Present-Day Wickedness, Apostasy and Modern Civilization Cannot Prevent Revival
(Chapter 7 from Dr. Rice's excellent book, We Can Have Revival Now)
THE God whom some people worship is old and tired. The
present-day civilization is entirely too much for Him! Maybe He could one
time give great revivals, but He cannot any more. Mankind has simply gotten
to be worse than that old-fashioned God can handle the God of some people's
faith. The only thing that God and the people of little faith and little
passion who serve Him can do is to retreat from the world. Such people on
every hand can only read the newspaper reports of atomic bombs, hydrogen
bombs, the spread of communism, modernism among church leaders, and say,
"Jesus is bound to come very, very soon!" These Christians and their gospel
are not adequate to face and meet the conditions in this world; so they, in
defeated despair, do not "watch" in the Scriptural sense, do not "occupy
till I come," as Jesus commanded, but rather they study technical details
and speculate upon the Antichrist, and whether Russia is now forming the
great northern confederacy (Gog and Magog of Ezekiel).
Christians with belief in that kind of a defeated God can have no great
revivals. Rather, they are like the remnant of the British army at Dunkirk,
surrounded and hounded and being cut to pieces by the German blitzkrieg, and
waiting only to be taken from the beaches by British boats, to escape
annihilation! So many Christians look for the rapture as a last resort of a
God who cannot cope with the present world, in a Christianity which is more
or less out-of-date, very nice for the few who have it, but inadequate to
reach multitudes, to shake and change cities and nations and save millions!
Can you see the wickedness, the near-blasphemy of that kind of an attitude
toward God and the gospel? How God must be grieved by our defeated unbelief
about revivals!
I thank God that I look for the Saviour's coming. But I look for His coming
because He said for me to look for Him, not because I read about the
hydrogen bombs in the newspapers! I look for the dear Saviour's coming, and
my heart will leap with unmeasured joy to see His face; but I know what will
rejoice His heart and I am trying to do that. He wants sinners saved, and
left me to do this task while I await His coming. Oh, I long to be pleasing
Him, should He come today! And if He does not come for another thousand
years, I will serve Him gladly till I die, winning all the souls I can, and
then rejoice with Him in the blessed revivals that will continue in this age
until the Saviour does come.
Dr. Hyman Appelman, Jewish evangelist, tells how in San Angelo, Texas, in a
hotel room he, as a state evangelist under the employ of the Baptist State
Convention, discussed revivals with his superior. That godly man tried to
comfort Dr. Appelman, saying that he must not expect such great revivals as
had occurred in other ages since now people were distracted by radio, by
automobiles and other luxuries, by a pleasure-madness, by leisure time and
by widespread wickedness. Dr. Appelman should go on and do the best he could
but not hope for a return of the revivals of D.L. Moody, said the good man.
Dr. Appelman tells how he bowed his head upon the bed and wept
uncontrollably. Then he told his distressed superior that if the Lord Jesus
Christ and His gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit were not adequate for
this wicked age as well as all other ages, then the gospel was truly
out-of-date and Christ was not all He had claimed to be. Dr. Appelman was
not willing to make that concession; nor am I.
The simple truth is that mankind is insatiably wicked, but no more wicked
than he has been since the fall. The truth is that there is everywhere a
great tendency toward spiritual decline and unbelief, but this is not
essentially different from what it has always been. In Bible times it was
so. It was so in all the ages of great revival. The wickedness, apostasy and
all the distractions in all ages have never been enough to prevent great
revivals when God's people paid God's price; and they cannot prevent revival
now. If I seem bold in this matter, then let me thank God that I have such a
Saviour, such a gospel, such divine resources available for revival, that I
know we have the answer to the world's need. This world has not gotten
beyond God's power. The atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb have not razed God.
The present civilization is not more complex than the Lord anticipated; and
man's wickedness and unbelief have not surprised Him, nor reached a stage
for which He made no provision.
