In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of following the example set by the early disciples in fulfilling the great commission. He highlights how the disciples waited for God's power before carrying out their mission and encourages Christians today to do the same. The preacher shares a testimony of a church that experienced a powerful revival, with hundreds of people saved and baptized in just one week. He emphasizes the need for prayer, witnessing, and the power of the gospel in bringing about revival and the salvation of souls. The sermon references the book of Acts, specifically the events of Pentecost, as an example of a powerful revival where miracles and signs were done by the apostles and many people were added to the church daily.

And now, here's Dr. John R. Rice. I'm glad to bring you a message on revival, and now for the month of January, let's start the year off with some messages on a Bible kind of revival. The text for today is in Psalm 85 and verse 6, and I'm going to read a passage from the book of Revelation. may get God's favor on his people. So here is a blessed prayer, wilt thou not revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee? Now, I am an evangelist. That means that through my many years of ministry my heart has been primarily set on getting people saved, and God has wonderfully helped so that I have seen many thousands of people come to Christ. And I have letters in my editorial work and writing, I have letters from over 14,600 people who have written to say they have trusted Christ through the printed sermons that we have gotten out. I am an evangelist. For many years I was in big campaigns. For example, I have had citywide campaigns in Buffalo, in Cleveland, in Chicago, in Everett and Seattle, Washington, in Winston-Salem, in Durham, North Carolina, in Elmira, New York, in Oakland, California, in San Pedro, California, in Winston-Salem, in Durham, North Carolina, in Miami, Florida, in the City Auditorium, and of course in literally hundreds and hundreds of churches I have had revival campaigns, and many times big independent campaigns also. I am an evangelist. I'll be having in the month of February, from February 1 through 20, I'll be in a citywide campaign in Columbus, Georgia. I'm invited there by a group of 22 churches, and other churches will cooperate in the campaign. I'm making plans for that now. I'll have eight days of revival campaign in Wadsworth, Ohio, a little later. Much of the time I must give to the editorial work in preparing a climate for revival and encouraging others in soul-learning and building soul-winning churches. But my heart's love is for revival campaigns, evangelistic campaigns. Now, I'd like to talk to you about what is a revival. What is a revival? First of all, thy people. It's a revival of God's people. Will thou not revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? So a revival does deal with God's people. I suggest here that all of you who would like to have great evangelistic campaigns, you should remember God wants a dealing with his own people, and we should deal with their sins and with their coldness and bring them to confession and forsaking of sins and starting a family altar and giving up dirty habits and making peace with those with whom they've been at odds, and then starting the main work of soul. This is a revival to begin with God's people, and God has a plan for that, and we should just fix it. Thy people, that they may rejoice in thee. There ought to be a renewal of love for God and God's people, a love for God, love for each other, a renewal of love. There ought to be a cleansing from sin. There's a campaign in the promise of God. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And I thank God in any blessed revival of God's people, there comes an acute sensitiveness towards sin and burden about their sins and failures of the people of God. In one campaign at Oldham in Texas years ago, I remember one Tuesday morning we met in the big tabernacle, 300 people and spent two hours simply in confessing our sins, that's all. No praises, no preaching, and no begging requests for others, but getting things right with God and each other. Two hours of confession of sin. It's not surprising that we had 165 additions to that little church in two weeks' time, and that many, many were saved. I saw about 90 of those leather-faced ranchmen in that country baptized on profession of their faith. I'm saying people need to have a cleansing for sin. That's a part of revival, and there ought to be turning from it. There ought to be Christian joy and blessedness and assurance and so on. There ought to be a return also to that one main end of Christianity. Always a good revival leads to soul winning. A Christian isn't right with God who doesn't do what God said about soul winning. One who ignores the Great Commission is not right with God, backslidden and cold. You say, Well, I don't feel called to that. Then you don't feel called to do right, because you don't have to ask God if about soul winning. God's already told you what to do. You can ask God how and who and which way first and so on, but no Christian has a right to ask God if he should win souls or wait for some leading to win souls. We're already plainly commanded to take the gospel to every Christian. There are some people who would like to make a distinction, or a learned Bible teacher, and they say, Don't say revival when you mean evangelism. But they are mistaken, for evangelism and revival are parts of the same thing. There isn't any genuine revival that doesn't get God's people back on the track of getting people saved. At Pentecost they had a great revival so they had 3,000 people saved, and that's the real aim. That's what Jesus died