So many things these days work against the possibility of revival it is easy to give up on it. For one thing if we are really in the last days shouldn't we just expect everything tn the culture and in the churches to deteriorate as it seems to be doing? Lawlessness is one of the signs of the last days and we re certainly seeing lawlessness in the culture as protests grow violent day after day and there are active efforts by local governments to prevent the usual methods of restraining such violence. A law was passed to deprive the police of their usual nonlethal methods of crowd control, prompting the police commissioner to say she couldn't in good conscience require them to put themselves in such a dangerous position without such protections. I think that was in Seattle, but it might have been in Portland. Both cities have been experiencing what seems like an endless daily attack by protests, protests that apparently start out more or less peaceful but become violent at some point in the evening. Overall our "lawmakers" seem determined to interfere with laws meant to protect life and property rather than enforce them. They seem happy to impose their political views on their opposition too, willing to lie to sway public opinion. In the recent congressional hearing of Attorney General William Barr, the Democrats would seem to ask him a question but then refuse to let him answer. They woulc castigate him for supposed transgressions they themselves invented, without any regard to evidence that he was at all guilty of such transgressions, and certainly no interest in taking his denials seriously let alone finding out the truth about any of it.
Then we have the COVID-19 pandemic 3which has been wreaking a different kind of havoc on the country. "Pestilence" is another of the signs of the end days leading up to the return of Jesus.
So we have reason to be expecting the Rapture of the Church very soon, which will be the trigger for the seven-year Tribulation before His return.
In such an environment how would it make sense to seek the revival of the Church? What's the point? There are plenty of churches that are disobedient in a vaqriety of ways these days, some teaching a completely false doctrine that denies God's word, some of them "liberal" churches that are supporting the lawlessness in the culture as if it were a righteous thing to do, as if it expressed God's love. Churches have become lax on many biblical teachings such as divorce, the incidence of divorce among Christiansbeing no different than in the rest of the population. Our laws have been perverted in many ways by our legislators and our courts over the last few decades, so that the murder of unborn babies is now legal and treated as a "right" as if our very Constitutional rights support it. Same with the legalization of pornography, treated as freedom of speech. These perversions have changed the character of American society dramatically over the last half century or so, and unfortunately many Christians have pretty much just fallen in step with it all instead of opposing it. John Adams famously said that our system of government was designed for a moral and religious people, that it was "wholly inadequate for the government of any other." Well, we are now that "any other," no longer that moral and religious people. The devil has done his work well. America is pretty much undone already, and now that we are under siege by this virus and these lawless violent protests, the nation's complete destruction wouldn't take much to accomplish.
The Church should act as a bulwark against such destruction but the Church has been weakened along with the culture. We should be the "salt" that inhibits its corruption, but we are just as corrupt in many areas; we should be the "light" that illuminates truth and righteousness and restrains lawlessness and falseness, but many congregations have already succumbed to false doctrine and become useless.
Many have been crying for revival for many years but it has not come. Oh we've had some bogus revivals, such as the "laughing revival" that started in Toronto, and other "revivals" in Florida, based on "supernatural" phenomena that are not biblical. In fact such bogus revivals discourage some of us from praying for revival at all because we don't want more of that and despite solid biblical opposition to it such as in the Strange Fire Conference at John MacArthur's church some years ago now, there area still many who think those were genuine revivals. was God in them at all? I don't know, but their tone was fleshly.
What we want is a sober revival of godliness and biblical truth that characterized earlier revivals, like the one in Scotland I highlighted in a recent post. God gave them revival as they agreed to the principles of the Protestant Reformation. They no doubt had some things to repent of but nothing like we have today to repent of before we can expect God to revive us.
And repentance is the necessary first step as that video about Scotland affirmed. Just praying for revival has not succeeded. Perhaps the major effort was Leonard Ravenhill's. He called for repentance and reform and constant prayer but revivgal didn't come through his efforts. Why not? I remember that some ten years ago or so Kay Arthur whose Precept Minitries exist all over the country called for prayer for revival among her Bible study groups, and that didn't bring revival either.
Somehow we've been failing to discover the necessary conditions that God would honor with revival. What are we missing? I speculated that Ravenhill gave too much credence to the charistmatic movement, which the Strange Fire Conference has definitively exposed as fraudulent. That's just a speculation, I don't know if it is the reason though it could have been I suppose. Beyond that I've speculated that our abandonment of the woman's head covering may be a strong reason God won't honor us now as well. The reason I think both of these carry some weight as hindrances to revival is that they are both rationalized away, and treated as acceptable to God. Perhaps now there are more Christians who reject the charismatic movement, but it's certainly not all, and the woman's head covering has been relegated to culture rather than bilbical principles.
The Strange Fire Conference made it clear that the "gifts of the Spirit" that are claimed by the charismatic movement are not the same phenomena described as those gifts in the New Testament. The "gift of prophecy" is not prophecy from God, it's more like fortune telling. The "gift of tongues" has no recognizable meaning as did the languages spoken through the Spirit by the early Christians. Certainly God may still do supernatural works, but those supernatural works are not from Him. We need to completely repudiate such phenomena if we are to have true godly revival.
The scripture about the head covering, 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, is too complex to argue here. I've done that at my other blog, Hidden Glory. All I'd mention here is that by that scripture we require men to remove their hats in church, showing that we still regard the covering of the head to be what that scripture is all about. That being the case there is no excuse to interpret away that meaning for women. The passage is about covering the head, it has no other meaning, and it is based on God's own principles, not on culture. If we require men to remove their headgear, the only action that makes sense for women is that we require women to cover their heads in the same circumstances. Besides this we need to note that historically women did cover their heads in church, pretty much up until the mid-20th century, which happens to coincide with the feminist movement in the general culture. Then the abandonment of covering the head got rationalized in the theological literature, in ways I thihnk are pretty transparently illogical and unconscionable despite what I must assume is the sincerity and Christian spirit of the authors. Yet such rationalizations have persuaded a whole generation of some of the best pastors in the nation and probably the world, just as a similarly questionable defense of the "oldest" manuscripts that are really corrupt and unworthy, has been used to deceive the same basically good teachers into using bad Bibles. Perhaps this too should be one of the things the churches need to repent of if God would give us revival.
In praying for revival I would want to emphasize at least the need to repent of accepting charismatic phenomena as from God, and repent of abndoning the head covering for women. This is speculation and I can't argue for sure that ithese areTHE lreasons we haven't had revival but I do think it very well could be. In either case it would be right to give them up because they are wrong and MAYBE God would honor us with revival if we did. There will be many who resist both of these attitudes and that could keep us from true revival IF what I'm saying is right.
We need repentance for all our sins, both personal and corporate in any case if we want revival. That is where we have to start. We need to ask God to reveal to us where the hindrances lie and confess and pray according to His will.
It may be that the Rapture is at the very door, and the Tribulation is right behing it, and there isn't even time for revival, but I can't think of anything we would be better engaged in at any time. Revival is when we become full of the spirit of God. There is never a time when the Church doesn't need to be full of the Spirit of God. We need to be praying that the lawlessness will be restrained and that righteouesness prevail in the culture, but above all we need the power of God in the churches and in our own lives if there is any hope at all of saving the culture. And if not the culture, then human beings, since revivals not only renew the spiritual life of the churches but convert unbelievers. When people re right with God, whether newly converted Christians or spiritually renewed Christians, the culture will naturally straighten out.
