These are different days from the days of the 1859 Revival or the Welsh Revival; we must be tolerant and we must try to accommodate. In order to do that it is necessary at times to lower our standard and seek the co-operation of those who do not accept the position that we hold relative to evangelical truth.

The secret of power is separation from all that is unclean, for me there is nothing so unclean as the liberal views held by some today. We dare not touch them. I am stating what to me is a deep-seated conviction:

Come out from among them and be ye separate . . . and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you.” (2 Corinthians 6:17)

Yes, we must seek power even at the expense of influence. Think again of the great Apostle Paul. What an opportunity he had of gaining influence with Felix, had he but flattered him a little in his sin. He could have made a great impression and I believe he could have gotten a handsome donation for his missionary effort by being tolerant and accommodating the situation.

Paul chose power before influence and he reasoned of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Let Felix say what he will, let Drusilla think as she chooses to think, I must be true to my conscience and to my inner convictions and declare the whole counsel of God and take my stand on the solid ground of separation unto God.

Now the person who will take his stand on that ground will not be popular, he will not be popular with some preachers of today who declare that we must soft-pedal in order to capture and captivate.

Here I would quote from the saintly Finney: “Away with your milk and water preaching of the love of Christ that has no holiness or moral discrimination in it; away with preaching a Christ not crucified for sin.” Such a collapse of moral conscience in this land could never have happened if the Puritan element in our preaching had not, in a great measure, fallen out. Here is the quotation from a Highland minister preaching on this very truth. He cried:

Bring me a God of mercy but not just, bring me a God of all love but not righteous, and I will have no scruples in calling Him an idiot of your imagination.

Strong words, but I say words that I would sound throughout our land today in this age of desperate apostasy, forsaking all the fundamental truths of Scripture. Here you have the Apostles proclaiming a message that was profoundly disturbing.

We are afraid of disturbing people today. You must not have their emotions stirred, you must not have people weeping in a meeting, you must not have people rolling on the floor under conviction of sin; keep things orderly. May God help us, may God have mercy upon us.

Who are we to dictate to Almighty God as to how He is going to work? If God chooses to move in that way, if God chooses to so convict men and women of their sin that they will be about to lose their reason, I say, God move on until we can see again what was witnessed in the Edwards Revival, in the Finney Revival, in the Fifty-nine Revival, in the Welsh Revival, and, praise God, today in the Hebrides Revival — God moving in supernatural reality.

We need the Holy Spirit not Entertainment from men. One of the very sad features that characterizes much that goes under the name of evangelism today is the craze for entertainment. Here is an extract from a letter received from a leader in youth work in one of your great cities: writes Duncan Campbell:

We are at our wits’ end to know what to do with the young people who made a profession of conversion recently. They are demanding all sorts of entertainment, and it seems to us that if we fail to provide the entertainment that they want, we are not going to hold them.” Yes, the trend of the time in which we live is toward a Christian experience (or should I say experience and leave Christian out of it?), an experience that is light and flippant, and fed on entertainment.

Some little time ago I listened to a young man give his testimony. He made a decision quite recently, and in giving his testimony this is what he said, “I have discovered that the Christian way of life can best be described, not as a battle, but as a song mingled with the sound of happy laughter.”

Far be it from me to move the song or happy laughter from religion, but I want to protest that young man’s conception was entirely wrong, and not in keeping with true New Testament Christianity. “Oh, but, say the advocates of this way of thinking, “how are we to get the people if we do not provide some sort of entertainment?

To that I ask the question, how did they get the people at Pentecost? How did the early Church get the people? By publicity projects, by bills, by posters, by parades, by pictures? No! The people were arrested and drawn together and brought into vital relationship with God, not by sounds from men, but by sounds from heaven. We are in need of more sounds from heaven today.

It seems to me that heavenly sounds are dying out. I am sure you must have noticed that Pentecost was its own publicity. I love that passage in the Acts that tells us “when this was noised abroad the multitude came together.” What was happening in the midst of men? What was noised abroad? That men and women were coming under deep conviction. That men in the community appeared like drunken men because they were drunk by the mighty power of God.

That was God’s method of publicity, and until the Church of Jesus Christ rediscovers this and acts upon it, we shall at our best appear to a mad world, as a crowd of common people, in a common market, babbling about common wares. The early Church cried for unction and not for entertainment because they knew that unction creates interest and real soul-concern.

But you say, “Yes, that happened in the Acts of the Apostles, but dare we expect that to happen today?” Are there sounds from heaven today? Are men moved in this fashion today?

Are men arrested by a power that seems to be apart from all human agencies today? I say yes, it is happening today! Some of us saw it happen in churches comparatively empty, the youth given to pleasure rather than seeking after God; then suddenly there was a sound from heaven.

Three young women were praying in a barn when there was a sound from heaven, and the whole community became saturated with God, and men and women were swept into the Kingdom.

We had not organized, we had no publicity program, but heaven’s messengers moved in the midst of the people, and in a matter of hours churches became crowded as scores were swept into the Kingdom of God.

Yes, unction is the dire and desperate need of the ministry today. They believed in unction and not in entertainment. Further, the early Church put power before influence.

The present state of our country presents a challenge to the Christian Church. Those who have eyes to see and who are truly observant tell us that at this very hour forces are taking the field that are out to defy every known Christian principle. The need is desperate, and it is awful. We have got to do something.