for, that's what the gospel is about, that's why churches and preachers are always in a revival. It turns out to be an evangelistic campaign. If you make such a great distinction between revival and evangelistic services, then why is it that you never have a revival of just Bible teachers? No, the evangelist, or the man who works as an evangelist in soul winning, is the man who leads in a revival of God's people, too. You cannot separate people. You win souls, and God's people are happy and blessed, and you get a revival and God's people win souls. So we are right to call an evangelistic campaign a revival. They are the same thing. May I say also that revival campaigns may properly be called revival. We can set out to have revival and announce at certain times we'll have a revival. Some people mock at that. They think that it's more or less a matter of fate or a predestination that God works here, and utter disregard of men, and he may send revival, and he may not. You can't tell. That is not true. The Bible has certain well-planned ways to have revival. I mean several plain invitations that we can meet and commands that we can obey in order to have revival. In 2 Chronicles 7.14, the scripture says, If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from the wicked way, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins, and heal their land. A well-known radio preacher and a good man, he has widely stated that now there are no plans whereby we can have revival, and that, for example, that this promise of 2 Chronicles 7.14 does not apply to soul winning and revival efforts in this generation. He is mistaken. The trouble is that he is not himself an evangelist. He has not put this to an honest test, as I have in literally hundreds of communities, and thank God I found it is always true. If God's people turn from their sins and get things right with God, and get a burden for souls, and wait on God for power of the Holy Spirit, and then go out to win souls as God commanded, in every case there can be revival, in every case there can be soul saved. So God does have plans. Didn't he say plainly in Psalm 126, verses 5 and 6, They that sow in tears shall reap in joy, and he that go forth and reapeth bearing precious seeds shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheep with him. Some people bear foolishness to say, Well, revival is not worked up, they are preyed down. That is a half-truth, and being a half-truth it may deceive more people and do more harm than if it was wholly false. It is only half-a-truth. Revivals are both preyed down and worked up. The matter of soul winning involves two people, God and men. Will you listen to me? God never saves a single lost soul without using some Christian to get him the gospel. Did you know that? Did you know God and Christians are partners in soul winning, and that neither one can do it without the other? It is God's choice. By his wonderful grace he put us in the plan, and there was Cornelius begging and crying and waiting on God and fasting and wanting to be saved, and God sent an angel to tell him, You'll have to get a man. He sent over to Joppa to the house of Simon the Tanner and get Simon Peter, and he'll tell you words whereby you and your house can be saved. There is God and Peter, and both were essential. The revivals are worked up and preyed down. You see, the truth is that it's the man that's failing and not God about revival. Someone said, Well, Brother Russell, can you have revival now? That depends. If God's people meet God's requirements, if God's people turn from their sins, if God's people wait on God and pray for the power of God, if God's people then set out to seek the lost and love them and pray for them and warn them, then always you can have people saved and always you can have a sweet reviving of God's people. You see, God has plans that are plainly outlined in the Bible, and Christians can follow those plans and have revival. That's why it's all right to plan a campaign and call it a revival. That is, if you plan to pay the price to have revival. I remember in my own ministry years ago, I sometimes had a blessed revival. Lots of people saved. Then sometimes I'd have a flop and a hard pull and not very many people saved and not much reviving. Then I found two passages of scripture. One in Romans 15, Paul says, When I come to you in Rome, I am sure I shall come to you in the fulness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ. I said, Paul said, Before I get there, I know I'm going to have the power and blessing of God. The other was a passage over in Corinthians where Paul said, Thanks be unto God who always causes us to triumph. So I said, All right, Lord, in this time on, then, I won't go unless I have assurance you're in it, and when I go, I'm going to claim I have a right to have the power and the blessing. So always God's people can have God's blessing if they are willing to pay the price and do the praying and do the working they ought to do. So I'm saying the revival campaigns are properly conducted and properly planned. It's all right to call them revivals, for they'll turn out to be revivals if we simply meet God's plan. It's just like a man who said, Is a man presumptuous to say, I'm going to grow a crop of corn? No, it's not presumptuous. He knows, of course, he'll have to. You say, Well, God has to make the corn sprout. That's true. And God has to make the sun shine. That's true. And God has to send the rain from heaven. Oh, yes, but then God's going to do that, and what I ought to do is to plow the ground, kill the weeds, plant the seed, cultivate it, and do my part, and God will do his part. And just as certain as that is God's law of sowing and reaping about revival, just as certain is that