Revival is...

[John of Japan]

"Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not" (Jer. 33:3).

Believers can call upon God--praying!--and see great things happen--revival!--in His name!

 

[John of Japan]

"Emptiness and willingness." Lee Roberson, pastor of the famous Highland Park Baptist Church, telling what is needed for the Spirit's power and revival.

 

[37818]

I understand winning the lost to be a result of revival. People can actually proclaim the Gospel when they are bitter or sinning in some other way. For God's true power to come down, His people need to be right with Him. And the verses about revival I've posted so far have been aimed at believers.

But we're not that far off.

What passage are we referring to?

 

[Hazelelponi]

A poster since banned opined that American Christianity is declining, and I agreed, saying that America needs revival. In this thread I'd like to see single words, short phrases, quotes, and Bible verses telling what you think revival is, how it comes, etc.

"Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent." Revelation 2:4-5

^^ revival

 

[Hazelelponi]

Maybe, maybe not. I understand revival to be winning the lost.

You can't win the lost when you're lost and wandering yourself. Jesus called it blind guides I believe.

You have to be in right relationship.

 

[John of Japan]

What passage are we referring to?

"Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?" (Ps. 85:6)

 

[John of Japan]

"Emptiness and willingness." Lee Roberson, pastor of the famous Highland Park Baptist Church, telling what is needed for the Spirit's power and revival.

The 1970s at Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga was a time of revival. I remember R. G. Lee preaching his famous sermon "Payday Someday," and hundreds getting right with God or being saved. I heard E. J. Daniels preach "God's Three Deadlines," and the same thing happened. Then there was Richard Wurmbrand, who wrote Tortured for Christ, and of course John R. Rice preaching revival several times a year.

 

[John of Japan]

"When a man says, 'Oh! yes, we are getting on very well, we do not want any revival that I know of,' I fear me he is not low enough to be blessed; and when you and I pray to God with pride in us, with self-exaltation, with a confidence in our own zeal, or even in the prevalence of our own prayers of themselves, we have not come low enough to be blessed. An humble church will be a blessed Church; a Church that is willing to confess its own errors and failures, and to lie at the foot of Christ's cross, is in a position to be favoured of the Lord" (Spurgeon, op cit, p. 9).

 

[Dr. Bob]

I understand revival to be winning the lost.

That is where controversy may lay. This (revival = salvation) is SELDOM used by our churches today. Obviously, reviving dead sinners by regenerating work of the Spirit is valid.

BUT when most talk of "revival" in the church of God's people ALREADY saved, it is a work of the Spirit of God in the hearts of saints that have grown cold or comfortable and need "life" again in their walk with God.

"Revival" of sinner from death to life = once (born again/regenerated) by holy Spirit of God
"Revival" of saint/church from cold apathy = may be often (spiritual life renewed) by holy Spirit of God

 

[37818]

You can't win the lost when you're lost and wandering yourself. Jesus called it blind guides I believe.

You have to be in right relationship.

Are you accusing me of being lost here?

 

[37818]

That is where controversy may lay. This (revival = salvation) is SELDOM used by our churches today. Obviously, reviving dead sinners by regenerating work of the Spirit is valid.

BUT when most talk of "revival" in the church of God's people ALREADY saved, it is a work of the Spirit of God in the hearts of saints that have grown cold or comfortable and need "life" again in their walk with God.

"Revival" of sinner from death to life = once (born again/regenerated) by holy Spirit of God
"Revival" of saint/church from cold apathy = may be often (spiritual life renewed) by holy Spirit of God

Where's revival explicitly taught in the NT?

 

[37818]

"Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?" (Ps. 85:6)

Conflicting the OT people of Israel with the NT church? Am I wrong about this?

 

[John of Japan]

Conflicting the OT people of Israel with the NT church? Am I wrong about this?

What do you mean by "conflicting"? Do you mean "conflating"?

