Translation of upper section: “I believe in the one true living God; I repent of my sin; I accept salvation through the Cross of Jesus Christ; I follow Christ even unto death.”
The two large characters signify “Heart” and “Decision.” Then follow instructions and space for writing one’s name and address.
We had the most unexpected success in attaining our second objective. From the six thousand unbelievers we had three thousand and sixty-one decisions for Christ. More than half of the unbelieving portion of the audience decided to accept Christ. This was a great surprise. No one ever dreamed of such a great result as this. Moreover, this audience of eight thousand people was made up of all classes. Among them were high government officials, members of Parliament, professors of universities, teachers of all kinds of schools, students from the universities, as well as high-school boys and girls, merchants, bankers, and business men; in fact, all classes of Japanese society were represented in this audience. But the greatest surprise of all was that out of the three thousand decisions we found about two thousand were all educated young men and women, the essence of the rising generation of Japan. Here are the exact figures of the campaign.
| Total Attendance | Christian | Unbelieving Portion | Decisions | |
| First Night | 1,000 | 250 | 750 | 390 |
| Second Night | 1,200 | 300 | 900 | 394 |
| Third Night | 1,300 | 300 | 1,000 | 429 |
| Fourth Night (big snow storm) | 500 | 150 | 350 | 267 |
| Fifth Night | 1,600 | 350 | 1,250 | 690 |
| Sixth Night | 2,200 | 450 | 1,750 | 891 |
| ——— | ——— | ——— | ——— | |
| Totals | 7,800 | 1,800 | 6,000 | 3,061 |
But I must tell of the “follow-up work” of the campaign. We began immediately. For the five nights following the campaign we had meetings for the new converts, during which I preached the practical side of Christianity, such as consecration, prayer, Bible reading, and so on. A little over sixteen hundred out of three thousand converts attended these after-meetings. Then for a whole month the pastor and his associates conducted special preaching services every night, just for the purpose of educating and training these three thousand converts. After that about fifty Christian homes of the church were thrown open for district meetings for the converts living in that district. And lastly, the names of the new converts were all printed on one big sheet and distributed to all the church-members, so that every one of these new converts should come under the care of some member of the church. To each member were assigned from three to ten names, for whose spiritual training he would be responsible. In these ways we carried on our “follow-up work” after the campaign. God wonderfully blessed that campaign.
Immediately after this a Congregational church carried on the same kind of an evangelistic campaign. In this we had two thousand decisions. After these two big campaigns we had twenty smaller ones in and around the city of Tokyo, conducted by twenty churches, in which a little over five thousand decisions were made. So that the whole number of decisions during the three months’ campaign was 10,440. Of these converts about one thousand were taken into the churches of their choice before the summer of 1919.
Thus you can easily see how mightily the Spirit of God is now working among my people. And it is not man’s work, but the work of God himself. In the presence of such fire from heaven man must take off his shoes and praise the Lord only.
In this connection I must tell you one secret, if it can be called a secret. In that big campaign in the Tokyo Y. M. C. A., if it can be said that I had any part in it, it was not by my preaching so much as by my praying. This I say to the glory of the Lord, and not my own. Though I made fifteen hundred decisions the objective for the church, I had my own secret objective, which was three thousand decisions. For the last three years I had been conducting my evangelistic campaigns all over the country, except in Tokyo, the capital. And now at last God had led me to this city of about three million people, to conduct a campaign on a larger scale than I had ever attempted. Surely the result of this campaign must exert great influence all over the country. So I prayed to God that he would pour out his Holy Spirit in this campaign as he did at Pentecost in Jerusalem, and show forth his power and glory, and let all people know that our God is a living God.
So I prayed for three thousand decisions, the same number as at Pentecost. For ten days of the campaign I left my own home, which is in the same city, and retired to a private room on the fourth floor of the tower on the Y. M. C. A. building, and there spent a quiet time in prayer and fasting. It is my usual custom during these campaigns not to see any one in the afternoon. After lunch I always retire and engage in prayer. When I preach my three-hour sermon to an unbelieving audience, I never take my evening meal. I lose my appetite as I feel the burden of my message to those thousands of unbelievers, whose eternal destiny is now in my hands. If they accept my message and believe in Jesus, it will be life eternal to them, but if they reject it the result will be just the opposite. Who can feel equal to such a great responsibility as this?
When I was once asked, half jestingly, why I do not take food before I preach, I answered, “Could you sit at your table, eating and drinking, laughing and joking with your good friends, and in this manner spend the last critical hour just before you appear before thousands of souls in the attempt to settle their eternal destiny?”