Thank you, Greg, appreciate it. Well, it's good to be with you all. If you have your Bibles, turn to Psalm 85. I want to work through a few of those verses in just a second. But I was trying to think of how long Greg and Laura and I have known each other. Probably, what, 10 years at least? Probably longer. Greg was in our presbytery when we were in Connecticut. And we became good friends. Did a lot of revival prayer together at their church. They came every Sunday night to our house in West Hartford. We did a lot of street evangelism together. And so it's a real joy to be here with y'all. And by the way, I love your facility. This is really nice. Beautiful building. And Greg kind of filled me in on the church a little bit. I think it was started back in the 70s. Is that right? Or something of that nature? Yeah. So that's great. Why are we here tonight and why are we here this weekend? Well, the answer to that question is, as Greg mentioned a moment ago, we need revival. And what I want to do tonight is kind of give you a little historical sketch on revival and tell you what's going to happen tomorrow. So let me start with that first of all. I believe we're starting at 9.30. Is that right, Greg? 9.30 to 5. OK. Now, here's the first thing. When you hear that we're going to have an eight hour day long meeting, it's like, whoa, what in the world? We're not used to that. I don't think we can make that happen. I hear that a lot. I promise you God will do a great work and the time will fly. It will go very, very quickly. So it can be a very powerful time. So what are we hoping to be accomplished this weekend? Well, by 530 tomorrow afternoon, and I'll say this again tomorrow to the others who are here, and y'all are here because you're sort of the leaders in the church, that's why you're here. What I'm gonna say tomorrow is we have one objective. By the time we finish tomorrow afternoon at 530, Lord willing, we'll have at least one group in the church engaged in revival prayer One hour a week from here on out. That's the plan. Now, I know that you have prayer, of course. You probably already have a prayer meeting. That's good. But what we want to do is we want to teach you about revival prayer. I'm suggesting that praying for revival and revival prayer are different. They're not necessarily the same thing. And so what we'll do tomorrow is I'll have three lectures. When we start off tomorrow morning, I'll lecture on the intolerable burden. I'll explain it. I'll define it. I'll illustrate it. I'll apply it. We'll go about an hour, hour 15 on something of that nature. We'll take a few minute break. Then we will pray. We'll pray in a little group, everybody together the first time. And since Greg has done this many, many times, if we have a group of more than 10 or 15, the second and third time we pray together, I'll break off and let Greg take a group and I'll take a group. And there's also somebody I think coming from Philadelphia tomorrow who also has been involved with us. So he can maybe help us as well, depending on how many people we have. So we'll have that first lecture on the intolerable burden. We'll pray for an hour and a half or two hours, and then we'll take another short break, then I'll speak again on the 10 marks of the revival culture off of the book of Acts. And by that time it will, we've probably already broken for lunch actually by that time, but then we'll have another hour and a half prayer time, then we'll have a third lecture, Making Your Church a House of Prayer for the Nations. That's when we get into actually defining and illustrating what I mean by revival prayer. Now, when we pray together, we're praying and we're seeking God for revival, but we're also learning about revival prayer. So I will, tomorrow, for example, I will lead the first time in prayer, and a rather lengthy time of prayer, and so that'll say, oh, that's what he means by revival prayer. And so then you'll have an opportunity to practice that as we go on. And then, So we'll pray again, then we'll have a few minutes back together and feedback and how things went. And that'll be it for Saturday. And then on Sunday morning, I'm preaching. Or do we have a Sunday school class? I'm speaking at that, too. OK. And we'll just try to drive home what we're talking about. And then that's it. And here's what I hope will happen. Here's what I see happening. I've been doing this for a number of years now with Dr. Kravendam. A lot of you all probably know Dr. Kravendam. He's a mentor to me. I know he is to Greg as well. And what we hope will happen and what we see happening is as people gather together in revival prayer, God begins to give them an evangelistic burden. And when I was doing this out in Amarillo, Texas, about four years ago, there was about five churches that gathered together. There was an OPC church. There was a PCA church. There was a Southern Baptist Church. There was a Christian church. These were all Reformed people. They had a ministry they called ARF, A-R-F, Amarillo Reformed Fellowship. And after the