If so, I must say that I am not a hyper-dispensationalist. In other words, while rejecting replacement theology, I do not believe that all OT references to Israel must be rejected as inapplicable to believers in the church age. Actually, not a single Psalm was written to anyone else but Jews. Should we then reject the whole book, all of the Psalms, as being applicable to us?

 

[John of Japan]

"If God could give a revival in Jerusalem at Pentecost, He can give one anywhere. Never a city, never a country in the world where people have hated Crist more than they hated Him at Jerusalem" (John R. Rice, We Can Have Revival Now, p. 92).

 

[Martin Marprelate]

Where's revival explicitly taught in the NT?

Acts 2:1-4 would be the best place. The rest of the chapter shows the immediate results. Acts 21:20 shows the further results, which were mixed.

 

[Martin Marprelate]

Some years ago I went to a book sale and bought The Beddgelert Revival by Eryl Davies. Beddgelert (pronounced 'Bethgelert') is a small town in North Wales near to Mt. Snowdon, the highest mountain in England and Wales. I never got around to reading it until this thread started, but it's fascinating. Here are some extracts concerning the start of the revival in 1817.

'Come in your imagination to a small farmhouse in the Beddgelert area one Sunday evening in August 1817. Here there was a remarkable preaching service. The congregation had not experienced anything like it before. That was also true for the preacher, Richard Williams of Brynengan. A faithful, sincere man, he was regarded as a very ordinary preacher, and he made no pretense to being more than that. On that August Sunday evening, however, it was different. An ordinary preacher .... was given exceptional power as he began to preach......
One man born and brought up in the area who witnessed the revival was William Humphrey. The service, he informs us, was held in the kitchen to the left of the front door. And the room was full. Richard Williams stood between the window and the front door. In the milking room next door a group of uninterested young people were sitting and playing, so he stood on a bench in order to be seen and heard,
The preacher's text was John 6:44 - 'No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.'
Robert Ellis, a young boy attended the meeting. According to him, within 15 minutes of announcing his text the Holy Spirit came upon the preacher.

"It was awful," he wrote later, and "Impossible to describe. For although Richard Williams was speaking, yet somehow it was not him; the voice was not his ... and the sermon was not his sermon! The preacher had his own sermon on the text and had preached it frequently before. His thoughts on the sermon were instructive, but it was not the old sermon that came out now but a completely new sermon, one he did not possess beforehand and one he could never again afterwards get hold of........ Someone else was speaking to the conscience of the congregation and the preacher lost himself in him.
The farmhouse was immediately filled with the sense of God's presence. All the people present, including the young people next door, became serious, earnest, and visibly shaken. John Jones reports that some were weeping because of their sinful condition before God; some cried profusely and uncontrollably. Others rejoiced and wept simultaneously as they praised God for his mercy and salvation extended to them......

At the end of his sermon, Richard Williams prayed before announcing the verse of a hymn for the congregation to sing. But no one sang, and the service ended quietly, with some individuals weeping, albeit quietly William Roberts reports That the people were gripped by such seriousness and fear that they were unable to sing......

 

[Tenchi]

First of all, Rice's statement does not illustrated "Man-centered thinking." His belief about revival was that prayer and repentance, getting right with God and others, were absolutely needed. These are certainly not "Man-centered." Please look back at posts 55 and 56 in this thread, then come back and tell me that prayer and getting right with God do not bring revival. Note also that the phrase "pay the price" is not limited to money or whatever you are thinking. It can simply mean sacrifice, and that is how Rice means it.

Well, when I read in the quotation from John Rice that Christians have to "pay the price" for revival, this sounded to me like he was locating the key to revival in their "paying" for it. The phrase "paying the price" has a consumerist flavor that seems to me to suggest that revival can be purchased from God, like a kind of spiritual product. This may not have been what Rice meant to convey, but if he'd had "sacrifice" in mind, instead, perhaps he ought to have used the word.

