Thoughts on Revival

Compiled by Brother Amartey

Leonard Ravenhill:

“As I said, there are two great reasons we don’t have revival. We’re content to live without it; It’s too costly. We don’t want God to disrupt our status quo. The Christian life can only be lived one way, and that’s God’s way. And God’s way is that I leave all and follow Him. God’s way is that, in that hour when I think I am going to have joy or something, suddenly that cup turns into a cup of bitterness. When I think I’ve “arrived” at something, the Lord shutters that. We think, “If I had the privileges of Mrs So-and-so, I’d be a real saint.”

“He has called us to stand in the gap. To be the repairers of the breach. To bring the powers of the world to come on this materialistic blind day in which we live and this sleepy Laodicean church. When He was on earth He cleaned the temple. I feel it needs cleansing again, from worldliness… from materialism… May the Lord help us to search our hearts as well as search the Scriptures. Help us to be honest and admit that we’ve failed, seek the place of prayer, and the place of cleansing and the place of anointing. May we be a vital link between His Eternal Spirit and this troubled, lost world outside. May His glory shine forth again.”-

Dr. Campbell Morgan:

“Here is revival that comes from heaven; There is no preaching, no order, no hymn books, no choirs, no organs, no collections, and finally no advertising! Now think of that for a moment! There were organs, but they were silent; there were ministers but no preaching – they were among the people praising God! Yet the Welsh Revival is a “revival of preaching” for everybody is preaching! No order, yet it moves from day to day, county to county, with matchless precision, with the order of an attacking force. No songbooks, but ah, me, I nearly wept tonight over the singing! When the Welsh sing they abandon themselves to their singing. We sing as if we thought it wouldn’t be respectable to be heard by the one next to us! No choir, did I say? It was all choir!”

“We cannot organize revival, but we can set our sails to catch the wind from heaven when God chooses to blow upon His people once again.”

A.W. Tozer:

“The story of revivals throughout the ages has been the story of lone men meeting God, of going out and finding God all alone. Sometimes they went down to the church basement, sometimes to the caves, sometimes out under trees, sometimes by haystacks, but they went alone to meet God, and then the revival went out from there.”

Charles Spurgeon:

“Oh! men and brethren, what would this heart feel if I could but believe that there were some among you who would go home and pray for a revival – men whose faith is large enough, and their love fiery enough to lead them from this moment to exercise unceasing intercessions that God would appear among us and do wondrous things here, as in the times of former generations.”

Del Fehsenfeld Jr:

“True revival is that divine moment when God bursts upon the scene and displays his glory. Revival is not just evangelism, excitement, or emotionalism. It is the extraordinary movement of the Holy Spirit! Revival, no matter how great or small in its ultimate scope, always begins with individual believers whose hearts are desperate for God, and who are willing to pay the price to meet Him. If revival depended on you — your prayers, your faith, your obedience — would your church ever experience revival?”

Ted Rendall:

“Perhaps the greatest barrier to revival on a large scale is the fact that we are too interested in a great display. We want an exhibition; God is looking for a man who will throw himself entirely on God. Whenever self-effort, self-glory, self-seeking or self-promotion enters into the work of revival, then God leaves us to ourselves.”

Sammy Tippit:

“There is no shortcut to revival. If we’re going to have revival that shakes our churches and our communities, we’re going to have to get a group of people, somewhere, sometime, somehow, to pray.”-

Brother Amartey:

“Like Lot, we live in Sodom, and are unaware of the impending disaster and gloom that is looming over the nation. I call upon all Americans, churches, individuals, believers and unbelievers, to fast and pray for this nation. Judgment is already upon America and it’s going to get worse, but our God is merciful and He might mitigate His judgment upon the land when we cry out to Him. This is not a prophecy of doom and gloom, but of judgment and of the wrath of God. Please let us humble ourselves before the Lord, repent, fast and pray and ask the Lord to show mercy and mitigate His judgment, but instead, revive us and let us rejoice in Him again.”

