Pastor's Blog

Yet these revivals did have the potentiality and purpose of saving Israel from the ultimate consequences of her evil ways. On more than one occasion these revivals gave Israel periods of peace and prosperity, sometimes of considerable length. The failure of revivals to keep Israel from relapse and provide a permanent cure lay in Israel’s failure to abide by the principles inherent in revival as a remedy, not in the failure of the remedy itself. The story would be entirely different if they had maintained after revival the same consecration which brought them into revival. Likewise, the record of Israel would be still worse had it not been for seasons of revival. God was certainly not pleased with their defection, but He was with their return.

The very same principle applies today in the history of the Church, the course of denominations, and the experience of individuals. God’s people should never be in need of revival. There is a far better provision. But when there is need for revival, thank God, revival is available. Although we do not believe in the need for revival, we believe in revival when we need it. When such sense of need finds vocal expression among the people of God, it is at least an honest expression of a regrettable fact and a glimmer of hope for a change for the better.

The Call to Revival

A true sense of need for revival is actually the call of God to revival. Such a sense can only be accounted for by the drawing of the Spirit of God in accordance with the will of God. A conscious need of God and hunger for God is actually God Himself hungering within us for Himself. When such drawing of the Spirit is followed by the necessary responses to God on the part of man, revival in some form and commensurate with that response is inevitable.

God Himself is delighted to respond to man’s response. Whenever one of Israel’s leaders recognized in her defection from God, the true cause of her national calamities, God evidenced His pleasure by supernatural intervention in her national affairs. The availability of revival to arrest a trend away from God or to regain lost ground is not only a deduction based on historical events inside and outside the Scriptures, but is also a scriptural assurance of a glorious fact. “I will restore to you the years that the locust have eaten” (Joel 2:25).

Furthermore, the promise of things beyond past experience and above natural expectation is an additional scriptural assurance of an even more glorious fact. “Behold, I will do a new thing... I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19). “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither has the eye seen, O God, beside You, what He has prepared for him that waits for Him”(who has worked for him that has waited for Him, margin) (Isaiah 64:4).