In many quarters there is today a growing conviction that unless God moves, unless there is a demonstration of the supernatural in the midst of men, unless we are moved up into the realm of the Divine, we shall soon find ourselves caught up in a counterfeit movement, but a movement that goes under the name of evangelism.

There are ominous signs today that the devil is out to side-track us in the sphere of evangelism, and we are going to become satisfied with something less than Heaven wills to give us. Nothing but a Holy Spirit revival will meet the desperate need of the hour.

The early Church, the men of Pentecost, had something beyond mere human influence and human ingenuity. But what do we mean by influence?

The sum total of all the forces in our personality; mental, moral, academic, social and religious. We can have all these, and we can have them at their highest level, and yet be destitute of power.

Power, not influence, was the watchword of the early Church. While at the Keswick Convention, it was my privilege to spend an afternoon with a leader in foreign mission activity. I was arrested, if not perturbed, by what that man said to me. Here are his words:

Today we have some Bible Schools in our land and they are turning out young men and young women cultured and polished but without power.

Was that a true diagnosis? I want to suggest that he was near to the truth. Polished, yes, we may be polished, we may have culture, but the cry of our day is for power and that from on high.

I could take you to a little cottage in the Hebrides and introduce you to a young woman. She is not educated; one could not say that she was polished in the sense that we use the word, but I have known that young woman to pray heaven into a community, to pray power into a meeting.

I have known that young woman to be so caught in the power of the Holy Spirit that men and women around her were made to tremble — not influence, but power.

The Apostles were not men of influence, “not many mighty, not many noble.” Oh, no, the Master Himself did not choose to be a man of influence. “He made Himself of no reputation,” all of which is equal to saying that God chose power rather than influence.

I sometimes think of Paul and Silas yonder in Philippi. Why? They had not enough influence to keep them out of prison, but possessed of the power of God in such a manner that their prayers in prison shook the whole prison to its very foundations.

Not influence, but power. Oh, that the Church today, in our congregations and in our pulpits, would rediscover this truth and get back to the place of God-realization, to the place of power. I want to say further that we should seek power even at the expense of influence.

Will God do it Again?

God will do it again when he finds a church he can trust; when he finds a man whom he can trust with revival. God found such men in Lewis — I have no hesitation in saying that — men whom He could trust.  God can do it through a man completely and entirely filled by the Holy Spirit, through clean hands and a pure heart! I want to think of this as a glorious possibility for you.

You have heard of the movement in the Hebrides; you have heard of the movement in the Congo; you have heard of the movement in Korea and in Brazil. Then you exclaim: “God can you do it again?” I want to say this, and I say it on the authority of this Book, Yes He can, but the secret of this power is separation from all that is unclean.

Now I am sure that you will be interested to know how, in November 1949, this gracious movement began on the island of Lewis. Two old women, one of them 84 years of age and the other 82 (one of them stone blind), were greatly burdened because of the appalling state of their own parish.

It was true that not a single young person attended public worship. Not a single young man or young woman went to the church. They spent their day perhaps reading or walking, but the church was left out of the picture. And those two women were greatly concerned, and they made it a special matter of prayer.

A verse gripped them: “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground” (Isaiah 44:3). They were so burdened that both of them decided to spend time in prayer twice a week.

On Tuesday they got on their knees at ten o’clock in the evening, and remained on their knees until three or four o’clock in the morning—two old women in a very humble cottage. One night one of the sisters had a vision. Now remember, in revival God works in wonderful ways.

A vision came to one of them, and in the vision she saw the church of her fathers crowded with young people, packed to the doors, and a strange minister standing in the pulpit.

She was so impressed by the vision that she sent for the parish minister. And of course, he, knowing the two sisters, knowing that they were two women who knew God in a wonderful way, responded to their invitation and called at the cottage. That morning one of the sisters said to the minister:

You must do something about this. And I would suggest that you call your elders together and that you spend at least two nights with us in prayer a week, Tuesday and Friday. If you gather your elders together, you can meet in a barn or a farming community, and as you pray there, we will pray here.”Well, that was what happened; the minister called his elders together, and seven of them met in a barn to pray on Tuesday and on Friday. And the two old women got on their knees and prayed with them.

That continued for some weeks, in fact, I believe almost a month and a half. Then, one night as they were kneeling there in the barn and pleading this promise, “I will pour water on him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground,” a certain young man, a deacon in the church, got up and read Psalm 24: 3-5:

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing (not a blessing, but the blessing) from the Lord.

And then that young man closed his Bible. And looking down at the minister and the elders, he spoke these crude words (but perhaps not so crude in our Gaelic language): “It seems to me to be so much humbug to be praying as we are praying, to be waiting as we are waiting, if we ourselves are not rightly related to God.” And then he lifted his two hands and prayed:

God, Are my Hands clean? Is my Heart pure?

But he got no further. That young man fell to his knees, and then fell into a trance. Now don’t ask me to explain this because I can’t. He fell into a trance and was now lying on the floor of the barn. And in the words of the minister, at that moment he and the other ministers were gripped by the conviction that a God-sent revival must ever be related to holiness and godliness. Are my hands clean? Is my heart pure? This is the man whom God will trust with revival; that was the conviction.

