Karen: This podcast you will be hearing my husband, David Main’s voice more than mine. That’s because he’ll be sharing a chapter from the book he’s writing right now. Writing it right now these days. It’s about prayer vigilantes. The next week I’ll be part of a book I’m working on. I’ve actually got two manuscripts going. We’ll choose one of them. And as we’ve learned, writing can be a lonely act. You do it alone in a room by yourself. Sometimes it takes months. So being able to share with you our listeners what we’re crafting, we consider that to be a privilege. Thank you so much for joining us.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

Karen: David is prayer vigilantes, a working title or have you settled on that one?

David: I’m not sure what it is Karen. I think it probably is a working title and maybe a little bit more than that. I’m feeling good about what I’m writing. It’s coming. It’s not something I’m struggling with.

Karen: The interesting thing about titles is you can labor on a title as a book writer or book author. Then you submit it to the publishing house and the marketing committee takes over and they know what they think sells in the marketplace. So sometimes the well-loved title you choose isn’t the one that they choose.

David: It’s exactly right.

Karen: Writer less than number one.

David: Been there, done that. Anyway Karen, I’m starting this chapter with comments I’ve heard during this COVID pandemic. And people saying, you know, it’s never been like this before. So that’s how this second chapter, the first chapter is all on the prayer of vigilante and why that term was chosen.

I can’t remember a time when our country was this polarized. We made it a state of rule that if guests come for dinner, including family, they can’t talk politics or they won’t get invited back if they do. “There are things I really don’t like about the left, but there are also things I don’t like all that much about the right.” “I’ve almost given up watching the news on television. Too often it’s more like hearing a strongly biased political commentator.” “In an attempt to be open to the views of others, I often find myself unsure of what I personally believe.” “I already have enough problems of my own. Why should I get worked up about an issue like systemic racism?” “Are you looking for unifiers like the president says he wants to be? I’m hard pressed to find such people. And apparently even himself isn’t doing all that well yet working with the other party.” Well now, have you heard or made any comments like these recently? You could even have gone so far as to say, “I don’t believe our country has ever been this divided before.” If that’s the case, I should quickly inform you that you would be wrong.

Can you recall hearing the name James Buchanan? He’s considered by most historians to be one of the least competent of all our chief executives. Well, he completed a full term in office in the critical years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. Talk about gridlock. Every significant bill the Republicans passed in the House fell before the Southern states and the Senate. Otherwise it died with Buchanan’s presidential veto.

Sound familiar? It’s said that this White House resident succeeded in making all sides of the political divide mad at him. Be that as it may, he certainly inadequately grasped the political powder cake he inherited that was just about to explode. To be fair, these were incredibly contentious years before the war. Buchanan’s term was much like what David writes about in Psalms 60, verses 2 and 3. “You have shaken the land and torn it open, mend its fractures for it is quaking. You have shown your people desperate times. You have given us wine that makes us stagger.”

Two days after Buchanan’s inauguration on March 4, 1857, the Supreme Court handed down its Dred Scott decision, which declared among other points that African Americans who lived in free states were not and never could be citizens of the U.S. Earlier in that decade of the 1850s, the Fugitive Slave Act had been passed, which authorized the seizure and return of runaways who would escape from one state to another. As you can imagine, abolitionists, those wanting to abolish slavery, were powerfully vocal on issues like this and kept people’s emotions stirred.

This was also the decade when Harriet Beecher Stowe’s powerful book, Uncle Tom Cabin, came out. Looking ahead, a lawyer from Illinois who would soon run for president quoted scripture saying, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” To put things mildly, ours was an incredibly split nation. Buchanan chose not to run for a second term. He was reputed to have said to Lincoln, “If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, that’s a state in Pennsylvania, you are a happy man.” My guess is that the electrifying, beneficial spiritual changes that were about to take place all across America would catch everyone by surprise. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We know from current urban studies that when neighborhoods change racially and or culturally, existing congregations have to quickly adjust or they risk the real possibility of dying. This was the case with the Old North Dutch Reform Church at Fulton and William Street in Lower Manhattan. Numerous families of long standing had already moved away as the location was now made up more of both the laboring class and immigrants. Other congregations in the vicinity had already made their move, had the leaders at Old North waited too long. Praying for God’s direction, the trustees eventually decided they could pay a salary of $1,000 a year for someone to head up a ministry of visitation. Their eventual choice was of Mr. Jeremiah C. Lanphear, who at age 49 had no prior experience of working on a church staff. What soon happened reads like fiction, but it’s fact. Making cold calls is hard in any field of endeavor, and it certainly was true initially for Lanphear as he tried to breathe new life into this old church setting.

