CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 8
UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS
At Eastertime. in 1936, the Rev. A. S. Wilson, well-known devotional speaker and writer, cabled the religious press in London. to announce that an extraordinary local revival had begun during Orr's ministry at the Easter Keswick at Ngaruawahia and other camps in New Zealand, with hundreds of people publicly confessing sin and scores professing conversion during sanely intense meetings of tireless crowds.1
Ngaruawahia is a little Maori town where two rivers meet, the name is Maori meaning "meeting of the waters". For many years, Easter Keswick Conventions were held there, the work having begun through the efforts of Mr. Bruce Scott, a lawyer in Auckland. A mild autumn with warm sunshine was beginning, and as most of those attending were young folk they preferred camping under canvas.
We turn to an account of that 1936 Ngaruawahia awakening written by the present General Director of the China Inland
Mission, J. Oswald Sanders, published in The Reaper in 1936:?
For some time before Easter, a spirit of unusual expectancy had been kindled in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, but the reality greatly exceeded the expectation. Those of us who were responsible for the conduct of the camp had the joy of sitting back and seeing God work in a sovereign way.
We were as men that dreamed.
Charles Rolls and Edwin Orr were the main speakers that year and attendances at the Camp reached a record mark of 1,250.3
The meetings proceeded in orderly fashion throughout the Friday, and most retired at about 10 o'clock for a muchneeded rest. But in the Men's Camp at least rest was out of the question. In one tent, several men who had been revived in soul before Camp gathered for prayer and were visited by Mr. Orr. It was not long before other tents were
being visited by these enthusiasts and soon a meeting was in full swing in the big marquee. A real breaking down commenced among the young men present. Tears flowed, sins were confessed and reconciliations effected. The meeting did not conclude until 1.30 a.m., with songs of praise. Some began to complain, but the next night they were doing the same things...
Shall we ever forget that (Saturday) evening meeting?
Orr spoke in restrained yet searching terms on Hindrance to Revival, and the searchlight of God's Word penetrated every heart. Secret sin, prayerlessness, criticism, lack of love and unbelief were named as hindrances. As soon as opportunity was given, many rose and confessed the sins of which the Spirit had convicted them and from which they sought cleansing and deliverance...
Mr. Sanders was: deputed to take charge of the meeting for those who had so risen and adjourned with them to another large tent.?
What a scene that dining marquee presented, a scene such as we read of but are seldom privileged to see. Young and old flocked in and knelt quietly at tables with bowed heads, many with tears flowing, until some one hundred and fifty had gathered. They were encouraged to confess their sin to God in prayer and to receive the forgiveness and cleansing promised (1 John i. 9). The tent was filled with the voice of prayer as a dozen or more prayed in subdued tones at the same time. Each seemed totally oblivious of the other, anxious only to lose a burden of sin. As they got through to victory, they quietly returned to the large marquee where similar scenes were in progress.
At ten, all assembled in the marquee for a service of praise.
With exultant joy, hymns and choruses of praise and rejoicing were sung until the whole township rang and rang again. At midnight, the young men were still singing, and I went in to persuade them to go to bed. "We have a heavy programme tomorrow, so you should go to bed now," I began. "It's not tomorrow, it's today," a youth replied.
Mr. Sanders reported that while this work was going on among the Christians, many unconverted were being won to
Christ. Two Chinese who could not speak English were led to Christ through an interpreted conversation. Sunday morning was devoted to teaching, but a gospel address in the evening added numerous inquirers for counsel. At eleven p-m., the large marquee was still full and at midnight the people retired reluctantly. Mr. Sanders reported the final meeting thus:5
Perhaps the outstanding meeting of the whole Camp was the final Testimony Meeting, commencing about 6.30 p.m. although many had gathered before that. When it was announced that all who desired to testify must come up to the platform and speak through the amplifier, it was thought that few would face the ordeal. From the very first moment however, the platform was crowded and sometimes the aisle
' too, with those eager to tell of blessing received. As it neared ten. o'clock, and the meeting had been going on for nearly four hours, an endeavour was made to close, but young folks jumped from their seats and literally ran down the aisle lest they should miss opportunity ...
Once again, midnight was drawing near when the meeting concluded with singing such as one expects to hear in heaven.
_ Mr. Sanders commented that there were many remarkable features about the movement.
There was great spontaneity and freedom, and yet no extravagance. In spite of consistently late nights and long meetings, campers did not seem unduly tired. While there was no great wave of emotionalism, a subdued but contagious holy joy was in the air. Twenty years later,
Christians were still talking about the movement which Mr.