Saturday time of prayers, we're driving back to the pastor's house, he said, you know what this really is? This is practical Calvinism is what this is. And I thought that's a good analogy. That's a good description. Because what we're acknowledging is this whole work of doing the church, as some people would say, this whole work of seeking to reach the community in evangelism and discipleship is impossible. It's impossible. And clearly, Revival is impossible. We can't make it happen. None understand. None seek for God. All have turned aside. Together they've all become useless. There's none righteous. There's not even one. This work is impossible. And when you add on top of that the utter disdain for the Bible, for the law of God, for Christian morality, It's just, it's impossible. And yet, that's what drives us to prayer. Now, I believe that Psalm 85 is a post-exilic psalm after the exile. And you might remember that in Deuteronomy 28, as Israel was about to go into the promised land, God gives them the law a second time. Deuteronomy 28, he says, and it shall come about that if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, if you're careful to walk in all His commandments and to keep His ways, then all these blessings will come upon you and they will overtake you. You will be blessed above all the nations of the earth. You'll be blessed in the city and you'll be blessed in the country. And he goes on for 14 verses and talks about, if you will just obey me, you will be blessed. Then he turns on to chapter 28, verse 15, but It shall come about if you do not diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God. If you are not careful to walk in all his commandments, then all these curses will come upon you and they will overtake you. Cursed you'll be in the city and cursed you'll be in the country. Then he goes on for about 60 verses. I mean, read it sometime. It is sordid detail. By the way, my wife was speaking at a women's retreat about four years ago, and she had one of the women read the entire chapter of Deuteronomy 28. These women were leveled by it. Just read the scripture. I mean, it's awesome. But all they had to do was to obey. Of course, they did not obey. Very quickly, they went into idolatry, and God began to send Many, many prophets to them. You know, in the 700s A.D. or B.C., He sent them Isaiah. He sent them Hosea to the northern and the southern kingdom, urging them to repent, and they wouldn't do it. We know that in 722 B.C., God sent the Assyrians on the northern kingdom, took them away into exile, and they never came back. Now, because there were a few godly kings here and there in the southern kingdom, they lasted a little bit longer. But surely by the 600s, Jeremiah starts preaching about 630 BC. And we know that nobody listened to him and nobody responded to his message. And so eventually they were taken into exile in 586 BC. There had been many entrees into Judea in that particular time. It all finally came down in 586 BC. They're all sent off into exile. And Daniel has been sent into exile sometime during that time period, maybe a little bit earlier. But it's because they never turned back. Now, many years later, maybe scholars say 30 years, 60 years, somewhere in that time frame, God raised up Ezra and Nehemiah. And in chapter 8 of Ezra, he says, there will be a little reviving. Now, Krabbendom tells me, and I agree with him, that that little reviving is the return from the exile. God is being gracious to them once again. What's astonishing about that is in Jeremiah 29, Jeremiah against preaching, you know, maybe 630, 620 BC, and then some 50 years later, excuse me, Daniel is reading Jeremiah the prophet, and he's reading Jeremiah 29, he says there, when the 70 years for Babylon have been finished, then I will visit you and I will fulfill my good word to you. He goes on to say that not only will I fulfill my good word to you, but I will restore your fortunes. You will listen, you will call upon me. and you will pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and you will find me when you search for me with all your heart." That's amazing. Judah had been so hard-hearted. And God says, if you'll just humble yourself and seek me after all that you've done, I'll listen to you. I'll bring you back. I'll take you from the nations. I'll gather you from the places where I sent you into exile. So now they're back in the land. Nehemiah, or excuse me, Ezra chapter 8, they're back in the land. And so I think that's the context of Psalm 85. Restore us, O God, of our salvation, and cause thine indignation toward us to cease. Without being angry with us forever, without prolonging thine anger to all generations. Wilt thou not thyself revive us again that thy people may rejoice in thee? Show us thy lovingkindness, O Lord, and grant us thy salvation. I will hear what God the Lord will speak. He will speak peace to his people, to his godly ones, but let them not turn back to what? Folly. Folly. And throughout the book of Proverbs, we're told that a fool A fool is