So I want to talk about six characteristics of a revival and one of the passages that
I love in speaking of revival is Isaiah 64, 1-3 let me read that Oh that you would rend
the heavens oh Lord and that you would come down that the mountains might shake at your
presence as fire burns brushwood as fire causes water to boil to make your name known to your
adversaries that the nations may tremble at your presence when you did awesome things
for which we did not look you came down the mountains shook at your presence I think that's
a beautiful passage about what revival does it just shakes the church
and it shakes the community in an area and I talked about that in my first episode about
what is revival but here are six characteristics that I think print not I mean not always perfectly
because how can you even define something as unique as a special outpouring of the spirit
or surprising work of God as Jonathan Edwards said but I'm I'm I'm looking at church history
and different authors and I would say there's six characteristics these I feel kind of have
to be there they're always there but I mean heck there's probably 20 things I could say
but I'm narrowing it down to the irreducible minimum of six so here's the first one the
first is that a revival in my thinking is saved people people who already know the Lord
coming alive in the spirit like someone who's fainted so when I think of someone who's fainted
they're alive but they're disoriented and they're they're not conscious they're they're
unconscious and you're coming in and you are waking them up I think that's what the spirit
does a great example I think in scripture would be Ezekiel 37 with the dry bones so
Ezekiel is told by the word of the Lord to prophesy to the nation of Israel dry bones
live dry bones breathe and he calls forth and these dry bones in that valley start coming
together into a great army is what it says that's a beautiful picture of revival the
spirit of God being released over dry bones or dry people or a dry church and interesting
when you follow Psalm 37 it eventually comes to the point where it says he's speaking about
Israel and he's speaking of the Holy Spirit so it's the Holy Spirit upon Israel in that
passage but it's a beautiful type of revival to the to the church like we have throughout
history quite frankly and we're going to look at that and in some of the episodes I want
to look at several key passages in the Bible of revival so as someone who's kind of fainted
there revived but then it's not just that it then spreads out because it's also interesting
in Ezekiel 37 that the reason that God speaks to the dry bones of Israel is so that they
will now take the land that they'll go into the land that the land will be theirs so there's
this there's these repercussions in the community and that's going to be a part in my next message
where I talk about revolution because I'm going to give it a slightly different name
because revival is the beginning it's the embryonic stages actually of a revolution
so revival in my mind as a characteristic first is God moving on the church and then
the movement of God on the church results in evangelistic fervor that moves across a
district or a county or a city or an area number two characteristic is I don't know
of any examples where a true revival was not birthed in fervent prayer so there's a there
is a fervent bold prayer by a group of believers that are not going to give up I mean they
are going to keep asking and seeking and knocking for God to move in revival power
you don't have revivals just show up out of nowhere this is there's always a group of
believers they don't even have to be very many the example I'm going to give is just
two little old ladies but a group of people that are hungry for God hungry for the kingdom
of God hungry for the presence of God they're they're the type of intercessors that look
at the community and they see the negative they see the backslidden state and it burdens
their heart to pray.
pray for the Holy Spirit to come in power and so they begin to pray that way and then
what happens is they start to gather others who also have that same burden.
Every revival, every revival has these intercessors that are bold like that.
So this writing that I'm going to read comes from again Duncan Campbell, I mentioned him
last time about the revival in the Hebrides islands of Lewis and Harris and here's what
he says, One night God gave one of the sisters a vision.
Now we have got to understand that in revival remarkable things happen.
It is supernatural.
You're not moving on the human levels.
You're moving in divine places.
In the vision she saw the churches crowded with young people and she told her sister,
I believe revival is coming to the parish.
At that time there was not a single young person attending public worship, a fact which
cannot be disputed.
Sending for the minister, she told him her story and he took her message as a word from
God to his heart.
Turning to her, he said, what do you think we should do?
What she said, give yourself to prayer, give yourself to waiting upon God, get your elders
and deacons together and spend at least two nights a week waiting upon God in prayer.
If you will do that at your end of the parish, my sister and I will do it at our end of the
parish from 10 o'clock at night until two or three o'clock in the morning.
So the minister called his leadership together and for several months they waited upon God
in a barn among the straw.
During this time they pled one promise, quote, for I will pour water upon him that is thirsty
and floods upon the dry ground.
I will pour my spirit upon my seed and my blessing upon thine offering, Isaiah 44 3.
This went on for at least three months.
Nothing happened.
But one night a young deacon rose and began reading from Psalm 24, who shall ascend unto
the hill of the Lord?
