I recently had a dream I believe was prophetic. I want to submit it to you all to pray and ask you to seek the Lord about it. I believe there’s hope and redemption in it, but I believe it’s a warning.

There are some things we receive from the Lord that are conditional. We can pray about them, and it makes a difference. I know some things are set in stone, but some things can be altered and changed by human behaviour and prayer. Often, we talk about Hezekiah, who received the prophetic word, “Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.” He turned his face to the wall and repented, and fifteen years were added to his life (see Isaiah 38:1-6).

So, I share this dream in the fear of the Lord. I’ve given it the title “The Rebirth of America Dream.”

I had an intense dream Saturday morning, March 9, 2024, that seemed prophetic. It was about the coming eclipse in April 2024 triggering an awakening that starts in April 2024 and lasts until July 2025—over a year. I was moving fast in time, starting in April 2024 with the eclipse that crossed over Texas. It seemed in this dream that Texas was pulled into this.

At the same time, around April 2024, a metaphorical conception happened. It coincided with this eclipse leading to something serious happening in the nation before the elections in November 2024. This event caused absolute chaos and affected the elections in the U.S. in November 2024.

It seemed like an epic October surprise, and pandemonium ensued. In the dream, I knew that President Joe Biden had fizzled out, and they had tried hard to prop him up. But this event right before the election caused a major division of America right before and during the election time. It intensified the division already in the nation to a very scary and intense level.

Then, the dream shifted. Somehow I was in 1968, and I was given an old newspaper which said, “Assassination of two major leaders in the same year of the Chicago convention.” Robert F. Kennedy—Bobby Kennedy—and Martin Luther King Jr., were both tragically killed in 1968.

What’s also interesting about 1968 is that the Democratic National Convention was in Chicago, and it’s in Chicago in 2024. I knew that was significant. But through all the chaos in the streets, in the economy, and on the news, America had a huge awakening—an awareness of evil and corruption going on in America. And it was like the vast majority of the nation after this said, “We can never let this happen again. We can’t.”

At the end of the dream, it was July 2025. For some reason, July 11 was highlighted to me on the calendar. It seemed like most of the chaos ended in the nation, and things were starting to heal by July 2025. It had all started in April 2024 with the eclipse coinciding with a conception, and there were forty weeks of pregnancy, with birth pangs intensifying before the delivery.

Then, there were complications before and after the birth. Since the conception happens around April, nine months later ,the baby being born in January 2025. What’s interesting is that’s also when the presidential inauguration takes place. But this baby was born, and the thing that happened right before the election was almost like a mother having false contractions. It wasn’t the birthing time, but it was still very intense and real. It was like the baby wanted to come at tht moment, but somehow was delayed.

The birth was in January 2025, and the baby was placed in an incubator for several months after it was born. The baby lived, and it was a beautiful baby. The drwithm ended by me seeing this baby wrapped in an American flag. It was like it was in a maternity ward where babies were lying in little beds with name tags at the top. The name of the baby was America.

I couldn’t help but believe it was the rebirth of America. The dream seems to portray an awakening, starting in April 2024, then a long, painful, and traumatic pregnancy. A traumatic event triggers chaos before the elections, and the chaos lasts for several months. The birth occurs in January 2025, requiring care in the incubator at least until July 2025.

Here’s the part we need to pray about in all of this. I think this is a warning and a call for the intercessors and the people of God to take seriously. Seeing the 1968 Democratic Convention reference and knowing Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were both killed, I felt that the warning was there. It seems to be an indication of a coming assassination attempt sometime during this 16-month process from April 2024 until July 2025. We don’t want to see that happen to anybody.

I feel that this is important to share and to put before the body of believers to pray into, to see if the Lord can intervene and help us and show us what to pray and how to pray—and to see if some of this can be lessened or prevented. I believe the dream was significant. I think we are entering into a unique time in American history. Starting in April, there is a 16-month process that I believe is integral to the rebirthing of this nation.

Will you help me pray about this? Will you help me pray into this and take it seriously?

In a recent sermon called “When the World is on Fire,” I shared from Micah 7, which offers a lesson for our time. The prophet Micah described the dire spiritual crisis in his day, and we’re in a similar spiritual climate today. Micah gives us the solution in Micah 7:7: “Therefore I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”

In a time of spiritual crisis, we as the people of God have to get our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ, get in the secret place, and wait patiently upon Him. God is looking for a people who, when the world is on fire, will turn to the Lord. If we’ll follow this, it doesn’t matter how dark it gets. “For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you” (Isaiah 60:2).

Copyright 2024 Morning Star Ministries. All rights reserved.

Jonathan Edwards had written a sermon that he felt would make an impact upon his church. He promised God that he would keep an absolute fast (no water) for three days before preaching the sermon. He spent His time praying for God’s power upon the sermon.

At approximately four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, two hours from ending his fast, Jonathan Edwards began to choke and gag. He knew he couldn’t preach, and he felt he would die from choking. So he violated his fast and drank water.

That night he was a broken man as he ascended the steps to the pulpit. He was devastated in his lack of self-discipline to carry the fast through until sundown. Holding a kerosene lamp in one hand and the sermon in the other, he read Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God. And the Spirit of God poured forth on his listeners, so much so, that they grabbed the post of the church, thinking they were slipping into hell.

That sermon began the First Great Awakening and revival swept through the 13 colonies. It wasn’t the fast that God had used, God anointed the brokenness of Jonathan Edwards so that one sermon touched Colonial America.

His famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was taken from Deuteronomy 32:35:

To Me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

He preached this sermon with power from on high, and Eleazer Wheelock who was with Edwards, reported that before Edwards was done, these “thoughtless” people were “bowed down with an awful conviction of the sin and danger.” The people were consumed with conviction as the Holy Spirit revealed their hearts to them. Knowing the terror of the Lord” (a thing seemingly forgotten in our day both by pulpit and pew)” Edwards smoldered with holy wrath. Impervious to any consequences of such severity, he thundered these words from his pulpit:

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and His arrows made ready upon the string. Justice points the arrow at your heart and strings the bow. It is nothing but mere pleasure of God (and that of an angry God without any promise or obligation at all) that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.

To utter truth like that with tears and tenderness takes an anointed and therefore fearless and compassionate man.

But in the hearts and minds of the hearers, there must also have been some prevenient grace at work. Apart from this, men would have rebelled at this stern sweep of power on their souls. As it was, before Edwards’ spiritual hurricane, the crowd collapsed. Some fell to the earth as if pole-axed. Others, with heads bowed, clung onto the posts of the temple as if afraid of failing into the nethermost depths of hell.

As pastor of one of New England’s largest, wealthiest, and most socially-conscious congregations, Edwards had a rare perception of the needs of his flock. He also had a heart of great tenderness for spiritual health. Let’s go to the woods where Edwards is alone with his God. Let’s creep up behind that old gnarled tree and listen to his broken prayer:

I have had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness; very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together; so that I have often been forced to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my wickedness, and the badness of my heart, than ever I had before my conversion….

I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. Very often, for these many years, these expressions are in my mind, and in my mouth, Infinite upon infinite….Infinite upon infinite!” When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell.

