...of God that they experienced, and that was
all.
But God reminded me that there are still
these areas in my life where I'd say,
well, it can happen, but not over there.
Or it can happen, but not through that
person.
And there's a little of that in all
of us.
Oh, Lord, I'll believe for revival, but as
long as it doesn't come through that individual
there.
You know, I'll believe for it, as long
as it comes in a way that's religiously
acceptable to me.
Then it'll never come.
It comes beyond our control.
It comes beyond our power.
We cannot put our name on top of
it and claim it for ourselves.
It's a movement of the Holy Spirit.
So the first major characteristic of revival is
its absolutely supernatural God-glorifying quality.
No flesh glories in its presence.
It is sudden and spontaneous.
It is uncontrollable and uncontainable.
That was number one.
Number two, major characteristic of revival is its
overwhelming revelation of the holiness of God and
the sinfulness of man.
Overwhelming revelation of the holiness of God and
the sinfulness of man.
We think we have a revelation of how
holy God is.
We sing about Him.
We say that He's holy.
We say that we're in awe of Him.
We call Him a holy and wonderful God.
And we think we recognize how fallen human
nature is.
And we think we recognize as believers how
short we often fall of God's standards.
But you see what revival does is it
rips the veil off.
There's an incredible veil of hardness over us
that we don't even recognize.
There's a thickness.
There's a blindness that we don't appreciate.
And every so often when we come into
an experience in the Lord and something deep
and significant happens on the inside of us,
then we just weep before the Lord.
And then we recognize who He is.
Or then we humble ourselves before Him because
we recognize how little we are.
When real revival comes, it brings that revelation,
Oh my God!
That's exactly how people would feel.
They're stricken.
They're shaken.
One man visiting the Welsh revival gave this
description.
Someone said to him, You speak as if
you dreaded the revival coming your way.
He was a famous newspaper editor in England.
He'd gone over to Wales to observe things
in 1904.
He said, No, that is not so.
Dread is not the right word.
Awe expresses my sentiment better.
For you are in the presence of the
unknown.
You have read ghost stories and can imagine
what you would feel if you were alone
at midnight in the haunted chamber of some
old castle and you heard the slow and
stealthy steps stealing along the corridor where the
visitor from another world was said to walk.
If you go to South Wales and watch
the revival, you will feel pretty much like
that.
There is something there from the other world.
You cannot say whence it came or whither
it is going, but it moves and lives
and reaches for you all the time.
You see men and women go down in
sobbing agony before your eyes as the invisible
hand clutches at their heart and you shudder.
It's pretty grim, I'll tell you.
If you're afraid of strong emotions, you'd better
give the revival a wide berth.
And then when they say, well, your impression
is favorable, he says, how could they be
otherwise?
Did I not feel the pull of that
unseen hand?
Have I not heard the glad outburst of
melody that hailed the confession of some who
in very truth had found salvation?
The fact is there is a revelation of
the reality of God and the reality of
the human state.
Something happens, something snaps, something clicks and the
veil drops and people are confronted with God.
Would we live the way we live and
do the things we do if we had
a 24-hour revelation of the holiness of
God?
Would we ever set our eyes on something
we ought not to or let our ears
hear something we shouldn't?
Would we ever utter words out of our
mouths that were displeasing to us?
Would we ever give ourselves over to the
lusts and desires of the flesh?
No, not for a split second.
If heaven was filled with every potential temptation,
it wouldn't be heaven if it was, but
even if it was, and if the devil
was there raging, just the fact that we
could see God would keep us perfectly free.
So another characteristic of revival is its overwhelming
revelation of the holiness of God and the
sinfulness of man.
I remember when God's Spirit fell on the
church where I was attending and working at
the end of 1982.
November 21st was the precise date until March
27th of 1983.
I remember people weeping and wailing before God.
I remember people suddenly seeing their own state
and humbling themselves before God.
I remember people choking on their tears and
not even knowing why.
Just caught up with the presence of God.
Coming to the end of themselves, crying out
they couldn't take it another second.
They lived like that all their lives, but
they couldn't take it another second.
There had to be a break.
There had to be a stop because they
saw God and had a revelation.
When revival comes, it's not a doctrine.
It's not an action.
It's not a work.
It is God coming in a tidal wave
power Himself.
And then another characteristic of revival is its
life-transforming effect on those who are touched.
Its life-transforming effect on those who are
touched.
We basically have to admit that in all
of our assemblies there are people who are
chronic messes.
There may even be some sitting here tonight
that say, that's me.
