Following Judah's Lion

Are We Thirsty Yet?

Is.41:17-18 - When the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forake them. I will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water.

Today we know the place called Ulster as a strife torn part of northern Ireland that is more Protestant than Roman Catholic, but there is a story of the moving of God’s Spirit that should create in every born again believer a thirst for God to do the same in our midst.

There had been great movings of revival in America during 1857 and 1858 and reports of those Spiritual awakenings had made their way to Ulster and began to be read in Christian circles. This was used of God’s Spirit to create a thirst for God to move in their midst and prayer meetings were born. These meetings began to stir up a Spiritual deepening among the believers, but the catalyst can be identified in a lady named Mrs. Colville. She had a burden for souls and came to the area with a God directed purpose of bringing souls to Christ. As she passed out tracts and witnessed to many people she was met with some obstacles. It was during one of those obstacles that a young man named Jeremiah McQuilken overheard her and another lady speaking.

It seems as if Mrs. Colville had been sharing the gospel with this lady who seemed to want to discuss predestination rather than a living and vital walk with Jesus Christ. Finally Mrs. Colville said to the lady, “My dear, you have never known the Lord Jesus”. Now whatever the affect upon the lady was, Jeremiah heard those words and they pierced his own heart and for two weeks he wrestled with God about his own conversion and was gloriously saved. After leading his friend to Christ they banded with two other believers in intercession for the souls of Ulster and the revival of the church.

For months they prayed and the number of intercessors grew as the Spirit drew many kindred spirits to join them in prayer. During 1858 God answered their prayers and many sinners were brought to Christ as the fires of revival began to burn. Bible studies along with the prayer meetings helped strengthen the gatherings and sometimes the prayer would last all night with saints imploring the mercy of God. Repentance and conviction of sin grew mightily and when the church services would end the congregation refused to leave. Just as the preacher would pronounce the benediction fresh prayer or the cry of people over sin would again break out and the Spirit would descend upon the meeting as in the beginning. The services would become elongated and protracted as God’s glory would visit His repentant followers. So many hundreds of meetings would be going on simultaneously and so many people began to be Spiritually affected that the nuisance of loud drunken parties in the street ceased and gave way to hymn singing and shouts of praise.

It was recorded that everywhere people were singing the songs of praise and that if a stranger asked directions from a police officer he would stop singing just long enough to give the directions only to continue the song where he had left off. Houses by the hundreds with their windows open were singing and shouting praises to the Risen Lord. Soon all the churches and meeting places were so filled that larger buildings were secured for Spiritual gatherings and even they were not sufficient to hold the crowds. The meetings were also marked by testimonies of sinners converted and saints awakened. On a particular night in Broughshane an old man looking every bit a drunkard rose to speak in the midst of several thousand people. Many recognized him as a notorious drunk and every ear inclined to hear his words. He began,

“Gentlemen, I appear before you this day as a vile sinner. Many of you know me, for you have but to look at me and recognize the profligate of Broughshane; you know I was an old man hardened in sin; you know that I was a servant of the devil, and he led me by that instrument of his, the spirit of the barley. I brought my wife and family to beggary more than fifty years ago; in short, I defy the townland of Broughshane to produce my equal in profligacy, or any sin whatever; but gentlemen, I have seen Jesus! I was born again on last night week, and am therefore ‘a week old’ to day. My heavy and enormous sin is all gone, the Lord Jesus took it all away, and I stand before you this day not as a pattern of profligacy, but a monument of the perfect grace of God. “I stand here to tell you that God’s work on Calvary is “perfect. Yes, I have proved it His work is perfect. He is not like an architect who makes a drawing of a building, and then takes out this line or that, or alters “the whole, and even while the building is going up makes some further change. No, but God drew out the plan of salvation, and it was complete, and He carried it out with His blessed Son Jesus, and it is all perfect, for had it not been so, it would not have been capable of reaching the depth of iniquity of myself, the profligate of Broughshane.”

I personally had a hard time reading that because my eyes kept filling with tears. Oh God, where is the power today that produced a glorious testimony such as this man’s? Is it gone forever? Was it just for those old times or is it still available for today? Are we relegated to just speak correction to compromisers and false prophets or will you visit us with a fresh wind of your power?

