Unit 10 – Expansions and Revivals in Many Nations During the 1900s


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Video Transcript: What Happens in Revival (Dr. David Feddes)


What happens in revival? There are many revivals that have happened throughout history. And there are some patterns that we find in them. But at the very heart of what happens in revival is simply this. The Holy Spirit comes a fresh and in a sense, Pentecost is repeated. You know what happened on Pentecost in Acts chapter two, the Holy Spirit came upon the church with great power in the outpouring that Jesus gave from heaven of His Holy Spirit on his church. But that was not the last outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It was the first there's one sense of course, in which Pentecost can't be repeated, because it was a launch a first time event. But there are many times since then, where God has sent His Holy Spirit with fresh power. We can read some of those right in the book of Acts. Just a few chapters later, we read that the apostles were having some problems with opposition from the authorities. And so they prayed about it. And after they prayed, the place where they were meeting, was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and spoke the word of God boldly, Acts four verse 31. You read on in the book of Acts, and there are a number of occasions where we read it, the Holy Spirit suddenly came on those who heard the message. And so Pentecost can happen more than once in the sense of the Holy Spirit coming in power on a group of people. Now, if we look in a little more detail, we'll see what's involved in what happens in revival. But let's look at a great revival that occurred in Africa in the Congo in the 1950s. Here's an eyewitness account from a medical missionary Dr. Helen Roseveare. She writes, the first day revival came to Bombay, the actual building shook. We were sitting in the bible school hall. It was seven o'clock on a Friday night. Jack shows our field leader that just come back from a trip in the south and he had seen revival down there. He stood up to speak about the revival and started to read from scriptures. Suddenly, we heard a hurricane storm. It was frightening. We looked out and saw it was moonlight, and the palm trees were standing absolutely still against the moonlit sky. It should have been pitched black and stormy. 


Then the building shook and the storm lanterns down the center of the building moved around, there was a terrific noise and a sense of external power around we were all frightened. There must have been about five whites and 95 Africans present you could sense fear all around. Jack stood at the front and said to us, this is of God. Just pray, don't fear and don't interfere. It was as if a force came in and we were shaking. There was no way you could control it and some were thrown to the ground off the benches as if someone had earl them down. But no one was hurt. Everyone ceased to be conscious of anyone else. People began to confess publicly what you might call big sin, and these were all Christians. They spoke of adultery, cheating, stealing, deceit. One friend who my thought too good to be true, was crying out to God for mercy and confessing her sins. I couldn't imagine she'd done anything wrong. We didn't leave the hall that whole weekend. Most of the time God was dealing with our sins. Some needed help from the pastors who moved around with much wisdom and encouragement. Then joy struck the repentant sinners and the pastors moved on. It was remarkable what discernment was given to these uneducated pastors. I remember they discerned that one lady's confession wasn't real, and they urged her to confess what was really inside her. Helen Roseveare goes on to describe the other things that were happening. She said there were amazing visions from people which were often based on Old Testament Scriptures, even though they didn't have the Old Testament. I remember one woman standing up with her arms appraised and her face radiant, talking about wheels within wheels and eyes within the wheels and patterns. And, above all, a great rainbow. It was straight out of Ezekiel. She spoke of the glory and began weeping. When she said she saw the glory was in the midst of the Bible school and then it went out of the hall, across the courtyard and into the forest. The glory was leaving, she broke down crying, it's because of our sin, our sin. The white people just sat back and watched it first. And the Bible school students held that it was all right for the village people but not for us. But God broke into the Bible school we were soon broken down as well.


There were also amazing visions of hell and people would break down weeping because of unsaved relatives. They carried exhausting prayer burdens. What started off as a 10 minute prayer meeting would last three hours. We didn't discuss anything we spoke with God. There were waves of out poured prayer. Some went off at 4 am on one occasion and walked 12 miles to a village compelled by the Holy Spirit to share the gospel. Many were saved as a result. In the years following the initial work, revival blessing came in waves, but I still wasn't being revived myself says Helen Roseveare. I was frantic. There was a coldness in my heart. I was saying the right things, doing the right things and being the right things. But somehow, I was outside all that was happening. I spent a long weekend crying out to God. There was little victory in my life. I was frustrated, hurt and empty, knowing the right answers, but getting nowhere. on the Saturday night, I went to one of the pastors and his wife and said, Please help me. His response was clear, although he was very gentle. We can see so much Helen, and we can't see Jesus. Everything revolves around your vision, your work, what you will do. I knew he was right. That was always said. But somehow Jesus was there. I spent the following 10 days in the presence of the Lord broken. It was wonderful. She goes on. I remember one time I was visiting the sick wife of one of the evangelists. I was driving through a dirt track and came to the top of a hill and then suddenly saw this forest fire. The fire was at the village where we were going and it lit up the whole sky. We walked the last few miles but as we got closer, I was struck that there was no noise. 