like a dog returning to its vomit. We've all seen that and we say, how awful is that? Oh, look at that dog there eating his vomit. We say that's the stupidest thing you could ever imagine. But here we are, he's saying that these people, after God has given them blessing after blessing, after they've turned away from him, he sends one prophet after another. They still don't believe. He sends them into exile. He brings them back. And now they're going to go after it again. He says, don't go back to folly. Revive us again. Now what's he asking for there? If Ezra 8 is the little revival, then what he's asking for in this post-exilic Psalm 85 is the big revival. And the big revival is Pentecost. That's when the Spirit was poured out. And as Charles Hodge says, Pentecost was a once and for all occurrence, but it's not been withdrawn. We should still expect the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And here we are in our folly, going back to our folly like a dog to its vomit. As we were driving here today, We were both talking about what an amazing Christian history New Jersey and Pennsylvania have. I know you know that. It's astonishing. I mean, so many amazing things happened right here. You know, going back to the 18th century and earlier, there is a strong history of revival in this country. Just a short sketch now of that, just as an encouragement. In 1630, as the Puritans were making their way to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, people gathered together on board the Arbella, and Winthrop gave what was now called the greatest speech or sermon, if you will, of the second millennium, his city on a hill speech or sermon. And he was laying out the Calvinistic vision for the new world. And he says, in essence, we will be a God fearing people. We will exalt Jesus Christ. We will establish this nation on the Holy Scriptures. Within eight years, 1638, the Massachusetts Bay had established Harvard to train ministers for the gospel. We know that went south long ago. By 1804, it was in the hands of the Unitarians. But at least in the beginning it was serious about training men for the Gospel ministry. In 1643, right in that area, we know that Thomas Hooker came with 100 people from his church in England, made his way to the Massachusetts Bay Area where they were farming, it was too rocky, the soil wasn't good. He asked if he could leave. They went further west. They ran into the Connecticut River. And then they went south and established Hartford. And Hartford was a mighty, mighty place of the Spirit of God. We could go on. When you get into the 18th century, right here in Newark, David Brainerd was ordained to the gospel ministry in Newark. William Tennant, Frelinghuysen, all these great, great preachers of the gospel were right here. And I know that Brainerd ministered to the Indians not far from here. He was in several different places, but he was right here. So there's this amazing history of revival. But by the time of the early 1700s, however, people began to grow cold toward the gospel. In fact, it started about 1690, actually, because Cotton Mather, concerned that the revival fires and the zeal with which the people had when they came to this place they called America was already waning. And so he was urging the people to pray and to seek God for revival. And nothing seemed to happen for a long period of time. Things were so bad in England. There was so much licentiousness and so much lawlessness in England. that the authorities didn't know what to do to gain control of the situation. Every third house sold, made and sold gin. The people were just drunkards everywhere. There was so much lawlessness there that they had 13 different crimes that were now punishable by death. The story goes there was a 12-year-old boy stole a loaf of bread and they hung him. They're trying to get control of the situation. And so people were praying. They had been praying since the 1680s at least. But now the early 1700s, there's just not much evidence at all of any kind of fervor for God. In January of 1735, Jonathan Edwards was at Northampton, Massachusetts. He was 32 years old at the time. His grandfather died. He was the associate pastor for his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. And so he took over when his grandfather died. And he was 32 years old. And he was off on a preaching trip in January of 1735. And a young man came in to preach for several weeks while he was gone. And the Spirit of God fell on this young man's preaching. In fact, Sarah Edwards, Jonathan's wife, was deeply affected by the preaching. She had a tendency toward what they called then melancholy or depression. And yet it tells us that she was so filled with joy that she was dancing around this Puritan woman, was dancing around with emotion. The Spirit of God was on her. She's rejoicing. So when Edwards came back, the revival continued. And anywhere from 10 to 15 people, adults, children, whatever, every week were being soundly converted. This went on for several weeks, several months actually, maybe