The first three months yielded few results. Discouraged, he would return to his room in the church’s consistory worn out and dispirited, and there in his own words he quote, “spread his sorrows before the Lord.” On one such occasion a new thought occurred to him. There may be others in the vicinity who shared his feelings. Possibly there were working people with similar thoughts who would respond to an offer of praying with him once a week. The church official granted Lanphear permission to try it.

His brochure was more detailed. Prayer meeting from 12 to 1 o’clock. Stop 5, 10 or 20 minutes or the whole hour as your time permits. The date and place were set. Wednesday, September 23, 1857, 3rd floor of the church. For the first half hour Lanphear sat alone. Then at half past noon another man arrived, and the two prayed quietly as a couple more joined them. When the hour was up the total of those who participated was six.

The meeting ended promptly with an agreement that a similar prayer time would be held the following Wednesday, September 30. Would you have seen this as a successful first attempt? There was certainly nothing extraordinary about the hour. I’m sure none of the man had any inclination that this would be the start of a most remarkable moving of the Holy Spirit in which well over a million persons would soon be swept into the Kingdom of God. Anyway, the number of praying men jumped to twenty the second time around. The third Wednesday, October 7, the number doubled to forty. Sensing that God was in what was happening the next meetings were moved to a bigger room and it was also decided to hold the prayer times daily.

Only God knew that on Wednesday, October 14, 1857 the country would be stunned by one of the worst financial panics in its young history. Banks failed, men lost their jobs, families had no money to buy food, many were evicted from their homes. It wasn’t long before the entire church building was filled every noon hour with crowds of more than three thousand. Prayer regulations had to be made like this one that’s self-explanatory.

Brethren are earnestly requested to adhere to a five-minute rule. The population in New York back then, not counting the other burrows, was about 800,000. Before a half year had passed, some 10,000 were gathering daily for prayer at the noon hour in multiple locations such as the YMCA’s. Burton’s Theater on Chamber Street was first used as a place of prayer on March 17, 1858, long before the official time to begin it was packed, quote, “from the pit to the roof.” Early in 1858 newspapers began covering these meetings and soon it was next to impossible for the average person not to know what was happening because headlines read, “New Haven, Connecticut, city’s biggest church packed twice daily for prayer.” Washington, DC, “five prayer meetings go round the clock.” Albany, New York, “state legislators get down on knees.” New Haven, Connecticut, “revival sweeps Yale.” Schenectady, New York, “firemen’s meeting attracts 2,000.” Death of Connecticut, “business shuts down for hour each day.”

Everybody prays. What began in the east swept into the west. All the major cities were touched. One of the original six who first met for prayer on that initial Wednesday back on September 23, 1857 was a 21-year-old from Philadelphia. He felt led to initiate such a gathering in his hometown. The start, however, was disappointing. Only about 40 came.

We would probably think it’s phenomenal if 40 elected to attend a time of prayer at the noon hour, but persistence paid off. And on Wednesday, March 8, 1858, 300 showed up. Two days later, 2,500 jammed into a larger auditorium. In May, a tent was erected and within four months, 150,000 people had prayed together in that tent. It’s estimated that there were some 10,000 conversions to Christ in Philadelphia in 1858. 2,000 showed up for prayer in the Metropolitan Hall in Chicago. A newspaper reported, quote, “So far as the effects of the present religious movement are concerned, they are apparent to all. They are to be seen in every walk of life, to be felt in every phase of society. The merchant, the farmer, the mechanic, all who have been within their influence have been excited to better things, to a more orderly and honest way of life. All have been more or less influenced by this excitement.”

Charles Finney, by then an older man, but still a powerful revival figure from the earlier 1800s, said, “There is such a general confidence in the prevalence of prayer that the people very extensively seem to prefer meeting for prayer to meeting for preaching. The general impression seemed to be we have had instruction until we are hardened. It’s time for us to pray.”

It helps me to fit what was happening into a more complete picture of the times. Religious historians see 1858 and 59 as the years the revival was at its initial peak. Early in 1860, May, Abraham Lincoln was nominated in Chicago as the Republican candidate for president. A half year later, after the season of campaigning, Lincoln was elected over three other candidates, and on March 4, 1861, his presidency began.

