History of Revivalism in Boston, Part Three

by Rudy Mitchell
Senior Researcher, Emmanuel Gospel Center, Boston

Outline

Part One
Revivalism
First Great Awakening in Boston, 1740

Part Two
The Revivals of 1823-24 and 1826-27
Boston Revival of 1841-42

PART THREE
Revival of 1857-58
Dwight L. Moody Revival Meetings, 1870s
Billy Sunday Revival of 1916-17
Billy Graham Revival of 1950

Bibliography

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The Revivals of 1857-58

Even before the Prayer Revival of 1857-58 reached Boston in full force, there were preliminary elements of revival. Thousands of young men were in the habit of gathering on the Boston Common on Sundays in the 1850s. Therefore, in the summer of 1856 the Boston YMCA started a series of Sunday evening outreach meetings under a great tent. “These were attended by thousands, and this work took on the character of a general revival.”⁶⁴ Preliminary cultivating of the soil also included the preaching of Charles Finney at Park Street Church beginning in the winter of 1856-1857. Although some of the other churches did not join in the meetings, Finney’s messages did have an impact on Pastor Andrew Stone himself, and many conversions resulted.⁶⁵

In 1857-1858 the Prayer Revival led largely by laymen was sweeping across the country, beginning from New York City. Businessmen were gathering for noontime prayer meetings, and at its peak, there were thousands of conversions per week. In December, 1857, Finney returned to Boston with his wife and found the city full of religious interest. He was not the cause of the revival of religious interest, but he and his wife joined in what was already happening. Mrs. Elisabeth Finney held daily prayer meetings for women at the large vestry of Park Street Church. These meeting were filled to overflowing with women standing everywhere they could to hear. Her husband said, “If the businessmen have had their daily meetings, so have the women; if the men have visited and conversed with individuals, so have the women. God has greatly honored the instrumentality of woman… In Boston I have seen the vestries crowded to suffocation with ladies’ prayer meetings.”⁶⁶ While this revival is often reported as one involving businessmen, women like Elisabeth Finney, Phoebe Palmer, and others made important contributions.

In Boston, the “Businessmen’s” noon prayer meeting started on March 8, 1858, at Old South Church. At the time there was also some opposition and a divisive influence in Boston. Therefore, when the meeting place was reserved and advertised, there was considerable doubt about whether it could succeed. Charles Finney recalled in his Memoirs, “To the surprise of almost everybody, the place was not only crowded, but multitudes could not get in at all. This meeting was continued day after day, with wonderful results.”⁶⁷ From the beginning the Old South Church was too small; therefore, other daily prayer meetings were established throughout the city. Wherever there was a prayer meeting, the place would be full, even if it was at Park Street Church. Although Finney carried on a typical preaching schedule at Park Street Church and other churches in Boston and surrounding communities like Chelsea, this revival was strongly characterized by prayer. Finney commented, “But there was such a general confidence in the prevalence of prayer, that the people very extensively seemed to prefer meetings for prayer to meetings for preaching. The general impression seemed to be, ‘We have had instruction until we are hardened; it is time to pray.’ The answers to prayer were constant, and so striking as to arrest the attention of the people generally throughout the land. It was evident that in answer to prayer the windows of heaven were opened and the Spirit of God poured out like a flood.”⁶⁸

The Dwight L. Moody Revival Meetings in Boston

In 1854, young Moody left rural Northfield, Massachusetts, and came to Boston. After searching for work, he asked his uncle, Mr. Holton, for a job in his shoe store. His uncle gave him the job on the condition that he attend church and Sunday School. Moody started attending Mount Vernon Congregational Church and the young men’s Bible class taught by Mr. Edward Kimball. Mr. Kimball decided to talk personally to Moody about his salvation. So one day he went to Holton’s Shoe Store and met with him in a back room. Here in a Boston shoe store Moody accepted Christ as his Savior. Moody later moved to Chicago where he was successful in business and soon became involved in Sunday School ministry among the poor. He also was deeply involved in the Chicago YMCA, leading it with an emphasis on evangelism and Bible teaching. Moody and Ira Sankey toured the British Isles from 1873 to 1875 and returned to America as famous revivalists. During the following years they led successful revival campaigns in major American cities.