I have greatly longed of late for a broken heart, and to lie low before God…it is affecting to think how ignorant I was, when a young Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy and deceit, left in my heart.

In one of the revivals, Edwards recognized a certain amount of deception among some of the people, an action that would grow as the revival did. He made it very clear that with the acceptance of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit, a life ought to be quite changed.

If a person confessed Christ but continued unabated in sinful ways, Edwards was apt to note that as a false confession and would not count the person among the number saved.

To him, as it is written in James, there had to be outward signs of a changed life from inward salvation. The work of the Holy Spirit went beyond convicting the sinner of the need for repentance and Christ. Edwards wrote that:

For the people, it was a “dreadful thing” to think of being outside of Christ when hell awaited them daily.

The Spirit also burrowed into the hearts of believers. An example of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit is the story of an elderly woman in her 70s, who had spent most of her adult life under the solid teaching of Solomon Stoddard. Reading about Christ’s suffering for sinners; she seemed to see it for the first time. She wondered how Stoddard could have missed such a wonderful concept, and then realized she had heard him many times.

She understood how ungrateful she had been to sin against God and such a loving Savior, even though everyone vouched for her as one of the pious and good women in the town. But she was so overcome with the conviction in her heart through the Holy Spirit that her family thought she was dying.

The revival reached its peak in April 1735. Edwards recorded an average of four conversions daily during this portion of time. Entire families were saved, and at least as many more repented of backsliding and committed themselves anew to the Lord.

Edwards wrote the book A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in response to the requests for more information. The book made it into the hands of two elderly men of God in London, who re-published it there, in what was practically the capital of the world at that time.

Publishing the Narrative was a fateful decision, for God would use it as a spark for His Spirit elsewhere. With that London publication, events in New England gained worldwide attention.

Iain H. Murray wrote:

It was possibly the most significant book to precede the great evangelical awakening on both sides of the Atlantic.

The book went through twenty printings and influenced groups of men who desired just such an act of God—including John Wesley, who wrote of it in his journal, and George Whitefield, who would put feet to his faith.

Space and time forbid writing more about this flaming revivalist. The question is: Lord, what will it take to break me?

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is acknowledged to have played a role in one of America’s First Great Awakening and he experienced the first revival in 1733-1735. He is also known to be one of America’s greatest intellectuals and philosophical theologians. He wrote many books including The Life and Times of David Brainerd, which continues to be published today and which has inspired thousands of missionaries and generations of believers.

It has been reported by one historian that in the larger world of the rapidly growing colonies, the church of Jesus Christ was already well into spiritual decline. It was nothing like modern America, of course, but gone were the days of tightly knit bands of fervent believers who were seeking refuge from English persecution. More and more, immigrants were coming for the economic hopes of fertile and cheap land, and less for their unconditional devotion to Christ.

Most people in a colonial town such as East Windsor were church members, often attending every Sunday morning and going through the rituals. But a decreasing percentage had Christ in their hearts. For them, the church was more traditional than being part of the body of Jesus. And the more people who immigrated from Europe, not from persecution, the more the churches were diluted of committed Christians…… They could still give correct answers to the catechism, but their hearts were fixed not on God, but on land and trade. The decline naturally manifested itself in community life, also.

The Puritan ways had all but disappeared and were increasingly being mocked. Many pastors saw this trend and the problem, but they did agree on the solution: the power of God to revive the spirits of the people, starting with their spiritual leaders. We have to understand that the only religion in those days was always referred to as Christianity. There was no other. And therefore, for this pouring out of the Holy Spirit, Jonathan Edwards and many others prayed diligently.

E.M. Bounds in his book Weapons of Prayer writes:

Jonathan Edwards must be placed among the praying saints—one who God mightily used through the instrumentality of prayer. As in the instance of the great New Englander, purity of heart should be ingrained in the foundation areas of every man who is a true leader of his fellows and a minister of the Gospel of Christ and constant practice in the holy office of prayer.

A sample of the utterances of this mighty man of God is here given in the shape of a resolution which he formed, and wrote down:

Resolved to exercise myself in this all my life long, with the greatest openness to declare my ways to God, and to lay my soul open to God—all my sins, temptations, difficulties, sorrows, fears, hopes, desires, and everything and every circumstance. We are not surprised, therefore, that the result of such impassioned and honest praying was to lead him to record in his diary: It was my continual strife day and night, and my constant inquiry how I should be more holy, and live more holily.

The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness. I went on with my eager pursuit of more holiness and conformity to Christ. The character and work of Jonathan Edwards were exemplifications of the great truth that the ministry of prayer is the efficient agency in every truly God-ordered work and life. He himself gives some particulars about his life when he was a boy. He might as well be called the “Isaiah of the Christian dispensation.

There was united in him great mental powers, ardent piety, and devotion to study, unequalled save by his devotion to God. Here is what he says about himself:

As a boy, I used to pray five times a day in secret and spend much time in religious conversation with other boys.I used to meet with them to pray together. So, it is God’s will through his wonderful grace, that the prayers of his saints should be one great and principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ’s kingdom.

Pray much for the ministers and the church of God. The great powers of Edward’s mind and heart were exercised to procure an agreed union in the extraordinary prayer of God’s people everywhere. His life, efforts and character are exemplification of his statement:

The heaven I desire is a heaven spent with God; an eternity spent in the presence of divine love, and in holy communion with Christ.

At another time he said:

The soul of a true Christian appears like a little white flower in the spring of the year, low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasing beams of the sun’s glory, rejoicing as it were in a calm rapture, diffusing around a sweet fragrance, standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of other flowers.

Again he writes:

Once I rode out in the woods for my health, having alighted from my horse on a retired place, as my manner has been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God as Mediator between God and man, and of His wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love. And His meek and gentle condescension. This grace that seemed so calm and sweet appeared also great among the heavens.

The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued, as near as I can judge, for about an hour. It kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust to be full of Christ alone, to love Him with my whole heart.

As it was with Jonathan Edwards, so it is with all great intercessors. They come into that holy and elect mind and heart by a thorough self-dedication to God, by periods of God’s revelation to them, making distinctly marked eras in their spiritual history, ears never to be forgotten, in which faith mounts up with wings as eagles, and has given it a new and fuller vision of God, a stronger grasp of faith, a sweeter, clearer vision of all things heavenly and eternal, and a blessed intimacy with, and access to God.

Here is a conscience summary of the Edwards from the pen of Leonard Ravenhill:

Jonathan Edwards achieved greatness as an American preacher-evangelist, principal of a college, mystic, and revivalist. For us to see Jonathan Edwards ascend his pulpit today, a candle in one hand and his sermon manuscript in the other would cause a titter in the congregation. His tongue must have been like a sharp two-edged sword to his attentive hearers. His words must have been as painful to their hearts and consciences as burning metal on flesh. Nevertheless, men gave heed, repented, and were saved.

A thin crust, a very thin crust of morality, it seems to me, keeps America from complete collapse. In this perilous hour we need a whole generation of preachers like Edwards. ‘Oh Lord of hosts, turn us again; cause Thy face to shine upon us, and we shall be saved.’

