Animists worshipped gods of the earth and sky and warring tribes collected the heads of their enemies in the 1800’s in northeast India. Today three northeast Indian states - Nagaland, Mizoram, and Meghalaya - are the three Christian-majority states of predominantly-Hindu India.
Revival fire broke out in 2006 and again in 2007 in Meghalaya State (formerly a district of Assam), just north of Bangladesh. As Presbyterians began to celebrate the centenary of the great revival in Meghalaya of 1905-1906, they soon were vividly aware of their own sin and hardness of heart. Many publicly confessed their sins, cried out to God for mercy, and were filled with joy and peace. Kindled in rural churches of Shillong, the capitol, the revival fire spread to urban churches, schools, and colleges – eventually inflaming the Khasi and Jaintia hills.
The British acquired Assam in the Anglo/Burma War of 1826. Around 1832, William Carey provided the New Testament translated into Khasi. Then in 1841, two Welsh Calvinistic Methodists (later called Presbyterians) came to reach the Khasis, who were animists. In 1891 there were over 2,000 Christians in 189 churches. By 1902 almost 17,000 attended church in the Lushai Hills. In 1906 revival erupted in this remote part of India, nestled between Muslim Bangladesh, Hindu Assam, and Buddhist Myanmar. Hearing of the 1904 Welsh revival, Christians in the Khasi hills met together to implore God for revival every night for eighteen months. Revival fell and spread both north and south. Eight thousand were converted in the 1906 revival in the Khasi Hills.
What led to a new revival 100 years later in 2006? The process began three years earlier as Christians of the Khasi Jaintia Presbyterian Synod West began praying desperately to see God meet the needs they saw in both church and society. They opened the church for groups of people to pray every morning. Soon a prayer chain began among a number of Presbyterian churches to implore God to again bring revival among them as He had in 1906. Many other churches in the area also began to pray for the Holy Spirit to work. As they met at the Mairang Presbyterian Church on Sat. afternoon, April 22, 2006, to celebrate the centenary of the 1906 revival, about 300 people fell to the ground unconscious under the power of the Holy Spirit, and thousands more were touched. People were repenting of sin and crying out to God. The next day 300,000 attended from all the synods of the Presbyterian Church in India.
Revival radiated to other churches and to schools. During this time many children “fainted” and lay unconscious for hours. When they regained consciousness they told of seeing Jesus, recognizing angels, and going to heaven. The prevailing message they relayed was the imperative command that the church should prepare for Jesus’ soon return. Some saw an angel stopped as he was preparing to close the Book of Life or other angels held back as they were about to close the gate of heaven. Some children fainted in school and the teachers carried them to church where they would eventually regain consciousness. In one village, a pastor met a seven-year-old boy who had gone to heaven. He wanted to stay with Jesus but Jesus told him he must go back. When people asked the boy if Jesus had anything to say the boy replied, “Read Matthew 3:2.” [This verse says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”] Many children were led to tell unbelieving friends and relatives what Jesus had done for them and some children held meetings in the markets. At times children saw Jesus with open eyes.
Churches were packed every evening. The meetings would last for hours with enthusiastic singing, testimonies, joyous praise, preaching, and prayer. There was a new freedom to worship. Prophecies would come through children as well as adults. People related visions they had seen or what they felt God was saying. The presence of Jesus was so palpable that people could barely stand at times. Occasionally demons made their presence obvious and believers then cast out the demons. There were miraculous healings. Children prayed earnestly for unsaved parents. Many young people sold or burned their rock and heavy metal music. The heavens were opened and countless people saw angels. While most saw visions of heaven there were some who saw visions of people being dragged to hell.
Even some non-Christians began to come under the power of God. Hindu and Buddhist children had revelations of the living God. Some Muslim children saw Jesus. Many Hindus and animists began coming to the church services. Some were miraculously delivered. Pastor Reuben Pradhan reported, “One non-Christian girl was choking and couldn’t speak. She was holding on to her neck struggling to utter a word but she couldn’t. Some believers noticed an amulet on her neck, and the moment they broke that off her neck she suddenly burst out and was able to speak once more.”
Repentance and revival came to one village when they heard a group of Christian children praying fluently in their dialect (and they knew those children did not know their language).
Four teenagers had a burden for their village to be unified. Thirty-three years of dissension over village administration had resulted only in lawsuits. The villagers met on the church lawn. But, after much discussion, many were still unpersuaded. The teens prayed that God would shake the villagers’ hard hearts. God answered their prayers literally with an earthquake that shook the church. Both sides reconciled quickly, withdrew their court cases, and burned the papers.