he that goes forth and weeps, bearing precious seeds, shall come back with joy, with rejoicing, bringing sheaths with him. I'm saying this message, what matter of revival, is the God and man, and it is proper to plan such a campaign. And again, I say, a revival campaign and an evangelistic campaign are the same. The people who say they're not are the people who don't win souls, and they do not know. But nobody really wins souls except one with a warm heart and a burden before God. And nobody is really revived unless he sets out to do what God has plainly commanded every Christian to do, that is to win souls. Oh, may God give us, then, blessed revivals. Let's see, then, prolonged revival campaigns are proper. You say, Brother Rye, since you think we could have perennial revival in the church. Well, there ought to come a time of special revival, though. There ought to be times that are special in the political world of the Democratic primaries and then the National Convention, that's revival. Democrats getting ready, spending more money, working harder to elect another President, or so the Republicans, if they start out the campaign. When a great department store puts on a big sale and hires extra salesgirls and does extra advertising, that's a revival. And why not? Oh, in every springtime when a man gets his plows and cracks the road ready and breaks the soil and plants his seed and God sends the rain and the sunshine upon it, that's in some sense a revival, starting over again. I can remember as a boy in the old time when people laid by the crop. That meant now the corn is about done, and the last plowing would throw dirt up on the corn and that would kill the weeds, and now you wait and work further. Now you can go fishing if you want to, though you worked awfully hard this summer. Now you can go visit the kinfolks if you want to. So revival starts again in farming. And that's the way it is with us, you know, mankind being poor fallen creatures we are. Oh, we need to come back for refreshing. Isn't that the meaning of the model prayer when the Lord said to us, when you pray, forgive us our trespasses? You mean a Christian needs to come and get new cleansing? Oh, yes, and get new health every day. So revival is essential to the right time. You say, well, isn't Sunday enough? No, that's good, but don't you think there ought to be a time when you are preaching every day instead of just on Sunday, and prayer meeting every day instead of just on Sunday? So they did at Pentecost and after, and daily in the temple and in every house they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. Oh, what a floodtide the revival continued where they did it that way, and where the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. So there comes a time churches ought to get together when they can. You ought to get the crowd, and perhaps you need some kind of meeting in a high school auditorium or in a big tent or in the city auditorium, or some other way to reach the mass and public that doesn't come to your little church. Revival campaigns and evangelistic campaigns ought to set out to get the gospel to every creature possible, and I urge people able to say, I'm going to follow the Lord's plan and have revival. I hope to speak more on the line next week about the revival at Pentecost and other teachings about revival. You may have these messages in print if you like them. But let me ask you, dear Christian friends, why don't you say, we must have a blessed revival in our church and in our community, in times of special pleading and prayer, maybe fasting and prayer, maybe all-night prayers, at the times of confessing sin and making things right with neighbor, and seeking the will of God, and then setting out to win a multitude of souls. God send great revivals. This is John R. Rice at the microphone. Thank you, God bless everyone. I'm speaking this month four times on revivals. I have a burden about revivals. I am an evangelist. I've spent my life, my main motive, as God has helped me, has been to win souls and teach others to win souls and to stir up people to have great soul winning churches. So I want to talk to you this time about the revival at Pentecost. It is discussed in Acts chapter 2. When I was just a young fellow, fifteen, I discovered this chapter. I doubtless had read it before, but my heart was hungry for the power of God, and in a blessed revival in our small-town church in West Texas, my heart got burdened, and I got to reading this. And I thought, then, that is the most amazing and glorious and wonderful thing I ever saw. Here was a revival in which they had three thousand people saved in one day. I want to read you a part of that story in Acts chapter 2. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues, let's say other languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And they were dwelling in Jerusalem, Jews, devout men out of every nation under heaven, known as Norah the broad. And the multitude came together and were confounded, because everyone heard them speak in his own language." Note carefully, the other languages here were real languages, and people heard them who were born and had those languages from childhood. I read on verse 7, "...and were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, and not all these speak Galileans, and how here we ever met in our own tongues wherein we were born." And the wonderful preaching followed, and now I take up the story and begin with verse 40. And with many other words did he, Peter, testify and exhort, saying, Save yourself from this unto our generation. Then David gladly received his word and was baptized. And the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls, and they continued to fast