Contrast this great man of God with his contemporary. This again is from Ravenhill in his book Sodom Had No Bible:

There was an atheist named Max Jukes and a godly man named Jonathan Edwards. Max Jukes, the atheist, lived a godless life. He married an ungodly girl, and from the union there were 310 who died as paupers, 150 were criminals, 7 were murderers, 100 drunkards, and more than half of the women were prostitutes. His 540 descendants cost the State one and quarter million dollars. But, praise the Lord it works both ways! There is a record of a great American man of God, Jonathan Edwards. He lived at the same time as Max Jukes, but he married a godly girl. An investigation was made of 1,394 known descendants of Jonathan Edwards of which 13 became college presidents, 65 college professors, 3 United States senators, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, 60 physicians, 75 army and navy officers, 100 preachers and missionaries, 60 authors of prominence, one vice-president of the United States, 80 became public officials in other capacities, 295 college graduates, among whom were governors of states and ministers to foreign countries. His descendants did not cost the state a single penny.

The Bible says: “The memory of the uncompromisingly righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked shall rot” (Proverbs 10:7 AMP).

Three simple words. We. Need. God. But those words say it all. America has sunk too deep to recover on its own.

We have sunk too deep into a moral morass, too deep into cultural confusion, too deep into a spiritual stupor. Only God can turn the tide. Only God can save us from implosion. We need God!

Political involvement has its place.

Social engagement is important.

There are many practical things we can and should do.

But all the while, we must recognize that without divine intervention, it is over for America as we know it. There is no turning back the clock.

Without a fresh wave of revival in the church that will lead to a great awakening in our society, America is in terminal condition. No strategy can heal us. No method can save us. Only God!

Let’s be realistic for a moment. We need to understand just how far we have fallen.

There was a time when truth was considered absolute. Today we have “my truth” vs. “your truth. “There was a time when moral standards were considered fixed. Today, morality is relative.

Even reality has become relative. After all, you are whoever (or whatever) you perceive yourself to be, including males who are females and females who are males and others who are neither or both. A whole generation has been raised on this madness. Let’s not fool ourselves.

Consequently, while we’re trying to restore respect for the Scriptures others are debating which preferred gender pronouns to use. We need to wake up!

Think about it for a moment.

It was not that long ago that the idea of same-sex “marriage” was universally rejected by conservative leaders, especially in the church. It was contrary to nature. It was in violation of God’s plan. It was not in the best interest of children who would be raised by same-sex parents.

Today, many conservative outlets avoid the subject of homosexuality as too controversial, while many pastors affirm it from their pulpits. This is high-level deception. This is a generational turn in the very wrong direction.

In fact, when gay atheist David Rubin announced that he and his partner were adopting children, quite a few conservative leaders offered him their warmest wishes. (This is not to bash Rubin and his partner. It is to point out the degree to which our eyes have been blinded and our standards have been compromised.)

And it was Fox News, the largest “conservative” news network, that recently hired Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner as part of its team. In the words of Fox CEO Suzanne Scott, “Caitlyn’s story is an inspiration to us all. She is a trailblazer in the LGBTQ+ community, and her illustrious career spans a variety of fields that will be a tremendous asset for our audience.” Enough said.

Or consider the depths to which we have sunk in musical entertainment, with unrepeatable songs like W.A.P. captivating the nation. How many young children know the words by heart?

As for our churches, how many are really preaching the Gospel without compromise? How many are gaining new converts and making lasting disciples rather than losing members?

Recent research indicates that more churches are closing than opening in America, while the number of professing Christians continues to decline dramatically.

As for our reputation before the world, how many more scandals must we experience before we recognize that something is fundamentally wrong? We need God!

When it comes to the church and politics, we are just as divided as the world and often as vulgar and ugly and carnal. Is this the church for which Jesus died? Is this His spotless bride?

Yet again and again, we think a new church strategy will transform us or we look to the latest political hero to deliver us. When will we learn? How much more shaking do we need in our nation, from political upheaval to riots in our streets and from pandemics to financial crises, before we fall to our knees by the millions and cry out for mercy?

In the Old Testament, Israel constantly looked to the arm of flesh, hoping that other nations and leaders could bail them out of their trouble. But they were in trouble because they were not in right relationship with God. Instead, they continued in their sin and looked to man for help. But it never worked.

As the prophet Isaiah warned, “Behold, you are trusting in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him” (Isaiah 36:6). The same can be said about all earthly supports in which we put our spiritual trust.

We need God!

More of the same will only produce more of the same, and we deceive ourselves by thinking that somehow, simply with the passing of time, the tide will turn on its own.

Not so.

Only God can turn the tide. Only God can change the narrative. Only God can save the nation. It really is revival or we die.

We. Need. God.

Copyright 2022 Dr. Michael Brown-All rights reserved.

Men have forgotten God: The West has, in recent years, bestowed upon itself an immense weight of suffering from financial crisis, lack of ethics, health and a variety of political crisis. Traditional values, respect for the elderly, tradition, the family and faith has been scrapped from the public narrative.

Front and center is the atheist materialist world view that deems the physical dimension as the only true existence. With physical wealth as the only value, the rich fight to own it all with no regard for the afterlife.

Materialism is preached to the young at universities and schools as God is proclaimed dead and our culture left without answers for the big questions of of life, writes historian of comparative religions and author, Hanne Nabintu Herland.

In parallel, depression, the meaninglessness of life and spiritual depravation engulfs so many, with little cultural knowledge of how to grapple with inner demons. The knowledge about how we did this before, is lost.

Yet, it is still worth remembering that the current suffering might produce something genuine.

Just look to Russia where the poverty of atheist Communism almost killed the respect for its historical culture, yet from this very repression of human diversity came the massive Russian revival that currently sweeps the East. Of which we, by the way, hear so little in the Western media.

Forced upon the Russian people was the Marxist world view, at center of it a remarkably harsh attitude of hatred towards traditional religion. In the Soviet Union, people were not in any way free to believe as they pleased, but were forced to adhere to an atheist tyranny that denied them religious freedoms. The spoken goal was to eradicate religion and old traditions all together. They were also told that God is dead.

Christian Orthodoxy experienced a massive revival in the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union precisely under the tyranny of atheism under the Communist decades.

Today over 70 % of the Russian population adhere to the Orthodox Christian faith, maybe the most underreported revival in our time.

Copyright 2021-Hanne Nabintu Herland The Herland Report-All rights reserved.

Prophet Habakkuk was called by God to prophesy to Judah during the final years of the nation’s destruction by the Babylonians in around 588 B.C. Maybe just like the present “New World Order or the “military-industrial complex”, Babylon was proud of its military might, strategies, armies, and weapons.

With no regard for humanity, the armies brought home riches, plunder, prisoners, and tribute from the nations they invaded and conquered. Like his contemporaries, his call for repentance and the impending disaster were messages the Jewish people did not want to hear. In the end, Habakkuk asked God why he would use the wicked Babylonians to punish his people. This was part of his dialogue with the Lord:

O LORD, how long shall I cry, And You will not hear? Even cry out to You, “Violence!” And You will not save. Why do You show me iniquity, and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me; there is strife, and contention arises. Therefore the law is powerless, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore perverse judgment proceeds. (Habakkuk 1: 1-4)

The Lord’s reply was not what Habakkuk wanted to hear. The Lord told him He was going to do something that he wouldn’t believe even if someone were told about it in advance.

