Featured What About Revival?

In Post #10 I mentioned the dispute between John R. Rice and Bob Jones Junior about the possibility of revival in the end times. Here is an excerpt of the actual letter Rice wrote to Jones about that:

“You did not agree with my position that there is no way to know when the end of this age approaches. And, as you said plainly, you do not believe that great areawide revivals are possible now in the same sense that they were in other days because you think we’re approaching the end of the age.”
John R. Rice letter to Bob Jones, Jr., September 20, 1971, from John R. Rice Papers at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Quoted in John R. Himes, John R. Rice, p. 243.

 

I've been off the BB this week because of our awesome missionary conference, one of the best ever (and I've been to many). No fewer than six of the nine missionaries were former students of mine! It is such a privilege as a former missionary to be a prof, training young future missionaries.

The main speaker was M. G., whose full name I will not give since he ministers in Muslim lands by the Internet, radio, TV, and in person. Michael is a former Muslim from Iran. He lives in revival, and many decisions were made in the services. He was a student of mine in our MA in Bible Translation degree, and has worked some on a Farsi OT. In recent times he has gone to a certain Muslim land and started two churches, then visited them on a follow-up visit.

Sending, being, and supporting Gospel preaching missionaries is a part of revival. If your church never has anything to do with missions, then your church needs revival! Why? Because to send and support missionaries is a big part of what the Great Commission is all about! So a church or individual who has nothing to do with missions is not obedient.

There are independent Baptist churches which are disobedient in this area. There are SBC churches also disobedient. To send money to the Cooperative Program and have a once a year "Lottie Moon Offering" is not enough. That allows a church to be excited about reaching the world for Christ just once every 52 weeks.

Then there are Calvinistic churches that ignore missions and never support a missionary. For shame! This ignores the great history of men like William Carey and Adoniram Judson! Where are the modern Fullerites? How can any church justify ignoring the Great Commission?

 

I agree. You'll notice that I said "Calvinistic churches," not "all Calvinistic churches."

 

I'm trolling to get new buyers for the book.

 

Charles Finney is badmouthed quite a bit nowadays, and if you are talking about his theology, often deservedly. However, you cannot discuss revival without discussing Finney. Men like Jonathan Goforth (Presbyterian missionary to China), R. A. Torrey, and John R. Rice, along with many other revivalists, were influenced by Finney.

The truth is that many who attack Finney do so without properly sourcing their accusations. For example, some say that Finney invented the modern evangelistic invitation, but that is inaccurate. (Please note that in this post I am not saying having an invitation at the end of the sermon is wrong, though it can be done wrongly.)

I believe Finney was a godly man of God, used in revival, an effective evangelist depending on the Holy Spirit for guidance and power.

The invitation was actually invented by the Separate Baptists. H. Leon McBeth writes, "The Separates apparently helped popularize what is now known as the 'evangelistic invitation.'" He then quotes Robert I. Devin (A History of Grassy Creek Baptist Church, p. 69): "At the close of the sermon, the minister would come down from the pulpit and while singing a suitable hymn would go around among the brethren shaking hands. The hymn being sung, he would then extend an invitation to such persons as felt themselves poor guilty sinners, and were anxiously inquiring the way of salvation, to come forward and kneel near the stand." McBeth then writes, "The separates thus devised a method of encouraging on-the-spot religious decisions, to the singing of a hymn, well before the revivals of Charles G. Finney, who is often credited with inventing the invitation."
McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashiville: Broadman Press, 1987), 231.

 

I see that I briefly answered this, but it deserves more comment.

Thanks for this. Few people really understand what a missionary does and what the challenges are.

Thank you for the kind words.

I know you are right about this. My best friend from college (50 years a friend!) is a five point Calvinist and one of the most zealous men I know for getting the Gospel out. He supported our work in Japan for all the time we were there. He once had me translate a salvation letter, which he then sent to all of the Japanese restaurants in New York City!

He is an inveterate track distributer, and once had me translate one of those "comic tracts," a very good one about the life of Christ, and it is still in circulation.

 

The great revivalists all agree about how revivals get started. There must be repentance of all known sin. No one gets saved without repentance. Thus, in a revival meeting, the evangelist must first preach on sin, or revival will not happen.

Finney wrote, "I have already intimated that pains enough had not been taken to search the heart and thoroughly detect and expose the sinner's depravity, so as to make him see the need of the gospel remedy."
Charles Finney, Reflections on Revival (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1979), 18.

 

Finney believed that there are means to bring about revival, and there are not more revivals because we do not utilize those means. However, what is often misunderstood about Finney is that some believe the "means" he wrote about and utilized were human tricks: 40 verses of "Just As I Am" in an invitation and the like. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Finney wrote, "Why are there not more revivals? as well as: Why is their character so changed? The inquiry is also made: What can be done to promote them? And to promote them under a desirable and permanent type" (Reflections on Revival, 69).

Then he wrote that the problem is with the preachers. How so? "Want of personal holiness, unction, power in prayer, and in preaching the word--the want of holy living and consecration to the work--of self denial, and energetic effort in the ministry--these, no doubt, are the principal reasons why revivals are so few and far between, and of so superficial character at the present day" (Ibid.).

 

Passionate corporate and private prayer are absolutely necessary to bring about revival.

Goforth wrote in Manchuria, “Please let’s not have any of your ordinary kind of praying. If there are any prayers which you’ve got off by heart and which you’ve used for years, just lay them aside. We haven’t any time for them. But of the Spirit of God so moves you that you feel you simply must give utterance to what is in your heart, then do not hesitate. We have time for that kind of praying.”
Jonathan Goforth, By My Spirit (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, Inc., 1942), p. 34.