| Poster | Thread | crsschk
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Santa Clara, CA
| | Re: What is... | | [i]Revival is when God gets so sick and tired of being misrepresented that He shows Himself.[/i] ~Leonard Ravenhill
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Mike Balog
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|  2006/7/19 10:20 | Profile | Compton
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| | Re: | | Quote:
We remember Edward's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", Finney's track record, the ecstasy and excitement of the Welsh and Chinese Revivals, but we ignore the woeful state of the Church and the World immediately prior to God's wonderful outpourings.
This is not how I read these events...ecstasy and excitement. They are agony and indictments if anything.
Yet brothers I need someone here to help me understand the tremendous contradiction I sense in this forum. Let us reason together! I've been on this revival website for over a year now. I've heard railings against idolatry, divorce, adultery, pornography, love of money, false prophecy, false teaching, hatred, boastfulness and many other habitual behaviors in the church. These things do not describe carnal Christians...they describe carnal men practicing Christianity and failing.
Indeed, most here refute the notion that there even is such a thing as a carnal Christian. Yet, isnt the idea that a revival is that long-awaited event where the millions of woozy near dead Christians are stirred and activated into obedience and Christ-likeness...isn't this idea of revival a deep-rooted affirmation that there indeed is such a thing as a Carnal Christian? Arent we making room for the very thing we say doesnt exist when we say that revival is merely awakening the carnal Christian?
As we continue to treat revival as a mass repentance to run faster and jump higher, as if somehow the aggregate sin in the church is going to be addressed without first addressing the aggregate false heart, we are actually delaying the real abasement that must occur.
Do we not see that the real problem is not the behavior of the man, but his nature? I admit I'm a novice at the history of modern revival, but from my fresh readings of those times, I see the main theme was not changing a man's behavior but changing his nature. How is it that many who are experts on revival do not know these things?
So I could care less about an excitement that fades quickly. The issue at stake for us...whether we want to call it revival or Christianity, is that we have eroded the all-important central message that a man must and can be born again. The constant emphasis on changing our behavior does little to rebuild this crumbled altar of repentance...not merely for a renewed effort towards Christ but for a renewed nature in Christ.
Perhaps we are missing common sense in our search for great things. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it must be duck! Why preach to a duck to start clucking like a chicken? (Although some revivals have achieved this miracle...)
When I read the sermons and lectures of past preachers, I do not see them content to preach that churchmen aren't trying enough. I see them fearful that churchmen aren't truly converted.
Here are just a few examples
First Edwards laments the sorry state of mens' false hearts...but in these times what he is describing might actually be accepted for 'revival' today.
Thus are all of you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from the dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life (however you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religous affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God and may be strict in it."
And again...
There is such a thing as conversion."
Here is Wesley, abasing himself so that others might also test themselves...
I did..., as many of this place can testify; using diligence to eschew all evil, and to have a conscience void of offence; redeeming the time; buying up every opportunity of doing all good to all men; constantly and carefully using all the public and all the private means of grace; endeavoring after a steady seriousness of behavior, at all times, and in all places; and, God is my record, before whom I stand, doing all this in sincerity; having a real design to serve God; a hearty desire to do his will in all things; to please him who had called me to "fight the good fight," and to "lay hold of eternal life." Yet my own conscience beareth me witness in the Holy Ghost, that all this time I was but almost a Christian.
And here is Whitefield on the same subject.
An almost Christian is one of the most hurtful creatures in the world...These are the men who turn the world into a lukewarm, Laodicean spirit...
And again on what true revival will imply for some who think they are merely uncommitted Christians...
The Lord enabled me to open my mouth boldly against unconverted ministers for I am persuaded the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ. The reason why congregations are dead is because they have dead men preaching to them. O that the Lord may quicken and revive them! How can dead men beget living children?
And this...
Unconverted ministers are the bane of the Christian Church.
And more recently from Paul Washer
"There is only one thing that gave me a sleepless night, there is only one thing that troubled me all throughout the morning; within a hundred years a great majority in this building will possibly be in Hell.... and many who confess Jesus Christ as Lord will spend an eternity in Hell...I'm talking about you.
And last of all, and most piercing...
Quote:
Revival is a word that is most often used to speak of "bringing one back from near death".
If we apply the term "near death" on an individual level, we might be thwarting the very real conviction and blessed conversion individuals need. "Near Death" and "Asleep" might be terms suitable for the general body of Christianity, but "death" is a more clear-eyed term for many of us Christians.
Why expect change in behavior without a change in nature first?
MC
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Mike Compton
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| | 2006/7/19 10:47 | Profile | DerekSpalla
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Joined: 2006/7/6
Posts: 22
Powder Springs, Georgia
| | Re: "Faces" of revival | | The eternal human quest is to know and experience God
One way God responds to this basic human longing is to manifest himself in a revival.
Here is a working definition of revival from The Ten Greatest Revivals by Elmer Towns and Douglas Porter [1-56955-217-7]:
An evangelical revival is an extraordinary work of God in which Christians repent of their sins as they become intensely aware of His presence in their midst, and they manifest a positive response to God in renewed obedience to the known will of God, resulting in both a deepening of their individual and corporate experience with God, and an increased concern to win others to Christ.
