The Cry for Revival

In 1 Chronicles chapter 14 and in verses 14 through 15 we read, Therefore David inquired of God, and God said unto him, Go not up after them, turn away from them, and come upon them over against the mulberry trees. And it shall be when thou shalt hear a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou should go out to battle. For God is gone forth before thee to smite the host of the Philistines.

I've spent decades in the study of Revival. I've preached on Revival and written books on Revival and prayed for Revival with a burden to see it in our day. I've traveled all across this land and across Great Britain to visit the scenes of Revival where God has moved.

In former times I've walked the ground in Enfield, Connecticut, where the old meeting-house stood where Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, where an eyewitness stated that she minister had to desist from preaching from all the shrieks and cries in the house. I've stood on mounds and boulders and on commons and fields in New England and in Great Britain where George Whitefield preached in the open air to twenty thousand hearers where God poured out His Spirit and borrowed for Revival that shook two continents for God. I've had the privilege to see a few dewdrops fall from heaven from time to time in meetings where men's faces were altered under the hammer of God's Word and they became alarmed beneath the penetrating fire of His Spirit.

There used to be a time in this country where you could still witness the power of God in a meeting. Where the tops of the mulberry trees were rustling, society is spinning out of control and our young people today have left the church for the world. Our only hope, friends, is Revival.

My late homiletical mentor, Dr. Stephen Olford, was a man of Revival and he wrote a book called Heartcry for Revival. He and I would often talk about the subject of Revival and pray together for God to send Revival in our day. And I agree with him, there is such a thing as a cry for Revival where a burden is carried to the Lord to see Him move in His manifest presence and while prayer is made in holy desperation.

A cry for Revival is uttered by the people of God that gains the ear of the Almighty. What we need today, friends, is a fresh cry for Revival. Will you join me in that cry? Here now is that cry.

Listen, friends. In 1740, when God moved through New England, it was called the Great Awakening. Revival has often been referred to as an awakening.

At Gethsemane, Jesus faced the crisis point of His earthly ministry and His disciples slept right through it. Today, the Church is in a crisis point and we are sleeping right through it. Today, in America, the bane of the Church is self-indulgence, self-preservation, and self-centeredness.

The Gospel message is all about us served on a man-centered platter at a sumptuous banquet table laden with delicacies. Other generations knew the price of discipleship and the cost of following a crucified Savior. John the Baptist had a platter with his head upon it.

Stephen was baptized with stones as he saw Jesus rise from His throne. Paul finished his ministry not with accolades and applause but with a falling axe. The blood of the martyrs cries out against the self-absorbed Church of this generation.

God's eyes are continually searching the earth for those rare individuals of whom the world was not worthy, men like Moses and John the Baptist, Luther and Calvin, Wesley and Whitefield, Finney and Moody, men who live in a different atmosphere than other mortals, men who have annihilated self with the cross and whose lives are broken alabaster boxes from which fragrances arise to the heavens, from the broken pieces of selflessness, self-sacrifice, and self-crucifixion. God is always on the lookout for such men. The greatest need in our land today is a prophet, a man sent from God, God's man who will stand in the gap between heaven and earth, between mortal man and almighty God, a holy man who is so wholly sold out to God, so intoxicated with Christ and so consumed with eternity that his very footprints leave a smoky trail of the lingering fire of God, a man whose desperate life of prayer has left fingerprints on the horns of the altar in glory, a man whose emboldened faith and Enoch-like walk with God moves mountains of resistance and proves that the God of the Bible is alive and interested in the most minute requests of men, God will always raise up an Elijah whose prayers impact a sleeping nation, the church in each generation has had individuals who live upon their knees, whose prayers reach heaven with a holy violence, India had her pray and hide, China her Hudson-Taylor, England her Puritan, Scotland her Covenanters, America her fiery Ian Bounds, voices which gained the attention of the throne room startled angels and shook the gates of hell, making even the demons quake and tremble with their desperate prayers, if the church will not defend his holy name then the almighty must, God will either pour out his blessings in revival to defend his holy name or he will pour out his wrath upon mankind to avenge his holy name, it will either be a defending or avenging to show forth his glory and remind mankind, he alone is the sovereign ruler of all, but the Apostle Paul, Luther, Wesley, Whitfield, Knox, Edwards, Finney, Spurgeon, Moody, each shared a common denominator of fire in their belly, they were each so eaten up with the gospel and thirsty for Christ and filled with the holy ghost, they could not stand idly by while others perished, they saw nothing but eternity, worshipped the holy God and served the risen Christ, living not for earth nor its gains but living only for heaven and its rewards, when they preached they linked the devil with sin and the cross with salvation, they preached hell and its fire and Christ and him crucified, not one of them feared king, queen or Pope and not one of them sought the compliments of men.