All of the materialism, all of the getting
rich on the gospel mentality has nothing to
do with the revelation of the righteousness of
God and is devoid of it.
When the revelation of God's righteousness comes in,
all the corruption, you know what you do?
You do the same thing that Jesus did.
You go into the temple of God and
destroy those things that are just out to
make a buck.
I've read to you the first class about
the moving of God in 1857 on children
in Ulster and how God just supernaturally swept
down, well, in 1904 in Wales, revival under
Evan Roberts that we mentioned.
There were also supernatural sweepings, movings of God.
You know, at other times there are accounts
of ships coming to a port and as
they got near a port, everybody on the
boat getting saved.
There was a divine influence.
There was so much prayer going up.
The angels of God were there that something
just clicked and all of a sudden people
started getting saved all over the place.
Well, Evan Roberts had prayed.
He saw a vision of hell.
He got an overwhelming vision of hell.
He had prayed for about 12 or 13
years continually, just as a boy growing up
for God to send revival to Wales.
But he had seen an incredible vision of
hell and of people falling through that door
and being lost forever.
And he prayed, he prayed that God would
give one year that he would spare people
sinking down to hell for one year, kind
of just stop it and give everybody in
the country a supernatural opportunity to be saved.
And within that first year's revival, one hundred
thousand people in Wales were born again with
no organization, no one group or church taking
credit for it.
And Evan Roberts just participating, just going from
meeting to meeting, but not being the central
person because it was happening all over the
place.
Let me read you a description as Frank
Bartleman describes what was taking place in Wales.
And there are many, many, many descriptions.
An English eyewitness of the revival in Wales
wrote such real travail of soul for the
unsaved.
I have never before witnessed.
I have seen young Evan Roberts convulsed with
grief and calling on his audience to pray.
Don't sing, he would exclaim.
It's too terrible to say this was known
as the singing revival when they asked him,
could it come to England?
He said, could you sing?
But here, you know, the power of God,
the conviction would be too great to don't
sing.
And a little quote from Bartleman conviction has
often been lifted from the people by too
much singing.
A revivalist in Wales in the previous century,
in the late 1800s named Richard Owens, would
not close the meetings with a with a
hymn because he felt it lessened the conviction
that the word left.
But we like to leave people feeling happy
and up and devoid of all conviction.
Well, that's what we do.
You know, the word comes forth and people
are struck by it, and then we have
to change pace so they don't get too
heavy and weighed down and serious.
They may actually go out and change if
they do.
Another writer declared it was not the eloquence
of Evan Roberts that broke men down, but
his tears.
He would break down, crying bitterly for God
to bend them in an agony of prayer.
The tears coursing down his cheeks, his whole
frame writhing.
Strong men would break down and cry like
children.
Women would shriek.
A sound of weeping and wailing would fill
the air.
Evan Roberts and the intensity of his agony
would fall in the pulpit, while many in
the crowd often fainted.
Now, some would say, well, it was a
very emotional revival.
Well, it was it was not characterized by
emotionalism.
In other words, it was not worked up
in the flesh or driven on by human
frenzy, but there was a lot of outbreak
of emotion in the midst of it.
And that's perfectly appropriate and right and understandable.
Just take this one element, revival brings back
truth, revival brings us into a clear picture
of things.
If there's anything that we are deficient in
in terms of understanding, it is our recognition
of eternity.
Yes, God's concerned with this world.
Yes, God wants to bless us in this
world and take care of us.
But we have almost no revelation.
And I say that those words with premeditation,
not just off the cuff.
We have almost no revelation of eternity.
We have almost no revelation of hell.
I mean, when I've prayed for revelation of
hell, I pray carefully, I say, God, give
me the burden that I'm able to handle,
because if we could actually recognize for a
moment that right now, as we're talking, people
are being lost forever, we would we collapse
under the weight of it.
We'd have a nervous breakdown.
We go crazy or we just drop dead
from the stress of it.
And what we've done, we know it's good
to witness to people.
We know we're supposed to witness to people.