In this lecture I want to show that present-day wickedness and unbelief is
not worse than in Bible times when God gave great revivals; that all great
revivals since were not prevented by the failures of Christianity in Bible
times; that the awful Dark Ages could not prevent the Reformation and its
marvelous revival; that wickedness and depravity everywhere could not
prevent the greatest revivals in modern times. The Christ, the gospel, the
Holy Spirit, the promises, which were adequate in other days are adequate
now. All of modern wickedness, apostasy and distraction cannot prevent
revival.
I. Mankind's Spiritual Conditions and Apostasy Are Not
Worse Than in Bible Times When God Gave Great Revivals
Those who believe that men are more wicked and the days are more desperate
now than in New Testament times have simply failed to see the picture
clearly given in the New Testament of human wickedness and failure, and have
underestimated the power of the New Testament gospel and Spirit-filled New
Testament Christians.
First, consider that man was then the unregenerate, depraved sinner--as
alien from God then as now. To a leading Pharisee it was that Jesus
insisted, "Ye must be born again." He taught Nicodemus that that which is
born of the flesh is only flesh, and cannot see the kingdom of God; that the
new birth was the only chance to avoid Hell. He told the nicest church
people of their time--tithers, praying, law-abiding, religious people--"Ye
are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do" (John
8:44). To them He said, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye
escape the damnation of hell?" (Matt. 23:33). He said that all the
civilization, all the religious forms and ceremonies they observed were only
the whitewash on sepulchres filled with dead men's bones and all
uncleanness. He likened the hearts of these outwardly righteous Pharisees to
decaying, stinking bodies. The hearts of men in Bible times were no better
than the hearts of men today.
Paul wrote to the converts at Ephesus, "And you hath he quickened, who were
dead in trespasses and sins." Lost sinners then were not only wicked, they
were spiritually dead. They had in them no power to be good or to do good,
though they might put on the outward appearance of goodness. It is hard to
see how a race that is totally bad can get any worse, or how a man who is
dead can get any deader. The Bible clearly pictures that men by nature, in
Bible times the same as now--are utterly incapable of saving themselves or
of doing good. It would take a miracle of God's grace, the new birth, to
make men into the children of God. If you believe the foolish chatter of the
Christ-rejecting modernists that all men are by nature the children of God,
then you do not believe the Bible, and your conception is fundamentally
unchristian and anti-Christian. Men, according to the Bible, are a fallen
race, alien from God and enemies of God by nature. But they were so in Bible
times the same as now.
Don't you see that if the gospel could reach and save such men in Bible
times, it can reach them now? There is nothing in the nature of wicked men
that can prevent great revivals. The gospel of Jesus Christ is enough for
the hardest sinners now as it was when some of those who crucified Jesus
Christ were converted and when Paul the persecutor found Christ on the road
to Damascus. The gospel that could save Mary Magdalene, possessed of seven
devils, and chief priests who mocked Jesus while He died, is today the
gospel which can reach the hardest human heart, if it be preached in the
power of the Holy Spirit by men who will pay God's price for revival.
And consider, please, how in New Testament times flood tides of persecution
rose everywhere that the gospel was preached in power. If you think that
opposition to the gospel is stronger now than in Bible times, you have very
carelessly read your New Testament. The inhabitants of Christ's own home
village in Galilee knew and honored Jesus for years, until He was filled
with the Spirit and began His public ministry. Then the first day He spoke
in the power of God in their synagogue they "rose up, and thrust him out of
the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was
built, that they might cast him down headlong" (Luke 4:29). John the Baptist
had his head cut off. The Lord Jesus Himself was crucified. Stephen, one of
the first seven deacons, was martyred for the faith. Right in the midst of
the blessed revival which began at Pentecost was much persecution, and Peter
and John were arrested and thrown in jail. Early church traditions say that
every one of the twelve apostles save John the beloved died a martyr's
death. We know that Paul barely escaped from Damascus with his life, that he
was stoned at Lystra and left for dead, that he spent some years in jail and
finally was taken in chains to Rome. After years as a prisoner, Paul seems
to have been released for a little while, then arrested again and finally
was beheaded under Nero.
