From an Historical Christ to a Personal Saviour

Rees Howells would later become known throughout the Christian world as a remarkable man of prayer and intercession. He would serve as a missionary in Southern Africa and eventually found the Bible College of Wales in Swansea.

But before all of that, Rees Howells had to discover something far more important.

He had to be born again.

Rees was born on October 10, 1879, in the little mining village of Brynamman in South Wales. He was the sixth of eleven children—three girls and eight boys.

His father worked first in the ironworks and later in a coal mine. Rees left school at only twelve years of age and began working in a tin mill. He later worked underground in the coal mine and attended night classes to continue his education.

He had been brought up with the Bible and surrounded by godly influences.

But knowing about God was not the same as knowing God.

America and the Love of Money

By the time Rees was 22, he had grown into a broad-shouldered young man nearly six feet tall.

Beneath his quiet exterior was a powerful ambition.

He wanted to make money.

Young men from his village had gone to America and returned with glowing reports of the wages they could earn there—sometimes in a day what it might take a week to earn in South Wales.

America captured his imagination.

He later said that he had “weighed the losses and gains, and America won every time.”

His brothers were preparing for careers.

Rees had another plan:

Make money and retire early.

A cousin, Evan Lewis, had already emigrated and found employment in the steel district around Pittsburgh.

Rees decided to follow him.

“God Will See You”

About a month before Rees sailed for America, something happened that he never forgot.

One Sunday evening, he arrived late for church. The building was full, so he stood in the vestibule.

The minister was reading Hebrews 12:

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses…”

Then the minister said something that seemed aimed directly at Rees:

“Young man, you may be leaving home, you may be going to a place where your parents will not see you; but remember, the cloud of witnesses and God will see you.”

The words struck him.

He could cross the Atlantic.

He could leave his parents.

He could go where nobody from home knew what he was doing.

But he could not get away from God.

Rees went to America and continued living what appeared to be an upright Christian life.

He joined a church.

He attended prayer meetings faithfully.

He stayed away from many worldly amusements.

In fact, the minister of his church regarded him as one of the finest young men in the congregation.

But there was a problem.

Rees Howells was religious, but he was not born again.

“Are You Born Again?”

One night, his cousin Evan suddenly asked him a question:

“Are you born again?”

Rees had never even heard the expression.

Like Nicodemus, he did not understand it.

Immediately, he became defensive.

“What do you mean? My life is as good as yours.”

But Evan pressed the matter:

“That’s not the point. Put it this way: Do you know you are saved?”

Rees answered:

“I am a Christian, and that’s good enough for me.”

Outwardly, he resisted.

Inwardly, the arrow had struck.

His cousin did not let the matter go.

Again and again they argued about it.

Then one day Evan told Rees about his sister’s death. As she was dying, she had spoken to Evan about his own need of the Saviour.

Evan told Rees that while she spoke, he had “seen Calvary.”

Rees did not understand what he meant.

But something about those words stopped him.

He felt as though he were standing on holy ground.

Rather than continue facing his cousin’s questions, Rees decided to leave and find employment elsewhere.

He moved about a hundred miles away.

But as Evan saw him off at the railway station, he gave him one final word:

“If only you were born again, I wouldn’t mind your leaving; but it troubles me to see you going when you are not right with God.”

Rees left.

But those words went with him.

A Religious Man Who Was Spiritually Dead

Sometime later, Rees began reading Henry Drummond’s Natural Law in the Spiritual World.

One idea particularly gripped him.

Physical life can be understood by a living creature’s relationship with the world around it. The eye corresponds with light. The ear corresponds with sound. The lungs correspond with air.

Rees began applying the thought spiritually.

Did he have a living relationship with God?

Was the Saviour as real to him as his own mother?

Did he know God as a daily Presence?

Or did he merely think about God when he went to church and prayer meetings?

If he died that day, did he possess spiritual life suited to another world?

Then his cousin’s words returned:

“Except a man be born again…”

Suddenly Rees saw it.

He later said:

“I believed in the Saviour, but one thing I knew, I wasn’t born of Him.”

He had religion.

He had morality.

