Christ's Call to
Revival
Repent. . . or else. . .
— REVELATION 1: 5, 16
Perhaps nothing is more cluttered with false notions and contradictory ideas than the matter of revival. More energy has been misdirected, more carts put before the horse on this theme than on almost any other that engages our attention. A revival is not an evangelistic campaign. It is not a church paying out of debt or erecting a new building or putting on a stewardship campaign. These things may flow from a revival, but they do not constitute one. A revival is not a drive for church members.
A revival is a work of God's Spirit among His own people. David prayed, ''Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.'' That is God's order, and He has never changed it. A lot of so-called joy of the Lord is merely whipped-up emotion which leaves a lot of unconfessed sin and hidden iniquity. We have made convalescents of church members who need operations. We have tried to cure them with sunshine, leaving the focal infection untouched. Nathan did not tell
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David to play on his harp. He made David see himself to be a sinner and ready to pray, ''Create within me a clean heart.''
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan divides his treatment of First Corinthians into two parts. He tells us that Paul dealt first with the carnalities, then with the spiritualities. Today we ignore sin in the midst and pass over the carnalities on the popular argument that we should never be negative but deal only with the positive. But there are churches that have accentuated the positive for years, while the members have lived among the negatives. Men will not desire a physician until they know they are sick, and they will not seek a closer walk with God so long as they are content to get along without it.
There is, however, a wrong emphasis in preaching on revival. Sometimes it has created the impression that revival is a spurt of religious enthusiasm which is not possible to live up to the year round. As a matter of fact, what we call revival is simply New Testament Christianity, the saints getting back to normal.
Most Christians have been subnormal so long that when they become normal they are thought to be abnormal! A boy and girl had danced all night in a roadhouse. Early in the morning they walked out of the dance hall reeking with the smell of whisky, beer, and tobacco. Outdoors, the girl suddenly sniffed and said, ''What is that I smell?'' ''That's not a smell,'' the boy replied. ''That's fresh air!'' We have lived so long in the swamps of a low-grade Christianity that the fresh air of the hills stuns us when it strikes us.
Many revival sermons are preached from Old Testament
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texts: from Second Chronicles seven, verses thirteen and fourteen, the revivals under Hezekiah or Ezra, or other portions. But one does not have to stay in the Old Testament to preach on revival. A preacher suggested to me some time ago that there was nothing about revival in the New Testament. Certainly there is not much about it in the Acts. They didn't need a revival; they had a ''vival''; and there was no need of reviving. But as one moves on through the book, he finds such words as, ''It is high time to awake out of sleep,'' or ''Stir up the gift of God that is within you.'' Perhaps the supreme call to revival is from the lips of our Lord Himself in the Book of Revelation. The last word of our Lord to the church is not the Great Commission. The Great Commission is our marching orders; the last word of Christ to the church is, ''Repent.'' To five out of seven churches in Asia it was His message. Many churches today are not ready to carry out the Great Commission until first they repent.
In some quarters we hear much of the Christ of the Gospels. There is a place for that, for He is not only our Saviour but our Example, and in the Gospels we see how He walked. We hear much of the Crucified and Risen Christ, and there we have the Gospel. We hear of the Coming Christ, and there we have our Hope and a mighty incentive to revival, for he that hath this hope purifieth himself, and that is the essence of revival. His return is not a lullaby to put us to sleep but a reveille to wake us up! But we need also a vision of the Glorified Christ among the candlesticks, with His eyes as fire, His feet as brass, and His voice as the sound of many waters; with seven stars in His right hand, a two-edged sword proceeding from His
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mouth, and His countenance as the sun in its strength. The greatest preacher of revival is the Glorified Christ of Revelation.
The church needs to face Christ. He is the Issue; we must settle with Him. There is a lot of soft, sentimental talk about Him today that brings no conviction. When Isaiah saw the Lord, he did not feel comfortable! Neither did Habakkuk nor Daniel nor Paul nor John. We want a picture of Him today that does not disturb us, that smiles at sin, and winks at iniquity. I remember a man who told me he wanted to hear no hell-fire sermons but rather about the meek and lowly Jesus. Yet the poor man did not seem to realize that the meek and lowly Jesus said more about hell than is reported from the lips of anyone else in the Bible! We need a true and complete vision of God in His holiness and Christ in His glory that will bring us to repentance.
The great awakenings of the past have been accompanied by preaching against sin, and for conviction, repentance, godly sorrow, confession and forsaking of sin, restitution, return to first works, return to the Scriptures, and prayer and witnessing and godly living. We are willing to do anything but repent. In our great church gatherings you cannot get many ''Amens'' on a call to repentance. Of course, there are polite references to it occasionally, but real repentance that would put us all on our faces from the top officials on down would be awfully humiliating. Besides, we haven't time for a revival, for our programs are all set up, and if God wants to send a revival He must do it in the week allotted to it; any other time it would upset the schedule.
Our Lord's message to the churches was, and is, ''Repent—or else.''
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It is revival or removal. Ephesus was loveless, orthodox—busy—but loveless. Are we not guilty today? Jesus said, ''By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.'' What is the badge of discipleship? Stately buildings? Stained-glass windows? Robed choirs? Impressive statistics? It was love! Tertullian writes that it was said of the early Christians, ''How those Christians love each other!'' Today the world might sometimes be more inclined to say, ''How those Christians hate each other!'' We have left our love for Christ, and when love for Christ dies, love for each other, for the Bible, for souls, dies.
Again, the church at Sardis was lifeless. It had a name to be alive, mind you, but the Lord pronounced it dead. Our Lord does not always have the same name for us that we have for ourselves!
Laodicea was lukewarm. A little too hot to be cold and a little too cold to be hot, and don't forget that the Lord did not say He would spew them out for being too hot! He would even prefer that a man be on the wrong side of the fence than on the fence.
But His message ends with a positive note: ''Behold, I stand at the door and knock.'' We apply that to sinners, but it was spoken to the church, a self-sufficient church, with Christ on the outside. ''If any man open the door. . .'' One man can start a revival. Someone has said that Christ is waiting, not for a committee to pass a resolution, but for one man to let Him in. Laodicea had everything but Jesus.
He comes in as guest and abides as host. ''I will come in and sup with him and he with me.'' At Cana, and with the Emmaus disciples, He was first the guest, then
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the host. Alas, in our homes we put Him in a picture on the wall, but too often He is not the Head of the house. In our churches we may put Him in stained-glass windows but never let Him in the door. Back of all else, we may carry His name on our lips but never crown Him in the throne-room of our hearts. The way to revival, home or church, is to open the door to Jesus.