I would add that revival is the extraordinary work of God in a believers life and that it is different from the work that the believer has experienced or is currently experiencing.
I also like the nine faces of revivals found in Rivers of Revivals by Elmer Towns and Neil Anderson:
1. The repentance revival emphasizes a moral cleansing of individual lives and of society as a whole.
I think this is what most of the posts so far have been referring to. But there are other faces of revival:
2. The evangelism revival focuses on winning souls to Christ.
3. The worship revival centers on magnifying God.
4. The deeper life revival emphasizes the experience of Gods indwelling.
5. The spiritual warfare revival devotes its energies to battling Satan and the other demons.
6. The Holy Spirit revival is characterized by extensive manifestations of the Spirit.
7. The reconciliation revival leads to the removal of barriers to racial and ethnic harmony.
8. The liberation revival focuses on gaining freedom from corporate and personal bondage to sin. (I think we have been focusing on this one too.)
9. The prayer revival displays considerable efforts at intercession and other forms of prayer.
Though any given revival may manifest several of these characteristics, most revivals tend to display one trait more prominently than the others.
I think we are in danger of trying to put God in a box when we presuppose that the Church must be dead for true revival to take place. We should put few limits on how God chooses to send revival.
I think it is true that in revivals past, present and those in the future, revival may be birthed because the Church is dead and needs to be revived. But I do not want to limit revival only to these instances.
Christ has made me alive and I am hungry for more of Him. I want Him to manifest His physical presence to me and bring me to a place of a more abundant life, not because I am dead, but because I can be made more alive.
Kind Regards,
Derek
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Derek Spalla
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| | 2006/7/19 11:47 | Profile |
| | Re: Can someone define revival for me? | | Iamhis asked
Quote:
Many people believe revival is just holding services a few nights and having someone different come by and preach. What do you believe true revival is?
Derek wrote:
Quote:
Here is a working definition of revival from The Ten Greatest Revivals by Elmer Towns and Douglas Porter [1-56955-217-7]:
An evangelical revival is an extraordinary work of God in which Christians repent of their sins...
'in which Christians repent of their sins...' struck me as an oxymoron - not that Christians should not repent of their sins - but can a person who is [b]abiding in sin all the time[/b], [i]really[/i] call her or himself a Christian?
And shouldn't the person who aspires to call him or herself a Christian, be [i]much more sensitive[/i] to what [u]is[/u] 'sin', than those who we / they would proclaim are 'dead in' their sins (Eph 2:1 ,2)? |
| | 2006/7/22 6:52 | | brentw
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Joined: 2005/12/14
Posts: 440
Ohio
| | Re: | | We want to define revival....but do we want it?
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Brent
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| | 2006/7/22 12:16 | Profile | crsschk
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Joined: 2003/6/11
Posts: 9192
Santa Clara, CA
| | Re: MC | | Brother!
Quote:
The fact that we panting revival hounds need to come to grips with is that many in our churches are not part of God's church. Feeling the force of this dreadful reality is the spiritual revolution we need for true revival...to stop singing happy dishonest songs of unreality and to cry out in shrieks and moanings..."What must I do to be saved?"
If the American church, which is given over to effectually secular gratifications, was given over to such effectual saving grace, all of the other benefits we hope for, including the salvation for the lost, charity for the poor, infirmed and imprisoned, as well as the improvement of our national character would naturally follow like fruit on a living tree.
Presently our churches are celebrations of unreality. Unlived truths are paraded routinely before us. It is making our us and our nation hard to true repentance.
Quote:
As we continue to treat revival as a mass repentance to run faster and jump higher, as if somehow the aggregate sin in the church is going to be addressed without [u]first addressing the aggregate false heart[/u], we are actually delaying the real abasement that must occur.
Quote:
These things do not describe carnal Christians...they describe carnal men practicing Christianity and failing.
You are dead on MC.
I am coming very much to the same conclusions that you are describing in part.... That it isn't the false doctrine that is the bane of this hour, it's the faking, fronting, pretending, the ...
Quote:
... Edwards laments the sorry state of mens' false hearts
...and the blackness thereof. The frightening aspect is that it is still far too easy to be careless and forget that even the regenerate still have a memory, a resevior of past haunts and sins ... Ah, don't want to get off on a different tangent here.
Will carry your bottom line over again;
Quote:
Why expect change in behavior without a change in nature first?
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Mike Balog
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| | 2006/7/22 13:25 | Profile | DerekSpalla
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Joined: 2006/7/6
Posts: 22
Powder Springs, Georgia
| | Re: Short Reply | | Quote:
'in which Christians repent of their sins...' struck me as an oxymoron - not that Christians should not repent of their sins - but can a person who is abiding in sin all the time, really call her or himself a Christian?
Dear Dorcas,
When Isaiah is called as a prophet he exclaims;
"Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of Hosts."
