The first word that I would call to
your attention is the word awakening.
Now, strangely, in Psalm 44, verse 23, God
is urged to awaken.
Now that does seem strange, doesn't it?
When we think of the Lord, we think
of one who neither slumbers nor sleeps.
But listen to these words.
Why dost thou sleep, O Lord?
Awake!
Do not reject us forever.
Why dost thou hide thy face and forget
our affliction?
Into the dust our body cleaves to the
earth.
Rise up and be our help for the
sake of thy lovingkindness.
Now, did you ever ask?
It would hardly seem appropriate, would it?
But you see, the psalmist is facing a
time like we're facing, and he's coming at
the issue from a different angle than we're
going to come at.
But because there is no sense of the
presence of God in the society, now,
understanding things the way that we do, we
know it's not because God is asleep that
we're in this trouble as a nation.
But the terrible moral and spiritual decline that
we have been experiencing over the last two
decades is not because God is tired.
Period.
But because God is tired of our sin,
and therefore he has withdrawn not because he
needs rest, but because he cannot tolerate pride
in man.
But this expression, awakening, some of you know
that the term revival and the term awakening
have been used interchangeably.
For instance, during that period, I spoke of
a moment ago, in this country, from 7
,000 years ago, the great awakening.
The same movement of the Spirit of God
was in
the ages.
And yet, while there is some correctness in
the use of the term, and
when we use these terms technically, we're speaking
of two separate things that are destined.
The church needs to be revived.
And the world needs to be awakened.
Right now, the world doesn't know that there
is a holy God, a God of all
majesty and power, a God who always has
his way, a God who is ever
victorious.
Right now, the world is under the impression,
winning, that theirs is, and
you tell them about Christ, and you threaten
them with the judgments of God, and they
don't think you know what you're talking about.
But let an awakening come, and suddenly people
who have no concept of God at all,
and no fear of God, will be alive
to realize that they have offended their own
Creator, and that the one who made them
for his own glory is going to destroy
them, and that the sins with which they
have toyed, and promoted, and enjoyed...
But dear friends, you must understand, no awakening
is going to happen in the world until
first there is a revival in the church.
Because right now, the viewpoint that the...
I believe I mentioned last night that at
the present time, the average person cannot believe
in Christ, because they cannot believe in those
who call themselves Christians.
They see the bickering among the churches.
Some of them work right next to some
loud-mouthed Christian who's always witnessing that their
life is so hollow, so empty, so full
of contradictions, that the man of the world
says, I regard Christianity with contempt.
I would never ever in all my life
let a revival come to the church.
Let the church be restored to the purity
of Christ.
Let the holiness of God descend upon the
church, and then...
of the lives of the church.
But the world won't ask that question.
Has first been revived?
Well, I don't know if you feel a
deep longing for an awakening in the world,
but let me put it to you from
the standpoint of an old man in this
work more than 50 years, traveling incessantly, pleading
with people to heed the word of the
Lord.
And time after time after time, sin congregations
live as they can, unaffected, unshamed.
And all this time preaching everywhere I could,
every time possible, always seeking to pour out
my heart and the truth of the word
of God, and watching our world decline, decline,
decline.
People often say to me, Oh, preacher, don't
you get discouraged?
Somebody said to me since I've been here
in this Seattle area, What good has all
your preaching done?
And humanly speaking, how do I answer?
Well, appearance-wise, I would say no good
at all.
Oh, an occasional person here or there who
seems to be out.
But I tell you, I long for an
awakening.
I've often said to my father, Oh, Father,
if just once I could preach, and every
word would be hung on to, and every
command obeyed, every auditor altered.
Just once, Lord, before I pass from hence,
just once, could I see the response to
the word of God that is always there.
You ever feel that way, preacher?
Longing, longing, longing for people to hear the
word of God.
I frequently read the passage in 1 Thessalonians
2, where Paul is commending.
Wouldn't you love, even if you're not a
preacher, wouldn't you love to live at a
time when every word of God that you
quoted to your family, your friends, Oh,
dear friends, these terms, I
don't know how some people can be excited
by all that noise.
I long for the word of God to
come like a mighty, the force and the
power of which I've spoken, and for the
impact upon lives.
But let me leave the terms revival and
awakening, the word fire.
Now, no doubt, this expression in connection with
revivals is derived, but
oh, the need.
Just take your own personal life.
Do you not frequently mourn before the throne
of grace when you see the chaff in
your own life?
