I would like first of all to talk about the meaning of the word revival. It means
different things to different people. To some, it's just a time of religious
excitement to be found on. To others, it's a series of evangelistic meetings.
I recall reading about a Christian worker he was driving and he saw a sign in
front of a church and the sign said, "Revival every night but Friday." And they
went about 50 miles and he saw another church and it had a sign in front saying
"Revival every Friday night." So he thought if they could get together, they could
have revivals seven days a week! But it shows that people don't really
understand. At least, some do not understand what is meant by the word revival.
Actually revival has to do with Christians. Christian people who are
perhaps truly saved, walking with God to some extent, but more or less dead.
In a time of revival when God pours His spirit on His people, they come alive. They begin
witnessing, living holy lives, excited about God in a good way, in a good sense.
In 1962, I moved from Winnipeg, Canada to Saskatoon in Saskatchewan a distance of
500 miles, and I became pastor of what in Canada would be considered a fairly good
church, sized Church (175 members.) That would not seem like a large Church in
the United States. I was happy to be there, was a good church. We had numbers
of people in the congregation who were graduates of Bible schools--Briercrest School
or perhaps Three Hills and others from other places. Mostly young married
couples, and they all loved God, they all loved evangelism, and they all loved missions,
but nobody did it. And I wondered how to get this church on the road. So to begin with,
after I'd been there about a year, I figured that I knew the
congregation fairly well. So I divided the congregation into five groups. I did this
all on my own. And then I gave
each group a name or a number, and then I let the congregation know what I done and
I said now Monday night (and I had a list on the bulletin board) check it out; see
which team you're on, then you'll know once in every five weeks you and your
team will be going out door calling, trying to win people to Christ.
So I thought it was pretty neat. And Monday came and went nobody showed up.
I told them if you don't feel capable of doing this, stay home and pray.
So everybody stayed home and prayed! Nobody came. So I thought well now the
problem is they really don't know how to do it, so I'll have classes. So I had
classes for eight weeks on how to win people to Christ. Then I did the same
thing. I had a good attendance almost 100%, I mean people that signed up they
were there every every night for eight weeks, And I said, "Now Monday night is
evangelism night. I expect to see all here. And we'll go out and talk to people about
Jesus Christ. But if you don't feel quite ready for that, you stay home and pray.
And it happened again! Two people showed up, both them shaking in their shoes.
Then it dawned on me: they never had a heart for it. They didn't really want to
do that; they didn't have a heart for it. They weren't excited about God.
They weren't really filled with the Spirit of God.
So I began praying for revival. Five years before the revival, which began in
1971, I really pushed the prayer meeting And it grew from 25 to 50 to 75
to 100 to 125 to 150, It got up as high as 170. And it became the most exciting meeting
of the week. It wasn't revival, but it was certainly a path to revival. And people
began sharing answers to prayer they were having, and people would share personal needs
in the prayer meeting.Then we started having children's prayer meetings in
connection with the Wednesday night prayer meeting.
So finally we had 30 or 40 children attending, and we divided them into two
groups and had an adult with each group in a different room. And they trained the
children to run their own prayer meetings, and the kids just loved it.
This meant more people could come to a prayer meeting because their kids were in prayer meeting.
Then we had a prayer wheel on the bulletin board of the church
divided into pie-shaped wedges, 15-minute wedges. And each person was to pray about
it and then sign his or her name and a slot that they would take the time day
or night to pray 15 minutes for revival every day of the year.
Pretty soon we had the whole 24 hours taken up and sometimes more than one
name in a time slot. And then I suggested . . . . see, if I had done all all this at once
it wouldn't have taken; it would have been too heavy a burden; the people couldn't have
carried it. But as we did one thing, they they got more of a spirit of prayer and
then there's a verse in the Bible, it speaks about God (in Zechariah) pouring on
His people "a spirit of grace and supplication." One translation says "a
spirit of grace to supplicate." That is, there is such a thing as a spirit of prayer.
People began telling me, "You know, last night God waked me, and I prayed for 45
minutes. I used to be prayed out in five minutes, not anymore!"
And we began hearing reports like this. And this went on. And then we had cottage
prayer meetings, and we just we emphasized . . . we used to tell people:
"Don't worry about the food getting cold when you're asking a blessing over the meal or if you
feel like praying for revival, pray for revival!" And so people began doing that
as well. So it was a real spirit of prayer all through the congregation.