in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and breaking of bread and prayers. And fear came upon every soul, and many wonderful signs were done by the Apostles. All that believed were together and had all things common, so the professions and goods, and parted them to all men as every man had need. And they continued daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved by this wonderful revival at Pentecost. First of all, let me say that this is a proper example to copy. This Pentecost is a good kind of revival that we should plan for. They had gathered in that upper room, like Jesus said. He said to them, Now ye are to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. In Luke 24, verse 46 and following, he said that repentants of remission of sin should be preached in this name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are witnesses of these things, and behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you. But tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, till ye be imbued with power from on high. And so what did they pray for? To be imbued with power, to witness, and they did have power, and they did witness, and so three thousand people were saved. This is a proper example for us to copy. In the first place, this is simply carrying out a great commission. The Lord had commanded them to get the gospel to every creature, but he said, Wait for power, and they did, and now they're starting to fulfill this great commission. So we have the same commission, we have the same job. Let's get the gospel to every creature. They didn't get it to every creature, so the job is only partly done, and every Christian is carrying on the same kind of a plan to get the gospel to everybody we can. So we ought to follow this kind of a pattern and be thrilled by it, and have blessed revivals where we can. I do not mean necessarily it'll be three thousand in one day. The other day Dr. Tom Malone called me. They'd had a blessed week. They'd had some revival preaching, Dr. Latham. He said that they've had six hundred people out visiting from house to house. They had lunch at the church every day, and they had oh a multitude, hundreds of people saved, and Sunday morning they baptized 151 converts, and Sunday night five more. 156 converts saved and baptized in that one week, and others saved. Perhaps who went to other churches. I'm saying it's a good example for us to have, and the details, it won't be ever detail-like, but the power of God and the witnessing and souls being saved, that's a pattern for us today, because the great commission is given to us too. We too are to take the gospel to every creature. You notice a message here, and the power, and the way they waited on God for it, and the results. We need now just as much as then. We too must pray for God's power. We too must go and witness. We too must have reached centers with the gospel and get them saved. We want to get our loved ones saved and keep healed from going to hell, so then we ought to have such revivals too. Miracles. They had wonderful miracles in the first place. Here they were given the power to speak to these people who were present in their own languages, because they wanted to get them saved, and that's the only way they could get to them. So they spoke to them in their own language in which they were born, the wonderful works of God, and so many were saved. Miracles. Yes, you understand, miracles are not always the same. They are incidental. But everywhere there is a great pouring of power and revival and preaching and pleading and faith, where also God does some wonderful things. I look back on some wonderful cases of miraculous healing in my poor ministry. I do not believe in so-called healing services, because I'm not a divine healer. I do not believe it's always God's will to heal the sick, but I'm saying as God selects and as it is his, he lays it on the hearts of people and they pray. Often in times of great revival there are wonderful answers to prayer, and that includes healing. I remember that Charles E. Penning in his Blessed Revivals found a strange thing. One poor woman who could not read, and she prayed for God to help her, and then she found she could read the Bible. Mr. Penning said, I only tell you the facts, I don't explain it. I remember that the same thing happened. Dr. Jack Howe tells us of one man in his church in Hammond, Indiana. I can tell many a case where wonderful great floodtides of rain came to God's stricken country when God's people prayed in a revival. I can tell the time when it rained all about the little ground of a blessed great revival, and we prayed and it did not interrupt, though the rain was two blocks away from us in Dallas, Texas. Miracles in answer to prayer. You see, when you get right and get on the main track of winning souls and you wait on God and have his power, then it's not surprising that sometimes there are some wonderful things to the glory of God. Yes, miracles when it pleases God. In Wichita, Kansas, a pastor's wife had a brain tumor, and the doctor said she probably won't last six months. We've done all we can do. The pastor said, I don't see how I can get along, Brother Jack Adrian. I can't get along without my wife. He said, will you come into my house and pray? And we did. An amazing thing happened in some way, that tumor regressed and now she's gone for more than two years, fully active in the work, and no bother at all about that. I'm just saying, God does wonderfully show us power, and it is a great revival. And the promises include now that if they had revival then, you know, Peter said, This is that spoken by the prophet Joel, which shall come to pass in the last days, God will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh. He didn't say