Man Of Revival Preaching Institute

Well, let me pray for us before we begin, friends. Great God in heaven, I thank you for you being a living God. You're not a God who's black ink on white paper, but a living Lord, Father.

Buddha lived, died, and was buried. Confucius lived, died, and was buried. Muhammad lived, died, and was buried.

Jesus lived, died, and was buried. But he rose again. He ascended into heaven.

He sits at the right hand of the Father, and you earned that right, Lord, by way of a bloody cross. We thank you for an opportunity to come before you this morning and to talk about revival. Oh, great God, you are the God of revival.

I pray that your spirit will be in these messages, Lord, and that you'll bless many hearts, strengthen them, quicken them, challenge them, encourage them, undergird them, and send them out to proclaim your truths. In the strong name of Christ Jesus. Well, we are in the section, friends, on our revival section in these preaching institutes on the man of revival.

In 1740, when God moved through New England, it was called the Great Awakening. Revival has often been referred to as an awakening. At Gethsemane, Jesus faced the crisis point of his earthly ministry, and his disciples slept right through it.

Today, the church is in a crisis point, and we are sleeping right through it. Well, hello, friends. This is the third and last section of our preaching institutes on revival.

In revival, I consider this to be one of the most important aspects of these international preaching institutes. We desperately need revival in our churches. We desperately need spiritual awakening in our land.

But there are a few pastors who really understand revival, who have taken the time to study it, and who are desperate enough to pray for it. Oh, they want a revival. They may pray casually for revival, but they want revival on their terms and for their purpose.

I remember years ago, a Baptist pastor down in Mississippi asked me to take the Wednesday evening service at his church to preach on revival. He knew the deacons of the church had turned against him and were ready to terminate him, and he asked me to come to preach revival to them in the hopes that it would save his position. He wanted revival for the wrong reasons.

We must ask ourselves, how badly do we want revival? Are we desperate enough to set aside our service schedule and just let the Holy Spirit take over? I remember years ago, I visited a church in the South that was in the very midst of a genuine revival. They were having services on a Saturday night, and I arrived late that evening. The service had already begun, but the church's pastor was nowhere to be found.

But the manifest presence of God was there, and God's majesty and holiness was so thick in that church sanctuary, it felt like a heavy curtain. There were about a thousand people sitting in the sanctuary, and all they did was sit there and weep and worship God for several hours, soaking up his presence. Around midnight, after the church service ended, I found the pastor in the parking lot of the church going to his pickup truck, and I stopped him to ask him this question.

I said, brother pastor, I drove an hour and a half to get here because I heard your church was having revival, but when I got here, I got here late. Can you tell me what happened tonight? Well, he looked like a worn-out dishrag, and this is what he told me. All I know is I had a message to preach tonight, but the Holy Spirit showed up, so I sat down and let God take control of the service.

Well, that was a wise pastor. Would we relinquish our pulpit to God, or would we want to stay in it and share it with God? Brother pastor, are you willing to stay invisible if God wants to become visible in your church in revival? We must ask the question. Well, Vance Havner once said, everybody's holding a revival.

It's about time somebody let loose of one. Of course, Havner was referring to an evangelistic meeting or a special time of preaching services at church, often accompanied by loud music, loud preaching, and loud praying. These man-centered meetings center around the activity of man through evangelism.

It's like the good deacon who was praying after a successful week of such meetings, and he said, Lord, we've really had us a time this week. We sure had us a time. Lord, you should have been here.

Sadly, that's how many in the church view revival meetings. They're just evangelistic effort, but when God shows up, when a sovereign God shows up in revival, then everything goes to the wayside, and his manifest presence takes over. A genuine revival is the felt presence of the awful majesty of supernatural activity of God, whereby the manifest presence of God appears to the people of God by his spiritual activity in town, and the very town is altered, as described in Jonathan Edwards' wonderful writings on revival, entitled, A Narrative of Surprising Conversions, An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton, 1740 to 1742, and especially, I recommend you read Edwards' treatise, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, which I highly recommend to you, friends.

It's important we must study how God has moved in former times, in periods of revival and spiritual awakening, so we can be better prepared to pray for revival, to seek revival, and to recognize a real revival when it comes, from a spurious one when it comes. I've been a student of revival for more than four decades. I've written 30 books on the subject of revival.

