‘The Son of Man’ walketh, as the great Head of the church, ‘in the midst of the golden candlesticks’, Rev. 1.12-16.

     He looks upon the work of his own hands, and too often beholds it drooping, declining, dying: He utters his rebuke – ‘I know thy works, etc. Be watchful, and strengthen the things that remain, which are ready to die’, Rev. 3:1,2.

     His church owns the charge, and cries – ‘O Lord, revive thy work!’

I. When does the work of the Lord need reviving? 

     1. When iniquity abounds, Is. 59:1-15. Jer. 5:23,10, etc.

     2. Where there is a want of power upon the word, Is. 64:7. Matt. 13:14,15.

     3. Where there is want of appetite for the sincere milk of the word, Num.21:5. 2Tim. 4:3.

     4. When the Saviour’s presence in the soul is not duly prized, Cant. 3:1; 5:2,3.

     5. When there is want of concern for the honour of God, Hag.1:1-9.

     6. When the principles and conduct of Christians are not distinctly separate from the      world, 2 Chron.18:1; 19:2. Ezra 9:2.

II. How does the Lord revive his work?

     1. By exciting his people to pray, Ps. 80; 85:4-7. Is. 63:17. Zech. 8:21. Acts 1:14; 2:1.

     2. By invigorating their graces, Hos. 14:5-7.

     3. By sending an increased power upon the word, Acts. 2:41-47; 5:13,14; 6:7; 11:21,24.

     4. By causing a steadfast adherence to the means of grace, Neh. 9:3. Luke 24:53. Acts 2:46.

     5. By a distinct separation of his people from the company and principles of the ungodly, Neh. 9:2. Acts 2:40. 2 Cor. 6:14-18.

     6. By pouring out a spirit of love and unity upon his church, Is. 11:6-9. Acts 2:44,45; 4:32.

     7. By enlarging the enjoyment of Christian privileges, Acts 9:31.

     8. By restoring those that have erred in doctrine or practice, to the simplicity of the Gospel, Is. 29:24.

     Let us learn the importance of earnest, individual, and united prayer, for the outpouring of that gracious Spirit, who is the Almighty Agent of the revival of the Lord’s work in his church, Is. 64:1-3.

Top of page

4.   The Local Church, the Centre of Revival

by James Alexander Stewart

     In the New Testament we discover that God’s way of revival is through renewals from within, so that our local churches become centres of blessing. A true spiritual awakening will revolutionize the spiritual life of the local evangelical churches, and then in many cases will revolutionize even liberal congregations. Any movement that fails to deliver the local church from its subnormal existence and raise it to a higher elevated position in its ascended Lord has no true marks of a New Testament revival.

     How many sincere believers are ignorant of this fundamental truth! They look for revival in the great auditorium or tent, where thousands are gathered together in a glorious evangelistic effort. The heavens open and there is a wonderful sense of the Lord’s presence in their midst, which has not been known for years. “Surely,” they cry, “this is revival!” However, one of the acid tests of a true spiritual awakening is that this mighty spiritual atmosphere be taken back to the local churches.

     For a mighty movement of the Spirit, it is not enough that a few isolated believers be revived; the evangelical local churches must be revived. Revival, as presented to us in the New Testament, is not so much an individual experience as a collective experience of born-again believers. How many times down the years we have been sadly disappointed when large united meetings, which have proved such a blessing to us all, seemed to leave the local churches untouched. The casual reader of the epistles will see that the centre of all God’s thought and testimony is located in these local churches. If I heard that a mighty awakening had taken place in a certain city I would not seek for revival in some great hall, rented for the purpose of evangelistic meetings: I would go direct to the evangelical churches to see the fire of God burning there.

     In the New Testament we have God’s plan and purpose for His people in this dispensation of grace, even as we have in the Old Testament His plan and purpose for Israel. Pentecost marked the beginning or formation of a new body or organism which is designated by Paul as “the Church, which is His body” (Eph. 2:22-23). Having been incorporated into Christ by the new birth (2 Cor. 5:17), we are then incorporated into His mystical, supernatural body by the Spirit’s baptism (1 Cor. 12:13). The finest description of the character and testimony of the Church is to be found in Peter’s first Epistle: “But you are the elect race, the royal priesthood, the consecrated nation, the people who belong to Him, that you may proclaim the wondrous deeds of Him who has called you from darkness to His wonderful light” (1 Pet. 2:9, Moffat). This Church is composed of all believers in the Lord Jesus, both Jew and Gentile, blessed with all spiritual blessings, sealed by the Holy Spirit individually, and baptised by the Spirit collectively.

     The purpose of a body is to express the character of the person who inhabits the body. The peculiar mission of the Church is to express the character and life of the Son of God, and that is why a believer taught by the Spirit will always pray, “O Lord, send revival in the body of Christ!” We affirm once again that there can be no revival anywhere other than in the Body. The purpose of the Church is to gather, through her testimony of truth and love, a people who, saved by grace, and separated by the Holy Ghost from the world, are serving the Lord and waiting for His coming (1 Thess. 1).

     The Church, which is His Body, is expressed in the local churches, the members of which have been supernaturally born again and redeemed from the penalty, power, and love of sin. In the New Testament we see the distinction between the Church universal and the “churches of the saints” (1 Cor. 14:33). These churches of the saints manifest the unity of the one glorious Church. The local church at Corinth, for example, was one part of the whole, and thus was a local expression and representation of the whole. Its members were in living spiritual union with every other member the whole world over. What a glorious and solemn truth! The evangelical believers in the Book of Acts were not detached isolated units, but were all vitally linked in their fellowship with the “churches of the saints” in their district. “ A man’s body is all one, though it has a number of different organs; and all this multitude of organs goes to make up one body; so it is with Christ. We, too, all of us have been baptised into a single body by the power of a single Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:13, Knox).

     In the early pages of the Book of Acts we catch the heavenly thrill of this New Testament fellowship,

          Christ! I am Christ’s! And Let the name suffice you,
               Ay, for me too, He greatly hath sufficied; 
          Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning,
               Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.
                                                                                MEYER

     There was a holy glow in the services because the living Christ was in their midst. The Son of God was absolutely everything to them. These believers were burning with love to each other because they were burning with love to their adorable Lord.

     Those who accepted his message were baptised, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.                                                                                               Acts 2:41-47 


     With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all.                                                             Acts 4:33

     Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events. ... No-one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.    Acts 5:11-13

     Here is a thumbnail sketch of the type of local church that revival produces.

IT WAS A STEADFAST CHURCH
     These new-born babes continued. They continued steadfastly. Continuance is always the test of reality, and where a so-called revival cannot stand that test it is wise to inquire as to the cause of the failure. Sometimes a great desire to secure converts for publicity reasons robs the Gospel message of its drastic note. If we preach all the implications of the Evangel we may have fewer conversions but we will have genuine new-births. As Mr. Spurgeon said to his students, “If God enables you to build three thousand bricks into His spiritual temple in one day, you may do it, but Peter has been the only brick-layer who has accomplished that feat up to the present. Do not go and paint the wooden wall as if it were solid stone, but let all your building be real, substantial, and true, for only this kind of work is worth doing. Let all your building for God be like that of the Apostle Paul” (1 Cor. 3:9-15).

     The true mark of a real work of God is the steadfast walk, day by day, of the new-born babes. We cannot allow that backsliding is in any sense a corollary to revival. It is only when the emotions are greatly stirred, without a deep work of grace having been wrought in the hearts of men, that backsliding is inevitable. It is an utter impossibility to avoid deep emotion in revival, as the Holy Spirit in them works mightily, bringing eternal realities so vividly before the people. But the true servants of the Lord must have their animal natures crucified, so that the emotions are under the control of the Spirit of God. The work of the Spirit is quiet and deep. Any true saint who spends hours before the throne will know that in his closet intercession, it is when he is quietest in prayer that the Spirit of God is speaking most mightily to him. So it is in the large gathering. Excitement must not be aimed at. There must be something more solid. Although there was great excitement and noise in these early days of the Church’s history, the excitement was as incidental as is the dust when a woman sweeps the house clean. It is the steady walk that counts.

THEY CONTINUED STEADFASTLY IN THE APOSTLES’ DOCTRINE AND THE APOSTLES’ FELLOWSHIP
     The Apostles’ doctrine was the doctrine they taught and preached concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God. It is also called “The doctrine of Christ” in 2 John 1:9. The apostles’ fellowship consisted of all those who believed the apostles’ doctrine. It is not possible to be a true member of a New Testament church without believing in the apostles’ doctrine. On the other hand, if one member of the assembly denies the historic fundamentals of the Christian faith that assembly ceases to be a New Testament church. All true revival ministry is founded on the historic truths concerning our Blessed Lord: His eternal Sonship, His virgin birth, His sinless life, His vicarious death, His bodily resurrection, and His glorious appearing. All preaching in revival times is a reaffirmation of the fundamental truths of our glorious redemption.