Sanders did not hesitate to describe as ''Revival at Ngaruawahia''.
Many were those whose lives had been impressed by the work of the Holy Spirit therein.
The news of the Ngaruawahia Revival spread rapidly through New Zealand and opened many doors of service for Edwin
Orr. In succession he engaged in campaigns in Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Auckland as well as single meetings in the smaller towns.°® One Sunday afternoon found Edwin Orr in the Wellington
Town Hall speaking on the subject of "'Adventures in Soviet Russia. and Why I am a Revolutionist," one of his dodges for
luring the unconverted to meetings. A crowd of Communists — turned up and it appeared that they would try to spoil the meeting. To avoid heckling, Orr began:
"It gives me much pleasure to speak to such a well-mixed crowd.
We have Anglicans here, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Brethren—and also agnostics, Communists and plain-clothes policemen."
Even the Communists laughed at the gentle warning, and Orr went on to say that he was glad that the Communists present were not rude and rowdy types but rather intellectual persons.
So, knowing that they were people of good taste and intelligence, Orr said that he felt assured that they would not interrupt in the vulgar way but instead write questions on slips of paper. Two thousand five hundred attended the meeting and Orr both answered questions and preached the gospel with great liberty. Charles Willcox, later known as a local builder and Brethren overseer, was converted during the Wellington visit.
The Rev. A. S. Wilson cabled from Auckland :'
Edwin Orr's wonderful five weeks' tour of a hundred meetings culminated in twice packing Auckland Town Hall with three thousand on Sunday. Thousands of New Zealand
Christians revived, backsliders restored, over four hundred public decisions. Impressive ministers and leaders, gatherings in Christchurch, Dunedin and Auckland with decided foretastes of far reaching awakening. Country prayer groups multiplying spontaneously and a rising tide of blessing.
Did Orr's meetings in New Zealand in 1936 produce any lasting results? The New Zealand Challenge, twenty. years later, in its survey of evangelism in that country noted lasting results and cited instances of well-known converts then engaged in Christian work.® These facts spoke for themselves.
Another generation of young people had grown up, but in 1956 there were numerous Christian workers of about forty years old or so who had entered upon Christian service at Ngaruawahia or other meetings during and after Easter 1936.
It was a breath of the Spirit.
These manifestations of revival in New Zealand did not constitute anything resembling a national awakening of the
type of the Welsh Revival, but they were part of a movement which was felt all over the North and South Islands. It was truly a general movement of all denominations.
Though a convinced evangelical, Orr tried to chdentane the difficulties of the modernists and to be of help to them. In Dunedin, he addressed a joint luncheon meeting of the Bible
League and the Council of Religious Congregations, seventy people attending, representing all shades of theological opinion from modernist to fundamentalist.° There were Anglican clergy, ministers and officers from the various denominations and Brethren oversight. Orr concentrated upon the spiritual message, stressing hindrances among Christian workers, including the unbelief of the modernist (who calls it intellectual difficulty) and the unbelief of the fundamentalist (who pays only lipservice). There was an immediate response, as modernists confessed unbelief and fundamentalists cried out for a baptism of love.
In the concluding meeting in Auckland Town Hall, Robert A. Laidlaw gave a public appeal at the conclusion of Orr's
- address, and forty were counselled in the inquiry room. Up until that time, Edwin Orr had regarded his ministry as being directed to believers only, preaching revival and letting other
Christians better equipped do the reaping. Aboard the ship for Sydney, Orr prayerfully revised his ideas and asked the Lord to set His seal upon his resolution by giving 100 professions of faith a week in Australia.
There were more than 1,200 who made public profession of faith in Christ in the six weeks that Orr spent in Australia, and there were ten times that number of Christians who publicly avowed a decisive dedication of heart and life. Edwin Orr preached. on. an average twenty times a week, provoking the | Marechale (eldest daughter of General Booth) to warn him that "the Lord has a good, young, willing horse, but don't let the devil drive it to death".
News of the blessing in New Zealand prepared the way for Orr's series of meetings in Australia. His first meeting was one for professional people in Sydney, a meeting so overflowing with blessing that a future Anglican bishop, Stephen Bradley,' recalled it with enthusiasm as a landmark in the spiritual life
of his immediate group of Christians. The second meeting likewise bore blessing, held in the church of Dr. C. J. Tinsley, later President-General of the Australian Baptists who presided at the Baptist World Alliance assembly in Copenhagen. Of the third meeting, held for welcoming clergy and ministers, a — Methodist minister declared that he had seen nothing like it for thirty-five years and The Methodist in describing the results said ""What followed is too sacred to unveil in detail."
