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Cane Ridge Revival Spreads

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Pentecost to the Present – Book Two: Reformations and Awakenings: From Kentucky, the camp meetings soon spread into Tennessee, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and throughout the South. Some were as wild as the frontier itself. In North Carolina, yet another Presbyterian congregation held a similar series of meetings in 1801 in anticipation of revival, but nothing happened. Sorely disappointed, the pastor rose to conclude the last meeting when someone from the audience stood and shouted, ‘Stand still and see the salvation of God!’ Immediately, ‘a wave of emotion swept over the congregation like an electric shock.’ The physical manifestations and speaking in tongues reportedly made it ‘like the day of Pentecost and none was careless or indifferent.’ One University of Georgia student told of a meeting in which “they swooned away and lay for hours in the straw prepared for those ‘smitten of the Lord,’ or they started to flee away and fell prostrate as if shot down by a sniper, or they took suddenly to jerking with apparently every muscle in their body until it seemed they would be torn to pieces or converted into marble, or they shouted and talked in unknown tongues.’

Birthing of the American Camp Meeting and the Cane Ridge Revival

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Pentecost to the Present – Book Two: Reformations and Awakenings, Jeff Oliver: “When McGready announced a similar meeting at his Gasper River Church in July, the response was overwhelming. Some came from as far away as a hundred miles, bringing their tents with them. The crowds grew so large they had to clear some underbrush near the church, build a pulpit, and set up log seats outdoors. The American camp meeting was born. Services lasted well into the night. When McGee preached that Sunday night, the Spirit again fell, and many who were seeking God were slain followed by cries and shouts of joy that seemed to drown out the preaching. In 1801, Barton W. Stone (1772-1844), another Presbyterian pastor, who attended the Red River meetings, decided to use McGready’s principles to start a series of meetings near his church in Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Crowd estimates were reported between 15,000 and 20,000. One minister who was present reported 3,000 slain in the Spirit at once with others breaking into loud laughter and still others running, shouting, barking like dogs, and making other strange sounds. One eyewitness reported, ‘The noise was like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of human beings seemed to be agitated as if by a storm. Some of the people were singing, others praying, some crying for mercy in the most precious accents, while others shouted vociferously. A strange supernatural power seemed to pervade the entire mass of mind there collected…At one time I saw at least five hundred, swept down in a moment as if a battery of a thousand guns had been opened upon them, and then immediately followed shrieks and shouts that rent the very heavens.’