Look among the nations and watch— Be utterly astounded! For I will work a work in your days which you would not believe, though it were told you. For indeed I am raising up the Chaldeans, a bitter and hasty nation which marches through the breadth of the earth, to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful; their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, And more fierce than evening wolves…….(Habakkuk 1:5-11)

Habakkuk could not understand why God seemed to do nothing about the wickedness in his people. So he made a second complaint because he wanted some judgment for his people in order to get their attention. But he did not want them to be destroyed.

In order to execute judgment, the Lord was going to use the wicked Chaldeans who trusted in themselves and this bothered Habakkuk. How could the most evil people be used to punish his people? He cried out to the Lord with a sense of desperation:

Are You not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, You have appointed them for judgment; O Rock, You have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he? Why do You make men like fish of the sea, Like creeping things that have no ruler over them?…….(Habakkuk 1:12-17)

So Habakkuk realized he had been rash to talk like this way to God. He decided to stand upon his post of observation and station himself on the watchtower and watch to see what the Lord will say within him.

Oh, I know, I have been rash to talk out plainly this way to God!] I will [in my thinking] stand upon my post of observation and station myself on the tower or fortress, and will watch to see what He will say within me and what answer I will make [as His mouthpiece] to the perplexities of my complaint against Him. (Habakkuk 2:1 AMP)

Remember that the questions were: (1) How long would You allow evil to prevail 1:2-3)? (2) Why would you use the wicked Chaldeans to destroy people who are more righteous than they (1:13)? Then the Lord in His timing answered him by saying:

Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2: 2-4 KJV)

The just shall live by his faith! What did the Lord mean by that? This Word is quoted three times in the New Testament: in Romans 1:17, in Galatians 3:11, and in Hebrews 10:38. This Word has produced a great impact on the whole human race. Within three centuries it brought the great Caesar to his knees, the head of the most powerful empire that the world had ever seen.

The Holy Spirit used the same Word in the heart and mind of Martin Luther, through the protestant reformation to change the course of history in Europe and the rest of the world. There is no doubt that even today, this powerful Word once applied by faith contains within it the power to revolutionize the lives of individuals or the course of nations and empires.

Regardless of whether this Word is short and simple, it covers all aspects and areas of the human personality –the spiritual, the mental, and the physical. It also covers areas like breathing, thinking, speaking, eating, working, and so on.

The Bible teaches that trying to be right with God by own efforts doesn’t work. Everything we do must be motivated and controlled by faith. Even eating food as Paul makes it clear in Romans 14: 23 must be done by faith…..For whatever does not originate and proceed from faith is sin [whatever is done without a conviction of its approval by God is sinful]. (Romans 14:23 AMP)

Paul admonishes us to try to work out our faith with fear and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ). Not in our own strength, for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in us energizing and creating in me the power and desire, both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight (Philippians 2:12-12).

The Lord’s Reply to Habbakuk

The Lord in His mercy began to explain to the prophet that He understood and knew everything that was going on, the greed, persecution, deception, injustice, plunder, murder, immorality, cruelty, and idolatry of the Chaldeans. The Lord assured Habakkuk that the Chaldeans will in due time be judged and that ultimately righteousness and justice will prevail for the people of God.

Because you king of Babylon have plundered many nations, all who are left of the people shall plunder you–because of men’s blood and for the violence done to the earth, to the city and all the people who live in each city…Woe to him who builds a town with blood and establishes a city by iniquity!……..But the time is coming when the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea…….(See Habakkuk 2: 6-20)

The Lord concluded His reply with the words:

But the Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth hush and keep silence before Him. (Habakkuk 2:20)

The Lord is on His throne, He is alive, powerful, sovereign, all-knowing. He is God and beside Him, there is no other. We have no right to question Him, His motives and actions but to trust Him.

Habakkuk understood that the Lord was going to discipline his children “For the Lord disciplines those He loves “(Hebrews 12: 5-6), this was not what he wanted but he had to accept God’s will. In the end, Habakkuk had to repent, humble himself, and pray for revival and mercy for his nation:

O Lord, I have heard the report of You and was afraid. O Lord, revive Your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make [Yourself] known! In wrath [earnestly] remember love, pity, and mercy. (Habakkuk 3:1-2 AMP)

As the prophet was praying and begging for mercy for his nation. The Lord showed him a vision of the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth to reign and rule over the nations which gave him hope. In the vision Habakkuk sees the Messiah coming in all His glory with “rays of light flash from His hands” where His awesome power is hidden. He comes in wrath, with pestilence marching before Him and plagues following behind Him. When He stops the earth shakes and when He looks, the nations tremble. (See Habakkuk 3:3-15)

In this vision, the Lord is saying to the prophet, a day is coming in which He will judge the world in righteousness (Acts 17:31) and each one of us will receive what he deserves. Paul also says:

For we must all appear and be revealed as we are before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive [his pay] according to what he has done in the body, whether good or evil [considering what his purpose and motive have been, and what he has achieved, been busy with, and given himself and his attention to accomplishing]. (2 Corinthians 5:10 AMP)

The prophet Habakkuk trembled and waited quietly for the day of trouble and sure God would indeed pour out His judgment on Judah. (Habakkuk 3:16). Then Habakkuk praised the Lord for answering his questions.

He affirms that even if crop failure, death of animals, times of starvation, and loss would devastate Judah, he will still rejoice and praise the Lord. Habakkuk’s feelings were not controlled by the events around him but by faith in God’s ability to give him strength and endurance.

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, And the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, And there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. (Habakkuk 3:17-18 KJV)

Habakkuk decides to submit himself and his nation to God’s will, believing that God will do is best for them. Habakkuk had asked God why evil people prosper and the righteous suffer. The Lord assured him that He is God and He will do what is right. And what happened?

The Chaldeans came and the city of Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. The land was devastated, and the surviving Jews were taken into captivity. But many years later as we’ve already mentioned in one of the previous posts, King Belshazzar was having a party in a royal palace.

The Babylonians and their wives defiled the sacred Temple vessels by drinking wine from them. While they drank from them they praised their idols made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

Suddenly they saw the fingers of a human handwriting on a wall of the king’s palace and it was the king himself who saw this and called astrologers, magicians, and wise men who claimed to interpret the future. However, none of them could tell the meaning of the Writing on the Wall. But then, the queen mother heard what was happening and called Daniel whom she said, had within him the spirit of the “holy gods.” Belshazzar was upset by the writing and asked Daniel to interpret the supernatural message. And this is the inscription that was written:

MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN.

This is the interpretation of each word. MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; TEKEK: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” (Daniel 5:25-28)

These words were in Aramaic language, the word mene is derived from mena, meaning “to number,” and is repeated to provide emphasis. This word declared that God had now limited or judged the days of the Babylonian Empire.

The word tekel is derived from tekal, “to weigh, “and declared that God had evaluated the pagan kingdom and found it to be wanting. The word peres means to “divide.” The word upharsin is the pural form of peres and provided increased emphasis.

