those different areas. All that was happening that we talked about during those times, all the persecution. But by 1527, do you remember, you were having conferences talking about sending out missionaries, sending out people across the entire country, and we had what was called the Martyr Synod.
60 of the ministers that were there, only two were surviving just a few years later. From then, by the time you get to 1529, up until when everybody was getting purged out of Switzerland and South Germany, by the time you get to 1529, think of it now, 12,000 people were willing enough to say, "I'm going to believe this. I'm going to leave my house and home," and 12,000 people made their way east all the way into Moravia.
It was remarkable when you think about the times and what that meant for them and the persecution that they had. There in Moravia, remember, was the birth of the Moravian Anabaptists, and there they gave rise to the Hutterites and the different zeal that the Hutterites gave in those early days is unprecedented. We hardly can glean everything from just the chronicles, but time and time again, as you thumb through the chronicles, you see a burden for missions, a burden for their preaching, and they're going out.
And when you look at the next few decades of the tens or 20 or 30 communities, entire communities that were all over the Moravian area, it just is astounding on how much this revival fire was growing in their time. During these times, you just have to stop and wonder and ask the question of Scripture, "What has God wrought? What has He done?" And when you see what God can do to a people who are completely dedicated to serving Him and living for His kingdom, it is astounding, and it's astounding over and over again.
That's what I hope to show in this message. There are times in the church, and there is today, we may be in one of those times today. I would venture to say we probably are, when the spiritual tide has got a little low. Even those flaming Moravians, Hutterites, when things began to finally, through persecution, through disease, through warfare, were dwindled down to just a tiny little remnant. Do you remember what brought them back on the map? Revival.
A revival in Germany, in a Lutheran church, brought an entire new set of people that were dedicated to living out the gospel in the fullest. Had a problem. They had a revival that they believed that Jesus meant every word He said. And when the queen said, "Yeah, you can have this little place over there and be good Lutherans, but you have to swear an oath of allegiance," they couldn't do it. Jesus said they couldn't.
From there, they met with the very tiny last spark of the Hutterites, and from those people, they got the old writings of the Hutterites and said, "This is great. Let's do it." And the entire Hutterites known today have been revived from that people. That's in page 377 of volume 2 in the Hutterian Chronicles, that entire revival there.
There, when those things were happening and all those ups and downs of the different things amongst the Moravian people, meanwhile, back in Switzerland, think of the different times that were happening there. In Switzerland, when people started to get kicked into different areas and it was hard and the persecution, sometimes the spiritual temperature would drop down. Sometimes they would start making little compromises.
Sometimes it would start to be profitable and they would start to make money and things would start to compromise. But over and over again, God brought revival. In Switzerland, in Zurich itself, coming into the 1600s, just when times were getting a little bit low, God raised up a bishop by the name of Hans Landis. And an old bishop who the reformers executed in Zurich and cut his head off.
And even in their own records, do you remember from our lectures, even in their own records, they mentioned that they put to death a godly man and that he was a minister of the church of God. And from there, they never had another execution in the town of Zurich. But from that, revived the people again. You had people, do you remember, a flag bearer, flag bearer, Lieutenant Heinrich Frick there in the Zurich area was revived by a domino effect of the things that happened from Hans Landis.
And he became a powerful missionary and evangelist throughout the different areas and started to begin to revive people. Eventually reviving people to it got to another famous evangelist by the name of Ulrich Müller, who Ulrich Müller then started traveling around the Bern area, all around here. Right when things were getting kind of really low in spiritual temperature in the Emmental Valleys and the Palatinate of Germany, God raised up Ulrich Müller, who began to evangelize people.
And 200 names still with us today in the Anabaptists were brought in during that time period under the preaching of Ulrich Müller. He then, if you remember, baptized Jacob Ammann and became the pre-church, if you would, of what became known as this very tenacious group that would not compromise called the Amish. It was happening under this revival that happened under Ulrich Müller. Powerful times.
Powerful times that the church continually used these types of preachings, these types of times of awakening to wake up the church to genuine following of Christ. But in each of these times, there were things that they had to deal with. There were extremes that might have gone one way or the other.
But every time, it seems like the burden, the Christ that I see in these revivals, the beauty of these revivals is that, again, my message through this whole five weeks was focusing on Jesus Christ and His message being alive today in everything. Truly, the all things of Christ. And also, as the all things of Christ tell us to do, this all things of Christ produces a church, a city, and the kingdom of God, a community of people in the world that are to be salt and light, a light upon the hill.
And this concept of a true revival that brings forth its true fruit of a church, of a community, of a called-out people is what marks the most impressive things of the Anabaptist revival. And that's what I see here with these revivals, even with Ulrich Müller, the early Amish, and those sorts of things. The fire goes to Holland. In Holland, do you remember, it started off kind of rough, didn't it? You remember our lectures about Holland? It started off kind of rough.
And as the fire went to Holland, Melchior Hoffman took the gospel up to the very next bordering town of Holland, to Emden, and there began to preach the gospel, and there a revival broke out. And there was a huge response. You remember, even some of the magistrate and some of the things were getting converted and said, "What do we do with this message that we were given?" At that time, there were then all kinds of extremes back and forth.
When those revival fires hit Holland and hit that northern Germany area, they hardly knew what to do with it. It was then Satan tried to bring in a very negative thing to the church, and he does this, I believe, time and time again. And do you remember what he did in Holland? He brought the whole Münster tragedy, chaos to the church. And that made the true church look, you know, ugh.
And all this think people were looking at it, but faithful brethren, faithful sisters were be able to take the scriptures and say, "No, we're going to continue to focus on Jesus Christ." And again, the revival fires spread again, even after the chaos of Münster and all the things that happened there. But again, I see this as an impressive time of what God was doing with His people over and over again. During that same time in Holland, do you remember a man by the name of Leonard Bouwens?
He was a powerful evangelist. He cataloged. We have the names and the dates, catalogs of going from town to town on horseback, on carriage, by foot, and baptized himself over 10,200 converts with the names logged in his book of his activity around Holland. This is the kind of thing, it's impressive. We read the stories about the circuit writers, and it's impressive.
We tell the stories of the early Methodists, but it's a shame that we don't know some of these stories of men like Bouwens who did those sorts of things. And Leonard Bouwens truly was remarkable in his evangelism fire that he spread. So yeah, it's impressive when you begin to take a step back and look at the way that God ministered to these people time and time again.
Same way during that same time, Menno Simons, himself baptizing hundreds, but even more so leading out little fellowships and holding meetings in the field and the forest and all those different places that was able to rise up a church, a people of God that wanted to serve him in totality. And so it was, again, time and time again, you see that.
So here we had revival fire in Switzerland, in France, which is where a lot of the Amish came from, the Alsace, and over Moravia, revival fires spreading through with the Hutterites all the way through to the east, to Transylvania, and finally into Russia and the far east. We get up to Holland with Bouwens and Melchior Hoffman and Menno Simons.
