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| Ahoghill, Ireland |
Imagine a revival that woke so much Christian fervor that in a city of
fewer than 3,000 it filled all of the existing churches and required two
large new ones to be built. Such a revival took place at Ahoghill,
Ireland in 1859.
148 years ago, on March 26, 1859, the Ballymena Observer
printed a letter describing the initial events. "The movement in this
immediate neighborhood has assumed the startling character of unexpected
and instantaneous 'conversions' accompanied by the physical and
spiritual operations of some overwhelming power upon the minds and
bodies of the parties so converted." Most of the early converts, about
35 individuals, were "good" people, even Sunday school workers, who
afterward testified they had been living as dry bones.
In November, after the movement had been tested for nine months, the
Ballymena Observer reported on the effects. Out of hundreds of converts,
less than a dozen had backslidden. Prostitutes, thieves, gamblers,
drunkards, cockfighters and swearers had been transformed into new
people. Men and women who had formerly lived together out of wedlock had
married. Church attendance was up by an average of 500 each Sunday. The
Observer concluded, "...the revival movement has effected a very large
amount of local, tangible and positive good."