That was strange, forest fires have an enormous roar Louder than a plane. As we got closer, there was also no heat. As we entered the village, one house was ablaze, which was the pastor's house, but there were no people about. Again, that was strange because everyone would have been out to beat the fire. Suddenly, there was this terrifying sense of awe. We went into the blazing house with flames everywhere, but nothing was burned. The people inside were praising the Lord as the pastor's wife had died and gone to be with Jesus, the Shekinah glory had truly come down upon them. Helen Roseveare says the rebellion came 12 years after the revival first hit us it was a terrible war in Congo. It was a terrible and appalling time, when a quarter of a million people were murdered. out of a population of 15 million. Many of them were Christians. The revival made us ready for all this and carried us through the suffering. Eleanor Roseveare herself was attacked was nearly killed, was violated by enemy soldiers. And so it was a terrible time for her to and she believed that one aspect of the revival was to prepare people for those terrible times. So again, what happens in revival, the Holy Spirit comes afresh and in many ways Pentecost is repeated. We look at a little more detail. Here are several things that happen in revival. First unbelievers pray urgently, and they pray eagerly. And that's often the thing that comes just before revival, God sets people to praying and gives them an urgent desire in their heart, maybe it's only a few. And yet God causes them to want more of him, and to see his power displayed. And then, at a time of God's choosing, and through the Holy Spirit's own work, God shows his presence and his power. And He manifests themselves Sometimes he'll do it through the literal shaking of a place or the sound of a wind as he did in Pentecost, or in the Congo. It there were times when he did it through speaking in tongues. 


Other times, there was just this sense of awe and there was no speaking in tongues, people would just be overwhelmed. In this presence of God, then awe, and guilt and dread overwhelm many, and they're very, very conscious of their sinful state before God, and they often will begin to confess right before others, the sins that they've been hiding, and the ways in which they've offended God because they want nothing more and they won't settle for anything less than to be forgiven by God right then and there and be cleansed. And as that happens, then comes the blessing Jesus is exalted. They have a spirit of praise. And Jesus is not only exalted he's experienced in just a flood of love and joy and peace in the hearts of the believers and love and joy and peace in their fellowship together. And another very important thing and and in some ways the purpose of revival is that the spirit comes in power on these believers for bold witness, and they win many unbelievers to Christ and revivals often lead to widespread evangelism, and many, many people 1,000s, sometimes even millions in different regions of the world, all around the same time being brought to the Lord Jesus Christ. So these amazing things that happen in revival are ways in which God sometimes just hits the fast forward button, if you will, where God makes things happen much more quickly, and not at a gradual rate. But in a sudden and astonishing way. He brings about amazing change in the lives of believers and amazing expansion to his kingdom. After the time of prayer, when the Spirit actually comes, God's presence and his power are felt very intensely we see that in the book of Acts and in all of the New Testament Acts two says there was a sound like the blowing of a violent wind, tongues of fire. A few chapters later, the believers are praying and the place where they were meeting was shaken, and God's power in his presence, our sense, and they're filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is speaking with Cornelius and some other Gentiles and Gentiles had not yet come to know the Lord as Savior and and to know the Lord. out through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, while Peter is speaking to them, the Holy Spirit just fell on all who heard the word and it must have been a very manifest and obvious thing, because they all knew it. Peter knew it. And the people within knew it, that the Holy Spirit have come on these Gentiles and those Gentiles knew it as well. 