to June of 1735. At the same time, in England and in Wales, The Spirit of God was beginning to move. There was this preacher in Wales by the name of Daniel Rowland. He was a Church of England pastor. That was really the only church at the time. And he was preaching, but he didn't know Christ. And he heard a street preacher come through. And the street preacher is preaching Christ, and on the spot, Daniel Rowland is convicted and converted. And he continues to preach, but now he's preaching with a new heart. At the same time, there's a 21-year-old school teacher named Howell Harris. They all went to church. You've got to understand this. Everybody went to church, but they would get it over as quickly as possible. And the preacher would already have a big keg of beer sitting on the side there. So as soon as they finished the sermon, they'd all get drunk for the rest of Sunday. That's the way they were. They outlawed the prayers thing, but it didn't mean anything to them. So on one Sunday, the pastor, this guy must have been pretty spiritual, the pastor says, now next Sunday, we're going to have communion. And I know what most of you do who are not converted. You stay away. Because you know that you can't take communion. But what you need to understand is if you're not ready to take communion, you're not ready to live. And if you're not ready to live, you're not ready to die. So that seemed to pierce the heart of Howell Harris. He came back to church the next week. Sometime over the next few weeks, he was converted. This was like in February or March 1735. At the same time in England, in Oxford, there was this young man named George Whitefield who was about 21 years old. They're all young men. And George Whitefield was at Oxford, and he was part of what people pejoratively called the Holy Club. They're mocking, oh, they're part of the Holy Club. These are the real holy men. Of course, you know that John Wesley and Charles Wesley and Whitefield and many, many others were gathered together, and they would regularly fast. They fasted two days a week. They recorded in 30-minute segments how they used each and every day. You talk about meticulous. You talk about discipline. They would preach in the prisons. All of this was going on, and yet they really didn't understand that what God's got to do is He's got to take out the rebellious heart that loves sin and hates God and give the heart that loves God and hates sin. They have to be born again. They didn't understand that. Now, God was bringing conviction on George Whitefield, 21 years old, and sometime along about June of 1734, maybe a year earlier, he begins to have real problems. He says, you know, I don't have peace with God. I got to seek God more. Think maybe I've been eating the wrong kind of food. So I got to cut back on that kind of food And I'm eating too much food. So I'm going to cut back on that. I've been fasting two days a week That's not enough. I'm gonna fast three days a week. And by the way, you know those those Wesley boys I'm not so sure about those guys so he began to withdraw from the Wesley boys because they weren't seeking God as much as he was and You see, he was just covered up with legalism, thinking that was going to save him. And it got so bad that long about September of 1734, he has a physical nervous breakdown. He has to drop out of Oxford. He's in the hospital for several months. And yet sometime about almost identically to the time that Daniel Rowland and Howell Harris are converted, the same time God's doing this great work at Northampton, Massachusetts. The light goes on by the grace of God, and George Whitefield is converted. He understands that it's the free grace of God It is not fasting three days a week. It's not eating certain types of food. It's not withdrawing from certain type of people. It's the sheer grace and mercy of God that saves anybody. And so when that happened, the next day, George Whitfield began to preach, 21 years old, and they had never heard anything like it. That's the great awakening, the beginning of the great awakening. What I want to remind you of is this, that in New England in 1735, in Wales and in England in 1735, These three men, Daniel Rowland, Hal Harris, George Whitfield, all converted, young men, converted within just a period of a couple of months of each other. And God's doing this great work through Jonathan Edwards. These were the four major architects of the Great Awakening that shook America, England, Scotland, and Wales, and literally saved the Great Britain area from the French Revolution. And so this great revival is going on until about, you know, 1755, somewhere like that. It's estimated that at least one-tenth of the American population, only about three million people at the time, were converted. But now by 1776, the Declaration of Independence, most of that's gone away. Christianity was foundational to the beginning of our country. But by 1776 the French philosophers were taken over, Rousseau and others. And this was, people were imbibing of this false idea