Here’s a story about a baptismal service where 562 were baptized. It was the culmination of a 5 week series that saw over 800 come to Christ. You may not appreciated some of the tailgate party part of the event, but celebration certainly is appropriate and it sure got me thinking!

This event may not be revival, but when I saw the photo of the three temporary fonts set up in the parking lot, the Holy Spirit spoke to me about revival and of what it might be like when it does come. What if all of a sudden hundreds or thousands of folks wanted to be baptized at your church, what would you do?

I have been told by many who were there that during the midst of the Jesus People Revival in Southern California, Chuck Smith and his pastors baptized thousands at the beach. Most Calvary Chapels and Vineyard churches in this area still occasionally have some baptismal services at the beach, at least during the summer.

I look for the day when hundreds and even thousands of churches across America have their parking lots filled with people waiting to be baptized and publicly proclaim their commitment to Christ. That would be a picture of revival!

I found this quote from my old pastor John Wimber:

We need to be aware that in times of great blessing, there is also the potential for great testing and trial. This is not the time for ‘business as usual’: This is the time to get deep into prayer and God’s Word, and deal with those cracks and holes in our spiritual lives, to get our lives in order – because with great blessing goes great pressure.

Some of the activity that is going on is quite extreme, and it’s incredibly easy in these times to become so enamored of some aspect of the outflow of God, that in trying to protect or champion it, you will find yourself out of line with orthodoxy. Down through the history of the church many wonderful things have happened that have produced much fruit. But certain aspects of these things have led people to get out of line with Scripture and the church, simply because of the excitement of the movement and the intensity of the phenomena, often resulting in the birth of a cult.

As leaders we need to remain congruent with orthodoxy and orthopraxy, to maintain our focus on the ‘main and the plain’ in Scripture.

Response:

This is really good counsel for all of us, particularly in times of revival or during special moves of God. We can get so caught up in what going on that we forget and actually ignore the basics. Pastor Stephen Winters (SLW) recently posted about some of the unwanted ‘side-effects’ of revival. I have been chewing on some of his comments for a couple of weeks now. His observations are well taken. I believe that we need to remember the counsel of my old pastor John Wimber and stick to the basics especially in times of extraordinary spiritual blessing when we start to think that we are ‘bullet proof’.

‘Business as usual’ is not adequate during times of great outpouring. Exceptional responses are called for. We need to listen and respond to the Holy Spirit, our feet need to be firmly placed upon the rock of our salvation (Jesus Christ), and we need to stand up completely balanced by the basics of our faith (especially prayer and Scripture).

Today (Sunday) marks the 150 year anniversary of the beginning of the Fulton Street Revival, one of the greatest ‘unreported’ revivals of all time. It started with a few laymen meeting together for prayer on Wednesday 23, 1857 and grew until over 50,000 in New York city were pausing at noon to pray everyday. It spread across the entire country and in a year and a half over a million people were converted to Jesus Christ.

This was not a movement with major preachers or any prominent leaders, but was started and fed by laymen and women hungry for greater daily relationship with God, and was called “the Layman’s Revival” by some.
Services are planned in New York to commemorate the Revival with a hope that revival will come once more to our land.

We have been posting about revival for some time on this blog, I thought you might be interested in reading a Baptist vision of revival.I found this article on the Baptist Press. Here, Southern Baptist Convention President Frank Page calls for continued prayers for Revival and then gives a glimpse of what he believes revival would look like. Page sees at least three key elements of revival “when the Holy Spirit Comes”:

— A love for God’s Word.

— A focus on evangelism.

— A unified focus.

Response:

Actually Rev. Page’s comments are quite good and I do agree that those three elements will be part of any revival. However, I believe that a coming revival will bring us closer to God in a more personal way. Also, I look forward to much more “when the Holy Spirit comes” in power.

Rather than write more about my own expectations, I would like to hear from some of you. What do you look forward too and what is your vision of revival?