Moody returned to Boston in 1877 for an evangelistic campaign. The Boston YMCA, along with the churches, invited him while he was in New York. The YMCA threw itself into the work, and its building became the campaign headquarters. The meetings began January 28, only a month after Moody had lost one of his close associates, P.P. Bliss. Bliss had died in a train crash on December 29 while on his way to join Moody in his Chicago crusade. A. J. Gordon, pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, was a supporter and friend of Moody in this campaign. Moody urged him “toward a love of the Holy Spirit”, and Rev. Gordon “set Moody afire with a desire to encourage worldwide missions.”⁶⁹ The Tabernacle built for the Moody and Sankey campaign seated 6,000, and was located around the corner from Rev. Gordon’s church, between Clarendon and Berkeley Streets facing on Tremont and Montgomery Streets. “It is estimated that often seven thousand people were crowded into this building. For three months three services daily, except on Saturday and Monday, were conducted by the evangelists. The revival grew to such proportions that other auditoriums were brought into contemporary use… In March, a Christian convention, lasting three days, to which delegates from all New England were invited, was held. This resulted in revivals throughout the six states.”⁷⁰ Moody also developed a close relationship with Henry F. Durant, founder of Wellesley College, who opened his home to Moody and his family during the ten-week Boston campaign.⁷¹

By almost every angle of vision, Boston was another great success. Hundreds of thousands attended the meetings, thousands made commitments of faith in Christ, and many churches gained new members. One of the remarkable success stories came to A. J. Gordon’s church. Moody had pushed the pastors and lay leaders to look to the hurting masses. He especially urged them to reach out to alcoholics, prostitutes, the poor, and dispossessed children. Thirty alcoholics who were rescued by Moody’s zealous program were baptized and became members of Gordon’s city church. Nearly twenty years later, twenty-eight of these ex-drunkards were still on the wagon, and they were loyal disciples and faithful churchmen.”⁷²

In addition to his emphasis on temperance, Moody encouraged a well-organized, cooperative effort by 90 churches to do house-to-house religious visitation, especially among the poor. Two thousand people were spending a large part of their time in visitation, covering 65,000 of Boston’s 70,000 families.⁷³ YMCA workers visited every saloon in Boston to bring a word of witness or invitation. Rev. Joseph Cook wrote, “If there is one measure in which our American evangelist has shown his generalship more effectively than anywhere else, it is in setting men [and women] to work, and in so setting them to work as to set them on fire.”⁷⁴ The effort to reach out to urban families through visitation was a strategy Moody felt was necessary to reach those in the large cities who would not come out to church. He believed women could best get into homes by serving the practical needs of mothers and children. To train women workers Moody established two training schools at Northfield, Massachusetts (in addition to Moody Bible Institute).

The revival meetings in Boston lasted about three months and were accompanied by many prayer meetings. The noon prayer meetings were crowded with men. Meetings were established for men in the dry-goods business, for men in the furniture trade, for men in the market, for men in the fish trade, for newspaper men, for all classes in the city. Prayer meetings were springing up all over the city. “Certainly Moody’s determination to focus on God and not on himself, plus the tremendous prayer support before and during the meetings, were significant factors in the ensuing blessing.”⁷⁵

Some additional evangelistic meetings were held in the Tabernacle after Moody left. It was decided to leave the building standing through the following year. In March, 1878, Moody returned for twelve days of further evangelism. The crowds were as large as the year before.⁷⁶

