(Excerpted from Revival! A people saturated with God)

By Brian Edwards

(This portion of Edwards's book, published in 1994, was written about the state of Christianity in Britain. However, I believe the same points are applicable to America. Hence, it is relevant for the topic of this page. ~ Webmaster)

For all our noise and claims, the mission societies are desperate for new workers and more funds, we have to plead for attendance at the prayer meeting, and an increasing pattern of gathering with the Lord's people just once on a Sunday is developing in this nation. Sermons are, in the main, either heavily dull or flippantly irrelevant, leading one modern writer to dismiss preaching as 'an ocean of verbiage'. Few unbelievers are being converted, and the Word of God does not seem to be changing the lives of God's people. If the living are not alive, what hope is there for the dead?

An alarming description of one church in the Assam district of India prior to the revival of 1905 led to urgent prayer by the missionaries:

"Nearly all the members, men and women, were given to drinking, some smoked ganja. They quarreled, they fought, they lived immoral lives, and shielded each other so that the missionary would not find these things out. It was almost impossible to get them to attend more than one service on the Sabbath day, and the weekly service was very badly attended. The missionary often felt ready to give them up altogether, it seemed a hopeless church." ¹

This is not so far from our situation as a first reading might lead us to consider. The way many Christians in our churches behave and dress would have been unthinkable two decades ago. We have lowered our stand on the use of tobacco and alcohol under the pretence of "freedom" and many of our members are hooked on the equally mind-and-soul-destroying drug of television. Professing Christians watch close on the national average of five hours viewing time each day and rush to the prayer meeting or Sunday service with a mind filled with impressions of the worst this world has on offer. We squabble and gossip and divide and are careless of those who are sitting beside us in urgent need of friendship and help. We go through our evangelical duties as coldly and routinely as a well-trained regiment of soldiers.

It is no use one section of the evangelical church delighting in the fact that this is all a description of the "other side"; I have worshipped in churches across the evangelical spectrum and it is largely true of us all. I have attended churches with activity, enthusiasm and gifts to make even the angels envious, yet which had to appeal for more people to join the prayer meeting! I have attended churches with plenty of music and movement and churches with solemn stillness. Yet none of them exhibits the awareness of the presence of God. There will be no revival all the time we analyze the state of the nation and merely lament the terrible sins of the world around us. After all, we should have learnt in 2,000 years that sin is what is to be expected of an unbelieving world. And there will be no revival all the time we lay the blame exclusively on the other wing of evangelicalism. God comes to a people who admit their own sin and cry for forgiveness for their own coldness and unholiness.

The problem with our nation is not the government, or the education system, or the economic conditions, and it is not that dead and lifeless institutional religion that believes everything or nothing. The real problem lies with the evangelical churches who claim to have the truth and think they are rich in spiritual gifts and life, and yet are cold, complacent and unattractive to the watching world. I am afraid this means most of us today. Covering our tracks with big bonanzas and impressive projects will never convince a godless world of the reality of our God, though the world may certainly admire our expertise at showmanship. We can gather large numbers of Christians together for giant conferences, monster banner-waving marches and technically brilliant satellite-relayed missions. All these may have their place and value, but the danger is that they fool us into thinking that there are a lot of us and that we are making a strong impact upon society. In reality we are thinly scattered among a godless nation and we are hardly making a scratch on its surface.

It is always risky to try to identify a fundamental problem in society, but I will hazard the risk of stating that there is one great tragedy among people today, and the fault lies with the church. The book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible is the story of Solomon' s backsliding. A wise king with absolute power and unlimited wealth, the envy of the world around him, allowed his heart to be turned away from God. According to Ecclesiastes 2:4-9 he tried everything as a substitute for God and yet he discovered that his life was empty and meaningless. The more he left God out, the more miserable he became. Our Western society has everything it needs and yet half our National Health Service hospital beds are taken up by mental health patients. The Samaritans tell us that suicide is rising at an alarming rate (more than one young person commits self-murder every day in this country) and alcohol-related problems cost the nation twenty-six billion pounds each year. At work, at home, and even at our sport, we are not a happy people. Why is this?

