The Revival Hymn (Video)

The Church of Jesus Christ is largely sleeping, like a great bedroom. And you have all the Christians in bed, and they're all sleeping. And they're saying, please, don't wake me up. I want to sleep on. And of course, then God starts to operate a revival. People cannot sleep. You can't sleep in church. But the Spirit of God awakes the people. Look at the first verse of this 52nd chapter. Awake! Awake! Put on strength! Wake it up, you sleeping Christians! Awake, all the sleepers! Arise from the dead! Christ will give you life! Keep this in mind, from an old man. There is no finality to the Christian life that's tied to each other. Are you afraid that some of us may go through our own funerals tonight, and die to serve, and end all the failure, and all the weakness? Why should a person come to the cross? Why should a person embrace death with Christ? Why should a person be willing to go and identify with God? Because it's the only way that God can get to us. If I was to ask you tonight, you'd say, yes, I'm saved. When? Oh, so-and-so preached, I got baptized. What are you saved from? Hell? Are you saved from business? Are you saved from love? Are you saved from cheating? Are you saved from lying? Are you saved from bad acts? Are you saved from rebelling against your parents? Come on, what are you saved from? Who shall ascend the hill of God? Who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn beseechfully, he shall receive the blessing of the Lord. And there's no room for him in the inn. He got a bit older, there was no room in his family. His family turned on him. He went to the temple, no room in the temple, the temple turned on him. And when he died, there was no room to bury him. He died outside of the city. Well, why in God's name do you expect to be accepted everywhere? How is it the world couldn't get on with the holiest man that ever lived, and it can get on with you and me? Are we compromised? Are we no spiritual stature? Are we no righteousness that reflects on their corruptions? Jesus from above is above all. I want to say to the Christians, don't go around apologizing for him. Don't go around worried because you can't make his doctrines fit in with what you've learned in school. All you learned in school was one fallen head instructing another fallen head. And you don't have to apologize for him. As dear Dr. Tolke used to say, Len, you knew one thing about a man that was carrying a cross out of the city, and here he wasn't coming back. He's come to an alter and he goes back the next week, and we're as fascinated, we haven't spent half an hour with Jesus, but we're staked those stinking hours in a movie house. And Paul says, that's what the world is to me. It's a system of corruption and rottenness and violence. It's antichrist when the world goes. Is the world crucified to you tonight, or does it fascinate you? Do we not need a very much greater conception of how tremendous, invaluable, a true expression of the church is to the Lord? It's Christ, Len. Let the Lord give us more of this anguish for his church than the Holy Spirit. When God set down, suddenly men and women all over the parish were gripped by the fear of God. God are my hand, is my heart yours. The moment that that happened in the bar, a power was let loose in Barber that shook the whole of Newark. God set down. The Holy Spirit began to move among the people, and the minister writing about what happened in the following morning said this, You met God on Meadow and Moorland. You met him in the homes of the people. God means to be everywhere. What was that? Revival? Revival! Not an evangelist, not a preacher, not anything at all organized on the basis of human endeavor, but an awareness of God that ripped from all communities so much hope. 24 hours of dressing, eight meetings. Crowded churches. And while this young man's power of God moved into Barber, over a hundred of them backed from the dance. I found the young people who had been at the dance. When I went into the pulpit I found a young woman, a graduate of Aberdeen University, who was at the dance. And she's lying on the floor of the pulpit crying, Is there mercy for me? Is there mercy for me? Is there mercy for me? God, what a quirk! Well that meeting continued until four o'clock in the morning. Mr. Campbell, there must be anything between two and three hundred people at the police station. They're gathered there and some are on their knees. Now I can't understand this. Now he wasn't in the church, you see. But here a crowd of men and women from a neighboring village, five and six miles away, were so moved by God that they found themselves moving to the police station because the constable there was a God-hearing and well-saved man. They were there. This young man begged of me to go along to the police station. And I went along. And I shall never, never forget what my ear and head and my eyes saw. That morning young men were kneeling by the roadside. I think just now of a group of half-a-dozen, one of them under the influence of drink. And his old mother kneeling beside him and saying, Oh, Willie, Willie, are you coming at last? Has Campbell something wonderful happened? Revival has broken out. And Willie today is the parish minister. And from the group of young men who taught the law that night, there are nine in the ministry, I went to the door and seen the crowds of people. Eleven o'clock, Matthew, eleven o'clock. And I went to the door and there must have been a congregation of between six and seven hundred people gathered around the church. And within a matter of minutes, the church was crowded. Out of four there were twelve. Now where did the people come from? How did they know that a meeting was in progress in the church? Well, I cannot tell you. But I know this from Willie and Campbell, the people came. Were you to ask some of them today what was it that moved you, they couldn't tell you. Only that they were moved by a power that they could not explain. And the power was such as to give them to understand and see that they were all deserving sinners. And of course, the only place they could think of where they might find help was at the church.