The 1916–1917 Billy Sunday Revival

In our time it is hard to imagine the excitement and anticipation generated in the population of greater Boston by the visit of Billy Sunday in the late fall of 1916. At that time, Billy Sunday was at the height of his popularity. Boston’s religious leaders started planning the campaign in early 1915 with the help of Sunday’s advance men. The preparations included recruiting and training 1,500 ushers, 500 secretaries, 5,000 personal workers, 7,000 prayer group leaders, and 4,500 choir members.⁷⁷ Close to $50,000 was raised to build a steel and terracotta brick tabernacle on Huntington Avenue for the three-month crusade. The large building would hold 15,000-18,000 people, and the city built an extra train track down Huntington Ave. to handle the huge crowds.⁷⁸ Over 1,000 people came to the tabernacle in early November just to hear one of the three choirs practice. The two main choirs each had 2,000 members and the Women’s Choir had 500 more singers.⁷⁹ The papers were full of stories about Billy Sunday and every aspect of the coming revival in the days leading up to his arrival. On November 6, the main story on page one of The Boston Globe was “12,000 Aid Dedication: Huge Throng Flows in for Tabernacle Service.” This was before Billy Sunday even arrived in Boston. The article goes on to say:

Twelve thousand men and women by their presence, their prayers, their singing and their chatauqua salutes, dedicated yesterday afternoon the largest building ever erected on this continent for religious purposes, the $50,000 tabernacle built on the old Huntington Avenue Ball Grounds for the greatest evangelist of modern times to preach in.⁸⁰

Preparation for the revival meetings included six weeks of prayer meetings. Well over 100,000 greater Boston Christians attended the 7,402 parlor prayer meetings leading up to the campaign.⁸¹ By January 16, Christians had held 48,661 home prayer meetings with an aggregate attendance of 630, 828.⁸² In addition, campaign workers visited every shop, factory and store with more than a few employees, inviting workers to meetings and recording all places where Sunday’s assistants might hold meetings in the coming months. This led to 160 meetings attended by nearly 34,000 men. Booklets called “Suggestions for Personal Workers,” with practical, sensitive, and common- sense words of advice were provided for the personal workers. On Thursday before the first week of meetings Christians fasted and continued to pray.

Then on Saturday, November 11, at 11:55 a.m., Billy Sunday leapt from the Twentieth Century Limited train onto the South Station platform to greet a crowd of several thousand held back by 150 policemen. Upon his arrival, he led a motorcade parade through Boston to the five-story townhouse on Commonwealth Avenue where he and his team were to live for the coming weeks.

The Boston campaign began with three services on Sunday, Nov. 12, 1916. In first page headlines, The Boston Globe reported that Billy Sunday “Rivets the Attention of All from Start to Finish.” He was in “his best form” for the opening day crowds of 40,000-50,000, although he decided to cut down on his typical slang. Another 12,000-15,000 people were unable to get into the Tabernacle that first day.⁸⁴

Billy Sunday’s campaign had a profound impact on men. As a former professional baseball player with the language of the common man, he attracted thousands of men. On November 23, he began a series of meetings for men only. On that night every last seat in the Tabernacle was filled with men. After an impassioned invitation to come up and say, “I will live for Christ from this time on,” over 1400 came forward amidst cheers and tears.⁸⁵ On Saturday, December 2, nine men had to be carried out after they fainted in the meeting. That day 36,000 men saw Billy jump around like a boxer and climax a story from his baseball days with a slide across the platform. The Globe said, “words slipped from his lips at a rate which makes a ‘Gatling gun-delivery’ an inadequate descriptive.”⁸⁶ At the invitations, nearly 2,800 men came forward. “Billy was the [Teddy] Roosevelt of preachers, the tough, manly Rough Rider of religion, charging into the enemy lines sword drawn, slashing at those who would tear down his America or blaspheme his God.”⁸⁷ With his dramatics and stories, he could move tough men to tears.

