quotations on revival by respected men
“Numerous writings on the subject preserved confirm that revival is Divine intervention in the normal course of spiritual things. It is God revealing Himself to man in awful holiness and irresistible power. It is such a manifest working of God that human personalities are overshadowed and human programs abandoned. It is man retiring into the background because God has taken the field. It is the Lord… working in extraordinary power on saint and sinner” (Arthur Wallis, In the Day of Thy Power, p. 20).
“The essence of revival is that the Holy Spirit comes down upon a number of people together; upon a whole church, a number of churches, districts or perhaps a whole country. It is a visitation or outpouring of the Holy Spirit God has come down among them” (Martyn LloydJones, Revival, p. 100).
“……a movement of the Holy Spirit bringing about a revival of New Testament Christianity in the Church of Christ and its related community. It may significantly change an individual, a group of believers, a congregation, a city, a country or even eventually the world but it accomplishes the reviving of the Church, the awakening of the masses and the movement of uninstructed peoples towards the Christian faith; the revived church by many or few is moved to engage in evangelism, teaching and social action” (J. Edwin Orr, The Eager Feet, p. vii).
“… what we call revival is simply New Testament Christianity, the saints getting back to normal” (Vance Havner, Hearts Afire, pp. 103104).
“To the church, a revival means humiliation, a bitter knowledge of unworthiness and an open and humiliating confession of sin on the part of her ministers and people. It is not the easy and glorious thing many think it to be, who imagine it fills pews and reinstates the church in power and authority. It comes to scorch before it heals; it comes to condemn 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. That 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 they are dead, it calls them to awake, to renounce the world and to follow Christ.” (James Burns, writing in Revival, Their Laws and Leaders)
4 comments June 26th, 2008