of life. And it was very, very destructive. But about 1792, one year after John Wesley died in England, God began to pour out his spirit again in what we now call the Second Great Awakening. And while the First Great Awakening was God-centered Calvinism, the Second Great Awakening was a mixture of Calvinism and Arminianism. Some of it was very, very good. Some of it was not good. And yet, God continued to do a great work. Now that brings me to about 1857, just a few miles from where y'all are right now. 1857, on Fulton Street in Manhattan, just a few blocks away from Wall Street, was this church called the North Dutch Church. And this church had fallen on hard times. The people who had been going to the church were Dutch, and people from Southern Europe, mainly Southern European immigrants like Italians and Greeks and people like that moved into the area. And so the Dutch people moved out, and so the church attendance began to wane considerably. The church became a full, vibrant church, several hundred people. Very, very well-to-do church, lots of money in the church. And the people moved out, and so there was very, very few people going to the church. And the elders were concerned. What do we do? They didn't really know. They tried a lot of different things, but they didn't know. And there was this young man, actually, he wasn't that young. at the time, a man named Jeremiah Lanphier. He was from upstate New York. He was a businessman. He'd been converted back in the 1830's by listening to Charles Finney preach in New York City, and had joined the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church under A.A. Hodge, who was a great Princeton theologian later. into the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, a very, very solid man in the Scriptures. And he was a layman, he was not ordained, but he had a great concern for the church. And he was a very active Christian, always engaged in trying to lead people to Christ, and very successful in the business world. But the elders from the church came to him and says, can you help us out? We know that you're very active in ministry. We're having trouble. We just we're losing members and we want to we really want to impact our community. But all of the people that look like us are moving out. Can you help us? And he said, yeah, I'll try. So they hired him to be on the staff of the church. This was January. This was July 1st, 1857. And what he did, he prayed every day, now Lord, what do you want me to do? So he thought, well, the most logical thing to do is to begin to visit all the people that live around the church and try to get something going. So he would go door to door. right around the church. And he would invite people to church. He would give them tracts. He would give them information about the church. He would try to engage them in the Gospel. Most of them didn't even speak English. They were from, again, Southern Europe. The English was not their language. And so there was a real language barrier. There was a cultural barrier. But then he thought, well, I can't really seem to reach them. Why don't we do this? I tell you what, I'm going to have a vacation Bible school for the children. So he had that at the church. And, you know, some of the children would come, and he'd get pretty encouraged by that. But it never translated into the adults coming to church. And this was going on for a month or two. He was very active. And he just said, he'd come in in the evening. He said, Lord, what is it you want me to do? Well, he noticed that at Wall Street, just a few blocks away, the people knocked off for lunch about noon every day for an hour. And he thought, well, you know, maybe we could have a prayer meeting at the church. By the way, you need to understand this. At that time, the economy was in a very precarious situation. The stock market had lost about 40% of its value. There were one million people living in New York City at the time, and 10,000 men were out of work. I mean, there was a serious depression going on, a recession, in the economy. It was a very precarious time. So he thought, well, let's have a prayer meeting. Came up with a flyer on the one side that says, when's the best time to pray? He said, well, you should pray when you're sick. You should pray when you are happy, and on and on. He says, the best time to pray is always. It's always a good time to pray. Then on the other side, it says, we're having a prayer meeting. It starts at noon on September 23 at the church right here on Fulton Street, one hour So he went around the neighborhood passing these out. He walked over by Wall Street and passed these out. And like I said, there were a lot of men out of work just walking around. They didn't really have much to do anyway. So he says, that's what we're going to have. We're going to have a prayer meeting. So here comes September 23, 1857. He's in the consistory. That's the elders' meeting room. waiting for people to come. At noon, nobody's there. 1215, nobody's there. 