They're counseled for years.
They're prayed for for years.
They have hands laid on them.
They're put into Bible studies.
They're given tapes and they never seem to
change.
And every one of us would have to
look at areas in our own lives and
say, you know, it's been years and these
things are still plaguing me.
Years.
I remember 10 years ago saying, there's no
way 10 years from now I'll be struggling
with this and I'm still struggling 10 years
later.
When revival comes in a moment of time,
God does such a work, just like when
He saved us, a supernatural working of God
taking us out of the devil's kingdom and
putting us in God's kingdom, God's family.
When revival comes, it's such a working of
God's power and God's life and God's majesty
that people are transformed for good.
You have to fight.
You have to resist.
You have to do all in your power
to get out and to go back to
the way you were before.
I've seen people change during an outpouring of
the Spirit that struggled with certain sins for
years and I've seen them change and never
go back to the way they were, even
though they wrestled with those things for years
and years.
I've seen God come in a moment of
time and set that person free as they
got hungry for Him.
And in that moment of time they were
so transformed that it meant more to them
than all the previous years of ministry because
they're getting a pure and real dose of
the real thing.
Again, you've got to hear that, that a
lot of what we're ministering is not the
pure and full dose.
You know, if you take some medicine and
you dilute it by 80 or 90 percent,
it'll have almost no effect on the sickness.
So much of what we're giving out is
so diluted because it's coming through diluted and
unconsecrated vessels.
So much is coming through a diluted understanding
that is compromised with the world that we
don't really have the medicine that's going to
cure the sickness of our society.
They're getting it in diluted, watered down form.
Real revival, you get a real dose of
the real thing and that's one of the
reasons why other religious people get so upset
because you're telling them that they're diluted, that
they've mixed with the world.
You're telling them that this is the real
thing.
Even if you don't open your mouth, when
you start to get the results of God,
when you start to see the real thing
unfolding in front of you and it's happening
in your life, it's happening in your family,
it's happening in your community, the community next
to you where it's not happening has two
choices.
They can either say, hey, we want what
you have.
Even though we've judged you in the past
and put you down, we recognize you have
something we don't and we want it.
Or you guys are wrong.
What you have is not really God.
What you have is just the flesh or
it's just the devil.
Whenever someone succeeds in something that you've been
working at and you can't succeed, you have
two choices.
One is to say, hey, you got something
I don't have.
Tell me how.
And the other is to judge that person
and say it's not real, it's not genuine.
When real revival comes, you'll see people change
that you've given up hope for.
You'll see people that you prayed for and
nothing happened.
The breakthrough will take place and there it
is, they're transformed.
You'll see areas where the gospel's been preached
and preached and preached and preached with no
effect and revival comes and suddenly thousands are
coming, swarming, flocking to hear the good news
and to be born again.
I remember during the outpouring in that church
in 8283, that one man, the first week
after he was immersed in the Spirit and
set free from various sins, he said he
prayed more in that first week than in
all his previous five years as a believer
put together.
Now that's negative and positive.
The negative is, can you imagine how little
he prayed those five years?
If you could add it all up and
it didn't even add up to what you
could do in a week.
The positive is, look at what God did.
Look at the depth of that change.
Look at the effects in his life.
So revival is absolutely supernatural and God glorifying
no flesh glories in its presence.
Revival brings an overwhelming revelation of the holiness
of God and the sinfulness of man.
Revival has life-transforming effects on those who
are touched and there are life-giving effects.
This is the fourth major characteristic that I'm
giving you.
It has life-giving effects on society as
a whole.
I said that before but I need to
say it again.
There are two main reasons why it affects
the society as a whole.
One reason is people get saved.
If you had 500 people sinning yesterday and
300 got saved, you only have 200 left
sinning the next day.
Recently in the D.C. area with all
of the murder acceleration taking place and all
the bloodshed, primarily drug wars, one of the
big drug kingpins was arrested and the murder
rate dropped a little bit because he was
a key guy.
He was either instigating it or people were
after him, whatever the case was.
But when you got him out of the
way, it cut it down.
When you break the force of a spiritual
strong man, a spiritual kingpin, a satanic agent,
that also lessens crime in an area.
But I just say common sense would tell
you that if you had all these people
buying drugs from somebody and now the person
is no longer there, the connection isn't there
and half the people buying drugs aren't there
anymore, the crime rate's going to drop.
It just would tell you naturally that there's
going to be less rape and there's going
to be less murder and there's going to
be less stealing and everything else.