The prophecy written on the wall made it clear that Babylon would be judged, divided and given to the Media- Persians. How could all the wise men, the magicians and the astrologers unable to translate the four words considering the fact that Daniel’s education in languages was the same as theirs?

It was only revealed to the uncompromising man of God –who walked with the Lord through daily intimate fellowship. He was so committed and dedicated to Him that God could speak to him and through him.

Only such a man could tell what these words meant. Blessed are those who are to dare to be a Daniel! That very night that God delivered the written prophecy, the greatest empire in the ancient world ended, Belshazzar, the Babylonian king was killed.

Babylon was defeated in the conquest of the capital city by the Medo – Persian Empire led King Cyrus of Persia and King Darius the Mede. The Lord kept His Word and now where is the mighty splendor of Babylon? It collapsed. And where are the Jewish people? They have been re-gathered to the ancient homeland, waiting for the coming of Yeshua (Jesus Christ) their Messiah.

It is only the Lord that knows the incredible detail in which He will carry out His will, plan, and purposes for our lives as individuals, families, or nations. He just calls a righteous man or woman to live by faith, not by sight.

Finally, the book of Hebrews says:

For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The LORD will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God…….Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you May receive the promise: for yet a little while and He who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.” (Hebrews 10:30-38 NKJV)

This judgment is for those who have rejected God’s grace and mercy through His Son Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins. For those who accept Christ’s salvation and love there is no need to worry.

The Lord is sovereign and He will do as He promises. God never promises that His people will be immune to persecution and suffering at the hands of His enemies, as we’ve seen with Habakkuk. He only promises that they will not go through the wrath He will pour out in the Great Tribulation.

He says, He will never leave us nor forsake us; He will constantly encourage us and give us hope, courage and providing our basic needs. We need to meditate on these words from the book of Isaiah:

But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior (Isaiah 43:1-4 KJV).

God has always warned the world of coming judgments so that they might return to Him.  You will find if you read your Bible diligently, that God always precedes judgment with mercy and grace. Grace is a forerunner of judgment.

The Hebrew prophet Isaiah resolved:

My soul yearns for You O Lord in the night, yes, my spirit within me seeks You earnestly; for only when Your judgments are in the earth will the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness (uprightness and right standing with God) (Isaiah 26:9).

When we study the Old Testament, we find that the Israelites sought God, repented, and prayed when things were not going well, and God in His grace and mercy heard and answered their prayers. But in prosperous times they forgot God and sinned— time and time again.

He warned Noah of the coming flood (Genesis 6:13), Abraham and Lot of the future destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18: 17; 19:14), Jeremiah of the destruction of the temple and Babylonian captivity (Jeremiah 25: 1–11), Jonah of the destruction of Nineveh (Jonah 1: 2; 3: 4), and Amos of the downfall of Syria, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah, and Israel (Amos 1–2).

Hosea warned Israel about her apostasy in her covenant relationship with God (Hosea 6: 4–10:15). The prophet Joel also warned the people to turn to God in repentance (Joel 1: 1–11). Various prophets were told in detail about the final events in connection with the captivities of the chosen people, and in every case the warnings were startlingly executed.

The Destruction of Jerusalem

The awful destruction of Jerusalem, in 70 A.D., which resulted in the extermination of a million Jews and the captivity of multitudes more, was preceded by the offer of divine mercy at the hands of the Son of God Himself. When Christ came to plead with the people in Jerusalem, it was their day of grace; but they mocked and laughed at Him. He then said,

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! (Matthew 23:37).

The Bible says that while Jesus was being led through the streets to His crucifixion, and although He was suffering so terribly, His heart was filled with compassion for these women who were weeping for Him. He saw their tears and He must have felt their broken hearts. He turned to them and said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:38).

The Lord saw what would happen in the not-too-distant future, around 70 AD in only about 40 years, Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed by the Roman army under Titus in a very cruel and ruthless manner. Jesus saw the terrible things that these women and their children would soon experience.  Before that, the Bible also makes it clear that Jesus wept for Jerusalem as He was returning to the city for the last time. Luke writes that:

Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:41-44 NKJV).

Forty years afterwards, thousands of people begged that their lives might be spared, and eleven hundred thousand perished in that city. Those who survived fled Jerusalem to a town known as Pella on the eastern side of Jordan. The Temple was completely destroyed and not one single stone was left upon another exactly as Jesus had prophesied.

In the course of that war, two million Jews were killed and one million were sold into captivity as slaves throughout the Roman Empire. The lesson to learn from is this: The people who gave heed to the words of Jesus saved their lives and those who didn’t lost theirs.

The Great Awakening in Britain

There is no more devastating judgment than war. Historians tell us that when God sent revival or a Great Awakening in Britain in the eighteenth century, He saved her from the bloodshed that had happened in France during the time of the French Revolution. Thousands of people repented of their sins and began to live holy lives, spreading a spiritual and social revival. It touched and changed approximately one million lives.

This awakening was truly a reformation of the heart. The impact that this Great Awakening through both George Whitefield and John Wesley had on this country and its people was unfathomable; it had far-reaching effects and lasted well over a hundred years.

In four waves, it crossed the Atlantic and brought conversion to 20% of the population in America. However, although Britain was spared mainly because of Wesley’s preaching, most of the great revivals in history came before the war, not during or after.

Great Awakening in America

The first great awakening in America preceded the Revolutionary War, which terribly devastated the cities and countryside of America. The Second Great Awakening preceded the Civil War, which was the most devastating war in America’s history.

In 1857-59 a great revival wave visited the United States, sweeping a half a million souls into the fountain of salvation. This revival swept over America in the east and on to the western cities, and over to the Pacific coast. It was God calling the nation to Himself. Immediately the terrible carnage of 1861–1865 the Civil War followed. Americans were baptized with the Holy Spirit in 1857, and in 1861, they were baptized in blood. It was a call of mercy preceding judgment.

Azusa and Welsh Revival

The Welsh Revival, which greatly impacted the whole world, but especially Europe, preceded World War I. In 1904 the Welsh revival began. It created almost desperate hunger worldwide for such a blessing. In Germany, the evangelicals organized conventions and prayer efforts. The cry was, “Lord do it again.” The revival visualized was a repeat of the Wesley-Whitefield-Edwards awakenings. But God wanted to do a new thing and waited.

In 1904– 1908, just six years before World War I, God poured out His Holy Spirit at Azusa Street in fulfilment of the prophecies of Joel that the Holy Spirit would be poured out once again. This Pentecostal outpouring spread through Florence Crawford to the Pacific Northwest of the United States, to the Midwest through William Durham, and eventually to New York through Elder Sturdevant.

The following leaders came to the Azusa Street Mission and spread the Pentecostal message in individual states: G. B. Cashwell in North Carolina, Glen A. Cook in Indiana, C. H. Mason in Tennessee, Samuel Saell in Arizona, and Rachael Sizelove in Missouri. And R. E. McAlister took the message to Ottawa, Canada.

