Revival: What is it? What Does it Look Like?

Jonathan Edwards was considered one of the greatest preachers in American history. It is said that he and George Whitefield and other great preachers of there time (early to mid 17th century) were responsible for the great birth and strong foundation of the nation known as America. Jonathan Edwards's ministry and life was changed forever by a revival that hit his Northhampton congregation in 1934 through 1935. Here is what one of his biographers wrote about the man and his life.

What are the lessons for today from Jonathan Edwards? No man is more relevant to the present condition of Christianity than Jonathan Edwards. None is more needed. Take all we have been considering, and on top of that take the treatise he wrote in 1748 with the title An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and for the Advancement of Christ's kingdom on Earth. Some friends in Scotland had been meeting together to pray in this way, and they wrote to Edwards and told him about this. They asked whether he agreed with this and whether he would write about it. So he wrote this great treatise pleading with people to join together, and to agree to do so once a month and in various other ways. He argues and pleads very specially in terms of what he and they regarded then as the nearness of the second coming of Christ and the glory that was to be revealed. It is a mighty and a glorious statement. Surely revival is the only answer to the present need and condition of the church.

An apologetic which fails to put supreme ,emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit is doomed to be a complete failure. But that is what we have been doing. We have brought out an apologetic which is highly philosophical and argumentative. We have argued about modern art, modern literature, modern drama, politics and social views as if this is what is needed. What is needed is an effusion, an outpouring of the Spirit; and any apologetic which does not finally bring us to the need of such an outpouring will ultimately be useless. I believe we are again in much the same position as that which obtained before those great things happened in the 30'S of the eighteenth century. The Boyle lectures had been instituted in the previous century to provide an apologetic, and to defend religion and the gospel. And we have been doing the same with much assiduity. Not only so, Bishop Butler's famous Analogy had appeared in defense of the gospel in a different manner. But these were not the factors that changed the entire situation. It was revival; and our only hope is revival. We have tried everything else, Edwards reminds us once more of the supreme need of revival.

Let us be clear as to what he said about this. We must know what revival means. We must know the difference between an evangelistic campaign and revival. They are not to be compared. We must realize the difference between experiencing the power of the Spirit in revival and the calling of people to make a decision. Some years ago a certain well-known and prominent Evangelical leader at the time was urging me to attend a certain evangelistic campaign, and full of enthusiasm said, 'You must go. It's marvelous. Wonderful! People go streaming forward. No emotion. No emotion!' He kept on repeating 'No emotion'. He had not read Jonathan Edwards! We should be seriously concerned if there is no emotion. If people can take some supposed decision for Christ with no emotion, what is it that really happens? Is it conceivable that a soul may realize the danger of spending eternity in hell, know something about the holiness of God, and believe that the Son of God came into the world and even died on a cruel cross and rose again from the dead that he might be saved, and yet feel no emotion?

Read Edwards on revival. The term he used always is ‘an outpouring of the Spirit'. Today, we are hearing much about what is called 'renewal'. They dislike the term revival; they prefer 'renewal'. What they mean by that is that we have all been baptized with the Spirit at the moment of regeneration, and that all we have to do therefore is to realize what we already have and yield ourselves to it. That is not revival! You can do all they teach and derive many benefits; but you still have not had revival. Revival is an out-pouring of the Spirit. It is something that comes upon us, that happens to us. We are not the agents, we are just aware that something has happened. So Edwards reminds us again of what revival really is.

That leads to a warning to those who are quenching the Spirit; and there are many who are guilty of that at the present time. A book by the late Ronald Knox on Enthusiasm has become popular among certain Evangelicals. He was an intellectual Roman Catholic ignorant of these things. He, of course, mentions Edwards and the famous sermon. The New Testament warns us against 'quenching the Spirit'. We can be guilty of doing so in many ways. We can quench the Spirit by being exclusively interested in theology. We can do so also by being concerned only about the application of Christianity to industry, to education, to art, to politics etc. At the same time Edwards gives similar warnings to those who emphasize experience only. Nothing is more striking than the balance of this man. You must have the theology; but it must he theology on fire. There must be warmth and heat as well as light. In Edwards we find the ideal combination - the great doctrines with the fire of the Spirit upon them.

Please, KP family, be praying for an "outpouring of the Holy Spirit." We need it. Our kids need it. our unsaved family and friends need for us to experience it. Our community and our nation's only hope is for us (the church) to experience an outpouring of the Holy Ghost.

-Pastor