one day, he said days. And Peter said, This is it. You mean Pentecost then was one of those days, but not the whole age, was it? And so if Pentecost had that blessing, then the days promised meant the next day too, and the next day too, and on through this age, as that scripture says, unto the great and notable day of the Lord come. And in Acts 2.38, they said, What do we do, Peter? We want what you have here. And Jesus said, Repent then, and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are far off, even as then as the Lord our God shall call. Oh, the blessed power of God to witness and win souls is promised for us, and for all that are far off, everyone God ever calls to be saved can have power to win souls. So this scripture says, we can rejoice that. Isn't that what is said in Acts 1.8? Jesus said, But ye shall receive power when the Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. That sweet promise he gave them is to us, and to all, even to the uttermost parts of the earth, so that we can call Pentecost a good example of a revival. There are some marvelous facts about a revival of Pentecost, where 3,000 people are saved. Oh, if your heart doesn't thrill to that, you must not be right with God. It's a strange thing to me that anybody could read this wonderful story of Pentecost, and they're all thinking about the origin of the Church, or they're thinking about sanctification, or they're thinking about talking in tongues, and nobody seems to give a hoot about these poor souls that would have gone to hell, but God got them saved through the witnessing here this day and wonderful power. We ought to be interested in what God said at the end, and we ought to go to talking about what God is talking about when we talk about Pentecost and what happened here. They had 3,000 people saved, saved for eternity and in heaven now for endless ages because of what happened there that day, and that's wonderful. Notice another thing. It got the attention of thousands. Now, I'm for every revival when a little church has some special services and they get some Sunday school saved and anybody else they can get to come in. I'm for that, but I'm even more for the big campaign that sets out to reach everybody in town. It sets out to get the attention of all the country round about and spread the news. I remember how I rejoiced in that many times. I was in Moncton, New Brunswick, in a blessed revival, high school auditorium, about five churches across boarding it, and I remember the word got out on the radio, and one family drove in 40 miles that night, and the whole family was saved, and then they told us we came to get saved. We heard about it on the radio, and we came to get saved. So at Pentecost it was notable, that widespread interest, and they talked about it everywhere, and so we ought to feel. Listen, preachers, you ought to feel accountable for in town. You ought to feel accountable to knock on every door, to beg every sinner to be saved, to warn every Christian to help men's souls, and God intends not just little incidental things alone, though God can use small things also, but everybody ought to say, Oh, but to get everybody saved that we can. That's the plan they had at Pentecost. That was a marvelous thing about it. That's why we ought to have often revival campaigns in big tents and in city auditoriums and in open air campaigns, the best we can. Another thing that riles the open opposition of the wicked. You just put this down. The devil may not be against you starting a school. He may not be, if you don't talk too much about the Lord. He may not be against you starting a grocery store or a filling station, but if you have a kind of revival that makes the drunkard sober and the harlot pure and infidel into a bleeding saint, then the devil is going to be against that. I remember in a big campaign at Sherman, Texas, I one early morning got on the train to go to Fort Worth for a big radio broadcast and coming back to the campaign that night, and an old man on that train said to me, he said, You're evangelist John R. Rice, aren't you? And I said, Yes. He said, You owe me $300. I said, How's that? He said, I lost that much this last week, he said, because of people all went to your revival instead of coming to my theater. Well, I just cried and cried about that, but I'm just saying you're going to arouse opposition. One preacher said to me, Brother Rice, you talk about the devil like he's a person and like he's always got it in for you. Well, he said, The devil doesn't bother me. I said, If you twisted his tail like I do, he'd bother you. If you got enough people saved and changed enough lives and enough communities, the devil would bother you. So here there was opposition and beatings of the people and putting preachers in jail. A little bit later, Stephen, a good deacon, is stoned to death and then they cut off the head of Apostle James. I'm just saying it arouses the opposition of wicked people. Such a big revival gets attention and arouses opposition. They followed up the converts. They were baptized. They were glad to receive this word, were baptized, and they met them in a fellowship and breaking their bread. And they stood out to give liberally, and they continued steadfastly in the apostle doctrine. They didn't neglect these new converts. You know, we don't go to hospital and have a baby and then leave the baby at the hospital, do you? Well, then we shouldn't. When you go get somebody saved, then go get him and get him back at your house for a coffee break and a little fellowship with some Christians, and then get him in your car and take him to church, and then you encourage him to get acquainted with a preacher and to get baptized and get in with God's people. I'm saying, Oh, follow