     Vinet, in his Outlines of Theology, declares:
If you learn in a general way that there has been a revival in a place, that Christianity is reanimated, that faith has become living, and that zeal abounds – do not ask in what soil, in what system, these precious plants grow. You may be sure beforehand that it is in the rough and rugged soil of orthodoxy, under the shade of those mysteries which confound human reasoning… The revival has preached the total depravity of man and his powerlessness to save himself. The revival has preached salvation by grace and not by works, the necessity of the new birth in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and the absolute dependence of man in regard to God. The revival has preached the plenary and essential deity of Jesus Christ as well as His perfect and entire humanity; it has declared that God was in Jesus Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself and that it is in Jesus Christ alone that we have remission of sins and access to the Father; and that whosoever abideth not in Him abideth in death.

     In Ephesians 2:20 we are told that the Church was “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone”. This means that the Church was founded upon the teaching of the apostles and prophets concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore the Church was founded upon doctrine. So in a New Testament church the Word of God will be honoured and obeyed. Such will be not only a Bible-believing but a Bible-loving church. Its leaders will expound the truths of the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. Its members will have a deep appreciation and spiritual penetration into divine Truth. Their Christian life will not be based merely upon their own experiences. They will be deep students of the Word. They will not remain babes, but will rather become giants as they digest the strong meat of the Word. How sad it is today to see around us so many believers who hardly spend a half-hour a day studying the Word for themselves. How few believers can even give a clear explanation of the truth of “adoption”, and yet this is one of the most vital truths in the Christian life. Too many of our church members remain immature, babes, requiring to be spoon-fed by their pastors for many years.

IT WAS A PRAYERFUL CHURCH
     When I was a young convert the first thing that struck me when I was reading the Acts of the Apostles was the fact that these local assemblies lived in the atmosphere of prayer. Prayer meetings were the order of the day. They prayed on every occasion. They prayed for open doors. They prayed for guidance and boldness in their ministry after they had passed through the open doors. They prayed before the battle, during the battle, and after the battle. They prayed that God would show them His plan and that He would frustrate Satan’s plan. They prayed that God would raise up workers. They prayed that God would empower workers. They prayed that God would send forth workers. They prayed in prison. They prayed in their homes and they prayed in their church gatherings. They prayed in their private circles, and they prayed before the Sanhedrin. They lived on their knees. In order that the apostles might “give themselves continually to prayer” they appointed seven men of honest report to administer the secular business of the church. So mighty were they in prayer that they “turned the world upside down”.

     A true New Testament church will always be mighty in prayer. Said George Mueller, when writing to Hudson Taylor in China, “If you are going to take that province for Christ, you must go forward on your knees.” One of our desperate needs is the revival of the week-night prayer meeting. How often I have heard the remark, “Only a prayer meeting.” What is inferred by such a statement? Surely it implies that there is nothing important or interesting doing, as the Christians are only going to talk with God! One of the mightiest manifestations of the Spirit in revival power is the resurrection of dead prayer meetings. The majority of pastors would be pleasantly shocked and surprised if even 50 per cent of their congregation turned out for the week-night prayer meeting.

IT WAS AN OVERFLOWING CHURCH
     They overflowed in liberality and praise. They overflowed in liberality because they overflowed in love. Their cups ran over with love to the Lord Jesus. They knew the significance of the high cost of their redemption. Gazing at Calvary, they could not hoard up their money and hold on to their lands and houses. The original text reveals that they continued to sell their property and goods and continued to bring the money and place it at the feet of the apostles. It was not mere passing excitement, or the flush of a first love; it was a deep realization of the glory of their salvation that caused them to give so generously. If they had lived in our day, they would have sung heartily: 

          Everybody should know – everybody should know,
          I have such a wonderful Saviour, that everybody should know!

     What a great challenge to us today! If these Christians in the first century needed to sell their possessions for the evangelisation of a lost and dying world, how much more we who live in the twentieth century! While vast continents still lie in midnight darkness, and hundreds of millions have never heard the Gospel, surely if our hearts were filled with His love and His passion we would show forth the same response. ”I warn you”, said A.J. Gordon, “that it will go hard with you at the judgment seat if He finds your wealth hoarded up in needless accumulations instead of being sacredly devoted to giving the Gospel to the lost.”

     They overflowed in praise. Their whole life was flooded with praise. The assembly gatherings were characterised by praise. They praised God for His glorious salvation. They praised Him that they were counted worthy to be ambassadors of the Lord Jesus. They praised Him that they could suffer shame and reproach for His glory. They praised Him that they had something to sacrifice for the spread of the Gospel. Deep spirituality and worship go hand in hand. Read the hymns of past centuries in English, French, German, Russian, Scandinavian, and Latin. Read the hymns that were born with deep spiritual insight and simplicity of adoration to Christ.

          O God, I love Thee; not that my poor love
               May win me entrance to Thy heaven above,
          Nor yet that strangers to Thy love must know
               The bitterness of everlasting woe.

          But Jesus, Thou art mine, and I am Thine;
               Clasped to Thy bosom by Thine arms divine,
          Who on the cruel cross for me hast borne
               The nails, the spear, and man’s unpitying scorn.

          No thought can fathom, and no tongue express
               Thy grief, Thy toils, Thy anguish measureless;
          Thy death, O Lamb of God, the undefiled –
               And all for me, Thy wayward sinful child!

          How can I choose but love Thee, God’s dear Son,
               O Jesus, loveliest and most loving one!
          Were there no heaven to gain, no hell to flee,
               For what Thou art alone, I must love Thee.

          Not for the hope of glory or reward,
               But even as Thyself hast loved me, Lord
          I love Thee, and will love Thee and adore
               Who art my King, my God, for evermore.

     How little praise there is in our churches today! How refreshing it would be for a group of churches to come together for a united praise meeting. Such words related to the word “praise” as price, prize, precious, appraise, appreciate, etc., help us to understand better the full meaning of the term. The saints bursting forth spontaneously into songs of adoration and worship is one of the glories of revival. Song leaders are not necessary during such times, as the huge congregations sing over and over again the songs of Zion which spring from their hearts. I remember once dismissing an immense congregation in Czechoslovakia twice in a single evening without any success. I had finished preaching and pronounced the benediction twice, but the believers went on praising the Lord for over an hour after I had left the building. In times of revival the Holy Spirit inspires a great number of hymns to be written. For every John Wesley there is a Charles Wesley:

          Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing
               My great Redeemer’s praise!
          The glories of my God and king,
               The triumphs of His grace.

IT WAS A POWERFUL CHURCH
     It was powerful in its Gospel presentation. In one day three thousand souls were saved, and on another day about five thousand men and women. Today if a church of three thousand members won one hundred and twenty souls to Christ in one day some would call that revival! Oh, dear child of God, a church that is not a soul-winning church in not a New Testament church. It is true that there are times of sowing as well as times of reaping, but every pastor and every group of believers should search their hearts industriously to see why there is a dearth of conversions. It seems that Satan has so drugged the Lord’s dear ones that they have no deep concern and anguish in their lack of spiritual results. How many assemblies accept with astonishing calmness annual reports of so few, if any, conversions! Such churches should convene special meetings in desperation before the Lord to see if there is anything hindering God’s blessing His Word according to Acts 4:33, “And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”

     How inconsistent it is for churches back home, who very rarely ever see the Lord add to their membership, to expect a mighty harvest to be reaped by the missionaries they support labouring in hostile heathen lands! If they demand and expect a mighty manifestation of the power of the Gospel among the pagan population, should they not expect a mightier demonstration in an evangelical atmosphere? 

    They were powerful in their holiness. “Great awe came over the whole church, and over all that heard about this… though people extolled them, not a soul from the outside dared to join them. On the other hand, crowds of men and women who believed in the Lord were brought in” (Moffat). It was a powerful Church because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their midst. The sin of Ananias and Sapphira was a frontal attack by Satan to deny the deity of the Holy Spirit. When judgment was brought to bear upon these two, a holy awe fell upon saved and unsaved alike. So holy was this church that hypocrites and unbelievers dared not join themselves to it. On the other hand, crowds of men and women who were true believers were brought in.

     How easy it is to receive the “right hand of fellowship” in our churches today! Without doubt this weakness is one of the underlying causes of the subnormal church. Too many people are rushed to the altar. Too many people are rushed into church membership without careful examination and instruction. In our evangelical churches of Eastern Europe and Russia, sometimes it takes from six months to a year for a new convert to be received into church membership. So holy and powerful are these churches in their gospel witness that the unsaved attending their services know that it is no small thing to enlist under the banner of the Lord and identify themselves with a company of born-again believers.