And over and over again, we see many times the start of these things was a pouring out of God's Spirit upon the church to waken the people to say, "Wow, we're just living in complacency. We're living in sin," and God woke up the church over and over again. The Dutch had their ups and downs. We looked at the Dutch, the Holland people. They had their ups and downs, and then eventually they head over to Holland.
I mean, excuse me, they head from the Holland is the Dutch, and they headed over to Poland and the areas close to Poland and Prussia and those sort of places. And there we see some interesting things with revival. Close to this area was Herrnhut. And when Zinzendorf was having his revivals in 1740, the Mennonites here actually came under the leadership of the Herrnhut ministers there and had an interesting influence on the mission life and the revival life of what became the Russian Mennonites later.
It's an interesting part of history. They then take that to Russia. They have their ups and downs. And one of the things that I notice as we look at the Russians and we see some of the things that they ran into, some of the things that brought them down, I think, are things we face today.
When they finally grew in prosperity, when they allowed some of the communities that had different, not all the communities were the same, some had more involvement with the political government than others, particularly Cornies, who was an extremely wealthy man. He made his wealth with different agricultural things, and he wanted a lot of connections with the Russian government.
And it was in his communities that had some of the most abuse of the different whippings and things like that that the Russian government brought into the communities. But in that still, when times are low, times are getting down, God raised up people that said they wanted to believe the gospel with everything they had. And it was truly impressive. Men by the name of, here's one, Heinrich Dirks, a Russian Mennonite who spent some time on the mission field.
And as he spent some time in the mission field, he came back, and I read a part of this to you at the end of our Russian Mennonite lecture. And as he came back, he preached to the Russian Mennonites, and I'm going to give you a little excerpt of this again in this context of revival. He said to them, preaching at a mission conference, he starts off the whole mission conference with these words.
He says, Jesus quoting the scriptures, "I came to cast fire upon the earth, and oh, how I would it were already kindled." And then he comments on this, Heinrich Dirks comments, "Certainly, the fire Jesus came to kindle on the earth was not a natural one. No, it was a supernatural spiritual fire. The fire of the knowledge of God, the fire of truth and love, the fire of eternal life and the Holy Spirit." He goes on. I listened to his little formula here. I like it.
"Take the knowledge of God, all right, take truth and love, take eternal life and the Holy Spirit together, and the Jesus fire breaks out." Amen. This fire burned within him, the Lord. This fire burned within him before the foundation of the world. This fire brought him from heaven to earth. It drove him while here to spark it and fan it to flame in the hearts of his fellow men. Jesus' fire already burns in many believers' hearts, but oh, he says to the Russians there, "May it burn in our hearts as well." Amen.
So this appeal to the church over and over again, I see, and God calling these preachers to a dead, sleepy church and to wake them up. Any thoughts or questions before we come to America now? I know I'm on a roll, so I don't. I get excited about this stuff, so bear with me here. All right. Come to America, you start off with a bit of a challenge. If you remember with our lecture yesterday, they didn't come as a community. A lot of times, most of the times, they didn't come as one certain group.
So a lot of times, you had a scattered approach of what the Mennonites were in America. Particularly, John D. Roth says in the outskirts areas, even more so were people quickly giving up their Anabaptist convictions about the Jesus teachings, war, oaths, and things like that, slavery. And so it got off to sort of a hard start. But God was faithful, and he brought revival again. We just some different examples of the different things.
Remember, in those times, they had church in the Lancaster County area and these different places where a lot of Mennonites were, mainly Lancaster County, I'm talking about early enough now, is they had church only once every two weeks. If you live in the country, maybe only once every four weeks. Compare that to Zollikon, where you had church four times a week, or in the Moravia, four times a week. But here you had church maybe one time every four weeks. That led to a spiritual decline.
And it also led to a bit of formalism. A Moravian missionary in 1748, looking at some of the Mennonites in Virginia, which would have been one of those on the outskirts, said, "Many Germans live here. Most of them are Mennonites, who are in a bad condition. Nearly all religious earnestness and zeal is extinguished among them." He didn't like what he saw there. In the 1750s, in many places, real conversion had begun to decline.
And this was the same problem facing Jonathan Edwards when he began to bring his revivals to the northeast. The Calvinist people, the Puritans, had begun to grow rich. They had begun to grow complacent. And this was also happening to our Anabaptist people as well. And we see this.
One ex-Mennonite in 1770, speaking of his departure, said, "The parents sometimes insist on their children being baptized before they will consent to their marriage, which I wish they would not, lest any be forced into a thing which should be a matter of personal choice following conviction and cause of conscience." He's saying this whole idea of just getting baptized to marry the church is a dangerous thing. And he's saying that in 17, what was that, 50 or so. It's good to take note of that.
Another one, Christian Kaufman, another one who was grieving in that time period, 1759, talks about his baptism classes that he went to, and he records it in his diary in 1759. And he says this. He says, "When the time came for me to come forward for his examination, I was asked what prompted me to desire baptism. As I began freely and honest to relate how I was exercised and that I confidently believe that according to the scriptures, it is a duty of man to observe it, I was told, 'That'll do. I may withdraw.
They have no time to spare as they have more yet to examine. This is the history of my preparation of baptism. I thought, 'My God, have mercy.'" And so that was his baptism class. All right. Just to give you a little glimpse, the population's growing, the ministers are busy, there's all these things going on, and things are beginning to grow lax, at least in some areas we have records of. And so revival begins to happen. The first known revivalist amongst the Mennonites is a man by the name of Martin Boehm.
And there's this little nice picture there I have for you. And he is the first known Mennonite to become active in the revivalist movement of the 1700s. He was born in Pequea Settlement in Lancaster County. He joined the Byerland Congregation where he was ordained by lot to the ministry in 1756. Like many other young ministers chosen as fashion, he felt humbled and unworthy of his calling. And he began to just sit and wonder, "What am I going to preach when I come to the pulpit?" And he met with God over this.
And it says here, he wrote, "To be a preacher and yet have nothing to preach, nor to say, but to stammer out a few words and then be obliged to take my seat is shame and remorse." While praying for divine aid in preaching, however, God began to reveal to him a bigger need in his life. And that bigger need was a genuine and true salvation. Forget this preaching business. Let's have a genuine salvation. And he gives this in his account. He says, "My salvation followed me wherever I went. My mind became alarmed.
I felt and saw myself a poor sinner. I was lost. My agony became great. I was plowing in the field and kneeled down at each end of the furrow to pray. The word lost, lost," there's a German there, "went everywhere around me. Midway in the field, I could go on no longer, but sank behind the plow, crying, 'Lord, save. I am lost.' And again, in the thought, came a voice to me, 'I am come to seek and to save that which is lost.' In a moment, a stream of joy poured over me." Hallelujah.
And he had this genuine conversion. The following Sunday, he was so excited, he eagerly wanted to tell his congregation there and the revival of the people. And it was reported that it was well received. The congregation, we don't get a lot of details, was there was much audible weeping. His preaching went on in this way, and he began to preach in an anointed fashion. And eventually, he was actually made bishop of the Mennonites in this area in 1759. And then something happened.
