Reminiscences of Rees Howells, 1933–1950
by Doris Ruscoe

It was from Rees Howells that Norman Grubb learned the principles of intercession which formed such a crucial part in his life and ministry. Norman wrote the critically acclaimed Rees Howells, Intercessor, which has sold over 10 million copies worldwide and been translated into more than 20 languages. He encouraged Doris Ruscoe to record her memories of Rees in the book The Intercession of Rees Howells, from which this excerpt is taken.

It was my privilege to be associated with Rees Howells in the years leading up to and during the Second World War of 1939-1945, the period in which he reached the peak of his ministry. Norman Grubb, author of Rees Howells, Intercessor, has asked me to give some account of life in the Bible College of Wales, Swansea, during those years, and I speak as a representative of the many staff and students who were in the college during the 1930s and 1940s.

I first came to the Bible College of Wales, Swansea, in 1932 as a visitor, together with my mother and my brother, Alfred Ruscoe, of the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade, whose life had been transformed through his contact with Rees Howells. After some years of local preaching in Derbyshire, and leading several Bible Study groups, I was spiritually ‘dried up’ and earnestly seeking to meet God in a new way. The Lord had revealed Calvary to me when I was   a university student of nineteen and I had experienced the power of the Blood of Jesus, but in the Methodist circles in which I moved in the 1920s, the New Theology, especially the so-called ‘higher criticism,’ had taken firm hold, and for several years the foundations of my faith were shaken. Was there in reality an absolute truth, on which one’s life could be based with complete certainty and deep inner conviction? Apart from the Bible as the living Word of God there seemed to be only the shifting sands of varying interpretations and the theories of men with changing views. Was there this reality and if so where was it to be found? The answer came to me through Rees Howells in the Bible College of Wales, Swansea.

It was August. There was a heat wave, and the college was ostensibly on holiday, but in fact prayer and fasting were being carried on for several weeks, with prayer meeting after prayer meeting throughout the day and on into the evening. The meetings fascinated me. I was gripped with a sense of God’s presence as never before, and the first time I heard Rees Howells speak I knew that here was a man who really knew God and knew him in a way I had never met in anyone else before. After a few days the opportunity came for a talk and prayer with the ‘Director’ as he was always called, and God met me in an overwhelming way. Shortly after he called me to the home and school for the children of missionaries, one of the special matters of prayer at that time. Within a year I resigned from the school in Matlock, Derbyshire, where I had been teaching for nine years, and moved with my mother to the college in Swansea. In September 1933 the school was started and it has been my home ever since.

Along with our ordinary work in college and school, we all, staff and students alike, sat at the feet of one whom God had led through strange and wonderful experiences, one who knew God in a direct and personal way and trusted him implicitly. While we were learning the rudiments of the life of faith, we saw Rees Howells reaching out to new heights, daily challenging us to trust God ourselves for the supply of personal needs, as his own faith rose to the needs of the college and school. We learned in the school of   faith to pray with him prayers which became increasingly involved with a world vision and international affairs.

The “Every Creature” Vision

I can still see Rees Howells on that Boxing Day morning, December 26, 1934, as he came into the meeting in the old lecture hall, at 9 a.m. fresh from hours spent with the Lord, who had faced him with the challenge of believing that the Gospel could be given to ‘every creature’ in accordance with the last command of the Lord Jesus to ‘go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature’ (Mark 16:28), and that this could be carried out in one generation. On New Year’s Day, 1935, the college spent the whole day in prayer and fasting, as the reality and the implications of this command came home to all. From that day the ‘Vision of Every Creature’ became the focal point of the life and prayers of the college. In the years that followed we were introduced in a practical way to the principles of Intercession. Henceforth we followed Rees Howells as the Holy Spirit began to prepare him for the warfare which lay ahead. There was a new concern for international affairs and as soon as Hitler came to power in Germany, it was revealed to Rees Howells that the devil, through this man, would seek world domination and so be a threat to the spread of the Gospel.