The apostle Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians, speaks of proper conduct in worship and of the proper use of gifts of discernment and prophecy. And then he says that if an unbeliever comes into an assembly where God is present, and where people are worshipping, as they are then falling on his face that unbelievable worship God and declare that God is really among you, if you had to pick a phrase to summarize, the initial sense of revival in the Holy Spirit hitting, it's just that God is really among you. And people feel overwhelmed with awe that he's there. And then they also feel very sinful and inadequate in his presence that happened on Pentecost. The apostles were anointed Peter preached his message about Jesus being exalted, and resurrected and pouring out the Holy Spirit. And it says that those who heard him were cut to the heart. And they said to Peter, in the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? They were just overwhelmed with a sense of sin and the need to respond and have their sins taken away. Saul, the persecutor of Christians was on the road to Damascus. And it says, suddenly, a light from heaven flashed around him and he fell to the ground. Now, this was not a widespread revival. This was a revival directed right at Saul, that was going to turn him into the mighty Apostle Paul. But you see, again, the sense of dread and he cries out, Lord, who are you? And he's flat on his face when he does it. Acts chapter 19, says that in Ephesus, the people were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honour. Many of those who believe now came and openly confessed their evil deeds. So you see that element of fear and of confession of sin. And there are examples since the book of Acts here are some of the more striking. 


Korean Pentecost is something that happened in the early 1900s. Missionary William Blair writes about and he says, each felt as he entered the church, that the room was full of God's presence, a sense of God's nearness, impossible of description. He came to us in Pyongyang that night with the sound of weeping. As the prayer continued, his spirit of heaviness and sorrow for sin, came down upon the audience. Man after man would rise, confess his sins, break down and weep, and then throw himself on the floor and beat the floor with his fists in a perfect agony of conviction. My own cook tried to make a confession, broke down in the midst of it and cried to me across the room, Pastor tell me, is there any hope for me? Can I be forgiven, and then he threw himself to the floor and wept and wept and almost screamed in agony? And this is a different missionary, not William Blair, writing about Korean Pentecost now but a missionary named Graham Lee and he continues sometimes after a confession, the whole audience would break out in audible prayer and the effect of that audience of hundreds of men praying together in audible prayer was something indescribable. Again after another confession they would break into uncontrollable weeping and we would all weep we could not help it. And so the meeting went on until two o'clock am with confession and weeping and praying. During that meeting, a Korean elder elder Kim confessed his hatred for the missionary William Blair, and Blair rights turning to me, he said, Can you forgive me? Can you pray for me? I stood up and began to pray, Father, Father, and got no further it seemed as if the roof was lifted from the building, and the Spirit of God came down from heaven in a mighty avalanche of power upon us. I fell at Kim's side and wept and prayed as I had never prayed before. My last glimpse of the audience is photographed indelibly on my brain, some threw themselves full length upon the floor, hundreds stood with arms outstretched toward heaven. Every man forgot every other each was face to face with God. I can hear you out that fearful sound of hundreds of men pleading with God for life, for mercy. 


The missionaries and the Korean church leaders were asking what should we do if we let them go on like this, some will go crazy. But says William Blair, we dare not interfere. We had prayed to God for an outpouring of His Spirit upon the people, and it had come. So they went around the room from person to person, speaking of God's pardon and peace, and finally Mr. Lee started to hymn and quiet was restored during the singing. He says, then began a meeting the likes of which I'd never seen before or wish to see again, unless in God's sight, it is absolutely necessary. Every sin a human being can commit was publicly confessed that night, pale and trembling with emotion, in agony of mind and body guilty souls, standing in the white light of that judgment, saw themselves as God saw them. their sins rose up in all their vileness to shame and grief and self loathing took complete possession. Pride was driven out the face of men forgotten, looking up to heaven to Jesus whom they had betrayed. They smoked themselves and cried out with bitter wailing Lord Lord, cast is not away forever. Everything else was forgotten, nothing else mattered. The scorn of men the penalty of the law, even death itself seemed of small consequence, if only God forgave. I know now that when the Spirit of God falls upon guilty souls, there will be confession, and no power on earth and stop it. We may have our theories, says William Blair of the desirability or undesirability of public confession of sin, I have had mine. But I know now that when the Spirit of God falls upon guilty souls, there will be confession, and no power on earth can stop it. If you read about the Cambridge revival of Kentucky read about people crying out for for God's mercy and throwing themselves on their face and in sorrow over their sin. If you read about the Great Awakening under Jonathan Edwards, you find the same thing people just throwing themselves before God crying out for his mercy.