On December 10, he preached his famous sermon against saloons and “booze,” called “Get on the Water Wagon.” This message detailed the effects of alcoholism on fathers and families, but also used extensive statistical data on the liquor industry and its negative impacts to argue for national structural changes to eliminate this social evil. In today’s terms it was parallel to declaring war on drug trafficking. Anticipating a great speech, 17,000 men packed the Tabernacle in both the afternoon and evening services, and 20,000 more were turned away. “With an effect like that of a potion, [the sermons] sent those 34,000 bursting the bounds of ordinary enthusiasm, brought them to their feet with the suddenness of jumping jacks, time and again and set them cheering loudly and louder.”⁸⁸ At least two or three Boston area mayors and an ex-governor attended. On December 10, his powerful presentations of those sermons made this the biggest day of his career up to that point.

Women were touched by the revival in a variety of ways. They thronged to the regular meetings at the Tabernacle and to special meetings there, like the Day for Mothers. Miss Frances Miller also led several special mass meetings for women at Mechanics Hall. For example, on December 2, 4,500 women heard her message on “Personal Purity.”⁸⁹ As a part of the overall campaign, working women were invited to noon luncheon meetings at Park Street Church. Frances Miller led these meetings, which drew 500-1000 women three times a week.⁹⁰ She organized 200 volunteers to go out to all the downtown businesses and invite female employees to the lunches prepared by two thousand volunteers.⁹¹ On December 1, The Boston Globe, evening edition reported, “Business Women’s Luncheon Thronged – Miss Miller gave four of these half-hour talks, and at each one, the historic building was well filled with young women… At the close of each talk the girls went to the parlor downstairs where luncheon was served for five cents.”⁹² Overall they held 54 of these meetings providing spiritual and physical food for 28,456 working women. Mrs. William Asher organized an additional 130 meetings in various shops and workplaces for another 26,000 women. An additional 81,000 women attended the 54 afternoon Bible classes at the Tabernacle led by Grace Saxe.⁹³ Thus Billy Sunday, his well-organized staff, and local volunteers all contributed to the effective outreach to women in greater Boston.

By the end of the Revival, the total attendance for the 133 messages Sunday gave at the Tabernacle reached 1,320,000,⁹⁴ and the number of “trailhitters” who had made a decision and come down the sawdust trail was 64,484.⁹⁵ On the closing day, attendance was 62,000 as he preached four sermons. Probably 40,000 more were turned away. The Boston Globe commented, “No one can gainsay that 100,000 persons tried to hear him, for there seemed to be as many outside the Tabernacle as inside through the afternoon and evening.”⁹⁶ The record-breaking free will offering for that day alone was $50,898 plus church offerings, and 5,196 came forward at the invitations.⁹⁷ These January 21 goodbye meetings brought to a climax the greatest revival campaign Billy Sunday had experienced to date, “meetings which had broken every high record Billy Sunday had set up in other great cities of America.”⁹⁸

The 1950 Billy Graham Revival

While the Billy Sunday campaign had been planned in detail over a two-year period, the Revival of 1950 began initially with a simple invitation for Billy Graham to come and speak at Park Street Church for ten days after a mass meeting at Mechanics Hall. In some ways, the keys to these evangelistic meetings were in the preparation of the speaker and in his previous Los Angeles campaign six weeks before. During 1949, Graham had led unremarkable campaigns in Miami and Baltimore and a discouraging one in Altoona, Pennsylvania.⁹⁹ Why did he then have such a big impact in Los Angeles and Boston less than a year later? During the summer of 1949, Billy had some deep experiences in prayer where he asked “the Lord for a chance to serve him in a greater way.”¹⁰⁰ Before coming to Los Angeles, he had also struggled with the issue of accepting the full authority of Scripture. He had made the decision to surrender “to the authority of the Bible, which he would simply accept by faith as God’s Word.”¹⁰¹ As he began the Los Angeles campaign, his preaching seemed transformed. Billy Graham’s experience demonstrates that one cannot preach with power and authority from God unless one believes in the authority of the Bible. The Los Angeles meetings were also supported by more than 800 prayer meetings and 250 churches. Then the latter half of the campaign led to some high profile conversions and subsequent national publicity. Therefore, when Graham came to Boston six weeks later, people were waiting with considerable interest and anticipation. By then, more churches were supporting the meetings. Nevertheless, the organizers were not fully prepared for the revival and its large crowds.

