It all began at a tea party. In 1856 in Ulster, Ireland, James McQuilkin was invited to tea. There a visiting woman skirted the civilities of discussing the weather and spoke openly on a subject McQuilkin found uncomfortable: the condition of the soul. After another guest at the tea party described the nature of her Christian experience, the visitor said, “My dear, I don’t believe you have ever known the Lord Jesus.” McQuilkin later wrote, “I knew that she spoke what was true of me . I felt as if the ground were about to open beneath me and let me sink into hell. As soon as I could, I left the company. For two weeks I had no peace day or night. At the end of that time I found peace by trusting the Lord Jesus.”
The following year McQuilkin felt burdened to pray for his
neighbors. He asked three friends to join him. Once a week the four men
gathered at the village schoolhouse to pray for each person in their community
by name. The town was Ahogill, County Antrim, Ulster, Ireland. The date:
September 1857.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to them, God was laying the same
burden on many hearts, and similar prayer groups started throughout northern
Ireland. Pastors began preaching about revival.
In December 1857 McQuilkin’s group rejoiced to see the first
conversion in Ahogill. But widespread revival did not come. Still, God’s people
prayed—for nineteen more months. Then one morning in the city of Ballymena,
just six miles from Ahogill, a young man fell prostrate in the crowded
marketplace and called out, “Unclean! Unclean! God be merciful to me a sinner!”
The night of March 14, 1859, the McQuilkin group responded
by inviting Christians to a prayer meeting at the Ahogill Presbyterian Church.
The church was so crowded that they moved the meeting out into the street.
There hundreds of people knelt in the mud and rain, confessing their sins and
praising God. They were the first of one hundred thousand people God called to
himself in 1859 in what became known as the Ulster Revival.
There was a great spiritual movement among young people. It
was not uncommon for teenage boys to hold street meetings to reach their peers
for Christ. At one such street meeting an Irish clergyman counted forty
children and eighty adults listening to the preaching of twelve-year-old boys.
The results of the revival were remarkable. In 1860 in
County Antrim the police had an empty jail and no crimes to investigate. Judges
often had no cases to hear. With their owners converted, pubs closed and
alcohol consumption fell so drastically that whiskey distilleries were sold.
Gambling at horse races fell off by 95 percent.
A visitor to Ulster reported “thronged church services,
abundant prayer meetings, increased family prayers, unmatched Scripture
reading, increased giving, converts remaining steadfast.” The Ulster movement
touched off similar revivals in England, Scotland, and Wales.
God drew hundreds of thousands of people to himself, and it
all began with a woman unafraid to speak spiritual truth over tea.
Source: The One-Year Christian History by E. Michael
and Sharon Rusten, pages 148-149.
