In
1906, the same year he went to the Keswick Convention and was invited to give a
special address,[1] Roberts
moved into the Penn-Lewis household after Jessie Penn-Lewis had visions about
him,[2]
leaving behind “the confusion of South Wales where there were disorderly
meetings at Carmarthen, dancing and barking at Llannon, a prophesying curate at
Llanelly, [and] a persuasive woman healer in Swansea.”[3]  By 1907 there were “many instances . . . [of]
prostrations and trance visions and such manifestations as guiding lights and angelic
helps.”[4]  Indeed, Roberts experienced almost
innumerable visitations from the spirit world and made “many statements about
special guidance by vision and voices”[5]
both before, during, and after the Welsh holiness revival.  “[H]e claims as his guide . . . the inner
voice . . . the Spirit tells him when to speak and when to be silent, to whom
he may grant an audience and whom he must refuse, what places to visit and the
places he must avoid.”[6]  Thus, Roberts was directed by visions of
Satan and sundry other spiritual beings concerning where he should go to hold
meetings.[7]  In one often-mentioned vision[8] he
claimed he “was taken up into a great expanse without time or space—it was
communion with God. Before this it was a far-off God that I had. . . . I was
frightened that night . . . [s]o great was my shivering that I rocked the bed
and my brother awakened [and] took hold of me, thinking I was ill.  After that I was awakened every night a
little after one” to experience similar communion, although without the same
fear, “for about four hours. . . . About five I was allowed to sleep[.]”[9]   Frequently his visions “caused his body to
shake.”[10]  He had a “vision . . . [of] a kind of arm
stretching out from the moon in the direction of earth,”[11]
“many visions about the sufferings of Jesus,”[12] a
“terrifying vision of hell,”[13] a
“vision . . . [of] a great conflict between Satan and the Archangel of God,”[14] a
“vision of a white horse and of a key which opened the Gate of Life,”[15] a
vision of “a person dressed in white, with a glittering sword in his hand,
striking the devil until he fled and vanished,”[16]
various “visions of the devil and of the blessed Saviour,”[17]
and “dreams . . . such as that of Satan’s face sneering at him in the midst of
some garden shrubs”[18]—although
Satan not only sneered at Roberts in gardens in dreams, but also appeared while
Roberts was walking in a garden hedge, until a glorious figure in white—the
Church—struck Satan and made him disappear.[19]  Thus, “Evan Roberts . . . speaks of God and
the devil with the assurance not only of one who has had communication with
them, but who has actually seen them. 
The devil grins at him in his garden, he goes back into the house, and
when he returns Jesus Christ is there smiling at him.”[20]

After
seeing a book called The Gospel in Art,
he “experienced a new series of visions, each of which was centered upon
biblical scenes,” although the pictures in the book “bore a striking
resemblance to his visions” of the actual events.[21]  Because of “visions and voices,” in his
revival meetings he said, “I have to say strange things;”[22]
and services, the large majority of the time, had the scripture readings and
sermon omitted for people getting up to sing or speak without any order.[23]  In his meetings, “the din was tremendous . .
. constant interruptions [of] the speakers [took place as] excited men and
women [rose] to pray, testify, sing, ask questions, recite verses, etc. . . .
formal preaching [was] an impossibility.”[24]  “Pentecostal enthusiasm” required that there
was no preaching for months in various congregations.[25]  Some ministers stated that they had not
preached for almost a year.[26]  Those parts of Wales under Roberts’s influence
“almost completely ousted preaching,” for “to cease preaching . . . seemed to
many the natural and right thing to do.”[27]  Ministers who ascended pulpits to proclaim
God’s Word were forbidden to do so by the confused disorder of their congregations.  This de-emphasis upon preaching was accounted
for by the conclusion that “Evan Roberts had a ‘ministry of gifts’ rather than
a ‘ministry of the Word.’”[28]  While there was not much preaching of God’s
Word, at least there were plenty of alleged miraculous gifts, as Roberts
believed that all the spiritual gifts of the Apostolic age were to be present
and active in his day.  On those
instances where Roberts did attempt to preach, he might be “interrupted about
thirty times by pleas and excited comments,” as his meetings “sounded chaotic.”[29]  “He made no preparation beforehand concerning
what he should say” even when he did preach; “all was spontaneous response” to
what was supposed to be the Holy Spirit.[30]  “Well-structured expository preaching . . .
was just unworkable . . . [since] each service was dominated by testimonies,
prayers, pleadings, and songs.”[31]  Indeed, his meetings had a veritable “Babel of voices . . .
breaking forth simultaneously in prayer and song . . . [and] people . . .
praying in several languages simultaneously.”[32]  At times people would sing “again and again”
a handful of lines from a song “twenty times,”[33]
or even hear a “chorus . . . sung, perhaps, a hundred times”[34]
in a meeting.  It “was a new experience”
to many churchgoers “to hear a large crowd sing over and over again for 15 or
20 minutes, without a moment’s pause,” a one-line “refrain” from a song.[35]  Such practices prepared the way for the
“Pentecostal movements . . . [that] put their own seal on such worship”[36]
soon after the end of Roberts’s ministry. 
Roberts also encouraged people to pray the same words “over and over
together, or every one separately, as [they were] inspired by the Holy Spirit.”[37]

It even came to pass in southern Wales that “Mr.
Roberts gradually ceased to speak at his own meetings.  He [rather would] . . . sit silently in the
pulpit and take no part—a spectacle rather than a prophet.”[38]  “Evan Roberts accepted everything,” all the
people who “acted strangely,” with the sole exception of “loud shrieking and
wild gestures.”[39]  “[E]ven in the most orderly meetings
confusion reigns . . . Roberts generally preaches but little, sometimes not at
all.”[40]  “[H]ysteria [was] . . . a sign and proof of
the apprehension of spiritual truths . . . [e]verything was in confusion, without
order, without purpose, and often without decency,” despite the fact that “[w]e
have no record that such physical results followed the preaching of our Lord or
the ministry of the apostles.”[41]  No one must “reduce the interruption[s]”—Roberts
forbade his helpers from trying to do so—because “the Spirit’s prompting . . .
must never be ignored or questioned.”[42]  In fact, “[s]ometimes he threatened to leave
a meeting if anyone tried to interfere in any shape or form.”[43]  “One day he was in a chapel where ninety
percent were English speaking, yet he refused to speak in English, not because
he was unused to this but because ‘the Spirit has forbidden me,’”[44]
the spirit world leading Roberts to speak in what was an unknown tongue to the
overwhelming majority of his hearers, despite the Pauline prohibition on such
action in 1 Corinthians 12-14.  Answering
criticism for downplaying preaching and the reading of the Word, Roberts
answered:  “Why should I teach when the
Spirit is teaching?”[45]  After all, “the wonderful eloquence displayed
by unlettered persons in prayer and speaking” was “proof of direct Divine
inspiration,”[46] was it
not? 

---