1230, nobody's there. At 1240, he heard the door open, and in walked six men. Well, they had a simple time of prayer for 20 minutes, because he said, we'll stop at one. They prayed for 20 minutes. And they all agreed that it was a good thing, so they came back the next week, and the next week there were 14 men there. here's what they would do. They would come in and they would sit quietly, they wouldn't talk, and when it became noon a layman, never a pastor, a layman would stand up, he would read a passage of Scripture, they would sing acapella, a verse or two of a Gospel hymn, then they would say, now let us pray. And let's just pray for our lost friends. Let's pray for God to do a great work in our city and this church and your churches. And they said, now, by the way, pray for, don't take the whole prayer time. Pray for five minutes at the most. And if somebody tended to pray long, somebody would come up and put their arm on the shoulder. OK, brother, that's enough. Let somebody else pray, you know? It was lay led. It was 99% men. And the Monday before the third prayer meeting, I'd already told you that the stock market was in trouble. Well, on that Monday, it was like a Black Monday. The bottom fell out. I mean, now there's people jumping out of windows. I mean, this is a major problem. And so two days later, there's 100 men at the prayer meeting. Then they began to say, you know, we think God's doing something, let's pray every day. They began to pray every day from noon to one o'clock. Within a month or two, there's so many men coming to the church, they break up into three different rooms in their prayer. And then there's so many coming that they can't fit them all into the church. And so they start also having prayer meetings all over Manhattan. Then over in Brooklyn, at the Plymouth Church, there was a prayer meeting. And then the prayer meeting spread to Philadelphia. Then it spread to Boston. It spread all over the Northeast. Then it began to make its way south, which I'll speak about in just a moment. Here's what's beginning to happen. These men are praying, and they're coming out of their prayer meetings, and they're so filled up with Jesus, they gotta tell people about Jesus. And so they start walking around, because remember, a lot of them don't have a job. They don't have anything else to do, because you see, they're desperate. And because they're desperate, God, listen, God uses the trials and tribulations of life to drive us to Himself, amen? That's what's going on. And so they go out and they began to witness to people. Guess what? People are getting saved. And then these people just got saved, come and say, listen, my wife doesn't know the Lord. My children don't know the Lord. We got all these problems. Well, let's pray for each other. So they pray. These people get saved. And then they bring other people in. So every week new people are coming in. And by the way, because of that, they not only are witnessing to the neighbors, they're going out and they're going door to door throughout New York at the height of the Revival. Remember I told you there was a million people in New York City. The height of the Revival, 10,000 people a week were getting saved. The Bowery Street Mission started out of that. The Salvation Army came from England to New York because of that. There were many, there were These gangster type thugs converted, you know, amazing things were happening. And it spread to Boston, Philadelphia and other places. And historians tell us now that as many as 10 percent of America was converted at that time. At that time, there were 35 million people living in America. 3.5 million people converted. If that happened today, we'd have 350 million people. That would be 35 million people getting saved in a period of about six months to a year. You don't think that'd change this country? I think it would. Now, at that time, we're now about 1858. Let's switch down to Charleston, South Carolina. Remember now, this is in the midst of slavery. This is the time of a very difficult time in our nation. This was a hot-button political issue. And in Charleston, South Carolina, there was a Presbyterian preacher named John Gerrido. John Gerrido grew up in a very privileged situation. His family had slaves. His wife came from a very privileged background. They were married. He pastored a church out of rural South Carolina. And he ministered to the white people. He ministered to the slaves. And he was a powerful preacher. And then The Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, wanted to start a church primarily of African slaves. And they asked Gerardot if he would pastor the church. And he said yes. Now Gerardot, again, could have gone anywhere and could have made a lot more money. But he decided that's what God wanted him to do. So he took that church in 1851. And he was a powerful preacher, one of the most powerful preachers this nation's ever had, just as a sidelight. A number of years later, he's asked to preach to the South Carolina General Assembly, the House of Congress and so forth. He's preaching at