WHEN GOD STEPPED DOWN - GREAT REVIVAL IN SCOTLAND

When God Stepped Down! ....."The Great Revival in the Hebrides 1948"

by Duncan Campbell

Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence. As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence! When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence. Isaiah 64:1-3

 
I never read that third verse without my mind going back to what actually happened in the parish of Barvas on the island of Lewis. At the outset, let me make it clear that I did not bring revival to the Hebrides. I had the privilege of being there and in some small way leading the movement for about three years but God moved in the parish of Barvas before I set foot on the island. Revival is still a sign which is spoken against, and you cannot believe every story you have heard about the Lewis Awakening. Down through the years things have been said which have no foundation in fact, however, facts are powerful things.

 
Revival Defined:
 
First, let me tell you what I mean by revival. An evangelistic campaign or special meeting is not revival. In a successful evangelistic campaign or crusade, there will be hundreds or even thousands of people making decisions for Jesus Christ, but the community remains untouched, and the churches continue much the same as before the outreach. In revival, God moves in the district. Suddenly, the community becomes God conscious. The Spirit of God grips men and women in such a way that even work is given up as people give themselves to waiting upon God. In the midst of the Lewis Awakening, the parish minister at Barvas wrote, "The Spirit of the Lord was resting wonderfully on the different townships of the region. His Presence was in the homes of the people, on meadow and moorland, and even on the public roads." This presence of God is the supreme characteristic of a God-sent revival. Of the hundreds who found Jesus Christ during this time fully seventy-five per cent were saved before they came near a meeting or heard a sermon by myself or any other ministers in the parish. The power of God, the Spirit of God, was moving in operation, and the fear of God gripped the souls of men - this is God-sent revival as distinct from special efforts in the field of evangelism.
 
A Foundation of Intercession and Vision:
 
How did this gracious movement begin? In 1949, the local presbytery issued a proclamation to be read on a certain Sunday in all the Free Churches on the island of Lewis. This proclamation called the people to consider the "low state of vital religion . . . throughout the land . . .... and the present dispensation of Divine displeasure . . . due to growing carelessness toward public worship . . . and the growing influence of the spirit of pleasure which has taken growing hold of the younger generation." They called on the churches to "take these matters to heart and to make serious inquiry what must be the end if there be no repentance. We call upon every individual as before God to examine his or her life in light of that responsibility which attends to us all and that happily in divine mercy we may be visited with a spirit of repentance and turn again to the Lord whom we have so grieved." I am not prepared to say what effect the reading of this declaration had upon the ministers or people of the island in general, but I do know that in the parish of Barvas a number of men and women took it to heart, especially two old women. I am ashamed to think of it - two sisters, one eighty-two and one eight-four, the latter blind. These two women developed a great heart concern for God to do something in the parish and gave themselves to waiting upon God in their little cottage.
One night God gave one of the sisters a vision. Now, we have got to understand that in revival remarkable things happen. It is supernatural; you are not moving on human levels; you are moving in divine places. In the vision, she saw the churches crowded with young people and she told her sister, "I believe revival is coming to the parish." At that time, there was not a single young person attending public worship, a fact which cannot be disputed. Sending for the minister, she told him her story, and he took her message as a word from God to his heart. Turning to her he said, "What do you think we should do?" What?" she said, "Give yourself to prayer; give yourself to waiting upon God. Get your elders and deacons together and spend at least two nights a week waiting upon God in prayer. If you will do that at your end of the parish, my sister and I will do it at our end of the parish from ten o'clock at night until two or three o'clock in the morning." So, the minister called his leaders together and for several months they waited upon God in a barn among the straw. During this time they plead one promise, "For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring" (Isaiah 44:3). This went on for at least three months. Nothing happened. But one night a young deacon rose and began reading from Psalm 24, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation" (Psalm 24:3-5). Closing his Bible, he addressed the minister and other office bearers in words that sound crude in English, but not so crude in our Gaelic language, "It seems to me so much humbug. To be waiting as we are waiting, to be praying as we are praying, when we ourselves are not rightly related to God." Then, he lifted his hands toward heaven and prayed, "O God, are my hands clean? Is my heart pure?" Then, he went to his knees and fell into a trance. Now, don't ask me to explain the physical manifestations of this movement because I can't, but this I do know, that something happened in the barn at that moment in that young deacon. There was a power loosed that shook the heavens and an awareness of God gripped those gathered together.
 
Breakthrough in Barvas:
 
Now, I wasn't in the island at the time. I was in another area when word came asking me to come to Lewis for ten days. I had other meetings scheduled and wrote back that I would put Barvas on my calender for the following year. However, do to circumstances I won't go into, my other meetings were canceled, and I found it possible to go to the islands as requested. Arriving by boat, I was met by the minister of the church and one of his office bearers. As I stepped ashore, the office bearer came to me and said, "Mr. Campbell, may I ask you a question? Are you walking with God?" I was happy to be able to respond, "I can say this at any rate, I fear God."
They had arranged for me to address the church at a short meeting beginning at nine o'clock that night. It was a remarkable meeting. God sovereignly moved, and there was an awareness of God which was wonderful. The meeting lasted until four o'clock in the morning, and I had not witnessed anything to compare with it at any other time during my ministry. Around midnight, a group of young people left a dance and crowded into the church. There were people who couldn't go to sleep because they were so gripped by God. Although there was an awareness of God and a spirit of conviction at this initial meeting, the real breakthrough came a few days later on Sunday night in the parish church. The church was full, and the Spirit of God was moving in such a way that I couldn't preach. I just stood still and gazed upon the wondrous moving of God. Men and women were crying out to God for mercy all over the church. There was no appeal made whatsoever. After meeting for over three hours, I pronounced the benediction and told the people to go out, but mentioned that any who wanted to continue the meeting could come back later. A young deacon came to me and said, "Mr. Campbell, God is hovering over us." About that time the clerk of the session asked me to come to the back door. There was a crowd of at least 600 people gathered in the yard outside the church... Someone gave out Psalm 102 and the crowd streamed back in to the church which could no longer hold the number of people. A young school teacher came down front crying out, "O God, is there nothing left for me?" She is a missionary in Nigeria today. There was a bus load of people coming to the meeting from sixty miles away. The power of God came into the bus so that some could not even enter the church when the bus arrived. People were swooning all over the church, and I cannot remember one single person who was moved on by God that night who was not gloriously born again. When I went out of the church at four o'clock in the morning there were a great number of people praying alongside the road. In addition to the school teacher, several of those born again that night are in foreign mission work today.
 
In Church, Meadow, and Moorland:
 
>From Barvas, the move of God spread to the neighboring districts. I received a message that a nearby church was crowded at one o'clock in the morning and wanted me to come. When I arrived, the church was full and there were crowds outside. Coming out of the church two hours later, I found a group of 300 people, unable to get into the church, praying in a nearby field. One old woman complained about the noise of the meetings because she could not get to sleep. A deacon grabbed her and shook her, saying, "Woman, you have been asleep long enough!"
There was one area of the islands which wanted me to come but I didn't feel any leading to accept the invitation. The blind sister encouraged me to go and told me, "If you were living as near to God as you ought to be, He would reveal His secrets to you." I agreed to spend a morning in prayer with her in the cottage. As we prayed, the sister said, "Lord, you remember what you told me today that you were going to save seven men in this church. I just gave your message to Mr. Campbell and please give him wisdom because he badly needs it." She told me if I would go to the village, God would provide a congregation. I agreed to go, and when I arrived at seven o'clock, there were approximately 400 people at the church. The people could not tell what it was that had brought them; it had been directed by the Spirit of God. I spoke for a few minutes on the text "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent' (Acts 17:30). One of the ministers stopped me and said, "Come see this." At one end of the meeting house, the most notorious characters in the community were on their faces crying out to God.
On a trip to a neighboring island I found the people were very cold and stiff. Calling for some men to come over and pray, I particular requested that a young man named Donald accompany them. Donald, who was seventeen years old, had been recently saved and baptized in the Holy Spirit about two weeks later on a hillside. As we were in the church that night, Donald was sitting toward the front with tears falling off his face onto the floor. I knew Donald was in touch with God in a way that I was not. So I stopped preaching and asked him to pray. Donald rose to his feet and prayed, "I seem to be gazing into an open door and see the Lamb in the midst of the throne and the keys of death and hell on his waist." Then he stopped and began to sob. After he composed himself, he lifted his eyes toward heaven, raised his hands, and said, "God, there is power there. Let it loose!" And at that moment the power of God fell upon the congregation. On one side of the room, the people threw up their hands, put their heads back and kept them in that position for two hours. It is hard to do this for ten minutes, much less two hours. On the other side, the people were slumped over, crying out for mercy. In a village five miles away, the power of God swept through the town and there was hardly a house in that village that didn't have someone saved in it that night.
 