Dr. Harold Ockenga had prayed for revival for fourteen years and preached about it throughout the 1940s. He had organized evangelistic meetings and invited well-known speakers before, but the desired large-scale revival response he prayed for had not yet materialized. Although Billy Graham was still a young country preacher from the South, this time would be different.

The campaign began on New Year’s Eve, 1949, with a surprisingly large audience of 6,000 at Mechanics Hall, where hundreds more were turned away. The organizers quickly decided to rent the hall again for the next afternoon. It was again filled nearly to capacity with little advance publicity. The front page of The Boston Globe said, “Although hotels, night clubs, and bars in the city were crowded last night, the largest gathering in all of Greater Boston packed Mechanics Building to hear Rev. Billy Graham.”¹⁰² He used the New Year’s opportunity to speak out against all forms of wickedness and to urge people to let Christ change their lives and enable them to make a new beginning for the new year. According to the Globe report, he said, “‘Your gangsters can be converted.¹⁰³ Your places of iniquity can be closed up. Your politics can be cleaned up. And when that is done, the city could enter the greatest year of its history. It isn’t impossible. It can be done if the church people will meet God’s conditions for revival.’ He made a dramatic plea to all of Boston to make a new start.”¹⁰⁴ In those first two services a total of 300 people came to Christ. The front page story in The Boston Globe on January 2 read, “Attracted by the magnetic personality and youthful fervor of blonde, handsome evangelist Billy Graham, thousands of Bostonians thronged his revival meetings yesterday, in what was described by local ministers as one of the greatest religious outbursts to sweep the city in years.”¹⁰⁵

On the evenings of January 1 and 2, Billy spoke to 2500 people packed into Park Street Church, with thousands more turned away. The sponsoring leaders had promised God that if they all clearly discerned that he was at work in Monday night’s meeting, they would step out in faith and seek larger meeting space. God was leading them step by step in faith. They had originally rented the massive Mechanics Hall with the assurance that businessmen Allan C. Emery, Jr. and Malcom Calder would back up any financial needs.¹⁰⁶ However, now they followed the moving of God to rent it for the next four days in faith. On Tuesday, the editor of the Boston Post called Dr. Ockenga and challenged his faith further by asking, “If I get you the Boston Garden, will you take it?”

God moved Mr. Emery and all the trustees to agree to this added expense, even though a leading pastor cautioned Ockenga not to rush in and make a fool of himself.¹⁰⁷ The Boston Garden was engaged for January 16 even though it had previously seemed to be fully booked for months. With this new meeting arranged, the organizers decided to fill in the extra days and double the length of the campaign. They were able to rent the Opera House and the Mechanics Hall for the additional days. Even though the additional rentals added up to more than $10,000, God was clearly moving in a special way, and by the end all expenses were covered. The next four meetings at Mechanics Hall each drew well over 5,000 people.

On January 4, Billy’s call for a week of prayer in Boston made first page news in The Boston Globe. Prayer meetings for revival were being held every day at Tremont Temple. In the first week of meetings, about 900 people accepted Christ as Savior and signed cards.¹⁰⁸ Thousands attended the second week of meetings as well. With the various Boston papers giving front page coverage to the meetings, the greater Boston area was becoming aware of the growing revival.

The preparation for the final meeting included an all-day prayer meeting at Tremont Temple, attended at various times by 2,000 to 3,000 people. An hour before the service that night, the Boston Garden was packed with 16,000 people, with 2,500 people in the lobby and 10,000 more in the streets outside. In response to Graham’s message on Noah, 1,200 to 1,500 people made decisions to turn to Jesus. In all, the campaign resulted in 3,000 conversions in January.¹⁰⁹ In his autobiography, Graham says, “Response to the invitation at each service overwhelmed us physically. There had been no significant training of counselors in advance of the meetings. Hence, all of us on the team – including Grady, Cliff, Bev and myself – met with individual inquirers, helped by volunteers who stepped forward on the spur of the moment.”¹¹⁰ Dr. Ockenga and other pastors were experiencing many additional conversions in response to their own preaching within their churches.