the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. I've been there many times. It's a very historic church. The congregation is, the church is full, 2,000 people. He's preaching from 1 Corinthians 15, then the end will come. He's preaching for an hour. He's a Presbyterian preacher, he preaches long. He's preaching for an hour, expounding the text. 1 Corinthians 15. And then the last 10 to 15 minutes, he begins to make application. And he's talking about the glory of heaven and the glory of getting a new glorified body, but also the horrors of hell and the lake of fire. And those who are there watching him preach, listening to him preach said that as he's finishing his sermon, everybody's leaning forward. He spoke with great power and vivid imagery. And they're leaning forward, listening. And then he finishes his sermon, and the sermon climaxes with the glory of Christ. And they say everybody sat back and collectively went, whew. Now, wouldn't you like to preach like that? Man, that's the kind of preacher he was. accused of teaching his slave congregation to read and write. You know that was against the law back then. But he didn't, he didn't do that. But what he did do was he taught them to memorize the shorter catechism. He memorized the shorter catechism. And he didn't believe in musical instrumentation. And I've often said, I would give anything to listen to to those slaves. There were 2,000 of that congregation. Sing a cappella. Don't you know it was glorious? Well, by the mid-1850s, there's such a huge congregation. They have to build a bigger church building on Calhoun Street, Mount Zion Presbyterian Church. It became the largest building in the state of South Carolina at the time. 2,000 people, more than two-thirds were the black folks, the slaves. There were white members, but the church was elder led, and the elders were black men. But they began to hear about what God was doing in New York. And so the slave members said, could we get together and pray? And he said, of course. So they began to gather together, come in from the fields, or the homes, or whatever, at night. And they would go into the congregation, they'd pray for three hours every night. And they would ask, they'd say, Mr. Girono, would you preach to us at night? He goes, no, no, no. I preach Sunday morning, and I preach Sunday afternoon. When the Holy Spirit comes, then I will commence with preaching. So they met every week. Remember I told you that he was a Presbyterian, right? you need to understand this because of what I'm getting ready to say. So they would gather together every night and they would pray. One night, as they're finishing up their prayer time, Gerardot announced a hymn. They stood to sing the hymn and Gerardot says, as we're singing the hymn, I felt something like a lightning bolt start at the bottom of my head and go all the way through my body and come out my feet. He was a Presbyterian. And after announcing the benediction, he simply said, tomorrow night we will commence with preaching. In other words, the Spirit had come. And he said, you're free to go. They all sat down. Ah, the Spirit has come on you as well. And he began to preach. And he preached every night for eight weeks. This is long, about 1859. By the way, there's what's called the 1859 Revival that went on in the glens of Antrim in Northern Ireland. It was going on in Wales. It was going on in England. It was going on in South Africa with Andrew Murray. It was going on a lot of different places. That's what's happening in Charleston, South Carolina. He preached every night for about eight weeks. And somewhere between around 800 African slaves were converted during that time. And another 400 white people were converted at that time. Shortly thereafter, the war between the states began. Many of those white men, young white men, went off to war and they all almost all got killed. And God in His mercy, saved them before they went off to their deaths. Now after the war was over, his dwindling congregation said, would you, can we pray again? He said, yes. They prayed and they prayed and they prayed and revival never came again. But it did during that period of time. Now my dear friends, we need revival in our day. I could give you many, many other examples of what God has done Let me just close with one more, because what I want to do is I want to show you God can do this. It was in potless, and New York was in utter disarray. Nobody saw this coming. God did it. God can do it again. Now, I go to South Africa a couple times a year. Back in the apartheid days, you know the segregation they had there, right? Back in the apartheid days in the 1960s there was this man named Erlo Stegen, E-R-L-O Stegen, S-T-E-G-E-N. He was a Lutheran pastor, a white man, who grew up in South Africa and he was fluent in Zulu. The king says he speaks it better than our people do. He grew up in that culture. He knew the culture very well. He was pastoring a small, little Zulu church in KwaZulu-Natal. That's sort of in eastern South Africa, near Durban, if you