REVIVAL

Raphael Oye. Taiwo

WHAT REVIVAL IS

Revival Is When God comes

Revival is when God comes to a place and manifests His presence to the people there.  That is why people have a deep sense of God’s presence, glory and power where revival is taking place. 

Hab 3:2

2. O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.

3. God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.

4. And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.

Hosea 6:3.

3 Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.

This coming is not a prophecy about Jesus’ first or second coming.  It is the promise of God concerning revival.  Rain waters the ground so that new lives can be produced from it.  Rain invigorates plants weakened by the sun and revives dying plants.  Similarly, revival brings new lives into the kingdom of God, invigorates the weakened and revives those who are dying spiritually. 

Isaiah 64:1-2.

1. Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence,

2. As when the melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy presence!

In this scripture, the prophet Isaiah was praying for revival when he called upon God to come down.  When God comes, His glorious and powerful presence will burn up mountains of resistance to the gospel, the mountains of unbelief, the mountains of satanic oppressions and demonic curses.  God’s presence destroys the yoke and works of the devil.

Revival is when God comes and His wonderful presence destroys everything that is of the enemy.

Micah 1:3-4

3 For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth.

4 And the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place.

Revival is when God comes and His glorious presence causes sinners of various shades of color to tremble in fear before Him. ‘…To make your name feared by your haters, so that the nations may be shaking before you.’ Isaiah 64:2 (BBE)

In the book, The Awakening – One Man’s Battle with Darkness, Christoph Blumhardt related how the coming of the Lord caused sinners to troop to his house to confess their sins and receive Christ and forgiveness of their sins. Here’s one of such stories:

Yesterday, from eight in the morning until eleven at night, there was one caller after another, a total of thirty-five, all suffering severe pangs of conscience and looking for peace. Some wept so bitterly in their distress that I granted absolution the first time they came, for their hearts seemed about to burst. In all, twenty-four have found peace. These newly awakened men and women gather every evening in various houses.

(The Awakening by  Friedrich Zuendel, The Bruderhof Foundation, Inc., Farmington, PA 15437 USA and the Bruderhof Communities in the UK, Robertsbridge, East Sussex, TN32 5DR, UK)

Revival is when God comes and His powerful presence dissolves the mountain of demonic problems and satanic oppressions in the lives of the people.

Isaiah 25:7.

7 And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.

In Is a Wave of Revival Coming? Ralph Mahoney shared some of his experiences of revival in Central America in 1959. He related:

I was very intimately involved with a most unique visitation of God that took place in a little town called Puerto Cabezas, on the east coast of Nicaragua. We were there in 1959 in a Crusade and returned in 1961 for follow-up ministry.

In those years, there was much persecution of Protestants in many of the countries of Latin America…

Not much happened the first night. The team was fasting and praying for a breakthrough. The second night, with about 2,000 present, the glory fell. When it did, all manner of sickness and disease was healed…

I have prayed for thousands of people around the world and, to my knowledge, the majority of them were not healed. But in this situation, it was the exception if they didn’t get healed. As I laid hands on them, almost everyone was healed – from the lame and the deaf to the terminally ill. God came! ...

The Lord so blessed that city, such a work of God was done by the Spirit, that the city was delivered from a demonic covering…. The problem was most noticeable in the children. It appeared to be a mix of psychosomatic, psychological and demonic influences. The children would fall down in the streets of the city in some kind of a seizure, similar to epilepsy. This was widespread throughout this whole city of about 11,000 souls…

But when the revival was less than ten days old, God broke that oppression off the whole community.

ACTS, International Edition, January-March, 1997, pages 14-16, Is a Wave of Revival Coming? By Ralph Mahoney, World MAP, 1419, North San Fernando Blvd., Burbank, CA 91504-4194, USA

Revival is when God comes and His omnipotence is mightily manifested, destroying the yoke and works of the devil, setting people free from sin, Satan and sickness, and causing people to stand in awe of Him and His word

Exodus 3:7-8.

7. And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;

8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

  God comes down to deliver His people.

From the time the Lord ‘came down’, great things began to happen in the lives of the Israelites.

In his book, God Among the Zulus, Erlo Stegen, the man God used to lead the revival related:

The day came when God rent the heavens, as it were, and came down while we were gathered together.

Suddenly we heard a noise like a great wind. I can only faintly suggest what happened and attempt to make it clear with a small example. It was similar to pressurised air escaping from an air pump, and as if that wind were blowing right through every one of us. The Spirit of God came down and nobody had to explain to anyone else, "Look, God is in our midst."

Everybody was conscious of the presence of God without anybody saying a word. All I could do was to bow down and worship the God of heaven.

What happened then? The Spirit of God came over that place, over the whole area, and brought the people. The first person to come was a witch who lived seven kilometres away and was in charge of a training school for witches. God began at the very strongholds of Satan. To use the prophet Isaiah's words: "The mountains flowed down at Thy presence, as when the melting fire burneth."

The fire burned as if everything were made of dry brush-wood. When I asked this witch, "What is it you want?" she answered, "I need Jesus. Can He save me? I am bound with chains of hell. Can He break these chains?"

I couldn't believe my eyes and ears! For twelve years I had tried in vain to convert witches, sometimes forweeks at a time, and they had always claimed that their powers were a gift from God. And now, suddenly, right out of the blue, a witch stood in front of me and told me that she was sick and tired of her life, and was bound with chains of hell.

"Who spoke to you?" I asked her.

"Nobody," she answered.

"Who preached to you?"

"Nobody!"

"Who invited you?"

"Nobody!"

"But I can't understand this. Where do you come from? What happened?"

"Why do you ask me all these questions? Don't waste my time! If Jesus doesn't save me right now, I will die today and go to hell!

"I had never seen the likes. I continued by asking, "Are you prepared to open your heart to the Lord Jesus and let Him come into your life?"

"I am prepared to do anything."

"Are you prepared to confess your sins?"

"Yes!"

After that witch came the witch doctors, then the possessed, one after the other, day after day. For two or three months we hardly had any sleep at all. Day and night we were so busy that we sometimes didn't even have time to eat or change our clothes. The Spirit of God would literally go into the peoples' homes and bring them to us.

We asked every one of them, "Who brought you here?

"Nobody!"

"How did you know that we were here? Who invited you?"

"Nobody!

"Over and over again we received the same answers, heard the same story.

"We can't explain it, but it must have been God! A power within us has driven us to come here. We can't sleep anymore, can't recover our peace of mind, all we can see are our sins!"

It was as if the walls of Jericho were bursting asunder. The possessed came and identified the spirits that were in them by name and number. Many of the things that occurred at that time we do not even talk about, because people wouldn't understand them, they would seem like fairy tales. But there is more between heaven and earth than our human mind can grasp. Such things must be experienced before we are able to comprehend what they are all about.

(Revival Among The Zulus by Erlo Stegen, Chapter Six, Published by Kwasizabantu Mission, Private Bag 252, Kranskop 3268, South Africa. E-Mail: mail@ksb.org.za)