The pastor of
the Baptist church at Builth Wells wrote to Mr. Price:

Permit me to thank you for
your frank and straightforward speaking . . . on the “Double Revival.” . . .
For some time I have longed to see someone who resided in the zone of fire, to
rise and repudiate the gross excrescences which are passing for the real thing
in the Revival in Wales.  It is something monstrously base to tolerate
without protest the barbarous falsehoods that are being accepted in the name of
Christianity.  My Dear Sir, we are in for
one of the greatest religious siftings that Wales ever experienced. . . . From
all sane and thinking men, who love true Religion and who try to augment its
forces with intelligent thought, you will only receive the gratitude you merit.

        God bless you for your stand and bravery. I shall . . .
accumulate facts . . . and join you in your fight for true Christianity.[1]

Indeed, as
time passed, not only those who had been critical of Roberts’s practices from
the beginning, but “even sympathetic ministers felt the Word was being
dethroned and the singing too exalted . . . [in] Evan Roberts’ work. . . .
[G]ood men, and . . . godly . . . were seen looking very frowningly upon the .
. . Revival, critically and reprovingly too[.]”^[2]  For example, the Baptist minister Dr. Davies
thought much of Roberts’s ministry was “mass hysteria.”^[3]  Other ministers object[ed] to the visions
seen and to women leading in public prayer, exhortation, and testifying.^[4]  Advocates of the true revival rejected
Roberts’s disregard of preaching and refused to stop preaching and teaching
God’s Word.[5]  While Bible-believing Baptists were among the
strongest critics, “official disapproval was not confined to the Baptists, and
one c[ould] find strong words from . . . leaders in other denominations.”^[6]  Many objected when people would burst into
song, or prayer, or testimony in the middle of the sermon, or sometimes from
the start of the service so that the preacher could only listen.^[7]  Many of the ministers did not preach for
months,[8]
and large numbers recognized that such a downgrade of the preached Word was
totally unscriptural.  Even “[g]rumblings
about the inferior quality of the new revival hymns grew louder and louder.”^[9]  People warned that the “flippancy manifested,
especially by the young and others who had just [adopted revivalistic ideas] .
. . helped to kill the [real] Revival,”[10]
the revival that had been going on before and apart from the work of Evan
Roberts.[11]  Many noticed that “the conversions in the
chapels attended by Evan Roberts were fewer than in the chapels where he was not present.”[12]  The true “Revival . . . transfigured many
individual souls . . . [who] never saw Evan Roberts . . . never had . . .
tumultuous gatherings . . . [but] owe[d] all that [they were] to the agency of
[their] own pastor.”[13]  Criticism poured in, affirming:

In the present revival, the Bible is ignored, and it
is claimed that visions and new revelations are received . . . the elders are
condemned as heretics if they do not yield, and conform to the methods of the
young [cf. 1 Peter 5:5].  The officers of
the churches are at present ignored, although they have been set apart in
office by the churches; thus, the Apostles of the Lamb are ignored; the hand of
God is ignored; the Holy Spirit is ignored; and that by some other spirit that
has possessed our young people.^[14]

Evan Roberts’s
claims to direct Spirit guidance were considered “profane, and his visions
blasphemous, because he was not, as were the Apostles, endowed with Spirit
gifts, [proven in] healing the sick, raising the dead, giving sight to the
blind,”^[15] and other
Apostolic miracles (2 Corinthians 12:12). 
Baptist leaders in Gwent considered various practices of Roberts
“unseemly and disorderly,” while “senior ministers and laymen in Pembrokeshire
. . . were responsible for the early opposition of the Welsh Baptists there.”^[16]  One “fervent Baptist minister . . . split a
revival meeting” by stating the obvious truth, clearly taught by the Holy Ghost
in Scripture and patterned in the real revival in the book of Acts, that “baptism
by the Spirit did not dispense with the need for water baptism. . . . [He]
carried on his attack on the revivalists for preaching obedience to the Spirit
yet not practicing that virtue by being baptized themselves.”^[17]  The newspaper “Y Celt Newydd . . . sounded a warning note about voices and visions
and the danger they posed to true revival.”^[18]  Many church leaders . . . disavowed the work
of Roberts and “oppose[d] . . . signs and wonders . . . [v]isions, voices,
spiritual promptings, [and] inspired prayers.”^[19]  They believed that it was a serious error to
stress “signs rather than faith . . . psychic and bodily experiences rather
than the Word of God . . . ecstasies in special meetings rather than . . .
simple, quiet and consistent obedience to the Spirit of the One who is in us.”^[20]  In rural Wales, the “response of the
Baptists . . . to the revival [work of Evan Roberts] was initially very
cautious.  The editor of the local
Baptist journal, Y Piwritan Newydd
(‘The New Puritan’) . . . stated that he could not go along with the mode of
activity in some meetings[,]”^[21] as
various aspects of the revivalism were “sure to be working against Baptist
principles.”^[22]  Indeed, Baptist church membership had been
increasing for many years prior to the work of Evan Roberts, with Baptist
membership increasing by 24,000 in 1905 the largest rate of increase;
similarly, in 1905 Independents increased by 12,000 and the Calvinistic
Methodists increased by just under 16,000. 
Baptist critics of Roberts affirmed that genuine growth in the kingdom
and church and genuine revival were overcome by the false revivalism of Roberts
and his followers.  “[T]here c[ould] be
no doubt . . . [t]hat Evan Roberts did repel, that he quenched rather than
inflamed the Revival flame in many districts[.] 
Evidence of this fact abounds, and is indisputable.”[23]  While the revivals in the book of Acts led to
the continued multiplication of churches for many years, after the revivalism
of Roberts had finished its course Independent and Calvinistic Methodist membership
began to decline in 1906, followed by the beginning of membership decline in
1907 for the Baptists.^[24]  With the ascendency of Keswick and
continuationist doctrine and the revivalism of Evan Roberts and Jessie
Penn-Lewis, “decline set in so quickly after the revival’s end”—a fact which
“did not augur well for the future of Nonconformity in Wales.”^[25]  Indeed, a decades-long decline set in almost
immediately after Roberts finished his revivalistic course, as many years of
steady growth among Baptists and evangelical Protestants was transformed to
decades of decline.

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