     One of the mightiest warnings of A. J. Gordon to the church is as follows: 

     "We dwell too much on the attractions of Christianity, but rarely stop to think of the repulsions, which are vitally necessary to its purity and permanence. If the Church of Christ draws to herself that which she cannot assimilate to herself, her life is at once imperilled; for the body of believers must be at one with itself, though it be at war with the world. Its purity and its power depend, first of all, upon its unity. So that if perchance the Church shall attract without at the same time transforming them; if she shall attach them to her membership without assimilating them to her life – she has only weakened herself by her additions. Such is the lesson that is impressed upon us by the text “and of the rest durst no man join himself to them.”

     The Church has just entered upon her first conquest. The Gospel is preached with a freeness and breadth of offer unheard of before. Three thousand souls have been added to the Church in a single day. The tide of success is rising higher. The sect of the Nazarenes is fairly becoming popular. Multitudes are crowding up to lay their gifts at the apostles’ feet. Is there not a danger that the infant Church may be overwhelmed in the tide of her own prosperity? That upon the swelling wave of success the uncircumcised and the unclean may be born into her communion to corrupt and destroy it? But look! Like a keen lightning flash the judgment of God falls in the midst of His mercies, and the two who had “agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord” lie dead at the apostles’ feet. Is God about to close the gate of mercy so recently opened, and to guard it with a flaming sword? No! Here is an exhibition of His holiness in the midst of His free grace. And before this unsheathed sword of His holiness the multitude instantly divides – a part thrust back, a part drawn nearer. No sincere disciples are repelled, for the record is that “believers were the more added to the lord, multitudes of both men and women”.

     The terror of the Lord puts afar off those who have not the love of the Lord to bring them nigh. My brethren, I know of no lesson concerning the growth and development of Christ’s Church that needs to be more thoughtfully pondered than this. The tendency of our times is to multiply the attractions of Christianity. No attraction can be too powerful, no charm can be too alluring that acts for the single ends of drawing believers to Christ and identifying them with His Body. But the appeals that win men without transforming them, which join them to the church without bringing them into fellowship with Christ, are fatal to a pure Christianity, and in the end must put the very existence of the Church in jeopardy. In the first place, the sanctity of life and character, which Christ requires in His Church, is her most powerful defence. These, O Church of God, are thy weapons of defence and conquest! I believe that the most effective discipline which any church can have is a consecrated and devoted and unworldly piety in its members.

     Whenever we see God’s wonderful pattern for the Church so practically demonstrated in these pages in the book of Acts we cry with Jeremiah, “How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed!”

© Revival andYou, James Alexander Stewart, Revival Litterature, 1969

5. Revival Must Be: A Word to Christians 

By Theo M. Bamber
[Theo Bamber was one of the founders of the Baptist Revival Fellowship, which became Fellowship For Revival (FFR), and is now Reformation and Revival Fellowship (RRF). It seems fitting in this 70th Anniversary year to have a contribution from him. This article was originally published as Baptist Revival Fellowship Booklet No. 2.]

     When we say that Revival Must Be, we do not intend to suggest that such a work of God can be engineered by human effort. Revival is ever the work of God. We mean that the need is desperate, and that unless revival comes to the church, hope must forever depart from the world!

     A stranger to the truth of God may pick up this booklet, and therefore it is necessary to explain that revival can come to the church only. The world’s need is not revival but resurrection. An unsaved man is dead in trespasses and sins. No man realises this important fact about himself until he sees that the words “life” and “death” refer to his relationship to God. The prodigal son was not dead to his friends upon whom he lavished his wealth. He was not dead to the pigs that ran after him for their food, but he was dead to his father and home. Of what use to be alive to wastrels and pigs, if one is dead to one’s own father? Indeed the more alive the prodigal was to his friends in the far country; the more he was dead to his father and home. An unsaved man may be very much alive to the world and its pleasures and sins, and yet be dead while he lives because he is dead to God.

     Dead to God! And that more truly than he realises, for the tragedy of his condition is terrible indeed.

     It will repay you to look at the opening chapters of Genesis afresh with serious interest. When Adam sinned in the garden, he died, as God said he would. If he did not die then Satan told the truth! But Adam died. The spirit within him by which he had fellowship with God, the inner personality died. It ceased to be active; the faculty perished. Hence he sought to hide from the God whose fellowship had hitherto been so sweet and precious. When Adam and his wife had children they were born with the spirit dead to God. Adam and is wife could not produce children as they were before they sinned. That is what it means to be born in sin. Every descendant of Adam comes into the world with a spirit dead to God. The need of every individual therefore, is that his spirit should be brought to life. He needs resurrection! That cannot be achieved by any process of man any more than we can elevate mice to horses. God only can bring to life the spirit in you or me that is dead in sin. How is it done?

     I first turn to Jesus who is in heaven, and acknowledge that I am a sinner, that I am dead in sin, and that I have committed sin. I tell Him that I believe He went to the Cross to die for me in the judgment of sin. I repent and abhor myself concerning my lost estate, and accept Him, as God has accepted Him, as my Sin-Bearer. When thus I trust Him, Jesus from heaven brings my dead spirit to life, and then baptizes me with the Holy Spirit. In the person of the Holy Spirit, I receive from the heavenly body of Jesus the life that is in His body in heaven. As I received my human life from the body of my father so I receive divine life from the body of Jesus, and in receiving that life, eternal life, I am saved. As the Lord Jesus from heaven seals me with the Holy Spirit He makes me a Christian, He saves me. I have been raised from the dead. From that instant I am in the true invisible church of Jesus Christ. I have been born again. I have received life from Jesus, and now I want Him, I seek Him, I love Him, and Jesus is the joy and delight of my life.

     If therefore, you have thus received eternal life from Jesus, and belong to the one and only church of those redeemed in the blood of Jesus, your privilege is to recognise that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that as a saved person you are to yield to the Holy Spirit, so that He may live through you the life of Jesus. Your Christian life is Christ living in you in the Person of the Holy Spirit. God intends and desires that ever increasingly you should be able to say “Not I, but Christ liveth in me.” How glorious is such an experience! Day by day the Holy Spirit rules and reigns in the life, unveiling truth in Jesus from the Scriptures, revealing Jesus who lives in heaven, and seeking more and more liberty and power in the life and walk. Such a person is being continually revived. Revival is a daily experience.

     Alas the unsuspecting Christian is beset with many trials in desiring such a life. For one reason he may not know what are his real possessions in Christ. I have known Christians who had no idea of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Some have thought themselves to be Christians who were not. They had quite sincerely decided to follow Jesus, but dead men cannot follow the living! They decided to take Him as their friend, but how can one who is an enemy to God become friend until reconciled? And how can we be reconciled save through His blood? Some have thought themselves Christians by joining a church, but you cannot join a church any more than you can join a family. You have to be born into it. Those in the true church of Jesus Christ have been born again, born from above, born anew of the Spirit, and by that birth they are in the church.

     Even so some who really have put their trust in Jesus have not known that Jesus had given them the Holy Spirit. Hence, after conversion they still try to be followers of Jesus instead of trusting the Holy Spirit to live through them. Have you received the Holy Spirit? Have you ever thanked Jesus for this blessed gift of the Third Person in the Trinity? It will be like a second conversion for you when you praise Jesus, the heavenly Jesus, for this most precious blessing of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That will indeed be the first step to revival.

     Some who have thus made progress are still held back because one may grieve the Holy Spirit. How easy it is to falter before the attitude and actions of others, especially Christians. We grieve the Holy Spirit if we are unforgiving, unkind, ungracious and bitter with our tongue, and given to animosity. If we do not love our fellow-Christian whom we have seen, we cannot love God whom we have not seen! And if these things are in our hearts, no matter what we profess, then the Spirit is grieved, and the life within, that ought to be dominant and triumphant, is feeble and faint.

     The world too, so often exercises its influence. Think of this: “Love not the world.” That is to say, never love the old life from which Christ has redeemed you. You have come out of darkness into light. The world’s pleasures are a snare. They are a bait by which the Christian is drawn away from God, but always remember that if you go after the world’s pleasures, you must be overwhelmed eventually in the world’s pains and woes and despair. Nevertheless there are Christians who do not believe this, they seek to be as like to the world from which they have been redeemed as they can. Yet the Word declares: “Love not the world, if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” And again: “The friendship of the world is enmity with God.”