Those in the college at the time can never forget the burden in the spirit that came upon us when events in Europe were particularly threatening. Could anything stop the onward march of Hitler? He had established his supreme power in Germany and was already planning the achievement of his main objectives in Europe. As was usual, the college had been spending the weeks of Lent 1936 in prayer and fasting. Meetings took place throughout the day until late at night, with a break for a meal at 5 p.m. In the school we carried on with the normal routine but joined the college as far as possible in the midday meeting and in the evenings. Wearied we might be with the stresses and strains of the day in home and school, as well as very conscious of the burden that often weighed heavily upon us all, but over and over again in the meetings we were lifted into another realm and were renewed and refreshed day by day.

“Only Intercession Will Take Us Through”

In March 1936 Hitler sent his troops into the Rhineland, an aggressive act which met with no resistance from any European power, nor from the League of Nations. But Rees Howells was profoundly disturbed in the spirit and a crisis came in the college on Sunday, March 29, a day never to be forgotten. Rees Howells came into the midday meeting not looking his usual self. Always immaculate, his hair was ruffled and on his face was a look of intense strain. He simply said, ‘The Lord has told me that prayer has failed and only intercession will take us through.’ We gazed at him, stunned and silent. Was it then really possible for prayer to fail—the intensive prayer of the recent weeks? What was the Lord asking of us? It was a new realm into which he was leading us and in the late meeting that night, we began to get light on the situation. The battle in the heavenlies was raging, the forces of darkness were gathering strength, the world was on the brink of disaster. What then of the Gospel to every creature? God had said through Isaiah that he wondered that there was no intercessor and in Ezekiel he had called for someone to stand in the gap. We began to see that the Holy Spirit was calling us to a total commitment to the heavenly warfare, to throw everything of ourselves into it.

Would we dare to enter this conflict and pledge ourselves not to let go until the tide of evil was thrown back and victory assured? Would we range ourselves on the side of the armies of heaven and follow whatever the cost? From 9 p.m. until midnight the Holy Spirit dealt with us as individuals, revealing to each one the price to be paid to take part in the intercession. We made our solemn vows to him and pledged ourselves not to withdraw until victory was won. We were aware that the Holy Spirit was leading through the Director and knew that he alone would know the cost to him to go through. For us all from that time on, spiritual matters, especially the battles of the Lord, the spiritual warfare, were always to take priority over everything else, whatever claims on time or strength there might be. Essentials must always be taken care of. In the school the standards of education and care for the children must never be lowered and they never were, but first and foremost we must follow the Holy Spirit as he led us in the Director.

In the years that followed the Holy Spirit held us to our vows. It involved   weeks, even months, of prayer and fasting, with usually five meetings each day and no let-up at weekends or through the vacations. Hard on the flesh it was but who could estimate the spiritual gain? As a proof that the Holy Spirit had accepted the intercession of March 29, the days that followed were literally days of heaven upon earth. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon us and we prayed, sang and worshipped throughout the Easter vacation. From that time prayer was concentrated upon the international situation in a new way and continued through the years leading up to and during World War Two.

Exposition of Bible Intercessors

How the Holy Spirit led Rees Howells in those wonderful years! Five meetings each day! How could anyone lead them and take them through? There were meetings when the Lord shed light on the great intercessors of the Bible, Moses, Daniel, Ezekiel, Nehemiah. There were quiet meetings when the Lord dealt deeply with us, revealing self, self-motive, things we had not realised were in us until the light of God showed them. Sometimes the Holy Spirit revealed himself in all his majesty and godhead, sometimes we were broken at the foot of the cross. At times the burden of prayer was heavy and it seemed impossible to break through the cloud of darkness and oppression, but we battled on and always at the end of the day there came a lifting in the Spirit and the assurance that in the end the victory would come. Before us always was the ‘Vision of Every Creature,’ the preaching of the Gospel worldwide, the avoidance of war at all costs.

The meetings always began with Scripture and an address based on it, but obviously there could not be prepared messages. The only occasions when Rees Howells spoke in this way were the Sunday evenings when many people from the neighbourhood came for the Gospel Service at 6:30 p.m. He used to joke with us sometimes about his ‘three heads’ for his ‘sermon’ although he rarely kept close to them. But in the college meetings he always came with a definite leading from the Holy Spirit, a definite passage of Scripture, and often he used the well-known Daily Light readings. There was always a clear prayer objective and he relied upon the Holy Spirit to give light on the Word of God as he spoke. It was this which made the meetings often so exciting and so alive. From his early years when he had spent weeks and months alone with God and his Word, he had been given an insight into the lives of the men and women of the Bible, the way God had led them, their struggles of faith, their victories or failures and above all the paths of intercession along which they had been led.

