CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 7
TIMES OF REFRESHING
On the 28th of September 1935, Edwin Orr sailed on the ship Newfoundland for Canada. There arose a terrific storm and the westering ship rolled and tossed on the wild seas of the North
Atlantic. Most of the passengers did not leave their cabins in such stormy weather, and Orr himself remained for two whole days within his cabin. "I spent the time sleeping, reading, eating, praying, thinking—chiefly thinking."
Exactly two years before on 28th September 1933 he had begun his ministry for the cause of Revival. God had wonderfully provided numerous opportunities for service in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe. Now he was going much farther to preach the Good News.
His arrival in North America proved to be the opening of a remarkable new chapter in his own ministry for God. The door opened wide to let him speak to thousands of people where hitherto he had been addressing hundreds.?
And not only did he preach to as many as ten thousand people under one roof but he soon was privileged to preach in some of the more famous churches of Canada and the United
States, such as The Peoples Church in Toronto and St. John's Cathedral in Saskatoon and in the great Moody Church in Chicago and in denominational churches of every type from Seattle to Jacksonville, from Los Angeles to Boston.
These were days of both economic and spiritual depression, when there was much distress among the people and great discouragement in all the churches..Orr's ministry reached nothing of the proportions evidenced in the Awakening of the mid-Twentieth Century, but it was fruitful everywhere —times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.
Before he left London, Orr had received a letter from the Rev. Oswald Smith inviting him to hold a series of meetings in The Peoples Church in Toronto. While visiting Latvia, he
had heard about Oswald Smith and the excellent missionary work which he promoted there.
Oswald. Smith believed intensely in Revival, and had earlier written a book with the title: The Revival We Need. A copy of Edwin Orr's book Can God—? had been sent as an anonymous gift by an interested friend to Mr. Smith; this in turn led to the invitation to Orr to hold a campaign in The Peoples
_ Church.® The meetings went on for two weeks. Edwin Orr spoke on such subjects as Past Revivals, the Need of Revival, Hindrances to Revival, Victory over Sin, Full Surrender, The Filling of the Spirit and the Secret of Abiding. The Holy Spirit blessed the preaching.
In one of the after-meetings in the Church, a crowd of three hundred people stayed behind, confessed their sins with tears and surrendered themselves to God. The crowds were increasing and after two weeks it became necessary to move to the Massey
Hall to accommodate three thousand people. Oswald Smith announced the farewell night as an "Irish Night". He challenged the meeting:
'All of you who were born in Ireland and proud of it, stand up." A thousand people stood up.
"Well, what do you think of that?" (Laughter).
"And now, all who are of Irish parentage, stand up." Another thousand rose to their feet, leaving a thousand sitting and looking ashamed of themselves. Oswald Smith turned to Orr:
'Well, Brother Orr—you aren't the only Irishman in Toronto."
_ The addresses were broadcast and thousands of people were reached in that way. Some of the folk who listened to him on the radio professed lasting conversion.*®
Toronto people proved very hospitable. Orr was continually invited out for meals. One complaint he had to make. Canadians regarded as a great delicacy pumpkin pie. They offered it to him in every home he visited and for every meal. He wrote:
"And so it was—I had pumpkin pie for lunch, dinner, supper.
It even haunted my dreams. Of course, the first time it was delicious; the second time it was fine; the third time it was very nice; the fourth time, it was good; the fifth time, it was all right; the sixth time, it was not so bad; the seventh time,
it was pumpkin pie: the sixteenth time—what more shall I say? If it had not been for the lovely people who produced ites yis??
A minister from another city wrote regarding arrangements, and asked some questions about Orr's services. He must have received a mild surprise when Orr telegraphed via Canadian
Pacific "No pumpkin pie!''® Oswald Smith reported the meetings thus:?
What times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.
It is surely heaven on earth ... a spirit of revival permeates every service ... Orr, unlike many preachers and evangelists, makes the application throughout—drives home his points one after the other, and does not tack on the application at the end. He speaks of the sins of gossip, dishonesty, prayerlessness, unbelief, impurity, criticism, etc.... being not only scholarly but logical in presentation of truth. The aftermeetings are becoming so large that it is necessary to stay in the main auditorium. Very few leave . . . the people desirous of spiritual blessing being in no hurry to go home. The message is clearly Keswick teaching which has been such a blessing to untold thousands. Mr. Orr's diction is almost perfect, and he has an unusual vocabulary.
* * * Five years later, Orr returned to Toronto to serve for some time as the associate pastor of The Peoples Church.
* * * A lady in Hamilton had been sitting on a park bench reading aloud to a companion from Orr's book, Can God—? A man who had seated himself at the other end of the bench began to fidget, so the lady said to him apologetically:
"If this reading is annoying to you, I'll stop."
"To tell the truth, Madam," he replied, "I was going to ask you if I might sit beside you while you read more."
Before very long, the man was brought to faith in Christ.
When the lady travelled to Toronto to tell Edwin Orr about it, eh pressed him to consider visiting her home city. And so he did.