Also, it seems to me that prayerfulness, repentance and humility before God are all as much effects of revival as they are the means to it. Interesting that, I think.

And how does a person in need of spiritual revival make the necessary "payment," or sacrifice, of the kind 2 Chronicles 7:14 describes? Their spiritually deteriorated condition would prevent what is necessary, wouldn't it? Is it all up to the spiritually healthy person to move God to revive the one who is in need of revival? What if that spiritually healthy person for some reason - injury, sickness, death - cannot "pay the price" for the one in need of revival? Does God just refuse to act, then? These are some of the things I wonder about when I hear folks talk about revival.

 

[John of Japan]

Well, when I read in the quotation from John Rice that Christians have to "pay the price" for revival, this sounded to me like he was locating the key to revival in their "paying" for it. The phrase "paying the price" has a consumerist flavor that seems to me to suggest that revival can be purchased from God, like a kind of spiritual product. This may not have been what Rice meant to convey, but if he'd had "sacrifice" in mind, instead, perhaps he ought to have used the word.

Also, it seems to me that prayerfulness, repentance and humility before God are all as much effects of revival as they are the means to it. Interesting that, I think.

And how does a person in need of spiritual revival make the necessary "payment," or sacrifice, of the kind 2 Chronicles 7:14 describes? Their spiritually deteriorated condition would prevent what is necessary, wouldn't it? Is it all up to the spiritually healthy person to move God to revive the one who is in need of revival? What if that spiritually healthy person for some reason - injury, sickness, death - cannot "pay the price" for the one in need of revival? Does God just refuse to act, then? These are some of the things I wonder about when I hear folks talk about revival.

What you are missing is that Rice a linguistic product of his time. He wrote the book I quoted from in 1950, 75 years ago. It was a compilation of his lectures on revival at Bob Jones University at the time. I don't know how old you are, but 75 years ago nobody would have taken his statement to be advocating what you are taking it as. Everyone knew back then that "pay the price" meant sacrifice, usually in a negative way, but not always.

In another book, he clearly tied "pay the price" to the power of God, writing, and I quoted that already, but here it is again: "When the D. L. Moody revival came to America and England, the moral and spiritual conditions were tremendously bad, even in many ways worse than conditions today. Conditions did not deter the power of God then and cannot prevent His blessing now, if His people pay the price for revival. God must feel it as an insult to His power an grace that people think revivals can only be had in propitious circumstances" (John R. Rice, Revival Can Happen Now, p. 26).

I don't know why you immediately assumed a non-spiritual meaning for Rice's statement. He certainly meant it in a spiritual way. I take from that, that you do not know who he was. He was a noted evangelist of 1937-1980, writing over 200 books and pamphlets about revival, soul-winning, Christian standards, commentaries, etc. He never attributed revival solely to human sources, but only preached that we need to get things right to be able to pray for revival.

 

[John of Japan]

“So when I say that revivals like that at Pentecost may be had today I am not discussing outward physical manifestations. I am discussing the reviving of God’s people, the coming of floodtides of God’s power upon the saints, enduing them for soul winning. I am discussing the arousing of sinners when they are convicted of their sins, when they are compelled to repent and seek God, and when great numbers of hardened sinners are saved and their lives transformed. And these latter gracious results are possible today in great revivals."
John R. Rice, The Evangelist (Murfreesboro: Sword of the Lord, 1968), 11.

 

[37818]

What do you mean by "conflicting"? Do you mean "conflating"?

Yes, conflating was the intended word.

If so, I must say that I am not a hyper-dispensationalist. In other words, while rejecting replacement theology, I do not believe that all OT references to Israel must be rejected as inapplicable to believers in the church age. Actually, not a single Psalm was written to anyone else but Jews. Should we then reject the whole book, all of the Psalms, as being applicable to us?

Not necessarily. It's teaching has a how it does and doesn't apply.
Hebrews 10:39, But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.