In Dec. 2006, fifty thousand people attended a Synod-wide service in a stadium. There were 1,000 trained volunteers to minister to the many who wept, repented, and fell under the power of God. A number of traditional animists also committed their lives to Jesus for the first time.
At one Presbyterian church their cross glowed because of light bulbs behind the cross. But, miraculously, during the revival, an x-ray-like image of Jesus appeared on the cross. Sometimes instead of the image of Jesus there was an image of a dove with its wings spread on both sides. When the revival faded away the images were no longer there. In other churches gold and silver and red “glitter” fell from the sky – through the church roof and onto people, books, and the ground. While these things are very unusual, they were the very things that attracted thousands of people to church daily, including many Hindus who could then hear the Gospel and see the power of God on display.
What quenched the fire? In a July 2, 2009 email, responding to my request for more information about the revival, Pastor Reuben Pradhan included this analysis: “…although the revival made a huge impact in the churches it wasn’t visible enough in the various strata of the society. Towards the end of the revival man-made traditions, rules and regulations began to creep in and children and youth were discouraged from going to these revival meetings because their studies were being neglected. Eventually, I believe the Holy Spirit was quenched and the move of God came to a stop although some embers still seem to spark here and there.”
Nonetheless, there have been some enduring effects: Many believers saw a demonstration of the power of God similar to the events in the book of Acts. Repenting of personal sin, they experienced the love of God and saw His power to miraculously heal and cast out demons. Their own lives were transformed. Broken homes were restored. Thousands of unbelievers came into a living relationship with Jesus. Alcoholics and drug addicts were healed. Brewing houses closed in a number of villages and liquor sales decreased. In some villages rival factions came together to work for the common good. Court cases were dropped. Churches which mistrusted each other were reconciled. Believers received a new boldness to witness. Some ministers continue today to see miraculous healings in answer to prayer. Some of the churches in the rural areas still experience the Holy Spirit moving in revival in their services, though with less intensity.
What can we learn from the Welsh Revival in 1904 and the Khasi Hills Revivals of 1906 and 2006? Their stories make it clear that revival does not arbitrarily drop down from heaven.
· Desperate people acknowledged their own spiritual poverty and recognized only God could fill the vacuum in their own hearts and transform the surrounding community.
· Encouraged by reports of other revivals, they expected God to come in revival power.
· Prevailing fervent prayer ensued. Evan Roberts prayed for revival for eleven years before it came to Wales in 1904. Other Christians had also prayed for years. Khasi Christians from a number of churches prayed for revival every night for eighteen months before revival fell in 1905-1906. In the next century, the Khasi Christians were not satisfied to simply commemorate the revival from 100 years ago. They had been praying fervently for years that they could experience the same blessing and God wonderfully answered their petitions.
· Christians responded to the Holy Spirit in humility – even to the point of listening to God speak through the prophecies and visions of some very young children. God poured out His Spirit on thousands of people as they sought Him and obeyed what He spoke to them.
· Succeeding generations have to continue to seek God. 100,000 people committed their lives to the Lord through the 1904 Welsh Revival. Bars closed and police stations were empty. But the grandchildren of those in the 1904 revival did not continue to seek the Lord. Ironically, in a 2006 article the BBC reported that the Presbyterian Church of India sent two of their own ministers as missionaries to Wales. Evidently at that time, fewer than one tenth of the Welsh population were attending church.
© 2009 - Carol Saia and The Sentinel Group. Reproduction and/or distribution for non-commercial purposes is permitted, provided this article remains in its original form. Please do not modify this article in any way without prior written consent. Source: www.GlowTorch.org.
The information in this article comes from watching video interviews by Sheila Cherian and reading many eyewitness reports by Pastor Reuben Pradhan in http://timesofrevival.googlepages.com and others in shillongrevival.com, shillongrevival.wordpress.com, and www.cwmission.org/features/indian-hills-ablaze-with-the-holy-spirit.html. Background information of the arrival of the Gospel and of the 1906 revival is in A History of The Expansion of Christianity – Volume 6:The Great Century: North Africa and Asia, 1800 A.D. to 1914 A.D. by Kenneth Scott Latourette (Zondervan 1970 edition) and Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present (part of the Oxford History of the Christian Church) by Robert Eric Frykenberg (Oxford University Press, 2008).