When that happened in the barn, the power of God swept into the parish. And an awareness of God gripped the community such as hadn’t been known for over a hundred years. An awareness of God—that’s revival! And on the following day, the looms were silent, and little work was done on the farms as men and women gave themselves to thinking on eternal things, gripped by eternal realities. Now, I wasn’t on the island when that happened. But, again, one of the sisters sent for the minister. And she said to him:

I think you ought to invite someone to the parish. I cannot give a name, but God must have someone in His mind, for I saw a strange man in the pulpit, and that man must be somewhere.” Well, the minister that week was going to one of our great conventions in Scotland.

At that convention he met a young man who was a student in college, and knowing that this young man was a God-fearing man, a man with a message, he invited him to the island. “Won’t you come for ten days, a ten-day special effort? We have had so many of them over the past couple of years, but we feel that something is happening in the parish, and we would like you to attend.”This minister said, “No, I don’t feel that I am the man, but quite recently there has been a very remarkable move in Glasgow under the ministry of a man by the name of Campbell. I would suggest that you send for him.

Now at that time I was in a college in Edinburgh. It wasn’t very easy for me to leave, but it was decided that I should go for ten days. I was on the island within ten days. I shall never forget the night that I arrived at the piers in the mail steamer.

I was standing in the presence of the minister whom I had never seen, and two of his elders that I never knew. The minister turned to me and said: “Mr. Campbell, I know that you are very tired. You have been traveling all day by train to begin with, and then by steamer. And I am sure that you are ready for your supper and ready for your bed.

But I wonder if you would be prepared to address a meeting in the parish church at nine o’clock tonight on our way home. It will be a short meeting, and then we will make for the manse, and you will get your supper and your bed, and rest until tomorrow evening.” Well, it will interest you to know that I never got that supper.

We got to the church about a quarter to nine to find about three hundred people gathered. I gave an address. Nothing really happened during the service. It was a good meeting.

There was a sense of God and a consciousness of His Spirit moving, but nothing beyond that. So I pronounced the benediction, and we were leaving the church around a quarter to eleven. Just as I was walking down the aisle along with this young deacon who had read the Psalm in the barn, he suddenly stood in the aisle and, looking up to the heavens said:

God, You can’t fail us! God, You can’t fail us! You promised to pour water on the thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. God, You can’t fail us!” Soon he was on his knees in the aisle praying, and then he fell into a trance once again. Just then, the door opened. It was then eleven o’clock.

The door of the church opened, and the local blacksmith came back into the church and said, Mr. Campbell, something wonderful has happened. Oh, we were praying that God would pour water on the thirsty and floods upon the dry ground, and listen, He’s done it! He’s done it!”

When I went to the door of the church I saw a congregation of approximately six hundred people. Where had they come from? What had happened? I believe that very night God swept by in Pentecostal power, the power of the Holy Ghost. And what happened in the early days of the Apostles was now happening in the parish of Barvas.

Over a hundred young people were at the dance in the parish hall, and they weren’t thinking of God or eternity. God was not in any of their thoughts. They were there to have a good night when suddenly the power of God fell upon the dance.

The music ceased, and in a matter of minutes, the hall was empty. They fled from the hall as a man fleeing from a plague, and they made for the church. They were standing outside, and they saw lights in the church, and that it was a house of God, so they went in.

Men and women who had gone to bed rose, dressed, and made for the church. There had been nothing done in the way of publicity, no mention of a special effort, except an announcement from the pulpit on the Sabbath that a certain man was going to be conducting a series of meetings in the parish covering ten days.

But God took the situation in hand. Oh, He became His own publicity agent. A hunger and a thirst gripped the people. Six hundred of them were now at the church standing outside.

Then, this dear man, the blacksmith, turned to me and said, “I think that we should sing a psalm.” And they sang, and they sang, and they sang, verse after verse. Oh, what singing! What singing! And then the doors were opened and the congregation flocked back into the church.

Now the church was crowded. A church to seat over eight hundred was now packed to capacity. It was now going on towards midnight. I managed to make my way through the crowd along the aisle toward the pulpit. I found a young woman, a teacher in the grammar school, lying prostrate on the floor of the pulpit praying,

Oh, God, is there mercy for me? Oh, God, is there mercy for me?

She was one of those at the dance. But she was now lying on the floor of the pulpit crying to God for mercy. That meeting continued until four o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t tell you how many were saved that night, but of this I am sure and certain, that at least five young men who were saved that night are ministers today in the Church of Scotland.

At four o’clock we decided to make for the manse. Of course, you understand we made no appeals; you never need to make an appeal or an altar call in revival. Why, the roadside becomes an altar.

We just leave men and women to make their way to God themselves; after all, that is the right way. God can look after His own. And when God takes a situation in hand, I tell you, He does a better work! So we left them there, and just as I was leaving the church, a young man came to me and said,

Mr. Campbell, I would like you to go to the police station.” I said, “The police station? What’s wrong?” “Oh,” he said, “There’s nothing wrong, but there must be at least four hundred people gathered around there just now.

Now the sergeant there was a God-fearing man. He was in the meeting. And next to the police station was the cottage in which the two old women lived. People knew that this was a home that feared God. I believe that that had something to do with the magnet, the power that drew men. There was a coach-load at that meeting.

A coach-load had come over twelve miles to be there. Now, if anyone would ask them today, “Why? How did it happen? Who arranged it?” They couldn’t tell you. But they found themselves grouping together, and someone was saying,  “What about going to Barvas? I don’t know, but I have a hunger in my heart to go there.” I can’t explain it, they couldn’t explain it, but God had the situation in hand.