In one area of the district there was bitter opposition to the movement because I preached the baptism of the Holy Ghost as a separate and distinct occurrence following conversion. Those who opposed me were so successful in their opposition that very few people came to the meetings. One night, the session clerk came to me and said, "There is only one thing we can do to the correct the situation which now prevails. We must give ourselves to waiting upon God in prayer. I have been told there is a farmer who said we could meet in his home. He is not a Christian and his wife isn't saved, but they are God-fearing people." About thirty of us, ministers and elders from the district, met in this farmer's house. I felt the going very, very hard. I prayed. All the ministers prayed. One felt that the very powers of hell were unleashed. About midnight I turned to one of the elders and told him I thought the time had come for him to lay hold of God. This man rose to his feet and prayed for about half and hour. (Of course, you must remember that we were in revival, and in revival time doesn't exist. Nobody was looking at the clock.) The man paused, lifted his hand toward heaven and said, "God, did You know that your honor is a stake? You gave the promise that You would pour water on the thirsty and floods upon the dry ground, and You are not doing it." I wonder how many of us could approach God with words like that on our lips? Then he said, "There are five ministers in this meeting, including Mr. Campbell, and I don't know where a one of them stands in Your Presence. But if I know anything about my own heart, I think I can say that I am thirsty for a manifestation of Your power." He paused again, then cried out in aloud voice, "God, Your honor is at stake and I now challenge You to pour water on the thirsty and floods upon the dry ground." And in that moment the stone-built house literally shook like a leaf. I immediately went to the Acts of the Apostles where it is recorded that they prayed and the place where they were assembled was shaken. As soon as this dear man stopped praying, I pronounced the benediction a little after two o'clock in the morning and went out to find the whole village ablaze with God. I went into one house and found nine women on their knees in the kitchen crying out to God. One woman saved that night has written some of the finest Gaelic hymns in our Gaelic hymnal. On the following Sunday, the road was black with the people walking two miles to the church. The drinking house in that particular village closed that night and has never reopened since. This is God at work. A God sent revival is always a revival of holiness.
 
Conclusion:
 
It takes the supernatural to break the bonds of the natural. You can make a community mission-conscious. You can make a community crusade-conscious. But only God can make a community God-conscious. Just think about what would happen if God came to any community in power. I believe that day is coming. May God prepare us all for it. Amen

A Call to Anguish - David Wilkerson

"A Call to Anguish!"

                 by David Wilkerson

This is a passionate message by David Wilkerson calling on a return to Biblical Christianity, the Faith of our Fathers.  That faith was based upon the people of God involved in desperate prayer, calling out to God in anguish for lost loved ones, a country going to hell and a church gone astray.  Oh that we return quickly to that place of anguish!!

 

"The Final Great Awakening....The End Time Revival"

"OLD WELLS, FALLEN MANTLES, NEW

FOUNTAINS"

 ( A VISION OF THE FINAL GREAT AWAKENING)

by Michael Edds

I moved to a major U.S city in June 2000 to assume the position as Head of School for an interdenominational Christian High School. The school was new but had numerous problems, the most severe totally unknown to me. Prior to my arrival, a teacher had been arrested for involving a student in pornography. The teacher had been convicted and sentenced. Upon my arrival, the incident had become front-page news in the community. To say the least, I was shocked and stunned.

One night I could not sleep. I was very angry with the Lord for putting me into this greatly stressful mess. “Surely, I thought, I deserve better than this.” Around 2 am, I got up to sit on the couch and pout. In spite of my upset state, anger and disgust, the Presence of the Lord settled in the living room. God did not even pay attention to or address my complaint. Instead, His presence was so strong that I physically trembled. He spoke these words, “Old Wells, Fallen Mantles, and New Fountains.” He instructed me to get my Bible. By that time, I too had set aside my complaint. His Presence was so great that I did not know if I could survive it.

I opened my Bible to Isaiah 35: 3-7: “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing, for IN THE WILDERNESS SHALL WATER BREAK OUT and streams in the desert. AND THE PARCHED GROUND SHALL BECOME A POOL and the thirsty land SPRINGS OF WATER.”

The Lord led me to Isaiah 41:17 -18, "The poor and needy seek water but there is none. Their tongues fail for thirst. I, the Lord, will hear them. I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them. I will open rivers in the desolate heights and fountains in the midst of valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of waters."

Next came Isaiah 43:20, " I will give waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert to give drink to my people, my chosen."

I was directed to verse 19 of [Isaiah 43]: “Behold I WILL DO A NEW THING. Now it shall SPRING [BURST] FORTH. Shall ye not know it?”

The Lord was moving so quickly through the scriptures that I could hardly keep up. His presence was incredibly strong. I felt like I was floating.

Leaving Isaiah, the Lord took me to Joel 2:23: “He will cause to come down for you the rain, THE FORMER RAIN AND THE LATTER RAIN IN THE FIRST MONTH.”

Then Joel 2:28 was given which states: “It shall come to pass afterwards that I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT ON ALL FLESH. Your sons and daughters shall PROPHESY, YOUR OLD MEN SHALL DREAM DREAMS and your YOUNG MEN SHALL SEE VISIONS.”

Finally, Genesis 26:18 finished the scriptures that the Lord was rapidly giving me: “AND ISAAC DUG AGAIN the WELLS of water which they had DUG IN THE DAYS OF ABRAHAM HIS FATHER.”

The Lord revealed the meaning of this vision:

The Early Church experienced the fullness of God. They had the fullness, the gifts and revelation of the Holy Spirit. They were full of boldness, power and anointing. God turned the world upside down through them. The dead were raised, the blind received sight, the possessed were set free, the sick healed and the Gospel was preached to the poor. The anger of Hell was violently aroused. The more the devil persecuted and killed them, the more they multiplied and spread. So Satan changed his tactics. By 300 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire. What Satan could not do through persecution, he accomplished through promotion, position, power, prestige, acceptance and prosperity. They SOLD OUT! The Church backslid and humanity later fell into the brutality of the Dark Ages.

The purpose of each Great Awakening or the bursting forth of a spiritual well was to restore an element of truth that the Early Church possessed back to the church. Luther restored "the just shall live by faith." Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards and the First Great Awakening restored repentance, inward holiness and “Christ in you.” The Second Great Awakening with Barton Stone at Cane Ridge in the West and Francis Asbury in the East brought restoration in society through evangelism, missions, and great social renewal such as abolition, child labor laws, and suffrage movement. The Third Great Awakening of 1857 restored the power of prayer. Azusa Street Outpouring of 1905 restored the in filling and gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Lord stated that He was going to reopen all of the “old wells” of revival in order to restore TOTAL truth to His church.