There in the valley, in the Virginia Shenandoah Valley, one of the congregations came under the preaching of George Whitefield and began to get very excited about this conversion. The ministers didn't know what to do about it, so they felt challenged by it. So they said, "Well, let's call up Lancaster County and let's see if we can get somebody to come down here and talk these guys out of it." So Lancaster County chose Martin Boehm. So he went down there to begin to listen to them and listen to their testimonies.
And he reports that all he could do was encourage them. Wow, I think you've got genuine conversion. This is revival happening there. And he writes that that was a very important moment for him because he felt confirmed in the Spirit. God is doing something. It's confirmed. It's happening in their life, and it's happening in my life. And that's what he began to do, is to proclaim it more. And so he got back to Lancaster. And instead of having church once every two weeks, he started to have revival services.
And this Mennonite bishop now is having revival services. To the church that met once or twice a month, Boehm held services weekly and every Sunday. I mean, all the weekdays and then every Sunday. The response was great. He also started allowing traveling revivalist preachers to share the pulpit with him. Now, this would later cause some trouble. Not only was he now beginning to preach, he was now beginning to let the Methodist preachers come and preach in the pulpit with him. Okay. All right.
There's interesting little notes in that time period. People wrote concerning this time period. One wrote about, "These big meetings were attended by crowds of people. Some came from a great distance. The host, the person who owns the farm, at whose house the meetings were held, were not scared." And that was all capital letters in the original.
"They were not scared when they saw carriages, wagons, and vehicles of all sizes and in use drawn by four-legged animals and loaded with saints and sinners coming to the meetings. Some came to see and some to be seen, others to hear preaching. In many instances, from one to two hundred persons were entertained and fed during the meetings together with their horses." And so it just gives you a little insight of this revival that's happening in Lancaster County in the 1750s. And then it happened.
There in Landis Valley, if you go down 272, in Landis Valley, meeting at Isaac Long's barn, there's a picture of it. It was Pentecost. Now, again, Pentecost is what? The birth of the church. And I believe that he desires us to draw into brotherhood and that type of thing when that happens. Well, it was Pentecost Sunday, 1767, and an overflow crowd heard Boehm and several Virginia preachers that were also there. One in particular, you should note, is Philip Otterbein.
He was a Methodist minister, a good friend of Francis Asbury and such. And he was there, and he began to preach. And Otterbein was so impressed with his preaching that he came up and hugged Boehm and said, "Wir sind Brüder." We are brothers. And actually, the United Brethren Church sees that as their birthday because of the connection between those two. But it was a powerful outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and many people were converted, and it was an exciting time.
This had lasting effects on the Anabaptist congregations across Lancaster County. At another meeting, a Lancaster meeting, another Lancaster County meeting, a minister, another Methodist minister by the name of Benjamin Abbott records in his journal, I found this little piece of interesting information, in the March of 1781 that he was at one of these Boehm revival preachings and went on from day to day into the night.
He said, "In one case, people fell on the floor, and their groans and moans could be heard at a great distance from the preaching place." And then he said, "As they did this, to kind of like bring the service to the end, a song leader would come up and to, okay, start singing a song, like Jacob would come up here and start singing a song, and he fell down. And the next one came up, and he fell down." And there was a succession of these things that were beginning to happen.
And he says, this Methodist minister even writes, "I have never seen the Lord work in this way before." Now, a word about slaying the Spirit in the 1750s. As I read revival history, I do think it's very different than what we hear today amongst charismatics. What I read in these days were people so burdened from their sin that it was like they just fell over because they couldn't handle this conviction of sin until they got it off. Very different than today where it's a fancy thing to do just to get excited.
The reports of these slayings of the Spirits in the 1750s were of extremely serious and self-introspective type of thing of God convicting of sin. And so keep that in mind as you read some of these things. Again, you can do with it what you want, but it was impressive. God certainly dealt with people. So the Lancaster bishops now are starting to say, "Okay, but it's 1775. We're hearing a lot of ruckus. You're having guys in your pulpit that are also part of the revolution.
What are you doing?" And the Lancaster bishops began to get a little concerned. Most books that talk about them there make them look like bad guys. I don't know. I'm tossed to and fro by this time period. The Revolutionary War was serious. They were coming against the British crown in rebellion against the crown. Several things were happening. And I think the Lancaster bishops were cautious. They had a right to be cautious.
And if these ministers would have bowed their heart, I think the outcome could have been different. The association with the other ministers concerned the Mennonites. Because of this, some of the doors were closed to him. Boehm did not accept the counsel of the brethren. He wrote in his journal that some of the Mennonist meeting houses were closed against me. Nevertheless, I was received in other places. The Lancaster County bishops started to talk with Boehm at the conference.
Lancaster bishops, it was written, they had a conference to talk to him, quote, "It is a well-known fact that between us and Martin Boehm, there is in many points a difference of view. And we have at times for several years already labored to become more of one mind and to understand each other better." I felt that was a decent response. And they asked him, "All we're asking you to do is make sure that when you preach, that you preach the all things of Christ." He kind of agreed to it, said, "I'm a weakened person.
I'll try the best I can," but he never really changed. By the time 1777 hit and the Revolutionary War was in line, he seemed to be making no differences with the war. Finally, the bishops of Lancaster County excommunicated him in 1777. This was the same time period that you remember from yesterday's lecture that they began to call the Dutch Mennonites in Holland and saying, "Help us produce the Martyrs' Mirror here in America.
We need to revive our people in understanding our heritage." And they had the Ephrata brethren print the Martyrs' Mirror. It was an interesting thing. And so he ended up forming together with Otterbein, the early Methodist, the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, and was a very impressive preacher, still continued to go different places. And it's said that, well, it's recorded that Bishop Francis Asbury, the first Methodist bishop in America, was who preached at his funeral.
So he obviously had a lot of friends there in that place. Another interesting one, just going right on. I want you to hear these things. Martin Kaufman, the Shenandoah Valley, a minister there, began to have revival because a John Koontz, a Baptist preacher, came by. And as they were there, Martin Kaufman got born again, got converted, and got rebaptized and started entering in fellowship with the Baptists and started holding more and more meetings. More revival was happening, and things started to go even further.
Again, the Lancaster bishops came to him, and it was said this. It's recorded about this is what the Lancaster bishop said to him. When the ministers from Pennsylvania arrived, they attempted to persuade Koontz that Christians ought not to go to war, hold slaves, or take legal oaths, that these things were forbidden. Koontz then, excuse me, then Kaufman then replied to the bishops about their salvation, asking for their testimony.
He didn't get a clear answer, so he said, "Well, I'm not going to listen to you." And they went back to Lancaster without the result that they wanted. But he was a godly man. He was a revived man. He also knew his Bible. Then hit 1776 for him as well, and he began to say, "I can't do this. I can't let my congregations do this in the slavery that I see, the oath-taking to the country." And at that time, the Baptists in Shenandoah Valley were all required to take an oath of allegiance to the Continental Army.