     Hence it comes about that the individual Christian, either through ignorance of the Holy Spirit, or through neglect of grieving of the Spirit or love of the world, is not living as God intended he or she should live. They have the life of Jesus, but through their own folly and sin it is limited in them, enfeebled, grieved and perhaps quenched. Such a person needs revival. It is clear that Christians are needing this revival. Our churches were never intended to be as they are. They were intended to be centres of living fellowship where every member was in the full joy of the Holy Spirit, where sinners were brought under conviction crying out: “What must I do to be saved?” where multitudes were being added to the church. And instead…..? Ah! The bitter facts are too tragic, too heart-rending to record here.

     How can revival come? It begins in those tremblings of the heart, of which you may be conscious. Memory is taking you back to your first joy in Christ and now you are constrained to measure the distance you have travelled from God, and it is farther than you thought. Is there pain of heart? Thank God for it! Do you feel as if you must pour out to God the bitter anguish of your soul as you ask Him to forgive you? Then do it! Do you mourn that love of the world, fear of man, ambition after earthly things, have hardened your heart? Then ask Him to give you again a heart of flesh to know Him. This is truly the work of the Spirit. Get alone with God, pour out your heart in unrestrained confession before Him, plead with Him to be gracious, to “restore the years [that] the locusts have eaten,” and wait upon Him, sure that He has heard your prayer, and will most certainly answer in the conditions of His own creating. What will be those conditions?

     First, you will be conscious of some measures of renewed interest in the Scriptures. However little or much, encourage it. Every minute you give to the Bible will create an appetite for another minute. Do not subject the Bible to your judgment, but accept it as “a lamp unto your feet.” That is to say you will walk in its light and in its obedience. God will make clear to you two things. First the revelation of His will and purpose in the world, and secondly, His immediate will for you. The Indwelling Spirit is promised you for the purpose of leading you into all truth, and every step into that truth of the Spirit through the Word, will be a step towards revival blessing.

     Secondly you will be led to a genuine concern that the perfect Will of God may be done in your life. The will may be there, but the accomplishment of God’s Will in the life is often a painful experience, because we find our own human wills so frequently in conflict with God’s will. In our blindness we misunderstand His light. Certainly if we really desire revival, we must be tested out as to whether we are spiritually capable of carrying it, and that demands some form of trial which so far from finding us humble under the hand of God, may reveal stubbornness, resentment and possibly indignation. God’s perfect will is to be done in us so that in all situations we are found poised and controlled by the Spirit in the calmness of a faith that trusts Him.

If we are thinking and praying for revival, we must take the victory over the sins that do so easily beset us. And if this is difficult, as of course it is, let us know that the Spirit who reveals this fact to us will assuredly provide all the strength we need to take the victory. Patience with God in His will, and glad cooperation with Him in it, is an essential preparation for revival.

     Thirdly, as thus the fire begins to burn in your own heart, you will realise that formal fellowship in a Christian church is not enough. Your soul will long for those who possess the same fire as you are conscious of. Search them out in your own church, because you owe a duty to the people to whom you immediately belong, and if you cannot find one, then ask the Lord most mercifully to deal with others as He has dealt with you. Why should He not? Has He not begun to revive you, not for you but for others who are seeking God for His best. In this experience God will teach you how truly the Spirit within can be to you “a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

     The Holy Spirit within will meet your every need, and you will be amazed how marvellously He does it. Then as you keep the eye of faith on the Lord in heaven, He will cause the Holy Spirit to flow out from you to others. You will not yourself perceive this ministry, but as you keep your faith in Him, believingly for this blessing, He will fulfil His promise. Your life will become an inspiration to others, the Spirit of Christ will be seen to be upon you. He will mature and transform the weaknesses that are human, and cause you to be a channel of Divine life to others, for as others come in touch with you, they will think of Christ.

     These are the beginnings of grace as revealed in the Scriptures. These are the steps of faith we are to take, and as we take them we shall know the quickening of the Spirit within, we shall begin to feel our overwhelming need and our souls will be crying out for the Living God. We shall be conscious of the years that the locust has eaten, and shall want to retrieve them by His grace. We shall be intensely conscious of the sufferings of our Lord, and long that He may be satisfied. The longing will bear down upon us, not by human pressure, but by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. We shall begin to long for souls, souls to enter into the blessing of the Holy Spirit, we shall begin to talk to our friends, to our loved ones; we shall be constrained to see that nothing matters so only men and women enter into all that Christ died to secure for them, and lives to bestow upon them.

     Revival must begin with you! Let it begin in you! Your consent to the heavenly blessing is the first step. Prostrate your spirit before the Lord for fullness of life in the Holy Spirit, in yourself and in all other Christians. God never fails to answer that prayer. He will surely do it. Others will catch the fire; your church, whether you are the minister or a layman, will feel it. There will be new power in your services, Christians will be encouraged, backsliders brought back, sinners rescued from their sin. For when revival comes to the church, resurrection out of the dead will come to the world.

Top of page

6.   Revival and Fasting

by John Piper

There was a Presbyterian minister in Albany, New York, who died in 1876. He had been the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Albany for 40 years. His name was William Sprague (1795-1876). His life spanned the time of the Second Great Awakening when hundreds of churches were awakened in the early years of the 19th century and thousands of men and women were converted.

Sprague wrote a book called Lectures on Revivals in 1832. Charles Simeon, the evangelical leader in England at the time, and pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge, wrote in the fly leaf of his copy of Lectures on Revivals, "A most valuable book .... I love the good sense of Dr. Sprague." And when it was republished in 1958 by the Banner of Truth, Martin Lloyd-Jones of the Westminster Chapel in London was so full of thanks that he wrote the Foreword and said,
"I am profoundly convinced that the greatest need in the world today is revival in the Church of God. Yet alas! the whole idea of revival seems to have become strange to so many good Christian people... [This] is due both to a serious misunderstanding of the scriptures, and to woeful ignorance of the history of the Church...

My prayer is that as we read it and are reminded of "Our glorious God," and of His mighty deeds in times past among His people, a great sense of our own unworthiness and inadequacy, and a corresponding longing for the manifestation of his glory and His power will be created within us. His "arm is not shortened." May this book stir us all to plead with Him to make bare that arm and to stretch it forth again, that His enemies may be confounded and scattered and His people's hearts be filled with gladness and rejoicing."

If I understand correctly, that is what this day of prayer is all about. We believe that the Lord's arm is not shortened and that he has appointed this day for pleading with him to stretch it forth again to confound his enemies and awaken the joy and power of his church for the evangelization of the world.

I agree with Lloyd-Jones that revival in the church is the greatest need in the world today. But I doubt that very many people know what Lloyd-Jones means when he speaks of revival. The use of the term in our century for a brief evangelistic crusade has made the original meaning almost inaccessible to most Christians.

This is why an old book like Sprague's Lectures on Revivals is so tremendously helpful. One of the great things about the book is the 165 pages of correspondence it contains. For example, there is a letter from Francis Wayland which is of great interest to us Baptists when we want to know what our forebears from 150 years ago thought about revivals.

Francis Wayland was an outstanding Baptist pastor and president of Brown University in Rhode Island. He was a great admirer of Adoniram Judson, the Baptist Missionary to Burma, and he wrote the first major biography of Judson. He was born in 1772 and flourished through the first half of the 19th century (1772-1849).

In 1832 he wrote a letter to Sprague about revivals. Let's try to get a flavor of what he means by revival and the means God uses to bring it.

"I believe in the existence of revivals of religion, as much as I believe in any other fact, either physical or moral. By revivals of religion I mean special seasons in which the minds of men, within a certain district, or in a certain congregation, are more than usually susceptible of impression from the exhibition of moral truth...

[For example] ministers are more than usually desirous of the conversion of men. They possess, habitually, an unusual power of presenting the simple truths of the gospel directly to the consciences of their hearers, and feel a peculiar consciousness of their own weakness and insufficiency, and at the same time a perfect reliance upon the efficacy of the gospel, through the agency of the Spirit, to convert men.

Christians, during periods of revival, are characterized by an unusual spirit of penitence, of confession of sin, and of prayer, by a desire for more holiness, and specially by a tender concern for the salvation of souls.

Unconverted persons are more desirous to hear the gospel, and particularly the plainest and simplest exhibitions of it; they readily listen to conversation on the subject and seem to expect it. Truths which they have frequently heard with total unconcern they now hear with solemn and fixed attention; and in many cases, for days together, scarcely a sermon will be preached, or an exhortation offered, which is not made effectual to the conviction or conversion of one or more souls."

And where do such revivals of religion come from? Those who preached the old gospel of Wayland and Sprague believed that they were the sovereign work of God. Sprague puts it like this (p. 105):

"In every revival we are distinctly to recognize the sovereignty of God. As this is displayed in the influence by which a single soul is converted, it certainly is not less manifest in those copious showers of influence by which hundreds are converted. He who causes it to rain on one city and not on another, directs the motion of those clouds in the spiritual world from which descend the blessings of reviving and quickening grace. "The wind bloweth, where it listeth; and thou hearest the sound thereof; but canst not tell whence it cometh, or whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of the Spirit." And so too is every revival of religion."