We know it's good to share with people.
We know God wants us to we know
they can have a better life, we feel
somehow obligated to we know it'll help our
spirituality if we do.
That's the one that really gets us going.
It'll bless us if we do.
That's our great motivator.
But I mean, seriously, think about when have
you ever heard a message on hell?
When's the last time you heard a message
on hell that had you shaking in your
seat because people were going there and that's
where we would have gone without God.
Have you ever had something happen, you almost
got killed or someone close to you almost
got killed or something terrible almost happened, and
you know, the fear was so great trying
to grip you, you know, so and so
is going to drown or this or that,
and the fear tried to grip you and
take over.
Thank God nothing happened.
Well, you can think back to it and
still feel that lying spirit of fear trying
to attack.
You know, that could have been me.
I could have been lost.
I could have been dead.
Or my brother or sister could have died
and you still feel the reality of how
close it came.
Well, there's something about hell.
I don't know if we even realize the
reality of the fact we were ransomed from
it, rescued from it.
We could have been lost forever.
When Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God, which
brought about the so-called first Great Awakening,
you say, I thought it happened spontaneously.
It did.
Almost everybody in the congregation was unsaved.
Nobody was expecting this or touting this is
the big revival meetings are about to break.
He was just coming to bring the sermon
that Sunday because he was so nearsighted, he
had to hold the manuscript close to him
as he read his sermons monotone.
No flesh can glory in that.
And as he preached about Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God, even if we
wouldn't preach it exactly the same way today.
As he preached that message, people unconsciously began
to grip onto the seats and the pews
because they felt that they were at any
moment going to slip into hell when he
talked about sinners dangling over the precipice and
they could be gone at any moment, people
began to shriek and grab hold of the
pillars of the building and cry out to
God.
And that's how the first Great Awakening in
this country began in the 1700s.
That reality that gripped Evan Roberts was the
thing that fueled one of the key things
that fueled the revival, the reality of heaven
and hell.
That alone will cause us to get up
and leave everything and do something for God.
And that alone will show how much our
society really is secular and materialistic and this
world oriented.
You know, you look at the fanatical Iranians.
And how, I mean, with Khomeini's death, several
people killed in the in the crush of
people running to get nearest coffin and the
fanaticism of their hatred for the United States
and all these other things.
And it's crazy.
It's wild.
But the reason it really stands out is
because most of the rest of the world
is so secular.
That we expect more normal behavior from them
now, it's plain fanaticism, it's demonic, there's nothing
of God in it, but there is a
reality of the religious life to them, which
is the way we're supposed to be.
In other words, we're supposed to take our
faith as seriously as they take theirs, not
with demonic frenzy and fanaticism, but just as
seriously.
They they're absolutely, totally sure that they are
serving Allah and that the rest of the
nations that oppose it are satanic.
I mean, that's how they're living their whole
lives and they're changing their whole society.
They've paid with with tons and tons of
blood for it, but that's just a regular
religious attitude, regular religious behavior by people who
take their religion seriously.
Again, not the blood, the frenzy, the demonic
part, but the intensity of conviction.
Well, what about some other nations of the
world?
Things are happening in China.
It's said that the three week period in
China, more people are getting saved than in
the entire history of the Book of Acts.
Stories are commonplace, like one about this this
girl who was riding on her bicycle, a
guy jumped out of the road and tried
to rape her.
And I don't know if she preached or
rebuked him.
I forget that element, but he just froze
exactly where he was, couldn't move, froze.
And she drove into town on her bicycle,
got other people from her town who were
believers, went back and he was still there
frozen.
And they led him to the Lord.
He repented and just revival broke out in
the town.
You know, you're talking in historic periods of
time in different nations, revival breaking to the
point that whole towns, whole communities, whole cities
turn and repent and get right with God.
There's an account in India.
The turn of this century.
That Bartleman records.
And a girl's home.
About 20 girls went into a trance at
one time and became unconscious of this world
for hours, some for three or four days.
During that time, they sang, prayed, clapped their
hands, rolled about or sat still.