up the converts and see that lives are changed. Now, one who's trusted Jesus is saved, and the baby is born in the family, whether he's got any teeth or whether he can walk or not, but we ought to set out to follow up the converts and teach them and grow them to please God. Here's another thing. Oh, may God do it again. Don't you think that it would be wonderful if in your community we'd have such a revival, if Christians would love one another, instead of thinking about building a little group for your church? Oh, it'll be built if it's the power of God on it, and the church is what it ought to be. You'll get blessings too. Then get honor me, I will honor, the Lord says. But why don't you say, both to each other but in town, and get every born-again Bible-believing Christian together to go get people saved. And so Bible-believing Christians that can trust one another to be true to Christ, they should join in wherever they can. I do not mean join with infidels. I don't mean join with enemies of the Bible, and I don't mean join with the people that are modernists and liberals. I mean join with good born-again Bible-believing Christians to get out the gospel and get people saved. May God send great revivals. I want to see in America not just little eight days revivals, I want to see again some great revivals in principal cities. I worked years ago to bring back such campaigns, and God wonderfully blessed until great campaigns were held over America. Now let's do it again. I want the principal great soul-winning preachers to join me in that effort, and some of them will. I have right now a plea from Pittsburgh. Sixteen pastors met together, and they want a campaign this next fall, and they are meeting with a plan together again about it, and God will help us to get somebody for that. And so will other areas and communities. I'll be at Columbus, Georgia the first three weeks in February, and I'll pray for this broadcast. We need your help, your loving care, your prayers and your gifts. Will you write to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and I'll good-bye and God bless you. To call your attention to Nehemiah chapter 1, I'm giving a series of messages on revival. A good many years ago I had a burden on my heart to help bring back revival campaigns for America, great citywide revival campaigns. The Lord greatly helped, and I had citywide campaigns in Buffalo, Cleveland, Seattle, Chicago, Miami, Winston-Salem, Durham, San Pedro, California, and other cities. And now for many years I've been so burdened with the sword of the Lord spreading revival fire over a wide area, trying to make revival climate possible for America. I'm burdened now about great citywide campaigns put on by fundamental Bible believers alone, not mixing up with modernists and not having infidels on the platform or to lead in prayer or to get the converse, and not to send them off to false coasts. And so I'm going to be in a citywide campaign in Columbus, Georgia February 1-20, and those three weeks in a big auditorium, we hope we'll have many hundreds of people saved. I feel a call to call America to revival, and I want to talk to you today about the high cost of revival. For even a revival, God still answers prayer, the gospel still the power of God to salvation, but many people are not willing to pay the price it takes to have great and blessed revivals. As a sample example of this matter, what it costs to have the power of God, I turn to Nehemiah, the first chapter, where the children of Israel are in captivity over in Babylon, and two of these people go back to Jerusalem to see how things are. One was Hanani, brother of Nehemiah. When he got back, Nehemiah said, How is it over there in the province of Jerusalem, since all of us have been carried captive? And they went back some years ago to try to build a temple. How is it there? And they answered, they said to me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem altars broken down, the gates thereof are burned with fire. And the king of Bethlehem heard these words. I sat down and wept and mourned certain days, and fasted and prayed to the God of heaven, and said, I beseech you, O Lord God of heaven, the grave and terrible God, that keep the covenant and mercy for them that love him, and observe his commandments. Let thine ear now be attentive, and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I have prayed before thee now day and night for the children of Israel, thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee, both I and my father's house, and sinned, were built very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandest thy servant Moses. Here is a case where children of Israel are in captivity before their sins. Oh, they need reviving. How will we get back to the land of Israel, O Canaan? How will we make Jerusalem an inhabited city again? How is Jesus to be born at Bethlehem and grow up in Nazareth among the Jews? And how is there to be a Sanhedrin to condemn them to die after Jesus has lived his life and is ready to die an atoning death? I say Israel must be brought back to Palestine. And how God uses a man, Nehemiah, and others that join him in this effort to have the power of God and bring about a great revival to Israel and return to the land of promise. I want you to think with me about that. How did people in Bible times find God, and how to have the power of God? Well, a good text for a subtext for that would be Jeremiah chapter 29. The children of Israel were in captivity, and he said, I know the thoughts I think towards you, God says, thoughts of good and not of evil, to bring the unexpected in. Then shall you go and call upon me, and you shall pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And you shall seek