He wouldn't do it. And so the bishops tried to say to him, "This is a secondary matter. These are not the important things. You're focusing on the minor things." He said, "These aren't minor things. These are the things of Christ. And so nothing of Christ is minor." And so his church broke off from the Baptists and began having little congregations in the Shenandoah Valley, little Anabaptist revived congregations in the Shenandoah Valley completely by themselves for quite some time. Interesting little group.
Never hear much about them. Next interesting guy is Christian Newcomer, another one of these Mennonites that were revived. His testimony goes that one day he was out in the field again, and he was eating on a peach. And when he was eating on the peach, he aspirated. He sucked in the peach seed, and he thought he was going to die. And so as he thought he was going to die, he threw himself in an early Heimlich maneuver against a tree, and it dislodged the peach seed, and he lived.
So it had a profound experience on him. As he went on, that really made him think about his soul, and he began to just over and over think about the sin, and was he ready to meet God. Then finally, during a thunderstorm one time when he was crying out to God, he felt that he had the peace of God with him. A little later, he wanted to go to his congregation and tell them about what happened in the congregation. Kind of didn't understand where he was at. This is the Groffdale Mennonite congregation.
And they finally just said, "Hey, just get baptized, join the church." He did that. He still has his burden for something more, something more. He finally goes and talks to a minister. He doesn't get a right answer, and he eventually moves away. And there moved away, he gets sick again, and he thought, "I got to go back and preach to Groffdale." So he came back. He preached to the Groffdale Mennonite church, and the response was good.
Again, it says they don't get a lot of reports, but there was much crying, and it was well received. But after that, it went further and further, and it was during that time that he felt that he could no longer minister amongst those people. And it was in some of his revivals. He began a preacher then. He began to be a preacher. Again, were some of the very unusual outpourings that were happening.
Some of the things that are recorded on people that attended his services, quote, "The people jumping up, shouting and praising God in a manner as would never witness before." In October of the same year, this is 1801, he preached at a congregation at Christian Hershey's barn, I guess, where old and young were like persons intoxicating, shouting and jumping in ecstatic of joy.
And all these different cases, November 10th, 16th, and 1920, and 1803, again, more of these outpourings of the falling out and those sort of things were happening. As you can imagine, this began to have different effects on the Lancaster bishops and different types of things, and it wasn't always well received. He then did join up with the United Brethren. Just a few others. I'm just going to mention their name. John Neidig in the Dauphin County area.
Revival struck there, and they called them for a while the Neidiglites, people who followed him. And he eventually grew away from the church and joined the United Brethren as well. The United Brethren again were these revived Methodists at this time, and they did snatch up a lot of the Mennonites after a while.
Jacob Brunk, interesting little thing is that he's the descendant way before the George Brunks that it's recorded that he many times had Newcomer and several revivals in his barn preaching or visiting him with him there, at least five times between 1797 and 1819. He records that. And then the last one that I'll mention of this colonial period was Felix Light, interesting guy up in the more Lebanon County and in Lancaster County a little bit.
Felix Light was a Mennonite preacher who then preached for 25 years revival preaching amongst the Lancaster Mennonites and up in Lebanon. He eventually was donated some land to build a Mennonite church in Lebanon and preached up there to eventually his whole congregation then merged out of the Lancaster church as well. So it's interesting. That's the colonial period.
Even the United Brethren who started with these Francis Asbury and all these guys, half of their ministers when they started this thing were either Mennonite or Amish converts when they started their denomination. So that's the period there of the colonial period. Let me finish one more thing, and then we'll take a quick break. Through that time, a Christian Burkholder, he was a bishop of Lancaster Bishop and lived from 1746 to 1809.
And he had a burden to try to take truth and fire, and he started giving some lectures to the youth about true conversion and what it meant to have true conversion, trying to say, "Yes, let's have a true conversion." And he speaks in his books about the need for true conversion, but let's not forget that it makes us look like Jesus. And he tried to bring the Mennonite church back to seeing Jesus in reality. So that's the colonial period. Any quick questions? Powerful time of God, of God working.
Let's take a quick break, and we're going to come back to what Harold S. Bender calls the Mennonite Awakening. All right. Welcome back. Again, I have a burden to get these things out, and so I want you to hear these things. I want you to have the paper there because I think that we've been beat around as a people way too long in thinking this isn't part of our heritage, and it very much is part of our heritage. And I think it's an important part of our heritage. All right.
Again, I appreciate Christian Burkholder and his trying to bring balance because it was hard. I mean, some of these people were giving up the things of Christ. Some of them weren't. And again, Pentecost brings us to Christ and a people of Christ. But now we go to the phase that Harold S. Bender calls the Mennonite Great Awakening. He coined that term. And the figure that stands out the most of those is a man by the name of John Funk. And there is a picture that I have on him there, of him there.
John Funk, born on April 6, 1835, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he grew up on a farm there for 22 years. Didn't have a lot of high education. He was going to be a school teacher and went to Freeland Seminary, probably a school, probably to be truthfully a lot like Faith Builders here. It was just a school that helped people become teachers or such in seminary and that type of thing, preachers, and his home community.
But later he decided to go into the lumber business, and he went to Chicago, and that's where everything changed. In Chicago, it was the time of D.L. Moody. And D.L. Moody's revivals were sweeping through Chicago, and a young John Funk went to one of these revivals, and he got converted. And he got seriously converted. And then he began to follow Moody around and began to ask about his different things and was very impressed by his Sunday school. He watched how he disseminated literature.
He watched how he gathered discipled of men's together and just the organization and the way that D.L. Moody did himself. And he probably related a lot. D.L. Moody also wasn't a very educated man, classically educated, and he probably related to Moody a lot. And he took that then and brought it back into the Mennonites. Fortunately for us, I think that he tried very much to bring it not with the evangelicalism that Moody would have sided with, although he did bring the revival fire. I will say this about Moody.
There's an interesting quote by D.L. Moody when he was asked about warfare. He said, "As for me, I'm with the Quakers. I could never be able to shoot another man." And that was D.L. Moody's response. So you wonder about some of these talks even with Funk back and forth in those early days of Moody. So Moody now comes back, and he's bringing this revived fire into a church there in the Midwest, which is very lethargic, and he starts to just be on fire.
He began his house of operation with a publishing house in Elkhart, Indiana, and it was a great influence. He started to produce the paper, the first Mennonite paper ever out, Herald of Truth. He published it in both English and German. And then he had a gift of recognizing talent. Sometimes in our circles, we have men that rise to power, rise to influence, however you want to word it, and they're scared of everybody else, not Funk.
He had recognized talent and brought them to himself and worked with them and allowed them to work together. And that was a powerful gift of his. One of the particular people that he discovered and brought was J.S. Coffman, Coffman with a C, who became the revival preacher of the Mennonite church in this time period, the Anabaptist church in this time period. He also found John Horsch, a writer and historian, L. Bender, G.L. Bender, who was a mission leader, H.A.
Mumaw, the founder of the whole Elkhart Institute, which became Goshen University today. He started out helping the poor with the Mennonite aid programs. At one of the meetings that he was at, they launched their first mission to India and began encouraging the Mennonites to go out into all the world. And it was very impressive, the kind of things that Funk was able to do in just a small time. But I'd like to take a note about something that he did.