This is revival, dear people! This is a sovereign act of God! This is the moving of God’s Spirit, I believe, in answer to the prevailing prayer of men and women who believed that God was a covenant-keeping God and must be true to His covenant engagement.

I went along to that meeting. As I was walking along that country road (we had to walk about a mile), I heard someone praying by the roadside. I could hear this man crying to God for mercy.

I went over, and there were four young men on their knees. Yes, they had been at the dance, but they were now there crying to God for mercy. One of them was under the influence of drink, a young man who wasn’t twenty years of age.

But that night God saved him, and today he is the parish minister and a man of God. He was converted in the revival with eleven other men who were to serve in his presbytery, a wonderful congregation.

The question Duncan Campbell asked and which is being asked today is, Will the Church get back to the place of power, but not influence. We will try to examine that in Part 3.

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Duncan Campbell (1898-1972) was a Scottish preacher and a leader in the Lewis Awakening best known as the Hebrides Revival. He was a man of prayer but he insisted that “The revival did not break out because Duncan Campbell was there. No, a thousand times no, but because God found a man whom He could trust, a man who dared to believe the promise of God.

I hear men say at meetings, “Lord, I am claiming revival; I’m claiming revival.” We ought to be careful what we say. If we claim it, we have it; yes, this is a glorious possibility. Indeed I would go as far as to say if I did not believe this I would go back to business, and I believe that when God finds the clean hands and the pure heart we shall see springs in the desert and rivers in the dry places.”

Revival in the Hebrides Islands

Duncan Campbell

This is how Duncan Campbell describes the revival in the Hebrides Islands. There are two things that I would like to say in speaking about the revival in the Hebrides. First, I would like to make it perfectly clear that I did not bring revival to the Hebrides. It has grieved me beyond words to hear people talk and write about “the man who brought revival to the Hebrides.” My dear people, I didn’t do that.

Revival was there before I ever set foot on the island. It began in a gracious awareness of God sweeping through the parish of Barvas. Someone asked Duncan Campbell to define revival and he touched on this in his reply:

When I speak of revival, I am not thinking of high-pressure evangelism. I am not thinking of crusades, or of special efforts convened and organized by man. That is not in my mind at all.

Revival is something altogether different from evangelism on its highest level. Revival is a moving of God in the community, and suddenly the community becomes God-conscious, before a word is said by any man representing any special effort.

The Spirit of God grips men and women in such way that even work is given up as people give themselves to waiting upon God. In the midst of Lewis Awakening one parish minister wrote that “The Spirit of the Lord was resting wonderfully on the different townships of the region. His presence was in the homes of the people, on the meadow, and the moorland, and the public roads.”

Of the hundreds of who found Jesus Christ during this time, fully 75 percent were saved before they came near a meeting, or heard by myself or any other minister in the parish.

The power of God was moving in an operation that the fear of God gripped the souls of men before they ever reached the meetings.”While describing the first days of the movement in the Hebrides Islands, Duncan Campbell remembered closing out a service in a crowded church and noticing that the congregation seemed reluctant to disperse. Many of the people just stood outside of the church building in a silence that even a pin drop could be heard.

“Suddenly a cry is heard within; a young man burdened for the souls of his fellow men is pouring out his soul in intercession.” Campbell said the man prayed until he collapsed and lay prostrate on the floor of the church building. He said, “The congregation, moved by a power they could not resist, came back into the church, and a wave of conviction swept over the gathering, moving strong men to cry to God for mercy.

God, You Promised!

It is been told by someone who heard Duncan Campbell speak about this holy incident. He said,

Most of the people had already left the church. The postman stood up and prayed, and then this young man stood up and said: I will never forget the words he said: Oh God, You Promised!” All of a sudden it sounded like chariot wheels were rumbling on the roof of the church building. The next thing we knew, the church was filling back up again!

They learned later that many of the people had already started home when they suddenly felt the call to retrace their steps and return to the church building to pray.

During some points of the Hebrides revival, Campbell said, “Most of the converts to Christ only came to church to tell us that they had been converted because they would be weaving at a loom, or they would be plowing in the field when God would convict them. They just showed up to say, “Where do I join, and what do I do?

In Part 2, we will discuss how this glorious movement began.

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The Holy Spirit is Love. The same Holy Spirit that brought the love of Heaven into their hearts must fill us too.” writes Andrew Murray, Nothing less will do. Even as Christ did, one might preach love for three years with the tongue of an angel, but that would not teach any man to love unless the power of the Holy Spirit should come upon him to bring the love of Heaven into his heart.

As some old saint has said it very well;   When God gives the Holy Spirit, His great object is the formation of a holy character. It is a gift of a holy mind and spiritual disposition, and what need above everything else, is to say: “I must have the Holy Spirit sanctifying my whole inner life if I am really to live for God’s glory.

You might say that when Christ promised the Spirit to the disciples, He did so that they might have power to be witnesses. True, but then they received the Holy Ghost in such heavenly power and reality that He took possession of their whole being at once and so fitted them as holy men for doing the work with power as they had to do it.

