Although
Scripture states that the knowledge of men’s hearts is restricted to the
omniscient God (1 Kings 8:39), Roberts could see into men’s hearts and “discern
souls in conflict,” so that although “some called it telepathy,” his
supernatural powers were “accepted as one more sign that Evan Roberts was being
led continually by the Spirit.”[1]  Charges that “the revival depended on his hypnotic
skills and magnetism”[2]
were rejected.  After all, “in the midst
of another mass meeting in [a] 6,000 seat [auditorium], Evan detected that a
hypnotist had entered the meeting and was trying secretly to control him. . . .
[T]he man confessed to a theatre audience that this was the truth,”[3] so
Roberts was not using hypnotism himself but had clear power from the spirit
world.  Roberts knew “when anyone g[ot]
up unmoved by the Spirit”[4] in
one of his meetings and could “see . . . insincerity and hypocrisy.”[5]  He “kn[ew]” when “people . . . [were]
prompted by false motives . . . in their prayers” and would consequently
interrupt them and stop them from praying.[6]  He recognized when people had been truly
converted, so that at times he would announce that someone had “decided” for
Christ and the person would then reveal himself; for example, “at Saron, Evan
predicted a dozen individual decisions to turn to Christ,” and “[e]ach time
someone surrendered,” validating “his strange new powers.”[7]  He “displayed a remarkable gift of detecting
those souls who were secretly trying to come to Jesus.”[8]  In another meeting, “he began to cry
out:  ‘There is a soul lost because
someone has been disobedient to the promptings of the Spirit. . . . Too late!
Too late!’ . . . Oh!  Dear people, it is
too late! . . . [H]e explained that he was prohibited from praying for the soul
that was lost.”[9]  In a different meeting, at the “peak moment,
Evan stopped the meeting and announced that there was someone in the
congregation who wouldn’t speak to his brother. 
He called for that person to confess his sin, threatening him with
divine judgment and ordering him to leave. 
Because no one admitted this fault, the people had to remain on their
feet a very long time. . . . Some accepted this kind of rebuke from a man whom
they took to be a prophet; others felt it was a mistaken act done by an
overtired young man,”[10]
since Roberts continued “months . . . of serial meetings, all-night sessions,
and crises.”[11]  Others called Roberts “an unbalanced crow
stirrer, an exhibitionist, a hypnotist, and even an occultist . . . a prophet
of Baal calling down false fire by his incantations.”[12]

Roberts,
however, had an answer for those who said he lacked sleep.  Such a lack was not a problem for him.  He said: 
“God has made me strong and manly. . . . My body is full of electricity
day and night and I have no sleep before I am back in meetings again.”[13]  For months, as the holiness revival
progressed in 1904 and 1905, “he ate and slept little,”[14]
getting “two or three hours of sleep each night,”[15]
but the electricity that filled his body kept him going—at least until he
experienced one his several serious nervous breakdowns.[16]  In meetings he would often have “nervous
collapses” from which, however, he would usually “recover suddenly”[17]
and continue the meeting in most cases—at least until he came to the point in
1906 where he was “unable to stand or walk for almost a twelvemonth,” remaining
in “convalescence” in the Penn-Lewis household.[18]

Allegedly
empowered to see men’s hearts and live without sleep, Roberts “called to a man
to confess his sin” and said, “The Spirit has given me that man’s name and
age.”  This fact was, Roberts said, to
lead those who were “skeptical of the reality of this manifestation” to have
“no doubt about it.”[19]  On a different occasion “Evan Roberts became
visibly upset and started to threaten someone with divine punishment for
‘making a mockery of what was so divine . . . [m]ocking what has cost God his
life-blood.’ . . . After carefully scanning the congregation, again he urged
someone to ask for forgiveness and then declared that the meeting could not
proceed until the obstacle had been removed. . . . The remonstration went on
for another ten minutes, but no one owned up.”[20]  Later in a meeting he “lay a limp, inert mass
on the reading desk, with outstretched arms as if pleading.  Suddenly he straightened up . . . pointed to
the gallery and declared that some person there possessed a heart full of
scorn, skepticism, and sarcasm.  That was
an obstacle to the path of the Spirit, and the cause must be removed.  He tearfully appealed to him to repent or
quit the building,” and “continue[d] to sob, with his face buried in his
hands,” but “[n]o response was made from the gallery.”[21]  He would “place his hand on his neck, as if
pressing something down.  There was a
jerking back of the head . . . as in persons whose nervous systems are somewhat
deranged. . . . [T]hese . . . tremors . . . [are] attribute[d] . . . to Divine
influence.”[22]  Roberts also had a time when he was told to
“remain in the house for six days in a silence which had been commanded by the
Spirit” and “cancelled all mission engagements,”[23]
after a fashion similar to what had taken place with the prophet Ezekiel.[24]  On various occasions he would “walk out of
meetings after five minutes because he claimed to have discovered [spiritual]
obstacles there.”[25]  Surely such actions, and such abilities to
see men’s hearts, were evidence of the powerful supernatural forces that were
at work in Evan Roberts.

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