me and find me, for you shall search for me with all your heart. Now when you really want the blessing of God, the power of God to come, and the power to reach out to many and many souls to be saved, what is it going to cost? You must seek God with all your heart. How did Nehemiah do that, and how did others do it? First of all, Nehemiah had an extended season of prayer. He said, When I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned certain days, and fasted and prayed to the God of heaven. He said, Lord, hear this prayer that I pray before you now, day and night, day and night pray. Oh, in revivals, in times of seeking lost sinners, and having the power of God to win lost sinners, there must be times of extended seasons of prayer, waiting on God in prayer. How often that is commanded and promised in the Bible. In 2 Chronicles 7, 14, If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn from the wicked way, then I fear from heaven will forgive their sins and heal their land. Seek my face. Extended seasons of prayer. You remember that's the way it was with Nehemiah. He went on for a great period of time, and now for four months he waited on God and the power of God and burden was on him. You remember, don't you, how he had shown the apostles in Acts chapter 1, Jesus had commanded them to carry and to do something to be endued with power from on high? So in Acts 1, 14 we read about the apostles. We've all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women, and with Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. Oh, they waited in that upper room, and I think they fasted, and they cried to God and confessed their sin, no doubt, and pleaded for the ten days till the mighty power of God came at Pentecost, and they had three thousand people saved, waiting on God. That's what Isaiah 40 says in verses 28-30, that he gave power to the faint, and then to have no might he increased his strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall literally fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up their wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Oh, Christians need extended seasons of prayer, and that we can wait on God and have his power, of the good. You remember how Jacob, when he fled from his brother Esau, and years have gone by, and God says, Go back now to your father's house, and Esau is coming to meet him, and has sworn to kill him. He has four hundred armed men, and so Jacob waited alone with God and prayed all the night, and an angel of God came, and he held on to the angel and would not let him go until he got his blessing. So pleading with God for power. And the next morning he met Esau with a happy face, and Esau loved him, and the grudges all gone. Extended seasons of prayer. I was in a revival campaign at Buffalo, New York, in 1945, and I found the laymen in the churches had insisted on revival, and the pastors finally condescended. And so a great crowd, about eighty-five or ninety churches and the Christian businessmen and Youth for Christ and other organizations joined in to have a blessed revival in Clineham Music Hall. But I went to a pastor's conference on Monday morning, and I found to my shock and surprise that these pastors were angry with each other, and disorganized, and critical, and not prepared for revival. They quarreled and fussed with each other publicly, and that night with a broken heart I preached, and I said on Tuesday night, How can you expect the blessing of God when we have division and strife among the preachers and no burden of heart about it? I said, Why don't you call a night of prayer and pray all night and get ready so God can give a revival? I started to close the service that night, and the pastor said, Wait, I have your prior three hundred behind me on the platform, and thirty or forty preachers lined up there, and I said, And one man said, We've been passing late. He said, You're right, we ought to have a night of prayer. We said a night of prayer Wednesday night after the service. We went to a local church, and three hundred met the prayer. At ten o'clock the next morning, many still on their features, and for every Wednesday in those three weeks we prayed all night, literally all night. The power of God came and closed the night. I said, I hadn't intended to give an invitation until Sunday night, but I felt a moving of God, and I said, Is there anybody who wants to be saved? I do, a woman said. I have five adults, and I sent preachers to get them, and so we started giving the invitation and blessed, blessed revival. God's people need extended seasons of prayer for revival. What else does it take? It takes a broken heart and tears. Oh, these cold hearts of ours. Jeremiah said, I sat down and wept. You mean a man, a prophet of God weeping? Oh, yes, and Jeremiah said, Oh, that my head were a fountain of water, that I might weep over the slain of the daughters of my people, weeping. You know, Jesus wept over Jerusalem and said, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered thy children as the hen does gather her brood under her wings, and you would not. You remember that Paul said to the elders of Ephesus, he said, I spent two years in Ephesus. I'm not to blame if anybody here goes to hell. He said, Wherefore, remember, by the space of three years I ceased not to warn men night and day with tears. Oh, night and day with tears. That's the way it will come with a broken heart if you want the blessing of God. I'm certain, according to Psalm 126, verses 5 and 6, those that sow in tears shall reap in joy. You don't have much reaping because you don't have much sowing. You don't have much joy because you don't have much tears over your sins and failures and withhold a concern. People need to have a broken