So revival is a sovereign, supernatural work of God. And this has significant bearing on how we should seek it. Francis Wayland mentions three things we should do as prelude to the outpouring of God's Spirit in revival.

1. One is the putting away of all known sin.
2. Another is the setting apart of seasons of fasting and prayer and humiliation both individually and collectively.
3. And the third is the more frequent and more faithful preaching of the gospel.

I wish we had time to deal with each of these in detail. My task is to treat the second, especially fasting. But just briefly let me mention Wayland's summary of the kind of preaching that has been used of God to promote sustained revival. This is the sort of thing we should pray for in our pulpits.

"The doctrines which have been most successfully exhibited in the promotion of revivals of religion ... [include especially] the entire [lack] of holiness in all men by nature; the justice of God in the everlasting condemnation of sinners; the exceeding sinfulness of sin; the total inability of man, by his own works, to reconcile himself to God; the sufficiency, freedom and fullness of the atonement; the duty of immediate repentance, and faith in Jesus Christ; the inexcusableness of delay; the exhibition of the refuges of lies under which sinners hide themselves; the sovereignty of God in the salvation of sinners; the clear exhibition of the truth that he is under no manner of obligation to save them; and the necessity of the agency of the Spirit of God to the conversion of any individual of the human race."

In other words, in Francis Wayland's view, the truths that God has seemed to honor with the reviving work of his Holy Spirit have been those truths that accent the

1. Justice and holiness of God as the judge of all sinners,
2. The desperate and hopeless condition of all men,
3. The glory of Christ's work,
4. The free and sovereign grace of God, and
5. The utter necessity of repentance and faith.

The accent here is miles and miles apart from contemporary TV Christianity.

In fact, one of the characteristics of the old revivals that we need very much to consider and follow is their utter seriousness and solemnity. There is a place for humor in our lives, but there is something deeply wrong that we feel compelled to use so much of it in teaching and preaching and even worshiping. Listen to William Sprague's assessment of this situation written 150 years ago, when things were never so permeated with levity as they are today. This comes from Lectures on Revivals, pp. 118-120.

"All the means which God's word authorizes, are characterized by seriousness.

I may appeal to any of you who have been in the midst of a revival, whether a deep solemnity did not pervade the scene; whether, even if it is your common business to trifle, you were not compelled to be solemn then? And if you have wished at such a moment to be gay, have you not felt that that was not the place for it....

Now then, if there be a high degree of solemnity belonging essentially to a revival of religion...surely every measure that is adopted in connection with it, ought to partake of the same character. It were worse than preposterous to think of carrying forward such a work by any means which are not marked by the deepest seriousness, or to introduce any thing which is adapted to awaken and cherish the lighter emotions, when all such emotions should be awed out of the mind. All ludicrous anecdotes, and modes of expression, and gestures, and attitudes, are never more out of place than when the Holy Spirit is moving upon the hearts of a congregation. Everything of this kind is fitted to grieve him away; because it directly contradicts the errand on which he has come;—that of convincing sinners of their guilt, and renewing them to repentance. Nor is the case at all relieved by the occasional introduction of what may be really solemn and weighty; for its legitimate effect is almost of course neutralized by the connection in which it is presented; and that which might otherwise fall with awful power upon the conscience, is thus rendered utterly powerless and unimpressive. And not only so, but there is often in this way an association formed in the mind, which is exceedingly hostile to subsequent religious impressions;—an association between solemn truths which ought to make the sinner tremble, and ludicrous expressions which will supply him with matter for jests."

So it has seemed to me that if we are going to really seek and expect revival in our lives and churches and conference, we must get far more serious in our pursuit and our proceedings than we are.

This has led me in recent years, especially the six years that I have been pastor at Bethlehem, to consider the Biblical practice of fasting. For if there is anything that signifies seriousness, it is when you want something so badly that you will stop eating in the pursuit of it, or when the absence of something in your life or in the church or in the world grieves you so badly that you give up eating to express your humiliation and your longing to see it come.

The people that God has used to spark revival have often been men of extraordinary seriousness of purpose and much fasting. Jonathan Edwards, who led the Great Awakening 100 years before William Sprague and Francis Wayland reprimanded the ministers of his day like this:
"One thing more I would mention concerning fasting and prayer, wherein I think there has been a neglect in ministers; and that is, that although they recommend and much insist on the duty of secret prayer, in their preaching; so little is said about secret fasting. It is a duty recommended by our Saviour to his followers, just in the like manner as secret prayer is; as may be seen by comparing the 5th and 6th vss. of the 6th chapter of Matthew with vss. 16-18. Though I don't suppose that secret fasting is to be practiced in a stated manner and steady course as secret prayer, yet it seems to me 'tis a duty that all professing Christians should practice, and frequently practice."

Well my guess is that either Jonathan Edwards is wrong or 95% of us are wrong, for I doubt that 5% practice fasting at all, let alone frequently. But if Edwards is right, we are neglecting Christian duty similar to the way we would if we neglected prayer. And Edwards was no mean student of Scripture.

He directs our attention to Matthew 6. He points out that fasting is treated in the same way prayer is. Notice that there are three topics, each introduced similarly.

1. In verse 2, almsgiving: "When you give alms, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues....
2. In verse 5, prayer: "When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners....
3. In verse 16, fasting: "When you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites....

Edwards' point is that fasting is treated as something the followers of Jesus will do just like prayer and almsgiving. If we take this text to teach that secret prayer and almsgiving are duties, then fasting is, too. None of them is commanded here. Jesus just assumes that they will be part of our discipleship and obedience. And so he warns us against pursuing these duties for the praise of men.

Let's read the directions about fasting again:

"And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

The point here is that fasting is a feast. It is not a giving up of food for its own sake. It is a giving up of food either for the praise of men or for the reward of the heavenly Father. We are always driven to fast because we hunger for something more than food. That is the meaning of fasting: it cries out, "This I want more than the pleasure of food!" And "this" can be the admiration that men give to people with will power, or it can be the reward we seek from God alone without regard to the praise of men.

Jesus, of course, says, "Feast on God not man! Desire God in secret, not the praise of men in public." This is just another way of saying what William Sprague said about seriousness. No one engages in secret fasting in the presence of God alone with a spirit of levity or trifling. Even when you wash your face so as not to look dismal, there will be strong, earnest, serious longings in the soul. Secret fasting makes you real with God. It is just for God and it tests the authenticity of your hunger for his Spirit.

Well, it is time for lunch, and I need to find a way to invite you to stay for part two and for prayer without making those of you who have to go feel like second-class Christians. Here's how I can do it. We will just assume that you had an unbreakable appointment or that you are going away to fast in secret.

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: www.desiringGod.org

Top of page

by Andrew Murray

“If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children; how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” – Luke 11:13.

Christ had just said (5:9), “Ask, and it shall be given”: God’s giving is inseparably connected with our asking. He applies this especially to the Holy Spirit. As surely as a father on earth gives bread to his child, so God gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. The whole ministration of the Spirit is ruled by the one great law: God must give, we must ask. When the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost with a flow that never ceases, it was in answer to prayer. The inflow into the believer’s heart, and His outflow in the rivers of living water, ever still depend upon the law: “Ask, and it shall be given.” In connection with our confession of the lack of prayer, we have said that what we need is some due apprehension of the place it occupies in God’s plan of redemption; we shall perhaps nowhere see this more clearly than in the first half of the Acts of the Apostles. The story of the birth of the Church in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and of the first freshness of its heavenly life in the power of that Spirit, will teach us how prayer on earth, whether as cause or effect, is the true measure of the presence of the Spirit of heaven.

We begin with the well-known words (Acts 1:14), “These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication.” And then there follows: “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. And the same day there were added to them about three thousand souls.” The great work of redemption had been accomplished. The Holy Spirit had been promised by Christ “not many days hence.” He had sat down on His throne and received the Spirit from the Father. But all this was not enough. One thing more was needed: the ten days' united continued supplication of the disciples. It was intense, continued prayer that prepared the disciples’ hearts, that opened the windows of heaven, that brought down the promised gift. As little as the power of the Spirit could be given without Christ sitting on the throne, could it descend without the disciples on the footstool of the throne. For all the ages the law is laid down here, at the birth of the Church, that whatever else may be found on earth the power of the Spirit must be prayed down from heaven. The measure of believing, continued prayer will be the measure of the Spirit’s working in the Church. Direct, definite, determined prayer is what we need.