Do you think there is opposition today to the gospel? Why, it was a
customary thing for Paul and his companions to be run out of town! In Acts
13:50 we are told, "But the Jews stirred up the devout and honorable women,
and the chief men of the city, and raised persecution against Paul and
Barnabas, and expelled them out of their coasts." That was after the Jews
were filled with envy and there was much contradiction and blaspheming, and
Paul had said to them, "Lo, we turn to the Gentiles" (Acts 13:45,46). At
Philippi, Paul and Silas had their clothes torn off, were beaten and placed
in jail in stocks. In answer to prayer, God shook the jail, doors opened and
the jailer was wonderfully saved. But the officers and people "besought
them, and brought them out, and desired them to depart out of the city"
(Acts 16:39). Paul and Silas had to slip out of Thessalonica by night to
save their skins; then when the tumult reached Berea, Paul had to slip away,
pretending to go to the sea. At cultured Athens they mocked Paul. In the
synagogue at Corinth they opposed and blasphemed, and Paul said, "From
henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles" (Acts 18:6). Paul was seized by a
mob in a riot, and another riot filled Ephesus with confusion when Paul went
there!
The simple truth is that we can have revival today if we are willing to
preach the gospel as they did and suffer persecution as they did. If there
were a few people willing to be martyrs for Christ, then the blood of the
martyrs would be the seed of the church now, as it has always been.
We hear on every hand foolish statements like, "The foreign mission fields
are closing." What do men mean by such statements? They simply mean that
there are some nations in the world where the government will not protect a
missionary, and someone may hit him in the head with a stone. There are some
nations in which soul winners may be persecuted. Well, in that sense, then,
the whole world was a closed mission field when Paul began his missionary
journeys. If men will not be missionaries unless they can have their whole
family with them, have every comfort of life, have regular support of a
certain amount of money, and have a guarantee that no one will ever stone
them or burn down their house, then of course there will be some places
where men cannot preach the gospel with such ease and protection. But in
Bible times men expected to suffer for Christ when they went out to have a
revival. We should expect the same kind of opposition now.
Actually the opposition in Bible times did not stop revivals. Neither does
the opposition today stop revivals. What hinders revival is that God's
people are not willing to pay God's price to win souls. We have the same
Great Commission. We meet the same kind of sinners. We would have the same
kind of opposition if we pressed the battle to the gates for the Lord as
they did. But we could have the same kind of results.
Consider, thirdly, that the tendency of backsliding and spiritual decline in
Bible times did not prevent revival then and cannot prevent revival now.
There is one sad fact that all of us must recognize when we consider this
matter of revivals, that is, that even born-again people have still the old
nature, and have a tendency to wander, to grow spiritually cold, to lose
soul-winning power and Christian joy. This tendency to backsliding and to
spiritual decline was exactly the same in Bible times as it is now. Those
who are Christians have a tendency to grow less spiritual. All parents bring
children into the world who are unsaved, and even Christian parents have a
tendency to let them grow up unconverted. The tendency in churches
everywhere is to grow more formal and less spiritual. The preaching tends to
degenerate from clear, plain reproof of sin and a demand for repentance, to
comforting messages to the saved, and moral essays.
The first chapter of Romans tells us how a race of men who once knew God, a
race descended from Noah and his sons, spared from the flood in the ark,
became heathen and idolatrous. That chapter tells us how the ancestors of
heathen people, "when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither
were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened" (Rom. 1:21). When they began to make images in worship,
"wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness" (vs. 24), and "... God gave
them up unto vile affections" (vs. 26). Then "even as they did not like to
retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind ..."
(vs. 28).
