You may have heard of the great Welsh revival. I had occasion to study in detail reports on that revival. Many have made studies on it. This greatest of all revivals began between the years of 1904 and 1905. A correspondent of a well-known British newspaper actually went to Wales in 1909 to conduct an investigation of the event. Wales was not a small place. The pastors of one of the cities told the reporter that the number of souls saved had declined to almost nothing during the previous two years. When the correspondent inquired whether the revival was in recession, they replied, "Yes. There is no one around here any longer who is asking to be saved, because everyone has been saved already!" Knowing that the revival began with Evan Roberts, he then asked concerning his whereabouts. They answered, "We have no idea." When he asked them about their meeting time, they said, "We do not know." Likewise, when he questioned them about the meeting place, they repeated, "We do not know." They did not seem to know who the leader of a revival meeting was, nor the time and place of the meeting. The reporter then asked what he should do, to which they responded, "We meet anywhere at anytime, even at midnight or the early hours of the morning. We do not know where Evan Roberts is, but he may appear at anytime. There is a revival gathering in almost every home. You find people praying in different homes at different hours through the night. But it is difficult to find Evan Roberts. Nobody knows where he will be." The reporter remarked that he had never witnessed revival like this in his entire life. He was determined to find Evan Roberts. His efforts in the next few weeks, however, failed to yield any results.

One day, when someone told him that Evan Roberts was in a small chapel, the reporter dashed off immediately to the place. He remarked that the meeting he came upon was most chaotic. A mother was breast-feeding her baby; a few were running in and out of the meeting as if they were salespersons of some sort; another mother was comforting a crying child, while yet another was using a chair as a cradle, rocking her child to sleep. The place was in a mess. And yet there seemed to be an inexplicable and unique element in the atmosphere. "Where is Evan Roberts?" the reporter asked. "The fourth man on the third row," someone answered. "Mrs. Penn-Lewis is also here. There she is on that row." They were all silent in their seats. Once in a while someone would stand to call a hymn, or another might rise to read a few verses from the Scriptures. When one or two hours went by without a single word from the people, no one dismissed himself. At times some would stand to confess their sins on their own without being admonished to do so.

Friends, such a work is the work of God. It is different from platform sermons concerning deathbed stories with an intention to convince the audience that they must either confess their sins or else not be saved at all. I am not forbidding confession. There are times when one should confess his sins. At times one might even declare to a crowd what kind of person he once was and how God had worked in him. However, none of these should be the result of a preacher's prodding from the platform. Sometimes there is more than prodding; it is as if some are commanding. What is in Matthew 3:6 is indeed public confession, but it is the spontaneous result of the work of the Holy Spirit and not an outcome of John's charge. I am not opposing open confession; I am merely opposing this kind of confession. Much more, I am not opposing the work of the Holy Spirit; I wish there were more of such works! If a person is led by the Spirit to confess his sins, we all have to say, "O God, we thank and praise You, for You have worked among us." But we have to oppose any teaching that says confession must be done in a certain way and to a certain degree before certain results will be achieved. We cannot exchange confession for salvation. We must not take confession of sins as our way of salvation.

We have to note that in the sentence, "And they were baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins," the main predicate according to the original language is not "confessed" but "were baptized." Thus, the people were being baptized by John in the Jordan River, and while they were being baptized, they also confessed their sins. We may say that "he spoke, walking," which would mean that the person was speaking and walking at the same time. While both "spoke" and "walking" are verbs, "spoke" is the main predicate and "walking" the subordinate verb. Hence the man was speaking, but he was doing so while he was walking. Similarly, in Matthew 3 they were baptized in the Jordan River as they confessed, meaning that while they were being baptized, they were simultaneously confessing their sins. Such is the original sense in Greek. So you see, the confession there was absolutely not a method, but an action which took place. While the people were being baptized, they were admitting that they were wrong in this and in that. The picture here is one of the Holy Spirit working among them, rather than a work of regulation. They were being baptized and confessing, just like our example of someone speaking and walking at the same time. In any case, public confession was never treated as a way to be saved in this verse.