He attended church.

He attended prayer meetings.

People considered him a fine Christian young man.

But he had no living relationship with God.

His good life had never brought him into the Kingdom of God.

He was outside.

And he knew it.

Face to Face With Death

Then God allowed something to happen that brought eternity terribly near.

Rees contracted typhoid fever.

In those days, typhoid could easily be fatal.

He was far from home, alone in lodgings, and suddenly found himself staring death in the face.

For the first time, Rees discovered fear within himself.

The money he had wanted to make suddenly meant nothing.

The travelling meant nothing.

The sightseeing meant nothing.

America meant nothing.

He was facing eternity.

He later said that a man may live among a crowd, but he must meet God and face eternity alone.

Rees cried to God:

“Give me one more chance, and I will give my life to You.”

From that moment, he believed he was not going to die.

His body began to recover.

But something had changed forever.

He had looked into eternity.

And he could no longer treat it lightly.

“I Had Only an Historical Christ”

As Rees recovered, one question troubled him deeply.

He believed in the incarnation.

He believed Christ had died upon the Cross.

He believed in the resurrection.

These were doctrines he had accepted all his life.

But if Christ had conquered death, why was Rees still terrified of dying?

Then he discovered the problem.

He expressed it in words that perhaps summarize his entire conversion:

“I found that I had only an historical Christ and not a personal Saviour who could take me to the other side.”

He knew about Christ.

But he did not know Christ.

For the next five months, Rees earnestly searched for the way to God.

He later said that he would gladly have spent every penny he possessed and travelled from one end of America to the other if he could only find someone who could clearly show him the way to eternal life.

He even travelled the hundred miles back to see his cousin Evan.

Evan knew the Saviour himself, but somehow he could not make the way clear to Rees.

The search continued.

A Converted Jew Comes to Town

Eventually, Rees moved to Connellsville, Pennsylvania.

There he heard that a converted Jewish man named Maurice Reuben had come from Pittsburgh to conduct a mission.

Rees went to hear him.

That night, Maurice Reuben told the story of his own conversion.

Rees had heard sermons about Calvary many times.

He believed in Calvary.

He could have explained the doctrine of Calvary.

But as Reuben spoke, something happened.

Rees later said:

“I had heard preaching on Calvary scores of times before and believed it, but I had never seen Calvary before that night.”

Reuben told how he had come from a wealthy Jewish family and had lived to make money.

A Christian employee had once told him that his happiness came from his “second birth”—from accepting the Lord Jesus Christ and being born of God.

That testimony drove Reuben to purchase a New Testament.

As he read it, he was struck by something he had not expected.

John the Baptist was Jewish.

Peter was Jewish.

James was Jewish.

John was Jewish.

The apostles were Jewish.

And Jesus Himself was the Jewish Messiah.

Then Reuben read about the rich young ruler.

Here was a wealthy Jew of the twentieth century reading about Christ’s dealings with a wealthy Jew of the first century.

The question became personal.

What would Christ cost him?

His family?

His fortune?

His business?

His reputation?

Reuben counted the cost.

And he chose Christ.

“I Am the Way”

One day, while on his way to his store, the words of John 14:6 came powerfully to Maurice Reuben:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

He trusted Christ.

But his decision came at enormous personal cost.

According to the account Rees heard, Reuben stood to lose his inheritance because of his faith in Christ. His brother offered him a large sum of money if he would leave Pittsburgh and quietly disappear to Montana.

Reuben refused.

His answer was simple:

“I have had the light in Pittsburgh, and I am going to witness in Pittsburgh.”

His stand for Christ brought fierce opposition.

At one point, he was even confined in a mental institution after questions were raised about the “voice” he said he had heard.

But rather than becoming bitter against those responsible, Reuben determined to pray for them.

That impressed Rees deeply.

Here was something more than religious profession.

Here was a man willing to suffer for Christ.

“Is This Your Man?”

For years, one thing had hindered Rees from surrendering to Christ.

He had seen people who claimed to be born again, but their lives did not appear any better than his.

Why should he believe they possessed something he did not?