Isn't it astonishing, and doesn't it hurt the
heart to realize that even though we yearn
to be holy, and yearn to walk in
power, that
much of our strength is drained by stuff.
My wife and I, out of necessity, had
to put our home up for sale six
years ago.
And it's a lovely home.
When we bought it, we thought we would
die there, but we had to sell it.
And it was for sale for six years,
and finally it sold last Tuesday.
And we had some advance warning.
I mean, we had a contract, and we
hoped it was going to go through.
So we had to begin to get rid
of stuff.
I'm still in bewilderment at the realization of
how much stuff there was.
I began, when the contract was submitted six
months ago, moving my books, 75,000 of
them, mostly dragged up from the lower level,
carried by this poor old man.
Every day I took a van load down
to our office building.
Then, over the last two months, I had
to deal with my wife's accumulation.
I tell you, it was incredible.
I won't bore you with the details.
And even despite this horrendous experience, oh,
how blessed it would be.
And it's not just our person.
It's about equal in value.
It would be a wonderful blessing.
Now, the world looks at us and they
say, well, I don't think you're any different
from us.
And every once in a while, we have
a good look at ourselves, and we have
to ask, where am I different from the
world?
I'm the only man I know that lived
in a house that occupied 10,000 square
feet.
And when I'm talking about stuff, I'm not
talking about a trunk load.
10,000 square feet filled with stuff.
Oh, at one time, it was all justifiable.
Our offices were there.
Employees were working out of our home.
We needed every inch of that space.
But when we no longer needed it, we
still had it, and then we filled it
with, well, I don't need to use the
word again, the fire of God.
And think about those sins that have plagued
you, going way back.
Secret sins.
Sins that nobody else knows anything about.
Sins that you have groaned over, wept over,
sought to repent of, longed for deliverance, even
knew some nature of divine power over, and
then sooner or later, their ugly head popped
up and said, Oh, no, that's the fire
of God, consuming, besetting sins.
Oh, dear friends, when you're thinking about revival,
don't think about a little flurry of excitement.
Don't think about an intense period.
Think about the fire.
That leads me to draw a contrast that
I think is very urgent.
Now, I don't pretend that I'm the world's
expert on revival, but I do admit I'm
the only man I know that spent his
entire life on this subject, and I do
know I have the largest library in the
world on the subject.
So I'm centered, or word-orientated.
Now, look, we know that we're called to
pray for revival.
What kind of revival have you been praying
for?
Just anything that comes?
Or have you been specific?
If there is a choice, is there not
wisdom in choosing wisely?
If you have the right to aim a
prayer instead of just scattering prayer, is there
not wisdom in aiming the prayer toward the
highest and the best?
Now, perhaps you're not familiar with the terms
I've used, and wouldn't gain enough from my
having said that to know what to spell
out for you.
The difference between an experience-centered revival is
a revival in which the focus is upon
experiences, whereas a word-centered revival
is a revival in which the focus is
upon the word of God.
Now, let me just ask you right off.
Let's pretend this is just most
needed.
Now, to help you to think with me
about these, I'm going to put the question
to you.
Can you illustrate from history a word-centered
revival?
A word-centered revival.
Can you illustrate from history?
In other words, can you name a revival
that was word-centered?
All right, I'm hearing two things.
The Welch Revival, and, well,
I don't want to.
Yes, Wesley Whitfield?
All right, now let's start with this brother
here.
We all are at least familiar with the
term, the problem.
That happened, of course, in the 1500s.
And what does that consist of?
Well, essentially, I'm
not sure you all heard what he said,
but he mentioned Wickliffe.
In the early days of that movement, Luther
himself, he then was used, the Holy Spirit,
at Wittenberg Union.
They didn't feel burdened to encourage.
Now, most of our preachers today spend a
high time
These men preached the great doctrines.
These men, well,
this brother over here, in
the 1500s.
Well, any
notion of what the book might have contained?
It was his prison epistle.
As John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress while in
prison, and Paul the Apostle wrote glorious books
while in
prison, year after year, but
it was an experience-centered revival.
Now, do you think we
need now the last of a series?
Wouldn't you agree, brother, we need the first
of a series, not the last.
Now, we're not predicting the end times.
We don't know when our Lord, he may
come tonight.
It may be a thousand years away.
And in that we don't know when he's
coming, we must think of the little ones.
Do you think of the little ones?
While I'm an old man, I think of
the little ones just about every day.