Dr. J. J. Kitchen, Australasian Director of the China Inland Mission, cabled London to report that a local awakening in Melbourne during Edwin Orr's ministry had brought an aggregate attendance of 20,000 in five days, necessitating the hiring of the Olympia Stadium, with many ministers quickened, believers revived and more than 200 others professing faith in Christ.1?
Similar cables described similar stirrings in the Australian capital cities of Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Perth. The senior Methodist minister in Fremantle reported an overflowing meeting of 600 people in which 300 made a full surrender to God and 77 inquirers sought counsel."
Two years later, Edwin Orr returned to the Australian Continent with a team of evangelists, including Stanley Donnan,
Brinley Evans and the Chinese revivalist Andrew Gih. This time they left the main eastern cities to the ministry of Dr.
Oswald J. Smith, while they concentrated on the needier smaller towns. There were about 2,000 professions of faith in fifty campaigns.
It is a commentary upon the need of country towns in Australia to notice that, of the total of fifty campaigns, thirty came as the first united evangelistic campaign in the history of the town, and fifteen of these proved to be the first gospel campaign of any kind ever remembered.1° It was most encouraging for Orr to encounter many people who had been helped in his earlier series in» 1936; scattered from Fremantle all the way to Brisbane. It is always a thrill for a man of God to meet converts in after years. It was even more gratifying not to meet certain converts because they had already left for overseas service on the mission field, but took the trouble to send greetings through relatives and friends. It
was just as encouraging to find united prayer meetings in capital cities begun in the 1936 series still going on in blessing.
The 1938-campaigns in Australia came to 'anend. The Revival Fellowship Team had had a strenuous tour. They had travelled
100,000 miles to reach Australia, and another 100,000 miles in Australia itself..The Team had enjoyed internal harmony. But more than a dozen years later, Edwin Orr confessed that the tour was not the success that he had planned. He blamed that partly on his attempting things in his own strength, and partly upon some hidden scandal in the life of auxiliary workers. In fact, Orr called it "'a time of eclipse"'.14
In 1956 and 1957, an interdenominational team of evangelists visited New Zealand and Australia.15 It was comprised of Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Doing, Anglicans; Dr. and Mrs. J. Edwin
Orr, Baptists; Mr. and Mrs. Max H. Bushby, Methodists; and the Reverend and Mrs. William A. Dunlap, Presbyterians, together with Miss Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Reformed layworker, world-famed speaker and writer.
Much post-war apathy lingered in New Zealand when the team began its labours in Auckland for four denominational ministers supported by a few laymen. The campaign began in the Auckland Baptist Tabernacle and concluded in the Auckland
Town Hall, bringing a measure of revival and a number of conversions plus gratifying goodwill.
Half the churches of Christchurch supported the Team effort there and the inter-church co-operation continued for years.
Two-thirds of all the churches of Dunedin backed the interdenominational teaching mission, the main meetings of which were held in the historic First Church, the cathedral of Presbyterianism in New Zealand. Team members conducted meetings in the Anglican Cathedral and Baptist, Church of Christ and Methodist churches in the city and suburbs. It demonstrated the most cordial interdenominational co-operation since the days of Torrey, fifty years before.1® Goodwill began to spread throughout the whole country, so what was planned as a six-weeks' visit was extended to a full year.
Consequently, when the National Council of Churches of New Zealand met in executive on 8th May 1956, declaring its thanks to God for the reports of great things accomplished
through the ministry of the Team and of its good spirit of _ co-operation with the churches, it commended the Team unanimously to its whole constituency."
The fourth campaign, in Palmerston North, packed out all accommodations in turn, forcing Orr to preach at 7.30, 8.15,
9.00 and 9.45 p.m., alternating in crowded churches. The series was extended for a week in the Grand Opera House. The other members of the Team conducted four campaigns in South
Island.
The Wellington and suburban campaigns which followed encountered peculiar difficulty, for mid-winter storms from the Antarctic howled across wild seas, making attendance at meetings nearly impossible. The public knew of these obstacles but only the team and friends were aware of team discipline problems which led the evangelists of the team to demand the resignation of the musical auxiliaries. With the departure of the dissidents two months later, the Team emerged from a cloud under which they had been labouring.® Professor E. M. Blaiklock of the University of New Zealand reported in Christianity Today an extraordinary spiritual awakening in Dargaville in the Northland, characterized by a Presbyterian minister there as his "first experience of revival."