Man was originally created in the image of God and in friendship with God, and the first recorded conversation between man and his Creator concerned matters of morality and eternity: "You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." This is because, as Solomon soon came to realize, God had "set eternity in the hearts of men" (Eccles. 3:11). This gift is part of the uniqueness of man. Unlike the animal world around him, man is aware of eternity. For this reason there are very few real atheists in the world because atheism is a hard religion to believe in; it runs contrary to that voice within man that cries out to him that there is a God and an eternity and a judgement to come. It is this gift that accounts for the fact that wherever we find man, we find him worshipping; he must worship because he has "eternity in his heart".

The tragedy of modern man is that he has, with great effort and by careful practice, squeezed this sense of God and eternity out of his mind. An age of mind-blowing scientific achievement, colossal consumer choice and a soft luxury beyond imagination a few decades ago has all helped modern, Western man to convince himself that there is no eternity to worry about. And our generation has achieved this far more successfully than have billions of rubles spent in anti-God propaganda in the Eastern bloc! The greatest tragedy of man today is that he has lost the sense of eternity in his heart and mind. C. S. Lewis once criticized Rudyard Kipling and his age for lacking "a doctrine of ends" and concluded: "He has a reverent, pagan, agnosticism about all ultimates." That may be another way of making my criticism of today's generation: we have a pagan agnosticism about eternity.

During his ministry on earth, Christ spent much of his time turning the minds of his hearers to eternity. Many of his parables were about heaven and hell, like the vivid story of the rich man and Lazarus. Other parables spoke of the suddenness of death, like the rich fool and his barn. The parable of the tenant farmers taught about rewards and punishments, and the parable of the talents pointed to a day of judgment. And the list can go on. The terrifying thing about modern man is that he no longer feels afraid, or feels anything, about eternity. To tell him that Christ came into the world to save sinners invites the question: "To save sinners from what?" And when we reply, "From judgment and hell," the response is invariably, "Oh, is that all? I thought you had something important to say."

To describe hell as a Christless eternity is an irrelevancy to modem man. He lives all right without Christ now, so why not in eternity? Man has lost his uniqueness today; he has lost a mind filled with a sense of eternity. And, contrary to what we are often told, there is not a world out there just waiting to respond to our good news if only we will get onto the streets and tell people. Any face-to-face evangelist or faithful door-to-door visitor will tell you that people simply do not want to know. Eternity is not in their minds.

And when society no longer thinks about eternity, it almost goes without saying that it is because the church no longer thinks that way either. Our lives as Christians, and our worship when we are together, impress the world with our love of this life. There is little about us to convince the world that we are motivated for eternity rather than for time. People do not touch eternity in our meetings, they rarely hear of it in our conversation and they certainly do not see it as the priority of our lives. Of course, it glances off our gospel here and there, but we are not passionate about heaven and hell or the Second Coming of Christ, and we have lost a sense of accountability to God.

One thing revival does, and it always does it, is to reawaken, in both Christians and the community around, a sense of the reality of eternal issues. One observer described the eighteenth century as "stomach well alive, soul extinct." How did that change? God sent a revival that swept across the nation until hundreds of thousands knew that God was real. When 40,000 people gathered on Kenning- ton Common in London in the mid-eighteenth century, they had not come to watch the West Indies play the MCC; they had come to hear George Whitefield preach the gospel of eternal things. In 1737, when Whitefield was only twenty-two years old, he was preaching to crowded churches in London and thousands were turned away because there was no room; he had not yet begun preaching in the open air. At this time he said of the congregations, "They were all attention, and heard like people hearing for eternity." ² Interestingly, this is exactly the same description that Alexander Webster used five years later during the revival at Cambuslang in Scotland: "They hear as for eternity. .." ³ When God comes in revival, whole communities are aware that there is a God and that eternal issues j really matter. Not everyone will believe, but everyone will be made to think.

