Truth and Revival (part 4)

What image is there which is capable to show the real power and glory of the Creator?  Man is utterly powerless in the presence of God.  There is nothing which can even be compared with God.  He is infinitely far above our capacity to comprehend His true character and ability.  We know Him as the Creator of the Universe itself, as well as of other realms, other worlds, filled with living beings, beyond and outside of modern Science's power even to perceive.  There is not a nuclear power known to man which is capable even to remove one mountain.  Yet, the Bible says: "[T]the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place" (Micah 1:4).  The Lord Jesus Christ is the God of all power ~ both in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28:18).  He is the God of Creation: "All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3).  And He is the God of Revival (Psalm 85:6; Acts 3:9).

This is the God unto whom we seek for help and deliverance in this dark hour, in this our time of trouble:

And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. (Psalm 50:15) 

The LORD also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble. (Psalm 9:9) 

For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock. (Psalm 27:5) 

But the salvation of the righteous is of the LORD: he is their strength in the time of trouble. (Psalm 37:39) 

O LORD, be gracious unto us; we have waited for thee: be thou their arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble. (Isaiah 32:2)

Jesus Christ and the Apostles, through their own lives and through the writings of the New Testament (which also further illumines the writings of the Old Testament), brought to light truth and knowledge which is given for us to understand many things about God's kingdom during this present Church Age, which things were not before known to man.  By far the most important and transformative of those revelations has to do with the nature of man ~ as being a living "temple;" and, God's willingness and ability literally to indwell that temple ~ that is to say, every one who will repent of sin and receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  The Bible calls that the "mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations...which is, Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:26-27).

That "mystery" was never before known to mankind, until it was revealed to and through the Apostles.  Nevertheless, as glorious as that truth, that reality, is, still there are very few souls who even think to try and lay hold of the meaning and the power of that knowledge.

The fact that the Spirit of Christ lives in me, has changed me!  Man's nature is such that God made man to be a temple wherein God himself should live and reign in and through man.

Just stop and think about that for a while ~ like, say, every waking moment of your life!  If you are a Christian, then, God lives within you.  Oh!  I wish there were a word which could express how that thought affects my mind.

I could say a lot of things about how that being a born-again Christian changes a person.  But for the purpose of this essay, I want to focus on one thing only: that is, the fact, that my life is no longer my own but Christ's who lives in me, has profound implications for my "own" desires and goals and needs, in this present world.   So that Revival and soul-winning truly are to me my greatest desires, my most important goals and, yes, they are to me my most basic needs.   

Revival is not to me some pie-in-the-sky dream.  It is what I live for!  Why?  Because, Revival is what Christ in me desires.  And evidently He desires it so much that I feel it as a compelling, all-consuming need.  Revival is His will and His desire; there is no such desire in the carnal mind of unregenerate man.  

How else can it be explained why I feel so desperate that multitudes of souls must be saved ~ people whom I don't even know?  Why should I care about what may happen to them?  More inexplicable still is the fact that some of them whom I do know, have made themselves to be my enemies ~ and, yet, I care that they must be saved!  That is nothing else but Christ in me.

Now, if Christ in me causes me to be burdened night and day for the salvation of many souls; and, if it is Revival that Christ in me desires; then, how can I not but pray to God and seek with all my heart for Him to pour out of His Spirit in Revival power?

I have been attempting in this present series to show how necessary it is to restore truth to our minds, in order that we may then be not merely motivated, but empowered, thus to seek God for Revival.  I have written, that there must be (and there are) numerous obstacles ~ in ourselves, else, we would already be experiencing the outpouring of God's Spirit in Revival.  Those obstacles can only be of the following kind, namely:

• We are ignorant (without knowledge) of the truth of God; or,

• We have believed any number of things ~ which are not true, according to God's Word; or,

• We have not believed ~ so as to obey and act upon ~ the truth we do know.

All three of those factors above listed involve, in some measure, spiritual laziness and indifference.  In America at least, I believe that even the most desperately poor have reasonable access to a Bible.  Certainly, at least, everyone can pray and call upon God.

But the Bible teaches us that unwillingness to obey what we do know, is worse than ignorance (Luke 12:48).  Yet, worse still is the case of those who twist and distort the truth; for, not only do themselves not obey the truth, but by teaching falsehood, they thus hinder others from obeying the truth.

