July 1. Jeremiah Lanphier. Jeremiah became a Christian—and he felt deep concern for his fellow New Yorkers. So when a struggling church offered him a job visiting the congregation, he took the job.
On this date in 1857, Jeremiah signed on as an inner-city missionary.
“What if …?” will either cripple you or compel you. Your move.
In autumn of 1857, a lot of people in New York City were unemployed. Businesses and railroads were going downhill, and panic was spreading.
A number of churches had already closed, and Old Dutch North Church struggled. Membership was dwindling, and families were moving away. But the church had been there 88 years, and they didn’t want to give up on the people.
So the trustees decided to try something different. They hired Jeremiah—a 49-year-old tradesman—to leave his trade and make door-to-door visits to the immigrants, the laborers, and the unemployed in New York City. These people needed to hear the gospel.
And Jeremiah had a heart for people, but he had never done anything like this before. What if he failed? What if he spent his entire time pounding the pavement with no results? What if the church was wasting its money?
At first the work seemed unproductive, but then Jeremiah got an idea. Maybe businessmen would attend a weekly prayer meeting during their lunch hours.
He got permission to print up flyers and advertise. Any man who wanted to attend was welcome, and they would meet September 23, 1857, at noon.
On the big day, Jeremiah sat alone in the third-floor prayer room of the old church building. He waited. Fifteen minutes passed, and he waited. After twenty minutes, Jeremiah checked his pocket watch, and he waited.
At 12:30, he heard footsteps on the old wooden steps. One by one, six people showed up.
The following week twenty men came, and the next week forty men turned out! Their prayers were earnest, but as yet, unremarkable.
Undaunted, Jeremiah took a step of faith and decided the men should meet daily.
October 14—the twenty-first day after the first meeting—the stock market crashed. It didn’t dip. It bottomed out. Banks closed, and the whole country descended into the worst financial crisis it had ever seen. Upended New Yorkers flocked to the meetings for prayer.
Within six months, ten-thousand businessmen were bringing their petitions to God, meeting in churches and public buildings throughout New York City.
Laymen led these meetings. No controversial topics or advertising were allowed. Men wrote down their prayer requests and passed them to the front. Anybody could stand and pray for the request.
One man cried openly over his wayward children, while another stood and repented of his own sins. The days passed, and answers to prayers filtered back. Unconverted men publicly asked for prayer. People wanted more and more to know Jesus and what it meant to be his disciple. As the Spirit moved, song broke out, but no excess excitement took over.
Newspapers picked up the story and reported the revival spreading to other churches in Philadelphia and Chicago. Soon, every northern city had prayer meetings. Eventually, the revival spread to the South. Upwards of a million souls were converted to Christ across America because God used one ordinary man named Jeremiah Lanphier, who started a prayer meeting on the third floor of a dying church.
“And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42 ESV).
Might God be wanting to use a man like you? “What if …?” will either cripple you or compel you. Your move.
“Revival Born in a Prayer Meeting.” America’s Great Revivals. Bethany House Publishers. Minneapolis. Originally published in Christian Life Magazine and CS Lewis Institute’s Fall 2004 issue of Knowing and Doing, Springfield, VA: 2004.
Lanphier, Jeremiah. “Revival Starting in the Marketplace.” Bible Prayer Fellowship. Dallas, Texas: 1996.
Price, Oliver. “The Layman’s Prayer Revival of 1857–58.” Bible Prayer Fellowship. Dallas, Texas: 1998.
Story read by: Chuck Stecker
Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter
Audio production: Joel Carpenter
Story written by: Toni M Babcock, https://www.facebook.com/toni.babcock.1
Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/
Project manager: Blake Mattocks
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