ves up to the police. Restitution was common. People paid overdue bills. Some businesses opened new accounts to account for the conscience money being paid to them. Those who cheated at restaurants or hotels returned to pay their full bill. People returned stolen goods.
Christians found a new radical honesty in their lives. Pride and jealousies were confessed and transformed into humility and love. As people prayed for one another with new tenderness and compassion many experienced healings and deliverance.
Not all welcomed the revival. Some churches remained untouched by it or hostile to it. This seems common to all revivals.
Sherwood Wirt, editor of the Billy Graham Association’s magazine Decision reported:
“One day late in 1971 I read a strange report from Canada. Curious things were taking place in some congregations in the western provinces. Brothers and sisters, it was said, had been reconciled to each other; shop lifted articles had been returned; crimes were being reported by the culprits; church feuds were being resolved; pastors were confessing their pride.
“But then I heard this word: “We’re walking knee deep in love up here.”
“In November a team went to Winnepeg and told of the revival at a meeting for ministers. The Holy Spirit moved powerfully and many broke down confessing their sins. Rivalries and jealousies were confessed and forgiven. Many went home to put things right with their families. The ministers took this fire back into their churches and the revival spread there also with meetings going late into the night as numbers grew and hundreds were converted or restored.”
Sherwood Wirt reported on Bill McLeod preaching at Winnepeg on 15 December 1971:
“I confess that what I saw amazed me. This man preached for only fifteen minutes, and he didn’t even give an invitation! He announced the closing hymn, whereupon a hundred people came out of their seats and knelt at the front of the church. All he said was, ‘That’s right, keep coming!’
“Many were young. Many were in tears. All were from the Canadian 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 diss