Prayer
For Revivals
By
R. G. Flexon
Four
Nights of Prayer:
We
were in Greer, South Carolina at the Wesleyan Methodist Camp. T. M. Anderson and Robb French were my co-laborers. We had four
nights of prayer lasting from the time the night service closed until sun-up the next morning. The last all night of prayer,
I counted 157 in the tabernacle at 2:00 a.m. One third of them were preachers. A very unusual sight. That night when I rose
to preach, I did not get a chance to open my Bible before they started to the altar. I counted 150 at the altar and they were
still coming. How many were at the altar that night I have no way of knowing.
The
Daily Newspaper of Greer had sent a lady reporter to observe and write a report of the service. She said in her report she
“did not know that anything like it was still going on in the church; that it was more like a page out of the history
of the early church (meaning Pentecost) than anything she had ever heart of or read about.” From then on, we had crowds.
Oh, for some nights of prayer in our churches and camps.
Mighty
Outpouring of the Spirit:
I
was asked by a preacher to preach in a tent meeting near the place where Booth, the Assassin of Lincoln, was captured. The
tent was already pitched when my cousin Henry and I arrived. Accommodations and board were not the best, so after three very
unpleasant experiences with food, we decided to do our own cooking. We rented a room in a farmhouse, secured an oil stove,
cooking utensils and some dishes, and we were in business on our own. The meeting opened with a large crowd. Each night the
crowd increased. God came on the services and many men began to seek God and find Him.
They
proved to be demonstrative and the shouts of newborn babes were many. As the revival progressed, the atmosphere of the entire
area seemed pregnated with God's presence. Each night, after the altar service, there would be a time of spontaneous shouting.
As the people left for home in buggies, surries, large farm wagons, and cars, you could hear them singing and shouting. All
farm work ceased and a demand for day services was such that we yielded and gave them a morning service.
Everyone,
saint and sinner, was talking revival. Restitutions were the order of the day. Beside the women and boys and girls, over one
hundred men had prayed through. One lady, who was eighty some years old, who had smoked a pipe since she was eight, was gloriously
delivered, threw the pipe away, and went down the road shouting every step of the way to her home. Her husband owned and operated
a grocery store. Hearing her coming, he ran from the store to see what was the matter. We could hear him shouting from the
tent a quarter of a mile away. Thinking he had been saved, we rushed to his store and asked him if he had been saved. He said,
“Not yet.” He was shouting because his wife had been saved.
Another
old lady who was saved on her death bed, just before she died, called her husband to her bedside and asked him if he remembered
twenty years before, of coming home from work one night an finding his favorite driving horse dead in the barn. He told her
he did. She confessed that after they had had a quarrel, and he had gone to work, she had gone to the barn and given the horse
poison.
We
might go on, and on, telling of restitutions being made, broken homes being restored, drunkards being delivered, stills being
destroyed, and old feuds being ironed out. Before the meeting closed, a plot of land had been given for a church building,
lumber had been donated to build it, money raised for nails, windows, doors, and hardware. We organized a church with a goodly
number of charter members and the day after the meeting closed, a number of men began to build the church. In two weeks it
was finished and we dedicated it. Oh, for more such revivals! Over 100 men, heads of families, had found God in the meeting.
A
Night to be Eternally Remembered:
I
had closed a camp at Roanoke, Virginia and was on my way to Mount Carmel, Kentucky, for the camp at Miss McConnel's school.
I stopped over at the West Virginia Camp. H. K. Busby and S. B. Reese were the evangelists. They were doing some good preaching.
The District Superintendent, [Brother] Hussleton asked me to speak to the young people on Tuesday night. I spoke on Lot's
choice and it seemed very dry to me. However, they asked me to again speak on Wednesday night to the youth. As I was speaking
that night on “He maketh His ministers a flame of fire,” a preacher sitting in the back of the tabernacle came
running and fell across the altar weeping; another one on the other side came rushing to the altar.
Quickly
the altar filled up and then the front benches. Soon the saints were coming from every direction to pray with seekers. That
night, by eleven o'clock, there had been five altar services. God had come in answer to prayer. The District Superintendent
told me later that meetings started a chain of revivals which touched every church on his District. God is the same today
as ever. Don't talk about the old days, we can have revivals now.
Slain
Under the Power of God:
It
was in a Methodist camp meeting at Aura, New Jersey. My co-laborers were George Beverly Shea, song leader, and two lady preachers
who were taking turnsabout with me in preaching. Something happened in that camp I have never seen or heard tell of before
or since. Three nights in succession we all took the same text and preached on the subject of hell. It had its effect and
God settled down on the camp in a wonderful way. One night God struck one of the lady preachers and she fell on the platform
under His power. I do not know how long she lay there, but as she did, God came on the service. Many young people rushed to
the altar. It was a taste of old fashioned Methodism. In that camp, one of my sisters was saved out of a false religion into
which she had been trapped.