The Manchurian revival happened shortly after the Korean revival, by the way that Korean revival was accompanied by other works of God throughout the 20th century so that through the 1900s, huge numbers of the Korean nation came to know the Lord What a wonderful work of God was launched by those early revivals. Jonathan Goforth, the missionary in Manchuria says hitherto I've had a horror of hysterics and emotionalism in religion, and the first outbursts of grief from some men who prayed displeased me exceedingly. I didn't know what was behind it all. Eventually, however, it became quite clear that nothing but the mighty Spirit of God was working in the hearts of men. A power has come into the church that we cannot control if we would. It is a miracle for stolid, self righteous Chinaman to go out of his way to confess sins that no torture could force from him for a Chinaman to demean himself to crave weeping the prayers of his fellow believers is beyond all human expectation. He tells about one of the meetings he says on entering the pulpit I bowed, as usual for a few moments in prayer. When I looked up, it seemed to me as if every last man, woman and child in that church was in the throes of judgment. tears were flowing freely and all manner of sin was being confessed. Goforth goes on, perhaps you will say it's a sort of religious hysteria. So did some of us. But here we are people with all shades of temperament. And everyone who has seen and heard what we have everyday last week is certain there's only one explanation that it is God's Holy Spirit manifesting himself, one clause of the creed that lives before us now in all its inevitable, awful solemnity is I believe in the Holy Spirit. Remember that phrase from Acts two they were cut to the heart. 


That's what you see again and again, when the Holy Spirit comes in mighty power in revival, people sense the greatness and holiness of God and in the light of God, they see themselves and their horrible sin. What happens in revival well, starts with prayer than God shows his presence and power and people are overwhelmed with awe and guilt and dread. But it doesn't stop there. After being forced to repent and cut to the heart, then the Lord Jesus is exalted, and people worship Him and they, they exalt Him and they experienced him in the love and the joy and the peace that the Holy Spirit just floods their hearts with. And then after that he empowers believers. Here's just a few statements from the Bible itself. Romans chapter five, the apostle Paul says, Therefore, since we've been justified through faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, God has poured out His love into our hearts, by the Holy Spirit, who he has given us. And in revival, this peace is experience, especially vividly and intensely, and this love is poured out in a way that is amazing and marvellous and overwhelming. And with that peace and love comes tremendous joy in Jesus, the kind of thing that the the Apostle Peter talks about in First Peter one, verse eight, you believe in Jesus and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. Now, that was a hallmark of the book of Acts. If you read the book of Acts, you notice during this revival time of the Holy Spirit, continually renewing and empowering and filling people and bringing in the joy of Jesus right on that day of Pentecost and afterword, Acts, chapter two says they were together with glad and sincere hearts praising God. In Acts eight verse eight we read that the when the gospel came to the people of Sumeria, there was great joy in that city. When an African and Ethiopian man was baptized and learned of the Lord Jesus and embraced the way of Christ. The Holy Spirit took Philip away after sharing that message with the African as he went back to serve the Queen where he was an important official, and what's the last thing we hear about him, he went on his way, rejoicing, that's what the Holy Spirit does, he brings rejoicing.


Even in the face of difficulty and opposition, we read in Acts 13 verse 52, the disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Spirit, when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you're filled with joy. Acts 16 verse 34, to take just one more example from the book of Acts, this jailer who not long before was suicidal, but then comes to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and experiences the Holy Spirit at work in him. He was filled with joy, because he had come to believe in God, he and his whole family filled with joy. That's one of the great marks of a revival. Jonathan Edwards writes about the Great Awakening that occurred in his congregation as part of the wider Great Awakening that occurred in the 1700s. In the United States. He says the towns seem to be full of the presence of God. It was never so full of love, nor so full of joy, and yet so full of distress as it was then, there were also remarkable tokens of God's presence in almost every house. It was a time of joy and families on account of salvation being brought on to them. Parents rejoicing over their children as newborn, and husbands over their wives, and wives over their husbands. Jonathan Edwards, his wife, Sarah gives us a taste of what it was like for an individual to experience these times. 