Fallen mantles of ministry and anointing that rested upon the great men and women of God of old would be picked up and placed on godly men and women today to finish what was started long ago. They are the “Isaacs” that will revisit the old wells of revival and reopen them. The mantles of ministry did not die nor were they buried with Asbury, Wesley, Stone, Amanda Berry Smith and others. They have only been “on hold” until a generation would be born that could relate to them and pick them up. Isaiah 58:12 refers to them: “And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places, thou shall raise up the foundations of many generations, and thou shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.” The Lord said, “What once was shall be again.”

Malachi 4:5 prophecies that “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” The Lord said this was not just a generational reconciliation between the old and the young. It is a restoration of His people to the Faith once delivered to the Saints, the Faith of our fathers. The Lord said He was tired of the apostasy, deadness, programs, personality cults, plans and politics that have nearly destroyed His church. He is going to restore HIS church by returning the “Faith of our Fathers to their children (descendants) and the children (descendants) to the Faith of our Fathers.”


The old wells will BURST forth and the fallen mantles will be picked up. This will be a “suddenly”. Isaiah speaks of it occurring in the desert places and on the barren heights. In other words, it will happen in the most unlikely of places.


The Lord continued His interpretation of the vision by explaining to me that “NEW FOUNTAINS” would gush or break forth also. Something that has never occurred in any Great Awakening or in any historic move of God will exploded upon the scene in our day. 


Joel 2:23 speaks of God sending the former rain (the Old Wells of revival) and the latter rain (The New Fountains) in the SAME MONTH!!! In other words, all of the moves of God and fallen mantles from Pentecost until now will be reopened and picked up and combined with a totally new thing from God. It will literally shake the church and the world. HE WILL RESTORE A CHURCH WITHOUT SPOT OR WRINKLE! He will not allow the church to go out defeated. HE WILL ARISE FOR HIS OWN NAME’S SAKE!

God has been preparing a "Joseph Generation" that has been enrolled in the "School of Dung.” In this schooling, they have endured the pain of rejection, slander and isolation. The ‘Word of the Lord’ has tried them severely. They cry out, “God why? All I wanted to do is serve you. All seems to have ‘gone to hell in a hand basket’. It seems just the opposite of what You promised. I am lonely, the organized church thinks I am crazy, a fanatic, out on a limb. They have rejected me and hated me because of my love for you. WHY, OH LORD?”

God has been preparing and perfecting these "Josephs" in the darkness and in the prison houses of loneliness and isolation for a day and hour that they will be unleashed as a secret weapon on the kingdom of darkness. He has allowed all of these things to happen to them for their good. He has prepared a people whom He can trust with His power, gifts, and anointing. In holiness, humility and boldness they will fulfill His plans in our day. They will give HIM the glory. They will give HIM total control of the coming Great Awakening. The door of their prison house of utter loneliness and rejection is about to open. Their “word” is about to come. That word is “the King has need of thee.” In a moment, they will be ushered from prison to position. In a moment, they will fully understand their long and severe sufferings. In a moment, they will be brought out into the light of God’s divine destiny for them. God will greatly use them to lead the Coming Great Awakening.

Along with this final Great Awakening is coming Divine Judgment. Isaiah 35:4 declares, “Your God shall come with vengeance, even God with a recompense.” God is going to overthrow the abuse and control of man in His church. He’s going to take back the "ship" that has been turned into a luxury liner and restore her back to her original state: a ship of war. HE IS GOING TO TAKE BACK CONTROL OF HIS CHURCH!!! The Church is HIS bride, not someone else.


This nation is going to be greatly shaken. The First Great Awakening preceded the American Revolution. Before the Second Great Awakening began at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, a massive epidemic of Cholera occurred. In its early days, the Third Great Awakening saw every bank in the nation collapse. This awakening was followed by the greatest disaster in American History when the nation was ripped apart and 600,000 Americans perished in the horrific War Between The States. A great earthquake hit California at the same time as the Azusa Street Outpouring. He is going to shake the Church and this nation. Only that which is of Him will be left standing.

A great hunger for repentance, seeking God, seeking holiness and seeking truth has exploded within the "Joseph Generation." They have studied, researched and sought out the Old Wells of revival. They intensely hunger for God to do it again! They cry out, “Just one more time, oh Lord!” Programs, politics, personalities, manipulation, and plans in the church sicken them. THEY MUST HAVE GOD! They MUST be in His presence! They are meeting in the homes, in the fields, in the woods, in their prayer closets and any place that they can totally seek His face. Their despair has turned into an all-consuming hunger that says, “Give me God or let me die.” GOD HAS HEARD! He is about to reopen the old wells of revival, He is picking up the fallen mantles and placing them on men and women, and He is about to do a new thing!

Every Awakening has incurred the wrath and persecution of man. When the Presence and holiness of God confronts mankind, they must make a decision for or against Him. When they choose to reject Him, they lash out and fight against His messengers. In the mid-1700s, the Baptist in Colonial Virginia were beaten, imprisoned, and killed for preaching the Gospel. The Methodist circuit riders were jailed, tarred and feathered, beaten, abused and martyred for the message of God. The reason there is little persecution against the Church in America today is that there is so little of the Presence and Message of God to confront mankind. The world has heard how to get rich, how to prosper, how to have self-esteem, and to feel good. They have not heard the message, “Repent or perish.” They have not heard the anointed Word of God that demands a decision. Be forewarned, The Final Great Awakening will usher in a wave of persecution against the true Church of God.


Old Wells of Revival are on the threshold of being reopened. Fallen Mantles of ministry are being picked up. New Fountains are rumbling beneath the surface and about to burst forth. Frank Bartleman (chronicler of the Azusa Awakening) once said, “To understand what God is going to do, we must understand what He once did.” The most incredible move of God will suddenly explode upon the scene.

Judgment and a great shaking are coming to the land and to the church. Persecution of the Isaacs and Josephs, the true saints of God will occur. However, they will be covered with such zeal and boldness, they will be like the Fathers of old: “And they loved not their lives even until death.” (Rev 12:11) God will harvest a holy remnant from this generation. He will have a church that is without spot or wrinkle, a pure bride for His Son. Be encouraged. Lift up your heads. Your God has come! “The King has need of thee!”

1 comments:

C said...

Greetings Mr. Edds Thank you so much for your article, "The Final Great Awakening -- An Endtime Revival". Truly in our day people are wandering from coast to coast looking for the true Word of God and all they are getting is fluff and empty promises. I want no part of it. Amos 8:11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: 12 And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it. I appreciate your writing about the Joseph Company. It will be wonderful to behold --- those who truly bring God's life with power and they will not take the glory. It can't be long now! Thank you. C. Johnson P.S. Check out the life of John Sung. He sounds like a forerunner of the Joseph Company. In the 30's he ministered in the power of the Holy Spirit in the South Pacific before the Japanese invaded. Link: http://www.hograce.org/eng/document/Schubert/index.htm A book, "John Sung: Flame of God in the Far East" by Leslie T. Lyall, 1964, influenced me greatly.

"Weeping Between the Porch and the Altar" (part 1)

 "WEEPING BETWEEN THE PORCH AND THE ALTAR"

(PART 1)

                                 BY LEONARD RAVENHILL

Joel 1:13 "Gird yourselves, and lament ye priests, howl ye ministers of the altar. Come, lay all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God. For the meat offering and the drink offering is witholden from the house of your God. Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly."


And then to verse 17 of the next chapter, "Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare Thy people O Lord, and give not Thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them. Wherefore should they say among the people, Where is your God?" 

A few years ago, Dr. Carl F. Henry, founder and editor of Christianity Today, sent out a questionnaire to what he called, "Twenty of the leading intellectual preachers in the country." And the question that he sent out was this: "What do you see for the church of Jesus Christ by the year 2000." I remember only one of the replies, it was given by Elton Trueblood, the Quaker philosopher. He said this amazing thing: "By the year 2000 the church will be a conscious minority surrounded by an arrogant, militant paganism." I swallowed that hook, line and sinker, and woke up about 2 o'clock in the morning with mental and I think spiritual indigestion. Then I began to remind myself that Christianity was not served up to the world in a silver platter. Christianity was born in a sophisticated, totalitarian society. 