Christ spoke of power to the disciples, but it was the Spirit filling their whole being that worked the power. I know no fire like the fire of God, the fire of everlasting love that consumed the sacrifice on Calvary. The baptism of love is what the Church needs, and to get that we must begin at once to get down upon our faces before God in confession, and plead:

Lord, let love from Heaven flow down into my heart. I am giving up my life to pray and live as one who has given himself up for the everlasting love to dwell in and fill him, and Lord melt us together into one by the power of the Holy Spirit; let the Holy Spirit, who at Pentecost made them all of one heart and one soul, do His blessed work among us, and Lord help us to learn the importance of ministering in Your power alone. We can do all things through Jesus Christ, but without the Holy Spirit, we can accomplish nothing.

Therefore the greatest evidence of a Spirit filled life is not found in power and spiritual gifts but in the fruit of love. Paul wrote that: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22) A Spirit filled person is a person who can control his or her tongue. The release of the Spirit is not a onetime process. It is something that can happen several times in one’s life.

The reason is that we are leaky vessels. We can get filled with the Spirit and then get our eyes off the Lord and get involved in carnal pursuits again. The only way to remain filled with the Spirit is to keep drinking from the fountain of living water which is Jesus Himself. We must keep our eyes on Him. That is why Paul tells us not to be drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; (Ephesians 5:18)

Surely if there is one prayer that should draw us to the Father’s throne and keep us there, it is for the Holy Spirit, whom we as children have received, to flow into us and out from us in greater fullness. In the variety of gifts that the Spirit has to dispense, He meets the believer’s every need. Think of the names He bears: He is the Spirit of grace to reveal and impart all the grace there is in Jesus.

He is the Spirit of faith, teaching us to begin and go on and increase in believing. He is the Spirit of adoption and assurance, who witnesses that we are God’s children and inspires the confident address “Abba, Father!” He is the Spirit of truth to lead into all truth and make each word of God ours in deed and truth. He is the Spirit of prayer, through whom we speak to the Father in prayer that will be heard.

He is the Spirit of judgment and burning to search the heart and convict of sin. He is the Spirit of holiness, manifesting and communicating the Father’s holy presence within us. He is the Spirit of power, through whom we are strong to testify boldly and work effectively in the Father’s service. Lastly, He is the Spirit of glory, the pledge of our inheritance, the preparation and foretaste of the glory to come. Surely the child of God needs but one thing to be able to live as a child: to be filled with His Spirit.

As God’s children we have already received the Spirit, but we still need to pray for His special gifts and enabling as we require them. Not only this, but we also need His unceasing momentary guidance. Just as a branch, even though filled with the sap of the vine, ever cries for the continued and increasing flow of the sap to bring its fruit to perfection, so the believer rejoicing in the possession of the Spirit, ever thirsts and cries more.

Nothing less than God’s promise and God’s command should be the measure of our expectation and our prayer. We must be filled abundantly. When praying to be filled with the Spirit, do not look for the answer in how you feel. All spiritual blessings must be accepted or taken by faith. The Father gives the Holy Spirit to His praying child. Even as I pray, I should say in faith, “I have what I ask, the fullness of the Spirit is mine,” and then continue in steadfast faith.

On the strength of God’s Word we know that we have what we ask. So with thanksgiving that we have been heard, with thanksgiving for what we have received and taken and now hold as ours, let us continue in steadfast in believing prayer that the blessing, which has already and which we hold in faith, may break through and fill our whole being.

Sources:

1. Andrew Murray, The Ministry of Intercessory Prayer (Bethany House Publishers 1981, 2003, Edited by Nancy Renich, Originally published in 1897 under the title The Ministry of Intercession)
2. Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender (Moody Press MLM Chicago 1963)
3. Andrew Murray, Humility (Reprinted by Bridge-Logos Foundation Orlando Florida 2006)

God taught Murray the ways and rewards of prayer in regards to revival and this is part of what he said on the subject of revival:

Revive Your work, O Lord! Revival is God’s work, He alone can give it; it must come from above. It must be asked for and received from God Himself. Those who know anything of the history of revivals will remember how often this has been proven—both widespread and local revivals have been distinctly traced to specific prayer.

The coming revival will be no exception. An extraordinary spirit of prayer, urging believers to private as well as united prayer, motivating them to labour fervently in their supplications, will be one of the surest signs of approaching showers and floods of blessing.

Let all who are burdened with a lack of spirituality or with a mediocre state of the life of God in believers, listen to the call that comes to us all: If there is to be revival—a true, divine outpouring of God’s Spirit—it will correspond with wholehearted prayer and faith. No believer should think that he or she is too weak to help, or imagine that his or her input would not be missed. If we but begin, the gift that is in us will be so evident that we will become God’s chosen intercessor for own circle of friends or neighborhood.

Think of the need of souls, of all the sins and shortcomings among God’s people, of the lack of power in so many of our sermons. Then begin to cry to God, “Will you not revive us again that your people may rejoice in You?” (Psalm 85:6)

Let us press the truth deep in our hearts: Every revival comes, as Pentecost came, as a direct result of united and continued prayer. So the coming revival must begin with a great revival of prayer. It is in the prayer closet, with the door shut, that the sound of abundance of rain will first be heard. An increase of private prayer among ministers and laypeople will be a sure indication of the coming blessing. We find the same emphasis in the New Testament.

The Sermon on the Mount promises the Kingdom to the poor and to those who mourn. In the Epistles to the Corinthians and the Galatians, the religion of man-worldly wisdom and confidence in the flesh—is exposed and denounced; without its being confessed and denounced; without its being confessed and forsaken, all the promises of grace and of the Spirit will be in vain. The letters to the seven churches show us five churches of which God, out of whose mouth goes the sharp, two-edged sword, says He has something against them.