She says these words the Comforter is come, were accompanied to my soul with such conscious certainty and such intense joy that immediately it took away my strength and, and she just fell to the ground and had to be caught and helped by the people who were around her. The name the Comforter, seemed to denote that the Holy Spirit was the only an infinite fountain of comfort and joy. And this same real and certainly in my mind, These words the Comforter, seemed as it were immensely great enough to fill, earth and heaven. So conscious was I says Sarah Edwards of the joyful presence of the Holy Spirit, I could scarcely refrain from leaping with transports of joy. You got to remember this is a very logical, very sober mother of a large family, who has not given to just hysteria and acting strange, he says, I could just scarcely refrain from leaping with transports of joy, my soul was filled and overwhelmed with the light, and love and joy in the Holy Ghost. I wished to have the world join me in praising him, and was ready to wonder how the world of mankind could lie and sleep, when there was such a God to praise and rejoice in. That's a mark of revival when there is this delight in Jesus, this sense of the wonder of the Holy Spirit in this joy, and this overflowing spirit of worship. Jonathan Edwards, to quote him one more time about the Great Awakening, he says, the light and comfort which some of them enjoy, give a new relish to their common blessing. So everything they do is affected by the revival, and it causes all things about them to appear, as it were beautiful, sweet and pleasant, all things abroad, the sun, moon and stars, the clouds and sky, the heavens and earth, appear, as it were, with a cast of divine glory and sweetness upon them. They're getting a taste of what the Bible means when it says, the whole earth is filled with his glory. The Supreme attention of their minds is to the glorious excellencies of God, and Christ. And there is very often a ravishing sense of God's love, accompanying a sense of His excellency. It uses a little older language, but look at what he says a ravishing sense of God's love, and of God's excellency. Another account of joy from the Welsh Revival I've mentioned already, the revival in Manchuria that happened in the early 1900s. The revival in Korea that happened around that same time that was also going on in Wales, and here's an eyewitness account from the Welsh Revival of 1906. It was sometimes called the singing revival because it was characterized by so much joy and singing, and it just spread from place to place, prayer and hymn followed in mingled without a single halt or jar. It was as if an invisible Harper had the string of each soul ready to his finger, awaking the finest music at his touch and making it fade again to hushed expectancy. Anything more orderly, more harmonious than that unconducted meeting, I can scarcely imagine. So there was singing and beauty and yet it was very orderly in this revival.


Another thing that comes with a revival is of course, a mighty and bold witness as the Holy Spirit's anointing comes and holy boldness comes into people. Remember on that sort of second Pentecost, when they prayed, and the place was shaken, it says they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and spoke the word of God boldly. And we read that people were astonished at the boldness of the apostles and took note that these men had been with Jesus. Acts four verse 33, with great power, the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much Grace was upon them all. Stephen was a man who was full of the Holy Spirit. And when he was dealing with his opponents, it says they could not stand up against Stephen's wisdom, or the spirit by whom he spoke, they could kill him, but they could not resist the power of his testimony and of his witness. After Saul, the one of the killers of Stephen was converted by the power of the Holy Spirit. It says at once, Saul began to preach, he was just seized with this anointing and this call from God right away. And he began to preach that Jesus is the Son of God. Saul grew more and more powerful. And that too, is not something just limited to the book of Acts. The Holy Spirit brings this boldness and this power, where the Apostle Paul could later right our message came to you, not with wise and persuasive words, but with the Spirit's power. And so, this sense of power and authority and boldness is something that characterizes revival preaching, and revival witnessing, above and beyond anything that ordinary people in their rightful witness to Jesus can do. Over and beyond what ordinary pastors who are faithful to the Lord do in their ordinary calling. There are times of extraordinary boldness and anointing. David Morgan, was one of those who was a minister in Wales during a Welsh Revival of 1859. Around the same time, that there was a great prayer revival in the United States and a great revival in other parts of Britain as well. And David Morgan and describe what happened to him this way. He says, I went to bed that night as usual, David Morgan. 


