"Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens,
that thou wouldest come down,
that the mountains might flow down at thy presence."
Isaiah 64:1 Like most other Christians I have heard about revival. I have read books on revival. I have heard people pray for revival (but have never met anyone who has actually experienced revival). In the summer of 2002, brain dead from trying to understand the various points of view of the millennium, I was looking around for something to read, preferably something light that would require no concentration whatsoever. Having exhausted all the back issues of Reader’s Digest, I checked out our bookshelves trying to stay away from our collection of Christian books. Apparently God had other ideas as what I needed to be reading. My eyes fell on a book that I had never read, but remembered buying at least three years prior. Please don’t ask me why I had never read it before then and why it had gathered dust on the shelf for so long. I do not know! I usually start reading a book on our way home from the bookshop. All I can say is that somehow I had forgotten about this one (I know I have dusted those shelves many times since I bought the book). Needless to say the book was on revival. I read the entire book that night, but was very cautious about some of what I was reading as I do not easily trust ‘phenomena’ attributed to the Holy Spirit, thanks to the excesses and abuses of certain movements. However the result of this reading was that I heard, for the first time, about the 1970 revival at Asbury college. Three or four days later I was beginning to put the book behind me when my husband and I went to the library. I started to look for a video on the Philistines I had wanted and which I knew to be on the bottom shelf. As I picked up the video and straightened up I found my nose six inches away from another video on a higher shelf. You guessed it! The Asbury revival! Happenstance, or was God not letting me forget? Again I may be making more of the incident than mere coincidence deserves, but I took the tape home (slightly unwillingly, being yet unconvinced as to whether this was a genuine working of God’s Spirit) and watched it. A pleasant surprise! No ‘holy laughter’, no hysterical leaping and dancing, no one walked around the church clucking like a chicken, and, from what we could tell, (it was obviously a ‘home video’), no one was passed out on the floor in religious ecstasy. Instead one saw groups of youngsters kneeling together, praying together. Students and faculty members alike quietly praying, weeping and singing. My interest now thoroughly aroused I began to read of the great revivals and the more I read, the more awed I got at the periodic and amazing outpouring of God’s Spirit. When the Spirit is poured out upon His people in an extraordinary way and the manifest presence and power of God are released and the corresponding effects upon a given society. The men who led these great awakenings were ordinary men. They were intelligent, but they carried none of the distinguishing marks that accompany those who are capable of changing a nation. They were neither rich, powerful nor particularly eloquent. What they did have in common was a passion for the Lord Jesus. In this age of great apostasy the one thing the church needs above all else is revival. However while the Bible speaks lot about end-time apostasy ("When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth" Luke 18:8), what does it say, if anything, about end-time revival. See End Time Revival Or End Time Apostasy?
So what is Revival and what is it’s Purpose?
Webster’ Dictionary gives this definition..
REVIVAL - To restore from a depressed, inactive, or unused state. A restoration of force or validity.
However these words from A.W. Tozer sums it up perfectly. If all the revivals I read about were to be judged by those words, and I believe they should be, then there have also been many so-called manifestations of 'Holy Ghost' power with little or no evidence of holiness or renewed spiritual vigor. Revival is not, as I have heard it phrased, 'getting your whoop-de-doos' down at the altar’. This is not revival. Revival is not a planned evangelical meeting scheduled for the spring or fall. (Valuable, but not revival). Revival begins with a burden for the Word of the Lord and a sorrow for sins. (Revival worship always brings repentance). Remember what happened when the priests brought Josiah, the boy king of Judah, a copy of the Word of God that they found while doing repairs to the Temple. Then Shaphan the secretary informed the king, "Hilkiah the priest has given me a book." And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king. When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Acbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king's attendant: "Go and inquire of the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the LORD's anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us." (2 Kin. 22:10-13)
Revival broke out when the Word of God was recovered and sorrow for sins was palpable, and repentance was manifested. This is the pattern that God Himself told us, in the classic verse we like to use to promote revival, but seem not to obey: "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chr. 7:14) We like to quote the verse, we like to have meetings, we will even confess our 'national' sins, but never feel sorrow, sin-exposing sorrow that causes us to truly deal with our sins and seek God to change us. (See America’s New Religiosity)  So Why Do We Need Revival?