My aim is to show why it is preeminently important that truth must be restored, in order that the Church can have real Revival.  God will not ~ because He cannot ~ bless a mess.  He can only pour out His Spirit to those who are prepared to receive Him in truth.  God does not merely know the truth; nor does He merely reveal truth; but God is Himself the Truth.  He is the Reality.  None can come to Him, who are not willing to receive Him as He is.

That's why it is NECESSARY to confront and to deal with the effects of the Apostasy!  Think of the Apostasy, if you will, as being a kind of invisible machine which produces great volumes (a flood) of lies ~ most of which are crafted so as to sound like they came straight out of the Bible!  And multitudes of professing Christians have been duped to believe much, though perhaps not all, of those lies.  But it has been enough to grieve and offend, and in other ways hinder, the Holy Ghost from working in and through the Church.

Someone has to stand up against all of that darkness, and boldly proclaim that we must return to the truth of God.  But think about what that means.  Where is the darkness of the Apostasy coming from?  Not from the world, but from the Church!   To stand against the Apostasy, one must find himself or herself openly confronting many falsehoods ~ which are held as sacred by the great majority of professing Christians!  

Revival therefore cannot but involve intense spiritual warfare.  Of course, we are not fighting against "flesh and blood."  But that does not mean that we must not fight spiritually ~ YES, I mean INTELLECTUALLY, with words and arguments from the Word of God ~ against Satan's ministers who teach error to subvert the souls of men.

The writings of Charles Finney have impressed upon my mind the importance of this idea, namely: that the Holy Ghost does not work physically to transform the hearts of men; but God's Spirit seeks to exert His influence upon man's moral faculties.  Man is a moral agent; he has the capacity, and thus the responsibility, to choose what he will believe and how he will act.  The fact, that God has commanded man's obedience to God's Word, means that man must therefore have the ability to obey.  So he does.  God would be unjust to require man's obedience, in the case that man had not the ability to understand and to obey God.

Furthermore, Finney said, that if man was obligated to obey God, but man had no ability nor capacity for obedience: then, in that case, God were obligated, as the Creator, to make man obedient, as a matter of justice.  In other words, it were unjust for God to require of man what God did not equip man to do; if that were the case.  And if God should thus be obligated to make man obedient, as a matter of justice; in that case, the ministry of the Holy Ghost in bringing conviction to bear upon the mind of man to lead him to repentance, would not then be a gift of God's grace .  

God gave man both the capacity to understand, as well as the ability to obey, God's will.  Yet, because that man loves his own self and the world but not God, man therefore chooses not to obey God.  Man is a sinner by choice; Finney argued.  And man is brought to a change of heart, that is, to obedience to God, not by any mystical power of God but, rather, by means of the moral influence of the Holy Ghost, which impresses upon the mind of man the rightness and the necessity of obedience to God ~ and, hopefully, to convince man of the consequences of his refusal to obey.  Thus may a man be persuaded, by the Word of God and by the divine influence of the Spirit of God striving with man's conscience, to humble himself before God and to desist from his rebellion and become obedient to Christ.  All of which appears perfectly agreeable with the teachings of Scripture, as I understand that.

I must add, in the case that anyone may object: that salvation is not a matter of man's obedience to God, but it has only to do with "believing and trusting Jesus Christ."  I must then say, that believing and trusting Jesus Christ, in the first place, is a matter of man's choice and of his obedience.  Moreover, "faith" in Jesus Christ is not a magical ticket to paradise.  Jesus Christ is LORD.  Thus to "believe and trust" Jesus Christ means to submit oneself to obey the authority of Jesus Christ as Lord ~ whose "name is called the Word of God" (Revelation 19:13).  There is no getting around the fact that bedience to the Word of God is inseparable from salvation.

Revival then depends not only upon my own knowledge and right understanding, of the truth of God ~ as that is taught in Scripture.  But Revival depends upon my obedience to the Word.  And the Word in me, Christ in me, compels me to help others to the truth.  And, somehow by His omnipotent power, God will come in supernatural manifestation to help the efforts of those who are wholly given to serve the cause of Jesus Christ.  If you stop and think about what that last sentence says, you will understand the cost ~ and the goal ~ of Revival.

Truth must be restored to the Church.  But that is not in itself Revival.  Revival is what happens when we begin to live according to the truth.  First, though, we must know what is the truth.  But, then, it is Judgment Day: for, knowing the truth, we then come face to face with our own choice and responsibility ~ actually to obey the truth.

Will we?  Revival waits for us to decide, and to commit.  It's that simple.

Meanwhile, America burns.  And souls are descending into Hell, by the scores of thousands every day....