Isaiah being called to be the prophet of God confesses his own sinfulness and then also personalizes the sin of the nation of Israel as his own.
The angel that brought the live coal to Isaiah didn't seem to think it oxymoronic when he touched the coal to Isaiah's lips and said;
"Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your [b]sin purged[/b]."
Kind Regards,
Derek
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Derek Spalla
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| | 2006/7/22 22:45 | Profile | GaryE
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Joined: 2005/4/26
Posts: 376
Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania
| | Re: Can someone define revival for me? | |
Im not sure if the following is word for word of what Charles Finney wrote about revival because I heard this in a paragraph form previously. This gets into some of what you have been discussing.
.................................................
WHAT IS REVIVAL?
By Charles Finney
It presupposes that the church is sunk down in a backslidden state, and a revival consists in the return of the Church from her backslidings and the conversion of sinners.
1. The foundations of sin need to be broken up. A revival always includes conviction of sin on the part of the church. Backslidden professors cannot wake up and begin right away in the service of God without deep searchings of heart. The fountains of sin need to be broken up. In a true revival, Christians are always brought under such conviction; they see their sins in such a light that often they find it impossible to maintain a hope of their acceptance with God. It does not always go to that extent, but there are always, in a genuine revival, deep convictions of sin, and often cases of abandoning all hope.
2. Revival is a new beginning of obedience with God. Just as in the case of a converted sinner, the first step is a deep repentance, a breaking down of heart, a getting down into the dust before God, with humility, and a forsaking of sin.
3. Backslidden Christians will be brought to repentance. A revival is nothing else than a new beginning of obedience to God. Just as in the case of a converted sinner, the first step is a deep repentance, a breaking down of heart, a getting down into the dust before God, with deep humility, and a forsaking of sin.
3. Christians will have their faith renewed. While they are in their Backslidden state they are blind to the state of sinners. Their hearts are hard as marble. The truths of the Bible appear like a dream. They admit it to be all true; their conscience and their judgment assent to it; but their faith does not see it standing out in bold relief, in all the burning realities of eternity. But when they enter into a revival, they no longer see "men as trees, walking," but they see things in that strong light which will renew the love of God in their hearts. This will lead them to labor zealously to bring others to Him. They will feel grieved that others do not love God, when they love Him so much. And they will set themselves feelingly to persuade their neighbors to give Him their hearts. So their love to men will be renewed. They will be filled with a tender and burning love for souls. They will have a longing desire for the salvation of the whole world. They will be in an agony for individuals whom they want to have saved--their friends, relations, enemies. They will not only be urging them to give their hearts to God, but they will carry them to God in the arms of faith, and with strong crying and tears beseech God to have mercy on them, and save their souls from endless burnings.
4. A revival breaks the power of the world and of sin over Christians. It brings them to such vantage ground that they get a fresh impulse towards heaven; they have a new foretaste of heaven, and new desires after union with God; thus the charm of the world is broken, and the power of sin overcome.
5. When the Churches are thus awakened and reformed, the reformation and salvation of sinners will follow. Their hearts will be broken down and changed. Very often the most abandoned profligates are among the subjects. Harlots, and drunkards, and infidels, and all sorts of abandoned characters, are awakened and converted. The worst of human beings are softened and reclaimed, and made to appear as lovely specimens of the beauty of holiness.
6. When a revival can be expected? A revival may be expected when Christians have a spirit of prayer for a revival. That is, when they pray as if their hearts were set upon it. When Christians have the spirit of prayer for a revival. When they go about groaning out their hearts desire. When they have real travail of soul.
................................................
Notice #5 and #6
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Gary Eckenroth
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| | 2006/7/23 6:59 | Profile |
| | Re: Can someone define revival for me? | |
Derek replied,
Quote:
Dear Dorcas,
When Isaiah is called as a prophet he exclaims;
"Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of Hosts."
Isaiah being called to be the prophet of God confesses his own sinfulness and then also personalizes the sin of the nation of Israel as his own.
The angel that brought the live coal to Isaiah didn't seem to think it oxymoronic when he touched the coal to Isaiah's lips and said;
"Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged."
Kind Regards,
Derek
Isaiah was a priest under the Old Covenant system, whose lot had fallen to perform certain duties that day. He was the representative man for Israel, although I don't read that 'he personalises the sin of the nation of Israel as his own' in what he records of that event.
Yes, he as an individual prophet, was cleansed and empowered for the calling to which he responded but I think this falls far short of the claim believers make for themselves when they begin to call themselves Christians. I hope you can see why, and that that's why I used the word 'oxymoron'? |
| | 2006/7/23 9:06 | | DerekSpalla
Member
Joined: 2006/7/6
Posts: 22
Powder Springs, Georgia
| | Re: Short Reply | | Quote:
'in which Christians repent of their sins...'
Dear Dorcas,
Help me out. Are you saying that Christians have no sins to repent of? I'm just trying to understand your comment, though we might be digressing from the original topic a bit.
Kind Regards,
Derek
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Derek Spalla
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| | 2006/7/23 9:24 | Profile |
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