February 22, 2010

OBTAINING REAL REVIVAL
by Leonard Ravenhill

Revival..... another definition would be to recover, repair or restore.
Hosea 10:12 says: "Sow to yourself in righteousness, reap in mercy;
break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord till He
come and reign righteousness upon you." What is fallow ground? Fallow
ground is ground that has been fruitful, and then it has been plowed
over, and no seed has been sown in it, and therefore it has become
unproductive.

Notice, there is a human emphasis here -- it says that we are to break
up -- you break up your fallow ground.

Now take another aspect of it here in Psalm 85:6 - "Would Thou not
revive us again: that Thy people may rejoice in Thee." So, there is an
absence of joy, of vitality -- there is an absence of ecstasy. The very
word "revive" presupposes life. You can only revive what has already had
vitality -- life that has become sick, weak, or apathetic. I think the
nearest analogy I can give you is a recent case of a man who apparently
drowned. He had been under the water for an incredible amount of time.
Then somebody pulled him out and worked and worked on him, and
eventually life came again. This is actually what it means to revive,
It means to revitalize.
It means to restore lost power.
It means to recover lost energy.

In the Acts of the Apostles 3:19 we read, "Repent ye therefore, and be
converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of
refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord."
Whatever else we say about revival we have to recognize this, that
revival is an act of mercy in the sovereignty of God. There is a vast
difference between revival and evangelism. When we speak of revival in
America we think of church advertising, "Our revival will begin next
Sunday night at a certain time and it is going to finish the next Sunday
night at a certain time."
Obviously this is something purely mechanical, it is something which men
have engineered. I think that one of the offenses of revival, in the
historic sense, is that it cannot be organized.

As Doctor Tozer said, "When revival comes it changes the moral climate
of a community." You can have revival that covers a church - Spurgeon
had that. You can have a revival that covers a city. You can have a
revival that covers the whole nation -- and I am thinking in this
context more than in the other contexts (though sometimes revival
spreads from here to there -- like fire spreads.) Revival cannot be
organized -- evangelism can be organized. Revival cannot be subsidized
--evangelism can and usually it must be. Revival cannot be advertised
--evangelism can.

It may cost millions of dollars, as it often does, to have one of our
huge, modern, so called revivals. You have to pay vast sums of money for
time on TV, for example -- perhaps a million dollars a night. That's
incredible, that's unthinkable to me in the context of Biblical revival,
or even historical revival. Why doesn't revival need to be advertised?
For the simple reason, that fire is the most self advertising thing that
there is, whether it is a physical fire or a revival fire. It draws
people like a magnet. To bring this down to modern technology -- revival
cannot be computerized. There is information that you can put in
computer and presto, you get the answer predicting an outcome according
to the facts that were put in. But you cannot computerize or predict
revival. There are periods in which one thing predominates. Sometimes
revival is totally taken over by sorrow. Sometimes revival is totally
taken over by joy, ecstasy 'till you don't know whether you are in the
flesh or whether you've gone out of the earth. Sometimes revival is
taken over by stillness.

There are times when you go to a prayer meeting and the power of God is
there. There is stillness and you feel it is creative. You feel, "Now
something is building up around here, somebody is going to come out
shortly with a heart bursting... with some agonizing prayer..." Revival
cannot be rationalized. Again, one of the offensive things about revival
is you can't put your finger on the spot, usually, as to how or why or
where it began. It is supremely an act of God.

You find a man would go with a series of messages to a community and
before long that community is alive, it's throbbing. He goes to another
town with exactly the same group of men, the same type of prayer is
poured out, the same sweat and soul travail and there is no response.
You can't predict and you can't organize revival. Why? Because you can't
organize where the wind is coming from. The Spirit, the wind, bloweth
where it listeth. If you say it's going to come this way, it comes that
way. If you say God's going to use that man, very often He doesn't even
bother with that man. Revival so often comes through unknown characters.


I don't think the world has ever been in a greater sense of turmoil than
it is in this moment. I don't think our nation has. Whatever we shall
say about revival we have to recognize this: There are three things
about natural life: conception, gestation, and birth. You can't alter
the program. There has never been revival, that I can trace, that has
not been preceded by agonizing prayer. You might say, "I haven't got to
that stage yet of agonizing prayer. How does is come?" Well, it comes
through VISION. If we are really going to get a concept of revival we
have to get a vision of God's sorrow over sin. We have to get a concept
of how, day by day, we offend God. As a nation we offend God in millions
of ways.

When I was praying in the Bahamas one day, I saw a great column of
smoke, which happened to be coming from tires that were being burned. It
was as black as could be, and over there I saw a wisp of smoke going up
from the ground. I didn't think much of it until about a year after, I
was praying and the Lord said, "That volume of black, thick smoke is
like the volume of sin that goes up every day." All the blasphemy, all
the unbelief, all the dirty stories, all the lying, all the deception,
all sex- perversion, all drunkenness-- this tremendous column of
iniquity goes up in the sight of God. And here you have a little wisp --
of what? That is the praise that God gets out of His people. If we are
going to realize how much we need revival we need to recognize the
dimension of sin. We have to recognize that sin offends God. Psalm 85:4
says, "Turn us, O God of our salvation and cause Thine anger towards us
to cease. Wilt Thou be angry with us forever?" Psalm 80 verse 3, "Turn
us again, O God, and cause Thy face to shine." Notice, it's repeated
again in verse 7 and in verse 19, "...cause Thy face to shine"..."cause
Thy face to shine."

Leonard Ravenhill (1907-1994) was an English Christian evangelist and
author who focused on the subjects of prayer and revival. He is best
known for challenging the modern church and his most notable book is Why
Revival Tarries.

Born in Leeds, in Yorkshire, England, Ravenhill was educated at Cliff
College in England and sat under the ministry of Samuel Chadwick. He was
a student of church history and an expert in the field of revival. His
meetings during the war years drew large crowds in Britain, and as a
result many converts devoted themselves to Christian ministry and the
world's mission fields.

In 1939, he married an Irish nurse, Martha. The Ravenhills had three
sons: Paul, David, and Philip. Paul and David are themselves ministers
of the Gospel, and Philip is a teacher.

In 1959, Ravenhill and his family moved from Great Britain to the United
States. In the 1960s they traveled within the United States, holding
tent revivals and evangelistic meetings.[1]

In the 1980s, Ravenhill moved to a home near Lindale, Texas, a short
distance from Last Days Ministries Ranch. He regularly taught classes at
LDM and was a mentor to the late Keith Green. He also spent some time
teaching at Bethany College of Missions in Minnesota, and some time in
Seguin, Texas.

Among others influenced by Ravenhill were Ravi Zacharias, Tommy Tenney,
Steve Hill, Charles Stanley, Bill Gothard, Paul Washer, Dan Brodeur,
Sean Cabral Myers, Brett Mullett, and David Wilkerson.[2]

He was a close friend of pastor and writer A. W. Tozer and a prolific
writer himself.[3]

Through his teaching and books, Ravenhill addressed the disparities he
perceived between the New Testament Church and the Church in his time
and called for adherence to the principles of biblical revival.

Tozer said of Ravenhill:

To such men as this, the church owes a debt too heavy to pay. The
curious thing is that she seldom tries to pay him while he lives.
Rather, the next generation builds his sepulcher and writes his
biography - as if instinctively and awkwardly to discharge an obligation
the previous generation to a large extent ignored.

Gravesite at Garden Valley CemeteryWhen he passed on in November 1994,
Ravenhill was interred in the same cemetery as Keith Green.