See how this is confirmed in chapter 4. Peter and John had been brought before the Council and threatened with punishment. When they returned to their brethren, and reported what had been said to them, “all lifted up their voice to God with one accord,” and prayed for boldness to speak the word. “And when they had prayed, the place was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were one heart and one soul. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all.” It is as if the story of Pentecost is repeated a second time over, with the prayer, the shaking of the house, the filling with the Spirit, the speaking God’s word with boldness and power, the great grace upon all, the manifestation of unity and love – to imprint it ineffaceably on the heart of the Church: it is prayer that lies at the root of the spiritual life and power of the Church. The measure of God’s giving the Spirit is our asking. He gives as a father to him who asks a child.

Go on to the sixth chapter. There we find that, when murmurings arose as to the neglect of the Grecian Jews in the distribution of alms, the apostles proposed the appointment of deacons to serve the tables. “We,” they said, “will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the world.” It is often said, and rightly said, that there is nothing in honest business, when it is kept in its place as entirely subordinate to the kingdom, which must ever be first, that need prevent fellowship with God. Least of all ought a work like ministering to the poor hinder the spiritual life. And yet the apostles felt it would hinder them in their giving themselves to the ministry of prayer and the word. What does this teach? That the maintenance of the spirit of prayer, such as is consistent with the claims of much work, is not enough for those who are the leaders of the Church. To keep up the communication with the King on the throne and the heavenly world clear and fresh; to draw down the power and blessing of that world, not only for the maintenance of our own spiritual life, but for those around us; continually to receive instruction and empowerment for the great work to be done – the apostles, as the ministers of the word, felt the need of being free from other duties, that they might give themselves to much prayer. James writes: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.” If ever any work were a sacred one, it was that of caring for these Grecian widows. And yet, even such duties might interfere with the special calling to give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. As on earth, so in the kingdom of heaven, there is power in the division of labour; and while some, like the deacons, had specially to care for serving tables and ministering the alms of the Church here on earth, others had to be set free for that steadfast continuance in prayer which would uninterruptedly secure the downflow of the powers of the heavenly world. The minister of Christ is set apart to give himself as much to prayer as to the ministry of the word. In faithful obedience to this law is the secret of the Church’s power and success. As before, so after Pentecost, the apostles were men given up to prayer.

In chapter 8, we have the intimate connection between the Pentecostal gift and prayer, from another point of view. At Samaria, Philip had preached with great blessing, and may had believed. But the Holy Ghost was, as yet, fallen on none of them. The apostles sent down Peter and John to pray for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost. The power for such prayer was a higher gift than preaching – the work of the men who had been in closest contact with the Lord in glory, the work that was essential to the perfection of the life that preaching and baptism, faith and conversion had only begun. Surely of all the gifts of the early Church for which we should long there is none more needed than the gift of prayer – prayer that brings down the Holy Ghost on believers. This power is given to men who say: “We will give ourselves to prayer.”

In the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in the house of Cornelius at Caesarea, we have another testimony to the wondrous interdependence of the action of prayer and the Spirit, and another proof of what will come to a man who has given himself to prayer. Peter went up at midday to pray on the housetop. And what happened? He saw heaven opened, and there came the vision that revealed to him the cleansing of the Gentiles; with that came the message of the three men from Cornelius, a man who “prayed alway,” and had heard from an angel, “Thy prayers are come up before God”; and then the voice of the Spirit was heard saying, “Go with them.” It is Peter praying, to whom the will of God is revealed, to whom guidance is given as to going to Caesarea, and who is brought into contact with a praying and prepared company of hearers. No wonder that in answer to all this prayer a blessing comes beyond all expectation, and the Holy Ghost is poured out upon the Gentiles. A much-praying minister will receive an entrance into God’s will he would otherwise know nothing of; will be brought to praying people where he does not expect them; will receive blessing above all he asks or thinks. The teaching and the power of the Holy Ghost are alike unalterably linked to prayer.

Our next reference will show us faith in the power that the Church’s prayer has with its glorified King, as it is found, not only in the apostles, but in the Christian community. In chapter 12 we have the story of Peter in prison on the eve of execution. The death of James had aroused the Church to a sense of real danger, and the thought of losing Peter too, wakened up all its energies. It betook itself to prayer. “Prayer was made of the Church without ceasing to God for him.” That prayer availed much; Peter was delivered. When he came to the house of Mary, he found “many gathered together praying.” Stone walls and double chains, soldiers and keepers, and the iron gate, all gave way before the power from heaven that prayer brought down to his rescue. The whole power of the Roman Empire, as represented by Herod, was impotent in presence of the power of the Church of the Holy Spirit wielded in prayer. They stood in such close and living communication with their Lord in heaven; they knew so well that the words, “all power is given unto Me,” and “Lo I am with you alway,” were absolutely true; they had such faith in His promise to hear them whatever they asked - that they prayed in the assurance that the powers of heaven could work on earth, and would work at their request and on their behalf. The Pentecostal Church believed in prayer, and practised it.

Just one more illustration of the place and the blessing of prayer among men filled with the Holy Spirit. In chapter 13 we have the names of five men at Antioch who had given themselves specially to ministering to the Lord with prayer and fasting. Their giving themselves to prayer was not in vain: as they ministered to the Lord, the Holy Spirit met them, and gave them new insight into God’s plans. He called them to be fellow-workers with Himself; there was a work to which He had called Barnabas and Saul; their part and privilege would be to separate these men with renewed fasting and prayer, and to let them go, “sent forth of the Holy Ghost.” God in heaven would not send forth His chosen servants without the co-operation of His Church; men on earth were to have a real partnership in the work of God. It was prayer that fitted and prepared them for this; it was to praying men the Holy Ghost gave authority to do His work and use His name. It was to prayer the Holy Ghost was given. It is still prayer that is the only secret of true Church extension, that is guided from heaven to find and send forth God-called and God-empowered men. To prayer the Holy Spirit will show the men He has selected; to prayer that sets them apart under His guidance He will give the honour of knowing that they are men, “sent forth by the Holy Ghost.” It is prayer that is the link between the King on the throne and the Church at His footstool – the human link that has its divine strength in the power of the Holy Ghost, who comes in answer to it.

As one looks back upon these chapters in the history of the Pentecostal Church, how clear the two great truths stand out: where there is much prayer there will be much of the Spirit; where there is much of the Spirit there will be ever-increasing prayer. So clear is the living connection between the two, that when the Spirit is given in answer to prayer it ever awakens more prayer to prepare for the fuller revelation and communication of His Divine power and grace. If prayer was thus the power by which the Primitive Church flourished and triumphed, is it not the one need of the Church of our days? Let us learn what ought to be counted axioms in our Church work:-

- Heaven is still as full of stores of spiritual blessing as it was then.
- God still delights to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.
- Our life and work are still as dependant on the direct impartation of Divine power as they were in Pentecostal times.
- Prayer is still the appointed means for drawing down these heavenly blessings in power on ourselves and those around us.
- God still seeks for men and women who will, with their other work of ministering, specially give themselves to persevering prayer.

And we – you, my reader, and I – may have the privilege of offering ourselves to God to labour in prayer, and bring down these blessings to this earth. Shall we not beseech God to make all this truth so living in us that we may not rest till it has mastered us, and our whole heart be so filled with it, that the practice of intercession shall be counted by us our highest privilege, and we find in it the sure and only measure for blessing on ourselves, on the Church, and on the world?

© Prayer and the Coming Revival, Andrew Murray, Ambassador Publications, 1999.

Top of page

8. The Necessity of the Revival of Religion 

by John MacNaughtan

I will illustrate the necessity for a revival of religion in the present condition of the church, pointing to facts and circumstances humiliating to the believer and condemnatory of the church.

When is a Revival Required? Wherever there are the proofs of spiritual death in, or around, the professing church; wherever there is an actual decay or dormancy in the energy or activity of its members; or wherever there is the absence of a progression in those habits and feelings and principles that distinguish the divine life there is a necessity for a revival. If, among the professors of a holy faith, we find a growing conformity to the world in its passions, its policy, or its practices a want of sensibility to the claims of God, to the glory of Jesus, or to the imperishable interests of immortal souls a deadness in devotion, a lack of spirituality in sentiment and feeling a willingness to parade a dwarfed and shrivelled Christianity before the world, as if it were the healthful and full-grown impersonation of a living and energetic faith we say a revival is necessary; and this notwithstanding any scattered and splendid exceptions of almost apostolic zeal, or seraphic fervour, that may give lustre or dignity to the age or the church with which they are connected.