The country was to know a change from one of the least effective chief executives to one of the most revered presidents of all time. But only a little over a month after Lincoln was sworn in, southern troops captured Fort Sumpner near Charleston, North Carolina, and the Civil War had begun. The bloody conflict would last for a little over four years. What is seldom reported is the manner in which the religious revival continued this time among the troops. In my library is a 427-page book titled “The Great Revival in the Southern Armies.“

The preface states, “To what extent the religious element prevailed among the soldiers of the north they can best tell who labored among them in word and doctrine, to what extent the soldiers of the south, the following pages tell us in part.”

Here are some selected quotes. “It was now that the signs of that wonderful revival in the Army of the West began to appear. I shall never forget, says Reverend W. H. Browning, the look of astonishment in the Association of Chaplains in January 1863 when Brother Winchester, a chaplain and a minister in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, announced a conversion in his command and stated that he believed we are on the eve of one of the most glorious revivals ever witnessed on the American continent. His countenance glowed with an unearthly radiance and while he spoke, our hearts burned within us. He urged us to look for it, pray for it, preach for it. A revival in the Army. The thing was incredible. And yet while we listened to this man of faith, we could almost hear the shouts of redeemed souls that were being born to God.”

Another quote. “In the evening, at the close of Bress Parade, the drums would beat the church call on Chapel Hill. It was a glorious sight, just as the setting sun bathed the mountaintops in his ruddy light to see those toil-worn veterans gathering in companies and marching to the house of the Lord. From all directions, down from the hills, out of the woods, across the valleys they came, while a gallant Colonel McCullough of the 16th South Carolina, himself a godly man, leads his men to the place of worship. Then the 24th South Carolina falls into line led by their chaplain, Mr. Old, and their brave Colonel Capers, son of the deceased Bishop Capers of the Southern Methodist Church. The benches and the pulpit have to be removed from the house in a dense multitude of hearers crowned the Chapel Hill. A clear, strong voice starts a familiar old hymn, and soon thousands of voices chime in. In the evening air is burdened with a great song of praise. The preacher now enters the stand. A thousand voices are hushed, and a thousand hearts are still to hear the word of the Lord. At the close of the sermon hundreds bow in penitence and prayer. Many are converted. Tattoo beats, and the men disappear to their cabins, not to sleep, but to pray and sing with their sorrowing comrades. And far into the night the camps are vocal with the songs of Zion and the rejoicing of newborn souls. This revival, described by an eyewitness, 140 were converted in two weeks.”

More. “Lying behind the strong barrier of the Chattahoochee River for a few days, these Christian soldiers built a brush arbor, and beneath it many souls were born of God. Dying these noble men of the South gave testimony to the power of divine grace. ‘Can I do anything for you?’ said the missionary, kneeling by the side of a private shot through the neck. ‘Yes, right to my poor wife.’ ‘What shall I write?’ ‘Say to my dear wife, it’s all right.’ This was written. What else shall I write? Nothing else. All’s right. Thus he died. He was a convert of the camp.

More. “In the 57th North Carolina Regiment the work was glorious. God has blessed our regiment with the most glorious revival of religion. God has indeed been with us during the last 10 days. 56 have joined the church and 33 have been soundly converted. The Lord has done great things for us. Lions have been changed to lambs. I never witnessed such a glorious revival before.”

Here’s more. “The most careless observer can but notice the marked change that has taken place in the regiments. Instead of Ulth’s, Jess’s and Blackguard’s songs, we now have the songs of Zion. Prayers and praises to God. True, there are yet many profane wicked and rude. Yet the preponderance is decidedly in favor of Christianity. I very early believe that the morals of the army are now far in advance of those of the country. And instead of the army being the school of vice, as was once supposed and really was, it is now the place where God is adored and where many learned to revere the name of Jesus.”

Another. “Yesterday evening at about five o’clock the enemy began to throw shells across the river again, firing slowly for about an hour. Notwithstanding this, at the usual hour, twilight, we had a very large crowd of anxious listeners at the rude harbor the men had erected for the worship of God. A short discourse was delivered when the penitents were invited to the altar. Fifty or sixty came forward, earnestly inquiring the way of salvation. Ten of this number were converted and enabled to testify of a truth that Christ was their savior. The work is still extending. Each night increases the attendance, the interest, and the number of penitents. During a ministry of a fourth of a century, I have never witnessed a work so deep, so general, and so successful. It pervades all classes of the army in this brigade and elicits the cooperation of all denominations. We know no distinction here. Baptists, Cumberlands, old Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Methodists work together and rejoice together at the success of our cause.”