When they became conscious, they told of seeing
a throne in heaven, a white robe throng
and a glory so bright they could not
bear it.
Soon the whole place was aflame.
School had to be suspended.
They forgot to eat or sleep and whole
nights and days were absorbed in prayer.
The spirit was poured out upon one of
the seeking girls in the night, her companion
sleeping next to her awoke and seeing fire
envelop her, ran across the dormitory and brought
a pail of water to dash upon her
in less than an hour.
Nearly all the girls in the compound were
weeping, praying and confessing their sins.
Many of these girls were invested with a
strange, beautiful and supernatural fire.
And again, as I'm sharing a lot of
these accounts tonight, just another from Prattany beginning
on page 176 here, another girl's home.
This was for young prostitutes that they'd taken
in and were ministering to.
And here's how it's described.
It was so starving and dreadful.
I can use no other word that details
escape me.
Soon the whole upper half of the church
was on its face on the floor, crying
to God, each boy and girl, man and
woman oblivious of all others.
The sound was like the sound of waves
or strong wind in the trees.
Their hurricane of prayer continued for over four
hours.
They passed like four minutes for the next
two weeks.
They gave themselves to the word in prayer,
counseling around the clock.
Almost the whole compound got saved.
It deeply, deeply affected the village.
And then over onto the next page, great
outpouring in Asia.
During Christian instruction by George and Sarah Boardman,
Judson, Adonai Judson's helpers, the Karen seemed spiritually
dense until they began to teach her about
the Bible.
This is a tribe's person called the Karen,
and he and his people claim to worship
you are the true God, however it was
pronounced.
See, there's this remnant of the recognition of
the true God of Israel among peoples and
nations from all over, obviously from the time
after the flood as human knowledge and the
reality of God spread, there was this loss
in culture.
So they began to talk about the Bible
and all of a sudden this guy's eyes
began to be open.
Astonishingly, the Karen recognized the legendary lost book
telling about his own people's unknown God, you
are, which he believed had arrived in Burma,
full of excitement and destiny.
The Karen became a prophetic evangelist and eventually
entire Karen villages would respond to his ministry.
By 1858, there were tens of thousands of
Karen Christians, all missionary minded.
They went in turn to their neighbors, the
coaching, and within the next century, some two
hundred fifty thousand coaching were converted.
Ralph Mahoney shares that when he was over,
I believe it was in Malaysia.
He was sharing they were having a indigenous
missions training conference, in other words, the native
leaders in the different countries were being trained
and equipped for spiritual warfare and ministry.
And they would go out and not see
the people again for a couple of years.
Then they'd come back and have another one
of these conferences.
I believe it was Malaysia, the specific country
doesn't really matter, but he shared that he
had come back two years later and one
man came to him with a massive problem.
He was equipped and trained in the spiritual
warfare, spiritual equipping leaders seminar, and then went
deep, deep, deep into the bush where it
would take hours and hours first driving and
then walking and climbing into the jungle areas
of his country.
And he went in and for nine months
went into towns and preached to the Muslim
villagers every day about Jesus and town after
town, put him out, put him out, put
him out.
He slept many nights in the jungle with
wild animals, but would not turn back.
He knew he wasn't defeated until he acknowledged
defeat.
Finally, after nine months, an old Muslim man
received the Lord.
And the only thing this fellow knew is
the way he was baptized.
Someone just poured water over him.
So he took like a coconut as the
only liquid that they had and broke the
thing open and poured it over the guy.
And the guy is as the as the
juice just went over him, began to speak
in tongues.
And that began the pattern that broke when
he saw Ralph Mahoney, there were something around
twenty thousand people.
I think the figure is higher, but I
don't want to exaggerate about twenty thousand people
that in that subsequent almost year and a
half of ministry had come to the Lord
through his preaching.
The thing just snapped nine months by himself
being an outcast for the gospel, sleeping in
the jungle with wild animals, preaching, not turning
back, declaring the simple message things finally broke.
He was getting hundreds and hundreds saved every
single week.