Because all the meeting places were unavailable after January 16, Billy and the campaign leaders reluctantly decided to close the Boston effort. However, they agreed to organize a second phase beginning in late March. When the Billy Graham team returned on March 28, local committees in many of New England’s larger cities were prepared to spread the revival to all six states in the region. Dr. Ockenga provided leadership with the help of the Evangelistic Association of New England and the New England Fellowship of Evangelicals. In the intervening months, pastors and leaders had a little more time to prepare and plan for overflow crowds. They had also recruited people in New England and around the country to pray for the revival. The twenty-day itinerary covered about fifteen cities including Portland, Maine; Manchester and Concord, New Hampshire; Burlington, Vermont; Springfield, Worcester, and Lowell, Massachusetts; Hartford, Bridgeport, and Waterbury, Connecticut; and Providence, Rhode Island among others. God used national and local news media to give the meetings widespread publicity, with newspapers sending fifteen to twenty reporters everywhere Billy went.¹¹¹ “Headlines appeared constantly throughout the campaign, and no less than four hundred and seventy-six newspaper articles were printed about the meetings.”¹¹² Hundreds and thousands of people packed the city auditoriums, sports stadiums and theaters,¹¹³ with crowds overflowing halls and spilling out into the streets. Attendance at the indoor meetings of this second phase was conservatively estimated at 115,000, and more than 6,000 people signed confessions of faith on the decision cards. This phase of the campaign also included important meetings held on college campuses, including MIT, Brown, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Vassar, Wellesley and the University of Massachusetts. Graham learned that in spite of students’ apparent lack of seriousness, they were open to his straightforward presentation of the Gospel.

After speaking in the various New England cities and universities, Graham returned to Boston for four nights (April 19-22) at the Boston Garden and a final Sunday afternoon rally on the Boston Common. When Sunday came, there was a cold, pouring rain, but Billy’s team prayed for the sky to clear. In the afternoon as the first hymn began, the rain stopped, and when Billy stood up to preach the sun came out on the crowd of 40,000-75,000.¹¹⁴ Here on the same hallowed ground, George Whitefield had preached 210 years before with the theme, “Shall God Reign in New England.” Dr. Ockenga planned the final meeting as a “Peace Rally,” a theme which he felt would draw together many people in those times of cold war and gathering threats to peace in the Far East. Using Genesis 6 along with Romans, “Ockenga concluded that wherever you have righteousness you have peace, which is the fruit of righteousness. And the way to peace is through repentance, revival, and righteousness.”¹¹⁵ Ockenga presented a peace offensive for America, and Graham outlined a five-point peace plan emphasizing a revival of true religion of the heart. Then the audience joined in a prayer for peace. In his main message, Billy urged the vast crowd to “Prepare to Meet Thy God.” In response to his closing invitation, hundreds raised their hands to receive Christ.

In all these times of revival, prayer played an important role. While persistent prayer for revival was clearly evident, God often did not bring revival until several years later. In some revivals, church planting was an important result or ingredient. Generally, God worked through a specific person or persons who were filled with his Spirit and power and provided a focus for attracting the public’s attention. Quite often God used publicity from newspapers and other printed sources to prepare the way in arousing the interest of the general public. Although well-known personalities were often involved, the efforts of local pastors and countless laymen and laywomen were always crucial. God seemed to often use people who, in the world’s eyes, were not the most experienced or the most well-educated. These speakers were totally dedicated to God, and their weaknesses perhaps enabled the power of God to shine even more brightly. They were not known for brilliant, and uniquely new ideas, but for preaching the basic Gospel with simplicity, clarity, and power.

Complete Bibliography here.

