From Montagu to Scotland – The 1860 Revival Legacy and Our Call to Pray Today
Healing the Land: A Call to Revival.
Folks, over Christmas I watched Richard Hunt’s Adventures on YouTube, but sadly, as I finish this article 8 months later, his channel has been taken down. Richard Hunt is a born-again Christian.
But his adventures are as he explores on his cycle bike through the Cape in South Africa. During his journey, he came across an old church built in the late 1800s.
These churches were located throughout the countryside and were used by farmers and locals, as there was no motorised transportation available to reach the main church in Montagu.
As I watched Mr. Hunt, he mentioned that in 1860, a revival broke out – one of the greatest moves of God in the Cape. It began in Montagu, and I was deeply stirred in my spirit.
This is not some ancient tale to ignore; it’s living proof from the pages of church history that when God’s people get desperate enough to humble themselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from sin, He hears from heaven.
I can see that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit coming into these churches like a mighty rushing wind as God started to heal their land.
The same God who moved in Montagu and Worcester is alive today, and He’s ready to pour out His Spirit again, if we’ll only thirst for Him like Jesus invited us to.
The Dry Ground Before the Rain
Picture the Cape Colony before 1860 a dry spiritual desert. For 150 years under Dutch rule, only five congregations existed, all clustered within about 130 kilometres of Cape Town. Farmers, trekkers, families scattered across vast plains, most had no pastor, no regular services, no real feeding from the Word.
When services did happen, they were in high Dutch from the pulpit, a language the people barely understood anymore. Afrikaans, the heart-language that had grown up among them, was considered unworthy for prayer or preaching. The Bible in their hands was difficult to read, so devotion became rote formulas, fixed prayers, empty repetition. Spiritual paralysis had set in.
Prayer meetings? In one town, a faithful pastor tried for six years to get even one person to come to the weekly prayer time, not a single soul showed up. Missions to the lost? Strongly resisted. Liberal teaching from overseas seminaries was creeping in, producing preachers who lacked the new birth. The church was formal, cold, and dying on its feet.
Yet in His sovereignty, God used even the British push for English-only schools and government to bring in Scottish Reformed ministers. They learned the language of the people, preached in Afrikaans and Dutch, and God used them to fan embers that would soon become a blaze.
The Quiet Work of Prayer That Precedes the Fire (near the faithful pastor praying alone for 36 years)
Long before the outpouring, faithful men were on their knees. One pastor prayed every Friday night, alone in his study, for 36 years: “Lord, revive Your work.” This was Rev. Andrew Murray Sr., a Scottish-born Dutch Reformed minister in Graaff-Reinet, whose persistent cries for awakening spanned generations and deeply influenced his family, including his son.
In 1859, a few ministers published calls for sermons on the character of God, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of His outpouring in answer to prayer. An 85-page booklet on the power of prayer went far and wide. They urged believers to set aside one hour each week, alone or together, to cry out for God to visit the land with His Spirit.
Small prayer meetings began, they were in Worcester, but seldom more than three or four came. In Montagu, never more than three before May 1860. But one dear saint wore a path to the top of a hill overlooking Worcester, pleading day after day for awakening. God honours that kind of persistent, believing prayer.
The Moment the Fire Fell (describing the Worcester conference and young pastor)
April 18, 1860, an ecumenical gathering in Worcester brought believers from many backgrounds to lay out what Scripture teaches about revival. Into that meeting came a young pastor, fresh from frontier work among the Voortrekkers, now called to shepherd the Worcester flock. This was Rev. Andrew Murray Jr., only 32, who stood to pray once – and the power of God fell.
He stood to pray once, only once, and the power of God fell. Conviction gripped hearts. People wept over sin. The revival dated from that simple, Spirit-anointed prayer.
By Pentecost Sunday, May 27, when he was inducted, the awakening was already sweeping through. Murray preached straight from the Word: “What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise and call upon thy God!” “He that believeth not shall be damned.” “Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?”
The congregation was stunned; they had never heard such plain, earnest Bible preaching.
The fire spread fast. Cries of “I am lost!” and “Lord, help me!” filled the meetings. Confessions poured out. People prayed corporately behind bushes, on rocks, in ravines. men, women, children, servants, all on the same ground seeking mercy.
Joy unspeakable followed ~ Prayer meetings overflowed. Folks arrived at church singing before dawn. Coloured farm workers, once broken by drink, fell under the Spirit’s power first, crying out in gratitude as God met them.