In 1907 T. B. Barratt, a Methodist Norwegian pastor held revival meetings in Oslo, which attracted international attention. Jonathan Paul from Germany came to those revival meetings and was convinced this was truly the work of the Holy Spirit.

He began experimental services for the baptism in the Spirit, which drew a mixed multitude of wonder seekers, many of dubious religious stock. That same year he returned from Oslo to start revival meetings in the city of Kassel in Germany, the result of which was the formation of a German Pentecostal Denomination.

In 1908 T. B. Barratt, on tour in the United States during that time, took the message in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland in England, and the people were filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

By 1909 the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was reaching the whole of Europe and spreading throughout the world. The message spread to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, and Germany. However, things did not proceed well in Germany, and two experienced Pentecostal women brought from Norway to help went home disgusted.

The Berlin Declaration (Die Berliner Erklarung)

That same year in 1909 the revival prompted the evangelical churches in Germany to a meeting in Berlin to discuss the disputed manifestations of the Holy Spirit. They issued a statement, known as the Berlin Declaration, a theological statement by fifty-six leading evangelical theologians that condemned the Pentecostal experience.

The declaration stated that the Pentecostal movement was “not from above, but from below,” and that speaking in tongues, healing miracles, and all manifestations of this revival were of the devil. This short document was merely assertive and contained not a single argument, scriptural or otherwise. Most German evangelicals, under threat of disfellowship, had to toe the line it laid down. Thus the Declaration rooted itself deeply and bore bitter fruit.

This history of speaking in tongues from the beginning of the first day of the twentieth century is full of spiritual significance. It has produced the greatest soul-saving witness in the entire Christian age. However, the evangelical world conjured up a real fear of tongues, and leaders massed their weight against it. That was tragic and had far-reaching consequences.

“Enlightenment” and the Two World Wars

What happened after that is either a coincidence or something else entirely. The witness of the Holy Spirit in believers’ lives was for the most part silenced and God’s Word became a human theory rather than the living, breathing revelation of the eternal Triune God.

Since then, Western thinking has been dominated by secular and godless theories. Satan has planted agents in the highest educational establishments and even theological seminaries. Everywhere the effects have been frightening. The biblical grounds of morality are being destroyed. Without any inner light, each decade ever since has brought a worse wave of heathenism, evil for evil’s sake destruction, and even murder for the sheer pleasure of it, both by governments and devil-inspired individuals.

Anti-Christian concepts have destroyed the spiritual backbone of nation after nation, beginning with Europe, where the Bible-doubting cult of intellectualism was hatched during the eighteenth century with the so-called Higher Criticism or Enlightenment, which spawned the evils of revolution and war.

Along with the higher criticism movement that had destroyed the concept of divine revelation, this event spiritually prepared the way for Hitler and the Nazis. Subsequently, the German church and most of Europe gave the world the bloodiest century in the history of humankind.

The hills and valleys of this continent are still stained with crimson from more than 50 million lives lost in two world wars and a set of related conflicts. Most historians find it hard to believe that Europe will ever fully recover from this setback.

God had sent revival, but it was rejected by millions of biblical Christians. Apostolic-style revival made its own way mainly without evangelical encouragement. When George Jeffreys, the greatest, and earliest of British Pentecostal evangelists went through the United Kingdom like a flame of fire, warnings against him went out from almost every church pulpit.

In Britain’s second-largest city Birmingham, ten thousand people received Christ, and one thousand testimonies of healing were received, yet a leading free churchman tried to organize a counter-attraction against him.  That position only changed when the era of charismatic renewal began in the 1950s and ‘60s. The nations, which could have been swept by revival if the moving of the Spirit in this new way had been accepted by evangelicals, were swept by war.

What’s the Main Lesson?

True even in our time, mercy rejected means judgment, and on a corresponding scale. In all of the history of God’s world, there has always been first the offer of divine mercy, then judgment following. The prophets ceased not day and night to faithfully warn Israel, but their tears and entreaties, for the most part, were in vain. As Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke puts it,

These prophets of Israel often spoke to the whole nation. The New Testament prophet does not. The Hebrew prophets, before Christ, spoke to the nation as God’s people, and the Christian prophet speaks to the church as God’s people. No New Testament figure after John the Baptist went as Jeremiah or Amos did with a commission to address national affairs.

In the time of the kings of Israel some prophets, such as Nathan, were retained in some kind of official capacity for this purpose of national guidance. Samuel and the charismatic judges acted as national leaders, but there is nothing like this in the Christian dispensation.

The voice of God to the nations today comes through the whole body of the church. What Isaiah was to Israel, the whole church is to Britain, Germany, or America. The church’s existence, way of life, and principles of service should be a constant challenge to the ways of nations.

The world is at a tipping point by virtually every measure. We are now witnessing a worldwide political, moral and social bankruptcy where America has become an empire of lies, and where ‘truth-tellers’ are guilty of treason.

And so, as we anticipate the coming revival, which is already assuming rapidly worldwide proportions, we wonder if the judgment will follow mercy, like other times. And judgment in proportion to the mercy extended. The good news is, that God is holding up His justice because of His mercy and because a Savoir died.

It is only by grace that we are saved, and that is why Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (see Genesis 6:8). No one was ever saved in any other way other than by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The following is a prophetic word for Great Britain given through Lance Lambert, who had a great love for the UK as his adopted country after he escaped here from the Nazis as a child. Please read and weigh this prayerfully.

Saturday 6 August 2011

Hear the voice of the Lord, O Isles that I have so greatly loved and favoured. I the Lord the Almighty, I took you when you were nothing, clothed with skins and woad, and through My saving power, I made you great. When you were nothing, through My Word and your faith in Me, I lifted you and made you Great Britain.

Through many awakenings and many revivals, stage by stage, I took you until you became a great power with the greatest Empire in the history of the nations.

From you My Gospel and My Word went throughout the world, and tens of thousands came into an experience of saving faith! That Empire with all its many failings and weaknesses was still one of the most just and righteous Empires of history.

Those Isles of yours were soaked with the blood of My faithful martyrs and its soil received the burnt ashes of those who would not renounce My Name, My Truth, and My Word. I, the Lord have not forgotten those who gave their all for Me!

But now the whole nation that I created and sustained has turned from Me. They paganise their land, state and institutions; there is no voice heard to warn the nation.

False religion, the work of world rulers of darkness, cover your Isles; A Laodicean church, neither hot nor cold, rumbles on like machinery. It is a church where I am outside of its routine; its organisation and its methodology. It is Christianity without Me: Religion without Me!

My being is seared with pain, for judgement is determined against your land. I can do no other. I will destroy the vestiges of her greatness; I will return her to her first estate.

I will wreck her economy, destabilise her in every way. I will change her climate, even her weather. I will prove to her that the way of the transgressor is hard and terrible.

I will allow demonic forces held in check erstwhile by My Word and Gospel, and the living faith of so many, to become rampant in her social life, to the destruction of her society.

Will you who know Me and love Me go blind and dumb and deaf into this judgement?

It is time for you who love Me, who are faithful to Me, to take action! Stand before Me and plead The Finished Work of My Son. At least cry out to Me, that there will be those who turn from darkness, from sin, and be saved. For whosoever shall call upon My Name in the midst of these judgements, I will save!

