Revival # 2

Revival # 2

When I was praying in the Bahamas one day, I saw a great column of smoke, which happened to be coming from tires that were being burned. It was as black as could be, and over there I saw a wisp of smoke going up from the ground. I didn't think of it until about a year later, I was praying and the Lord said, "That volume of black, thick smoke is like the volume of sin that goes up every day." All the blasphemy, all the unbelief, all the dirty stories, all the lying, all the deception, all sex-perversion, all drunkenness - this tremendous column of iniquity goes up in the sight of God. And here you have a little wisp - of what? That is the praise that God gets out of His people. If we are going to realize how much we need revival we need to recognize the dimension of sin. We have to recognize that sin offends God!

Psalm 85:4 says, "Turn us, O God of our salvation and cause Thine anger towards us to cease. Wilt Thou be angry with us forever?" Psalm 80 verse 3, "Turn us again, O God, and cause Thy face to shine." "...cause Thy face to shine." You know, I think one of the awesome tragedies of our day is this: the people of Israel could not live if God turned His face away from them and seems now we cannot live if God turns His face on us!

The awesomeness of God's presence...The awesomeness of God's majesty... We've had meetings, in the last month particularly, where I would sit down at the end of the meeting. I didn't know what to do with it, and the pastor said, "Well, I can't handle a meeting like this, what do you do?" The invasion of God's power was so awesome that there was no way that you could handle it, so you just let the meeting ride itself out. We were having meetings five hours long, beginning at seven at night and finishing at midnight. College students came, and university people, and business people. When God comes, our social distinctions don't matter, our intellectual distinctions don't matter. There is an overwhelming sense that God is dealing, not with my intellect, not with my body, not with my emotions, so much as with the inner man...the inner being...the inner temple which He wants to indwell. 

Joel speaks about the priests, the ministers of God. Look at Joel 1:13, "Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: how ye ministers of the altar,come lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God." Go over to verse 12 of the 2nd chapter, "Turn ye now ever to Me with all your heart and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart, and not your garments." Come down to verse 17, "Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thine heritage to reproach."

Now, how do you get to that state? There is no way you can jump to that level in ten minutes. It is an operation. It's a process. It's a preparation. There has to be an individual breaking up of fallow ground in me. What is there in my individual life that obstructs the flow of the Holy Spirit? If you are going to break up fallow ground you have to get your own life into a state of discipline - and we are the most undisciplined generation of believers ever! There is no way of getting to revival unless previously there comes brokenness. 

What God wants is not to fill up empty pews. He is not concerned about filling empty churches. He is concerned about filling empty hearts. And empty lives, and empty eyes that have no vision; Empty hearts that have no passion, And empty wills that have no purpose.

Have you ever thought about the enormity of the Jewish system? A great monolith of priests and Levites, and offerings and sacrifices, and new moons and Sabbaths, and Urim and Thumin. Then suddenly God puts one solitary individual there he he has one commission. "You go and prepare the way of the Lord." But he has all this against him: At least 2000 priests, a senior priest and elaborate temple. A system of buying and selling cattle and other things for sacrifice. An outer court, where you could come to a priest and tell him of your sin and your guilt and he would make an offering for you. And this fellow comes and he is saying that the religious system is all obsolete - that God is going to manifest Himself independent of all of that, and there is Somebody Else! They say, "You must be the man." He says, "Oh, no, no, no! I am not the One. I am just coming to prepare the way of the Lord."

Now think of the sorrow of God after Adam failed. Think of the sorrow of God after the whole system that He'd inaugurated failed. Think of something which may be even more awesome still: Think of the fact that 2000 years have lapsed since Jesus came and did a full work of redemption...and the church is still dragging its feet today!

The human dilemma that we are in right now is that we have never been in a lower point. People say sometimes, "Don't worry, we have got out of situations like this."  Oh, no! We haven't. Don't you fool yourself. We've never gotten out of a situation like this. You know why? Because we have never been in a situation like this. That's why!

We've never had difficulties like this. We've never had this plague of divorce. We've never had a million girls under sixteen pregnant, like last year. What did they say the night before last on the news, "Tonight 20,000 girls over the nation will get pregnant. Sex is a sport. Immorality is an accepted way of life. People say there are fewer divorces than last year. Well, how do you expect any more when they don't get married? They did get married at one time and got divorced. They don't even bother to get married now, just live together. Have a baby, so what? "We agree to part," that's it. So we are a broken nation. Never, never in our history did we need revival more than today, the day in which we live. But you don't wish revival...there is no such thing.

~Leonard Ravenhill~

(continued with # 3)

[Reproduction Limitations: (c) 1994 by Leonard Ravenhill, Lindale, Texas)"