Who shall stand in his holy place?
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity
nor sworn deceitfully, he shall receive the blessing from the Lord and righteousness from
the God of his salvation, Psalm 24 3-5.
Closing the Bible, he addressed the minister and other office bearers in words that sound
crude in English, but not so crude in our Gaelic language.
He said, It seems to me so much humbug to be waiting as we're waiting, to be praying
as we're praying, when we ourselves are not rightly related to God.
Then he lifted his hands toward heaven and he prayed, O God, are my hands clean?
Is my heart pure?
Then he went to his knees and fell into a trance.
Don't ask me to explain the physical manifestations of this movement because I can't.
But this I do know, that something happened in the barn at that moment in that young deacon.
There was a power loosed that shook the heavens, and an awareness of God gripped these gathered
together.
And then Duncan Campbell goes into what started to happen after that, where the Spirit of
God came and all these people started getting saved, left and right, and it went on for
four years.
It was an amazing outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
So first, a revival in my thinking is God moving upon a church and it spreads out from
there.
Second, it's birth from zealous, passionate, bold prayer.
Third, a revival is often led by a key leader, usually someone who has a passion for God's
word and a deep zeal for the presence of God.
So there's always a preacher, there's always a pastor, there's always a leader that is
on the forefront of a move of God.
It was an African American preacher named William Seymour at Azusa Street in 1906.
It was Duncan Campbell in the Hebrides Revival, 1949 to 1953.
It was Lonnie Frisbee who was a key preacher in the Jesus People movement or revival in
the early 1970s.
Stephen Hill was the evangelist used by God in Brownsville in the 1990s.
It's pretty interesting that if you look at the First Great Awakening, at the beginning
the embryonic revival was in Northampton, Massachusetts, but the guy that really was
used to spread.
The movement, which I'm going to call a revolution, later was George Whitefield along the eastern
seaboard of the United States.
So thirdly, a revival is often led by a passionate, zealous leader.
Number four, a revival is when the supernatural power and presence of God comes down.
Often follow with signs and wonders that are unexplainable.
People getting saved, healed, and delivered in remarkable ways.
You may have seen the movie Jesus Revolution, and you see a little bit of that in that movie
which takes place 1970-71 with Lonnie Frisbee preaching where you see him healing some people.
Healings are always a part of revivals.
All of those different situations that I gave earlier from my own personal experience has
some kind of healing element.
There's always healing.
There's always demonic encounters, too, that occur.
Some people wouldn't call it, oh, that was a deliverance from the demonic, because different
groups have different terms.
But it's basically saying the same thing, that there was a stronghold in that person's
life, and bam, it's suddenly gone just really quickly.
Instead of it taking a long time, it happens fast.
The presence of God is just being felt in the worship, in the prayers, and in the preaching
of the word.
You see all kinds of what the Bible would call signs and wonders happening.
That would be the fourth characteristic.
The fifth characteristic is a revival begins in one location, and sometimes, but not all
the time, spreads out to other areas.
There's always one locale.
Most of the time, revivals don't happen all over the place.
It happens in one particular place, and then it spreads out to other places.
I think of Azusa Street in Los Angeles in 1906 with William Seymour preaching.
Down there in L.A., you could still visit this area of Azusa Street.
The spirit moved in a mighty way there, and then that became a full-fledged movement that
went out to the whole earth.
Every Pentecostal denomination would trace its roots back to Azusa Street.
And then lastly, sixthly, revivals eventually cease.
They're strong, they're vital for a while, and then they gradually fade out.
I think the longest revival that I've heard of is around five or six years, and there
have been several like that even in the 19th, 20th, and 21st century that lasted a few years,
but eventually they die out.
So revivals come and revivals go.
The Hebrides Revival went from 1949 to 1953.
The Jesus Movement lasted from 1969 to 1972.
Most recently, we've heard about the Asbury Revival.
Some people have called it that.
It seems to have touched Lee College and Baylor, Texas A&M, and other places.
Now whether that's a true revival, I'm not sure.
But those have been very short.
They've been like three weeks, four weeks, six weeks, like that.
So revivals come and they go, and it's really in God's hands.
I mean, we can quench the spirit and stop a revival.
There's no doubt about that.
God always allows us as humans to either receive it or reject it.
But those are six characteristics that I see in revival, and in the next episode, I want
to talk about revolution.
I want to talk about how I think revivals actually are used by God to spark a revolution,
a revolution that affects the entire culture and begins to pervade throughout different
arenas within society.