However, very often Roberts did not
preach at all.  Services became closer to
the pattern, though not necessarily the volume, of the Quaker meeting, where
everything was spontaneously enacted as led, allegedly, by the Holy Spirit.[1]  Roberts’s meetings “remin[d] one of the
Quakers . . . they would feel themselves thoroughly at home in [them].”[2]  While earlier Welsh revival movements
“exalted the preacher,” and preachers leading the people of God and boldly
proclaiming the Word were central to prior revival movements in Wales, this
“feature . . . was missing in the Revival of 1904-5,”[3]
which contributed to “the decline of the sermon.”[4]  Indeed, the “pastor . . . was practically
regarded as an alien in the Commonwealth of Israel.  The prevailing sentiment was . . . [to]
than[k] the Lord that He had shunted the ministers to the sideline.  [One] never heard
a word from the Revivalist in public in recognition of the Welsh ministry, nor
saw a single act that showed appreciation of their position.”[5]  Rather than emphasizing the study of and
unquestioned obedience to Scripture, and exalting the preached Word, Roberts
placed tremendous stress upon instant, immediate, and unquestioning obedience
to the “voice from within,” that “voice” that drove him into public ministry
and guided him in his work.[6]

            During significant portions of the
Welsh holiness revival, “clergymen [noted that] [s]ince the revival began [Evan
Roberts] has not taken a Bible verse and made comments as preachers do.”[7]  Indeed, “there was very little sermonizing of
any kind,”[8] as
frequently “sermons [are] put aside for testimony.”[9]  “Those who came to hear a great sermon, or
even a sermon, were
disillusioned.  [Roberts] was not an
expositor or even a fluent speaker,” but rather gave forth “broken sentences”
at intervals in his chaotic meetings.[10]  People recognized that “[p]reaching is not
generally acceptable at these spontaneous meetings.”[11]  “Preaching, in the usual acceptation of the word,
has . . . been entirely discarded,” as instead “services are throughout spontaneous,
resembling a Quake[r] meeting.”[12]  “Welsh preaching festivals” were “converted
into what approximated very nearly to Holiness Conventions”[13] through
the Keswick connection of Roberts, F. B. Meyer, the Quaker Jessie Penn-Lewis,
and others; indeed, “the Welsh revival might be regarded as a triumph for
Quakerism.”[14]  However, preaching the Word was supposedly not
necessary, since Roberts had “no body of doctrine to present,” but instead gave
out “prophetic messages and exhortations . . . in place of expository
teaching.”[15]  Following the pattern of the early Keswick
conventions, Roberts declared that he never studied the Bible to prepare a
message:  “I never prepare what I shall
speak, but leave that to Him,” he declared. 
This method was possible because Roberts had no substantive doctrine to
communicate.  He stated:  “There is no question of creed or of dogma in
this movement . . . only the wonder and beauty of Christ’s love.”[16]

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