The Prayer Meeting That Shook The World

       

 

"It Was Just A Simple Invitation to Pray"

(Prayer Meeting That Shook The World)

                                             by Michael Edds                            

 

It was just a simple invitation to pray that led a small group of people in 1898 to meet on Saturday evenings from 9 to 10 for prayer. They met at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago to cry out for an awakening. Within a short time, the group grew to 300 passionate intercessors. A few members remained to pray and intercede into the early hours one Sabbath morning. R. A. Torrey joined this small group to pray for a world - wide revival. During that intense intercession, Torrey asked God to send him around the world. Within a weeks of the close of the prayer meeting, two strangers approached Torrey and asked him to come to Melbourne, Australia to preach. These two men had left Australia months before in search of a man that they believed God would use to bring revival to their nation. Upon meeting Torrey, they felt they had found God's man. The result of that Chicago prayer meeting was an invitation for Torrey to come to Australia.
Torrey arrived in Australia in 1902. 15,000 tried to pack themselves into a building that could only seat 8,000. 8,000 conversions took place in that one meeting. For six months, Torrey and Charles M. Alexander traveled from town to town preaching. Revival swept the nation. Torrey believed that the key to the awakening was prayer. A woman in Melbourne read his book on prayer. She was so deeply touched by his teaching on the subject, that she organized her friends into prayer circles. The groups grew to 1,700 bands meeting regularly to pray for revival. This move of God spread into Britain, Ireland and into other countries. By 1904 30,000 of God's people were enrolled in daily prayer groups. Their prayer was "Revive thy work, Oh Lord." These prayers resulted in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1905 in Wales, Britain, America, in India and China! Wales was rocked by a mighty awakening. London experienced a five month long revival. A mighty choir of 4,000 made Londoners wonder what music must be like in Heaven!
It is estimated that Torrey and his partner Alexander led over 100,000 souls into the Kingdom of God. All this had its beginning in Chicago with a small group of people praying, "Revive thy work, Oh Lord!"
May God raise up such prayer warriors in our day who will daily cry out, "REND THE HEAVENS AND COME DOWN. REVIVE THY WORK, OH LORD!"

Persistent Prayer

Revivals Come Because of Persistent Prayer
by R. A. Torrey

We find right here why it is that many prayers fail to accomplish that which we seek from God. We pray and pray and pray, and are almost up to the verge of the attainment of that for which we are praying, and right then, when God is just about to answer the prayer, we stop and miss the blessing.
For example, in many churches and communities there are those who are praying for a revival. The revival does not come at once, it does not come for some time, but they keep on praying. They have nearly prayed through. They are right on the verge of attaining what they sought, and if they would pray a little longer, the revival would break upon them. But they get discouraged, throw up their hands and quit. They are just on the border of the blessing, but they do not cross into the Promised Land.
In January 1900 or 1901, the faculty of the Bible Institute of Chicago instituted a late prayer meeting Saturday nights from nine to ten o’clock, to pray for a worldwide revival.
After we had been praying for some time, a thing happened that I knew would happen. People came to me, or to my colleague who was most closely identified with me in the conduct of these meetings, and they would say, "Has the revival come?"
"No, not as far as we can see."
"When is it coming?"
"We don’t know."
"How long are you going to pray?"
"Until it comes."
And come it did—a revival that began there in that prayer meeting room of the Bible Institute in Chicago, then broke out in far-away China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, India, and swept around the world, with most marvelous manifestations of God’s saving power—not merely through Mr. Charles Alexander and myself, but through a multitude of others in India, Wales and elsewhere. In Wales, for example, under Evan Roberts and others, it resulted in one hundred thousand professed conversions in twelve months.
I believe that God is looking to us today to pray through again.




Saved After Fifteen Years of Daily Prayer I prayed fifteen long years for the conversion of my oldest brother. When he seemed to be getting farther and farther away from any hope of conversion, I prayed on.
My first winter in Chicago, after fifteen years of praying, never missing a single day, one morning God said to me as I knelt, "I have heard your prayer. You need not pray anymore; your brother is going to be converted."
Within two weeks he was in my home, shut in with sickness which made it impossible for him to leave my home for two weeks. Then the day he left he accepted Christ over in the Bible Institute in Mr. Moody’s office, where he and I went to talk and pray together.
I told this incident when holding meetings in a certain city. An elderly woman came at the close of the meeting and said, "I have been praying for the conversion of my brother, who is sixty-three years old, for many years; but a short time ago I gave up and stopped praying." She added, "I am going to begin my prayers again." Within two weeks of that time she came and said, "I have heard from my brother, and he has accepted Christ."
Oh, men and women, pray through; pray through; pray through! Do not just begin to pray and pray a little while and throw up your hands and quit; but pray and pray and pray until God bends the heavens and comes down!