There is no difficulty in determining when a revival is necessary in the world of nature: let winter protract her reign through the months of spring, and spread her mantle of snow, like a spotless winding sheet over the fields that were wont at that season to be green and gladsome; let the time for the singing of birds roll around, and no music be heard in the leafless groves; let the sower fill his hand with the precious seed, but be denied the opportunity of scattering it over the earth; and although we may witness here and there the snowdrop rearing its head, as the harbinger of vernal beauty amid the ungenial snows, we at once conclude that a revival is necessary. We long for the genial breeze, the refreshing shower, the invigorating sunbeam, that earth may escape from the blight of a long winter, array herself in all the bridal loveliness of an opening spring, and give forth the promise of a rich and luxuriant harvest. The same conclusion forces itself upon us when a cold and withering summer succeeds an early and promising seedtime, checking the advances of a needed vegetation, and almost quenching the hopes of the husbandman. The half-opened flower-bud that bends on its weakened stalk seems to plead for the reviving sunbeam to develop its hidden loveliness, and throw the blush of summer beauty on the faded cheek of a drooping world.

It is similar in the world of grace, in the great spiritual garden. When the winter of worldly conformity seems either to retard the buds of promise, or to check their growth after indications of vitality have appeared, we say that a revival is necessary. Or, to drop all metaphor, when there are few conversions under the ministrations of the church, and souls are perishing around her, unpitied and unhelped; when there is an evident suspension or withdrawal of those spiritual influences that are alone efficient to convince or to comfort; when there is a visible defection from acknowledged principle, or from attained piety, and a lukewarm formality usurping the place of a generous, devoted, living Christianity we say a revival is required.

Circumstances That Render Revival Necessary. Let us consider the specific circumstances of the church today that render revival necessary. The first proof is the limited extent of the visible church in the present days. If we examine the dimensions of the church, either as laid down in the covenant made with Emmanuel, or as described in the clear language of holy prophecy, we find that these are immeasurably vast, when compared with the limited territory that owns and acknowledges the sway of the Redeemer: In the one, all the kingdoms of the world are delineated as filled with the knowledge of God, kissing the sceptre, and proclaiming the praises of an adored Saviour His dominion is from sea to sea, and from the river to the end of the earth; in the other, the territorial extent occupied by the professing church of the Lord is very inconsiderable indeed.

Second, the want of zeal in the church for Emmanuel's glory, the feebleness of what has admirably been termed "the evangelistic spirit," and the lethargic unconcern with which the perdition of immortal souls is regarded, establish that a revival is necessary. Such a charge may, at first sight, appear scarcely admissible in this bustling and active age amid the numerous institutions in vigorous operation for the conversion of the world, and the splendid array of names and contributions that annually attract the public eye, and the dazzling eloquence with which every triumph on foreign shores is heralded from pulpits and platforms. It might be imagined that intrepid zeal and endless sleepless activity were the undoubted characteristics of this excited age.

But when we calmly consider the amount of energy put forth, as a means to an end as the devised and existing machinery to convert the world to Christ as the effort which is put forth in answer to the claims of God and the calls of a perishing world, we feel as if we would require to blot out such terms as sacrifice and self-denial from the Christian vocabulary altogether. If we take the Saviour’s command as our rule, His kingdom as the sphere of our appointed operation, the zeal of His apostles as the model of our own, we cannot fail to be humbled and ashamed. We must be persuaded and convinced that a mighty impulse must be given to the sluggish Christianity of the times, that there must be an increase of what is called benevolence, both in spirit and in act that in fact a revival is necessary.

A third remark is that the divisions in the church demonstrate the necessity of a revival, before the Church can regain her shattered strength, and become beautified with that brotherly love which is the bond of perfection. While controversy is not always a symptom of a weak or decayed Christianity, the present contentions have been within the church itself; and its holy unity has been rudely rent by trivial disputes. Must not unauthorized schism provoke His displeasure, quench His Spirit, and result in the withholding of the grace without which the church must wither and weaken and decay?

Finally, the languor of the devotional spirit in the church proves the necessity for a revival of religion. It is one of the strange anomalies of these times, that we meet with a ready assent to all that can be urged or argued on the omnipotence of believing, importunate prayer, and yet rarely are brought into contact with the thing itself. The theory is universally accredited the act is generally neglected; just as if the clear statements of Scripture regarding the potency, the almost miraculous efficacy of prayer, were designed as a pillow on which the church might slumber, rather than as a mighty stimulus to rouse to heroic achievements and urge on to glorious efforts in the cause of the Redeemer. Ah! There is need for a revival here, that which alone will be produced by the outpouring of the Spirit, the Spirit of grace and supplication.

The Remedy of Revival. Gather up these scattered thoughts: the abridged sphere of the church's efforts, and the feebleness of these efforts themselves her divided condition, and her lifeless piety and say, is there not a necessity for a revival? Shall we believe that when God's Spirit is poured out from on high, His graces, like tides of molten silver, shall first enrich His chosen ones and then roll out to the whole earth to aggrandize and ennoble its impoverished children? Shall we believe that when a revival takes place on a scale commensurate with the Church's necessities, that she shall awake from her slumber, put on her beautiful garments, and, rich in all the graces wherewith the Saviour so plenteously adorns His chosen Bride, go forth in His name to speak peace unto the nations? Shall we believe that when a revival is produced, that the hearts of Christians shall become almost visibly the habitation of God through the Spirit, and be irradiated with all the moral glory of His Divine presence?

Shall we not plead for such a time? The purest faith demands that we shall cry aloud and spare not, yea that we mourn and lament because that day is delayed. Oh, if the Church were but alive to this urgent necessity if she but felt how much of guilt attaches to her because the blessing is withheld if she but considered how her unbelief and prayerlessness stands in the way, as it were, of Jehovah's sweetest promises it would humble her to the very dust because of her sin, and her acknowledged guiltiness would be the harbinger of the day of love.

Ye children of the covenant go, weep amid the graves of perished millions weep amid the graves of buried graces weep amid the ruins which your own lifelessness has caused in the church and around it; and when the teardrop of contrition has filled the eye of the soul, look through it to a wounded Saviour, and say, "O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years in wrath remember mercy."

John MacNaughtan was minister of High Church in Paisley Scotland. His complete article is found in Lectures on the Revival of Religion (ch. XIII), originally published in 1840. A reprint of this book may be acquired from Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, Box 21, Wheaton, IL, 60189. The excerpts were selected and edited by Lowell D. Yoderfor Godliness (The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life) (chs. 3 & 19).

© 1998 International Awakening Ministries. All rights reserved.

Top of page

9. The Kind of Revival we Need  

Charles Haddon Spurgeon 

It is good for us to draw nigh unto God in prayer. Our minds are grieved to see so little attention given to united prayer by many churches.

How can we expect a blessing if we are too idle to ask for it? How can we look for a Pentecost if we never meet with one another, in one place, to wait upon the Lord? Brethren, we shall never see much change for the better in our churches till the prayer meeting occupies a higher place in the esteem of Christians.

But now that we have come together, how shall we pray? Let us not degenerate into formality, or we shall be dead while we think we live. Let us not waiver through unbelief, or we shall pray in vain. Oh, for great faith with which to offer great prayers!

We have been mingling praise and prayer together as a delicious compound of spices, fit to be presented upon the altar of incense through Christ our Lord; may we not at this time offer some special far-reaching petition? It is suggested to me that we pray for a true and genuine revival of religion throughout the world.

A Real and Lasting Revival

I am glad of any signs of life, even if they should be feverish and transient, and I am slow to judge any well intended movement, but I am very fearful that many so called revivals in the long run wrought more harm than good. A species of religious gambling has fascinated many men, and given them a distaste for the sober business of true godliness.

But if I would nail down counterfeits upon the counter, I do not therefore undervalue true gold. Far from it. It is to be desired beyond measure that the Lord would send a real and lasting revival of spiritual life.

We need a work of the Holy Spirit of a supernatural kind, putting power into the preaching of the Word, inspiring all believers with heavenly energy, and solemnly affecting the hearts of the careless, so that they turn to God and live. We would not be drunk with the wine of carnal excitement, but we would be filled with the Spirit. We would behold the fire descending from heaven in answer to the effectual fervent prayers of righteous men. Can we not entreat the Lord our God to make bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the people in this day of declension and vanity?

Old-fashioned Doctrine

We want a revival of old-fashioned doctrine. I know not a single doctrine which is not at this hour studiously undermined by those who ought to be its defenders. There is not a truth that is precious to the soul which is not now denied by those whose profession it is to proclaim it. To me it is clear that we need a revival of old-fashioned gospel preaching like that of Whitefield and Wesley.

The Scriptures must be made the infallible foundation of all teaching; the ruin, redemption and regeneration of mankind must be set forth in unmistakable terms.

