Where to look for evidence of the reality and power of God - Midweek Message 12th May 2021

 

Dear Friends,

If you were looking for evidence of the reality and power of God, where would you go?

I came across an article this week entitled ‘The last mainland British revivals?’ It told of a remarkable work of God which began in Lowestoft, Suffolk, 100 years ago, in 1921.

‘On 7 March Douglas Brown, minister of Balham Baptist, south London, arrived in Lowestoft, Suffolk – the UK’s most easterly town. It was a busy fishing port, like elsewhere still recovering from the Great War and a global flu pandemic! Brown was coming to preach for five days at London Road Baptist where, for some time, an average of 90 people had met regularly to pray that God would show his power in their town. Having been ill Brown brought a colleague along in case he could not get through the week. Little did he know that he would preach 370 times in the next three months!

Morning prayer, afternoon Bible studies and evening preaching commenced that Monday, and on Wednesday Brown spoke about Jesus healing at Bethesda (John 5). Concluding, he asked anyone wanting to surrender their lives to Christ to see him in the vestry. As the congregation sang ‘I hear thy welcome voice, that calls me Lord to thee’, so many people went to seek help that they had to open another room and that night nearly 70 people, mostly aged 15 to 20, were converted.’¹

That was the beginning of a series of meetings which continued until Easter in larger and larger venues in which many more people were brought to a living faith in Christ. On April 2^nd Brown went back to London for a break but he soon returned to preach in some of the outlying villages in which again many people were brought to faith. The revival spread to, for example, Ipswich, Stowmarket and Norwich and not just through Brown but God used the preaching and the prayers of many others. In fact, one newspaper reported of the time: All East Anglia was on fire for God. That however was not the end of the story.

Every year at the end of September at least 700 Scottish fishing boats with around 7,000 men would sail from all over Scotland to their autumn base in Lowestoft or Yarmouth. Some 3000 women would travel by train to join them to help with gutting, barrel packing etc.² In 1921 the catches were meagre and bad weather at the weekend meant that many of these fisher folks were idle. Among those who had travelled to Yarmouth was a young cooper from Fochabers called Jock Troup. Troup began to hold open-air meetings. On October 15^th at 9pm at one of these meetings, as he preached from Isaiah 63.1, scores of men and women listening were convicted of their sin, fell to their knees and cried out to God for forgiveness. That too was the beginning of a series of similar gatherings in which more and more people were brought to faith in Christ. Douglas Brown returned to the area in November and worked with Troup in speaking in number of different places. At the end of the year many of those converted returned to the Scottish fishing bases from which they had sailed.

Meanwhile, during his time in Yarmouth Jock Troup had a dream of a man from Fraserburgh asking God to send Troup to his town. Troup regarded this as a Macedonian call from God and he duly gave up his job as a cooper, boarded a train bound eventually for Fraserburgh and arrived there to discover that the local Baptist church had just drafted a letter to urge him to come to Fraserburgh as soon as he could. He immediately began preaching in the town square and then in the nearby Baptist church and soon crowds were flocking to hear him and more significantly people were coming to faith. It is reckoned some 400 people were brought to faith in the first 5 weeks. Soon Troup was speaking in many other places but God was also using other preachers and the revival spread, particularly along the North East coast but in many other places too. Some were sceptical about what happened, dismissing it as mere emotionalism but when someone mentioned such a sceptic to D P Thomson, the Church of Scotland evangelist, who had observed and assisted in what had gone on particularly in Fraserburgh, he responded ‘Send him to me! For I know at least 200 people who went out as missionaries or entered the ministry at home as a direct result of the revival in Fraserburgh’

There is much more that could be told but it is encouraging and exciting to read such accounts from relatively recent history of the presence and the power God changing lives in large numbers through his gospel. Yet when we are thinking of looking for evidence of the reality and power of God such dramatic revivals are not the only place to go. That is one of the key lessons of the book of Daniel, set as it is in a context of darkness and defeat for the people of God, the Old Testament church of God.

What we saw last Sunday in the opening chapter and will see throughout these early chapters is God displaying his reality and power through the faithful witness of Daniel and his friends in middle of such dark and depressing days. They were a tiny minority in Babylon - a young remnant among their own disheartened and compromised people - whom God used to display that he was not dead but alive, not helpless but reigning, not feckless but fulfilling his promises of judgement and salvation and accomplishing his long-term purposes not just for the Jews but ultimately for the world. Because of Daniel and his friends Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar and Darius, all mighty rulers  of their day would be brought to acknowledge that Yahweh the God of the Bible, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus, was and is the living God.

I say that to encourage us for our day is currently much more like the days of Daniel than the days of Douglas Murray in East Anglia or Jock Troup in Fraserburgh in the 1920’s. In whichever day we find ourselves there is always opportunity for God to display his reality and power through the faithful witness and prayers of his people. In that regard I was encouraged to read in the latest issue of Billions, the magazine of OMF, someone quoting the missiologist David Smith who said we can sometime miss authentic witness to Christ in for example ‘the extraordinary patience and undiminished love’ of those caring for people with dementia.

All that brought to mind lines from Anna Waring’s hymn Father I  know that all my life is portioned out for me’

I would not have the restless will
that hurries to and fro,
seeking for some great thing to do
or secret thing to know;
I would be treated as a child,
and guided where to go.

I ask thee for the daily strength,
to none that ask denied,
a mind to blend with outward life,
while keeping at thy side,
content to fill a little space,
if thou be glorified.

Yours in Him,

 David

¹  Evangelicals Now magazine May Issue - see here

² Taken from Glory in the Glen Tom Lennie p227ff