Prosperity has come to this small island in the past few years. The country is primarily Chinese in origin but there is also a large Indian and European population. Last year, the business leasers of Singapore got a vision from the Holy Spirit. They were to sponsor a national crusade to reach all of Singapore. They rented the local soccer stadium which seats 70,000. One business leader alone, Mr. Wy Wy Wong, paid for the total advertising in every newspaper in the country. The committee was composed of pastors, professional people and businessmen. These men and women had one thing in common. They had a burning desire for revival in Singapore, which has a small Christian population.

Night after night, for five straight nights, the rains came in torrents, but by six o’clock every evening, the sky would clear and we were able to have large crowds gather to hear the gospel. The total count of people that came forward to accept Christ amazed me. I repeated nightly. “Please, only those who want to accept Christ as their personal Savior for the first time in your life, only you come forward.” Yet, we counted more than 50,000 people making decisions for Jesus Christ.

Asa Mahan, president of Oberlin University for fifteen years, experienced a striking display of God’s power in answer to a Spirit-inspired prayer. I had an appointment,” he said,” during the season of afflictive drought, to preach in one of the churches of the city where I lived one Sabbath morning. As we came to our carriage, I said to my wife, ‘There is not the remotest probability that it will rain today. I will, therefore, carry in the robe which we usually take with us,’ and did so.

“When I kneeled to pray before that congregation, I had no more expectation that it would rain that day outside than inside the house of God. When I began to pray about the drought, however, a power came upon me which rendered that prayer a wonder to myself and the congregation. The Monday’s issue of our daily paper contained this statement: ‘The preacher in on e of our churches prayed very fervently yesterday morning that it might rain, and his congregation were drenched with rain on going home at the close of that service.’

“I can never tell when the ‘the spirit of grace and of supplication,’ in that form, shall be poured upon me. Nor do I feel under obligation to have such experience whenever I pray. All that I can do, or feel bound to do, is to leave my heart open, and let the Spirit intercede in it as and when He chooses. This I do say, however, that when the Spirit does thus intercede, I always obtain the specific object for which I pray. Nor can any one pray under the intercessory power of the Spirit without the hearer, as well as himself, marking the peculiarity of prayer.

“Hence it is that, for many years past, my students, in times of drought, for example, have been accustomed to say, ‘We shall have rain now. Did your mark our President’s prayer?’ Nor were they ever disappointed.”

During the summer of 1853 Oberlin was struck with a severe drought. The hay fields were dried up so there was no feed for the cattle. The cattle soon must die and the harvest fail unless rain comes. Crops have withered, wells dried up, and the parched earth become powdery. On Sunday morning the church was filled. Not a cloud was in sight and no one expected a drop of water to fall from the skies that day. The situation was desperate. Finney arose from his chair walked to the pulpit and lifted his voice in prayer.

“O Lord! send us rain. We pray for rain. Our harvests perish. There is not a drop for the thirsting birds. The ground is parched. The choking cattle lift their voices toward a brassy heaven and lowering, cry ‘Lord give us water’… We do not presume to dictate to Thee what is best for us, yet Thou dost invite us to come to Thee as children to a father and tell Thee all our wants. We want rain! Even the squirrels in the woods are suffering for want of it. Unless Thou givest us rain our cattle must die… O Lord send us rain! and send it now! for Jesus sake! Amen!”*

“In the preacher’s voice, “reports the California minister, “was the plaintiveness of a creature’s cry. I do not know whether any pencil caught more of this wonderful prayer, but all who heard it had to tell of its bold importunity. It had the pathos and power of an Isaiah.”

Then the pastor-revivalist poured out his soul in a searching sermon, “hewing close to the line,” from the text, “I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love.”

“Not many minutes did the sermon go on before a cloud about the size of a man’s hand came athwart the summer sky,” says the California preacher, “It grew fast. The wind rattled the shutters of the old church. Darkness came on the air, joy aroused our anxious hearts as great raindrops pattered on the sun-scorched shingles of the monumental old church.”

Finney’s lithe figure, tall as a Sioux warrior, ruddy as a David, trembled. His clarion voice choked. God had heard his cry. The sermon was never finished, for torrents of water poured from the prayer-unlocked heavens. The preached bowed over the pulpit and said, “Let us thank the Lord for the rain.”