Personal Godliness

Urgently do we need a revival of personal godliness. This is, indeed, the secret of church prosperity. When individuals fall from their steadfastness, the church is tossed to and fro; when personal faith is steadfast, the church abides true to her Lord.

It is upon the truly godly and spiritual that the future of religion depends in the hand of God. Oh, for more truly holy men, quickened and filled with the Holy Spirit, consecrated to the Lord and sanctified by His truth.

Brethren, we must each one live if the church is to be alive; we must live unto God if we expect to see the pleasure of the Lord prospering in our hands. Sanctified men are the salt of society and the saviours of the race.

Domestic Religion

We deeply want a revival of domestic religion. The Christian family was the bulwark of godliness in the days of the puritans, but in these evil times hundreds of families of so-called Christians have no family worship, no restraint upon growing sons, and no wholesome instruction or discipline. How can we hope to see the kingdom of our Lord advance when His own disciples do not teach His gospel to their own children?

Oh, Christian men and women, be thorough in what you do and know and teach! Let your families be trained in the fear of God and be yourselves "holiness unto the Lord"; so shall you stand like a rock amid the surging waves of error and ungodliness which rage around us.

Vigorous, Consecrated Strength

We want also a revival of vigorous, consecrated strength. I have pleaded for true piety; I now beg for one of the highest results of it. We need saints. We need gracious minds trained to a high form of spiritual life by much converse with God in solitude.

Saints acquire nobility from their constant resort to the place where the Lord meets with them. There they also acquire that power in prayer which we so greatly need. Oh, that we had more men like John Knox, whose prayers were more terrible to Queen Mary than 10,000 men! Oh, that we had more Elijahs by whose faith the windows of heavens should be shut or opened!

This power comes not by a sudden effort; it is the outcome of a life devoted to the God of Israel! If our life is all in public, it will be a frothy, vapoury ineffectual existence; but if we hold high converse with God in secret, we shall be mighty for good. He that is a prince with God will take high rank with men, after the true measure of nobility.

Beware of being a lean-to; endeavour to rest on your own walls of real faith in the Lord Jesus. May none of us fall into a mean, poverty- stricken dependence on man! We want among us believers like those solid, substantial family mansions which stand from generation to generation as landmarks of the country; no lath-and-plaster fabrics, but edifices solidly constructed to bear all weathers, and defy time itself.

Given a host of men who are steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, the glory of God's grace will be clearly manifested, not only in them, but in those round about them. The Lord send us a revival of consecrated strength, and heavenly energy!

Preach by your hands if you cannot preach by your tongues. When our church members show the fruits of true godliness, we shall soon have inquiries for the tree which bears such a crop.

Oh the coming together of the saints is the first part of Pentecost, and the ingathering of sinners is the second. It began with "only a prayer meeting", but it ended with a grand baptism of thousands of converts. Oh that the prayers of believers may act as lode stones to sinners! Oh that every gathering of faithful men might be a lure to attract others to Jesus! May many souls fly to Him because they see others speeding in that direction. 

"Lord, we turn from these poor foolish procrastinators to thyself, and we plead for them with thine all-wise and gracious spirit! Lord, turn them and they shall be turned! By their conversion, pray that a true revival has commenced tonight! Let it spread through all our households, and then run from church to church till the whole of christendom shall be ablaze with a heaven-descended fire!"

 Top of page

10. Revival Scenes

by Henry T. Blackaby

We have several generations who know nothing, experientially, of true revival and spiritual awakening. The following are descriptions of prominent features of revival scenes, which should stir your hearts to long for their repetition in our day.
 
Pervasive, Fervent Praying.

All revival begins, and continues, in the prayer meeting. Some have also called prayer the "great fruit of revival." In times of revival, thousands may be found on their knees for hours, lifting up their heartfelt cries, with thanksgiving, to heaven.

The accounts of revivals abound with illustrations of pervasive and fervent praying. In George Whitfield's time, overwhelmed by the Presence of God, people would pray and cry out to God throughout the night. Following a young girl's prayer, a youth meeting in South Africa was filled with the Presence of God, and the young people continued to pray for hours, issuing in the greatest revival during Andrew Murray's ministry. The great Moravian revival of 1727 began in prayer, and so overwhelmed were the people with the Presence of God, they were convicted to pray 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—and this lasted over 100 years, with astounding results around the world. In the 1904 revival in Wales, prayer was deep and crushing in the coal mines, in homes, in barns, along the roads, and in almost every place where people met. In Ulster (1859), more than 100 prayer meetings began instantly, even in graveyards and gravel pits. In New York City (1857), more than 30,000 people gathered daily to pray, and were "filled with the awesome Presence of God." Near the end of a prayer meeting in the city of Arnol, on the Scottish Isle of Lewis (1940s), a local blacksmith cried out: "Lord, Your honor is at stake!" At that moment the house shook and "dishes rattled...as wave after wave of Divine Power swept through the house." When this group of people closed the prayer meeting and went outside, they found the community alive with the Presence of God; it was 5 a.m. in the morning.

Powerful, Scriptural Preaching.

Powerful preaching is a hallmark of true revival. Revival preachers demonstrate their commitment to the authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures, with bold, urgent, and uncompromising preaching, as they set before God's people the way of life and death. Powerful, Spirit-filled sermons concerning sin, Christ and the cross penetrate the hearts of the saved and lost alike with the realities of eternity. Concerning a sermon Whitfield preached in Scotland (1742), one present reported: "During the time of divine worship, solemn, profound reverence overspread every countenance. Many cry out in the bitterness of their soul. Some...from the stoutest men, to the most tender child, shake and tremble and a few fall down as dead....when the ...preacher speaks of redeeming Love, and talks of the precious Savior...all seem to breathe after Him...."

Agonizing, Uninhibited Confessions.

When Holy God draws near in true revival, people come under terrible conviction of sin. The outstanding feature of spiritual awakening has been the profound consciousness of the Presence and holiness of God, "so overwhelming at times that people were afraid to open their mouths lest they utter words that would bring upon them the judgments of God. Sinners, overwhelmed by the Divine Presence, would fall helplessly, crying for mercy." Under the crushing gravity of even the smallest sins, people may be found for hours groaning and in awful distress, weeping bitterly and uncontrollably, sighing and sobbing anxiously and painfully. Entire congregations deal face-to-face with God about their sins, in open brokenness and contrition, with urgent prayers of repentance, pleading to God for mercy. Under deep conviction, missionaries, pastors, elders, and evangelists are found publicly confessing their sins. A missionary in Korea in 1907 wrote: "As the prayer continued, a spirit of heaviness and sorrow for sin came upon the audience. On one side, someone began to weep, and in a moment the whole audience was weeping. Man after man would rise, confess his sins, break down and weep, and then throw himself down on the floor and beat the floor with his fists in perfect agony of conviction." All are painfully (and joyfully) aware that this deep conviction is solely the work of God in their midst, and find great peace and joy in forgiveness.

Countless, Radical Conversions.

During true revival, thousands of lost people are suddenly swept into the Kingdom of God. Scenes of the lost coming to the Savior in great, and unprecedented numbers, are common. In the eastern states, during the revivals of 1858, conversions and baptisms quadrupled. During the Great Awakening in New England in the 1700s, between 25,000 and 30,000 were converted. When God visited Wales in 1859, it is estimated that 110,000 were added to the churches. In Korea between 1906 and 1910 the net gain of all the churches was nearly 80,000.

Revival conversions demonstrate the radical act of becoming a new creation in Christ. Crime in awakened communities falls dramatically, sins and worldly pleasures are abandoned, and joyful worship and service to Christ and demonstrable love for one another become the way of life. Of one Parish where Duncan Campbell was used of God in the late 1940s, we read: "Revival had surely come! Campbell conducted four services nightly (for 5 weeks)—at 7 p.m., 10 p.m., midnight, and 3 a.m., returning home between 5 and 6 am.... Simultaneously (with 'desperate praying') the Spirit of God swept through the village. People could not sleep; houses were lit all night; people walked the streets in great conviction; others knelt by their bedsides crying for God to pardon them!.... Within 48 hours the drinking house was closed. Today it is in ruins. Fourteen young men who had been drinking there, were gloriously converted....; within 48 hours nearly every young person between the ages of 12 and 20 had surrendered to Christ, and it was reckoned that every young man between the ages of 18 and 35 could be found in the prayer meetings!"

The above scenes are the common experience of all true revivals: Persevering prayer, mighty preaching, agonizing confessions followed by the joy of forgiveness, and this pervading the believing and unbelieving community alike. O Lord, in mercy, visit again your people in our day.

For further reading, see Revival, A People Saturated with God, by Brian H. Edwards

Evangelical Press, 1990).