THE PREACHING NEEDED IN REVIVALS – REV. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, D.D.

First, Revival preaching to be effective must be posi­tive. The doubter never has revivals. The man who finds it necessary to be all the while hedging and ex­plaining and apologizing for the Gospel message which he brings, will never arouse revivals under his preaching. A revival is a revolution in many important respects, and revolutions are never brought about by timid, fearful or deprecatory addresses. They are awakened by men who are cocksure of their ground, and who speak with authority. So the men who arouse reviv­als by their preaching are men who believe the Bible, and who hold its great message to not only be true but infinitely important. And they preach it with the positive force of a man who is certain that he stands on solid rock. The message is true. The man who believes it shall be saved; the man who does not believe it will be damned. Eternal destiny hangs upon it. Christ is able to save the sinner. No one else can save him. The sinner can be saved now. These great facts must be central and positive in the preacher’s mind and heart, and he must utter them with positive emphasis.

Second, revival preaching must be direct. It must be addressed to the people right then and there before the preacher. He is not giving out a message to be diffused around through the community. He is a messenger from heaven with a free pardon in his hand for a man condemned to die, and that man sits right there in the pew before him. He must get the man to see the pardon, to feel his need of it and to accept it before he leaves the house. He must get on to some basis by which he can make that man feel as well as understand the message.

Third, revival preaching must be sympathetic. If it is not it may arouse men and yet fail to win them. It must get at men from their human side. The preacher must find a man’s heart and warm it to himself, as well as to the Christ whom he preaches. There are many people who can be won largely through personal reasons. They are just as certainly won as though they were won in another way. But they come to know Christ through the preacher who proclaims Him. The sympathy and tenderness and love of the preach­er’s heart, which show forth in his sympathetic words and manner, attract them like a magnet, and they are drawn away from their sins and drawn toward Christ.

Fourth, revival preaching must be directed toward the heart and not the head. In spite of all that is said about agnosticism and infidelity there are very few who, down at the heart, are really unbelievers in the divine power of Jesus Christ to forgive sins and save the soul. Where there is one such, there are a hundred who are believers, so far as a wicked man is ever a believer, but whose heart-lusts and sinful pas­sions hold them away from Christ and righteousness. The conviction of the head will never win them to Christ. The heart must be aroused; they must feel the baseness of their ingratitude; they must see the heinousness of their sins; they must appreciate the certainty of punishment and feel that, hanging over their guilty heads, even now, is the weight of condem­nation of guilt. Get hold of the heart and the head yields easily. Men continue in sin because their hearts are evil. Make the heart feel its guilt, let the heart see Christ as the “one altogether lovely,” and as the helm turns the course of the ship in the hands of the pilot, who has just been taken on from the pilot-boat, so the life will change just as suddenly from the changed heart to which you have made your appeal.

Fifth, revival preaching must be simple and clear. There is no time to let a man study about it for a week and reason out what you have told him. You are like a lawyer before a jury, on the last day of the trial, when he knows that the jury is to go out to make its decision immediately on the close of his speech. All his desires to make a great impression on the jury, that may help him in some future case, are thrust aside. What he must do is to make the jury understand the case now, and look at it from his standpoint. He will not use a word, if he knows it, that is not compre­hended at a glance by the jury. What he says must be absolutely clear and simple and stand out distinct in their minds if he is to win his verdict. Revival preaching is like that. No man who wants immediate effect in the conversion of sinners ought ever to say anything in a sermon that a boy ten years old, brought up in a Christian family, would not easily comprehend. There is perhaps as great a weakness at this point as at any other among preachers who try to have revivals. They want to preach too big sermons. I had a man come to me once who was very serious and deeply anxious to have results in the conversion of sinners under his ministry. During the conversation he made this remark: “I cannot get the consent of my mind to so lower the literary and philosophical standard which I have set for myself, to do the kind of preaching which seems to win men to decision for Christ. ” That was a real confession. He had hit the root of the matter. He always reminded me of that moral, rich young man who came to Christ, and who was such a good young fellow that Christ loved him, and yet he went sadly away with a frown on his brow from the very door of the kingdom. This man of whom I have spoken has never got the consent of his mind to do the right kind of preaching, and as a result has never had a revival. And he never will have until he surrenders to Christ to do the kind of preaching that will accom­plish the result he desires.

Sixth, revival preaching must be illustrative. It must be in pictures. It must seize hold of the imag­ination. The Master used pictures. His sermons are full of stories and parables. He made men see His message as well as hear it. His message lived again in the imagination. We can bring men to action in the same way. No man has ever been a great revival­ist who scorned a generous use of illustrations. It is a common thing for the great evangelists, and the pas­tors who have great success in winning men to Christ, to be criticised by the so-called eloquent and profound preachers who never have any revivals of their own, as being only story-tellers, and not being “strong” preachers. This is all nonsense. A sermon is strong only when it is powerful to produce the effect for which, a sermon is made. If the great end of a ser­mon is to arouse a man to hate his sins, and see in Christ a divine Savior, and so awaken him as to cause him to immediately accept Christ and find forgiveness, then that sermon is a strong sermon which brings about that result; and the man who attempts to do it in any other way, and fails, has preached a weak ser­mon, no matter how scholarly nor how splendid its rhetoric, nor how profound its thought, nor how dig­nified its delivery. Sermons are strong that pull down the works of the devil and capture sinners for Jesus Christ.

Seventh, revival preaching must be intense. It must be more than earnest; it must be charged with suppressed moral electricity. A man must be excited in his emotions, and yet hold them in restraint. He must so feel his message that he could cry aloud on the street-corner, and yet must hold himself in leash, as a hunter holds back his dog, that quivers with excite­ment and yet keeps silent until the proper moment. So the man who is seeking to win souls by his message must hold his emotions in leash, but they must be there, and if they are not there the sermon will fail of its highest effectiveness. If there is any lack of this feeling it can only be brought about by putting him­self in the place of the man to whom he is preaching until he feels like Paul—that he is in prison with him, bound with him in like chains—and thus his message will become real.

Eighth, to preach effectively in revivals the preacher must absorb a great deal of the Bible. The sermon must be saturated with the Bible. God has promised to bless his own Word, and the people to whom we preach must feel that we are loyal to the Word of God. Illustrations drawn from the Bible are peculiarly effective in times of revival.

Ninth, the preacher must be conscious that he is God’s man. He must feel like Elijah did when he strode into the presence of Ahab and his wicked queen, and said: “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.” He must feel as Nathan did when he stood before David, and told him the story of the ewe lamb until David has committed himself, and then, with whitened cheek and flashing eye and accusing finger, says to the startled and astounded king: “Thou art the man!’’ If the preacher feels sure that God is with him, that he stands in the presence of the living God, there will be a glorious independence of speech, mingled with a deep and tender love for the people to whom he speaks, that will be marvelously effective.

Tenth, he must be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. He must be in the frame of mind and heart that Philip knew when he was caught away from the city into the desert, and which he felt and yielded to when he climbed into the chariot of the Ethiopian treasurer, and preached to him Christ. The presence of the Spirit of the living God in our hearts, giving holy unction to the message, is the crowning glory of the revival preacher. I have not time to speak of many other things, but must not fail to say that here, as everywhere else, true manhood, unspotted life and genuine character, frank and open and read of all men, is tremendously powerful.