It will cost you everything to stand in the gap, but you will enter into My heart, and know deep fellowship with Me. Such travail conceived in your heart by My Spirit will cost your deeply, but it will end in My Throne and Glory.

Copyright © 2019 Lance Lambert Ministries-All rights reserved.

Folks, I’m tired of hearing about revival. I’m tired of hearing about awakenings, of last day outpourings of the Holy Spirit. I’ve heard that rhetoric for 50 years. Just rhetoric. No meaning whatsoever.

I’m tired of hearing about people in the church who say they want their unsaved loved ones saved. I’m tired of hearing people say I’m concerned about my troubled marriage, when it’s just talk, rhetoric!

I look at the whole religious scene today, and all I see are the invention and ministries of man and flesh. It’s mostly powerless. It has no impact on the world. And I see more of the world coming into the church and impacting the church, rather than the church impacting the world.

I see the music, entertainment taking over the House of God, an obsession with entertainment in God’s House, a hatred of correction and a hatred of reproof, nobody wants to hear it anymore.

Whatever happened to anguish in the House of God? Whatever happened to anguish in the ministry? It’s a word you don’t hear in this pampered age! You don’t hear it. Anguish means extreme pain and distress, emotions so stirred that it becomes painful, acute, deeply felt inner pain because of conditions about you, in you, or around you. Anguish. Deep pain and sorrow. Agony of God’s Heart.

We’ve held on to our religious rhetoric, and our revival talk, but we’ve become so passive. Our so-called awakenings are stirrings; they last but a short time. And in those times we promise God we’ll never return to our passivity. But it’s not long, it’s just weeks or months and we’re back, and this time we slip further back into passivity than when we started.

I speak from experience. And we say: “This time Lord God, You’ve touched me for life, I’ll never be the same.” And it’s like fireworks, a loud bang and a lot of noise and then it dies!

All true passion is born out of anguish. All true passion for Christ comes out of a baptism of anguish. Search the Scriptures and you’ll find that when God determined to recover a ruined situation, He would seek out a praying man, and He’d take him down into the waters of anguish. He would share His own anguish for what He saw happening to His church and to His people.

He would find a praying man, and He would take that man and literally baptise him in anguish. Now I believe in the love of God. I’ve preached mercy and grace, and love, covenant love, and I believe in preaching the goodness and longsuffering of Christ.

But multitudes today are being saturated with ‘you’re ok’ messages. We’ve got people now that are turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.

We’ve become like the children of Israel who said the right words, but here is what God said:

I’ve heard the words of this people; they have well said all that they have spoken. O, that there was such a heart in them that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!

He said: “O, you have the right words, you sing the right songs, but your heart is not right!”

You find it in the Book of Nehemiah. Jerusalem is in ruins.  Here was a delegation from the ruined city coming to Nehemiah and said: “Jerusalem is broken down, the walls are down, ruin, nothing but ruin!” Now these I’m sure were godly men, good men, but they had no concept of how God was going to deal with the situation, how He was going to bring about a recovery.

Why didn’t they have an answer? Why didn’t God use them in restoration? Why didn’t they have a word? – Because there was no sign of anguish! No weeping! Not a word of prayer! It’s all ruin. Nehemiah says:

When I heard these words, I sat down and wept, and mourned certain days and fasted, and prayed before the God of Heaven.

You see, God found a praying man, and He takes him down into the waters of baptism of anguish. This man goes down into anguish. God found a man who would not just have a flash of emotion – not just some great sudden burst of concern and then let it die.

You see, we face a similar situation, except ours is many times worse! Does it matter to you today, does it matter to you at all, that God’s spiritual Jerusalem, the church – is now married to the world?! That there’s such a coldness sweeping the land?

So many people I know that were my friends, and I see them go, one by one, husbands and wives, into such passivity, going to churches where they can find smooth messages, no longer wanting to hear anything of wrath or of correction! Some of my closest friends – I see them falling by the wayside. And the cries? Is it nothing to you?!!

Closer than that, does it matter about the Jerusalem that is in our own hearts? The sign of ruin that is slowly draining spiritual power and passion? Blind to lukewarmness, to the mixture that is creeping in? You see, when spiritual blindness comes, very few recognise it, it is the last thing to be recognised that happens to a child of God.

In all honesty, there are numbers among us that are changing, and they don’t know it. You’ve lost your fight, so you won’t labour in prayer anymore, you won’t weep before God anymore, you can sit and watch television and your family go to hell.

Does it really matter to you that your unsaved loved ones are dying and we’re getting closer and closer to the end? Does it really concern you, they could die and go to hell? Even though you’re a lover of Christ? Where is the anguish? Where are the tears? Where is the mourning?

Where is the fasting? I know now, O my God, do I know it, until I’m in agony, until I’m in anguish over it, I’m preaching ‘sermons’! Then I say: “No! It’s too late! I don’t have that much time!” All our projects, all our ministries, everything we do… I know now, it will take more than preaching, more than a new revelation.

There’s going to be no renewal and no revival, no awakening – until we’re willing to let Him once again break us.

Folks, it’s getting late and it’s getting serious. Please don’t tell me you’re concerned, don’t tell me that you want your unsaved loved ones saved – when you’re spending hours in front of the internet or television. Come on!

There’s some that need to get to the altar and confess, “I’m not what I was, I’m not where I’m supposed to be, God I don’t have Your Heart or Your Burden, I wanted it easy, I just wanted to be happy!”

There is nothing of the flesh will give you joy. I don’t care how much money; I don’t care what kind of new house. There is absolutely nothing physical that can give you joy. It’s only what is accomplished by the Holy Spirit when you obey Him and take on His Heart.

He gives you the knowing of His Voice that instant knowledge God is saying, “This is the way, walk in it!” And then the wonderful joy of seeing God answer your prayer and build the walls around your family, build the walls around your own heart, and make you strong and impregnable against the enemy. God that is what we desire!

Here is the Full Sermon

 [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayYizi9TZAQ]

E.M. Bounds said more in various passages that relate to the theme of the Holy Spirit. We need to listen again to some of the fiery clarity of this prophet of prayer:

Preachers of the present age excel those of the past in many, possibly in all human elements of success. They are well abreast in the age of learning, research and intellectual vigour. But these things neither insure “power from on high” nor guarantee a live, thriving religious experience, or righteous life. These purely human gifts do not bring with them an insight into the deep things of God, or strong faith in the Scriptures or an intense loyalty to God’s divine revelation.

The presence of these earthly talents even in the most commanding and impressive form, and richest measure do not in the least abate the necessity for the added endowment of the Holy Spirit. Herein lies the great danger menacing the pulpit of today. All around us we see a tendency to substitute human gifts and worldly attainments for that supernatural, inward power which comes from on high in answer to earnest prayer.

Many Church leaders seem to think if they can be prominent as men of business, of money, influence, of thought, of plans, of scholarly attainments, of eloquent gifts, of taking, conspicuous activities, that these are enough, and will atone for the absence of the higher spiritual power which only much praying can give.