The foolish idea that man descended from brute ancestry and that man has
climbed up from an animal-like state through savagery, barbarism, and
civilization to enlightenment is a theory made in the imagination of men. It
is not taught in the Bible, and it is not verified by history. The idea that
man came through an old stone age, a new stone age, an age of metals, and so
forth to the present civilization is belied by facts uncovered by
archeologists and ethnologists everywhere. Heathen people did not reach
their present state by ascending from brute beasts; they reached their
present state of heathen darkness by apostasy and declension, going away
from a knowledge of God and light and truth. That is the constant tendency
of the human heart everywhere, a tendency toward straying from God, turning
away from the light. God said, "My people are bent to backsliding from me"
(Hos.11:7).
Of this constant tendency of people who are enlightened and blessed of God
to fall into spiritual decline, false doctrine, unbelief and wickedness,
Matthew Henry has the following to say in his comment upon II Thessalonians
2:3-12:
"And let us observe that no sooner was Christianity planted and rooted in
the world than there began to be a defection in the Christian church. It was
so in the Old-Testament church; presently after any considerable advance
made in religion there followed a defection: soon after the promise there
was revolting; for example, soon after men began to call upon the name of
the Lord all flesh corrupted their way,--soon after the covenant with Noah
the Babel-builders bade defiance to heaven,--soon after the covenant with
Abraham his seed degenerated in Egypt,--soon after the Israelites were
planted in Canaan, when the first generation was worn off, they forsook God
and served Baal,--soon after God's covenant with David his seed revolted,
and served other gods,---soon after the return out of captivity there was a
general decay of piety, as appears by the story of Ezra and Nehemiah; and
therefore it was no strange thing that after the planting of Christianity
there should come a falling away."
What became of all the converts of John the Baptist? We remember that when
John was preaching by Jordan, "Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all
Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan, And were baptized of him in
Jordan, confessing their sins" (Matt. 3:5,6). Some would lightly smile at
John the Baptist's revival, and scoff at his converts. But I remind you that
he preached exactly the same gospel as Jesus did, as we see from John 3:36
which quotes his words, that Jesus Himself said there was never a greater
prophet born of woman; and that the impact of His ministry was so powerful
that multitudes thought he was the Messiah. Not only Jesus but all of the
twelve apostles were baptized by John the Baptist, it is inferred. The
revival under John the Baptist was powerful. John the Baptist was great in
the sight of the Lord, was filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's
womb and "turned many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God," as
the angel plainly revealed to Zacharias before his birth (Luke 1:15,16). But
what had happened to these many converts of John the Baptist when Jesus was
crucified some three or four years later? Doubtless many of them were truly
converted people, but they did not have much faith in the resurrection of
Christ; they did not stand by Him when He was arrested and crucified. The
frailty of the best Christians in the world is here illustrated. Yet a
mighty revival could be had at Pentecost despite their failure and the
failure of the disciples whom Jesus had won Himself.
If you think that revivals are not possible when Christian people grow cold,
or fall into false doctrine, or bicker and divide and sin, then you should
remember what Paul said to the elders of the church at Ephesus, gathered to
meet him at Miletus:
"Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which
the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he
hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing
shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of
your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away
disciples after them."--Acts 20:28-30. Paul had a mighty revival among
fickle, immature Christians, and he knew that after his departure some of
these very same elders would arise to speak perverse things and draw away
disciples, and grievous wolves would enter the flock. Christians then were
the same kind of frail creatures that they are today. Backsliding and
apostasy were the constant tendency.
Paul, in deadly urgency, wrote to Timothy about this very thing. In II
Timothy 4:1-5 he said:
"I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall
judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the
word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all
longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves
teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the
truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in all things, endure
afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry."
Paul was ready to be offered. He knew that the apostasy prevailed
everywhere, then as now. Yet Timothy was enjoined to watch, to endure
afflictions, to do the work of an evangelist. Then good Christians might
have sung that old hymn which says:
"Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love."
But that did not prevent revivals. God can have revivals with poor, frail,
human instruments. He can revive His saints. He can use them in
soul-winning. The declension and backsliding are so natural to men that they
never surprise God, and we may be sure they never make powerless His gospel,
if a few Christians will pay God's price for the revival.