Do reading different sections. “Not a meeting is held by the chaplains of the different commands, but what they have large assemblies of soldiers and attendants. And when the invitation is extended to those who desire an interest in the prayers of the Christians, many are seen pressing through the crowded throng and bowing humbly on the cold, damp ground with but the broad blue sky for a covering. What scenes, resembling so strongly the great revival periods of the earlier pioneer settlements. The eloquent voice of the minister, the heavy sighing of the penitent, and the deep melancholy spirit of the soldier audience is a scene for the artist in one of no small moment. Not an evening passes by, but what there can be seen here and there are gathered together small clumps of soldiers singing sacred songs, and occasionally sending up a humble prayer to heaven. The idol jester and he who would make light of their romantic worship stand in awe and refrain from saying anything that would tend to mortify or molest their feelings. How often do we hear the expression, not alone from the young, but the age soldier that I am determined to live a better life and move in conformity with the Christian church, etc. Up to January 1865, it was estimated that nearly 150,000 soldiers had been converted during the progress of the war, and it was believed that fully one-third of all the soldiers in the field were praying men and members of some branch of the Christian church.”

One more. “Captain Richard H. Powell of the Third Alabama Regiment gives an interesting account of the work. ‘For two months we have held prayer meetings regularly when military duties have not prevented three times a week, which has constantly grown in interest. Last night, 26 of those hearty soldiers presented themselves for prayer. They gave the most earnest attention to all religious exercises and gathering crowds to hear the gospel. They are reflecting most seriously upon eternal interests. In the absence of a chaplain, we are doing what we can in the interesting work of instructing them in the way of salvation and pointing them to Jesus, the friend of sinners.’

Deploying the one of ministers to break the bread of life to the starving thousand, Captain Powell says, ‘I have never seen such a feel for doing good and extending the Redeemer’s kingdom on earth as the army of Northern Virginia presents this day. The fields are already white unto the harvest, but the laborers who must gather this rich harvest into the master’s granary, where, oh, where are they? It is astonishing to know what destitution of chaplains prevails.’ In this core, General Jackson’s, where an especial effort has been made to secure their services, not one half of the regiments are supplied. ‘Can you not, my dear sir, raise in our behalf the Macedonian cry and urge zealous, laborious ministers of the gospel to come and help us. They will be received by the army everywhere with open, wide-stretched arms.’ Well, when newcomers today begin to pray for a national revival, they often have a hard time picturing what they’re asking the Lord to do. Hopefully this chapter has helped in that regard.”

Earlier, I mentioned Dr. Orr’s book, The Fervent Prayer. The subtitle is The World-Wide Impact of the Great Awakening of 1858. His first six chapters relate to the United States. The next ten are about how the American revival also affected other parts of the world. Suffice it to say that God was wonderfully at work internationally in a manner that I’m sure was above and beyond the expectations of any of those who first gathered to pray that chosen noon hour in New York. I was most fortunate in that I got to personally meet, talk with, and interview Dr. Orr on several occasions. I believe he held a number of earned doctorates and was rightly considered the foremost authority on the subject of religious revival movements. He wrote numerous books about such outbreaks in various countries of the world. I distinctly remembering him saying to me that revivals never break out without someone somewhere paying the price prayer-wise.

I don’t believe he would be offended by me making a slight change in his wording to fit my book. Revival never ever breaks out without volunteer vigilantes somewhere paying the price prayer-wise.

Karen: It’s extraordinary stories, aren’t they?

David: Yeah, I’m almost done with chapter three now. That was two.

Karren: Yeah, well, you know, I was, as you’re reading, I was thinking in what is called the post-Christian era and it feels like we are there. Is this a possibility again? And so it means, it behooves some of us to become your prayer vigilantes to say, this is what I need to do and this is what God is calling to me to do. And we need to pray that He’ll, I think that’s what you’re doing, raise those up all over our country, all over the world.

David: Yeah, a lot of time is the beginning movement of revival comes after, it’s almost like all the lights have gone out.

Karen: Yeah, I mean, there was a thing, the congruity of it. I hear you had this slaughter going on in war and yet this extraordinary movement of God in those camps is just amazing.

David: And as a result of that phenomenal moving of prayer all through the country, thousands of people, they weren’t seasoned prayer warriors. They just were people with burdened hearts. They knew something had to happen.

Karen: Yeah, oh, that’s great, honey. It’s wonderful stuff. You can see the whole book.

David: I have this feeling that there’s a hand pushing me.

Karen: I think you’re feeling that. Yeah, I think that’s true.

David: Okay, you have a hand pushing you.

Karen: We’ll talk about it next time. I do. Okay, let’s do that.

David: I look forward to it.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address. hosts@BeforeWeGo.show. That’s all lowercase letters. hosts@BeforeWeGo.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2021 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.