In the more than fourteen years of our walk with the Lord we have sought a Spirit filled church to attend, but have met with little success. Please do not get me wrong.. I am sure there are some out there, but I have not been fortunate enough to find one. Sadly, all the churches I have visited have either been proponents of the ‘prosperity doctrine’ or one of the many other false teachings, or they have been as dead as a dodo. I have seen plenty of activity, services, retreats, conferences, and programs. I have heard a lot of noise. I have seen some busy and very sincere people, nice meetings with nice music (and in some cases.. not so nice music) and pleasant, sometimes even forceful preaching. I have seen some out and out charlatans. Today I sincerely believe that if the Holy Spirit were taken out of the average church 95% of the program would not be affected in any way. The church has fallen a long way and does little or nothing to change the moral climate of our nation. We have little to offer the world. [See Section The Contemporary Church] Moral decline is unchecked, out of control and unbridled. There is a gross spiritual darkness among the people but the real tragedy of it is that our eyes have grown accustomed to the gloom. Do we not bear striking resemblance to the Laodiceans, who thought they were rich, increased with goods, and had need of nothing? We are particularly fond of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘Cheap Grace’.... “The deadly enemy of our Church. Cheap grace means grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing”.
Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance” However the Bible says “without holiness, no man shall see God” Hebrews 12:14. (See True Holiness) C. Ryle once said; "Tell me not of your justification, unless you have also some marks of sanctification. Boast not of Christ's work for you, unless you can show us the Spirit's work in you." (See Myth of Faith Alone)
After September 11th the cry of the nation was “Why did God let this happen?” We do not see that God has withdrawn His presence from us. We fail to remember that God is not a sweet benevolent white haired old man in the sky. That God transcends time and culture. That He is still the God of wrath who caused Mt. Sinai to quake violently when He descended on it in fire. (Exodus 19:18). That His eyes are like a flame of fire (Rev 1:14). That His voice is “like the sound of many waters” and His face “like the sun shining in it’s strength” (Rev 1:15 and 16). That He is a “consuming fire”. (Hebrews 12: 29). That He has promised that once more He will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven. (Hebrews 12:27). (See The Towers Have Fallen But We Missed The Message, and The Wrath of God) We desperately need revival. We desperately need the fire to fall. But God seems to be very silent.. Why? The Fire Hasn’t Fallen because we, like the Laodiceans, don't think we need it. We are content never seeing that the glory and power of the Lord are conspicuous by their absence. We have fund-raisers to build bigger buildings and more ‘youth centers’. As Tozer once said “..we just want more people. But more people for what? More people to come and repeat our dead services without feeling, without meaning, without wonder, without surprise? More people to join us in the bondage to the rote?”. Why can't we see that our real need is for God Himself? (See The Church Growth Movement)
Christianity is not alive and well in spite of loud declarations to the contrary. “Current evangelicalism has laid the altar and divided the sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire upon the top of lofty Carmel”. (A.W. Tozer.. from 1 Kings 18).
