International Day of Reconciliation (March 4-10th, 2024)

 The revival experienced in Hamilton began to spread wherever the news was reported. The revival historian J. Edwin Orr indicated that this one revival did not become a flowing river, but it became a “flood,” which expanded throughout the world;

• Spiritual awakenings are exceedingly infectious, and proximity in time and place adds to the stimulation of desire for similar blessing. The appearance of the account [of the Hamilton revival] by a steadily increasing number of paragraphs describing local revivals, few in number in November, increasing in December, and a veritable flood in late winter and spring of 1858.

The report was that 600 people professed faith in Christ.

The Palmers also conducted meetings in Oswego, Binghamton, and Union, New York, as well as in locations in Connecticut. In August 1858 they were in Canada again (St. John, Halifax, Prince Edward Island). The number of conversions at these locations exceeded 1,670.

The Palmers then visited England, Ireland, and Wales, and spent several years there conducting very successful ministry with many thousands being converted.

The Methodist churches of Hamilton grew by 1,000 percent. The other churches in the town were unaffected.

Rev. Bruce Woods of Stanley Avenue Baptist Church in Hamilton (1972-1988) wrote that not all recognized the hand of God at work until after the revival had subsided:

• The Baptists and Presbyterians were largely untouched. Anglicans remained coldly aloof. Only after the divine visitation had come and gone did others awaken to the magnitude of the events that had transpired in their midst.

Phoebe Palmer’s preaching overshadowed that of her husband’s (he being an assistant). She has been credited with being one of the founders of the Holiness Movement in the United States, and the Higher Life Movement in the United Kingdom. Her influence led to the organization of The Church of the Nazarene, The Salvation Army, The Church of God, and The Pentecostal-Holiness Church.

Encyclopedia.com says the following of Phoebe Palmer:

• Palmer became one of the most influential female religious leaders in the latter part of the nineteenth century. At a time when most evangelists were men, Palmer converted thousands of people in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Europe, and she did much to advance the role of women in religion.

Christian History Institute has this to say of her:

• Phoebe Palmer was the most influential woman in the largest, fastest-growing religious group in mid-19th-century America—Methodism. By her initiative, missions were begun, camp-meetings instituted, and many thousands attested to the transforming power of divine grace. She mothered a nationwide movement that birthed such denominations as the Church of the Nazarene and the Salvation Army, bridged 18th-century Methodist revivalism to 20th-century Pentecostalism, and pioneered in social reform and female ministry.