Lyndon, who was here, he always says to me, he was here earlier this week, "The best things in life are copied and improved upon." Okay? Quit thinking we have to create the world. He recreated the wheel. He saw Moody. He saw, okay, hmm, hmm, hmm, probably some things he didn't like, hmm, but he took that pattern and put it into practice. One of the reasons why I study history and one of the reasons why I want you to study history is to say, "Wow, there are different ways that we could be doing this.
There's more effective ways." When I read what the Moravian Anabaptists did, when I read about what some of these people did, I don't just read it and say, "Oh, wow." I read it and say, "Oh, we can do this." And that's an example of what Funk did. He took something that worked and put it into practice. What's that? "The best things in life are copied and improved upon." That's the Japanese. Okay? Although we can't even say that anymore. They've gone way beyond us. All right. Then he also brought in revivals.
The whole concept of this Moody revival John Funk brought in. And particularly, he found that J.S. Coffman and brought him to bring in the revivals. In 1872, a revival meeting in Masontown, Pennsylvania, Daniel Brenneman and Brunk gave that first revival meeting, and the results from that were powerful.
The great thing about Funk, again, is the idea of truth and fire, kind of the balance that Christian Burkholder tried to make, was the idea of, okay, we've got these things revived, but he didn't want to give up his heritage either. He didn't want to give up his heritage. He published the Martyrs' Mirror in both German and English. He started producing these Mennonite journals in German and in English.
He did all these things to try to have a people have a heritage, but a heritage that was on fire and that can do things. And that's a rare balance. Critics today would say that he still made the church have an evangelical flavor.
In my looks at him, I think that some of that perhaps might be fair to say, but nonetheless, he, more than anybody else, tried, I think, to have the balance between revival fire and the truth and the things that I've read in his writings I've been very impressed with, which brings us now to his friend that he brought to preach with him, John S. Coffman. There's a nice picture of him right there. And Coffman had the burden too. And here we have written in one of his journals, John S.
Coffman puts it like this about the burden that he had for his people. He said, "Today," in 1881, he said this, "Today, I have been thinking much of the necessity of the churches making a more active effort to make converts. When we see what others are doing and see the success that follows their efforts, we are sorely grieved at the apathy of our members on the subject of evangelism." Interesting. So he had this burden. He was the first one to bring in the idea of a protracted meeting. You know what that means?
Protracted meetings mean they go on and on and on and on and on. The Mennonites didn't like meetings that went on and on and on and on and on. They're like, "All right, already. It's enough. Do it. Be done with it." But Coffman wanted to do that. And also, they saw some of the abuse of the Methodists and that type of thing. They were scared of it. But the nice thing about Coffman is that the reports talk about him as being a very respectful man, a very smart man. And he would work with bishops.
He would work with ministers. And he was very much desired to raise up the church and not destroy the church. That's a rare combination. Many people who raise with this kind of anointing and this kind of influence speak against the church, try to break down the church, not Coffman. And so because of that, it's said of him, he was able to open into areas that were never available to other people.
He actually brought unions between divisions of Mennonites and Amish that were there in the area and was able to preach in these circles that no one could preach in before because he had a respectful attitude and because he had a true passion that came out, a desire to build up the church. He even particularly was concerned about all these little churches out in the west, and he would go out there and do his meetings out amongst these little churches to try to raise up the church in his time. It was interesting.
He was an interesting man. He died just in '51 of some sort of tumor or something in his stomach. And so he had a short life, but the life that he gave was a powerful evangelist. Just a few others I just named their names. Also, A.D. Wenger, I wish I had more time to talk about him. Jacob Burghardt, were traveling evangelists, and A.D.
Wenger was one of the early ones that tried to bring these protracted meetings and bring these revivals into Lancaster County, Lancaster County still being a little bit more cautious. Some letters from the time period. Here's a letter that was written from Coffman to A.D. Wenger. It just kind of gives you an insight to the things that made them tick. Here's a letter.
He says, "I am glad that the Mennonite church has waked up to the necessity of establishing her institutions and doing vigorous evangelistic and mission work. I think I have lived for this," he said. Amen. I think he did. Another one from another revivalist written to A.D. Wenger. He said, "We would like to have at least two weeks with the Thomas District." Listen to the way they word this here. "The Lutherans have taken some of our young people, and we would like to check this and possibly regain a few." Amen.
They're after your youth? Go get them. So we're going to hold some meetings in this area. We're going to bring revival in here, and we're going to get our youth back. Wow. I'm impressed with that. I think that that's the kind of attitude ministers should have. Harold S. Bender, speaking of this whole time period and what all happened to the Mennonite church in this time period and gave this very celebrated response, I think this is an unpublished work. He says this about the Great Awakening.
He says, "This was the time of great evangelistic harvest in the church. It was the time of the founding of the first missionaries and charitable institutions at home and abroad," in America, that is. "The time when the beginning of a real church literature was created and church publishing interests were established on a sound and substantial basis. It was a time when our first two schools were founded and when our boards of mission, education, and publication were organized.
It was a time when the young people's meeting was introduced. It was a time when the church found a new unity and solidarity in the general conference. They were starting to organize. And above all, it was a time when a new surge of spiritual power and vitality, when the tide of spiritual life began to run high and strong, and a new type of church member, of minister, and of congregation was being created.
It was also the time when a new generation of young leaders of different type, men of unusual ability and vigor, took over the helm of the church. It was a tremendous epic in the life of the church, the breaking in of a new era." Wow. Do it again, Lord. Do it again. So Bender was very impressed with just when you stand back from history and look at all that happened from the Anabaptist Great Awakening, then it's impressive. The church then struggles. Okay.
All this is happening, but again, different extremes are happening. There was a brother by the name of Henry Egli, a bishop in Berne, Indiana, who had a genuine conversion, passionate conversion, and began to insist that all the Amish in Berne, Indiana, should have this kind of conversion. And he got excommunicated and started his own fellowship. But as the time goes on, they began to lose the things that were all things of Christ, and the people began to notice.
Daniel Brenneman, also one of the ones, started to lose some of those all things of Christ and even began to pick up second work of grace, eradication theology, and that type of thing. And so it made some people be cautious about what was happening. And so the particular place where these revivals, when this Great Awakening was happening, the place of resistance was Lancaster County. I love Lancaster County. I do. And Lancaster County had a conference meeting.
A conference meeting held in 1893 where they came to talk, "What are we going to do about the revival meetings, the protracted meetings?" And the conference decided, "A protracted meeting, it is not considered prudent to allow protracted meetings." A meeting at the Rohrerstown in 1894, a visiting evangelist, John S. wrote to John S. Coffman, and he gives, and here's a letter directly from how he came out of this meeting of the Lancaster bishops talking about these revival meetings. And this is what the letter says.
He says, "I was at the conference yesterday near Lancaster. Our future is dark now for holding protracted meetings. You know the bishops do the business in our conference. They decided with but one dissenting voice to forbid the holding of meetings for more than once or twice in succession, days or evenings at the same place." One or two days, that's it. "The bishops were sustained by 57 votes against 12 for the meetings as we held them in our country." I guess he's from Canada.