We moved, as I've said, from our big
house, and we're crammed now into a tiny
little apartment, and we have the joy of
living where our son and his family and
our daughter all live.
And every day, the little ones are around.
When I'm home, they're hanging on to my
leg, they're sitting on my lap, they're breathing
their sweet nothings in my ears.
The little ones.
And for the sake of the little ones,
I have to carry an increasing burden for
revival.
Can I contendedly live in a day of
moral and spiritual decline when the little ones
are clinging to my knee?
Can I say, oh, who cares what happens
when the little ones are under eight?
Must my heart not be stirred with anguish
and concern?
But Lord, please, don't let it be an
experience-centered revival.
Let it be a word-centered revival.
You say, Mr. Roberts, I'm not clear why
you would make that distinction.
Experience-centered revivals are short-lived.
Some of you may be aware of the
fact that somewhere between three and four years
ago, there was a stirring of the Holy
Spirit that began at Howard Payne University down
in Texas.
It was a very legitimate work of God.
University students were greatly moved, and many of
them rushed to the microphone and confessed unbelievably
wicked sins.
I was immediately alert and aware of that
movement, and the week that it was happening,
I was in touch with this man who
God was using in that situation and we
conversed about it.
The next week, another man from Texas called,
and he said to Mr. Roberts, Have you
heard any news from Fort Worth today?
No, I said, Not yet.
He said at Southwestern, the largest theological seminary
in the world, between three and four thousand
students, he said at Southwestern, chapel is still
going on.
It began at ten.
It was then between three and four in
the afternoon.
Deep stirring of the Holy Spirit.
I said, Thank you for calling.
I'm glad for good news.
My son who works with me was standing
nearby, and when I hung the phone up,
he said, Dad, what was that?
Oh, I said, Good news from Texas.
Stirrings of the Spirit at Southwestern.
He said, Dad, give me the phone.
So I handed the phone across the table
to him, and immediately he rang the college,
which is next to our office, and got
one of the professors, and he said, Professor,
do you know what's happening at Southwestern today?
No, I haven't heard anything, said the professor.
Tell me.
So my son passed on the news, and
the professor said, We must get some of
those students from Texas to come to Wheaton
College.
My son said, Dad, we'll be glad to.
So in a week or two, some students
from Texas came up to Wheaton, Illinois, and
the students meet regularly on Sunday
night at about 8.30 after the churches
have had their evening service in what they
call the World Christian Fellowship.
And so these students from Texas spoke at
Wheaton College on a Sunday.
And that meeting, if my memory is correct,
went on until four in the morning.
Deep, deep conviction, powerful stirring.
The administration allowed them to meet again the
next night after 9 o'clock.
And a lot of big, great big trash
bags were brought, and the students confessed to
drug addiction and pornography addiction and immoral deeds
and all kinds of things.
And for four or five days, they met
every night in the bigger auditorium as the
week progressed.
And a powerful, powerful sense of conviction touched
hundreds and hundreds of the students.
But then it was over.
It was a word, or excuse me, an
experience-orientated revival.
It didn't last.
It had good effect.
It was needed.
It was wonderful.
We thank God for it.
But I'll tell you plainly, Wheaton College needs
a word-centered revival.
Within a few weeks of that movement being
over, all the same sins began to appear
again.
And sadly, while it touched students, it didn't
touch faculty.
Now, those of you who know how to
use your brain know that when you have
a university revival and it touches only students,
you have to ask, but if it touches
faculty, then it won't be needed so frequently.
But now, here's my point in telling you
this precious account.
No one on the faculty, I was one
time on the faculty, no one saw the
necessity of preaching.
And so there was no preaching done during
that season of grace.
Later, now listen carefully, later, there were students
who had gone to the microphone and confessed
horrendous sins, who later wrote articles condemning the
movement, saying they had been forward, they had
confessed, but the revival was a fraud, because
they were right back when they wrote in
the sins that they had confessed.
Now, dear friend, you see, now listen, there
is a great difference between confession and repentance,
but the students weren't told that.
It's not fair to expect students to know
that.
Somebody, you see, should have grasped that it
will have many who are touched, who fall
away, and it will not result in major
social...
Now, we live in a time when we
already have with...
As long as you're led to...
When revival comes.
Now, let me tell you what happened in
Wales.
There was this stirring, it had actually begun
in a quiet way in...
We bear the same name, but
Evan wasn't a preacher, he didn't know how.
He didn't have an adequate sense of the
Word of God to preach, and so the
movement focused on experience.
