The Noon Prayer Meeting (1859) - Talbot Chambers - ebook

This Revival was the greatest Revival that America has ever experienced. It is referred to as the Awakening of 1857-1858, The Prayer Revival, The Layman’s Prayer Revival and The Businessmen's Revival.

For 12 years there had been a time of great prosperity and materialism took a grip on society. Churches were losing people and worldliness was creeping in.

Concerned Christians began 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 of America and Canada. This materialism was broken in many lives by the Bank Panic of October 1857.

For a variety of reasons the banking system of the United States collapsed, bringing financial ruin to hundreds of thousands of people in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and the industrial centers of the nation. Suicide and murder increased, as well as the number of unfortunate women who roamed the streets in the cities.

But God was already on the case. Prayer meetings had sprung up all over the nation, asking God to revive America again. He was not slow in replying, pouring out His Spirit across the nation. As in every revival there were ‘hot spots.’ Charleston, South Carolina saw the first major movement in the middle of 1857. He used a white man, Dr. John L. Girardeau amongst a prominently black slave community to show His power. In Boston the ageing Charles Finney, reported its impact.

There were other areas of blessing but the most well-known and far-reaching happened at the Old Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street, New York. Jeremiah Lanphier, a concerned layman, started a noon prayer meeting for New York businessmen. Only six people came to the first prayer meeting on September 23, 1857 on the third floor of the church. By spring daily prayer meetings sprang up in many locations and daily attendance grew to 10,000. America's greatest spiritual awakening was under way. By Christmas it is estimated that that not less than fifty thousand conversions occurred per week!

Hundreds of people who had always spent their nights in the gates of hell came to the prayer meetings. Thousands forsook crime and became devoted follows of Christ. Crime and vice drastically declined. Wealthy people generously helped the poor whom they regarded as their brothers and sisters.

Ships coming into New York harbor came under the power of God's presence. On one ship a captain and thirty men were converted to Christ before the ship docked. Four sailors knelt for prayer down in the depths of the battleship North Carolina anchored in the harbor. They began to sing and their ungodly shipmates came running down to make fun, but the power of God gripped them and they humbly knelt in repentance.

This book tells the exciting story of the revival at Fulton Street Church: its origin, character and progress, and some of its results.