What is a revival?

I have just been to a revival at the Bethel House of God. It was perfect.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit was very real, very beautiful, and very joyous.
Having just come from the "revival" it seems odd to describe my experience using another persons words. It seems ludicrous to underscore these written words as a way to relate my experience to you. My experience was, foremost, indescribable. But in the end, words do help accomplish lots of good. Often times God uses someone elses words to most accurately express your own. Martin Lloyd Jones is a better writer than I. I get caught up in emotion. He simply transmits the content and then lets God do the rest of the work. I love him for that. In the end we do need words. And more than that, we need writers to write down these words. While they may be pale, and while they fall short at the end of the day, they are sometimes helpful road maps towards that common destination which is God's glory in Jesus Christ.


What is Revival?
By Martyn-Lloyd Jones

We can define it as a period of unusual blessing and activity in the life of the Christian Church. Revival means awakening, stimulating the life, bringing it to the surface again. It happens primarily in the Church of God, and amongst believing people, and it is only secondly something that affects those that are outside also. Now this is a most important point, because this definition helps us to differentiate, once and for all, between a revival and an evangelistic campaign.

An evangelistic campaign is the Church deciding to do something with respect to those who are outside. A revival is not the Church deciding to do something and doing it. It is something that is done to the Church, something that happens to the Church.

So then, what is it that happens? The best way of answering that question is to say that it is in a sense a repetition of the day of Pentecost. It is something happening to the Church, that inevitably and almost instinctively makes one look back and think again of what happened on the day of Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2.

The essence of a revival is that the Holy Spirit comes down upon a number of people together, upon a whole church, upon a number of churches, districts, or perhaps a whole country. That is what is meant by revival. It is, if you like, a visitation of the Holy Spirit, or another term that has often been used is this--an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

What the people are conscious of is that it is as if something has suddenly come down upon them. The Spirit of God has descended into their midst, God has come down and is amongst them. A baptism, an outpouring, a visitation. And the effect of that is that they immediately become aware of His presence and of His power in a manner that they have never known before.

I am talking about Christian people, about church members gathered together as they have done so many times before. Suddenly they are aware of His presence, they are aware of the majesty and the awe of God. The Holy Spirit literally seems to be presiding over the meeting and taking charge of it, and manifesting His power and guiding them, and leading them, and directing them. That is the essence of revival.

And what does that mean? Well, there are general characteristics which you will find in every revival that you can ever read about. The immediate effect is that the people present begin to have an awareness of spiritual things such as they have never had before.

They have heard all these things before, they may have heard them a thousand times, but what they testify is this: "You know, the whole thing suddenly became clear to me. I was suddenly illuminated, things that I was so familiar with stood out in letters of gold, as it were. I understood. I saw it all in a way that I had never done in the whole of my life." The Holy Spirit enlightens the mind and the understanding. They begin not only to see these things clearly but to feel their power.

What are these things of which they become so aware? First and foremost, the glory and the holiness of God. Have you ever noticed, as you read your Bibles, the effect on these people as they suddenly realized the presence of God? Like Job, they put their hands on their mouths or like Isaiah they say, "Woe is unto me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips." They have just had a realization of the holi-ness and of the majesty and the glory of God. That always happens in a revival.

There can be a lot of laughing and lightness, and obvious organization in evangelistic campaigns. Not so in a revival, but rather awe, reverence, holy fear, the consciousness of God in His majesty, His glory, His holiness, His utter purity.





And that, as we have seen, leads inevitably to a deep and terrible sense of sin, and an aweful feeling of guilt. It leads men and women to feel that they are vile and unclean and utterly unworthy and, above all, it leads them to realize their utter helplessness face to face with such a God.

Or, like the publican depicted by our Lord in the parable, they are so conscious of all this that they cannot show their faces. They are far back near the door somewhere, beating their breasts and saying, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

The holiness of God, their own utter sinfulness and wretchedness, their own unworthiness; they realize they have never done anything good at all. Before, they thought they had done a great deal, now they see that it is nothing--useless. Like Paul they begin to talk about it as dung and filthy rags. In their utter helplessness and hopelessness, they prostrate themselves and cast themselves upon the love and mercy and compassion of God.

This is the convicting work of the Spirit who takes charge of the situation. People may be held in that state for some time--not only for hours but sometimes for days and weeks, and months. They may become almost desperate.

Then they are given a clear view of the love of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ and especially of His death upon the cross. At last they see it. Oh, they had always believed it theoretically, but it had never truly become real for them. They had honestly believed it, yes, but they had never felt its power, they had never known what it was to be melted by it, to be broken by it. They had never known what it was to weep with a sense of unworthiness and then of love and joy as they realized that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Suddenly it all becomes real to them, and they are given to know that the Son of God has loved them and has given Himself for them. It becomes an individual and a personal matter: "He died for me, even my sins are forgiven," and peace comes into their hearts; joy enters into them and they are lost in love and in a sense of praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

This now becomes the one thing that absorbs them. If they meet anyone they talk about it at once; everybody is talking about it, it is the main topic of conversation, it is the thing that absorbs all their interest. They desire to be together now and to talk about these things and so they get together, and they hold meetings. They meet every night to talk about these things and to praise God and to sing hymns to His glory.





Then they begin to pray, and there they are, hour after hour, night after night, longing to finish work so they might get together with other people who have experienced this movement of the Spirit of God. And that, of course, in turn leads them to have a great concern about others who are outside and who do not know these things.

I am giving you a synopsis of what you read in the books. They begin to get a concern for the members of their own family--husband, wife, father, mother, children, brother, sister--who do not know that they are outside. They tell them about it; they feel they must. There is a constraint that is driving them. They talk about it to people, to friends and to everybody, and they begin to pray for them. Prayer is always a great feature of every revival, great prayer meetings, intercession hour after hour. They pray for these people by name and they plead, and they will not let God go, as it were. They are intent on this with a strange urgency.