Consequently,
instead of rightly dividing the Word, Roberts gave allegedly inspired
“prophetic message[s]”[1] to
others.  It was not necessary to preach
the inspired Bible when Roberts’s own words and marvels were termed
“inspiration.”[2]  After all, Roberts testified:  “We now, like the prophets of old, have . . .
. transmitt[ed] . . . ‘The Word of the Lord’ . . . to the Church.”[3]  Thus, “[o]ne of the most striking things
about the Revival of 1904-5 was the comparative absence of teaching,” for it
employed “little theology of a definite and systematic kind,” preferring
“visionary and ecstatic” experiences.[4]  Observers noted:

[A meeting would]
practically resolv[e] itself into a singing festival[.] . . . At times, while
one section is singing a hymn, another section in the chapel starts off a
wholly different one.  This is
interspersed with short, spasmodic addresses by Mr. Roberts, relating to
visions he has witnessed.  Singing is kept
up hour after hour—the same tunes and words being interminably repeated—far
into the early hours of the morning . . . young girls and women, fatigued with
exertion, are strung up to a pitch of feverish excitement.  Their emotions overpower them and they break
out into wild cries and gesticulations . . . [which] are put down as a
manifestation of the Spirit.  Some
participants have since been confined to their homes with nervous prostration.[5]

In the sharpest
contrast to the revivals found in the book of Acts, in the work of Evan Roberts,
singing was employed “rather than . . . the Gospel message . . . being . . .
preached. . . . The sermon is a poor thing compared with the . . . song.”[6]  While sermons in Acts and other portions of
Scripture brought supernatural conviction and conversion (Acts 2:37-42), Evan
Roberts claimed that the Welsh were “taught to death, preached to
insensibility.”[7]  One historian noted:  “Evan Roberts . . . makes no sermons . . . [and]
is . . . no[t] a preacher. . . . [P]reaching is emphatically not the note of
this Revival[.] . . . If it has been by the foolishness of preaching men have
been saved heretofore, that agency seems as if it were destined to take a back
seat in the present movement.”[8]  At least such was the case for the preaching
of the Bible—but Roberts’s “inspired preaching,”[9]
his “inspiration of the exalted and supernatural kind,”[10]
was considered a sufficient replacement for the exposition of the Word.  He asked, “Why should I teach [the Bible]
when the Spirit is teaching?”[11]  However, in places in Wales where “greater
emphasis on preaching and teaching” was made, there were “more lasting and
beneficial results” than there were from Roberts’s “lack of clear biblical
teaching” and emphasis upon “what he claimed to be the immediate guidance of
the Holy Spirit,”[12]
at least among traditional denominational groups such as the Baptists and
Calvinistic Methodists.  On the other
hand, Roberts’s method of neglecting the Word for other alleged revelations was
central to the rise of Pentecostalism.

Evan
Roberts “claimed to have received over twenty ecstatic visions during the
earlier part of 1904, which left him elated but strangely perplexed.”  He placed an “emphasis on direct and
unmediated divine inspiration,” so that his “near clairvoyant tendency . . .
bec[ame] such a marked feature of his ministry [and] was given full rein.  He would claim regularly . . . that he knew by
divine intuition of particular individuals’ specific sins and of their need to
repent openly in order for his meetings to continue. These claims caused some
consternation.”[13]  Indeed, Roberts began his own ministry after
he claimed to have a vision^[14]
authorizing the beginning of his revival work and “hear[ing] a voice bidding
him go . . . and speak.”[15]  He felt “his whole body shaking and his sight
also wavering,” after which he seemed to see the people of a certain city and
men sitting in rows in a schoolroom, heard a voice telling him to go to them,
and then saw the room where he was “filled with light [as] dazzling [as] . . .
the glory as of the light of the sun in heaven.”  Although he wondered if “this was a deceiving
vision from Satan,” he concluded it was not, and left school to work for
holiness revival because of “the vision and the voice calling him” with “support”
from “the God of visions.”[16]  During the few weeks[17]
of his training for the ministry, Roberts “claim[ed] he was under the Spirit’s
command when he missed a class or forgot a study period or failed to finish an
essay.”[18]  He “would open a book, only to find it
flaming in his hands . . . [t]his experience increased daily until the awe that
possessed him made it impossible to battle on . . . [and] Dr. Hughes, an
American specialist . . . [affirmed] that Evan was suffering from religious
mania,”[19]
so that Evan “came under personal attack as a lunatic at worst and eccentric at
best.”[20]  Concerning one vision, Evan testified:  “For the space of four hours I was privileged
to speak face to face with [God] as a man speaks face to face with a friend,”[21] a
privilege Moses alone had among the Old Testament prophets (Exodus 33:11;
Numbers 12:8).

However,
Evan’s visions went beyond even what Moses experienced.  The Bible states that no one has seen God the
Father at any time, but only God the Son has been seen (John 1:18).  And yet, Roberts claimed to regularly see
“God the Father Almighty . . . and the Holy Spirit,” rather than only “Jesus
Christ” as did the prophets of the Bible;[22]  his experiences were comparable to those of
Teresa of Avila, who likewise claimed she conversed with God the Father rather
than Jesus Christ.[23]  Indeed, Roberts testified:  “I . . . sp[oke] face to face with Him [the
Father] as a man speaks face to face with a friend” for “hours” every night
“for three or four months,” and then “again retur[ned] to earth.”[24]  Unless Evan Roberts was a false prophet and
under Satanic delusion, a greater than Moses was here, and so the possibility
that “Roberts [was] . . .  intending to
set” a “notebook” with his writings “beside the writings of the New Testament”
as a record of inspired revelations is explicable.[25]  Through the power of the supernatural
manifestations he experienced, at times “a tremor ran through him, and his face
and neck were observed to quiver in a remarkable way.”[26]  Thus, his work in the Welsh holiness revival
teemed with “experiences of visions, voices, and ecstasies.”[27]  His “bodily agitations were awful to
behold.  They filled the hearts of
children with fear, bewildered and astounded men of mature years, and caused
hysterical women to faint.”[28]  On at least one occasion he records in his
diary:  “I was commanded not to read my
Bible”[29]
for an entire day by a voice.[30]  It was not necessary, however, for Roberts to
get guidance by searching the Scriptures, for he “adopted the practice of
writing down a problem, placing the paper on to an open Bible and leaving the
room for the Holy Spirit to write down an answer,”[31]
and in this way he could get solutions to his problems.

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