God
Took Over:
It
was in a church in Camden, New Jersey. The last night of a great revival had arrived. The church was crowded, the aisle had
chairs from the front of the church to the back and they were all filled. Ther very atmosphere seemed charged with the presence
of God. It was a time when everyone seemed to be expecting something different to take place.
It
did. When I arose to preach, before I could read my Scripture lesson, the pastor's daughter, a girl in her late teens, was
sitting to my right on the second bench. She was unsaved. She arose and, entering the aisle, literally ran from the church.
It disturbed the people some but all held steady. In a few seconds she came running back into the church and down the aisle.
She had reached the bench on which she had been sitting when the Holy Ghost struck her and she fell in the aisle as though
dead. She lay there for about three hours, motionless, but as she fell, a young man and his lady friend sitting in the middle
row of benches about three seats from the front, both fell between the benches crying out loud for mercy. He was at that time
working on a long suspension bridge being built across the Delaware River from Camden, New Jersey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He was one of the contractors for steel construction of the bridge. He had seen an advertisement about the revival in the
daily newspaper of Camden and he and his lady friend had come just out of curiosity. They were both gloriously saved and never
turned back. I had the privilege of performing their wedding ceremony a few months later. They both joined a holiness church
near Philadelphia. I found later that she had at one time been a student of God' s Bible School. They both attended God's
Bible School camp and contributed heavily to that institution for years. When they both fell between the benches crying for
God to have mercy on them, I saw eleven others fall between the benches crying for help from God.
That
was a night to be remembered. What hinders us from seeing more such services and such revivals? Are we afraid of the supernatural
manifestations of God's power?
A
Local Preacher's Camp in New Jersey:
I
had been an evangelist at this camp for four years in succession. I had labored with another very fine evangelist. He was
a great preacher and held very high standards. We had teamed up well and God had given us some great camps. The fourth year
we were together he had changed almost completely. In his first sermon, he said he no longer believed in the kind of altar
services we had at that camp. He had changed his mind about the old-fashioned standards and did not preach as he had at the
camp in other years.
Naturally,
the battle lines were drawn between us. He would make fun of my ministry and oppose me in many ways. As the camp progressed,
he lost the people and they stood by me. The last day had arrived and expectancy was pregnating the atmosphere. Numbers of
preachers had gathered to support me. I was to preach in the afternoon and the other evangelist was to preach the last message.
It was one of the old-fashioned Methodist camps. The floors were not cement but were covered with straw everywhere. Scores
of preachers got chairs and placed them in a semi-circle or around the platform and along the altar. That afternoon I felt
led to preach on the Blood of Christ. I had not been speaking more than ten minutes, just laying a foundation for the message,
when the Holy Ghost took charge.
There
was a rush for the altar, the preachers picked up their chairs and got out of the way. That was one time I saw people climb
over the back of benches to get to an altar. We had a veritable Pentecost in miniature. I will never, this side of eternity,
know how many were at the altar that afternoon. When that happened, the other evangelist, who had been sitting on the platform
in back of me, left the platform and walked off the camp ground.
That
was a service with the visitation of the Holy Ghost that I shall never forget. That night, the other evangelist came back
to preach but it would have been better had he not. God has a way of protecting His doctrines and standards. It is our duty
not to protect but to propagate.
A Note from
Brother O'Connor:
While
posting the above accounts by Brother Flexon, I was most intrigued by his mention of several places in New Jersey, where he
had ministered with great results. He mentioned a gentleman who was saved in his meeting in Camden, New Jersey, who was employed
in the construction of a suspension bridge crossing the Delaware River, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This was most likely
the Benjamin Franklin bridge, which was completed in 1925 or 1926. As of approximately 1990, an ancient stone church was still
in regular use at Second and Pearl Streets, directly under this bridge, and close to the river. This was in past times a Holiness
church (at one period, Wesleyan Methodist); and in the early 1930's, Pastored by two powerfully anointed Sisters, by the names
of: Carrie Hazard and _______ Richardson.
He
also mentioned Methodist Camp grounds: The Aura Camp, and the Local Preacher's Camp (possibly the one located in Delanco,
New Jersey, known as: Fletcher Grove), which stood on those sacred grounds for nearly one hundred years. It was my great privilege
to know personally, and to be influenced (as a teen-ager) by a number of dear old saints of God, who had been a part of the
Holiness meetings of Camden, and also the Aura Camp, the Local Preacher's Camp at Fletcher Grove, and the Riverside Gospel
Mission. I am eternally grateful unto our Lord Jesus for having brought into my young life such remarkable individuals who
played such an important role in my early Christian development and subsequent calling to the Ministry. Please review my article
in the current edition of “Pentecostal Evangelist,” entitled: My Methodist Roots, and Early Holiness Influences.