David Smithers:

“Ask the Lord to let you feel what He feels about the state of the Church and the world. This is the season and time for us to fast, weep and pray for a true visitation of God. In fact, it could be our last opportunity to cooperate with God’s revival purposes. Most believers never get more than one chance in a lifetime to be involved in a true move of God. Will you humble yourself and pray, or must the Lord look elsewhere to find a willing and humble virgin? “Ask the LORD for rain in the time of the latter rain” (Zech 10:1).”

James Burns:

“To the church a revival means humiliation, a bitter knowledge of failure, and an open and humiliating confession of sin on the part of her ministers and people. It is not the easy and glowing thing many think it to be, who imagine that it fills the empty pews, and reinstates the Church in power and authority. IT COMES TO SCORCH BEFORE IT HEALS; it comes to rebuke ministers and people for their unfaithful witness, for their selfish living, for their neglect of the Cross, and to call them to daily renunciation, to an evangelical poverty, and to a deep and daily consecration. This is why a revival has ever been unpopular with large numbers within the Church. Because it says nothing to them of power such as they have learned to love, or of ease, or of success; it accuses them of sin, it tells them that they are dead, it calls them to awake, to renounce the world, and to follow Christ.”

“Is the church today ready to hear that voice? Is she bowed down before God in prostration of need, in conscious dejection of unworthiness, in passionate self-abasement and desire for that renewal which comes through renunciation? It may well be doubted. It is upon the hearts of the few that the agony falls. Revivals are not usually preceded by the awakening of the Church to a sense of need, but by the awakening of devout souls here and there, who feeling the need, begin to entreat God in prayer for a revival. Gradually this deepens and spreads until the sense of need becomes a burden, until the cry, “How long, Oh God! how long! becomes an agony. This is the cry which God cannot deny. It is for that cry that we must intently listen. Is there, then today a disposition to pray for a revival? Are devout men everywhere becoming alarmed, not for the success of the Church, but for the glory of Christ, lest it be lost altogether? Is there a sense of a burden lying upon men’s hearts which will not give them rest, but which makes them agonize in prayer? If not, then the night is not far spent, a deeper darkness still awaits us. Of what use would a revival be if we are not prepared for it? It would pass over us without doing its work.”

Erroll Hulse:

“In our generation we have increasingly suffered from spiritual lethargy and powerlessness. There is a high percentage of weak and lukewarm Christians in western churches who evidence little interest in growing in grace and knowledge. The church may be bustling with activity and at the same time be infiltrated and permeated with the world’s thinking and doing. It is sometimes the case that our bright forms of worship camouflage a dead spiritual condition.

Today the church world-wide is struggling. The impact of our churches upon the spiritual state of the world has, with all too few exceptions, been minimal. The missionary effort among us is feeble. The enemies of the gospel are winning the day in almost every area of the world.

Our paramount need is for heaven-sent revivals of the kind that have adorned the history of the church. Nothing less than the powerful work of the Holy Spirit on a massive scale will meet the desperate spiritual poverty of our age, and remove the gross darkness that covers the nations. Only the manifestation of God in the midst of His people can give the church victory, making her the “praise of the earth.”

Evan Wiggs:

“But today is revival still possible? Can God and will God still move in power in our western world? I know personally the price of revival, my brothers and sisters. I was kicked out of the church where I was associate pastor because revival was starting to break out. Revival scares people and especially scares the leadership of the Church. They want to control, but the Holy Spirit will not be controlled. It rocks the boat and makes people uncomfortable. Oh God make us uncomfortable and not only rock our boats, but kick us out of the boat to where You are, out on the waves of the world. Those Churches who resist the movement of God and don’t understand the day of their visitation will lose out in the coming move of God.

Yes you heard right, God has not forgotten America and has a plan to move and to shake our country to wake up or even resurrect the Church!!! But for the remnant still in the Church, or even those who are fed up with the Church as it is, there is much we need to do to prepare ourselves for the coming revival.”

Del Fehsenfeld Jr:

“I do not know of any greater need in the church today than for the fire of God to fall. Just what do we mean by the fire of God?

I’m talking about the manifest presence and glory of God. I’m talking about the supernatural power of God. I’m talking about services that are more than just nice meetings with nice music and nice preaching. I’m talking about results that cannot be explained in terms of human effort. I’m talking about that which man cannot program, manipulate, plan, or make happen. I’m talking about something more than the ordinary operation of the Holy Spirit in the lives of His people. I’m talking about the extraordinary outpouring of His Spirit. I’m talking about the fire of God.”