As I recall, it was sometime in 1970 while I was in seminary that I came across a couple of hippies preaching. They were teaching that Jesus was coming back any day for his church, the Anti-Christ was going to be ruling in Europe soon and Russia was going to attack Israel but the USA would do nothing. It didn’t matter what any of us did, the whole world was just going to get worse, but all the faithful were going to be ‘Raptured’ away before the coming nuclear World War and before God brought universal judgment, so you better join with Jesus now. Pretty radical at the time.

I was not impressed. I had a different eschatological view and pretty much ‘knew it all’ like any other seminarian. These ‘unwashed’ guys came from some little church at the beach (Costa Mesa, California) called ‘Calvary Chapel’. This would be my only contact with the ‘Jesus People’ at the time, a move of God which would see more that 750,000 people to Christ in the early 70’s and started the Calvary Chapel Fellowship of Churches, eventually the Vineyard Movement, and many others.

Contemporary Christian music and worship also got its start during this move, so many thousands of churches across America and in the Western world have actually been affected by this little California Revival.

Later, since my involvement with the Vineyard Movement starting in 1986, I have talked to many pastors and members about their recollection and participation in this move. My long time pastor/friend Ed Piorek was a surfer who came to Christ and started a Calvary Chapel in San Clemente, which later after several moves became the Vineyard church I am part of. But that is another story.

One of my greatest disappointments now is that I didn’t investigate this revival which was less than 50 miles away. However, it might as well have been a thousand if you are a self assured smart aleck denominationally bound seminary student that knows better.

I was reminded of the ‘Jesus People Move’ with the coming of the 3 day Harvest Crusade at Anaheim Stadium this weekend and the Keynote preaching of Greg Laurie, supported by Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel and many other churches in Southern California. Pastor Laurie got his start during the early days of the revival.

8/6/07 Update: The Harvest Crusades were started 18 years ago in order to reach the ‘next generation’. Over 102,000 attended the three day crusade this year (Aug.3-5,2007) with over 9,500 making decisions for Christ.

What about Toronto and Brownsville? Were they moves of God or deceptions of the enemy? I would like to hear from some of you who actually experienced these moves and were touched by them in some way. I see so much negative junk on the internet.

John and Carol Arnott brought a team from Toronto to our congregation (Mission Viejo Vineyard) for a conference early in the move because he believed that our founding pastor Ed Piorek helped to kick off the beginning of the revival with a conference on ‘The Father’s Love’. 13 years later, I can still see the positive effects of that weekend on the lives of many that I know.

What did I personally get out of the Toronto move? Greater intimacy with God as a Father who really does love me and wants only the best. I knew all that theologically in my head, but it really makes a difference to really experience it and believe it. Also, even though I was getting on in years, the Lord was not done with me in spite of all the mistakes I had made in the past. He was specifically calling me to stick around as a ‘Caleb’ to help the next generation. To help rise up, train, and support a vast army of young people that are called to bring a major world harvest.

When I read about these moves on the internet, all I read about is all the negative junk that the enemy sowed. What the enemy did has overtaken and ended up characterizing these moves in the minds of so many who weren’t even there.

What about some of you who were there or were touched by these moves in some way? I want to hear from you. I would particularly like to hear from some of you who were touched by the Brownsville revival since I know so little about it. I have observed the changes that took place in many that attended the services at Toronto including Heidi and Roland Baker who were somewhat discouraged when they when but came away with a new anointing that has resulted in thousands of churches and hundreds of thousands of converts in Africa—still counting.

This is a continuation of some of the same things we were talking about in a previous post: Revival: Change Now or Change Later. The following is a prophetic word sent to me from ‘Streams of Revival’ from Charisma +online for May 22, 2007, given by Lou Engle (www.thecall.com).