Natural ability and educational advantages do not figure as factors in this matter; but a capacity for faith, the ability to pray, the power of a thorough consecration, the ability of self-degeneration, an absolute losing of one’s self in God’s glory and an ever present and insatiable yearning and seeking after all the fullness of God (see Ephesians 3:14-21).

God’s revelation of Himself and His will cannot be sought and understood by reason, intelligence or great learning. Great men and great minds are neither the channels nor depositories of God’s revelation by virtue of their culture, braininess, nor wisdom.

God’s system in redemption and providence is not to be thought out, open only to the learned and wise. The learned and wise, following their learning and their wisdom have always sadly and darkly missed God’s thoughts and God’s ways (see Luke 10:21-22).

The Gospel Flows Through Hearts

The condition of receiving God’s revelation and of holding God’s truth is one of the heart, not of the head. The ability to receive and search out is like that of a child, the babe, the synonym of docility, innocence and simplicity. These are the conditions on which God reveals himself to men. The world by wisdom cannot know God. The world by wisdom can never receive nor understand God, because God reveals Himself to men’s hearts, not to their heads.

Only hearts can ever know God, can feel God, can see God, and can read God in His Book of Books. God is not grasped by thought but by feeling.  The world gets God by revelation, not by philosophy.

It is not apprehension, the mental ability to grasp God, but plasticity, ability to be impressed, that men need. It is not by hard, strong stern, great reasoning that the world gets God or gets hold of God, but by big, soft, pure hearts. Not so much do men need light to see God as they need hearts to feel God (see Acts 17:26-28).

Human wisdom, great natural talents, and the culture of schools, howsoever good they be, can neither be the repositories nor conservers of God’s revealed truth. The tree of knowledge has been the bane of faith, ever essaying to reduce revelation to a philosophy and to measure God by man.

In its pride, it puts God out and puts man into God’s truth. To become babes again, on our mother’s bosom, quieted, weaned, without clamor or protest, is the only position in which to know God. A calmness on the surface and in the depths of the soul, in which God can mirror His will, His Word and Himself— this is the attitude toward Him through which He can reveal Himself, and this attitude is the right attitude of knowing God intimately in prayer.

Men are called to pray. God regards the man in so important a way as to put a kind of discount on all else. Men have built him glorious temples and have striven and exhausted themselves to please God by all manner of gifts; but in lofty strains he has rebuked these proud worshipers and rejected their princely gifts (Isaiah 66:1-2; John 4:24)

We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the important thing to be prepared—the heart. A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon. Volumes have been written laying down the mechanics and taste of sermon- making, until we have become possessed with the idea that this scaffolding is the building.

The young preacher has been taught to lay out all his strength on the form, taste, and beauty of his sermon as a mechanical and intellectual product. We have thereby cultivated a vicious taste among the people and raised a clamor for talent instead of grace, eloquence instead of piety, rhetoric instead of revelation, reputation, and brilliance instead of holiness. By it we have lost the authority over consciences and lives which always results from genuine preaching.

It would not do to say that preachers study too much. Some of them do not study at all; others do not study enough. Numbers do not study the right way to show themselves approved of God (see 2 Timothy 2:15).

But our great lack is not in head culture, but in heart culture; not lack of knowledge but lack of holiness is our sad and telling defect—not that we know too much, but that we do not meditate on God and His Word and watch and fast and pray enough.

The heart is the great hindrance to our preaching. Words pregnant with divine truth find in our hearts non-conductors; arrested, they fall shorn and are powerless.

Can ambition, which lusts after praise and place, preach the gospel of Him who made Himself of no reputation and took on Him the form of a servant? Can the proud, the vain, the egotistical preach the gospel of Him Who was meek and lowly?

Can the bad-tempered, passionate, selfish, hard worldly man preach the system that seems with long-suffering, self-denial, tenderness, which imperatively demands separation from enmity and crucifixion to the world? Can the hireling official, heartless, perfunctory, preach the gospel that demands the shepherd to give his life for the sheep?

Can the covetous man, who counts salary and money, preach the gospel till he has gleaned his heart and can say in the spirit of Christ and Paul in the words of Wesley:

I count it dung and dross; I trample it under my feet; (yet not I, but the grace of God in me) esteem it just as the mire of the streets, I desire it not, I seek it not?

God’s revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture, the brilliancy of human thought, the force of human brains to adorn or enforce it; but it does demand the simplicity, the docility, humility, and faith of a child’s heart.

It was this surrender and subordination of intellect and genius to the divine and spiritual forces that made Paul peerless among the apostles. It was this that gave Wesley his power and radicated his labours in the history of humanity. Our great need is heart-preparation. We do not say that men are not to think and use their intellects; but he will use his intellect best who cultivates his heart most. The heart is the Savoir of the world. Heads do not save. Genius, brains, brilliancy, strength, natural gifts do not save. The gospel flows through hearts (Acts 2:36-39).

Revivals Are Born in Prayer

As God from the beginning, has wrought prominently through revivals, there can be no denial of the fact that revivals are a part of the divine plan. The kingdom of our Lord has been advanced in large measure by special seasons of gracious and rapid accomplishment of the work of conversion, and it may be inferred, therefore, that the means through which God has worked in other times will be employed in our time to produce similar results. The quite conversion of one sinner after another, under the ordinary ministry of the gospel,” says one writer on the subject:

must always be regarded with feelings of satisfaction and gratitude by the ministers and disciples of Christ; but a periodical manifestation of the simultaneous conversion of thousands is also to be desired, because of its adaptation to afford a visible and impressive demonstration that God has made the same Jesus, Who was rejected and crucified, both Lord and Christ; and that, in virtue of His divine mediatorship, He has assumed the royal scepter of universal supremacy and “must reign till all enemies be made His footstool.” It is therefore, reasonable to expect that, from time to time, he will repeat that which on the day of Pentecost formed the conclusive and crowning evidence of His Messiahship and Sovereignty; and, by so doing, startle the slumbering souls of careless worldliness, gain the attentive ear of the unconverted, and, in a remarkable way, break in those brilliant dreams of earthly glory, grandeur, wealth, power, and happiness, which the rebellious and God-forgetting multitudes so fondly cherish. Such an outpouring of the Holy Spirit forms at once a demonstrative proof of the completeness and acceptance of his once offering of Himself as a sacrifice for sin, and a prophetic “earnest” of the certainty that He shall” appear the second time without sin unto salvation. “to judge the world in righteousness.

All revivals are dependent on God, but in revivals, as in other things, he invites and requires the assistance of man, and the full result is obtained when there is cooperation between the divine and the human.

God alone can save the world, but God chooses not to save the world alone. God and man unite for the task, the response of the divine being invariably in proportion to the desire and the effort of the human.

This cooperation, then, being necessary, what is the duty which we, as co-workers with God, require to undertake? First of all, and most important of all—the point which we desire particularly to emphasize—we must give ourselves to prayer.

“Revivals,” as Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman reminds us, “are born in prayer. When Wesley prayed, England was revived; when Knox prayed Scotland was refreshed; when the Sunday school teachers of Tannybrook prayed, 11,000 young people were added to the church in a year. Whole nights of prayer have always been succeeded by whole days of soul-winning.”  And when we pray, God will revive again.