Perhaps Rees Howells reached his greatest heights of Biblical exposition in dealing with the life of Moses. We were moved to our depths and taken into a realm hitherto unknown as the Holy Spirit, through Rees Howells, showed us a man on his face before God for 40 days and nights, prepared even to sacrifice his eternity for the sake of his people. It was God’s dealings with these men, their positions of faith, their walk as intercessors, that enabled Rees Howells to attain to the faith he needed himself in his own dealings with God. Over and over again faith came in the actual meetings, while he was speaking, and as he ‘went through’ so did we along with him

In finance he had had to get the faith to buy property ‘without money’, something of which he had no experience before the purchase of Glynderwen, the first college property, and then Derwen Fawr, where the college was finally established. As he was led along the difficult path of liability to an ever deeper extent, and as he reached out in faith and intercession for the World Vision, every meeting was vital to him. Only as the Holy Spirit gave light on positions of faith as yet beyond him, which the men of the Bible had attained, was he able to accept the responsibility for the task given to him and to believe that God would take him through. We came to see what every meeting meant to him and that he needed our co-operation. It was necessary to concentrate on every word, to follow the line of thought and to trust the Holy Spirit to give us, up to our more limited capacity, the light he was giving him, and so be able to believe with him when the assurance came. Without that, the whole point of a meeting could be lost and it would be difficult to pick up the threads for the next meeting. This is why there was such a quality of life in the meetings as we, with him, reached out for the faith required for each crisis.

There were times when the Holy Spirit would break through with great light and give the assurance that the prayer was answered, or he would show us what God’s purpose was.

Then the hall was full of God’s presence, and prayer turned to praise and worship. At times like these when there was such a release in the spirit, Rees Howells was never afraid to relax. For the time being, perhaps a day or two, he might cancel all the meetings and take two or three carloads of us up to the Black Mountain and descend upon his cousins in a Welsh village for a real Welsh tea. When a break in the spirit came he would sometimes say that he ‘shot out into space’ and the glory of God was on him and we too tasted that joy of heaven which has to be experienced to be realised.

The Revelation of the Holy Spirit

January 1937 brought never-tobe- forgotten days to the college when the person of the Holy Spirit was revealed, a revelation which came to staff and students alike, and which produced an indescribable awe in the presence of ineffable holiness and majesty. Day after day we were on our faces before him and often night was as day as his hand was upon us. Now we knew who was our real leader from this time forward, and we accepted his dealings, his discipline, his guidance, his commands, at whatever cost. There were times when he led us into deeper and deeper personal experiences of himself, into closer union and fellowship with the Lord Jesus, in his death and resurrection. To some the Easter of 1939 was specially memorable. The Director’s messages were based on Romans 6, and for days the Holy Spirit rested on the college as one and another realised their identification with the Lord Jesus in his death and resurrection. As others joined our fellowship later, light was given on the words of the apostle Paul in Romans 12:1, ‘I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.’ The Holy Spirit made very real to every individual what it meant to be ‘on that altar.’ He was anointing us for the warfare in the heavenlies during the war years, and we were being drawn together into a closely-knit community, dedicated to fight the Lord’s battles, concerned before everything else for the kingdom of God.

A feature of the college for many years was the annual Every Creature Conference, held in August, to which leaders of missions, missionaries and speakers from different parts of the world came. Many people had been blessed through the ministry of Rees Howells and the meetings were always crowded to overflowing throughout the week. There was always much blessing during the Conference and many responded to the call for full surrender to the Lord, or to the call for service. The conferences were discontinued during the war years and resumed afterwards. Rees Howells’ last conference was in August 1949 and his messages were outstanding, with a conviction that the Holy Spirit would unite all believers in the great cause of world evangelisation.

–from The Intercession of Rees Howells

(now republished by Zerubbabel Press and Lutterworth Press)