He is suggesting that now is a good time for Christians to pray, fast, and turn to God with all our hearts; that the Lord would like to release a great spiritual awakening in our land. Also, Lou Engle cites Joel 2 as being particularly meaningful for our time and situation:

“I believe that if we respond in repentance in this moment of time, we could release a great revival of confession of sin and a cleansing by the blood of Jesus that could draw us back into marital faithfulness with our Bridegroom. I believe a great spiritual awakening could be at hand that would affect the elections of 2008 and overthrow Jezebel’s death march in this nation.”

“What must we do? God’s holy prescription for our diseased state in times of national crisis and moral collapse is in Joel 2, verses 12-13, 15-16, 18 and 28, which describe a solemn assembly of united fasting and prayer:

“Now, therefore,” says the Lord, “Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.”

“Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the people, sanctify the congregation. Assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room.”

Then the Lord will be zealous for His land, and pity His people.

“And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions” (NKJV).

This is a continuation of a previous article: What is Revival Anyway?: A Simple Definition. What does it mean to say that revival is ‘God visiting his church’? After all, He is always with us and all Christians are suppose to be a ‘Temple of the Holy Spirit’ with his presence dwelling within, right? So what is so different about ‘God visiting his church’?

One of the Scriptures that has always affected me greatly is the call of Isaiah in Is. 6. Isaiah up to that time had probably lived in or close to King Uzziah’s court since he wrote the book on the King (I Chron. 26:22). He had probably been in the Temple many times and felt the presence of the Lord, but that day was different for Isaiah, God visited his temple and specifically visited Isaiah and everything changed after that.

You say: ‘well that was ‘Old Testament’ what does that have to do with us? Besides that was God commissioning a prophet, something special and unique.’ Answer: I believe that God is going to visit his church in a unique way and call his entire church to be his prophetic voice to a culture and people in need of repentance.

You ask: ‘What does entire church mean?’ Answer: the entire ‘Body of Christ’- Protestant, Orthodox, Charismatic, Catholic, Pentecostal, Anglican, Reform, Baptist, Evangelical and every other faithful group you can name or Christian denomination you can think of. Many will respond and some won’t, but for sure it should be interesting and controversial.

Now back to ‘God visiting his church’, what does that mean and really look like? We can always look at revivals in the past and read about how God has visited his church before. However, there always seems to be something different or unique about each visitation and revival.

An article in the March 2007 issue of Charisma Magazine (now in the archives) by Robert Heidler and Chuck Pierce is full of good insight about what it means for God to visit his church: “Watch for the Next Great Awakening”. Read the whole article, it is tremendous!

In their article, Heidler and Pierce identify three levels of God’s presence found in the Bible and find revival in the third category:

God’s omnipresence. When we speak of God’s omnipresence, we mean that God is present everywhere. No matter where you go, He is there.

God’s indwelling presence. When you trusted Jesus, the Holy Spirit came to live inside you. If you know Jesus, the Spirit of God is present in you in a way that is different from His general presence everywhere.

God’s manifest presence. God’s manifest presence becomes apparent when God reveals Himself in a given time and place in a way that is discernable to your physical senses. God is always here, but we don’t always discern Him. When God manifests His presence, He makes His presence known in a tangible way.

When God manifests His presence to His church corporately, we call it revival. Revival is the glory of God coming into His temple.

Many of us have experienced God’s presence in church services and conferences and yet no one would claim that it was revival. The changes to many leaders who experienced the renewal at Toronto were tremendous and are still affecting the church, yet it did not really touch society as a whole in North America.

So what makes true Revival different? I believe that it is a matter of degree. When you read about ‘The Great Awakening’ in America’, the presence of God filled the church and brought repentance that spilled out into the street. When Charles Finney walked into a factory in 19th century New York, God’s manifest presence came in with him, the work stopped, people repented, the whole city was changed, and 500,000 came to Christ. When revival came to Wales it was said by children:

“Don’t you know? Jesus lives here now!”

What we are talking about when we say that revival is ‘God visiting His church’ is a manifest presence of the Lord that is life changing for everyone present. A tangible presence that brings repentance, healing, and anointing that flows with every member out the back door of the church and touches families, neighborhoods, cities, and entire cultures and nations.