There were wonderful converts, many marvelously revised, and
others awakened and converted.
But the revival of Wales in 1945, now
listen carefully, it was only an interruption of
a downward slide.
Do we need an interruption?
We have been sliding downhill steadily for more
than two decades.
How much help would there be in interrupting
that downward slide for six months?
And then the slide continued.
Oh, dear friend, surely your heart tells you
we need a radical turnaround, and things need
to move up.
And it's the preaching of the Word of
God.
So, if you're in a position of leadership
and the Spirit of God begins to stir,
don't you dare focus on experience.
It's what's happened in Toronto and Pensacola.
There is some preaching, but they are not
what would be called Word-centered movements.
They're experience-centered movements.
There's some validity.
I would never cheapen the word revival to
define what's happening in those places.
It's not what I know our nation needs.
Now, as I said earlier, don't misunderstand.
I'm not saying to you that when there's
great preaching of the Word of God, there
is no experience.
Why, indeed, the most marvelous experiences of all
come directly through this.
As you were preaching, you saw someone come
up.
This dear man shakes his head, and this
brother shakes his head.
Those of us who preach, we watch
people come.
We see sweeping over their faces.
So I
am not urging the abandonment of interest in.
Well, I have not lost track.
And oh, what a precious term.
Oh, I would like to think that every
one of us knows something.
Because there's nothing refreshing but the word fullness
is used in connection with revival.
And oh, how blessed it is to catch
the significance of this.
In seasons of revival, God opens the portals
of heaven, and he begins to pour his
blessings down.
Here's a brother with a large cup.
And the portals open just above, and the
Lord starts.
But the windows of heaven are still filled
to overflowing.
My dear friends, there is depth filled to
overflowing.
And you can't conceive of a where there
is not that overflow of the already filled
cup.
Now the world is never spilled upon out
of our lives by anything other than our
lives contain.
If somebody knocks up against you, and you
spill out of the cup of your life,
you can only spill its contents.
And suppose there's bitterness in the cup.
Suppose you've got some gripe against God himself,
or some grievance with someone in the church.
That's what you're going to spill.
But oh, to be filled with overflowing, with
the fresh graces of Christ.
And then every time we're jostled or knocked,
or poked and spilled, it's the blessings from
it spill.
Another term, I've got to look at my
watch.
Oh, here it is.
I'll finish this this afternoon.
But let me give you one more word.
The word glory.
Glory.
You see, this is a word regularly used
pertaining to revival.
Oh, glory.
I don't know whether you've got all of
our books out on your tables, brother, but
we have put out a book called Filled
the Land.
We have another book entitled Scotland Saw His
Glory.
And all of you can remember that occasion
when Moses had been up on the mountain
with God and the people had complained to
Aaron and he had built the golden calf
and they had sinned wickedly against our Father.
And God said, Now Moses, you get busy
and you lead this people to the place
where I have sent you.
And the Lord said, Moses, I like the
way you do things.
All right, I won't send an angel.
I'll go with you again myself.
And then, full of courage, Moses said, Lord,
show me your glory.
So the Lord says, Come on back to
the mountain.
Moses, stand there in the cleft of the
rock.
Let me cover you.
Oh, all around us are people that know
nothing of the glory of God.
You know that precious psalm that says, The
nearness of God is my good.
My own personal experience throughout life has been
exactly as the psalmist described.
Those precious seasons when God has drawn near
to me, those are the best days.
We run the danger of thinking more lowly,
of accepting inconsequential things in place of what
we really need.
We can with one accord express to you
the conviction that we desperately need revival.
We long for awakening, for fire, for fulness,
for glory.
And we believe that while there are indeed
a series of arguments that we could raise
before you in keeping with your word through
Isaiah, Come now, let us reason together, saith
the Lord.
We could give you a sermon.
But above all the reasons for pleading with
you to send revival, none rises so highly
or takes on such gigantic proportions as the
glory of your own name.
For we are living amongst the pagan people
who if they use your name at all
do so with contempt and evil.
Every day your glorious name is trampled in
the muck and you're treated with disdain.
And we know of nothing that would bring
you greater glory than to pour out your
spirit upon the land in these days so
that our Lord Jesus Christ might be elevated
before all so that every day we
break for lunch, may it be with a
spirit of sobriety and yearning and help us
to come again this afternoon to be stirred
and moved in the direction that will ultimately
bring you the greatest glory through Jesus Christ
our Lord.