"You see, there was some concession by the bishops in allowing the ministers and deacons to vote. The pressure for the meetings was too strong, so the bishops did not want to carry all the responsibility. Not one minister in Lancaster County voted for the continued meetings. So the time of these meetings seems a good way off." And that was written in 1894. And it seemed like the cause of revival in Lancaster County was stopped. But God. And here's something that happened. Tragedy happened.
In the summer of 1896, a young married couple by the name of Barbara Hershey and Enos Barge, Hershey was only 18, Barge was 23, was riding their old, I guess it would have been Model T's in those days, and got hit by a train going 55 miles an hour. She was instantly killed, and he died a day later. But they had never professed Christ in their church. They were never converted, and it shook the whole community of Lancaster County. And they didn't know what to do with it.
And someone then wrote in the newspaper or something at that time, said, "We believe this is a warning sent by a kind heavenly Father to all. May we all, and especially the unconverted friends and companions of the departed ones, not allow this solemn warning to pass unheeded." And it began to catch attention all around Lancaster County. So they started to have their funeral services. And guess what happened at their funeral service?
A spiritual awakening followed, which brought about many young people into the church. And at the funeral services, people started to pour in. And they started having churches were opening. They were then opening up their nights. And suddenly, revival started to break out. 43 were baptized in Groffdale, 38 in Paradise, 16 in Strasburg, 21 at Old Road, 49 at Hershey's. Church services then finally opened in the evening.
And the first time that it was opened in the evening, over 1,000 people attended the one in, what did I have here, Strasburg. Wow. You can't stop revival when God truly wants to bring it in. And God used this time to bring in revival. At the time then, they started to have conferences. And then by 1903, the rules were changed. And I have here the quote from the conference meeting of 1903, the Lancaster Conference, quoted as it reads, "A protracted meetings.
Protracted meetings are allowed when the officers of the church and the laity in their district believe it is the only way to build on the cause of Christ. Such meetings to be subject to conference. Conference also to allow to have meetings." And they go on to give some specifics how they don't want it to get too carried away. But hallelujah, it was then allowed by the Lancaster Conference bishops, and they were allowed to bring in revival into this area. And A.D.
Wenger talks about this, and revival began to happen at one place in Elizabethtown. In 1906, a revival broke out there shortly after this conference, and 123 people got converted at that one meeting. And so it was a powerful time of revival in Lancaster County. But at this time also is World War I getting up. The Methodists now had lost their power amongst the Anabaptist people. I think Christian Burkholder and some of the things started to say, "They're baptizing infants. They're going to war.
They're keeping oaths." The Mennonites began to say, "Okay. Obviously, this is not we went too far with following some of this." But there was a new group from Germany in the 1700s also called the Church of the Brethren under the preaching of Alexander Mack, who grew also in this time period. And they were a kingdom church. I wish I had a day to spend on the Church of the Brethren. I appreciate them a lot.
And the Church of the Brethren were a kingdom church, believed in a called-out people, had non-resistance, believed in adult baptism. But they were pietists from the beginning, meaning they liked all this revivalism. And so in this early days, now become the 1900s, it was the Church of the Brethren that would typically people, if you left the Amish or left the Mennonite, you began to the Church of the Brethren. But in revival preaching, had changed its flavor a little bit.
A man by the name of Billy Sunday, who's heard of Billy Sunday? Billy Sunday, a fiery revivalist in Chicago, began to preach. But mixed with his revival preaching, he brought what? A preaching about what? Prohibition. No, about drinking. Prohibition. And it began to further and further that the revival cause got wrapped up with prohibition. And so now they would have revival services. And you can listen to Billy Sunday's sermon. We have a few clips of them. And his burden is prohibition.
Well, they started then having meetings. They would literally go house to house around Lancaster County, knock on the doors, and ask you to please vote against the selling of liquor and making a United States Constitution amendment against it. "Surely," they said, "any self-respecting Christian would vote on this issue. Won't you? Just vote. Register to vote and get involved. We'll outlaw alcohol." Well, they pulled it off.
They actually made an 18th Amendment, I believe it is, constitutional amendment that outlawed alcohol. But the whole feel of this began to bring unwittedly these people who said, "Okay. That's a good cause." And they were more and more involved in politics. Many of the Church of the Brethren who were involved even more so with politics began to rise up in politics until, guess what?
Their own member, a man by the name of Martin Grove Brumbaugh, a Church of the Brethren man, ended up becoming elected governor of Pennsylvania. Now you've got an Anabaptist governor of Pennsylvania. Oops. The revivals were short-lived. I mean, the prohibition was short-lived.
After it was finished, and just a few years later, on March 23rd, 1933, the President Roosevelt, after he signed the bill to end prohibition, said, "I think this would be a good time for a beer." As a matter of fact, you've ever seen the Budweiser horses at places, the big Clydesdale, they come marching up to the White House on that day with the big kegs of beer to get beer to the White House.
Billy Sunday's boys, and all the time that he was going around preaching revival and all that, he was involved, all of his boys were involved in some of the worst scandals of the time. And all the scandals that he was preaching against, he didn't keep his home. And so in the midst of this revival now that got mixed up with politics and everything, it got bad. Brumbaugh was tested as soon as he became governor.
An outbreak of sedition happened in Pittsburgh, and he said, "What do I do now?" Well, he called into the militia and had them killed, had them destroyed. Later on, World War I now starts to break out. And he, it wasn't even in place, he, Brumbaugh, brought back in the swearing of the oath of loyalty to the state and to his office by his board. Several of the German Baptists complained about this, but they said, "Well, we'll let the Philadelphia district deal with it." And eventually, nothing was done.
But now, the mixing of this, World War I was very hard. Interesting, in some of the worst cases of Mennonites going into the war happened from percentage-wise during World War I. They had lost something. The revival brought in something powerful, but somehow the defunct attempt of keeping the balance of keeping everything focused on Jesus and the all things of Christ did begin to wane again. And that affected them. World War I was very hard. You had people persecuted, Mennonites persecuted.
And like I mentioned before, there were Hutterites that were actually taken to Alcatraz and put into a cold, dark dungeon. And they said, "I'm not going to wear the uniform." And they just hung their uniform on the wall and said, "Well, if you get cold enough, you'll wear the uniform." And they were freezing to death, had water thrown on them and all these sorts of things. And finally, they absolutely refused to wear the uniform.
And eventually, they were taken from there to Fort Leavenworth and died from the abuses they received in the prison of some martyrs of World War I. So again, it's been a challenge with revival in the Anabaptist world. And it has been since Melchior or Hoffman back in Holland. And it has been still to this day of, "We like revival, but revival is the birth of the church." Remember, keep remembering that Pentecost births the church. And what stands behind Pentecost is Jesus and the teachings of Jesus.
