We were recently in Llanelli, Wales with our United Kingdom tour, holding the first of five consecutive conferences in Great Britain. While visiting the region, the Lord began to download a message of significance not only for Wales, but for the body of Christ at large.
There were dozens of healings in Wales alone, including several notable miracles. A man was healed after being unable to walk properly from a broken back 10 years ago. A woman was healed of a strange disease that caused her to lose her fingerprints, and her fingerprints were restored! On a lighter note, a man also reported that his left buttock, which was completely numb to all sensory feeling, was healed. There were too many miracles to report; these are just a few. Of far broader importance is the restoration of ancient spiritual wells that are bubbling again in this hour in direct connection with the region.
A brief historyMost revival historians are familiar with the massive move of God that swept the nations at the turn of the 20th century through the life of the young Welsh minister Evan Roberts. From 1904 to 1906, Roberts and his associates set Wales ablaze as one of every five citizens was converted and missionaries were sent around the world. Rugged coal miners abandoned the pubs, and church attendance swelled. Sporting events and theatres closed due to lack of interest as communities gathered for all-night prayer meetings and worship. Families were healed, and a nation turned back to God.
The Welsh Revival directly influenced a group of men in Los Angeles, Calif., who began praying for a similar move to strike America. Not long afterward, they were introduced to William Seymour, and the Pentecostal Revival was born at Azusa Street. The DNA of every subsequent move of God, therefore, has been mingled with that of Wales.
The Welsh Revival was the only one of its kind. It impacted not only the church, but also secular society. Before he stepped out of the pulpit, Roberts was even operating at significant levels of the word of knowledge and other prophetic giftings – there was no grid for this type of ministry at the time, and it even frightened him.
However, by 1906, Roberts was virtually taken out of ministry through the influence of a woman named Jessie Penn Lewis, at a time when Roberts was being hammered by criticism from a number of the older mainline church leaders. Lewis eventually manipulated Roberts to denounce many of the tenets and fruit of the very revival he ignited years later. Most consider that religious strongholds and the Jezebel spirit were what brought the short-lived revival to an end.
Evan pulled out of the revival after only a couple years, in the midst of his prime, and shortly after that, there was barely any trace of the revival left in the land.
Voice of brokennessThe body of Christ is now on the verge of global harvest. Therefore, it is important to recognize that a corporate release of God’s glory, comparable to that of the Welsh Revival, is being released, even as we move into something altogether new. The church has long looked back wistfully and sought to emulate that old revival, but the Lord is restoring the essence of what He did in a completely new package. Even as He is restoring old wells, He is also calling His people to dig new ones.
See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you (Is. 42:9).
In 2004, exactly 100 years since the start of the Welsh Revival, a very important find was announced. A wax reel was discovered that contained the only recording of Evan Roberts’ voice during the revival years. It was broken into pieces and was sent to Los Angeles (remember Azusa Street) to be repaired. After being reconstructed, one could listen and hear Roberts preaching in his native Welsh language.
This prophetically represents a voice coming again out of Wales, as the ancient wells of revival are being restored. It is a voice that comes through brokenness. The chief tenets of the revival were repentance and the confession of any known sin – points often reiterated by Roberts. But not in a somber religiosity associated with false holiness. Roberts would laugh and smile and walk up and down the aisles talking with people in the pews during his sermons – a stark contrast to his starch-collared contemporaries who accused the revival of playing on the emotions of the people.
Though there will be deep repentance coming to the body of Christ, this will also be associated with laughter and joy. Even as Evan Roberts prayed “Bend us, Lord!” So we are praying “Plaster us, Lord!”
Plugging the enemy’s wellThe Lord had me visit three particular geographical sites in Wales for the purpose of impartation and receiving mantles. One was Moriah Chapel, where Evan Roberts preached and was buried. I lay on Roberts’ grave, asking for a transfer of the anointing that once rested on his life. I was instantly taken into a vision, where I saw a large green bowl. This represented new life springing forth from the old well. In the same way that the revival was cut short, so did the bowl have a long way to go before it was full. The Lord is about to release in our day a fuller measure of revival that was destined for that age.
Nevertheless, the church has heard such promises for years with no action. Part of the problem has been our failure to plug up the enemy’s wells whenever we begin to redig those of the Lord. Often we idolize the old movements and encamp around the flicker of what God did many years ago, yet we never progress because we are still hindered by the work of the enemy that brought an end to the old movement.
Charlie Robinson discussed with me a principle the Lord has been showing him about plugging up the enemy’s well. Whenever the armies of Israel took back enemy ground, one of the first things they would do was to fill in the source from which their adversaries had drawn life. Even as Israel would redig the wells of their forefathers, they would refuse drink from the wells of their enemies. In the same way, through strategic intercession, we must disarm the adversaries that squelched revival many years ago.
Prayer and convictionEvan Roberts operated at a heavy level of intercession, often getting only two or three hours of sleep a night during the revival years. He also operated in the spirit of conviction – the Spirit of the Fear of the Lord (see Isa. 11:2).
