REVIVAL COULD COME

(Friday Church News Notes, January 3, 2014, http://www.wayoflife.org fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) –

The previous articles describe the difference between America in the 1940s and America today. The America that exists today simply could not do what it did 70 years ago. What’s missing today? The answer is God’s blessing. This is the answer that secular libertarians and unregenerate political conservatives don’t understand. Though America was not a godly nation in the 1940s when measured by the perfect standards of God’s Word, she was a nation that loved Israel, and she was a nation filled with churches that were much more faithful to God’s Word than they are today, and she was a nation of people that were much more God-fearing than they are today. The unchurched generally believed in God and feared Him and respected the Bible and respected churches and pastors, which was the salty influence of God’s people. Even Hollywood was bound by a moral code. The military chaplaincy program was robust and nearly universally respected. What was true in my mom’s Baptist church in Florida during the war, was true across the land. The church was open every day and every day people knelt before God and confessed their sins and begged His help. American’s victory in WWII was not a foregone conclusion. Had Hitler developed the atomic bomb first, he would doubtless have used it first on Russia and then on America, and it could have been America surrendering rather than the Axis Powers.

America’s root problems are spiritual, and the only real solution is spiritual. The only thing that will help America out of her terrible plight is a true revival, and there could be revival. Though the time on God’s prophetic calendar is late, there is no reason to believe that genuine revivals can no longer occur. But revival in America or Canada or England or other lands with anything like a biblical heritage will happen only on the basis of 2 Chronicles 7:14. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14). This is a promise for Israel, but it has application to the church age. See Romans 15:4 and 1 Corinthians 10:11.

Nothing like a revival and lasting change will happen through Moral Majority programs or Tea Parties or Chick Fill-A Days or Duck Dynasty support campaigns. As these have been tried repeatedly and enthusiastically over the past few decades, the moral depravity has only increased and the power of the forces for right and liberty has only decreased, because these are carnal weapons that only deal with symptoms and cannot affect the foundational spiritual issues. These are bandaids on cancer. They can win socio-political skirmishes but not spiritual wars. Keeping Duck Dynasty on the air is not a sign of moral victory at a fundamental level; it is a sign of the power of the almighty dollar. At the very same time that A&E was being pressured into keeping Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson on the air by an outpouring of support via social networking and “new media” sites, federal judges were ruling against biblical marriage in Utah and Ohio and the Supreme Court ruled against biblical marriage laws in New Mexico. Which of these events will have the most far-reaching and lasting consequences? The heart of the tree is being eaten away even as the watchers are rejoicing at keeping a few leaves alive.

Revival could happen if individual Christians and individual churches repent before God at a deep level, repent of their adulterous love for this God-hating world, repent of their lukewarmness, and beseech His help. If even 100 Bible-believing churches took 2 Chronicles 7:14 seriously, who knows what would happen? If they started a weekly prayer meeting specifically for revival, specifically to beseech God’s help for the nation, if they called for fasting and prayer, and if the members of those churches would spend time seeking God’s face in a persistent manner, who knows how far the forces of evil could be driven back? God has never needed a majority. Gideon’s brave and vigilant few are enough.

The very fact that it is unlikely that even 100 Bible-believing churches would call for such prayer meetings, and that the majority of the members would not attend such meetings even if the pastors exhorted them to do so, is evidence that what I am saying is true about the root problem being the churches themselves. Even the best, for the most part, are lukewarm, settled down and comfortable in the world, not pilgrims but dwellers, mighty for pot luck and parties but weak for spiritual warfare.

CONCLUSION: The Friday Church News Notes is designed for use in churches and is published by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service. Unless otherwise stated, the Notes are written by David Cloud. Of necessity we quote from a wide variety of sources, but this obviously does not imply an endorsement. We trust that our readers will not be discouraged. It is God’s will that we know the times (1 Ch. 12:32; Mat. 16:3) and that we be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. The News Notes remind us that the hour is very late, and we need to be ready for the Lord’s coming. Are you sure that you are born again? Are you living for Christ? “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Rom. 13:11-14).
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