The early church was walled in on one side with the mightiest military machine 
in history, the power of Rome. 
It was walled in on the other side with Greek intellectualism.
It was blocked ahead by the monopoly the Jews thought they
had on God. 
Those men who turned the world upside down had.....

•          No colossal intellectual capacity.

•       No great financial backing.

•      No social standing. 

They were about the most despised men in and around Jerusalem. And yet they broke out somehow - and later it was said that they turned the world upside-down.
I think at least once a week and sometimes I think once a day, what Dr. J. B. Phillips, who gave us the Phillips New Testament, said of the first chapters of Acts:
          "This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became fat and out of breath by
          prosperity.
          This is the church of Jesus Christ before it became muscle bound by over
          organization.
          This is the church of Jesus Christ where they didn't gather together a group of
          intellectuals to study phycho-sematic medicine, they just healed the sick.
          This is the church of Jesus Christ where they did not say prayers, but they
          prayed in the Holy Ghost." There's a vast difference. 

The tragedy in our colleges and seminaries right now is that we turn men out who know the word of God. - That is never going to turn the world.


The question is not whether they know the Word of God.
The question is:
DO THEY KNOW THE GOD OF THE WORD? Just to give a man a license to preach because he has so much academic ability is like giving a blind man a driving license. If he doesn't know God, why is he in this business?! We have to make up our minds if this Book is absolute or obsolete. It's either got the answer for our generation or forget it. 
We have to make up our minds that preaching is not a profession, it's a passion.
I remember going down High Holborne in London a few years ago... well it is a few, twenty five I guess. A little lady was going to the mail box. There she was, very, very stooped and she shakily put her mail into the box; then she turned to go into a building. Somebody asked me, "Do you know who that is?" And I said, "Not the slightest idea." "That is the widow of Hugh Price Hughes." At one time the king of the Methodist pulpit in England. His daughter gave us a huge biography of her father. And she said, "When he came back on a Sunday night from the service, if no one had been saved, he would be inconsolable. You couldn't comfort him. He wouldn't eat, he wouldn't drink. He wouldn't even take his long coat off. He threw himself over his bed and he sobbed and he sobbed and he sobbed and said, 'Why? Why? Why?'" 

Isn't it staggering when you think that one sermon on the day of Pentecost produced 3000 people? And we had some cities yesterday where 3000 sermons were preached and nobody was saved. And it doesn't even faze us. 

          The church used to be a lightning bolt, now it's a cruise ship.
          We are not marching to Zion - we are sailing there with ease.
          In the apostolic church it says they were all amazed - And now in our
          churches everybody wants to be amused.
          The church began in the upper room with a bunch of men agonizing, and it's
          ending in the supper room with a bunch of people organizing.
          We mistake rattle for revival, and commotion for creation, and action for
          unction.

Look, I think this is a critical hour in history, the most critical hour in history; the Middle East is ready to blow up... the prestige of this nation we love has gone down ... As someone said, "We live in a theater of the absurd." 

I'm old enough to remember years prior to World War I. My cousin had been to our house about a month before the war broke out, as straight as a ram-rod. He had his red jacket with its lovely gold buttons. I looked at him and thought, "My, what a marvelous thing to be a soldier." On the 4th of August 1914 the war broke out and he went with millions of other men to fight; he came back a total physical wreck. But you see, the slogan of World War I was this: "This is the war to end wars." War is not only unchristian, it's uncivilized. 

After that, from 1919 to 1939, we had twenty golden years of peace when the church had the greatest opportunity since Pentecost, in my judgment. Then came the second World War.
Prior to World War I we had a group of intellectuals in England called Fabian Socialists. The red bearded man who gave us plays like Pygmalion and My fair lady, George Bernard Shaw, was one of the super intellectuals. Really, the leader was a self anointed and self-appointed prophet of a new world order; his name was H. G. Wells, a cocky little man. Those men did not talk about redemption, they did not talk about sin, they were just rationalists, they were just humanists. Away back in 1912, two years before the 1914 war, H. G. Wells said, "It is possible for us to have a new race of people by intellectual and biological processes. We don't need the Bible, we don't need the church, we can pull down the hills of wealth, we can fill up the valleys of poverty."
          He didn't talk about sin and redemption and wickedness.
          He talked about the adequacy of materialism.
          He talked about the inevitability of progress.
          He talked about the sufficiency of man.
          They were going to bring in a new millennium by their own genius.
And then a shadow came over the sky. We had the 1914-18 war. And at the end, H. G. Wells and the gang were not so sure about things.

In 1939 came the 2nd World War. Well, H. G. Wells had written his outline of history, but the last book he wrote, in the middle of World War II, was not this rosy optimism. His last book was Mind at the end of it's Tether. And he said, "There is no hope for humanity." And he said one more sensible thing, "There is a little cavity somewhere in the human breast which can be filled by God and only by God." 

We feel a little nervous these days of talking about human depravity. Well, heaven knows, there has never been as much depravity around as we have today. Look at the iniquity that was on the earth when the prophet Elijah came on the scene. The nation was in bondage to idolatry, and impurity, and infidelity, and indifference.
          And it's my contention this morning that this pulpit is no place for puppets.
          In this day in which we live it's prophets that we need.

A Jewish scholar says,



"The prophet, by the very nature of his calling, is a tragic figure. He has a fierce loyalty toward God and he has a broken heart over a lost nation."   We miss the mark telling people who are morally good, and very excellent many of them, that Jesus Christ came into the world to make bad men good. He did not. That's a fringe benefit.

The first argument God has with a man is not that he's bad,
it's that he is DEAD in trespasses and in sin.
And Christianity is the only Gospel in the world, the only message in the world, where a man's God comes and lives inside of him.   Where's the brooding of the Holy Ghost these days? When revival comes you don't daringly say, "Joe Smith is coming to preach this week, and he'll finish Sunday night." Where in the world did we get the idea that the Holy Spirit only comes at 11 o'clock Sunday morning and you send Him home at 12 o'clock. You want Him back at 7 at night 'til 8 and we don't need Him 'til Wednesday night. When revival comes the lights don't go out in the sanctuary for weeks and weeks and weeks. I spent an afternoon in Wales in 1931 or 32 with an old man who had been one of the right hand men in the Salvation Army revival back in the 1880's. The man was eighty years of age. He told me about the amazing things that happened in their revivals. The men that would sit in the back seats, almost the scum of the earth, came in just to get warm, but they would get so worried when the old preacher William Booth was preaching one of his hell-fire messages, that they shred their hymn books. Begby, in his definitive work on William Booth, in the first volume I think, talks about the holiness meetings. And he said, "When the Holy Ghost came down and men resisted the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God would lift people from the back of the sanctuary and carry them over the audience and drop them at the altar." And we think we've seen everything because two or three people get healed. 

You can not standardize revival. I am not thinking of a church revival; I'm thinking of a national revival. There is only one hope for America and that is that we have a Divine intervention in the nation. Forget your denomination, forget your empty seats. 

Let's see first of all how God grieves over the sin of the people,


and after all, when you look in the Old Testament, God's argument was not with the Amalekites, and Hitites and all the other "ites". God's problem in the Old Testament was Israel. God's problem today is not communism, Mormonism, Moonism or any other "ism." God's problem is His church today. We are so worldly. 
A city wide crusade can cost two million dollars.
Revival doesn't cost a red cent, except broken hearts.
You can stage your revival; you can stage a city wide crusade; you can not stage Revival.
Revival is a mysterious divine intervention. I think one of the most awesome tasks given to man was given to John Baptist, when God said, "Prepare YE the way of the Lord."
You know, you talk about revival in this country and everybody has got tunnel vision. They think revival must come like Finney had it. We are not living in Finney's days. It would be nice to have him around, for sure, but we are not living in Finney's day. It is a new day. Iniquity has never swaggered like it swaggers now. You know what has happened in the last twenty three years in England? In the last twenty three years in England the Muslims have built 300 mosques and at the same time they were building their 300 mosques the Church of England has closed 660 churches. Does it drive us to despair? There are more people lost in this world at the moment than in any period in history. And yet we go on as though we were on the edge of the millennium instead of on the edge of judgment. 