In each of these the key word of His message is not to the unconverted but to the church:—the word was “Repent!” All the glorious promises each of these letters contain share one condition, right down to the invitation, “Open the door and I will come in,” and the promise, “He that overcomes will sit with me on my throne.” All are dependent on word “Repent.”

If there is to be a revival—not among the unsaved but in our churches—that word must be heard. Was it only in Israel in the ministry of kings and the prophets that there as so much evil to be cleansed away? Was it only in the church of the first century that Paul and James and our Lord Himself had to speak such sharp words?

Is there not in the church of our day an idolatry of money and talent and culture—unfaithfulness to its one Husband and Lord, and a confidence in the flesh that grieves and resists God’s Holy Spirit? And is there not a common confession of a lack of spirituality and spiritual power?

Let all who long for the coming revival and who seek to hasten it by their prayers pray this above everything, that the Lord may prepare His prophets to go before Him at his bidding: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression.” (Isaiah 58:1)

Every true revival among God’s people must have at its roots a deep sense and confession of sin. Until those who lead the church in the path bear faithful testimony against the sins of the church, it is likely that it will find people unprepared. Most would prefer to have a revival as the result of their programs and efforts. God’s way is the opposite. Out of death, acknowledged as the wage of sin, and confession of utter helplessness, God revives.

Come let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but He will heal us; He has injured us but He will bind up our wounds. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will restore us that we may live in His presence.” (Hosea 6:1-2) Even Job who was considered the most righteous man of his generation exclaimed, “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.”(Job 42: 5-6 NLT)

May the Lord bestow a spirit of repentance on every one of us.    

Andrew Murray (1828-1917) was a great writer, preacher and evangelist. He experienced revivals in Scotland similar to those that took place in America during the Great Awakening (1795-1835) under Charles Grandison Finney but before that he tried to stop a revival in his church in South Africa for which his father had prayed for 60 years. Andrew’s father prayed often for revival to come to his church.

Every Friday evening he read to his family accounts of great movements of the Holy Spirit throughout the history of the church. Then he retired to his study to pray, pouring out his heart out in tears, pleading with God for a similar outpouring of the Holy Spirit in South Africa. When revival finally came to his church, Murray resisted it.

Why did he resist this revival, considering the fact that he had a praying father who prayed passionately for revival? Not forgetting that he himself had prayed for revival. When the time came for him to participate, he was held back by his belief that the Holy Spirit moved through the preaching of the Word, and therefore only through the pastor. He felt unworthy. He expressed his personal concern in a letter to one of his friends:

When I look at my people, my face forsakes me. I am forced to flee to the Master to seek a new and more entire surrender to His work. My prayer is for revival, but I am held back by the increasing sense of my own unfitness for the work. I lament the awful pride and self-complacency that have now ruled my heart. Oh, that I may be more and more a minister of the Spirit.

 One day Murray was finishing a sermon and one of the church elders came running into the sanctuary to tell him that there was a great commotion in the nearby youth meeting hall. There was a young girl who was standing in the back of the hall during prayer time. This young girl requested if she could share a hymn and pray. Within a short time she was on her knees praying loudly, and soon others in the room joined her in spontaneous song and prayer.

It is reported that Murray followed his friend to find out what was going on. As they nearly reached the room, the sound grew louder and louder. Murray confused by the thunderous noise that he couldn’t identify, opened the door and discovered that all sixty young people were on their knees loudly praying and praising God. They didn’t even notice their pastor when he came in the room. Murray then decided that this behavior was inappropriate, he tried to silence them, but they didn’t hear him. They continued praying and singing late into the night, finally leaving the church to go out into the streets where others joined them.

At the next church meeting, Murray finished preaching his sermon. As he led everyone in prayer, the members of the congregation-young and old-spontaneously and simultaneously knelt and loudly prayed their own prayers. Again he tried to quiet them, walking up and down the aisle, begging his flock to calm down. But this time a stranger in the back of the church interrupted him, telling the preacher that he had just come from America where he had witnessed the very same thing happening.

He told Andrew that he needed to realize that the Spirit of God was at work in his church and that he should do nothing to stop it. At that moment, Andrew Murray underwent a transformation. He realized that in spite of him, the revival he had been praying for had finally arrived and that he was to be its champion instead of its opponent. To help the movement gain a foothold, Murray travelled around the country preaching about this new thing that was happening. Everywhere he went, revival broke out.

As with any true revival of the Holy Spirit, this was a revival of prayer. People would had rarely been in church in their lives would come in prayer meetings daily and sometimes even more than once a day. And where it had been difficult to find people to join the ministry prior to this time, as the revival spread, young men began stepping forward to offer themselves for the preaching of the Word.

Sources:

1. Andrew Murray, The Ministry of Intercessory Prayer (Bethany House Publishers 1981, 2003, Edited by Nancy Renich, Originally published in 1897 under the title The Ministry of Intercession)
2. Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender (Moody Press MLM Chicago 1963)
3. Andrew Murray, Humility (Reprinted by Bridge-Logos Foundation Orlando Florida 2006)

Isaac Backus (1724-1806) was a leading Baptist preacher during the era of the American Revolution who campaigned against state-established churches in New England.