II. Failures in New Testament Times Could Not Prevent All
Great Revivals Since
We had as well admit that Christians often failed God in New Testament
times. Critics might well have said then, as they sometimes say now,
"Christianity has failed."
After Paul warned Timothy, "For the time will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves
teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the
truth, and shall be turned unto fables," then Paul spoke to Timothy about
his own strait. He was in jail at Rome, about to be executed. Rather sadly
he said, "Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: For Demas hath forsaken
me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica;
Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me" (II Tim.
4:9-11). He said, "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord
reward him according to his works: Of whom be thou ware also; for he hath
greatly withstood our words. At my first answer no man stood with me, but
all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.
Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the
preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I
was delivered out of the mouth of the lion" (II Tim. 4:14-17).
We might suppose that Paul was writing in 1950. Alexander the coppersmith
hated Paul and opposed him, just as people turn against evangelists today.
When Paul was tried for his life and stood to answer for himself, there was
not a single witness who would stand up for Paul! All men forsook him! There
was not a Christian who would risk his life to stand with Paul. Alone he
gave his testimony and was delivered temporarily. But a little later he was
taken out to the executioner's block and his head was chopped off.
The worldliness and unspiritual state of Christians became so bad that even
John the beloved disciple, the only apostle left alive, was not allowed to
speak in some of the churches. He writes in the Third Epistle of John, "I
wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence
among them, receiveth us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his
deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words: and not
content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and
forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church."
Does not that sound much like some churches and Christians today, where
godly soul-winning evangelists are kept out, and where there are divisions
and strife? Does not that remind you of worldly-minded church officers who
hound the pastors in some churches today, and limit the power of God? The
decline in spirituality, the increase of worldliness and selfishness among
Christians is a normal thing that has happened in all the ages.
Does someone tell me that churches are failing in these days? Well, then,
consider that every single church that was known to New Testament times has
utterly disappeared! Where is the church at Jerusalem, filled with
Spirit-filled disciples, at the birthplace of Christianity? It is gone! Long
centuries ago, longer than even history has any record of, that church
disappeared. Likely it happened in A.D. 70 when Jerusalem was taken by Titus
and much of it destroyed.
Where are the seven churches of Asia? Even the church of Philadelphia, so
greatly commended, has disappeared, as well as all the other churches in
Asia Minor.
Where are the churches established in Paul's ministry? Where is the mighty
church of Ephesus? Where is the church at Corinth? Where is the Christianity
which flamed so brightly all around the Mediterranean Sea, established by
Paul's journeys? Gone! All gone!
Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome, "Your faith is spoken of throughout
the whole world." And at Rome the Christianity so greatly favored of God
drifted more and more into formalism and ritualism, and became what is now
Roman Catholic apostasy. Roman Catholicism with the papacy, with worship of
Mary, with prayers to saints, with the idolatry of images, with purchased
masses, with confession to priests instead of to God, offering at best a
dubious purgatory instead of outright regeneration and assurance of
salvation, is a constant witness to the frailty of human nature, the
constant tendency to spiritual decline and false doctrine, unbelief and
worldliness.
Don't you see that if cold churches, formal churches, modernistic churches,
if unbelief in pulpit and pew in these modern days could prevent revival,
they would have prevented all the great revivals since New Testament times!
For in all Bible ages Christ has not failed, but the church has failed.
Christianity has not failed, but the preachers, the Christians, the
teachers, have failed.
Thank God that He is able to revive backslidden saints! Thank God that He is
able to save cold, formalistic unconverted church members! Thank God that
all the wickedness, all the false cults, all the worldliness, all the sin of
these days cannot prevent revival if a few of God's people pay God's price
for power and blessing!