The young Murray was startled at first by the emotion, unlike the restrained meetings he knew in Scotland. As he tried to quiet things, a stranger touched him and said, “Be careful. This is the Spirit of God at work.”
He never saw the man again; many believed it was an angel. From that moment, he embraced what God was doing, warning against quenching the Spirit.
If you stamp out the wildfire to remove the false, you lose the real, too.
Fruit That Lasted
From Worcester, it then moved to Montagu, a simple Bible class of coloured farm workers taught by a young woman, met with an extraordinary outpouring. Then through Calvinia, Robertson, Swellendam, Tulbagh, Ceres, Stellenbosch, and beyond. Churches built extensions of wings and galleries to hold the crowds.
Society was turned upside down in the best way, holiness preached, sin confessed, restitution made.
Over 50 young men volunteered for ministry in one year. Missions’ resistance melted; training centres sent workers across Africa. Afrikaans became the language of the pulpit because God had blessed it so powerfully.
A 10-day prayer focus before Pentecost became a cherished tradition, this fruit was not emotional hype, it was transformed lives, bringing deeper surrender, and a hunger for God’s presence.
Remarkably, the fire returned even stronger in Montagu itself in 1874, a second revival that many described as more powerful than the first. While 1860 brought deep conviction of sin and tearful repentance, this later awakening overflowed with joyful praise, worship, and celebration of God’s mercy.
Under Pastor Servaas Hofmeyr’s continued shepherding (who had arrived in 1860 amid the first outpouring and served faithfully until 1888), the Spirit moved afresh, spreading once more across the Cape and beyond.
In Soutpansberg in 1875, for example, revival erupted among children at a mission station with such intensity that they prayed without rest for days and it soon swept to the adults and tribal communities, bringing conversions and scenes of profound repentance that words could scarcely describe.
These waves remind us: faithful prayer plants seeds that bear fruit for generations.
What began in humble Bible classes and persistent pleading continued to heal the land years later.
What This Means for Us in Scotland Today
We once sent missionaries to the ends of the earth; The revival God ignited in the Cape owed much to Scottish roots, ministers like Andrew Murray Sr. brought fervent Reformed faith from Scotland, praying decades for awakening. At the same time, his son Andrew Murray Jr. led the charge in Worcester.
The same principles apply: humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, turn from wicked ways. God is not finished. He still says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37, NKJV). Out of the innermost being will flow rivers of living water, the Holy Spirit.
Even now, in very simple humble ways, the Spirit moves, as Richard hunt the man riding rugged trails across South Africa on his bicycle, sharing the Gospel quietly with those he meets.
On one tough path, he prayed for a stranger’s leg that he met, and God healed it right there, no fanfare, just faith meeting need in the wilderness. That is revival in miniature: thirsty hearts, simple prayer, Jesus showing up.
My own family’s tie to Montagu, my sister lives and works there, my dad’s ashes near the hillside sign we painted fresh in his memory, makes this personal.
God started a movement that changed nations in that small town. He can start one here.
The Call
The same God who answered the lonely prayers of Andrew Murray Sr., who fell on a young pastor in Worcester, and who lit a fire in Montagu is still the same today.
He has not changed. The only question is whether we will thirst for Him the way those believers did.
So I want to make this personal.
Draw a circle around yourself and pray:
“Lord, revive Your work ~ begin in me.”
But don’t stop there! Revival has almost never been the work of isolated individuals. It has come when ordinary people began to meet regularly, to humble themselves, to seek God’s face together, and to refuse to let go until He answered.
If you live nearby in Helensburgh and sense the same hunger, I invite you to join me.
I’m looking for a small group of people who will commit to regular, focused times of prayer for revival, not just once, but consistently.
We will pray for our own hearts first, for the church in Scotland, and for God to do again what He did in Montagu and Worcester.
No programmes. No hype. Just hungry people asking God to heal the land.
If that stirs something in you, get in touch. Let’s begin.
The fire that fell in 1860 started with a few people who refused to stop praying.
It can start again the same way.
- Richard Hunt Encounters https://www.youtube.com/@RichardHuntEncounters
- Andrew Murray Audio Books https://youtu.be/FsybqNM5P5U?si=ibNmljJHxHSwOtmU
- Andrew Murray – SermonAudio – https://www.sermonaudio.com/speakers/11385/
- Andrew Murray – Sermonindex – https://sermonindex.net/speakers/andrew-murray/