And we had invited Ralph and Lou Sutera to come from Mansfield Ohio. (That's where
they lived then.) And they arrived. And we started on a Wednesday night. We were
planning to go for a week and a half. We had to go for seven weeks, and meetings
every night, then moving from one auditorium to larger buildings to
accommodate the crowds. But I remember that first meeting, the church would seat
about 300. And probably the first meeting we had maybe 125 or something there. And five people responded.
And God begun working in that first meeting: two ladies who had
been warring got together and straightened things out.
And that was a harbinger of what was to come.
By Saturday, we couldn't accommodate the crowds: the church was packed to the
doors. And then we had to start having double services, and early service, and
late service. And when it came to Sunday that was too small. So we moved to
the Centennial auditorium seating 2200 We had to have double services there.
We went for seven weeks. Well that's speaking; that's the statistics,
at least one side of the statistics that went on. What really happened?
I don't know how to handle that. There was a tremendous spirit of restitution.
Chief Kettles was the Chief of Police in Saskatoon at the time. He issued a
statement to the StarPhoenix, the daily newspaper in Saskatoon. And he said,
"I'm not a religious person, but I do know the difference between normal church work
and revival. And revival has come to Saskatoon.
I know because people are coming to us on their own and confessing crimes."
He said we've never had this happened before. This is what happens, I know, he
said, when revival comes. And then people asking forgiveness publicly, sometimes in
tears before large crowds confessing their failures and their sins, and asking
for forgiveness and prayer. And then people began talking about answers to
prayer, things they prayed for for years, they were seeing happen constantly, day
after day. Just everybody you talked to almost had exciting things to talk
about when it came to answers to prayer people being converted.
Two young men, both around 18 or 19, they did not like what they saw happening. And so one day they
were talking on the phone, and one of the fellows' mothers (she shouldn't have been,
but she was listening in the conversation) and it went like this:
"This revival thing is a bunch of hysteria, and remember we're not getting involved okay
we're not getting involved. We have to go Sunday morning because our
parents will put the pressure on us, but that's all. Okay? We're not going forward
remember?" Yes, they promised each other wouldn't go forward.
Well Sunday morning came. I didn't know a thing about this so much later. And one
of these fellows, the Deacons came and said the fellow wants to be saved, but we can't
do anything with him I said, "Well, bring him into my office and I'll talk to him."
So he knelt at my desk and he kept shaking his head, just
saying, "No way! No way! No way!" I knelt beside him and
waited and I said "Phil, what's on your heart?" And finally he finished the sentence.
He said, "No way can I ever doubt the reality of Jesus! So He spoke to my heart. He broke me, and I've been saved!"
The other kid went forward on the other side of the
church and got saved he's now a civil engineer living in Denver, Colorado
walking with God. So much for their promises to each other.
In the first year after revival in Western Canada, the alliance reported of a hundred
percent increase in the number of soul saved in that 12-month period, 20 previous year.
I came across a book the title of the book was, "A history of American Revivals of Religion."
The author was Reverend Calvin Colton. It was
published in 1832. There were great revivals the United States the early
part of 1800s, and he was getting inquires from England so he wrote this
book--a matter of fact, he went to England for some meetings and realized
he could never cover all the churches--so he wrote a book and then sent copies to
England. And some things he said were this: "Revival never came to a church that
was not expecting revival and believing God for revival. It never failed to come
to churches that believed God it would come." So he said fasting, praying,
preaching, believing God for revival, and revival would come. He said, "We were never
happy or satisfied (we were happy but not satisfied) with the twos and threes
finding Christ. We kept praying for God the Holy Ghost to come and when He came
He took the work out of our hands and He made the whole community aware of
God. Then people saved by the hundreds. He worked in the beginning of those revival
meetings in an independent way. Churches that were not expecting
revival will suddenly experience revival." This was happening for a period of time
until Christians found out what revival meant on how to work towards revival and
then that type of revival phased out and the revivals that followed were every
bit as powerful as the other revivals had been. But Christians
that learn how to do it. Stoddard (if some of you will know who he was, related to
Jonathan Edwards) he experienced in 35 years, he experienced five revivals in
his church. But other churches were not experiencing revival. So a bunch of
pastors had a meeting with Stoddard to ask him the secret of revival. And he said,
"God is not favoring us because we're any better than you. But we expect revival;
we pray for it, we fast for it. We believe God for it. You don't do any of
those things. You're waiting for something to happen. We're waiting for
something to happen too, but we're believing God for it. We're preaching towards it.
And that was a difference. And I think there is a very important lesson for us
to learn here
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