III. The Dark Ages Could Not Prevent the Reformation
Revival
Few people realize how black was the midnight of spiritual darkness,
spiritual ignorance, in the Dark Ages. Never in the world was the "failure
of Christianity" so obvious to unbelievers as in the Dark Ages when Rome had
stifled opposition, when there was a famine of the Word of God, when in all
the world there were only a little handful of spiritually-intelligent
believers. Here and there, like a tiny candle gleaming in the dark, was a
group of "heretics"' who still read the Scriptures copied by hand, who
believed in individual regeneration by faith in Christ and who could be
called New Testament Christians.
Practically every town of ten thousand or twenty thousand people in America
today has more gospel preaching true to the Word of God than a nation of
millions had during the Dark Ages. Sunday school scholars know more Bible
usually than priests and monks usually knew in those days. What chance was
there for revival when indulgences to sin were openly sold; when salvation
was not put on the basis of faith in Christ, but on the basis of confession
to a Roman priest and payment for masses in the church? What chance was
there for revival when not only kings, but often the popes themselves were
licentious and immoral?
Yet out of the welter of those Dark Ages God gave, in the Reformation, one
of the greatest revivals the world has ever seen. God raised up Luther,
Calvin and others and turned literally millions of people to personal faith
in Christ and to a knowledge of salvation by faith, in Germany, the
Scandinavian countries, Scotland and England, and parts of many other
countries. There was really a counter-Reformation in the Catholic church
that profoundly moved the whole corrupt organization. Protestantism as we
know it in the main, particularly with reference to Lutheran, Reformed,
Presbyterian and Anglican churches, came out of the mighty revival of the
Reformation.
Thank God, no such spiritual darkness as that of the Middle Ages is on the
world today, not in America, not in England, not in any English-speaking
country! If world conditions, if spiritual decline, if false doctrine could
not prevent revival in the Dark Ages, surely world conditions today cannot
stop the power of God, the progress of the gospel, and the salvation of
multitudes of sinners, if some of God's people will pay God's price for
soul-winning power.
IV. Wickedness and Unbelief Could Not Prevent the Great
Modern Revivals
All through recorded history one truth stands out forever the same. God has
given revivals in spite of man's wickedness, in spite of man's unworthiness,
his unbelief and unfaithfulness.
Consider England in Wesley's day. In the book, This Freedom Whence, by John
Wesley Brady, you would do well to read of the alarming state of England
when Wesley began preaching. The complete breakdown of government and morals
which took place in France and brought about the French Revolution bade fair
to bring a similar convulsion in England.
The established church, the Anglican church, was unutterably corrupt. The
church was, of course, supported by taxation and church leaders appointed as
something like political patronage, by government leaders. Bishops had
estates with enormous incomes, had them by appointment of political leaders
and kept them by subservience to political ends. The clergy were everywhere
simply political appointees, without any reference to spiritual fitness, and
generally did not even profess to be converted, born-again men. Gambling was
everywhere prevalent among the clergy. Drinking, even drunkenness, was very
common. Most of the clergy were Deists. They believed in a supreme being but
did not believe the Bible, did not believe in the deity of Christ, the new
birth. The church ceremonies were simply a stiff form. People in the parish
were sprinkled as babies, "christened," and were counted members of the
church. We have no record of anybody in the Anglican church at the time
doing revival preaching, preaching the new birth, calling sinners to
repentance. Puritan pastors had been barred from preaching in principal
towns and had often been fined and jailed, and worse, for simply preaching
the gospel. We remember that John Bunyan was kept twelve years in Bedford
jail simply to keep him from preaching.
English vessels carried on the slave trade for most of the world. Armed
thugs would land in Africa, raid villages, murder those who opposed them and
carry off slaves. With brutality, herded in pens and holds like animals, the
slaves were carried to the West Indies, to the American colonies, to England
and elsewhere. Many died and were pitched overboard enroute. Smuggling,
gambling, thieving, licentiousness were everywhere common. The Shakespeare
plays give an idea of how common was adultery. Thousands were jailed for
debt. A man could be jailed or hanged for catching a wild rabbit on an
earl's estate. Little children slaved in mines and mills as much as twelve
or fourteen hours a day.