But when I woke up the next morning, I realized I was a different man, I felt like a lion. I felt great power. And Morgan and others were used by God to bring revival throughout Wales for the next two years. And then David Morgan says, One night I went to bed filled with this power that had accompanied me for two years. I woke up the next morning, and found that I was David Morgan, once again, he had not sinned against the Holy Spirit. He continued to faithful minister to the end of his days, but there was that set period of his life by God's own choosing where he was just like a lion. And there was this tremendous revival, power and authority on him. As a man named John Livingstone, who preached at the Kirk of shots during a famous time, he was a man of faithful minister again, who had a long career serving the Lord. But there was one occasion where he was invited to preach on us at a certain event, and he felt inadequate and unworthy. But then he concluded the devil was trying to prevent him from preaching. So we prayed to the Lord for extra wisdom. And then he began to preach and then he began to preach long beyond what he had intended to and the Lord gave him more and more words, and in one day, more than 500 people came to know the Lord. They on that one day of Livingstone's preaching, more people were converted than during the entire rest of his ministry combined. That's just one of the mysteries of revival and how God chooses to do things. Sometimes he just speeds things up a great deal and he takes an ordinary faithful person, and for a period of time does make some a mighty mighty instrument in his hand. And he may do that for years and years. He may do that, for one sermon. Now, that doesn't mean that he never blessed any other sermon that was breached. It just means that there are special times of outpouring when the Lord accomplishes above and beyond what ordinarily occurs. J. I. Packer says that revival is marked by an awesome sense of the presence of God, and the truth of the gospel, a profound awareness of sin, leading to deep repentance and heartfelt embrace of the glorified loving, pardoning Christ, and uninhibited witness to the power and glory of Christ with a mighty freedom of speech, expressing a mighty freedom of spirit, joy in the Lord, love for his people, and fear of sinning and from God's side, and intensifying and speeding up of the work of grace. So that men are struck down by the word and transformed by the Spirit in short order. 


That's revival, a speeding up doing things in short order, and God showing himself in mighty ways, what happens in revival, while believers pray urgently, and they pray eagerly for that to happen, the Lord may start it with just a few. And then there comes a time when God shows up in power, and people know he's there. And at first maybe are overwhelmed with all and fear and guilt. But then they see the risen Christ as their Savior. They exalt Him, they experienced Him. They're filled with the love and joy and peace of the Holy Ghost. And then the spirit empowers these believers, for bold witness to win many unbelievers. What happens in revival is, first of all, that the Spirit of God just comes on the church. And once the church is transformed, then there is a mighty impact in the surrounding communities, sometimes surrounding regions and nations all around the globe. And this is what happens in revival. And so we, when we hear of this, maybe led to pray what it says in Psalm 85, verse six, will you not Revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? When times seem to be desperate? When the Christian witnesses growing faint when the church itself is growing more and more weak and corrupt and worldly? The Lord will lay it on the hearts sometimes of only a few to cry out this prayer, will you not Revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? That's what often happens before the coming of a revival. What about after a revival? Well, let's return to Dr. Helen Roseveare, who was there during the Congo's revival, the 1950s. She says the revival was wonderful. I hope that I still live in the joy of it, and that it burns forever in me. It's true that the manifestations were there, even if they shocked us and changed us this huge wind, the shaking of the place, the amazing visions that people had a house that appeared to be on fire, but nobody was burned and it was a sense of the seek kind of Glory, she speaks of these things. And then she says we'd be mistaken if we thought those were the important thing. But the lasting effect of revival was not to make us seek for more manifestations, but rather a deep desire for a holy life. 


If you hear me speak about what happens in revival and hear about some of those amazing manifestations say, wow, that would be great if we could see that. And if God would make himself so evident in such power, but the point of it all, is not so that we could have just these wow moments. The purpose of the wow moments themselves is to launch us in a holy life. Where a sense of the holy fills us, in a desire to be holy and pleasing to God is the driving motive of our entire life. That's what revival is really about is to make us more like Jesus Christ. And then so that Jesus will be evident to those around us. And when the revival is over, does that mean okay, we just quit as Christians. Dr. Roseveare says, You can't live forever on the mountaintop. You have to come down into the valley to do the work. You must never look back on the blessing you must always look on. We contain the treasure of the Lord Jesus, it doesn't matter about the beautiful thin chinaware or the cracked old earthen pot. What matters is the treasure within the key thing is that God and God alone is glorified. What happens in revival, God is glorified. And what happens after revival? Well, those who have truly been revived will continue to live to his glory. One more thing about revival sometimes it comes just before a terrible storm, before a terrible trial. In the Congo. It came before a horrible war in which Dr. Roseveare herself was attacked so terribly. The revivals of 1859 came just before the United States was cast into civil war. There are other revivals too, you read in the book of Acts, of course, the work of the Holy Spirit, provoked much opposition and intense suffering, but the very intensity of the revival power of the Spirit kept people going in the face of that. And so yes, pray for revival, know that there may be a high price to pay after revival comes. And know that the purpose of revival is not to keep looking back to that one special moment. But keep looking up to the God who touched you then, and continues to walk with you and to call you to go into the valley to serve Him and to bring Him glory.












Остання зміна: понеділок 24 травня 2021 09:02 AM