I believe the key to revival is given here in Joel, "Let the priests, the ministers of God, weep between the altar and the door posts." 

I was preaching in a well known college two years ago. I was preaching on Hannah, because I think Hannah is typical of the true intercessor. The intercessor believes, "The thing will happen through me. I have to stand in the gap." You know, when you talk about intercessors we always go back and say, "Well, America's had some of the best intercessors." You're right; we had.
          We had praying Payson of Portland back in the eighteen hundreds. The floor
          in his room was as hard as this metal and yet there were two grooves side by
          side where his knees used to rub in the floor.
          What about Jonathan Goforth that went out and had revival in China?
          What about John Hyde, one of the greatest men ever in prayer?

You know, the first thing that really moved me to God after I got saved? Somebody gave me an abridged edition of the life of David Brainard. I just could not believe it; I could not take it in. Could a man be so utterly selfless?
The thing that is crippling us is our prosperity. Materialism is choking the church as well as the world. We want ease and comfort.
          When I read of a young man that could walk out in the snow, snow up to his
          chin sometimes, wrestling in prayer from sunrise to sunset with a
          tubercular body...
          When I read about a man that wrestled in prayer like that, I was dumbfounded.
And since the church I went to was pretty sleepy and I was only about seventeen, I went out into Sherwood forest - I lived on the edge of it - and started praying by myself at night. We have some bracken there, and it grows seven or eight feet high, I used to creep in it and weep and groan and pray for revival. And revival came. Because I prayed? No, No. I was one of a number.
But a man called George Jefferys came. Very humble... He never stopped to meet you... never mentioned money...He just came there, they sang about one chorus, but the ministry and the authority of God was upon him, and again the Acts of the Apostles were repeated. I don't think that a move of miracles like that is the only answer. In fact I think we could by-pass that. In the last thirty years America has had more healing crusades than all the nations of the world put together. 

          What we need now is
                    A revival of holiness.
                    A revival of character.
                    A revival of people who are utterly selfless
                    and prepared to lay their lives on the altar for God.
 
Paul Koffman went to Nagaland, India, to see what happened and expected something like Finney. When he got there saw signs and wonders and miracles, cripples were healed, blind people were seeing, every distorted, perverted thing was put right. So what? Hey, did you ever hear of a revival like this? The government has made an inquiry. Why has the drink traffic gone down? Why is it the kids are behaving in the street? Why are we not having a problem with drugs? Why is the nation convulsed? Why is the government inquirying? They were the most rebellious, lawless state in India and now they are the calmest. The crime has gone. People are civilized and gentle and loving. Well, it's the same old story. They discovered a group of people, underground people, who had been praying twenty years for revival. 

No man - I don't care how colossal his intellect - No man is greater than his prayer life.
To stand before men on behalf of God is one thing.
To stand before God on behalf of men is something entirely different.
We've urged people to tithe, haven't we? But we only mean their money. You see, we want a "revival" which is a painless Pentecost. We want something that won't disturb our status quo. It's "easy street" everywhere else, so why not here? 



There never has been a revival that I can trace, that hasn't been
birthed back there with true, true, true intercession.

  "Copyright (C) 1994 by Leonard Ravenhill."

"Weeping Between the Porch and the Altar" (part 2)

 "WEEPING BETWEEN THE PORCH AND THE ALTAR"
(PART 2)  by Leonard Ravenhill


In the city of Leeds, where I lived in England, the revival came. It came because there was a little man there, he was unlettered, he had no degree, but boy, did he have a burning heart. And he labored, and he had three breakdowns, not mentally, but physically. You know why? Because he fasted so much. But he had authority.
Paul says in Ephesians 6:19, "Pray for me, that utterance may be given me." In other words he means, let the Word be endued with that mysterious thing that you can't define and nobody can give. The thing that we call unction. The anointing of God! If money could buy it, my, some of you would sell your house to get it, but you can't get it with money. And you can't get it at the university. 

We are trying to marry Christianity
          to prosperity,
          and popularity,
          and personalities. 

And it isn't working. Oh, you can preach the prosperity doctrine because that feeds our carnality. Look, why don't those men that preach that go to the third world to preach it where they need it? I know wealthy people, many of them are lovely people and I believe God lets them have a ministry in supplying needs. But when the church of Jesus Christ is prosperous, she never has revival. It's when she's poor. Prayer is the language of the poor. "Bow down Thine ear and hear me, for I am poor and needy." 

          The self-satisfied don't need to pray.
          The self-sufficient don't want to pray.
          The self-righteous cannot pray.
But the man who realizes,
"I need something outside of anything that's human at all,"
he wants to bathe his soul in prayer.  I went to a little Bible school in England, there were only thirty five students, but I'm glad that the man who was the principal was a man of prayer - Samuel Chadwick who wrote the book "The Path of Prayer." The weakest meeting in almost any church without exception is the prayer meeting. And when we are not strong in prayer we are saying to God, "We can manage." (Of course, we shall pray if we have an invasion, we shall pray if we have a famine - we have a great "utility" God.) 

Very often we say to young people, "Now look, you have to read your Bible and maintain your prayer. You need to maintain your prayer life to maintain your Christian life." No! Not so. Not so. You need to maintain your Christian life in order to pray.
The greatest expositor in the world living today told me personally, "I don't have any trouble. I delight to expound the Word. My books..." he wrote many, many books, but he said, "I've always found prayer so tough. I just find prayer the most difficult thing in the world."
Read the Acts of the Apostles and all you read about is prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer. When they had prayed the place was shaken. 

If you want to read the prayer life of Jesus you would read the Gospel according to Luke because in every instance he gives Jesus as a praying man.
I remember a series of meeting we had in Wales in 1949. After three days a lady, Mrs. Lewis, said to me, "Brother Ravenhill, this is the nearest thing to the Welsh revival that we've had." That was forty years after the Welsh revival. "Mrs. Lewis, what's the point of identification?" "Because we walk up the hill now as we walked then." And she explained, "Last night, the night before, the night before that," she said "it wasn't until we got to the cross roads and bid each other 'good night,' that we realized that nobody had said a word. We were so awed with the majesty and the presence of God." 

Our people don't get off the door step of the church - "Hey,do you think the Cowboys will win today?" It's dribble! It's nonsense!
When did you last tiptoe out of the sanctuary when you dare not say a word? The church has to rediscover two things. 
One, the majesty and the Holiness of God, and
the other, the sinfulness of sin.
Prayer is not the easiest thing in the world, 
Prayer is the hardest thing in the world. 
Prayer is the most demanding thing in the world.
 
I had the pleasure of praying very often with Duncan Campbell, a man God used in the Hebrides revival, 1950 onward. I asked him one day about a certain event, he said, "Yes, that's right. When I was ministering the place was like iron; it seemed as though God was a million miles away. And my message was like throwing a rubber ball at the wall, my words came back on me." In front of him were all kinds of ministers, but he didn't say anything to the preachers and the deacons and the elders. He pointed to a boy sitting over there, called him by name and said, "Laddie, will you pray?" A sixteen year old high school boy! And he stood up, and he said in his Scottish way, "Ach, what is the good of praying if we are not right with God?" And he began to quote Psalm 24, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? He that hath clean hands and pure heart." and so forth and so on. "And when he'd finished," Duncan told me, "The stillness of eternity was on the building." And the boy prayed 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 45 minutes. And then, when he prayed as though he could see the invisible he said, "Satan." 

