The Well That Broke Through Every Fence

In 1904, in the coal-dusted hills of Loughor, Wales, a twenty-six-year-old former miner named Evan Roberts stood in a small chapel and prayed with such raw urgency that the floorboards seemed to tremble. Within weeks, something extraordinary happened. The revival that erupted did not stay inside chapel walls or confine itself to ordained clergy. Housewives spoke with prophetic clarity in Monday market squares. Fourteen-year-old boys led prayer meetings that lasted until dawn. Miners emerging from the shafts at Morfa colliery sang hymns in four-part harmony, their lamp-blackened faces streaked with tears. Magistrates reported that courtrooms sat empty because petty crime had simply stopped. Pub owners watched their establishments go quiet — not from any temperance campaign, but because something deeper had taken hold.

The Spirit did not check credentials at the door. He did not ask for seminary transcripts or social standing. He fell on grandmothers and teenagers, on English speakers and Welsh speakers, on the educated and the illiterate alike.

This is exactly what the prophet Joel promised. "I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh," God declared — sons and daughters, old and young, servants and free. Not a measured drip for the qualified few, but an outpouring, a flood that ignores every boundary human religion tries to erect. Joel saw a day when the Spirit of the living God would be everybody's birthright, not just the prophet's privilege.