After a preaching series in Winnipeg, Edwin Orr travelled west to Saskatoon at the invitation of Principal Haslam of Emmanuel College. He stayed at the college and preached in the Anglican churches. He donned cassock and surplice and preached in the Cathedral of St. John's.®
From Saskatchewan, the evangelist proceeded to Alberta and arrived unheralded in Edmonton. Before long, he was sharing the platform of a big rally with the Prime Minister of Alberta, the Honorable William Aberhart. Orr preached in Calgary, then crossed the Canadian Rockies whose magnificence made a lasting impression on him.
His final meetings were held in Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia. He had arrived in Newfoundland two months before and had preached in the Maritimes and each other
Canadian province.
Early in December, Edwin Orr crossed the border into the State of Washington and so began a tour of all the States of the American Union which occupied the next hundred days.!°
He began a series in Seattle of which Abraham Vereide, executive director of International Christian Leadership, wrote ten years later:
It was our privilege to have Edwin Orr with us in Seattle in the winter of °35, speaking at the Metropolitan Theater, the largest downtown theater, which was filled each noon, messages being broadcast throughout the Pacific Northwest.
He addressed various union services throughout the city and surrounding territory at night or business executives at breakfast groups. He was the vehicle of the Holy Spirit and scores of people were converted under his ministry, and many Christians led to a consecrated life. He was also instrumental in leading business executives to Christ, among whom was a prominent rich young man. There was an amazing spiritual upsurge throughout his ministry."
This was the beginning of a life-long friendship with Dr.
Vereide and a life-long association with International Christian Leadership.
Not only were people converted in Orr's Seattle meetings, but in his everyday personal contacts. He had asked his host,
Dr. N. A. Jepson, to secure the services of a stenographer,
who turned out to be a clever, talented and intellectual young lady who was obviously unconverted.
Wrote the evangelist :!2
"I did not feel very joyous over the prospect of asking a non-Christian girl to co-operate with me in the Lord's work.
While I was thinking it over a quiet whisper came to me. "Your first duty is to lead her to Christ.' "
Orr broke a rule of procedure and asked his secretary to lunch, hoping for an opportunity to discuss things spiritual with her. He heard her difficulties, concentrated on the necessity of a personal experience of God's saving grace, and saw a remarkable answer to prayer.
"But, Mr. Orr, you seem to get your prayers answered.
Mine go unanswered, although I pray as a child of God.'
"*And when did you become a child of God? When were you born into God's family? When did you realize the fact of your salvation?' "
That evening Dr. Jepson asked Orr: "What happened to that stenographer of yours? She phoned me, and she seemed to be in tears as she told me that she had accepted God's gift of salvation."
Edwin Orr spent four days in Minneapolis. He spoke morning and evening on a Sunday in the First Baptist Church, seating three thousand.
Most of his meetings in the Chicago area were held in the great Moody Church, of which Dr. H. A. Ironside was the pastor. Dr. Ironside reported in his church magazine:!%
It seems that God has particularly chosen him for three reasons: First, to exemplify in actual experience the reality of the presence and the power of God with the believer who is willing to trust Him implicitly and to fellowship with Him from day to day. Second, to urge the saints of God wherever found to forget their differences and unite in one great appeal to Almighty God for a Heaven-sent revival. Third, to call upon individual Christians to confess their sins and to pray that the long-sought-for awakening might "begin in me".
The young Irishman preached to four thousand people in the Moody Church, and three weeks later he reached his greatest
audience preaching to ten thousand in the Chicago Coliseum under the auspices of the Christian Business Men's Committee.
Edwin Orr was always anxious to work among men of all races with their different backgrounds and temperaments.
He gladly accepted an invitation to conduct a meeting for the coloured, people in Detroit. In England he had often heard
Negro spirituals. He had sung them himself with real feeling.
Now in America he heard the Negroes sing their touching songs.
Orr could not readily forget the meeting that he had one afternoon with the coloured folk. The room arranged for them was overcrowded, so he moved to the main church hall, which was rather cold. It was his first meeting with coloured folk.1> At his special request they sang some spiritual songs, making great melody in their hearts to the Lord. Orr spoke that day on "'Ye are not your own, ye were bought with a price", taking first as subject the price that our Blessed Redeemer paid with His own Blood on Calvary, tears began to stream down from many eyes. Some of them began to sob. Orr was interrupted by a baritone singing with the people responding:
"Were you dere when dey crucified my Lawd? were you dere?
Were you dere when dey crucified my Lawd?
Oh, oh, o-oh. Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble; Were you dere when dey crucified my Lawd?"'
"I found it necessary to use my handkerchief, and looking around I saw scarcely a dry eye," Orr said. "One visitor was sobbing as if his heart would break. That song made the crucifixion real to us."
They took up the second verse. '""Were you dere when) dey nailed Him to the Cross?' Some cried and sang alternately.
One big fellow began to cry out loudly, "Oh my soul. Oh my soul. Oh my soul." Many were the decisions made.
It was not until World War II that Orr came into close contact with American Negroes again. His native city, Belfast, had half a million people and no racial prejudice, so happily he possessed none. He went out of his way to minister to the Negro soldiers in the American services.