And he said, I don't know what to
do with all the people.
That's revival when that breaks, when the things
begin to happen, when the reality of God
bursts through, when we experience the things we've
always read about and talked about.
But our attitude here has to be first
to examine where we are at right now.
What is the state of the body in
our country?
That's what we're responsible for.
What is the state of our own congregation
and assembly?
What is the state of our own lives?
We've got to look at that and we've
got to see the biblical norm.
We've got to say, God, take the blinders
off my eyes, take anything off my eyes
that's hindering my vision.
I just want to see what your word
says.
I just want to see what your word
says.
What's reality?
Look at the patterns of great movings of
God in the past.
These are real things.
It's often said if you weren't there, you
never could have believed the things that were
so astonishing and so intense and so overwhelming.
If you weren't physically there, you would have
said it's impossible when someone told you the
accounts.
Yet these are all things that God did.
You said, how could it be that shows
how little we've experienced?
We've got to look at what God's done
in the past.
We've got to look at the current state
and we've got to come to an absolute
firm conclusion that we need a revival in
our day and in our society.
You say, well, is revival the norm?
Do you live in constant revival?
No, revival gets you back to where you're
supposed to be and then you continue to
build in the regular pattern.
But more happens in revival than in all
the years of labor otherwise, because at that
point, the changing, the intensifying, the transforming is
so great that there's no stopping it.
You know, you could walk slowly for 10
years.
Or you could go at the speed of
light for one second and you'll travel a
whole lot more in one second.
So revival is something we need to get
us back to where we should be.
It's not something we live in continually, because
if you lived in a continually, you wouldn't
need it.
Revival presupposes declension, as we often quote Finney's
words, revival presupposes things have died, things are
out of order, things have been lost.
They must be revived and restored and brought
back.
So if you're walking in that, you do
not need revival, but you must continue.
And human nature is such that what we
do is we have a high point and
then we get lazy and complacent.
And before we know it, the revival is
just a story that we're talking about, the
good old days.
And then before you know it, it's something
that your grandfather talked about.
And then before you know it, you're deceived
into thinking that you're experiencing it when nothing's
happening.
So we're going to look at some of
the signs that revival is needed.
And then some of the signs as to
when a revival can be expected in the
next classes.
And then from there, we'll look at some
of the specific elements that make revival, the
things to expect, the things that must take
place in our lives, the things that we
must do to see revival come in our
days.
And let's let the words of Habakkuk three
to be our prayer, our heart desire, Lord,
we've heard of your fame, we stand in
awe of your deeds, renew them in our
day, the Hebrews in the midst of years,
in other words, just right here and now
where we live.
Renew them, make them known, may there be
a manifestation of the acts of God that
we've heard about in our day and age
and wrath, because certainly the wrath of God
is upon this country.
Certainly, you've got to stop and even think
of some of our great natural beauty beginning
to get attacked.
The massive forest fires in the best known
national park in the United States, what's happening?
They never expected anything to go so big
and so great as it did, millions and
millions of acres lost.
And then one of the great frontiers of
America, beautiful wildlife, the oil spill in our
history takes place over there, you have to
see what's going on, our beautiful land is
getting defiled.
Scripture says that when all types of abominations
are performed in a country that the land
itself vomits them out, there's certainly wrath and
judgment.
But in the midst of that, God, remember
mercy and pour out your spirit and send
a revival.
When I hear people say revival is here
in the midst of revival in the United
States, I said, I know what they mean.
They're having a great service and they're all
excited and they just got testimonies from 20
different groups of good things happening.
But that ain't revival.
There's a hunger, there's a cry, there's a
stirring, there's a recognition we're on the right
path.
God's ready to move.
But let's open our hearts, let's get our
vision set and let's be vehicles and vessels
of revival started in us.
That's got to be our prayer.
Lord, we thank you for your goodness.
We thank you for a revelation and for
the opening of our hearts and minds.
We pray that you would start a true
revival in our hearts and lives and that
you would be glorified in Jesus name.
Amen.