Rees had once said to God:

“If I ever see a person who is living the Sermon on the Mount, I will give in.”

Now, as Maurice Reuben told his story, the question came to Rees:

“Is this your man?”

He could no longer argue.

He had found a man whose life demonstrated the reality he claimed to possess.

And then Rees saw something greater than Maurice Reuben.

He saw Christ.

“I Saw the Cross”

As Maurice Reuben described Calvary, Rees broke.

He later described what happened:

“I too saw the Cross.”

He wept and wept.

It seemed to him as though Christ had died especially for him.

For months, Rees had lived beneath the fear of death.

Now he saw the Saviour taking that death for him.

His parents loved him dearly.

But they had never died for him.

Jesus had.

The love of Christ overwhelmed him.

He had known the facts of the Gospel.

Now those facts became personal.

Christ died for him.

Christ bore death for him.

Christ loved him.

Rees said:

“He won my love—every bit of it.”

“May I Come In?”

Then Revelation 3:20 came personally to his heart:

“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock…”

It was as though Christ were asking:

Would Rees receive Him?

Would he allow Christ to take the place that money, ambition, the world, and self had occupied?

Rees answered:

“Yes.”

And he said:

“He came in, and that moment I changed.”

He described it as being born into another world.

God was no longer merely the God he had heard about in church.

The Creator had become his Father.

Christ was no longer merely an historical figure.

He was his personal Saviour.

Rees said:

“That night I received the gift of eternal life, that gift which money cannot buy.”

Everything Changed

When Rees returned home, the world looked different.

His old friends could not understand what had happened to him.

But Rees knew.

The Saviour had become everything.

He later said:

“It wasn’t a point of doctrine I saw; no, it was Calvary.”

That was the difference.

For years he had mentally agreed with Christian doctrine.

Now his eyes had been opened to Christ.

The love of the Saviour flooded his heart.

He saw that Christ had not merely helped him from a distance.

Christ had taken his place.

And Rees understood something else.

If Christ now lived in him, the love Christ had shown toward him must flow through him toward others.

He had once been an enemy of God and had received mercy.

How then could he refuse mercy to another?

He Went to America for Money

Rees Howells never forgot that night.

He regarded it as his spiritual birthday—the most important day of his life.

And there is something wonderfully ironic about what had happened.

Rees Howells went to America to make money.

He had dreamed of becoming wealthy enough to retire early.

Instead, in America, God showed him something money could never buy:

eternal life.

Soon afterward, the manager of the works where Rees was employed offered him a job paying twelve dollars a day—an excellent wage for the period.

Once, such an offer would have thrilled him.

Now he recognized it as a temptation to return to the very ambition that had brought him to America.

He decided to return to Wales.

He had gone to America to see the world.

But, as he later put it, he had seen something infinitely greater:

Calvary.

What Happened to Rees Howells?

The young Welshman who returned home was not the same man who had left.

Rees became deeply involved in the spiritual awakening associated with the Welsh Revival of 1904–1905.

In 1910, he married Elizabeth Hannah Jones, a woman he had known since childhood.

Eventually, Rees and Elizabeth answered the call to missionary service in Southern Africa, where they laboured from 1915 and witnessed remarkable spiritual awakening.

Years later, in 1924, Rees founded the Bible College of Wales in Swansea.

Prayer and intercession became the great hallmark of his life and ministry.

During the Second World War, Howells and those at the Bible College became especially known for sustained periods of intercessory prayer.

He remained director of the Bible College until his death in 1950.

His son, Samuel Rees Howells, later continued the work.

Norman Grubb eventually recorded his remarkable life in Rees Howells: Intercessor, the biography through which generations of Christians came to know his story.

Yet Rees Howells himself would have pointed beyond the missionary work, beyond the Bible College, beyond the stories of intercession, and beyond his own name.

Everything began when a respectable, church-going, prayer-meeting-attending young Welshman finally realized:

Religion was not enough.

He needed life.

He needed to be born again.

He needed more than an historical Christ.

He needed a personal Saviour.

And when he finally saw Calvary, he could say:

“He won my love—every bit of it.”

—The Conversion Testimony of Rees Howells