At our first meeting, I looked around the sea of faces
black faces, brown faces, nearly-white faces, and the first thought that struck me was that probably they were as curious about me as I was about them.!® Instead of introducing himself, he sang out in the baritone part of a negro spiritual—and back rolled the full chorus of blended voices. Homesick conscripts enjoyed the concert of praise and enthusiasm became so intense that they refused to conclude the meeting. Sunday attendances then jumped from a full chapel to a full tent to more than a thousand men in the open air, all this in addition to attendance of air cadets.
Orr sought out opportunities of ministering to American Negroes in combat and got the same sort of response. Orr stated bluntly that the policy of segregation then prevailing in the American Army was unwise. It was abolished after World
War II. Orr recognized that many of the American Negroes were of low educational and cultural standards but the presence of highly educated, highly cultured men among them indicated the real truth. He saw them as different but fraternal comrades.
Orr's American journey took him across the Rockies to Los Angeles, where Dr. Paul Rood as President of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles reported a considerable stirring. Orr moved from California to Texas and spent some time ministering in the South.
In Atlanta, the Irishman preached for a Scot who was minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church and who reported the visit thus :2"
We had the pleasure and privilege of having Mr. J. Edwin Orr occupy our pulpit on Sunday night. An attendance of about four hundred and fifty people were very much thrilled by Mr. Orr's message, and already I can see the results of the heart-searching and the inspiration he brought. Men like Orr who have a message as worth while will always be welcome.
Westminster's pastor was destined to become far-famed as a preacher, for the same man Peter Marshall became chaplain of the United States Senate in Washington, where Orr encountered him next time. His was a powerful ministry, and his untimely death did not términate it.
The published accounts of Edwin Orr's first North American
journey reported instance after instance of the confessing of sins so typical of revival movements. Orr did not encourage indiscriminate confession of sin in public, but urged his hearers to put things right where necessary—secretly, privately or publicly as required.
The local awakening at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina demonstrated Orr's objective in preaching the confession of sins where necessary :18
We have been singing of the "marvellous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt"— thank God for that. Once I stood on the north coast of Ireland and gazed across the rolling waters of the Atlantic
Ocean. In my hand was a huge rock, as big as I could carry—a heavy burden, more than I could bear. I pitched that rock over the cliff into the water. I did not see it again.
It was big to me, but it was not too big for the Atlantic Ocean to cover. You are standing on the edge of the ocean of God's grace. In your hand is the burden of your sin—more than you can carry, greater than you can bear. Pitch it into the ocean. It seems big to you, but it is not too big for the vast ocean of God's grace.
Orr's journeys took him to the Middle Atlantic States and New England. A quarter of a century later there were middleaged people who clearly remembered the impact of those meetings, even though the visiting evangelist preached at single meetings far apart. The minister of a popular Presbyterian
Church in central Phildaelphia gave a glimpse of Orr's ministry in 1936:19
The service was announced to begin at 8 p.m. and I was amazed to learn that our auditorium was filled at seven.
So I called a friend and had him rush to the church with his amplifying system, to make it possible for people to hear in the Sunday School auditorium. It was estimated that there were at least two thousand persons crowded into the church and hundreds turned away. All available space was taken.
I wish we could broadcast to the whole world what we experienced and saw in that service. The God-given message pierced to the heart. Christians and unsaved alike were convicted of sin. Hard hearts were broken; cold hearts were
melted; tears flowed; sins were confessed; and there followed forgiveness and peace and joy as hearts were filled with the Holy Spirit. I cannot say how many, but I know that a number of souls were saved; and I am sure that hundreds of God's children received a filling of God's Spirit. The service lasted till midnight.
Many men prominent in evangelistic and missionary endeavour were moved in those meetings—the evangelist Phil
Saint in Philadelphia and a young man named Jack Wyrtzen moved in similar ways in Long Island.
By the time that his tour ended in Florida, Edwin Orr had had a strenuous time.2° He had visited every one of the then forty-eight states. He had worked fourteen hours a day, seeking to spend an hour in prayer besides reading four chapters of the Bible every day. For a hundred days he had been preaching an average of two addresses daily. One who had taught thousands of people had himself to learn. That was why he yielded to the urge to pray regularly and to read the Scriptures devoutly.
In May 1936 was published a book recording his work in the United States, This Is the Victory. It was written immediately after the events described, when his memory was fresh and clear. One thing which attracted his readers was no doubt his candid writing. He wrote about his own failures as well as his successes. He explained how he steadily learned from experience. He repeated frankly the criticisms which were made of his ministry—that he lived by his wits, that he earned too much money for a young man, that he was an impostor, and that he had a huge bank balance in London. None of these things were true, he said, and explained that he contributed to the support of his widowed mother and used royalties to support missionary causes."2
In 1950, the Sunday School Times of Philadelphia published an editorial on the Awakening which was then manifesting itself in the United States at the mid-century. As a factor, it cited "the remarkable ministry of Dr. J. Edwin Orr" back in the thirties as well as in the late forties. Considerable space is given this factor in the survey books published by both
Gingrich and Hoffman on American Revivals.22