Revival in the Camp!

This Day in Baptist History Past



March 26, 1803 – Littleburg W. Allen was born in Henrico County, Virginia, and was raised in County of Caroline. He was a seasoned ‘soldier of the cross’ when he became an officer in the Confederate army. Even though he was daring in battle he was also zealous to recruit souls for the glory of his Commander in Chief, Jesus Christ. He was one of those used of God to bring great revival to the Southern army. While he was a prisoner of war on Johnson’s Island, he led many men to the Savior. Elder Allen’s ministry began in 1835, and his first pastorate was in Matthews County, Va., where he preached for a season at the Walnut St. Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. His most influential ministry was within the Goshen Baptist Assoc. of Va., as an evangelist. Two churches in particular that he pastored, being the County Line and Bethany churches in Caroline County. In that period it was almost an unwritten law that every preacher would have at least four churches, ministering one Sunday per month each. Allen’s evangelical spirit set fires of revival in the churches as he preached the gospel simply and clearly to counter Unitarianism and other heretical views that threatened the churches, and had brought Satanic onslaughts of spiritual lethargy upon many of them. He told men plainly what they must do to be saved, and he told them that they would be damned if they didn’t do it. He was about six feet tall, solid in frame, and brisk in his movement. He took one young man into the woods and told him that he was not there to fight, but that he would get a “drubbing” if he attacked him. The old soldier died at Applewood, Va. in 1872. Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 166-67. [CF: George Braxton Taylor, Virginia Baptist Ministers, Third Series (Lynchburg, Va.: J.P. Bell Company, Inc., 1912), p. 172.]