There have been many interesting individuals who have labeled New York City as the modern day Babylon. In fact some faithful to the Bible Code thought that Manhattan would be hit by a nuclear bomb in May of 2006. When May past they revised their predictions many time with September being the new date. While New York City may not be seen as the epicenter for orthodox, evangelical Christianity, it was the launching point for a revival that is said to have produced over one million converts at a time when the US population was only about 30 million. Surprisingly, there are very few people who have ever heard of the Layman’s Prayer Revival.
In 1857, many churches across the US were seeing declining attendance. The Old Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street in Manhattan decided that they needed to reach out to the community more. They hired a business man named Jeremiah Lanphier to be in charge of their outreach ministry. Jeremiah, while brainstorming how to reach out the people of Manhattan, noticed that between noon and one o’clock most of the business men took their lunch break. He thought it might be beneficial to offer a time of prayer from noon to one. He handed out some 20,000 flyers advertising the first prayer meeting on September 23, 1857.
The result of Jeremiah’s 20,000 flyers was a total of only six men that showed up. After they prayed, Jeremiah let everyone know they would meet again next week, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel. Word got around and the next week 20 men showed up and then 40 the following week. After this third meeting everyone decided to make these prayer meetings daily instead of weekly. After a few more meetings, the attendance grew to over 3,000 so that they had to share space with the nearby YMCA. Other churches in Manhattan began to become involved and the newspapers began to report on this growing phenomenon. The idea began to spread to other cities with more than 3,000 praying in Jayne’s Hall in Philadelphia and 2,000 in the Metropolitan Hall of Chicago. The revival spread so that in most every city from Maine to California, you could find one of these prayer meetings.
No emphasis was placed on a certain denomination at the prayer meetings, but there were certain rules set in place. Anyone could come and go as they needed, but the prayer time ended at one. No controversial statements were allowed or announcements of a specific church’s events. Prayer requests could be submitted in writing and were read aloud so that people could pray for them. One unsaved man attended and heard a submitted prayer request for an unsaved son, which happened to be from his own mother requesting prayer for him. Many found salvation at these meetings, like the customer who asked a merchant if he must stop business to go pray. The merchant said, “Yes, I must. Why don’t you come with me?” It was quite common to see signs in Manhattan that read “We will re-open at the close of the prayer meeting.”
It is estimated that 50,000 people in New York alone came to Christ and about a million across the US. This revival is generally seen as a reaction to two major societal issues at the time. The first is the Panic of 1857 which occurred the month before the prayer meetings began. It was a great economic crisis where over 5,000 businesses failed in a year. The second major issue was the problem of slavery. The great tension over the problem of slavery would eventually end this revival with the start of the Civil War two years later. Eventhough the revival itself was ended by the war, the spirit of the revival remained and the effect was nearly equal in significance to the First and Second Great Awakenings, yet very few have heard of the Layman’s Prayer Revival.
So don’t blow up Manhattan yet, who knows where the staging point for the next revival might be. It appears that we are overdue for one.
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