OPPOSERS of REAL REVIVALS
Posted by: prophetic <prophetic@...>
-by TPW.
THE PROBLEM with Revivals is that, like the Lord, they are so
supernatural! For instance, "at that moment the power of God
swept in upon half the congregation, and one half slumped on top
of each other. On the other side men and women fell back in a
trance throwing their arms up and remaining in that position for
fully two hours."
Does that seem "decently in order"?
So, many a leader has tried to "correct" God's methods. When
Revival broke out in India's Ramabai Mukti Mission not only were
the girls "stricken by conviction of sin, followed by confession,"
but "noteworthy were all the emotional accompaniments, the
physical phenomena, the sensation of burning, simultaneous
prayer, and speaking with tongues, and (later) women praying with
loud crying."
What was Pandita Ramabai, "this well-educated Indian lady of the
highest caste, influenced in her ideas of propriety by the
Anglo-Catholics," to do? She tried to impose rules.
"But I soon found that I stopped the work of the Holy Spirit by
interfering with it. I wanted to be proper and conduct meetings in
our old civilised ways. But God would have none of it. He laid His
hand upon me, put me low in the dust, and told me to take my
proper place, that of a worm. He said, 'My thoughts are not your
thoughts, neither are your ways My ways.'
"I humbled myself under this severe rebuke and took my hand off
the work. The Holy Spirit has full liberty."
The result was the conversion of hundreds of young women.
Dr. Nicol MacNicol wrote: "Those whose religion in 1907 seemed
too emotional to endure long, 20 years later were bearing their
witness steadfastly."
Revivals can even be stamped out completely: "I have been pastor
of a church where Revival broke out among a little group in the
congregation. I was jealous and I stamped it out," Dr. Alan
Redpath told a Ngaruawahia convention.
"I know of many a church (or) college where a group of people have
felt hungry for God and sought His face ... They too have been
stamped out at faculty (leadership) level - 'too emotional'."
Every Revival has been branded "too emotional." Yet it is the
maker of man's emotions who stirs emotions in a Revival,
sometimes contrary to the intentions of the leader. David Brainerd
states "a Divine influence caused the persons to cry out in anguish
of soul, although I spoke not a word of terror, but on the contrary,
of Christ's willingness to save."
Charles Finney, often accused of stirring up the people, found that
"a few words of conversation would create a distress that seemed
unendurable ... in as gentle a manner as I could ... I pointed them
to Christ ... I said, 'Now please go home ... Try to keep silent, and
do not break out into any boisterous manifestation of feeling' ..
they went out sobbing and sighing" until at home one "fell on the
floor and burst into a loud wailing, in view of his awful condition."
That is the key: The view of their awful condition.
We naturally feel afraid at moments of great danger. And in Revival,
the Holy Spirit makes sinners vividly aware that "the soul that
sinneth, it shall die!" Naturally, when those sins are washed away,
people are, "So full of joy they could hardly contain themselves."
However, fallible human beings can overreact. In the Welsh Revival:
"Excesses were in evidence, as in every period of awakening in
the history of the Church." Some Christians, seeing only those
excesses, ignoring the incredibly massive blessings, criticised.