lthough the modern church is in desperate need of revival, we must begin with the recognition that we have no control over whether or not God will grant it to us. The central reason that glory has departed from the church has been our unfaithfulness to the central biblical truth that God is God. Consequently, we cannot hope for revival as long as we continue in our man-centered rebellion against Him. All "revivals" organized and put together by man are nothing but religious enthusiasms tub-thumping and arm-waving enthusiasms.
But as we prayerfully wait on God, asking Him to restore and revive His church, there are things that can be done now. Elijah could not, in his own power, make the fire fall from heaven, but he could prepare the altar, and that is what God had him do. So like him, we must be busy with the preparation. I have listed below a few of the areas requiring such preparation. These are the stones that must go into the altar, and it is important that they be stones that men have not chiseled. They must all come straight from the quarry of God's Word.
· There must be a return to the doctrines of sovereign and efficacious grace. Jesus did not come into the world in order to give men choices and possibilities. He came to give salvation. The cross, as many preach it today, receives whatever efficacy it has from the decision of the listener. This, of course, is not the cross of the New Testament at all. There cannot be a powerful preaching of the cross as long as our underlying doctrine is that the cross is impotent without the sinner's contribution. The modern evangelist operates on the assumption that the cross is powerless to save until the listening sinner puts in his share, making a "decision" or "commitment." Such an assumption is dishonoring to God, and it is not surprising when churches which tolerate such man-exalting puffery turn into a haunt for owls and jackels. But God is gracious; it is possible for dry bones to live, and for ruins to be restored. The prayer that this would happen is a prayer for revival.
Consequently, a precondition for revival is a simple and child-like affirmation of the sovereign election of the Father, the efficacious redemption by the Son, and the resurrecting call of the Spirit. We must repent of our idolatrous preferences common sense over Scripture, and human reason over the gospel and we must repudiate the idea that man is in any sense a contributor to his own salvation.
The gospel will not be preached in power until the gospel is recovered in its purity. And the gospel will not be recovered in its purity until we can, without embarrassment, say that salvation is, from beginning to end, a work of the Lord. It is Christ who saves us, and not we ourselves.
· There must be a return to eschatological optimism. The modern evangelical church careens from one Second Coming scare to the next. But there is a job to do before Christ comes again, and that job is the evangelization of the world. The nations are to be brought to obedience and submission to the Lord Christ.
Of course this is not something that we do, on our own, for Him. Rather, it is something He accomplishes in and through us. Obviously, this task cannot be done by us in our own power; it must be through the Spirit's work. But as the Spirit works in His people, one of the things He must overcome is the pervasive defeatist assumptions we have about evangelization. We assume that revival cannot come, we assume that the church cannot be restored, and we assume that the church is destined for cultural impotence and spiritual irrelevance.
But as long as we believe that the church is destined to be defeated, and cling to the conviction that the Antichrist is just around the corner, through our unbelief we attempt to reject the Spirit's work in us. But Christ's death was efficacious, and Christ died for the world. The day is coming when the church shall be greatly empowered, and China will be brought and laid at the feet of the Messiah. The church will be restored, and Europe will be turned from her horrible apostasy. The church will return to the faith of earlier Christians, and the Jews will have their heart of stone taken away, and will be given a heart of flesh and then the blessings for the Gentiles will really begin. There shall be glory, and all flesh will see it together. The living water will flow out from under the threshhold of Ezekiel's Temple, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
· There must be a return to hard work in doctrinal and theological study. This point is related to the first two. The modern evangelical has a "convenience store" theology. We don't want to buy anything unless we can consume it easily in less than 60 seconds. We want easy answers, quick solutions, and sermonettes for Christianettes.
Peter tells us that there are difficult things in Paul's letters difficulties which ignorant and unstable people twist to their own destruction. These are things which God wanted the church to understand, otherwise He would not have revealed them to us. The key to understanding these things is humble, diligent, prayerful study. The modern Christian attitude exalts man-centered ignorance knowledge without study, and wisdom without books!
Our generation of Christians is not stupid but we are ignorant, and we are lazy. We must return to the Scriptures with a mind to work. And as we do so, we must remember that the time required for growth varies between an oak and a cabbage.