“I hear Christian leaders today speak of how Christianity is flourishing. Others insist we are in the throes of revival. If that is the case, then why is every form of moral impurity rampant in our evangelical, Bible-preaching churches? ……. Why are so many professing Christians barren, empty, hurting, confused, and in spiritual bondage? Why is the world so utterly disinterested in what we have to offer? As long as we think we’re doing all right, we will never be motivated to cry out to God to send fire from heaven.”

Russell Moore:

“A “remnant” is usually the way that God brings about revival. He usually pares a people down, clears away the field, prunes the branches, and then starts again. The pattern is order, disorder, reorder.

For all the flaws of the evangelical emphasis on revival, the beauty of it is that it, first of all, doesn’t give up on the possibility of God acting. God can do a new thing. What’s more, a true revival, while corporate – in the sense of bringing new life to a whole body of believers – retains the sense of the personal. “Lord, send a revival,” the old song goes, “And let it begin with me.”

David Smithers:

“The problems facing the Church in our day seem endless and at times overwhelming. Many with the best of intentions have created every imaginable ministry, equipped with an answer for every need. Yet many supposed needs are often only a shadow of the real problem. Are we busy answering questions that don’t need to be answered? Have we been distracted, picking leaves that will only grow back, while never touching the root of our own stubborn pride? I am afraid that many have tried to improve the Gospel at the expense of Christ’s call to childlike humility. The promises of God offers the Church GREAT HOPE! That is, if we as a UNITED people will by God’s grace meet the conditions. 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, “If My people who are called by My name will HUMBLE themselves and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” Either God has lied to us or we are lying to ourselves!”

“Undeniably, revival is a miraculous work of God, BUT true revival never comes apart from the preparation and the participation of a remnant of God’s people. Oh, how the Church needs to rediscover the unchanging principles of revival. It is time for a new wave of young pioneers to rise up and cooperate with the Holy spirit’s revival process. It is time for us to break up our fallow ground and once again nurture the fruitful seeds of revival.”

Duncan Campbell:

“Then I would like to make it perfectly clear what I understand of revival. When I speak of revival, I am not thinking of high-pressure evangelism. I am not thinking of crusades or of special efforts convened and organized by man. That is not in my mind at all. Revival is something altogether different from evangelism on its highest level. Revival is a moving of God in the community and suddenly the community becomes God conscious before a word is said by any man representing any special effort.”

David Smithers:

“As I said before, the question is no longer if revival will come, but

rather through whom will revival come? Where are the humble and

broken people who will allow God to birth a mighty visitation

through them? Where are the ones who are willing to empty

themselves of their own agendas and plans in order to become

pregnant with God’s vision for revival? Will YOU allow Jesus to

break you and use you in the coming revival? Invite the Holy Spirit

even now to fill you with that kind of all-consuming vision and

calling.”

“Again in 1 Cor. 1:27-29, Paul plainly tells us where we should look

to find God’s chosen instruments of revival: “But God chose the

foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak

things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things

of this world and the despised things and the things that are not,

to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”

The most powerful revivals throughout the history of the Church

have always been nurtured by obscure and unlikely people. The

kingdom of God has the greatest impact when carried in the hands

of the HUMBLE.”

“Absalom, the son of King David, was once presumed to be God’s

chosen vessel simply because he was attractive and charming.

However, like a beautiful flower, he soon faded away and proved

not to be what he first appeared (2 Sam. 14:25, James 1:9-11).

God’s revivalists are not selected on the basis of beauty and ability,

but rather brokenness and humility! The Father has always

preferred the humble for His revival purposes. Rarely have God’s

revivalists been found among the polished and esteemed

churchmen of their day. Therefore, it would be a serious mistake

for us to expect to find the next move of God on some glamorous

stage bathed in glitter and bright lights. The birthplace of revival is

usually discovered in despised and lowly mangers, not elegant mansions!”

Brother Amartey:

“You don’t advertise a fire! When there’s a fire anywhere, everybody would know. That’s the kind of revival we are praying for.”