He was influenced by the Great Awakening and the works of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. In her book Beyond the Veil: Entering into intimacy with God through Prayer. Alice Smith describes one of the greatest revivals in American history, she writes:

Before the Great Revival of 1800’s in America, the conditions of society were so deplorable in both secular and scared. There was unprecedented moral slump following the American Revolution (1775-1783).

Drunkenness was epidemic. Out of the population of 5 million, there were 300,000 confirmed drunkards. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. For the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid to be out at night. Bank robberies were a daily occurrence.

In 1794, conditions reached their worst. A Baptist minister, Isaac Backus, had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. The impression left upon him was: There’s only one power on earth that commands the power of heaven –prayer.

He wrote “Plea for Prayer for Revival of Religion” and mailed it to ministers of every denomination in the United States, pleading to each pastor to set aside the first Monday as time to open his church all day in order to conduct extraordinary prayer for revival.

As a result, people humbled themselves and began to cry out to the Lord. God poured upon them the spirit of supplication. (Burning, believing, prevailing, persuading, persevering, intimate prayer always precedes a move of God)

The intercession of Backus and those who joined him fanned the fires of revival during 1798 in New England. Churches were unable to accommodate those inquiring about salvation. Multitudes were won to the Lord. By July 1800, unprecedented numbers began arriving in Cane Ridge, Kentucky.

A multitude estimated at 11,000 flocked to this camp meeting. (The largest city in Kentucky was Lexington, which had a population of only 1,800!) James McGready, a staid Presbyterian pastor from Pennsylvania, described the scene in the following words:

The cries of the distressed arose almost as aloud as [Methodist pastor] McGee’s voice. Here awakening and converting work was to be found in every part of the multitude and even some things strangely and wonderfully new to me. The Cane Ridge Camp Meeting of 1800 brought a change to the spiritual face of the United States. Thousands upon thousands of souls came into the Kingdom. One humble, desperate Baptist minister, Isaac Backus, had called for a national day of prayer for revival each week and from this humble call, revival swept across all denominational and racial barriers!

The steps of this revival according to Alice Smith were:

First, a solitary man had an encounter with the Holy Spirit

Second, a solitary man initiated the effort.

Third, a united prayer emphasis developed

Fourth, revival came.

Sources:

1. Alice Smith Beyond The Veil Entering into intimacy with God through prayer (Published by Renew Books 1996,1997)

Here is a testimony from A.W. Tozer about D.L. Moody: 

Years ago on the Southside of the city of Chicago, there was a little home. In the home lived an elderly woman full of the Holy Ghost named Mother Cook. A young fellow was converted in the city and he would have made a good salesman. He was very busy. He loved to run in circles. He went everywhere running in circles. His name was Dwight Lyman Moody. One day Mother Cook saw Dwight and said,

Son, I would like you to come over to my house sometime. I want to talk to you.”Moody went over to her house. She sat him down on a chair and said, “Now, Dwight. It is wonderful to see you saved so beautifully. It is wonderful to see you so zealous. But do you know what you need? You need to be anointed with the Holy Ghost.

“Well,” Moody said. I want everything God has for me.”

“All right,” she said, “get down here.” He got down on the linoleum and they prayed awhile. She prayed, “Oh, God, fill this young fellow.” Moody died out there, opened his heart, brought his empty vessel to the Lord and took the promise by faith, but nothing happened.

A few days later, he was in Philadelphia. He said, “As I was walking down the street suddenly God fulfilled the promise He had made to me in that kitchen.” And down on him came a horn of oil and the Holy Ghost came on him.

He said he crawled an alley and raised his hand and prayed, “Oh God, stay your power or I’ll die.” Then he said, I went out from there preaching the same sermons with the same texts but oh, the difference now.” The Holy Ghost had come. Now, the Holy Ghost had been there.

He had caused Moody to be born again just like all of us. “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.” It is one thing to have the Spirit as my Regenerator and quite a different thing to have the horn of oil poured out on my head.

D.L. Moody himself says that,

I believe firmly, that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and self-seeking, and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Ghost will come and fill every corner of our hearts; but if we are full of pride and conceit, and ambition and self seeking, and pleasure and the world there is no room for the Spirit of God; and I believe there a young man that is praying to God to fill him when he is full already with something else.

Before we pray that God would fill us, I believe we ought to pray Him to empty us. There must be an emptying before there can be a filling; and when the heart is turned upside down, and everything is turned out that is contrary to God, then the Spirit will come, just as He did in the tabernacle, and fill us with His glory. We read in 2 Chronicles 5:13 that:

And when the trumpeters and singers were joined in unison, making one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord, and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets and cymbals and other instruments for song and praised the Lord, saying, For He is good, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever, then the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud,So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.

I don’t believe that man broke down at first with hard work, so much as with machinery without oil, without lubrication. It is not the hard work that breaks down ministers, but it is the toil of working without power. Oh that God may anoint His people! Not only those in the ministry but every disciple. Do not suppose pastors are the only laborers needing it.

There is not a mother that doesn’t need it in her house to regulate her family, just as much as the minister needs it in the pulpit or the Sunday-school teacher needs it in his Sunday-school. “We all need it together, and let us not rest day or night until we possess it; if that is the uppermost thought in our hearts, God will give it to us if we just hunger and thirst for it, and say, “God helping me, I will not rest until  endued with power from on high.

