Few ordinary people have seen their personal prayer become the motto of an entire nation. Evan Roberts was a young Welsh coal miner who, moved by a sincere pursuit of God, became the face of the greatest revival Wales has ever known.
Born on June 8, 1878, in Loughor, the son of miner Henry Roberts and Hannah Roberts, Evan grew up in a Calvinistic Methodist home. He entered the coal mines at age eleven alongside his father, and later worked as a blacksmith’s apprentice under his uncle.
Despite limited formal schooling, he devoted himself to Bible reading and prayer from a young age, memorizing long passages of Scripture. By age fifteen he was already teaching Sunday school at Pisgah Chapel, showing a spiritual zeal unusual for his years.
In 1903, he was accepted as a candidate for the ministry by the Presbyterian Church of Wales, and in September 1904 he enrolled at the Newcastle Emlyn school to prepare for pastoral ministry. It was during this time of training that he experienced the encounter that would change his life.
In September 1904, at the Blaenannerch convention, he heard the preacher Seth Joshua pray, “Lord, bend us.” Overcome with emotion, Evan cried out, “Bend me! Bend me! Bend us!” and returned to Loughor convinced that God was preparing a revival for the nation.
In October of that year, he began preaching at Moriah Chapel with a simple message summed up in four points: confess every known sin, put away any doubt, obey the Holy Spirit promptly, and confess Christ publicly. Within a few weeks, packed-out meetings spread across all of Wales.
It is estimated that around one hundred thousand people were converted within a few months, and the news crossed borders, influencing revivals in Scandinavia and America, and later the emerging Pentecostal movement connected with Azusa Street in the United States. Historians also recorded a significant drop in rates of drunkenness and crime in Welsh communities.
Not everything, however, was met with consensus. In his most controversial campaign, in Liverpool in early 1905, Evan Roberts went so far as to claim he had received direct messages from God about churches and individuals present at the meetings, which divided opinion even among supporters of the revival. Biographers acknowledge that, at that point, he claimed for himself a discernment no human being can possess.
The extreme effort took a heavy toll. By 1906, physically and emotionally exhausted, Evan Roberts withdrew to the home of evangelist Jessie Penn-Lewis in England and lived through years of seclusion and depression. Years later, he co-authored with her the controversial book “War on the Saints” (1912), today disputed by some scholars for its teaching on spiritual warfare.
He died in Cardiff on January 29, 1951, nearly forgotten by the public that had once acclaimed him. His life reminds us that revival does not depend on titles or academic training, but on a heart willing to be bent by the will of God.