I've read most of the important books written on the topic of revival many times over. My PhD dissertation was on the Revival of Religion under George Whitefield and John Wesley in England. I've traveled extensively to various historical revival locations throughout Great Britain and America, and I say all this, friends, to underline the fact that if you want to become deeply familiar with the move of grace, known as revival, there must be a sacrifice of time, a sacrifice of prayer, and even a sacrifice of money.

Hopefully, these institutes will inspire and challenge you, friend, to take the subject of revival seriously, as anything truly worthwhile requires effort. What cause counts, and what counts costs. It's important to read Christian biography, especially on men whom God has used in revival.

Let me read you, friends, now the short preface to Mordecai Ham's biography, 50 Years on the Battlefront. Mordecai Ham was a fiery preacher from Texas who saw many revivals in the early 1920s and even through the 1950s, and it was in a Mordecai Ham crusade that a young teenage Billy Graham came to Christ. Well, let me read you this introduction to a 2005 reprint of this book, and it was penned by Dr. Bruce Miller, who was the president of the International Bible College.

Listen to his words. He's got a burden for students. He's got a burden for revival, and he gives solid good reasons for the study of books on revival.

Here now is his introduction. Since 1976, I have required my student preachers, one by one, to read my only copy of the life of Mordecai Ham. I wanted them to see what God did with this common man who was totally yielded to his Lord Jesus Christ.

I wanted the next generation of Christ's servants to learn how God could arrest the hearts of the most vile sinners, how conviction could grip entire rural communities, how conversion could come to thousands in the cities, and that God's Word still works. When Evangelist Ham preached, mockers were converted, families were restored, bars were closed, laws were changed, churches were filled to overflowing, one even advertised in the paper that no more new converts should attend, as there was no room for them. Hundreds were called to preach under his ministry, and crooked politicians either repented or feared the consequences.

When some resisted God's work, God withdrew His grace in answer to Ham's prayers, and God's judgment fell. Every Christian needs to read this book to learn of the old-time religion, a time when Christianity changed the world instead of the world changing Christianity. Preachers need to read it and plead, do it again Lord.

Well, I love that introduction friends, and it's a great book on Mordecai Ham, written by his nephew and by Edward Ham. It underlines the necessity for preachers to study men of revival whom God has used in former times, and it's critically important friends, for us to get familiar with revival men, men like George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards, Azahel Middleton, Evan Roberts, D.L. Moody, Sam Jones, Mordecai Ham, Duncan Campbell, and the greatly used Chinese Evangelist John Song, among others. Study their lives, see how God used these men of revival in the salvation of souls, to bring him glory.

The man of revival is the man God uses. God's eyes are continually searching the earth for those rare individuals whom the world was not worthy, men like Moses and John the Baptist, Luther and Calvin, Whitfield and Wesley, Finney and Moody, men who live in a different atmosphere than other mortals, men whose lives are broken alabaster boxes from which fragrances, fragrances arise to the heavens from the broken pieces of selflessness and self-sacrifice. God is always on the lookout for such men.

Well, as we study the subject revival in this last section of our International Preaching Institute, friends, we need to realize that God gets serious with those who get serious with him. How badly do we want to see revival? How badly are we willing to make time to read about it and study revival? Are we willing to lose sleep in the middle of the night to get down out of our bed, get down on our faces, and pray for revival? These preaching institutes are a wake-up call, a call to our knees, a call to revival, a call to return to vital apostolic Christianity, where Christ is once again preeminent in our sanctuaries and prominent in our lives, to where when we preach there is a power of God in our meetings that transcends our status quo, upends our lives in fresh surrender to a thrice holy God. But to get this, one often has to go against mainstream modern Christianity that has lost its way in an attempt to reach the world by becoming like the world.

Dark times call for desperate measures and even more desperate prayers, but God in his providence will raise up men for the times. Look at morally bankrupt England before the days of Wesleyan Whitfield. Back then, every sixth house in London was a gin shop.

Public drunkenness was considered normal, as even members of parliament showed up for work dead drunk. Yet John Wesley and George Whitfield stood out like two brilliant diamonds against the dark velvet backdrop of a degenerate age and an apostate church, mainly composed of an unconverted ministry. Their cry of, ye must be born again, startled men out of their sleep and awakened them to their lost condition.

Christ crucified was once again preached with power to the saving of a nation healed in the midst of revival. And I'm telling you, England is a nation worth saving again, friends. Oh, how we need revival to come to England again, to come to America, to come to Canada, to come to Australia, to come to our countries, to come to our churches.

Great God, bring revival again to salvation of thousands and to your glory. I pray these things in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.