At the opposite end of the country in Southland, the Invercargill Ministers' Association reported an extraordinary awakening which affected the city for a year or more. St. Paul's Presbyterian Church soon was packed to capacity and on a final
Sunday night the Civic Theatre was packed with an overflow filling the Victoria Concert Chamber. The Invercargill Ministers'
Association stated :!9
Many decisions and rededications were recorded, but the real significance lies not in this so much as in the degree to which the church life in this city has been affected. Within many churches has come a revival of spiritual zeal and a renewed interest in private prayer, and keener support of the week-night Bible study groups. Many personal problems have been righted, and better relationships within the fellowship at the local and inter-church levels established. For three months now, a strong inter-church prayer group continues to meet.
After six months' study, the Presbyterian in charge of followup in the Dunedin Campaign told his fellow ministers that the response of inquirers had been almost 100 per cent satisfactory.
An equally encouraging report came from pastors in Palmerston North. The same was true of the Dargaville mission.2® A year later, the Invercargill Awakening was reviewed as having been the deepest spiritual stirring in the memory of the city. Then the year 1959 brought the Graham Crusades.
After thirty-six campaigns in New Zealand, the Team moved to Australia where twice as many teaching missions were conducted, almost always under the auspices of ministerial councils.
The Team enjoyed the support of Anglican Archbishops and Presbyterian Moderators, of the Presidents of the Baptist, Church of Christ and Methodist and other bodies throughout
Australia.21 Edwin Orr felt it better to enlist the support of sympathetic key leaders than to wait for the moving of ponderous denominational machinery in support.
In Melbourne, the first campaign was poorly attended, partly because of the lingering effects of the rumours of team problems already dealt with, but the suburban campaigns picked up in strength, and support of the clergy and ministers became almost unanimous." Dr. Stuart Barton Babbage, Dean of Saint Paul's
Cathedral, spoke of Orr's teaching ministry there as ''outstandingly brilliant''.2? A thousand inquirers were counselled.
Similar missions were held in the suburbs of Sydney and in. New South Wales towns, often in the Anglican parish churches as in Victoria. To the surprise of many, the Archbishop of Brisbane (a High Churchman) encouraged his clergy to support campaigns held in Brisbane suburbs and Queensland towns, which reached far into the tropics. Orr held in Darwin its "first evangelistic mission, united or denominational'. This was also the case in Alice Springs, in the heart of Australia.
Team campaigns were held in Tasmania also, Orr commencing his preaching in St. John's, an Anglican parish church in Launceston, and concluding the first series in a packed-out central Methodist Church, "the most outstanding event of the quarter".24 Other towns were visited.
The Dean of Adelaide chaired the meeting for clergy and ministers of South Australia. In the first Adelaide campaign
the attendances rose from 300 to 1,200 and 200 inquirers were counselled.
The Team campaigns in South Australia and Western Australia, where the series concluded, generally enjoyed maximum denominational goodwill in sharp contrast to the suspicion and opposition usually presented to the interdenominational evangelists. Pioneering work it was, for the apathy encountered at first was staggering. The Lord had His purpose in it.
In October of 1957, the editor of New Life magazine announcing that Billy Graham had just accepted an invitation to campaign throughout the Commonwealth, noted that the preliminary work had been done by the Revival Fellowship Team.
In 1958, New Life magazine published very encouraging reports of the abiding value®® of the Team Missions given by leaders in all the Australian States. Not only were the converts reported as "'standing'', but ministers found a deeper satisfaction in their work and inter-church co-operation was more cordial.
Apart from the discipline problem resolved, there was nothing but cordiality in the relationship of the ten Team members.
Max Bushby of Launceston continued his work in Australia as director of the Navigator Bible Study courses which increased fourfold as a result of the Team missions. Later he was elected a member of the Tasmanian Parliament.
\ Dr. Billy Graham wrote to Edwin Orr upon the conclusion of his Australasian campaigns :?° I am convinced that the Lord sent you to Australia at the time He did. He has used you in stirring the hearts of the ministers toward Revival and evangelism. We are not coming with any false illusion. It is going to be a hard mission field. We are going tremblingly upon our knees.
Billy Graham forwarded to Edwin Orr a very generous cheque for a thousand pounds towards his next planned venture in the ministry of revival, the largest gift he received in the work.
The Graham Crusades in New Zealand and Australian cities were extraordinarily successful, with vast crowds attending and thousands of real conversions.