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listened could conclude that yielding to the Saviour was ever a transaction of slight significance, either from God’s standpoint or from man’s. There is basis for Dr. Crawford’s directness. He told the crowd that as a young man, slumped in a seat in the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles, he was jarred into awareness of his own need of salvation through a Bible-studded message on hell and how to escape it. That night the “why” of salvation loomed before him as a vivid and inescapable truth. It still does. “Boy!” exclaimed a youngster who was one of the more than five hundred impelled to a c t i o n by the speaker’s clear-cut invitation to accept Christ. “He sure gives it out straight!” In Hollywood, as had been the ease in Chicago as well, other young people came forward to yield their lives to Christ for His service. Under a clear, starry sky, some 2,000 individuals pressed forward to the base of the plat form. They represented eighty-three towns and cities, ten states of the Union and two foreign countries, and thirty-eight denominations. Not a few of them had been stirred by the report of Christian heroism among other young people abroad, which had been strikingly pre sented earlier in the evening. What Happened in Sweden Having either witnessed or heard of it, who could forget the scene in Sweden? Stockholm’s Immanuel Covenant Cathedral was packed to the doors for a youth rally. The night was cold and wet, with snow melting slushily underfoot. Four thousand people, many of them journeying long distances, squeezed into the pews of this historic old church. After the early comers, some three thousand others crowded in, tightly binding the edges of the crowd and filling the aisles all the way to the platform. Through a long evening they listened, eagerness written large on faces rosy with health. What these young people heard did something to them, something unpremeditated. Through the cathedral a whisper ran, at first a half-sob, then a half-shout, and finally a great chorus of young voices: “Vi vill ga! V i vill ga!” Spontaneously, the chant swelled. The congregation rose as one man. Tears streamed down young faces as
marked only by flares at the foot of the steps where they could cross over the high wall separating the seats from the field. Once they were on the field, they had to walk several hundred feet from some sections, in full view of the'vast audience. Yet they came. “ Furthermore, the invitation was given abruptly; little was said to lead up to it. After speaking for some twenty minutes from the Word of God, Dr. Fuller an nounced that they would have ‘an old-fashioned altar service.’ Many people who could see the difficulties in volved thought it was foolish to attempt . . . “The greatest human cause for the manifestation of the Spirit of God at Soldier Field was the prayers of thousands of believing Christians." Prayer had been ascending to God on behalf of this meeting for months. Entire days of prayer were held in the city and vicinity. Friends all over the world united in beseeching God for this rally. Ushers met in various sections for prayer during the afternoon. Thus it was that when the beloved radio preacher announced, “Let’s sing a hymn— ‘Just as I am, without one plea, . . . O Lamb of God, I come’,” he was addressing a prayed-up and prayed-for congrega tion. The results are well known. A few weeks later, a similar rally was held in Southern California to which not only Los Angeles con stituents came, but also delegations from as far away as Ventura and Bakersfield on the north, and Riverside on the south. What Happened in Hollywood June 29 was a glorious night in the Hollywood Bowl, the occasion of the second Youth for Christ rally held there. Far up on the purplish-black slopes of the sur rounding hills, lights gleamed as each person struck a match and held it up at a given signal—symbol of the effectiveness of united testimony. Some 18,000 young people, their parents and their friends, had climbed the eucalyptus-lined approaches to this f a m e d outdoor amphitheater, not to enjoy the talent of some world celebrity, but to take part in a program that exalted Christ. Around three mighty words, “ God spared not,” Percy Crawford, the climaxing speaker, wove a powerful two- part discourse on the awfulness of human sin and the amazing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. No one who
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T H E H O L L Y W O O D Courtesy Los Angeles Examiner
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War Veteran attends
President Torrey Johnson in action
Dr. Percy Crawford
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