There were no Sunday schools of any kind, no free day schools, and most
people could not read nor write. When Wesley would preach he was often
assaulted physically just for preaching the gospel. Mobs were raised again
and again against him and his fellow preachers. Occasionally a Methodist
meeting house would be utterly destroyed and the officers often favored the
culprits.
England was as unlikely a place for a great revival as one could imagine.
The Puritan revival had been suppressed with great violence.
Independent-minded and Bible-believing preachers were everywhere abused,
jailed, run out of the country, or their property confiscated. England was
hardly civilized, utterly foreign to what we now know as England. Yet God
breathed upon John and Charles Wesley, on Whitefield and the preachers whom
God raised up with them, and a mighty revival transformed England. Besides
leading to the salvation of millions of souls, the Wesleyan revival
indirectly started a Sunday school movement, caused prison reforms, stopped
the slave trade, caused immense reforms in government, and largely created
what we know as traditional English character, justice and society.
The unbelief, the lewdness, the immorality and dishonesty among the people
and among church and government leaders when the Wesleyan revival began were
far more discouraging than is true in America today. In view of the mighty
revival God gave in Wesley's day, it is foolish and faithless to believe
that God could not now stir America and England and anywhere else in the
world where men shake God and pay God's price for revival, as mightily as He
did in Wesley's day. The trouble is not with the hardness of world
conditions and wicked hearts. The trouble is with the laborers. "The harvest
truly is great, but the labourers are few."
The Wesleyan revival came to America through Whitefield, Coke, Asbury and
others. But you will remember that in America, Tom Paine, one of the leaders
of the American Revolution, was at the height of his popularity. He wrote
The Age of Reason in which he set out to prove the Bible false. The
multitudes read his books and pamphlets with enthusiasm. At one time his
popularity rivaled that of Washington, Jefferson and Franklin. Leaders of
thought in early America were also Deists, denying the inspiration of the
Bible, the deity of Christ, and the need for regeneration. Yet Benjamin
Franklin heard Whitefield preach and was profoundly moved. He did not make a
public profession of faith, but Franklin's Autobiography shows that Franklin
in his later years believed in the God of the Bible, that he earnestly urged
people to pray and to read the Bible. George Washington himself became an
earnest man of prayer and was, we believe, a believing Christian. God
brought a revival in early America in spite of infidelity and flagrant
wickedness. Why would the Almighty God be hindered by human conditions now
if His people meet His requirements for revival?
Consider the revival from 1857-1859, which began outwardly in the Fulton
Street prayer meeting in New York City. It began only three years before the
Civil War, and the flames of hate, strife and every wicked passion were
rising high. That marvelous revival came in the midst of all the agitation
for and against war, and it did not prevent the mighty Civil War.
Consider the state of America in the days of D.L. Moody. Robert Ingersoll,
an infidel, was at the height of his popularity following the Civil War in
which he had a distinguished military record. He came near being governor of
Indiana, and many think he would have been president but for his position as
an outspoken infidel. All over America he lectured to great crowds against
the Bible and the Christian religion. Infidel clubs were formed all over
America. Unbelief has never been more arrogant, more outspoken than it was
in America when D.L. Moody began his great ministry.
Moody worked among soldiers during the Civil War. He did not become
widely-known until after the war. All the aftermath of the war, with its
hatred, its economic dislocation, with the oppression of southern states and
flaming sectional hatred, did not prevent a revival. American frontiers were
pushed westward with lawlessness and bloodshed, crimes against Indians, and
whole communities were often kept in terror by murdering outlaws.
When Moody went to England, infidels, openly scoffing at the Bible and God
and Christ, were so bold that infidel clubs were more popular and active
than lodges are today. In fact, Mr. Soltau, in The Sword Book of Treasures,
published by Sword of the Lord Publishers, tells how Moody preached one
night to five thousand infidels in a service advertised especially for them.
