01.61. Excerpt20 - The Imperatives - Revival

Excerpt20 - The Imperatives - Revival

"True revival," said dear Dr. Tozer,
"changes the moral
climate of a community." Wet-eyed, heart-broken
revivalists produce wet-eyed, heart-broken sinners at the
feet of a holy God. The evangelism of the last twenty-five years has been the
most costly in history. High-powered methods have needed
high-powered men with high salaries to get them to
function. Revival never cost a penny.
It is the Lord’s doing and is marvelous in our eyes! This generation,
rapidly sinking in a morass of materialism
and swept by a blizzard of Satanic cults,
can only be rescued from total loss
by a heaven-sent, Spirit-born revival. Here in the United States we live like kings
compared to millions in other lands. Our
greatest danger is not even moral, bad as that
is, but spiritual. Prophets, as I have said and
written so often, are God’s emergency men
crisis hours. They thrive on perplexity,
override adversity, defeat calamity, bring the new
wine of the Kingdom to burst the withered
wineskins of orthodoxy, and birth REVIVAL.
Let no Christian’s heart fall him because it
seems that the enemy has come in like a flood,
that the voice of the prophet is not heard in the
land. God has His men hidden. They will come
forth without price tags; with nothing to sell,
nothing to propagate but
"holiness unto the Lord." WHAT IS REVIVAL?
Revival is the act of the Spirit upon believers
who have lost their first love.
Revival is the restoration of true doctrine.
Revival is the rekindling of the power of
prayer in individuals and in groups.
Revival is seeing that God must be vindicated
either by His mercy in pardoning - or by judgment!
Revival is the ascendancy of the spiritual over
the material.
Revival is the Spirit’s passion within the
believer to know and to obey the total will of God.
Revival is the willingness to forsake all, that
God might be all in all to the individual and
to the Church.
Revival is the "no-time-limit" operation of God
on the saints,
resulting in a moving of God
among the sinners.
Revival is the redeemed sobbing with broken
hearts over a nation of broken lives from
breaking the commandments of God.
Revival is not a luxury, but a necessity for our
nation;
not an alternative, but an imperative. 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 the nation at this given
moment is a FAMINE OF THE HEARING OF
THE WORDS OF GOD (Amos 8:11). I am sure that the main reason we do not have
a national revival beginning with personal
revival is that we are content to live without it. Will the economy have to break down before
God can break through and revival break out? The discord in our disjointed society is not
because of the generation gap, but because of
the regeneration gap. "They that wait upon the Lord renew their
strength."
They that wait upon men usually dissipate
their energies. America could be transformed in one day if
every professing Christian would live the Bible
concept of Christianity for twenty-four hours. The dislocation of the status quo
socially and religiously
is guaranteed when spiritual revival breaks. Apostolic purity, Apostolic piety, and
Apostolic power are the need for today. The law of revival is simply this:
Going- weeping- bearing (seed);
Coming- rejoicing- bringing (sheaves).
(Psalms 126:6) Can a polluted source birth a clean stream?
Can wrong men lead a nation right?
Can politicians who break divine laws
establish civil laws
and demand obedience to them? John Baptist did not raise a dead person.
He did more - he raised a dead nation and a
dead generation. A proof that misery and sadness are endemic
in the human race is that we need a host of
comedians to try to raise a laugh. At his expulsion from Eden, man took the
wrong turn,
and he has been on the wrong road ever since. We have been spiritually satisfied with so little
for so long-
when there is so much land for us to possess! Today there seem to be no recognized limits
governing personal behavior. The password
seems to be: do what you want, with whom
you want, where you want, when you want. If our nation has to break down materially in
order that God may break through and revival
break out, is the Church mature enough to
welcome this? Revival, like charity, begins at home. Holiness teaching contradicted
by unholy living is the bane of this hour. God’s problem today is not Communism, nor
yet Romanism, nor liberalism, nor modernism,
nor humanism.
God’s problem is dead fundamentalism America needs a Joan of Arc. The British need
another Boadicea to wage war on her immorality.
Both nations need another Jeremiah to
weep over their sins, another John the Baptist
to call them to repentance, and another Elijah
to bring fire down from heaven that the multitude
may cry again, "The LORD, He is God!
The LORD, HE is God!" We go down to our knees, or we go down to oblivion. We have labored in the flesh too long.
We have interpreted success by material gain -
bigger buildings for our churches, bigger
crowds for our hearers, bigger offerings,
as proofs of His favor. We have had pygmy
preachers too long. God, give us giants! We
have had promoters too many. Lord, send us
revivalists! We have played evangelism with
a hundred gimmicks. Lord, give us, in this dark
hour of human history, some John the Baptists
to burn and shine, some Knox to say,
"Give me Scotland (or England, or America), or
I die!" Maybe, nay, surely we need ten days in an
Upper Room or maybe more suitable for us a
basement to mourn the departed glory, to
apologize for our arrogance in preaching so
long without a NATIONAL revival. The last revival mentioned in the Old
Testament is found in the book of the prophet Joel.
He proclaimed a solemn feast and said, "Let
the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep
between the porch and the altar." Well, let’s
face it, who weeps anymore? Before Jesus comes I am convinced that we
will see a great, sweeping Pentecost that will
out-Pentecost Pentecost. God will pour out
His Spirit on all flesh, as Joel said. Our sons
and daughters will prophesy. God will produce
a race of spiritual giants for the last
mighty ingathering. Today God has these
leaders hidden, but in the great Day of the Lord
He will bring them to light, and the last shall
be first. I pray that day will come soon. Let the Church live again with holy passion
and America will be reborn.
THERE IS NO OTHER DOOR OF HOPE. God said, "I will pour out my Spirit upon all
flesh.... BEFORE the great and terrible day of
the Lord come." (Acts 2:17; Acts 2:20) If it is true
that greater is He that is in us than he that is
in the world, and it is true; if it is true that
the gates of hell shall not prevail against His
church, and it is true; then what have we to fear? Spiritual and moral revolution is only possible
to men whose "eyes have seen the glory of the
coming of the Lord!"