Scriptural or Not? 3

Where did crusades and door to door outreaches start? I know someone is asking.

I have never taken very keen interest in church history. I will therefore give an educated guess as a student of revival.

When the price for a revival has been paid, God will send conviction through the area targeted by its pursuers.

What that means is that a great spiritual awakening occurs beyond the narrow confines of the structure seeking revival. By structure I do not mean a church building. I mean the ‘church’ seeking revival. And by church I simply mean Christ’s followers in a certain area, many who are not even aware of others’ existence. Only God knows them by name.

That conviction shakes everything in the concerned area, leaving nothing.

That is why liquor dens and brothels close in revival. The fire of God consumes everything in its path, from evil desires to actions.

That hunger for the spiritual draws everybody to a place offering spiritual direction wherever it is. They do not have the luxury of choosing or deciding on the better. Their hunger for the spiritual is such that they will flock to anybody offering spiritual direction.

As things normally stand, spiritual houses (church buildings) and their managers are most times caught totally unawares of the spiritual tenor. This means that they will be suffering from a dearth of the spiritual as they are content with their structure. Remember Jesus and the temple?

The outdoors therefore become automatic venues for instruction. And they will consist of instruction to people who need to understand why they are so convicted. That may explain why they are mistaken for evangelistic campaigns. Many will have had no prior interaction with the God of the Bible and His word and so will be simply babes in the spiritual needing milk.

Another reason is that few, if any, church auditoriums would be big enough to contain the numbers revival would bring into the Kingdom.

Like we see with Jesus and the early church, nobody sent out any invites to the people who would come to those meetings. Their hunger for God’s things and the corresponding spiritual groundwork for revival was the one drawing those masses to the meetings.

I will in passing also mention the tent revival meetings where the church would hold meetings where they would invite revivalists to challenge (more accurately, guide) them about revival. Again these people would be men who have paid the price for revival so that there was no doubt that their relationship with God was one that could be emulated. The church would also be in deep search for revival and so would be ready to pay the price for it. That is why they would set apart weeks to be able to focus on God and His revelation. Remember Ezra?

Contrast that with the characters we invite for our crusades!

I will also hasten to add that that hunger for revival was not driven by material things. It was a purely spiritual hunger.

You see, you can only revive what is dead. It therefore means that those seeking revival had realized their spiritual death and so started calling on God to raise them from it.

Revival is never first aid. You do not revive someone who has fainted. You revive people in morgues.

It is therefore interesting that these days we have churches celebrating revival even without confessing spiritual drought. In other words they want to be raised back to life when they are in their best health. Imagine rushing to the mortuary to be raised to life! Yet that is what many believers and churches today are doing. They are celebrating revival without dealing or even acknowledging their spiritual death or even hunger.

And this is where our generation is getting it wrong. We are copying past revivals without seeking to understand how they came about.

No wonder we are getting away from the scriptures to recreate what past generations got through their spiritual sweat and blood. Sadly, we are using entertainment to ‘do’ it. And we are surprised when nothing similar comes out of our effort.

Then, when it doesn’t work out, we borrow from the world, even from dens of evil and wickedness to attract ‘revival’.

Or don’t you like me wonder what disco lights have to do with the Gospel? What effect does a smoke generator produce in a religious service? What about dance and comedy troupes? We even have seeker sensitive churches!

We have become so desperate for numbers that we are borrowing a leaf from the evil one to keep them in just like he is able to maintain his numbers in those dens of sin.

We forget that people will follow life and light wherever it is. It does not need any packaging.

No danger is adequate to keep a thirsty animal from the only source of water in the desert. The presence of a lion is not enough deterrent for a gazelle to stop visiting the only waterhole.

That is the same with the spiritual. We create baits because we are lacking in the life that the world is looking for. We think people are coming for those attractions and become frustrated when they do not stay despite all our efforts. They came for life and left when they found entertainment.

The Gospel is its own packaging. Let that sink.

It means we ought to clarify what is the Gospel and whether it has absorbed us.