Revival is Like Judgment Day - Part 6

If this had happened today, we would have had a cover-up committee. Don't allow it to get out to the public. You can take part. This may be a surprise to you when God exposes things. Misappropriation. I wonder how common it is. People don't drop dead today. But you could certainly say the penalty for trifling is loss of fellowship, not only with God, but with God's people. And one of the outcomes was that when God was vindicated, the Word gained strength again. Now, I generally speak to you on some uplifting side of revival. But I come back to my main point. William Cassels from Sichuan in China said, revival means judgment day. That's what happened in Shandong. Judgment on missionaries, pastors, people, and then fear fell on the world. And God's name was glorified. And people have such a wrong idea of what revival means. I don't really mean the misuse of the word revival like we're holding a revival, or a revival every Monday, or whatever. I don't mean that misuse of the word revival. They think of revival as something triumphant, and they shall say an overflow of great blessing. It's judgment day for the church. But after the judgment, after things are settled, it's blessing on a body. At Fuller, a student came to talk to me, a pastor who I think he was working on his—I don't remember his name. He was working on his D-min, came from the East Coast. And he said, Brother Walt, earlier this year I had an outpouring of God's Spirit on my ministry. A relunching. I had power in preaching, the responses were great. There were tears, there were reconciliations, there were confessions, there were humblings. And we felt, this is it. We prayed for revival, this is it. So he said, we organized a revival, and we brought in an evangelist, and we started our revival, and he said the revival stopped. Why? I said, I can't tell you exactly why. But the first thing that comes to my mind is this, you weren't content with what God was doing for you. So you had to organize it. And the man you brought in, I don't know who it was, but he may not have been in the groove. He may not have been in the Spirit. He may have been a good man. In fact, he might have been an evangelist or a pastor whose ministry was at a low ebb, and he was hoping for a chance of a good meeting type of thing. God bless them, evangelists have ups and downs. But I said, what was real revival stopped? Because you didn't let the Lord have us through the way. That's what's got to come. Now what are you going to make of this? We all know situations, don't we? We all know what we're praying for, we want revival. We're prepared for the excitement of revival, the blessing of revival, but we're not prepared for judgment day. It is a judgment on the church. It always comes that way. In every case, I'm not speaking of evangelism, that's the winning of souls to Christ. I'm speaking of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the body of believers. Therefore, if you want to see something happen, you better pray along those lines. I think the best way to pray is to pray the prayer of Psalm 139. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me. Lead me in a way everlasting. Ron, would you sing the first three verses of that, and then I'll ask the whole crowd to join in. The fourth verse, O Holy Ghost, revival comes from thee.