I believe a door can have much significance
to it.
The front door of your house often says
a lot about what's on the inside.
I remember a castle-like house whose front
door was imported iron from Spain and it
weighed well over a hundred pounds and cost
over five thousand dollars just for the front
door of that magnificent house.
A door also carries the significance of a
reality.
A door is one of two things.
It's either closed or open.
You are either shut outside it or let
inside by it depending on how well you
know the owner.
And I look around today at the moral
chaos in our society and the spiritual declension
in the church and I see very plainly
a large closed door.
We operate today in the church in the
west beneath a closed heaven.
We haven't seen real genuine revival in America
in over 160 years.
God has shut the door, removed his presence
from amongst us because the churches in America
used to run on the power of prayer
and by God's spirit.
But we figured out a long time ago
it was quicker to get the job done
by money and manpower.
So we became a self-reliant church and
God has left us to our own devices
and you can see where that has gotten
us.
The title of my message today friends is
the four doors of revival and I think
it's one of the most important messages I've
ever preached.
I've been on the battlefront for God for
many years now and I know what it's
like to experience the power of God in
a meeting.
I've seen the faces of a congregation before
me so altered with solemnity and conviction and
alarm that it looked just like a cannonball
had been shot down the center aisle of
that church.
I've seen God show up in his manifest
presence and alter not only the life of
a church but the life of a community.
But I long for a national revival.
I've been in church for over 60 years
and I've seen the sad spiritual decline fall
over our churches like a thick black plague.
I want to talk about the path to
revival because friends if we don't see a
national awakening in this land we won't have
a nation to live in.
America will be regulated to the ash heap
of history just like ancient Rome and ancient
Greece who were both titans of their times,
titans of their civilizations and who both imploded
upon themselves in utter annihilation.
I'm going to read you a familiar passage
of scripture and please do not allow your
familiarity with it to deaden you to it.
God makes a declaration in 2 Chronicles 7
13 where he says if I shut up
heaven that there be no rain or if
I command the locusts to devour the land
or if I send pestilence among my people.
Let me pause here friends to ask a
couple of questions.
In our churches today are we living beneath
a closed heaven and the withdrawn presence of
God?
Is there a pestilence among the people today
that just won't go away?
Now you can answer those two questions any
way you want to and come out with
an opinion on the state of things in
this country.
I've learned that almighty God never places his
people in a jam without a divine purpose
behind it and he has a way to
lead them out of that trouble.
I'm going to list the four doors to
revival and you can listen to me or
not listen to me.
You can agree with me or not agree
with me.
I'm not here to gain your approval.
I'm here to wake you out of your
spiritual stupor.
I'm going to read our text for today
and then like we say in the south
I'm going to give you the oil straight
from the can.
Here now is the word of God and
may the spirit of the Lord attend the
reading of his holy word.
If my people which are called by my
name shall humble themselves and pray and seek
my face and turn from their wicked ways
then will I hear from heaven and will
forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Well first we have to make some assumptions
here.
God is saying if we do some things
then he will do some things but if
we fail or choose not to do those
things then he won't do a thing.
He won't even hear us much less heal
us.
Do you hear what I'm talking about friends?
Let me ask you friend does our land
need healing?
Do our churches need the presence of God?
This passage speaks of four closed doors that
the stiff-necked people of God are unwilling
to pass through.
For whatever reason they just won't do it.
I think things have gotten so desperate, so
deplorable, so disgusting, so disturbing, so degenerate that
it's time we did the stated things or
we will implode as a nation just like
corrupt ancient Rome and perverted ancient Greece.
We will join them on the ash heap
of history.
I don't even see where America is mentioned
in my Bible in the end times.
I see Gog and Magog, China and Russia.
What happened to us?
Well let's examine these four closed doors one
at a time.
Door number one is humble themselves.
The first thing the church refuses to do
is to humble herself.
Why?
A self-reliant church is a church out
of step with God.
In Amos we read, can two walk together
except they be agreed?
The answer is no.
God hates pride and lists it with witchcraft.
Our spiritual pride won't allow us to pass
through door number one and we have to
go through this door if we have any
hope of gaining entrance to the other three.
Years ago I was sitting in a hotel
room with Richard Owen Roberts and I said
to him, do you know what mystifies me?
And he said, what mystifies you?
And I said, what mystifies me is the
sleepy headed pastor who refuses to get his
people assembled in the sanctuary of God for
nights of desperation and humility and prayer.
And Richard Owen Roberts said that mystified him
as well.
Does a nuclear bomb have to annihilate one
of our major cities before the people of
God humble themselves before God in nights of
desperation and prayer?
Door number two that the church refuses to
pass through is pray.
When the churches in America killed off the
weekly prayer meeting, they turned off the only
engine they had to operate the church.
That's why so many churches are out of
gas today.
They don't have a clue what corporate prayer
really is.
They think it's a three minute exercise where
you tip your head to God and that's
the end of it.
Rather than laying hold of God and entire
nights of desperation to see answers to prayer,
intercession is a lost art today in our
churches.
We refuse to pray the way God wants
us to because to pray that way means
we just can't have the time.
We just don't have the time.
We're too busy.
But what costs counts and what counts costs
and real intercessory prayer costs something.
The third door the church refused to pass
through is seek my face.
I believe we can have as much of
the Holy Spirit as we want so long
as the Holy Spirit can have as much
of us as he wants.
But the church refuses to pass through this
third door because of the bright light on
the other side.
Imagine you're in a dark room and you
grope for the doorknob and you finally find
it and you open the door.
Suddenly the room is filled with light because
all the bright light on the other side
has passed into the room.
The church refuses to pass through the door
of seeking God because we don't want the
spotlight of the Holy Spirit to expose us
to shine upon our sinful lives.
We just don't want that kind of scrutiny.
We like our little pet sins and want
to keep it that way.
Keep them close to our bosom.
And that leads us directly to the fourth
and final door that the church refuses to
pass through and this is the door of
repentance.
Turn from their wicked ways.
Jesus had a last word to his churches
in the book of Revelation and if you
read it you will see what that word
is and that word is repent.
The proud sin-laden church of today refuses
to admit any wrongdoing a sin because it
feels it has no need to repent.
It just doesn't feel its need and if
you're not going to the doctor for treatment
in a remedy for an illness you won't
go if you don't think you are sick
because thou sayest I am rich and increased
with goods and have need of nothing and
knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable
and poor and blind and naked.