And they came, on order of their infidel leader, as a joke and to put the
evangelists, Moody and Sankey, to shame. They knew no gospel hymns. Aside
from a few Christian workers, no one was invited but infidels. Yet God's
mighty power came upon them and some five hundred turned to the Lord, and
the infidel clubs were broken.
Those who imagine that revivals are simply the product of certain happy
circumstances are foolish. They ignore the teaching of the Word of God and
ignore the facts back of all great revivals. The moral and spiritual
conditions when the D.L. Moody revival came to America and England were
tremendously bad, even in many ways worse than conditions today. Conditions
did not deter the power of God then, and cannot prevent His blessing now, if
His people pay the price for revival.
God must feel it as an insult to His power and grace that people think
revivals can only be had in propitious circumstances! On the verge of the
destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of Judah, about which Jeremiah
had been forewarned and which he had faithfully preached, God instructed
Jeremiah to buy a field and do it openly and officially as an evidence that
"houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land"
(Jeremiah 32:15). In view of the wasting and the utter destruction which was
even then taking place, when the temple would be destroyed, the gates of the
city burned with fire, the walls torn down, the people slaughtered or
dispersed to Babylon, revival of the nation seemed impossible. But Jeremiah
said, "Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy
great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee."
God answered back, "Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there
any thing too hard for me?" (Jeremiah 32:17, 27).
Elijah had people pour twelve barrels of water over the sacrifice on Mount
Carmel before he called on God to send a fire from Heaven. He knew that God
could start a fire with wet wood as well as with dry. He knew that God could
give a revival in the midst of the awful depravity and idolatry and sin of
Samaria. And God's believing people know that God can do the same thing
today.
What kind of a God is this we worship? Can puny men block the power of God
when His people trust Him? Are sinners so strong and impervious to God's
call that the Spirit of God cannot bring conviction, cannot pale the
sinner's cheek, cannot put tears in the sinner's eye, cannot set a burning
in the sinner's conscience? What kind of a God is this we preach and serve?
Is He so weak that the weather, the competition of radio and sports and
television and business and vacationing, has left Him helpless? Can God not
compete in this brave modern world of which we boast? Shame on us for the
thought! Down through the centuries God has proved Himself the God over all
the circumstances, over all the people. He is the God above all human
rulers. "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (Rom. 5:20). Man
proposes, but God disposes. Man's extremity is God's opportunity.
If I had a God who could not save a drunkard, I would never preach Him to
little children. If I had a God who could not cleanse the harlot, I would
never preach Him to a chaste wife and mother. If Jesus Christ cannot save
Catholics and Jews, criminals and infidels, then I would never risk my own
soul into His hand. If God cannot give great city-wide revivals with mighty
results and thousands saved from the public preaching of the Word in mass
evangelism, I would never preach Him in a class in child evangelism, or a
class of Junior boys and girls!
What sin, what reproach upon God, what a mark of our unbelief, when we
indicate that conditions are too hard for God, that conditions prevent a
revival! History down through all the ages cries that it is a lie! All the
revivals in Bible times, the great Reformation revival with Luther and
Calvin and others, the Wesleyan revival that saved England from its French
Revolution and made English and American civilization and freedom what it is
today, the Moody revivals and more--these were all brought about in the face
of horrible, widespread and flagrant sin, in the face of spiritual decline
and unbelief in the churches and out.
Are you impressed with all the power and might and wickedness and the bent
away from God of this present modern world? Then listen to the words of
Jesus Christ, "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer;
I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). The world? Remember that "this is
the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith" (I John 5:4).
World conditions have never yet stopped a revival when God's people met
God's requirements and had His mighty power for soul-winning. World
conditions cannot stop a revival now. "The harvest truly is great, but the
labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would
send forth labourers into his harvest" (Luke 10:2).
More Life Changing Sermons:
Do you know for sure that if you died today, you would go to Heaven? You can know!
Click Here to find out how!