And so the revival continued. Almost all the mothers of the Broughshane district were converted and they held their own prayer meetings interceding for the children of the entire area of Ulster. The Roman Catholic priests of the area greatly opposed the revival because many hundreds of Catholics were born again. The priests called it “a satanic delusion” which prompted one convert to stand up in the midst of the priest’s talk and exclaim “If it is the devil it must be a new devil for the old devil surely would not approve of the changed lives and all the new followers of the Lord Jesus!”. At a city called Ahoghill people gathered at the First Presbyterian Church in order to hear accounts from converts. So many people packed the church that the pastor feared the balcony would collapse so he brought the meeting to the town square. The rain began to pour upon the three thousand listeners as the first unknown convert began to speak of the greatness of God, and by the scores the people, men and women alike, fell to their knees in the mud and wept uncontrollably before a Holy God. Without regarding the rain the meeting went late into the night with God changing thousands of hearts.

Some of the meetings were so solemn and filled with the awesome presence of God that no singing or preaching was possible since hundreds of people would spontaneously cry out for God’s mercy and salvation. And like the upper room repentant saints would be praying all over the church house with some from time to time praying out loud for the Almighty to move in a way that glorified His Son. And these meetings were not just on Sundays but every night of the week. As preachers would proclaim the sufferings of the Lamb and His atoning work on the cross cries would come from the congregation “My sins, oh my sins” and the sermon would halt and people would gather around the seekers and pray and quote the Scriptures.

Of all the stories of Revival blessing, none is more striking than that of Coleraine. The movement first became evident there in a huge assemblage of people, drawn by no alluring announcement of magnificent oratory, but simply to hear the testimony of a few rural converts, upon the Fair Hill. As the thousands gathered to hear some converts it became evident that the crowd was too large for any one person to speak to all of them. So they divided into several groups and as the different speakers spoke the wonderful works of God the Holy Spirit fell upon the multitude. Hundreds became born again and hours passed. Suddenly a small murmur began in one section. It grew louder and louder and spread throughout the whole crowd until it became a swelling anthem singing the chorus from Psalm Forty -

He took me from a fearful pit
And the miry clay,
And on a rock He set my feet,
Establishing my way.

In the subsequent days the Spirit blew through the entire town bringing many sons to glory. The whole town was dramatically changed not by petition or politics but by the mighty force of the Holy Spirit. All the secular buildings were used for repentant believers and sinners alike, and on one night a segment of people began to run toward the Evangelical Society building. The preacher took off after them to see why they were running there. His own words described what he saw,

“There, on their knees, were one hundred children, and beside them, ladies and gentlemen of position, who had been ‘too genteel’ to attend the extraordinary meetings, or who had been prevented by delicate health, prostrated together before the Throne of Grace. The godless and worldly-minded man of business was there; old and young of the higher classes were there, all crying out for grace and pardon.”

From county to county still the movement spread. Of a scene at Newton Limavady, an eye-witness said:

“In a field, in front of my own house, an immense work of God, and that in wonderful power, was presented to the astonished eyes and hearts of a vast concourse of beholders. Not fewer than a hundred souls were brought under conviction of sin. Some of the women and children were conveyed into the house; others followed to assist them; and shortly, nearly every room in the house was crowded with persons crying out and praying for mercy. The lawn was literally strewed like a battle-field with deeply wounded ones under conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit, who was revealing Christ to their souls.”

It would be impossible to even attempt to give all the accounts of the working of God’s Spirit during the year 1859 in Ulster. Doctors, lawyers, rich men, poor men, educated, uneducated, the Spirit drew no lines and invaded every corner of Ulster. Many men quit work never to return again so they could give themselves completely to serving the Living God. And from the children that witnessed God’s miraculous moving many became preachers, teachers, and missionaries as the Spirit directed.

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And so I ask us, are we thirsty yet? Does it not stir our hearts to read what God has done among others and do we pant like the deer to drink from that brook? Does the world mean so much to us that we can live without the demonstration of God’s Spirit moving unusually through His own body? Am I content to just write this article and not fall on my face and beseech the God of Heaven to descend in power on my own life? Are you content to just read this account and walk away without seeing the mirror the Spirit holds up before your face?

Lord Jesus, there is so much to confess but to find the power to overcome the Spiritual inertia that has us immobilized your people is not yet with us. We beg You Spirit of the Living God, rend the heavens and like a mighty convicting wind fall on us, all for the glory of the Risen Christ, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.