The Awakening: Revival in China: 1927-1937

REVIVAL! It was a long time coming. For twenty long years Marie Monsen prayed for revival in China. She had heard reports of how God’s Spirit was being poured out in abundance in other countries, particularly in nearby Korea; so she began praying for funds to be able to travel there in order to bring back some of the glowing coals to her own mission field. But that was not God’s way. The still, small voice of God seemed to whisper, “What is happening in Korea can happen in China if you will pay the price in prayer.” Marie Monsen took up the challenge and gave her solemn promise: “Then I will pray until I receive.” The Awakening is Miss Monsen’s own vivid account of the revival that came in answer to prayer. Leslie Lyall calls her the “pioneer” of the revival movement—the handmaiden upon whom the Spirit was first poured out. He writes: “Her surgical skill in exposing the sins hidden within the Church and lurking behind the smiling exterior of many a trusted Christian—even many a trusted Christian leader—and her quiet insistence on a clear-cut experience of the new birth set the pattern for others to follow.” The emphasis in these pages is on the place given to prayer both before and during the revival, as well as on the necessity of self-emptying, confession, and repentance in order to make way for the infilling of the Spirit. One of the best ways to stir ourselves up to pray for revival in our own generation is to read the accounts of past awakenings, such as those found in the pages of this book. Surely God is looking for those in every generation who will solemnly take up the challenge and say, with Marie Monsen, “I will pray until I receive.”