By Randy Willis
I got the idea for my headline from Dr. Roy Fish’s wonderful book When Heaven Touched Earth: The Awakening of 1858 and Its Effects on Baptists. Dr. Fish and I were both members of the Board of Trustees of the Joseph Willis Institute for Great Awakening Studies. He was in declining health and was never able to attend a meeting. I only met him once and that was while he was having breakfast in the same hotel I was staying. Dr. Rod Masteller introduced us. Not long before his death I contacted him concerning how I could obtain a copy of his book.
A few years ago someone asked me, “Why did the 1858 revival skip Louisiana?” This was my answer….
In 1857, sixty years after my 4th great-grandfather Joseph Willis first preached Jesus, in the Louisiana Territory, and just three years after his death, materialism pervaded America. The fact that the young were growing up without God, caused many Christians to begin to pray that God would break the love of money over people’s lives and send another revival to the nation. “Concerts of Prayer” began to spring up throughout the United States and Canada. Materialism was broken in many lives by the Bank Panic of October 1857.
Due to the long, hard winter of 1856-1857, transportation and trade transactions were delayed. On October 14, 1857, the extensive banking system of the United States collapsed. It was a far-reaching disaster bringing ruin to hundreds of thousands of people in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and the industrial centers of the nation. The Panic caused rich men to go broke, literally overnight. Suicide and murder increased, as well.
God answered the prayers of His people and revival broke out in 1857. In 1858, from February to June, 50,000 people a week were added to the church – in a nation whose population was only 30 million.
Across the Atlantic another million were won to Christ by 1865. The revival spread over much of the nation, except the few places that were not hurt by the crash, like Louisiana. So glorious was the revival that D.L. Moody said at the end of his life that he wished it would happen again. There was such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that Andrew Murray had to try and bring order to a prayer meeting. Out of this revival came D. L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, William Booth (founder of The Salvation Army), and many others dedicated to the Gospel of Christ. Later, the influences of these great revivals can be heard in the preaching of men like Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, and many others.
When Heaven Touched Earth: Except Louisiana. But, why not Louisiana?
In the 1850’s, most millionaires in the US lived between Natchez, Mississippi, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Prior to the Civil War, Louisiana had more millionaires than any other state in the Union and subsequently more antebellum homes, too. Louisiana escaped much of this economic disaster but sadly also missed much of the 1857-1858 revival. Louisiana’s economy was not dependent on industrial industry like the north. It was during the height of the plantation system in Louisiana, and slavery, the machine which drove the economic force of the region, was a large part of the culture. Although the dreaded Black Code had not been enforced for decades, the Roman Catholic church dominated much of Louisiana and resisted Protestant efforts of revival.
Will revival start where it stopped in 1858, Louisiana?
What God did through three Great Awakenings (I’ve included 1858 as the third) in our country, He can do again. Will it take economic disaster again to bring God’s people to their knees in humility? Pride is the great enemy of revival. It’s the first item referred to in the often quoted 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
~ Randy Willis www.threewindsblowing.com