heart over our sins. Jeremiah said, I want the power of God, I want God to restore Israel, and he spent ascended seasons of time in prayer and confession, and four months later he came before the king. The king said, Nehemiah, what's wrong with you? You're sick. Circles under his eyes, and you've lost weight, and it's obvious. He said, No, I'm not sick. The king said, Then this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. What is it? He said, Oh, it's Jerusalem. I must go to Jerusalem, waiting on God, and with broken heart and tears. So it is today, if you want to have a blessed revival. What does it take? It takes confession and forsaking of sin. Nehemiah said, I, the Lord, hear these prayers. I pray before you now, day and night, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, both I and my father's house of sin, good and wickedly. He said, Do not listen to thy commandments, nor hearken to thy servants that prophesy a confession of sin. Now, we do need that. Oh, if God's people, if you want to have the power of God on you, there must be a turning away from our worldliness and away from our negligence. These homes that never have a family altar, no time of prayer and Bible reading. These homes that don't whip the children, make them mind. These families where they are grown with nagging and strife in the home and dirty habits and no prayer life. How can you expect God to bless? There ought to be confession and forsaking of sin. Years ago in Oulton County, a city in west Texas in Lamb County, I had a blessed revival. I called for a two-hour session one morning, only of confession of sin. No preaching, two hours under a big tabernacle. Two hours, no preaching, no praises even. No, not even in a request for prayer, but confession of sin. And we spent those two hours confessing sin. It's not been surprising that the power of God came, and we had over 165 people came to join that little church. I saw 90 of those old sinners. I mean, tough old town men in that country, wonderfully saved and baptized in a big galvanized iron windmill tank. I'm saying, if God's people get a burden over their sins, then confess and forsake their sins. Don't you remember that 1 John 1 says, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness? And Proverbs 28.13 says that he that coveteth his sins shall not prosper, but he shall confess his sins and forsake, if they shall have mercy. So Nehemiah is confessing his sins, and so we ought to do. And I found that God's people have a sensitive heart, and they feel they've done wrong, and they admit it with concern and with holy tears, while God forgives and cleans up, and then God's ready to give revival and save souls also. If you're a little bit bitter and all your heart is near my bed, what would you do? How could you have revival? What is the price to pay for revival? Well, an all-out effort, an all-out effort. I'm thinking about this coming revival campaign in Columbus, Georgia, and I'm glad they're working and getting ready. You're going to have to spend money to have revival. You're going to have to hire a big place. You're going to have to have big advertising, and that's good. That's part of the work. But you're going to have to have a lot of people that set out to go from house to house and invite people to come, or get people in their cars. You're going to have to get some buses going to bring in the people to the meetings. You're going to have to have people to be ushers, and people to sing in the choir, and people to deal with the inquirers. But no way out about it. But if you're going to have revival, you've got to do what God says about the great commission. You want all the world to preach the gospel to every creature. You can't get to other parts of the world, but you can to your part, and God intends you to do it. They did it in Jerusalem, where the scripture says that daily in the temple and in every house they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. Oh, I want us to go to shoring again in America. What God will do when his people need goodness with all their heart, and they don't mind spending the money, and they don't mind spending the time, don't mind the tears and waiting on God, and don't mind going and getting things right with the neighbors, so we can have revival and have a great breaking out of power to win lost people again. Let me say again that you cannot separate two things that God has put together. That is, the reviving of God's people and evangelism of the lost. Sometimes people say, well, we'll have evangelistic meetings. Well, that's good. It means all to be evangelistic. But if you don't have some plain preaching against sin and get Christians to quit their sins and quit the lewd movies and quit the mini-skirts and quit the parking in cars and necking on the roads in the night and all the lewdness and sin, if you don't get people to turn away from the liquor and turn back to family altar and family prayers and soul winning, you're not going to have souls saved unless Christians do right. God uses Christians to win souls, and he can't use them unless there's a holy concern in turning to God. So let's have reviving among the people of God. There's a high cost to pay for revival. When you pray in your town and your church, get people together and pray, and all preachers in different churches get together and pray and try to get some big campaigns with Bible believers only, not a single infidel, not a moderate, not a liberal in it, and people that love the Lord and believe the Bible unite to win souls and bring great revivals to American cities again. God send the time. You pray for me in this camp in Columbus, Georgia, and in others that are planned for the future. Now, goodbye and God bless you, everyone.