Oh, I've heard people say this almost facetiously in some meetings, "Get the Devil out of this place." The young boy stood there and said, "Satan, I rebuke you. Get out of this territory! In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. I plead the blood of Christ, BE GONE!"  
And just as though a switch was pulled in heaven God came on the meeting,  
He came on a tavern at the end of the road and people left it. 
He came on a dance at the end of the road and people left it. 

We have to drag people to the altar; there are no altar calls in the New Testament if you want to be REALLY scriptural. Altar calls are an invention for when the Holy Ghost doesn't deal with people. This boy prayed, the Holy Ghost came and that whole community vibrated with God.
You see preacher, you've only two things to do, not twenty two. You are not supposed to be the janitor and running a business and finding about the church's bank balance and all that junk. If you are going to be a true Biblical preacher you got two things to do according to Acts 6:4, give yourself continually to prayer and the Word of God. That's all you have to do. Who is going to visit the sick? The deacons. Who is going to bury the dead? The deacons. (The Scripture clearly says, "Let the dead bury the dead." - I like to tease, you know.) 

You see, we want the church to function our way. "God bless our plans." "God bless what we do." When Alexander McClaren went to that great big church in Manchester, England - and I've ministered in that church - seats maybe a couple of thousand or so - the deacons, great bearded fellows they were in those days, asked him a host of questions which he answered. Finally they said, "We've asked you to be the pastor of this great church. We'll give you a new house, we'll furnish it, we'll buy you a carriage and pair," as we say in England, "and we'll give you a large salary." After they went on, and on, and on, they asked, "Will you accept this?" And he said, "All right, I'll accept it - that is if you accept my terms." "You have terms?" (You know most churches think when they get a pastor they are renting a Hertz car. You better come and fit in!) "And what are the conditions?" And he laid some down, but one vital thing that he laid down was this, "I shall do no visiting." 

Dr. Tozer, I loved that precious man and talked with him often, just the two of us in his office and prayed with him. Dr. Tozer never went to Bible school, he never went to the seminary. Yet he was one of the most learned men I ever met. I stayed in the house of a member of his church and she said, "You know what? I have gone to his church twenty five years and he has not been in my house five times." But I'll tell you what, he spread the table, and that's all you have to do.
You know brethren, you never have to advertise a fire. You don't have to advertise it in the news paper, forget it. You let the glory of the Lord fill the temple; people will come from hundreds of miles. Because it's starvation everywhere. 

My phone rings constantly, "I'm going to move here, I'm going to move there. Do you know a church that really is on fire for God? A church where they have all night prayer meetings?" No church should function these days without a whole night prayer. What do you want... social standing? Do you just want numbers of people? Do you want to fill the pews? Or do you want fire?
I said last night, I think the greatest honor that was ever given to a preacher in history was not given by men, it was given by demons. When those demons said, "Jesus I know and Paul I know." Come on preacher, do you think if the devil has a danger list of the ten most wanted men in America you are one of them? I would rather be the last man on the devil's danger list than the first man on any honor roll you could give us about preaching. I'll say it again: brother, if you are not known in hell you are not worth a hill of beans. 

We must realize we are not just fighting a local situation, we are not fighting drug addiction, we are not fighting massive pornography. We are surrounded by an arrogant, militant paganism. If you told your grandfather forty years ago that forty thousand homosexuals would march down main street, he would have said, "Not in America."
You know what? Adultery and divorce is getting to plague proportions even in the church of God. We don't have decent morality in some churches, never mind spirituality. We don't elect deacons because they are full of the faith and the Holy Ghost - we appoint them because they own two Texaco stations and a hot dog stand. 

Another thing Jesus did, He prayed all night before He chose His disciples. If we prayed all night before we chose our deacons, I guarantee half of them wouldn't get in... if we had to get the witness of the Spirit about it. 

You see, I have people saying, "Why don't you write a book about some methods of revival."
No, no. I can't do that. We don't need to find the formula for revival. The formula for revival is in the Word of God or else there isn't one.
          The formula of revival is:
                    Preachers need to hit the altars and weep because they have no tears.
                    Groan because there is no moving of the Spirit of God.
                    Apologize to God that we've kind of manipulated the supernatural.
Now, I am not just thinking of miracles of twisted limbs and other things.
I think the greatest miracle that God can do is to take an unholy man out of an unholy world, and make that unholy man holy and put him back in an unholy world and keep him holy. But we are more afraid of holiness today in the church than we are of sinfulness.
If an unclean man with an unclean spirit does unclean things, if a man that's vile does vile things because he has a vile spirit, surely the man who has the Holy Spirit in him will live a holy life.

I don't ask people if they are saved anymore, forget it, everybody is "saved;" it doesn't mean a thing. Don't ask a man if he is born again, just look gently at him, it doesn't matter who he is, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Methodist or Mennonite, just say, "Brother, does Christ live in you?" Well, isn't that the standard of the New Birth? Isn't that what Paul says, "Christ in you the hope of glory"? 

I hear an awful lot about gifts of the Spirit, that's all right. 
I hear less about the fruit of the Spirit.
I hear less still about having your fruit unto holiness.
I hear less still about bringing forth fruit meet for repentance. 

You know why some people don't believe in our converts? Because they don't go back and clear up the dirty mess that they've made as far as they can. Restore the stolen money...maintain the baby of the girl they got into trouble... some other thing they should do. Bring forth fruit. A healthy tree doesn't bring forth fruit. It's the tree that has all the flowing life that brings forth fruit. 

One day Napoleon ran his index finger round a great country, he was talking to his generals and he said, "There lies a sleeping giant, LET IT SLEEP!! Because," he said, "if that country ever wakes up and harnesses it's man power to it's mineral power it will shake the world." The country he outlined, in case you are interested, was none other than China, our biggest headache. See the devil standing there, he isn't running his finger round a map, he is running his finger round the church of Jesus Christ and he says, "There is the church of Jesus Christ asleep, LET IT SLEEP!!" "Because if it ever rediscovers the power of the Holy Ghost, if it ever rediscovers the resurrection power of Jesus, it will shake the world." 

I wonder how much of our lives is dominated by the Spirit of God.
No, no, no, we can't go to the congregations. Let the priest weep between the altar and the door posts. I walked round the front of the podium one day, in a distinguished, wonderful college, fourteen hundred students listening. I just walked round and said to the professors, "Gentlemen you are teaching young men to be preachers. In one sense, they are going to guide the church in the future days. Tell me this, do you have for them a course on weeping? And if they graduate, do you have a course on howling?" 

An old professor came and sat at the back in one of my meetings. He believed in old blood and fire, hell-fire preaching and holy living and a church being something which God deposited in the world just to show people how He can redeem us and get a bride for Himself. And you know, all the other professors in that university say, "That old man is senile." 

I like an old statement that was made I think by Montgomery, "All earthly things with earth will fade away, but prayer grasps eternity." And if we're going to see as God sees... Praying, just recently, the Lord seemed to say this to me, "If you claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit the things that grieve the Spirit will grieve you." Who does the Lord cast His burdens on? Does He roll them away into the oblivion? No, no, no. He says, "My yoke is easy, My burden is light."
We don't want people to think we're depressed. I mean, everything is depressing outside, why cover it over? We are heading for judgment faster than you could ever think unless there is a divine intervention. And the key, again, is the priests weeping. The priests howling. 

We sure need
          a heaven born,
          earth shaking,
          hell-terrifying revival. 

