Chapter 1 - What God Has Done

February 20, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

You probably wouldn’t be too surprised if I were to tell you that there was a time in the history of our country when nearly half of the population attended church on any given Sunday, the Bible was the best-selling book for years in a row, and Congress voted to make “In God We Trust” the national motto. But you might be surprised to know that such a revival of Christianity occurred within the modern era of electricity and telephones, automobiles and airplanes, radios and movies, within the lifetimes of many people who are still alive today early in the 21st Century. And you might become even more intrigued ...

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Chapter 2 - God Has Chosen The Weak

February 19, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson 3 Comments

On the north shore of Medicine Lake in Plymouth, Minnesota, stands a site that is an undeniable testimony to God’s mighty working in the post World War II years. It’s a site past which hundreds of people walk, jog, and bike on any pleasant day. It’s a site which numerous Christian people pass daily, unaware, as one historian put it, “that the ground on which they tread has … been hallowed by the footsteps of the Almighty.”1 If the inanimate could talk, then surely the walls of the old stone buildings on this ...

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Chapter 3 - Then Sinners Shall Be Converted To You

February 18, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

If you had been a Lutheran pastor, evangelist, or lay leader in the upper Midwest in 1936, you might well have received several weeks before Christmas the following letter which read in part:1 Dear Co-workers for Christ: You are cordially invited to attend a general conference on Lutheran Evangelism to be held January 5, 6, 7, 1937 at Trinity Lutheran Church, 40th Ave. So. and 52nd St., Minneapolis, Minnesota, Rev. Evald J. Conrad, ...

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Chapter 4 - While They Communed Together

February 17, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

On a certain Sunday afternoon many years ago, two friends were walking together and talking intently as they went. As would be fitting for any Christians to do on the Lord’s Day, they were discussing Jesus’ suffering and death and its meaning. And “while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them . . . [and] expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:15,27b KJV) That was what happened to Cleopas and his friend on the Emmaus road nearly 2,000 ...

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Chapter 5 - Born, Not Of The Will Of Man, But Of God

February 16, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

Throughout the centuries, it has often been a popular activity to compile genealogies or family trees. Although these are sometimes begun for no other reason than curiosity or hobby, they may aid those of a younger generation in understanding themselves through learning about their ancestral origins and formative influences. The recording of genealogies dates back to the beginning of time when God in the book of Genesis preserved the ancestries of the first humans who inhabited the earth. In fact, each of our own family trees if ...

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Chapter 6 - Yes, The Deep Things Of God

February 15, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

If its name was to be merely reflective of its largest and most widely-known work, the Lutheran Evangelistic Movement might just as aptly have been named the Lutheran Deeper Life Movement. It’s true that the original priority of the Lutheran Inter-Synodical Evangelistic Committee was the cause of evangelism, but as God expanded their work He very soon made clear that their calling within the church was to more than one main purpose. Within the first two years of the Committee’s existence, “as the friends of evangelism began to rally ...

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Chapter 7 - The Power Of God To Salvation

February 14, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

What did the members of the Lutheran Inter-Synodical Evangelistic Committee believe was so indispensably distinctive about the work to which God had called them? By their own admission, “Various efforts to promote sound Lutheran evangelism [have already] been made at various times.”1 What was it then that gave the Committee the driving enthusiasm to carry out their calling as if they were the only ones meeting such a critical need? There were two things mainly. First of all, to the best of their knowledge, “no united ...

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Chapter 8 - Though The Vision Tarry, Wait For It

February 13, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

“It is our earnest prayer that our beloved church may in these days experience a heaven sent revival and showers of blessings. It is ‘Revival or Ruin.’”1 So said Evald J. Conrad on behalf of the whole Lutheran Inter-Synodical Evangelistic Committee in early 1940. Their prayer echoed that same heart cry which had been brought out so prominently at the very first Inter-Synodical Evangelistic Conference in January 1937: the prayer that God might once again move powerfully within His church, arousing the unsaved out of their ...

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Chapter 9 - Out Of Them All The Lord Delivered

February 12, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

There is perhaps a danger inherent in this history of the Lutheran Inter-Synodical Evangelistic Committee and Lutheran Evangelistic Movement. The focus is so much on the positive that the reader is liable to mistakenly get the impression either that there were no difficulties in the movement or that the story has been manipulated to appear unrealistically rosy. The reason that this account appears so unswervingly optimistic is that its main emphasis is to retell some of the wonderful works of a perfect and good God. But of course there were ...

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Chapter 10 - God Gave The Increase

February 11, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

As World War II entered what proved to be its final months, the invisible hand of One who knew the future propelled the Lutheran Inter-Synodical Evangelistic Committee mightily forward into a vast expansion of their program. It was a time of urgent preparation and reorganization for what the Committee believed would soon be their greatest years of usefulness. On the surface, their decisions and organizational efforts might have appeared to be only the actions of men. But though some planted and others watered, the years of revival ...