Footnotes for Part Three:

⁶⁴ L. L. Doggett, History of the Boston Young Men’s Christian Association (Boston: Boston Young Men’s Christian Association, 1901), 27.
⁶⁵ Englizian, 148-149.
⁶⁶ Hambrick-Stowe, 281.
⁶⁷ Charles Finney, Memoirs of Charles G. Finney, Chapter 33, www.gospeltruth.net/1868Memoirs/mem33.htm (January 2007).
⁶⁸ Ibid.
⁶⁹ Lyle Dorsett, A Passion for Souls: The Life of D. L. Moody (Chicago: Moody Press, 1997), 251.
⁷⁰ L. L. Doggett, History of the Boston Young Men’s Christian Association, 55-56.
⁷¹Dorsett, 252.
⁷² Ibid., 253.
⁷³ Joseph Cook, “Introduction,” in To All People… by Dwight L. Moody (New York: E. B. Treat, 1877), 9.
⁷⁴ Ibid., 11.
⁷⁵ Dorsett, 241.
⁷⁶ Ibid., 56.
⁷⁷ Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, Fundamentalists in the City: Conflict and Division in Boston’s Churches, 1885-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 144,145.
⁷⁸ Ibid., 145.
⁷⁹ The Boston Globe, Nov. 4, 1916.
⁸⁰ The Boston Globe, 6 Nov. 1916, 1.
⁸¹ The Boston Globe, 11 Nov. 1916, 2.
⁸² The Boston Globe, 22 January 1917, 5.
⁸³ Ibid., evening edition, p. 14.
⁸⁴ The Boston Globe, 13 Nov. 1916, page 1; Bendroth, 146.
⁸⁵ Bendroth, 149; The Boston Globe, 22 January 1917, 4.
⁸⁶ “Nine Men Knocked Out by Sunday Talk, The Boston Globe, 3 December 1916, 1.
⁸⁷ Roger A. Bruns, Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big Time American Evangelism (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1992), 200.
⁸⁸ “Roar from 34,000 as Sunday Lashes Booze,” The Boston Globe, 11 December 1916, 1.
⁸⁹ “Hear Appeal for Purity,” The Boston Sunday Globe, 3 December 1916, 4.
⁹⁰ Bendroth, 146.
⁹¹ Ibid.
⁹² “Business Women’s Luncheon Thronged,” The Boston Globe, 1 December 1916, 9.
⁹³ The Boston Globe, 22 January 1917, 5.
⁹⁴ The Boston Globe, 22 January 1917, 5.
⁹⁵ Lyle W. Dorsett, Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), 92. (The Boston Globe, 22 January 1917, page 1, gave the number as 62,000).
⁹⁶ The Boston Globe, 22 January 1917, 1.
⁹⁷ Ibid.
⁹⁸ “Sunday Goodbys to Boston Begin,” The Boston Sunday Globe, 21 January 1917, 1.
⁹⁹ Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 220.
¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 222.
¹⁰¹ Ibid., 223.
¹⁰²“Graham Scores Typical Revelry of New Year’s Eve,” The Boston Globe, 1 January 1950, 1.
¹⁰³ Jim Vaus, a wiretapper for West Coast gangster Mickey Cohen, had been converted in the recent Los Angeles campaign.
¹⁰⁴ The Boston Globe, 1 January 1950, 1.
¹⁰⁵“Thousands Hear Billy Graham at Two Revivals,” The Boston Globe, 2 January 1950, 1.
¹⁰⁶ Harold Lindsell, Park Street Prophet: The Story of Harold Ockenga (Wheaton, Ill.: Van Kampen Press, 1951), 146.
¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 149.
¹⁰⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰⁹ Ibid., 152.
¹¹⁰ Billy Graham, Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco and Zondervan, 1997), 161.
¹¹¹ Billy Graham, Just As I Am, 164.
¹¹² Lindsell, 157.
¹¹³ In Houlton, Maine, they even used an airplane hangar for the meetings.
¹¹⁴ Lindsell, 159.
¹¹⁵ Ibid.

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Emmanuel Research Review, copyright ©2007, Emmanuel Gospel Center. All rights reserved.
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