And it only comes through brokeness, it comes through honesty.
It comes when we admit, which is true of most around these days, that we just have a form of godliness - thank God we are not filthy and we are not dirty and we are not drunkards and we don't have a spare woman or something, we are pretty good. Ha, yes, that's just like Israel. They got out of Egypt and they got to Kadesh-barnea and instead of going to the promised land they got stuck.
Kadesh-barnea was supposed to be a gateway and it became a goal. 
It was supposed to be a thoroughfare and it became a terminal. 
It was supposed to be a stepping stone to something else, it
became a stumbling block. 

Let me wind this up. I was reading, and I guess I read it every week or I recite it to myself, that amazing chapter that we call the Faith Chapter in Hebrews 11. Faith is mentioned twenty four times in that chapter. I believe the key is not just the word faith, I believe the key is the 6th verse - "He that cometh to God must believe that He is." He is what? He is everything that He said in this Word. And then, you know, I read Hebrews 11: "They subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, women received their dead come to life again." I read that and I knelt down to pray in my office and it's as though the Lord said, "Say that again." And so I said it, "Lord, these people far off there, they subdued whole kingdoms, they wrought righteousness, they obtained promises, they stopped the mouths of lions, women received their dead come to life." And, as somebody said this year, "and not one of them had a Bible." Did you ever consider that? Let me take you back to a time when God's chosen people wondered around in sheepskins and goatskins! Now we've a land flowing with milk and honey - and churches flowing with mink and money. As though God looks on the outside. Forget it! He looks on the inside. Those people never had 66 Books. And you know what, if the world lasts another 100 thousand years, which it won't, but if it did, God doesn't have anything to add to that Book. He's said all He is ever going to say to man. 

In my youth, I used to go listen in a Bible class where Dr. G. Campbell Morgan used to preach very often - a fascinating Bible teacher. And I remember in my early teens I thought, "One day I'll stay behind and ask him what kind of a Bible he has because all that stuff he has isn't in my Bible." I don't care whether you are thinking of Finney or Wesley or Booth, or any great majestic figure that has ruled in the church of God and seen revival, not one of them had a bigger Bible than you and I have. It's the same Word. Again, we better make our minds up whether it is absolute or obsolete. I'll tell you what, if this Book doesn't have the answer for a rotten, corrupt, stinking world, there is no answer for it. We've out sinned Sodom and Gomorra. Do you know there are 600 million Bibles in America? Would you try to guess how many millions or billions of Bible cassettes there are in the nation? Would you like to try to estimate how many seminars there are? Or seminaries there are? Or Bible schools? Or how many Gospel messages are preached throughout the nation? And that we've got 500 radio stations that broadcast something of the Gospel. 

Let me give you the other side and I quit.
          We are the most broken nation that we've ever been in history.
          We've more broken homes,
          We've more broken hearts over those broken homes.
          We've more broken little kids because of those broken homes.
          We've more minds broken by drugs,
          We've more bodies broken - over a million girls last year got pregnant under 17 years of age.

And people were marching a few years ago, "Stop the war in Vietnam, stop the war." "No right to kill people," and yet it's estimated in the last nine years we've put more than 10 million babies to death before they left their mother's wombs (in a Christian country. My Lord, what happens in a heathen country!) Do you think God Almighty is going to wink at our sin much longer? I don't.

And the legislators can't help us, 
and the banks can't help us, 
and the government can't help us,
and money can't help us. Our help cometh from the Lord. And the only way is in submission and brokeness. That we get and say, many of us,
          "Lord, I don't have the vision I used to have.
          I don't have the passion I used to have.
          I don't have the concern I used to have," not for America, for lost souls. Lost souls first, America second.

 

I am convinced the key is in the ministry. Maybe the way to start revival in your church is to stand up next Sunday morning and say, "Look, I want to tell you, I've had no passion for the lost. I shed no tears for lost mankind. I've so many other things I am interested in."
I believe one key to the apostle Paul's life was this, "This - one - thing - I - do." He lived God. He thought God. He prayed God. That's all.
          You can lash him, you can't whip it out of him.
          He can float on a piece of wood in the Mediterranean a night and a day -
          thirty six hours, you can't wash it out of him.
          They tried to starve him, you can't starve it out of him. He'd had a vision of the cross, he'd had a vision of the resurrection power.
He'd realized the greatest thing this side of eternity is to be a God filled man. And goes out and proclaims that message, whether he goes to Jews, to barbarians, the Greeks, the intellectuals. He is as at home in the intellectual capital of the world, Athens, as he is in the religious capital of the world, Jerusalem. 

God never, never intended His church to backslide. God never intended His church to function with anything less than Apostolic Christianity. And it's time to call the church to prayer. I believe if we were as spiritual as we think we are we would have gone to church yesterday in sackcloth and a handful of ashes to put on our heads and mourn that the Glory has departed. 

I can almost hear Duncan Campbell saying how they cried in Scotland, "Oh, that Thou wouldst rend the heaven and come down."
You see, we've never seen God move 'til He's stopped the traffic.
          'Til people in the shops are singing.
          'Til the lights don't go out week after week.
          'Til the Holy Ghost is moving in factories. He's done that in other revivals.
He has called us to stand in the gap.
          To be the repairers of the breach.

                    To bring the powers of the world to come on this materialistic blind day in which we live and this sleepy Laodicean church. When He was on earth He cleaned the temple. I feel it needs cleansing again, from worldliness... from materialism... May the Lord help us to search our hearts as well as search the Scriptures. Help us to be honest and admit that we've failed, seek the place of prayer, and the place of cleansing and the place of anointing.
May we be a vital link between His Eternal Spirit and this troubled, lost world outside.
May His glory shine forth again.                                                                   "Copyright (C) 1994 by Leonard Ravenhill." 

The Great Revival of 1779 in Wales

"The Great Revival of 1779 in Wales"

In April 1779,  a revival broke out in an old Methodist Church in the remote mountainous area of Soar-y-Mynydd, Cardiganshire. One Sabbath afternoon, whilst a very ordinary exhorter, Jack Edward Watkin of Llanddewibrefi, was preaching, the fire kindled, and 'numbers who had been so far hearers only became deeply concerned for their everlasting safety.' The meeting continued until daybreak on Monday morning. Daniel Rowland heard the news, and resolved to go and preach there.

'He preached, and the power was still present, and even mightier than on the preceeding Sabbath. On his return home he said to his friends, "It is a heath fire and will spread abroad." And it did spread.... until it reached many and far-distant localities in South and North Wales, and thousands were brought to seek everlasting life.'

Miracle in Nigeria - Raising the Dead

"Miracle in Nigeria - Raising the Dead"

During his earthly ministry, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.  He also raised a widow's son.  He is the same yesterday, today and forever!  He is still working miracles on behalf of those who have faith in Him.  This incredible miracle occurred during a revival meeting in Nigeria.  An elderly man collapsed.  Frantic efforts were made to revive him, to no avail.  His dead body was taken into a nearby room and laid on a bed.  A Christian minister prayed over him and commanded him to rise.  This video record this miraculous event.  To God be the glory! 


 

EUPHRATES River DRYING UP!! To prepare for Armageddon (REV 16)

"EUPHRATES RIVER DRYING UP - PROPHECY BEING FULFILLED!"

Rev. 16:12 - 16

"The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. Then I saw three impure spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are demonic spirits that perform signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty.
“Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed.”
Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon."

Prophecy is being fulfilled at a rapid-fire pace! Rev. 16 foretells the day that the waters of the Euphrates River will dry up allowing a massive 200,000 man Asian army to invade the Middle East. How close are we to that time? THE EUPHRATES RIVER IS ALREADY DRYING UP! Watch the video. Jesus IS coming SOON!!!

SEND US PROPHETS

SEND US PROPHETS!!

Leonard Ravenhill

The prophet in his day is fully accepted of God and totally rejected by men.
Years back, Dr. Gregory Mantle was right when he said, “No man can be fully accepted until he is totally rejected.” The prophet of the Lord is aware of both these experiences. They are his “brand name.”