Various revivals in the past, the effect on
society was so great that, for example, judges
wore white gloves because they had no more
cases to try.
You could just see the whole society, drunkenness,
goes way down because the people are getting
saved.
Now you say, well, I've seen people get
saved and it doesn't seem to affect the
community as a whole.
Well, that's because so few have gotten saved.
You haven't had whole towns coming, whole cities
coming.
And a second reason is that they haven't
been saved to the bone, they haven't been
saved to the core.
Sure, they'll make it into heaven, but they're
not impacting anyone with their lives.
They're not challenging anyone with their lives.
But revival will transform the society as a
whole.
You had policemen starting quartets, gospel quartets, because
there was so little crime to fight on
the streets.
You have one of the most famous examples
in the Welsh revival at the beginning of
this century.
It largely began among coal miners.
The central vehicle that God used was a
former coal miner named Evan Roberts, who had
a so-called scorched Bible.
He always had his Bible by his side.
It was always in the Word whenever he
had an opportunity.
But what happened was there was an explosion
in the mine.
Several of the miners were killed and his
Bible had a few pages scorched and he
kept that.
That was his special Bible.
But what happened was that the coal mining
industry almost shut down for a while.
It came to a real standstill because they
had to retrain the horses.
Because the coal miners would give orders to
the horses with total profanity.
They'd curse.
They'd use every kind of expression known to
man that was ungodly.
Now they got saved and they were speaking
to the horses properly and the horses didn't
know how to respond.
You have to realize that for a horse
the command, Go, you know if you said
it in Hebrew, Lech, or you said, Go,
or you could say to the horse, Stop,
when you wanted it to go, it doesn't
understand words.
It's just commands.
You could say, Hello, and that could mean
go.
So just because you're telling the horse to
go and do this and that, if it
doesn't understand the commands, it's not going to
act.
So they had to retrain the horses.
You're talking in effect on the society as
a whole.
And the other reason that revival will have
an impact on the society as a whole
is that the fear of God in general
will return to the society because of the
godly standards of the people of God.
The greatest indictment, it's been said, and it's
true, the greatest indictment on the body, on
the church, in the United States, in our
generation, is not that we have been attacked
or argued with, but that we have been
ignored.
I mean, picture you're standing there trying to
defend somebody.
There's somebody behind you and you're saying, If
you want to touch them, you've got to
get to me first.
And they just walk past you and ignore
you.
What an insult to your strength.
There is no fear of God in our
society.
There is no sense of law-breaking.
Let me explain this.
When we were in Israel, we were just
watching on our first trip over there on
the plane, and we got a sense of
rebellion from many of the people, that they
were law-breakers.
When we went over to Italy, the sense
we had was of lawlessness.
A lot of the sins come out the
same, the flesh comes out the same, but
there was a difference.
One was lawless, the other was law-breaking.
One was saying, We're doing it this way.
We're doing it this way.
I don't care what standards you put up.
We're doing it this way.
You see, in Israel, even if people don't
like it, they still have a biblical heritage
that they've learned.
They still understand basic principles of God's law.
They were taught those things in school just
growing up, just using the Bible.
And then you've got the Orthodox Jews arguing
for righteousness, righteousness according to rabbinic tradition, and
saying, You can't do this on the Sabbath.
You can't do this, and this is wrong,
and that's wrong, and they're a loud and
vocal voice.
So people are saying, We're doing what we're
doing anyhow.
We don't accept that stuff.
When we were in Italy, it was just
a different sense.
Actually, I know less about Italy than Israel,
but there was a sense of lawlessness, just
a society that hadn't been confronted with the
righteousness of God, hadn't been confronted with the
Word.
Well, it's understandable.
With the Roman Catholic Church being pervasive in
the society, and everybody's a Catholic, but they
can do whatever they want to do, there's
no realization of the truth of God or
the Word of God or the fear of
God.
So it says in Romans 4, where there's
no law, there's no transgression.
Where there's no law, Romans 4, 15, there's
no breaking of the law.
Well, people go around in our society doing
whatever in the world they want, killing each
other, performing all kinds of abominable acts on
men and women and children, the abortion rate
and everything else without any conviction.
Why?
Because there's no law.
There's no standard of righteousness.
Why is there no standard of righteousness?
Because the believers have compromised with the world.
Because we've retreated.
You see, when you have people out, for
example, picketing abortion clinics and saying, you're going
to have to put me in jail before
you can get in here and kill your
baby.
All of a sudden, people are confronted with
something.