Just last week, a member of our team, Gabe Johnson, had a supernatural encounter, as Evan Roberts came to his room at night in an open-eye visitation. Gabe is a large man – a trained security specialist – but he was utterly frightened. He asked prophetic teacher Paul Keith Davis about this, and Paul said it represented two things: that a burden for prayer is coming, as well as a release of the spirit of conviction. These are two elements of the revival that are being restored.
Release of the daughtersDuring our time in Wales, the Lord began showing me that the enemy’s number one target in the Welsh Revival was not the ministry of Evan Roberts, but rather, it was the women who were being released into ministry. Roberts was activating spiritual daughters like no other ever had before him. In fact, he was sending out traveling female revivalists into itinerate ministry, some as young as 15 years old!
These ladies were the point of contention raised by most of the religious leaders who persecuted Roberts in the newspapers. Eventually, Roberts backed away from his association with these ladies for fear of misperception. This consequently left many of these young ladies bewildered, no longer feeling the support or backing from their spiritual father. The Jezebel spirit was not so concerned with taking out the ministry of one single man. Rather, it sought to abort the potential for half of the body of Christ – the women – from being activated and mobilized.
Without being activated by the father’s love, the daughters cannot ascend to their true potential. The prophet Malachi tells us that in the last days, the spirit of Elijah will turn the hearts of the fathers back to the sons, and the sons to the fathers. But what we rarely consider is that the hearts of the fathers and mothers must also turn back to the daughters.
However, most of the “fathers” in the church today are so wounded that they do not know how to properly relate to the daughters. Either they close off from them altogether, or the Jezebel spirit pushes them to cross healthy boundaries into outright impropriety. Much of this is rooted in unhealthy relationships with women in the past. There must be healthy boundaries within ministry, without them being perceived as rejection. Without radical purity in these relationships, there can be immeasurable damage. But without apostolic fathering, the daughters will never be activated into their destiny.
There in Wales, I met a wonderful pastor and author, Karen Lowe, whose book on the women of the Welsh Revival, titled Carriers of the Fire, I would highly recommend. You can find it at
http://www.shedheadproductions.org/. The destiny cut short in the Welsh Revival is about to be restored to an entire generation.
Essentially, the Lord is releasing the spirit of adoption – perhaps like we’ve never known before in history. And in a very real sense, it pertains our corporate identity as the bride of Christ – the expression of the last day church which will enable us to relate with the Lord like never before. Please take time to read the following passage from the Book of Ezekiel, as it is most critical in imparting an understanding of this spiritual adoption:
On the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one looked on you with pity or had compassion enough to do any of these things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field, for on the day you were born you were despised.
Then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood, and as you lay there in your blood I said to you, “Live!” I made you grow up like a plant of the field. You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.
Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine.
I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord (Eze. 16:4-14).
Corporate seer realm, creative miraclesAnother often forgotten remnant of the Welsh Revival was the life and ministry of Stephen and George Jeffreys. Although they are more often associated with the Pentecostal Revival, the brothers’ roots were in the Welsh Revival.
Stephen Jeffreys operated in a level of creative miracles like no one else in his day. His signature healing was the reversal of rheumatoid arthritis. He would command afflicting spirits to leave, and people’s bodies would crunch and contort back into place as they were able to straighten out perfectly. Bones could be heard cracking and popping throughout the building whenever Jeffreys ministered. Jeffreys also saw eyeballs recreated in their sockets and other remarkable miracles throughout Wales and the nation. A high ranking vicar of the Anglican church followed Jeffreys for a length of time, documenting the amazing miracles that happened in his meetings.
This relates to another geographical site I was led to visit for impartation. I went to an open area where a church once stood where Stephen Jeffreys had preached. It was there that an open vision of the Lord was seen corporately by everyone in the congregation only days before the start of a world war. It lasted for six hours, and everyone from the countryside flocked to the church to see it. Jeffreys prostrated himself before the Lord there for three days straight, after which a new mantle of miracles, signs and wonders came upon his life. Again, I pressed the Lord to release again that same well of the corporate seer realm, as well as the miraculous.
The Lord spoke to me through a sign hanging on a nearby building which said, “Under New Management.” God’s church is even now reoccupying these areas in the Spirit, as the Lord establishes His Kingdom through His people.
The CeltsThe third well I visited relates to the ancient Celtic heritage of Wales. I traveled to a site of St. Illtud’s church, reputed to be the oldest site of continual worship in Britain. It was founded by a Celtic missionary in the fifth century, who worked miracles of nature. He once took authority over a flood tide, commanding it to stop before it destroyed the town. He also used his staff to supernaturally open a healing spring, not unlike the Pool of Bethesda in John 5.
The Celtic church holds a rich history of intercession and remarkable miracles, many relating to taking authority over the natural realm, even as Adam did in the Garden of Eden. Much of what Evan Roberts tapped into was the fulfillment of prayers of the Celtic church many centuries before him in his own land, but there is much more to come as the church taps into those deep realms of glory and we are made manifest as the sons and daughters of God. I discuss the restoration of the Celtic stream more thoroughly in my book, The New Mystics. The closer that the church nears the end of the age, these prayers of all the saints that have been accumulating in the bowls in Heaven (see Revelation chapters six and eight) are being mixed with the coals of the altar and the blood of Christ and hurled back to the earth, blowing open the heavens. That is what happened in 1904, and is happening now, 100 years later.