Every form of moral impurity is rampant in our evangelical, Bible-preaching churches. The divorce rate is as high in the church as it is in the world. People daily make "decisions" for Christ but the effect on society is negligible. What is the good of urging a man to come to Jesus when he has no sense of being lost? If we can get someone to say a prayer and join the church we consider we have done our job. In other words we are content to pack our entire Christian walk into ‘an experience’ and close our eyes to the lack of spiritual growth. The Lord’s children are starving while sitting with their feet under His table. (See Section Safeguarding Your Soul ). If we feel that we are what we ought to be, then we will remain what we are and will never be motivated to cry out to God to send His fire from heaven. The Fire Hasn’t Fallen because we really don't want it. We want to pack our pews, double our offerings, put on another stage production, but we don’t want God to actually drop in, as then the fire can and will not be a well orchestrated, ‘get it over with before lunch’ happening. God’s fire has this nasty habit of digging, uprooting, burning, destroying and consuming. We want to hear sermons on encouragement and "love". Preaching on sin, repentance, holiness, brokenness, or confession is considered negative and damaging to self-esteem. Just ask Robert Schuller. When asked by an interviewer whether he would be willing to address his congregation as a group as sinners. His response was “No I don't think I need to do that. ... My only concern is: I don't want to drive them farther away than they are! ... I do let people know how great their sins and miseries are. How do I do that? I don't do that by standing in a pulpit and telling them they're sinners. ... The way I do it is ask questions. Are you happy? Do you have problems, what are they? So then I come across as somebody who cares about them ... So the way I preach sin is by calling to attention what it does to them here and now, and their need for divine grace!” (11/92 radio interview with Robert Schuller) [Also See Robert Schuller ... the epitome of the wolves that Paul spoke about in Acts 20:29-30]
Our egocentric theology has become more concerned about self-image than about God's image. (See The Cost of Discipleship) The Fire Hasn’t Fallen because we don't believe it can happen today. "That's Old Testament!" "God doesn't work that way today." We do not believe that there is an immutable set of biblical principles which transcends time and culture. A serious study of the history of revival reveals that every revival is, in a sense, a repetition of what took place on the Day of Pentecost. The Spirit is poured out upon His people in an extraordinary way, and the manifest presence and power of God are released. But in our concern to avoid the excesses and exploitation of certain movements, we have denied altogether the possibility of a supernatural outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We don't pray for miracles, because we don't really believe that God still does miracles in the 21st century! (See Have Prophecy, Miracles and Direct Revelation Ceased?) The Fire Hasn’t Fallen because we aren't willing to pay the price to get it. This has become an ‘instant society’. Instant Coffee, Instant Mashed Potatoes, Instant Christianity. We have figured out how to do almost anything faster and with least possible effort. Revival should be equally quick and painless. “We would like the positive results and benefits of revival - all at little or no cost. We want gain without pain. We want the joy of new life without the travail of labor pains. We want healing, without surgery. We want joy without mourning. We want to enter into the power of the Resurrection, without first suffering the agony of the Cross. We want our schedules and programs and institutions to stay intact - we want a minimum of disruption or interference with our plans and traditions. (See Section Safeguarding Your Soul) “Revival involves a process - a process that requires plowing up the hardened, uncultivated ground of our hearts, before there can be planting of the seed, and ultimately, a harvest. The plowing is painful. But it cannot be circumvented. And it takes time. Yes, time is an unavoidable part of the price. Weekend ‘revivals’ may be easier to fit into our schedules, but they are unlikely to result in genuine revival.” (Del Fehsenfeld Jr.)
We're too busy to listen to God. God meets with those who wait for Him (Isaiah 64:4), but we want Him to send the fire on our timetable. And He'd better be through by noon! God simply will not fit into our plans, our schedules, or our timetables. He is God! And He must be given the freedom to operate as He wills, on His schedule. If God is Going to Send the Fire Remember
A lot of the excess baggage is going to have to go out of the window. God does not use man made methods and our carefully laid programs, which we have made into mini-gods. He has His own ideas and His own agenda and thank heavens for that. (Hasn’t it ever struck the church committees that God definitely comes across as an original thinker). Remember
When you glory in the approval of heaven you also have to be able to endure the assaults of hell. Remember
There is no fire without the sacrifice. which may be your reputation, job, life savings, or you yourself. Remember
“God’s works are not acts of passing fancy, but movements with long range designs”. (Dennis Kinlaw in 1970, then president of Asbury college) Remember
Preceding and throughout seasons of genuine revival, God frequently calls His people to fervent prayer. Coinciding, for example, with various awakenings at Yale, Williams, Harvard, and Middlebury colleges, numerous groups of students called their peers to join in protracted concerts of prayer. During the "Prayer Revival" of 1858, vast numbers from both the collegiate and non-collegiate communities were inspired to intercede for an outpouring of divine grace. The Spirit's descent on Eastern Nazarene College in 1930 caused classrooms to be turned into prayer rooms. Mealtimes found the dining center of this institution nearly empty, as students were compelled instead to prayer and fasting. During the same decade, the students at Wheaton had a similar experience when the manifest presence of God prompted students to be "on their faces" in prayer. Remember
The glorious vision of Isaiah 60 which starts with "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee" (Isaiah 60:1) is not only a prophecy of Israel’s deliverance from Babylon but has far wider reaching global implications. REMEMBER When the Fire Falls, GOD Comes. | 