A story is told that:

When D.L. Moody’s church in Chicago lay in ashes, he went over to England, in 1872, not to preach, but to listen to others preach while his new church was being built. One Sunday morning he was prevailed upon to preach in a London pulpit. But somehow the spiritual atmosphere was lacking. He confessed afterward that he never had such a hard time preaching in his life.

Everything was perfectly dead, and, as he vainly tried to preach, he said to himself, “What a fool I was to consent to preach! I came here to listen, and here I am preaching.” Then the awful thought came to him that he had to preach again at night, and only the fact that he had given the promise to do so kept him faithful to the engagement.

But when Mr. Moody entered the pulpit at night, and faced the crowded congregation, he was conscious of a new atmosphere.” The powers of unseen world seemed to have fallen upon the audience.”As he drew toward the close of his sermon he became emboldened to give out an invitation, and as he concluded he said, “if there is a man or woman here who will tonight accept Jesus Christ, please stand up.”

At once some 500 people rose to their feet. Thinking that there must be some mistake, he asked the people to be seated, and then, in order that there might be no possible misunderstanding, he repeated the invitation, couching it even I more definite and difficult terms.

Again the same number rose. Still thinking that something must be wrong, Mr. Moody, for the second time, asked the standing men and women to be seated, and then he invited all who really meant to accept Christ to pass into the vestry.

Fully 500 people did as requested, and that was the beginning of a revival in that church and neighborhood, which brought Mr. Moody back from Dublin, a few days later, that he might assist the wonderful work of God. The sequel however, must be given, or our purpose in relating the incident will be defeated. When Mr. Moody preached at the morning service there was a woman in the congregation who had an invalid sister.

On her return home she told the invalid that the preacher had been Mr. Moody from Chicago, and on hearing this she turned pale.”What,” she said, “Mr. Moody from Chicago! I read about him some time ago in an American paper, and I have been praying God to send him to London, and to our church. If I had known he was going to preach this morning I would have eaten no breakfast. I would have spent the whole time in prayer. Now, sister, go out of the room, lock the door, send me no dinner, no matter who comes, don’t let them see me. I am going to spend the whole afternoon and evening in prayer.”

And so while Mr. Moody stood in the pulpit that had been like an ice-chamber in the morning, the bedridden saint was holding him up before God, and God, Who ever delights to answer prayer, poured out His Spirit in mighty power. The God of revivals, who answered the prayer of his child for Mr. Moody, is willing to hear and to answer the faithful, believing prayers of His people. Wherever God’s conditions are met, then the revival is sure to fall. Again the promise is:

If My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.(2 Chronicles 7:14)

Sources:

1. A.W. Tozer, Edited by Re. James L. Snyder, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit (Bridge-Logos Foundation 2001)
2. D.L.Moody, Secret Power; or, The Secret of Success in Christian Life and Christian work.
3. Edward M. Bounds, Purpose in Prayer –Prayer Undergirds Revivals (Fleming H. Revell Company 1920).

If I know my own heart to-day, I would rather die than live as I once did, a mere nominal Christian, and not used by God in building up His Kingdom. It seems a poor empty life to live for the sake of self.–D.L. Moody

D.L. Moody (1837-1899) said that “Someday you read in the papers that D.L. Moody, of East Northfield, is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it!

At that moment I shall be more alive than I am now, I shall have gone up higher, that is all; out of this old clay tenement into a house that is immortal—a body that death cannot touch; that sin cannot taint; a body fashioned like His glorious body.

I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die, that which is born of the Spirit will live forever.”

It hadn’t been since the days of George Whitefield that and John Wesley, a century earlier, that the world had seen an evangelist who would move two continents for Christ, as did D.L. Moody.

During his travels between Europe and America, Moody personally witnessed to over 750,000 people, preached to more than 100 million, and led over a million into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

God used him to erect numerous churches, and he founded educational institutions including the Northfield School for boys and girls and the Chicago Evangelism Society, today it is known as Moody Bible Institute.

He also began a publishing company, Moody Publishing, which is still publishing good Christian literature. R.A. Torrey wrote of Moody that:

The first thing that accounts for God’s using D.L. Moody so mightily was that he was a fully surrendered man. Every ounce of that two-hundred-and-eighty-pound body of his belonged to God; everything he was and everything he had, belonged wholly to God.

As a preacher D.L. Moody was much criticized from standpoint of academic homiletics. Nor would any think of defending his preaching method on that ground. But the fact that for thirty-five continuous years, in the centers of culture and of active practical thought in the English-speaking world, this self-taught preacher drew the greatest audiences which faced any modern speaker on any theme—this fact, would say, should suggest to  teachers of homiletics that possibly they might learn something from him.

One can only ask the question, “What is the magic power which draws together these mighty multitudes and holds them spellbound?” Is it the worldly rank or wealth of learning or oratory of the preacher? No, for he is possessed of little of these.

It is the simple lifting up of the Cross of Christ—the holding forth the Lord Jesus before the eyes of the people in all the glory of His Godhead, in all the simplicity of His manhood, in all the perfection of His nature, for their admiration, for their adoration, for their acceptance.

Like the apostle Paul, he could say, “For me to live is Christ,” and as a result of that life his gain came at the end of earth’s career. “This one thing I do” was the key to his life of service.

Nothing could swerve him from this deep-rooted purpose of his life, and in all the various educational and publishing projects to which he gave his energy there was but one motive—the proclamation of the Gospel through multiplied agencies.