In Acts chapter 1, when it said that they were sitting there, they were asking Christ before he ascended to tell them the things about the kingdom of God. And they were wanting to hear those things. And so behind a true Pentecost is the kingdom of God. So that had some collateral damage. Interesting, a little quote from a book that I appreciate talking about this time period. During World War I also, of course, the Church of the Brethren young men had a very hard time applying for conscience objector.
Well, because they said, "Well, Brumbaugh is a governor." And he even was running for president against Wilson. And so they had a very hard time. And even the brothers, the Mennonites and the Amish had some problems. One writing that was a letter given in this time period. And here's a quote from a time period.
It says, "The brethren who for some time had been moving in step with believers in other Protestant churches suddenly found themselves at the cross current of their non-resistant background and the position of those they had been working within the outreach of the church. A specially called conference of elders issued a statement against military involvement, but it was quickly withdrawn under government pressures. Many brethren felt confused about where the church stood.
Hadn't they worked hand in hand with other church groups in social reform? Hadn't they joined forces with them in the mission field?" I wrote, "Hmm." We must remember it. It has to continually come back to Christ. So World War I's happening. It kind of took a lull, their revival. And in all revival history, whether you're studying Protestant or Anabaptist history, the wars definitely hurt revival. In the revivals in World War I, after that, you went through a big lull. In World War II, you went through a big lull.
But after World War II, these revivals of the Anabaptists were kind of forgotten. Forgotten. It's interesting when you hear George Brunk begin to preach, he speaks about what happened to him like it never happened to the Mennonites before. He didn't even seem to know these things. "This had never happened before," he proclaims. "It had been forgotten. The war had brought into different things. And now Lancaster County was growing, prosperous, and all these different things. And now we're entering to World War I.
And we're entering into World War II. And now it's 1950." And the church after World War II was saying, "Okay. Where are we now?" The militarism, the patriotism of the United States must have been huge in those days. After the atomic bomb and all those sorts of things, the Mennonite church knew, "It's time for us to organize again and have another serious awakening." Or if they didn't, at least the spirit knew they needed this.
And so you begin to see in the Gospel Heralds and the different magazines a proclaiming of, "Let's get back and let's have our fiery fighting evangelism back." The Gospel 1952 says this, Gospel Herald, quote, "Revival has to do with the Christian. Evangelism has to do with the ungodly. Revivalism is the fire. Evangelism, a major byproduct of the fire." And then again, the Gospel Herald by 1950 started posting articles proclaiming, "Let's regain an aggressive let's get again an aggressive evangelism," it said.
"Door-to-door evangelism." And even it said the concept we need the fighting church. Amen. So that was a spirit in Lancaster County, the Mennonites were across the country at this time period. So it's 1950. Revival had not been around for a while. And a man by the name of George Brunk is teaching theology at Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia. And he's there. It's interesting. There's a sermon you can hear from today. He's writing in 1950.
It's the first sermon that Raymond Brunk sells in his sets of sermons. And the staff, this was before the Lancaster Revival, and he's the staff at Eastern Mennonite College. And he's talking to them, and he's talking about conservative dress, plain dress. And it's an interesting sermon. He says in there, he starts talking about it and giving his reason to the student body. And you could tell he's kind of apologizing to it.
There's a place in the message where he says, "I'd like to make a prediction." And he kind of pauses. And he says, "I predict that if the Mennonite church ever loses its distinctive dress, it will become one of the most ungodly denominations in America." And there's like a pause. I have that clip on my website if you want to hear it. And that was the spirit of the different things that were happening in this time period of the church in the 1950s. But then something happened. There was a revival in Virginia.
You can go to page 18 here. In the revival in Virginia, Lawrence and George were there. And on the way back, their sister reports that Lawrence was just inspired by what he saw in Virginia and wanted to do this more and more. And he began to entertain the idea, "Well, can't we do this full-time? What if we gave our whole life to preaching the gospel?" This is just the beginning of people like Billy Graham. And some of that was now popular at this time. They were saying, "Well, why can't we do this?
Why couldn't we proclaim the gospel like Billy Graham does in his circles?" And so Lawrence wouldn't give it up. She reports how they talked about it all the way back from Virginia, but he wouldn't give it up. And one afternoon, Lawrence Brunk says, "Stood in the midst of his poultry flock of 5,000 broilers and asked the chickens and asked the Lord to give him as many souls as there were chickens." So imagine you're standing in a big chicken house.
"God, give me as many souls as I see chickens here." And then he says, "I'll make a promise, Lord. Okay. If I could sell enough chickens this year to clear $5,000, I'll put it into the ministry, and I'll buy the equipment, and we'll go on the road." Well, the Lord came through for him. And not only $5,000, he ended up with $35,000 excess. And so he was so excited. He starts to say, "Okay. I've got to do this." And there's an interesting thing.
At one time, George Brunk remembers that he was teaching college at Eastern Mennonite College. And he gets a phone call. And Lawrence is calling him. And he says, "Okay. You know how we've been talking about this? You know how it is, guys, when we start talking, 'Hey, wouldn't it be great if we hey, wouldn't it be great if we'll " It takes a Lawrence Brunk in your life to sometimes do things. I'm that way. I'm a flaming visionary. And sometimes I'll be just batting out a bunch of flaming visionaries.
And someone finally says, "Hey, why don't we do it?" And that's what happens. I get the impression George and Lawrence were in that flaming visionary phase. And Lawrence finally said, "Let's do it." So George talks about the time that he received his phone call. And the phone call was, "Yes or no? Are we going I have the money. Are we going on the road or not?" And George Brunk mentions that he wanted to go on the road. And they did it. At the same time, something is happening.
Lancaster County, different apart from George Brunk, is beginning to feel the spirit of prayer. When I became a student of revivals, I really see that in all true revivals, it seems lasting revivals, a spirit of prayer is there that seems to make the biggest difference. And so when I went to Lancaster, I went to the Historical Society in Lancaster, and I did not know what I'd find. I wondered, "Are you going to find this in Mennonite revivals or not?" And what I found, I couldn't believe.
I started going through the Gospel Heralds, the different accounts. And there were eyewitness accounts of the prayer meetings that predated the Lancaster Revivals of 1951. And it particularly happened at East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church. And the minister was a man by the name of Maurice E. Lehman. And just a few days after the revival, he begins to talk about these extraordinary prayer meetings that they were beginning to have at East Chestnut Mennonite Church. And he says this.
This is directly from the minister. Quote, "One great factor in the success of this program was that the saints of God prayed. On Good Friday of this year, 1951, we had a special day of fasting and prayer at the Vine Street Mennonite Church. There it was announced that we would have special prayer meetings once a month besides our regular prayer meetings. The next special prayer meeting was held on a Sunday afternoon at East Chestnut Street Church.
The meeting was well attended by, and many prayers were offered, and tears flowed freely. We prayed for revival and for lost souls. This type of meeting was followed by many more." It didn't stop. It goes on. Someone in the prayer meeting suggested that there should be an early morning prayer meeting every morning. So a meeting was called from 6:00 to 7:00 AM. The early morning meeting began at a large Sunday school room. The Lord poured out his spirit on us.