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Chapter 11 - A Cloud As Small As A Mana's Hand

February 10, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

The spiritual revival for which the leaders of the Lutheran Evangelistic Movement were seeking the Lord during the 1940’s was not a need limited to their sphere of influence. It was a desperate national need. The World War II years were not a time of triumph for Christianity in the United States. In fact, even during the decades leading up to the war, there had been an increasing breakdown in morality. By mid-century, an expert at Yale estimated that six million citizens were alcoholics.1 Another report claimed that 70 percent of high ...

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Chapter 12 - When You Search For Me With All Your Heart

February 9, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

According to written accounts of many who have lived during times of revival, one of the chief characteristics of such times has been the tremendous spirit of prayer preceding and accompanying them. Thus, older Christians who have observed revival firsthand have often exhorted future generations that to see a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit in their own day they must pray to God fervently and unceasingly for it. Perhaps no example of this is more noteworthy than Jonathan Edwards’ book inspired by the First Great Awakening - An Humble ...

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Chapter 13 - All The City Was Moved

February 8, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

During the first eight months of 1949, the Lutheran Evangelistic Movement had witnessed in and around their areas of ministry mightier and more regular stirrings of God’s Spirit than had occurred for decades in the United States. Their leaders were active participants in a city-wide ministerial group under whose sponsorship a revival movement with national implications had begun in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. And the outbreaks of revival which the LEM was seeing and hearing about showed no signs of decreasing. Early in December ...

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Chapter 14 - The Word Of God Grew And Multiplied

February 7, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

As witnessed by the national press, Billy Graham, the Lutheran Evangelistic Movement, and countless other Christian groups and individuals, the mid-century year 1950 was a remarkable year of heaven-sent revival across the United States. Even more importantly, it proved to be a door opened wide by God into a new and flourishing era of evangelism during which scores of large crusades were conducted by Billy Graham and numerous others in America’s most populated cities. “A few years ago we heard it said again and again that mass evangelism ...

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Chapter 15 - Be Filled With The Spirit

June 1, 2012 By Jonathan Anderson

As has been recounted in the previous chapters, the Lutheran Evangelistic Movement was one of God’s mighty tools for revival during the post World War II years and a witness to many of His wonderful works. Yet the LEM was not, of course, without its problems and disappointments. Strange to say, many of those things seemed to surface especially during the years of revival in the early 1950’s. In fact, the LEM suffered a sharp decline near the middle of that decade about the same time that revival on the national scene was beginning ...

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Chapter 16 - The Wind Blows Where It Wishes

June 1, 2012 By Jonathan Anderson

That God did indeed send revival to the U.S. during the ten or so years post World War II is quite clear. Dr. J. Edwin Orr, being one of the chief revival historians of all time and having lived during that era himself, referred to it in retrospect as “The Awakening of 1948 Onward,” citing not only the national evidences of revival mentioned earlier in this book but also subsequent movements around the world in such places as Scotland, Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, East and West Africa, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Southern India, ...

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Appendix 1 - To Other Cities Also

February 5, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

When Jesus Christ lived on earth some 2,000 years ago, He did not limit His ministry to one location. Rather He said, “I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent.” (Luke 4:43 KJV) Similarly, God’s work on earth through the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent after He ascended to heaven has never been confined to one locale but has permeated nearly every region of the world. God always finds ways of spreading His work to wherever people will receive it. This was certainly evidenced in the ...

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Appendix 2 - These All Died In Faith

February 4, 2011 By Jonathan Anderson

It’s not unusual for people to have some type of belief system that motivates them throughout their lives, but it is quite unusual for people to have a belief system that gives them joy and eager anticipation as they face their last days on earth. Death is perhaps the biggest test of all on one’s faith. Many people with a so-called faith have died at least stoically, resolutely, or even calmly. But only the one true object of faith, God the Savior, has ever been able to give such deep assurance of His mercy, compassion, and goodness ...

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Appendix 3 - Do The Work Of An Evangelist

February 21, 2013 By Jonathan Anderson

Civilization has always been on the advance, but perhaps during no period has it ever progressed as rapidly as it did between 1900 and 1950. The advances made then in science and technology were enough to astound any American whose adult life spanned that half-century; for it was during those years that electricity, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, radios, TVs, and movies came into use. Culture too has always been changing, but perhaps it has never done so more explosively than just one decade later during the 1960’s. The turbulence ...

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Selected Bibliography And Endnotes

February 21, 2013 By Jonathan Anderson

Selected Bibliography America’s Hour of Decision. Wheaton, IL: Van Kampen Press, 1951. An Ongoing Revival. Warren, MN: Warren Sheaf Print, 1990, Harvey Dyrud, editor. Appasamy, A.J. Write the Vision! Edwin Orr’s Thirty Years of Adventurous Service. London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1964. Baldwin, Ethel May, and David V. Benson. Henrietta Mears and How She Did It! Glendale, CA: Regal Books Division, G/L Publications, 1966. Bickel, Ottomar E. Fishing for Souls. St. Paul, MN: ...

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Our Fathers Saw His Mighty Works