The group, challenged by the prophet because they are smug and comfortably insulated from a perishing world in their warm but untested theology, is not likely to vote him “Man of the year” when he refers to them as habituates of the synagogue of Satan!

The prophet comes to set up that which is upset. His work is to call into line those who are out of line! He is unpopular because he opposes the popular in morality and spirituality. In a day of faceless politicians and voiceless preachers, there is not a more urgent national need than that we cry to God for a prophet! The function of the prophet, as Austin-Sparks once said, “has almost always been that of recovery.”

The prophet is God’s detective seeking for a lost treasure. The degree of his effectiveness is determined by his measure of unpopularity. Compromise is not known to him.
He has no price tags.
He is totally “otherworldly.”
He is unquestionably controversial and unpardonably hostile.
He marches to another drummer!
He breathes the rarefied air of inspiration.
He is a “seer” who comes to lead the blind.
He lives in the heights of God and comes into the valley with a “thus saith
the Lord.”
He shares some of the foreknowledge of God and so is aware of
impending judgment.
He lives in “splendid isolation.”
He is forthright and outright, but he claims no birthright.
His message is “repent, be reconciled to God or else…!”
His prophecies are parried.
His truth brings torment, but his voice is never void.
He is the villain of today and the hero of tomorrow.
He is excommunicated while alive and exalted when dead!
He is dishonored with epithets when breathing and honored with
epitaphs when dead.
He is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, but few “make the grade” in his class.
He is friendless while living and famous when dead.
He is against the establishment in ministry; then he is established as a saint
by posterity.
He eats daily the bread of affliction while he ministers, but he feeds the Bread of
Life to those who listen.
He walks before men for days but has walked before God for years.
He is a scourge to the nation before he is scourged by the nation.
He announces, pronounces, and denounces!
He has a heart like a volcano and his words are as fire.
He talks to men about God.
He carries the lamp of truth amongst heretics while he is lampooned by men.
He faces God before he faces men, but he is self-effacing.
He hides with God in the secret place, but he has nothing to hide in
the marketplace.
He is naturally sensitive but supernaturally spiritual.
He has passion, purpose and pugnacity.
He is ordained of God but disdained by men.

Our national need at this hour is not that the dollar recover its strength, or that we save face over the Watergate affair, or that we find the answer to the ecology problem. We need a God-sent prophet!
I am bombarded with talk or letters about the coming shortages in our national life: bread, fuel, energy. I read between the lines from people not practiced in scaring folk. They feel that the “seven years of plenty” are over for us. The “seven years of famine” are ahead. But the greatest famine of all in this nation at this given moment is a FAMINE OF THE HEARING OF THE WORDS OF GOD (Amos 8:11).

Millions have been spent on evangelism in the last twenty-five years. Hundreds of gospel messages streak through the air over the nation every day. Crusades have been held; healing meetings have made a vital contribution. “Come-outers” have “come out” and settled, too, without a nation-shaking revival. Organizers we have. Skilled preachers abound. Multi-million dollar Christian organizations straddle the nation. BUT where, oh where, is the prophet? Where are the incandescent men fresh from the holy place? Where is the Moses to plead in fasting before the holiness of the Lord for our moldy morality, our political perfidy, and sour and sick spirituality?
GOD’S MEN ARE IN HIDING UNTIL THE DAY OF THEIR SHOWING FORTH. They will come. The prophet is violated during his ministry, but he is vindicated by history.

There is a terrible vacuum in evangelical Christianity today. The missing person in our ranks is the prophet. The man with a terrible earnestness. The man totally otherworldly. The man rejected by other men, even other good men, because they consider him too austere, too severely committed, too negative and unsociable.
Let him be as plain as John the Baptist.
Let him for a season be a voice crying in the wilderness of modern theology and
stagnant “Churchanity.”
Let him be as selfless as Paul the apostle.
Let him, too, say and live, “This ONE thing I do.”
Let him reject ecclesiastical favors.
Let him be self-abasing, non self-seeking, non self-projecting, non self - righteous,
non self-glorying, non self-promoting.
Let him say nothing that will draw men to himself but only that which will move
men to God.
Let him come daily from the throne room of a holy God, the place where he has
received the order of the day.
Let him, under God, unstop the ears of the millions who are deaf through the
clatter of shekels milked from this hour of material mesmerism.
Let him cry with a voice this century has not heard because he has seen a vision
no man in this century has seen. God send us this Moses to lead us from the
wilderness of crass materialism, where the rattlesnakes of lust bite us and where
enlightened men, totally blind spiritually, lead us to an ever-nearing Armageddon.


God have mercy! Send us PROPHETS!

Newspaper Report of a Revival Meeting During the 1905 Wales Revival

 

Newspaper Report of a Revival Meeting During the 1905 Wales Revival

 

"The scene was almost indescribable. Row upon row of men and women filled every inch of space. Those who could not gain admittance stood outside and listened at the doors. Others rushed to the windows, where almost every word was audible. When, at seven o’clock, the service began, about 2,000 people must have been present.

"The enthusiasm was unbounded. Women sang and shouted until the perspiration ran down their faces, and men jumped up one after the other to testify. One told in quivering accents the story of a drunken life. A working coal miner spoke like a practiced orator. And one can imagine what a note the testimony of a gypsy woman struck when, dressed in her best, she told of her reformation and repentance.

At ten o'clock the meeting had lost none of its ardor. Prayer after prayer w hen up from those Welsh hearts with almost dreary persistence. Time and again the four ministers who stood in the pulpit attempted to start a hymn but it was all in vain. 

The revival has taken hold of the people, and even Mr. Roberts cannot hold it in check. His latest convert is a policeman, who, after complaining that the people had gone mad after religion so that there was nothing for him to do, went to see for himself, and bursting into tears, confessed the error of his ways and repented.
 

Meetings such as this are being repeated every day, and the enthusiasm is still spreading. While there has been no organization, no elaborate preparation for this mission, in the ordinary sense of the word, there is a strong belief that it is the direct result of earnest prayer. 

A prominent member of a Newport Baptist church, who has followed the movement with close interest and deep thankfulness, declared the other day the revival was a result of the praying by the young women who had been engaged in it for some months. Evan Roberts had, he said, been praying for thirteen months, for that wave to come, and he related how the young man was turned out of his lodgings by his landlady, who thought that in his enthusiasm he was possessed or somewhat mad. He spent hours praying and preaching in his rooms, until the lady became afraid of him, and asked him to leave.

It may be observed that the dominant note of the revival is prayer and praise.

Another striking fact is the joyousness and radiant happiness of the evangelist. It has been remarked that the very essence of his campaign is mirth. To the rank and file of the church ministers this is his most incomprehensible phase. They have always regarded religion as something iron-bound, severe, even terrible. Evan Roberts smiles when he prays, laughs when he preaches. "Ah, it is a grand life," he cries. "I am happy, so happy that I could walk on the air. Tired? Never! God has made me strong. He has given me courage."

Roberts is a leader who preaches victory, and shows how it may be won—victory over the dull depression and gloomy doubt of our time. Is it surprising that thousands flock to his meetings. It has long been felt in Wales, as elsewhere, that the time was ripe for a great Holy Ghost revival."

Revealing God's Treasure - Ark of the Covenant

"Revealing God's Treasure - Ark of the Covenant"

American archaeologist Ron Wyatt shares incredible information about the discovery of the Ark of the Covenant!  The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem in 1980 made the same claims that Ron Wyatt later stated.  The next great unveiling will be the recovery of the Ark of the Covenant. 

 

 

 

HOW WILL REVIVAL COME?

Revival will not come through promotions.
Revival will not come through hot dog suppers.
Revival will not come through bringing in a special guest
 or a group of evangelists.
Revival will come when God's people
begin to pray, pray, pray and pray.

 
...........................
Major Al Smith
Salvation Army