In 1859 when God swept Ulster with revival, the October meeting at the Maze racecourse attracted less than 500 race-goers instead of the usual 10,000. Clearly some people were being made to think seriously about eternity. Here is a description given by a minister in Comber, a small town in County Down, just nine miles from Belfast:

"The whole town and neighbourhood were roused. Many did not retire to rest the first night at all, and for several days great numbers were unable to attend their usual vocations, but gave themselves almost unceasingly to the study of the Scriptures, singing and prayer: and for the first month, with about three exceptions, I did not get to bed till morning, such was the anxiety of the people for pastoral instruction and consolation." ⁴

In Wales in 1904, whole towns were stirred, and everybody was talking about God and eternity. The North Wales Guardian for 20 January 1905 carried the following reports:

"In consequence of the revival the annual eisteddfod arranged to be held on Friday Jan 27th at Llansantffraid near Oswestry has been postponed. The secretaries who have widely advertised the postponement, discovered that the usual eisteddfod enthusiasts were devoting themselves to the revival gatherings, and that choirs have been unable to obtain accommodation for practice. At a Football Association meeting at Chirk, when the draw for a charity cup was made, it was deemed useless to fix a match at Rhos, as the Black Park Club secretary announced that in a recent match?Rhos-v. Black Park? the gate receipts only amounted to 9S." ⁵

It was not that people considered either the eisteddfod or football as sinful, but their minds and lives were gripped with something far more important. In revival God puts eternity back into men's minds, not just as individuals, but as whole communities. Another newspaper in Wales reported "a pervading and over- whelming solemnity, convincing even the most stoical that eternal realities had come into intimate contact with the men and women present." ⁶

Duncan Campbell recalls the same thing happening on the Isle of Lewis in 1949: "News of what was happening in Barvas spread faster than the speed of gossip. ..Within a matter of days the whole neighbourhood was powerfully awakened to eternal realities. Work was largely set aside as people became concerned about their own salvation, or the salvation of friends and neighbours. In homes, barns and loom-sheds, by the roadside or the peatstack, men could be found calling upon God..." ⁷

The population of New England in the eighteenth century was probably around 340,000, and it is estimated that the revival there brought up to 50,000 to salvation. If fifteen per cent of the population is converted in a short time, almost everyone has to think about eternity! When revival spread from Lowestoft in 1921 right up to the Scottish fishing ports whole communities were changed. One newspaper reported that in a small town of 1,500 inhabitants, no fewer than 600 professed faith in Christ; the paper also commented that gambling disappeared and tobacco was destroyed. ⁸ So powerfully did God work in a revival in Birmingham in 1834 that the bars and beer-shops were left "vocal with lonely grumblers." ⁹ A community cannot avoid thinking about eternity when things like this take place.

When Hezekiah came to the throne he did not begin by analysing the disastrous effects of the rampaging Assyrian army; he called to the Levites to "Consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the temple of the Lord" (2 Chron. 29:5). He knew exactly where the problem of the nation really lay. If we start here, we have hope for revival. But we must start now. Whole books can be written analysing what is wrong with the church today, but there is hardly a need for this. We must simply admit that we are not an eternity-minded people. We live like the world we are supposed to be saving: for the things of time rather tan for the things of eternity. Our priorities are world-related rather than heaven-directed; our treasure is on earth. Revival always begins by putting eternity back into the minds of the Christians, and only when the church takes eternity seriously can we expect the world to do so.

1. Jones, India Awake, p.2

2. Dalimore, George Whitefield, vol.1, p.1148

3. As above, vol.2, p.128

4. Paisley, The Fifty Nine Revival, p.77

5. Harris, Extracts from the Welsh Press, p.8

6. Evans, When He is come, p.90

7. Woolsey, Duncan Campbell, p.119

8. Ritchie, Floods Upon the Dry Ground, p.56

9. Orr, The Eagar Feet, p.145