As the numbers increased, he moved to the main room of the church. And in one morning meeting, now Brunk had now come to town, Brother Brunk said, "So far in our prayer meetings, we have been observing the second part of James 5, that the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. I think tomorrow morning, we ought to consider the first part where it says, 'Confess your faults one to another.' But Brother Stoner Crady said, 'Why wait till tomorrow?
Let's start right now.'" And they began confessing their sins to one to another. Powerful stuff. At this point, liberty was given, and the group confessed and gave their sins to God. It says, "Many prayer meetings that followed had a period of confession. Many sins of the spirit were confessed, and tears were shed as the Holy Spirit searched our hearts.
The special early prayer meeting were in session each morning from May 21st to July 22nd, 1951." And he says, "We believe that it was prayer that brought the revival." And he was writing this when it was still going in the Gospel Herald. "And it will be prayer that will continue it." Brother Brunk said that the early morning prayer meeting of July 22nd was the largest prayer meeting he has ever seen. And so as they went there, it began to be more and more impressive. So go down and check East Chestnut Street.
"Once George and Lawrence got to Lancaster, the prayer meeting was already strongly underway. The overwhelming response to the prayer meeting resulted in the opening night attendance at East Chestnut Street was over 2,000 people." If you look at East Chestnut Street now, you can go there. There's like a warehouse on the other side. They put up a tent. And they put up a tent and started to have these revival meetings. And the first one had already attended was over 2,000 people showed up.
And so you can see I call it the Lancaster Revival. I don't call it the Brunk Revival because it was already happening. Brunk just put a match to it. From that, it began to grow and grow. And crowds of over 7,000 people were pouring into these places at these Lancaster Revivals. Finally, they didn't even know what to do. There were so many people turning out until finally they found that there was an old airport.
This airport's not the Lancaster Airport, but there was a spot that's now behind Home Depot down there off of 30. And they said, "We're going to have to get a bigger place." They got some more tents. PVC pipe was just invented. They were bringing in sewage, bringing in electricity. And they held it and said, "Well, are any people going to come?" And they came. And they came by the tens of thousands. Or not tens of thousands.
They ended up with 12 to 15,000 people poured onto this meeting and revival in Lancaster County in 1951. Wow. The reports of the traffic of what this was causing, I went and I said, "Well, this had to make the newspaper." So I went to the newspapers in Lancaster and found interesting accounts in the newspaper complaining about the traffic and how they had to have special traffic things because of all the traffic jams that were there. I found some other things when I was there in the library.
Here on the front page of the Lancaster newspaper, this is our Lancaster newspaper. And this is cut right from the on the days of the revival. "Revival meeting leads boy to confess to $10,000 barn fire and things that they wouldn't even confess to the world they were confessing at the church. And true revival was happening." Here's some pictures of a close-up of down there. And you can see here, this thing right here was called the idol of bail.
And they would throw your cigarettes in there, your bad magazines, your books. And people would repent and throw that. And then afterwards, they would have a big burning here where they burn all these sinful things. And it was powerful. Later on, this grew. They couldn't believe the response. They were praising God for it. And it went on. It went on to the Franconia conference further east.
And the Franconian conference, they said in their I also have quoted there for you, "We realized we could not ride on the coattails of Lancaster. What brought revival in was prayer. And what's going to bring it into Franconia is also prayer." So the saints of Franconia began to pray. And again, outpourings came in to here, to Franconia as well. I have personally interviewed men who were setting in this interview. One of my favorites is the Franconian cowboy, William Burgie. Do y'all know Burgie?
He's now at the church in Bedford. And he was one of the biggest rebels in the Franconian district. He got the name Franconian cowboy because he would sling his rope and pull down mailboxes from his car. And he talks about this beautiful testimony. And still today, 50-something years later, when you talk to him about it, he cries as he gives the testimony of what God did to him during these early Brunk revivals. It continued to grow. It began to go on the road.
And eventually, it started to even begin to take the notice of the press. Time Magazine began to talk about this. And here's from the quote from the August by the time 1952, Time Magazine said, "This week, after 14 months of evangelizing through the US and Canada, the Brunks are preaching the word in Goshen, Indiana, to crowds of nearly 3,000 people a night.
At their previous stop in Waterloo, Ontario, attendance were even larger, 105,000 during the four weeks of steady preaching, including 1,500 people who made decisions for Christ. Local Canadian pastors were so pleased with the result that some canceled their own services to let their congregations hear what the Brunks preach." This is all from Time Magazine.
"At their first meeting in Lancaster, PA, Lawrence led the singing, and George gave his maiden sermon, a vigorous appeal to elect for Christ and escape damnation, a topic which Mennonites have always stressed. The first night, more than 2,000 jammed in their tents. Dozens were converted. Before the week was out, the Brunks had to order a new tent," said Preacher George. "We preach a fundamental brand of religion, but we're not fundamentalist. We're not modernist either.
You don't have to be one or the other." It's interesting trying to find the balance there. I appreciate that. Back to that. Oh, it's hard to find the sinner. That was right in Time Magazine. Eventually, they spread into Canada and fed into the different people. And it was powerful. The peak of the revival lasted about two or three years when literally thousands and thousands of people were swept into the kingdom of God. Impressive. During this time, the church was just coming down to the '60s and '70s.
And liberalism, modernism, hippyisms, and all those types of things came against the church again. And it made it difficult. Eventually, the Brunks himself began to not do well between the two brothers. And eventually, those two split up, which grieves me. And that kind of really took the steam out of their particular campaign. Others picked it up. A man by the name of Hammer, another by the name of Augsburger, and different ones were also spreading revival tents just like this around the country.
And it wasn't just Brunk. This was a revival that was spreading throughout the Mennonite church and the Anabaptist church in general all around. And so very, very impressive. Very impressive. So as we look at the history of revival amongst the Anabaptist people, a couple of lessons, a few lessons. Number one, I believe that God does work through revival. I've seen it in our people since the days of Zurich. I've seen it in the Moravian, the Hutterites. I've seen it in the Holland, Dutch Mennonites.
I've seen it in the Swiss Brethren. We've seen it in our country. And we've seen it over and over again. And number one is I do believe God works through revival. But again, one of my beliefs of revival is that Pentecost is the birth of what? The church. The church. Pentecost wasn't the birth of just a fancy meeting. It was the birth of the church, a called-out ecclesia, a people of God. Read what happened in Acts 2 and Acts 4 when God poured out his Spirit.
And again and again, I believe just like a 4 was a repeat of 2, he will do that. The other lesson is there's always the balance swing that can hurt us. We don't want to be close to everybody who's not like us. And so we end up sometimes being swayed away from the all things of Christ. And we see that example that we must always come back. If our revival does not make us look more like Jesus, it's not true revival. Do I hear an amen? Amen. All right. So that's the bottom line. We must always take it back to Jesus.
And as fancy as the preachers may be, as fancy what they're saying, we should be saying the things that Jesus was saying. And let's pray in our time period, God can once again raise up a church that would be able to stand for the teachings of Christ, be a committed brotherhood that would establish his kingdom on this earth, and have that Jesus fire that they talked about in Russia and living today.