See, there's a standard of righteousness that's being
espoused.
When believers across the country stop watching smart
and garbage on their televisions, then people are...
they're confronted with righteousness.
When people that you work with are clearly
living in sin and you look them in
the eye in love and say, you need
to stop that.
It's going to kill you.
Jesus died to set you free.
You're hurting yourself.
People are all of a sudden confronted with
reality.
What do we do?
We just blend.
We're indistinguishable from the rest of the world.
We're having almost no impact on the society
around us.
We are supposed to be the salt of
the earth and the light of the world.
God's light is going to shine through us.
The light is shining very dimly in our
country with all these believers that we bring
so little conviction.
You have to say the light of God
is shining very dimly.
When revival comes everywhere, all over, when I
say everywhere, I mean everywhere you go.
People are talking.
People are here.
Do you hear about this?
Do you know about this?
They're being confronted.
They're being shaken.
Their religious excuses are falling by the wayside
and they're wrestling with the fear of God
and the conviction of God.
So revival will have an effect on society
as a whole.
If it doesn't get out of the church
walls, so to say, it isn't revival.
And if you think of true revival contrasted
with recent superficial revivals, there was a great
revival of God's healing power in 1947 to
58 in the years often given for that.
But what happened to the vessels?
Adultery, alcoholism, grief, corruption, gluttony, disunity.
Where was the reality of God?
Well, His power to heal was there, but
the healing revival ended with a whole lot
of reproach and many of the great and
famous names never made it out of it.
Or they made it out scarred, wounded.
We talk about the great revival of faith
teaching.
Thank God for it.
Thank God for the truth of it.
But the fact of the matter is you
hear about more quote faith pastors falling into
adultery than any other denomination or group I've
ever heard of.
Why?
Because the character was bypassed.
Because people were like given a gun.
A little child was given a gun.
Look at all the power you have.
Then they thought there was somebody because they
were shooting this gun.
But the heart was never changed.
The character was never changed.
That's not real revival.
It's a revival of a specific truth or
a certain aspect.
It's not real revival.
One man said if you want revival you
must teach on the gifts of the Holy
Spirit.
Well, I can accept that only if that
means teach on the gifts of the Holy
Spirit capital H, capital O, capital L, capital
Y and emphasize the person of the Holy
Spirit because he'll come and clean house before
he starts manifesting gifts.
The fellow who said it said it meaning
no, you just teach about the gifts and
the manifestations and that'll break out the power.
We don't need the power.
We need to change your heart first.
We've seen what the power has done without
the heart change.
So we've had these quote revivals and people
all stirred up and excited and blessed but
it hasn't changed society.
It hasn't increased the fear of God in
the eyes of the American people.
It hasn't had a deep lasting effect on
the people involved.
Man has been able to get glory and
praise and honor for it.
It hasn't confronted people with a holy God.
Because of that we have to say we
need revival and we haven't seen revival.
Just this last point.
I don't know if it's just me or
if it's everywhere but the last few months
in particular the last few weeks I've just
felt something totally different in the air.
It's as if more and more people are
recognizing something is drastically wrong.
I mean things that you went on doing
for years and you felt okay doing going
to services and that you just say wait,
wait, wait something is drastically wrong.
And you look at all the man centered
stuff and our great gospel enterprise and it's
just the more I look the more I
just start to get glimpses of what God
wants to do I say man I mean
we are almost all wrong with very little
right mixed in between it.
I'm not indicting any person I'm saying us,
we.
I mean you look around.
You hear about movings of God in other
parts of the world or some of the
outpouring of the spirit in China that's produced
millions and millions and millions of spiritual believers
most of whom are willing to suffer persecution
for the cross.
Produced that over there and you think man
how would they react to our shows our
gospel shows how would they react to our
to our big presentations and the great man
or the great woman and the exalted person
it would probably boggle their mind.
I don't say they're walking in judgment towards
us their hearts may be purer than doing
that.
But I'm saying we can look at ourselves
and do what 1 Corinthians 11 says judge
ourselves that we won't come under judgment.
We have to look around and say OK
it's clear we need revival we haven't had
the real thing.
God what's it going to take for us
to see true and real revival in our
days.
Let's just stop and pray for a minute.
Lord God our father our savior and our
king we ask you Lord God with the
seeds that have been planted here to stir
us and provoke us and take hold of
us and move us higher into the realm
that you are speaking about.
In the name of Yeshua your son Amen.
What time is it?
We're just going to take a five minute
break.