Jeremiah C. Lamphier, a layman, started the revolution because he was helping his declining church near Wall Street in New York City. Posting flyers announcing a noon prayer meeting, he prayed alone in an empty room for the first half hour.
Finally someone joined him. Before the hour was over, six had attended. It was an ordinary prayer meeting, fervent but unspectacular. Meeting the next week, 20 attended. When 40 appeared the following week, they decided to go daily.
On Oct. 14, 1857, Wall Street experienced the Panic of 1857, one of the worst financial crises in American history. By the month’s end, another 100 people were participating in the daily prayer meeting.
Newspaper accounts of a November spiritual revival in Ontario, Canada, spurred prayer meetings throughout America. In New York City, the prayer movement spread so that by March 1858, newspapers reported that 10,000 businessmen were meeting regularly to pray. Every available room in churches was packed at noon for prayer and at evening for services. The happening gained front-page headlines in New York newspapers.
The fervency for prayer swept into Philadelphia and up into Boston and the Northeast. Like a wave, the movement splashed into Chicago and the Midwest. Though it started in the North, the spirit of prayer rippled into the South. Thousands came to Christ. Churches gained attendance.
Amazingly, it began by a layperson leading a small, obscure prayer group. It swelled into a tidal wave of prayer washing the nation, changing lives and reviving declining churches. It sounds like a plot in some cheesy Christian film, but it really happened!
There was a similar event in L.A. in the early 20th Century referred to as the “Azusa Street Revival”.