From the book, “What People Ask About The Church,” by Dale A. Robbins — 64 — In the strictest sense, a revival is really a spiritual awakening
— a stirring of repentance among God's people to a fresh obedience to God. However,
in the casual sense, a revival has often been used to refer to a special series of
evangelistic church meetings, conducted by an evangelist or minister, hoping to arouse
renewed spiritual fervor. In recent years, it was an annual tradition for many evangelical
churches to conduct one or more such meetings, which would extend nightly for a week or
longer. In years past I conducted hundreds of these type meetings, however, due to the
trends of our present society, prolonged revival meetings have (sadly) become unpopular
and nearly obsolete in some circles. The idea of revivalism, and special meetings devoted toward revival,
emerged from the evangelistic preaching and prayer meetings of the Great Awakening of the
early to mid 1700's, with such famed preachers as John Wesley, George Whitefield and
Jonathan Edwards. This was later combined with the tradition of the camp style meetings of
the early 1800's, popularized by pioneer preachers such as Presbyterian, James McGready,
Methodist Circuit Rider, Peter Cartwright, and evangelist Charles Finney.¹ It's possible to conduct a series of revival meetings anytime we
wish. Such meetings would be advisable and a good idea for every church, as has been the
tradition of many evangelical churches at least a couple times a year. But real revival
— that is a spiritual awakening, occurs only under certain conditions. Charles Finney
(1792-1875) was one of our nation's greatest revivalists, and taught on the subject later
in his life. In his "Lectures on Revival," Finney wrote that there are several
things that suggest when a revival is imminent: "First, when the providence of God
indicates that a revival is at hand... Second, where the wickedness of the wicked grieves,
humbles and distresses Christians... Third, when Christians have a spirit of prayer for
revival... And lastly, when believers have a desire and anxiety to a call of repentance
and to a new or fresh obedience to God."² History shows that the great revivals of times past turned the tide
of our nation's morality, yielded hundreds of thousands of converts to Christ, reversed
religious apathy and rekindled the spiritual fervor of churchgoers. Jonathan Edwards
(1703-1764), one of God's choice instruments of the Great Awakening of the eighteenth
century, described his observations of the effect that revival has upon the hearts of
people:³ (1) "Revival brings an extraordinary sense of the awful
majesty, greatness and holiness of God so as sometimes to overwhelm soul and body, a sense
of the piercing, all-seeing eye of God so as to sometimes take away the bodily strength;
and an extraordinary view of the infinite terribleness of the wrath of God, together with
a sense of the ineffable misery of sinners exposed to this wrath." (2) "Revival especially brings a longing after these two
things; to be more perfect in humility and adoration. The flesh and the heart seem often
to cry out, lying low before God and adoring Him with greater love and humility... The
person felt a great delight in singing praises to God and Jesus Christ, and longing that
this present life may be as it were one continued song of praise to God. There was a
longing as one person expressed it, 'to sit and sing this life away;' and an overcoming
pleasure in the thought of spending an eternity in that exercise. Together with living by
faith to a great degree, there was a constant and extraordinary distrust of our own
strength and wisdom; a great dependence on God for His help in order to the performance of
any thing to God's acceptance and being retrained from the most horrid sins." By all means, a spiritual awakening is something desperately needed
again in our nation — an objective that every Christ-devoted church should be praying
for. Without exaggeration, America's widespread sin and rebellion toward God has brought
our nation to the precipice of judgment and disaster. The verse of scripture that probably best summarizes the cause and
effect of revival is found in 2 Chronicles. "If My people who are called by My name
will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I
will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land" (2 Chron.
7:14). ¹ Eerdman's Handbook to the History of Christianity This article is copyrighted © by Dale A. Robbins, 1995, and is a publication of Victorious Publications, Grass Valley, CA 95949. Unless otherwise stated, all scripture references were taken from The New King James Bible, © Thomas Nelson Inc., 1982.You may download for personal use as long as you retain credit to the author. Obtain permission before reproducing copies for any reason, by filling out our simple permission form. For media reproduction rights, or to obtain published quantities of this title, . |
 |
|
If you liked this article, you’ll really love the whole book! |