Talk, by Apostle Tim Davies

The nation’s first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, in the state of Washington. However, it was not until 1972—58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official—that the day honoring fathers became a nationwide holiday in the United States. Credit for originating the holiday is generally given to Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, whose father, a Civil War veteran, raised her and her five siblings after their mother died in childbirth. She is said to have had the idea in 1909 while listening to a sermon on Mother’s Day, which at the time was becoming established as a holiday. Local religious leaders supported the idea, and the first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, the month of the birthday of Dodd’s father.

The national employment was down the coal mines. These were places of terrible ungodliness. There was much swearing, blaspheming and gambling. But now services were held hundreds of feet under the earth. Sometimes 300 would gather to here the reading of Scripture sing hymns and offer prayers. The revival made men do better work, no time wasting, and slackness; employees looked after their masters’ goods as though they were their own; even the pit ponies, that had been used to blasphemy, did not understand the changed language the colliers were using, refusing to respond to the new, controlled language of the miners! Another striking fact in connection with this wave of revival that was going through Wales, was that two-thirds of the congregations consisted of men, and nearly half were young men. Of the results consequent upon the outbreak of the revival the most marvelous was the effect upon the courts of justice throughout Wales. In several towns, especially those of the seaports and mining districts, judges and magistrates commented upon the effect produced by this movement upon proceedings in their courts. Criminal calendars were reduced to a minimum. Prison wardens must have imagined that something approximating the Millennium, if not the thing itself, had happened. Twiddling thumbs, instead of rattling keys, was a strange experience for them. Lists of convictions dwindled to nothing. Judges had, instead of the usual long lists of cases awaiting trial, blank sheets of paper, without a single name. To celebrate the occasion, pairs of snow-white gloves were ceremoniously handed to them, to be preserved scrupulously as a witness to future generations of the reality and blessedness of real revival. One newspaper report said this: Truly God has visited His people in Wales. It is not a question of one town being awakened, but of the whole Principality being on fire. Profanity silenced, public-houses deserted, theatres closed, betting books burned, football teams disbanded, police courts idle, family feuds pacified, old-standing debts paid, sectarianism and ecclesiasticism submerged, the family altar re-erected, and Bible study become a passion–it is certainly a wonderful record. “This is the finger of God.” Not only does it hold large place in the religious weeklies, but the chief Cardiff journals give columns to the Revival each day, and some of the principal London papers give a full column every morning