n Midwest, which is not known for its euphoria. It could be said that what I was witnessing was revival. I believe it was.”
Bill McLeod and a team of six brought the revival to the eastern Canada when they were invited to speak at the Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto. The meeting there began at 10 am and went through till 1.15 am next morning. Dinner was cancelled as no one wanted to leave. They did stop for supper, then went on again.
When the Sutera brothers commenced meetings in Vancouver on the West Coast on Sunday, May 5, 1972, revival broke out there also in the Ebenezer Baptist Church with 2,000 attending that first Sunday. The next Sunday 3,000 people attended in two churches. After a few weeks five churches were filled.
The revival spread in many churches across Canada and into northern U. S. A. especially in Oregon. Everywhere the marks of the revival included honesty before God and others with confession of sin and an outpouring of the love of God in those who repented.
The German speaking churches were also touched by the revival and by May 1972 they chartered a flight to Germany for teams to minister there.
The Afterglow meetings were common everywhere in the revival. After a meeting had finished those who wanted to stay on for prayer did so. Usually each person desiring prayer knelt at a chair and others laid hands on them and prayed for them. Many repented and were filled with the Spirit in the Afterglow meetings which often went to midnight or later.
Sherwood Wirt reports on his experience of an Afterglow. As he sat in a chair people came to pray for him. They told him to,
Ask God to crucify you.
Crucify me? I wasn’t even sure the idea was theologically sound.
“To do what?” I stammered.
“Nail you to the cross” was the reply …
“Now ask God to fill you with his Spirit and thank him for it.” …
“You probably don’t have much of a sensation of blessing now… Don’t worry. The feeling will come later and how!”
She was right. It came. And it has never left …
The Holy Spirit used a divine solvent… to dissolve the bitterness in my heart… In his own time and at his own pleasure he sent a divine solvent into this troubled heart. It was like the warmth of the sun burning off the layers of fog.
I don’t know just how the love came in, but I know that all the bitterness I held against others including those near to me disappeared.
Resentment hostility hurt feelings you name it.
They all dissolved. Evaporated.
He commented on this laying hands on people for prayer, which was normal in Afterglows: “Call it revival, renewal, a fresh touch, an anointing, times of refreshing, or what you will. I needed it.”
That deep work of the Spirit continues now across the world. Its expressions vary with different cultures and denominational traditions. However, the divine Spirit deeply impacts those who continue to seek the Lord.
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1973 – September: Enga District, Papua New Guinea
During September 1973 pastors from the Solomon Islands Enga Baptist churches in the highlands of New Guinea. They conducted meetings throughout the area including sessions with village pastors.
Revival broke out in many villages on Sunday 16 September when the pastors had returned to their churches. Hundreds of people, deeply convicted of sin, repented and were reconciled to God and others with great joy. Pastors in one area held a retreat from Monday to Wednesday in a forest which previously had been sacred for animistic spirit worship. Others joined the pastors there. Healings included a lame man able to walk, a deaf mute who spoke and heard, and a mentally deranged girl was restored.
Work stopped as people in their thousands hurried to special meetings. Prayer groups met daily, morning and evening. Most villages established special places for prayer such as groves near the village where people could go and pray at any time. In the following months thousands of Christians were restored and thousands were converted. The church grew in size and maturity.
This was followed in the eighties by tough times. Tribal conflict, destruction and bloodshed eru