know your geography there. He had a congregation of about 25 Zulus. And he was a good man. He was an Orthodox preacher. But he didn't see a whole lot happening. And one day he's out preaching out in the bush, and you know, there's a real problem in Africa with animism and witchcraft and demonic possession. And he knew that, so he's out preaching one day, and he says to the people out in the bush, the Zulus, Jesus is more powerful than the witch doctor. It kept going on like that. And by the way, the Zulus almost exclusively had no interest in what they perceived as the white man's God. They didn't want him. So he wasn't making any inroads at all. But a woman did come up to him and says, now Mr. Steggett, is that true that Jesus is more powerful than the witch doctor? Yes, by all means. She said, would you please come with me then? So he followed her with his elders. to a little mud hut with a grass-thatched roof, and there's no electricity. But he looks inside and he sees something like a 14-year-old girl, which is the daughter of this woman. She is naked. She's filthy. She's got dirt all over her. Her hair's all disheveled. She's foaming at the mouth. They've got her tied by steel wire to the middle post of the holding up the roof there in the house. He immediately looks and says, yes, demonic possession. He said, yes, we will pray. So Erlostegin and his elders laid their hands on this little girl, and they commanded the demons in the name of Jesus to come out. They kept praying. They kept demanding. Nothing happened. After an hour, they gave up, bewildered, stunned. And it rocked his faith. God, do you really have power? How come we don't see your power? Well, he began to seek God. And his elders and the people of the church began to seek God. Now, Erlo Steggin knew that like in many churches, there was a problem of immorality. There was also a problem of animism. What you have in those cultures, a lot of times people will become followers of Jesus, but when things really get rough, like when their crop fails or their cow dies, then they're worried about stuff, so they go back to the Sangoma or the witch doctor and say, what's happening? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You have offended the spirit deities. You've offended your ancestors. You've got to make a sacrifice. So kill this goat and sprinkle the blood on the ground, and then all will be well. That's what was going on. So they would claim to be followers of Jesus, but would think that really rough, they'd go back to the witch doctor. So they began to pray, and Erlo Steggans hoping that the people get away from their morality and their witchcraft and all of that, because he says, they're the problem, not me. Well, God did begin to convict the people of the church, but God also began to convict Erlo Steggans. Because you see, he had a problem with racial, cultural and theological pride. He really thought he was better than they were. In fact, you know, there were several times he'd say, you know, I don't have to be here. I'm well educated. I could go to Johannesburg and I could get a really nice church and make a lot of money. I don't have to be here. He told his congregation that. Well, God began to convict His congregation of their sin, but much to his surprise, God began to convict him of his own sin. And when I was in Cape Town about a year and a half ago, I was asking somebody who knows the story better than I do, who was there. He said, oh yeah, he said, here's something you don't know. Here's something you've never read. God was so dealing with Errol O'Steggin at this time. for three nights in a row, he woke up in a cold sweat. His bed was soaking wet. And a servant girl would say, lady, I had to wring out the sweat out of his pajamas and his bed was soaking wet. God was dealing with him. Now this sounds odd to us, but you put yourself, put yourself in the place of a white man in 1960s, in 1966 in South Africa, okay, apartheid, okay? He had a dream, I was told. The dream was, in his dream, he saw a big black man with a suitcase standing at the railroad platform. And then the next thing in his dream, he saw this big black man sitting at his table eating a meal. That was not done back then, you know. the black folks ate over here, the white folks ate over here. Then the next thing he notices in his dream is the big black man taking a bath in his bathtub. Whoa! Whoa! And then not only that, the last thing, the crowning blow was the big black man sleeping in his bed. And God, began to show him his sin, his racial, cultural, theological sin. Now, while they're having worship service, I can't remember, there's only like 20 people coming. I mean, there's nothing happening here. There was a woman who came for the first time to church one Sunday. She came from the bush. And she's listening to the sermon. She's never heard a sermon before. And she obviously didn't understand the protocol. The protocol is, while the preacher's preaching, you be quiet and you listen. She didn't know that. So while he's preaching, she says, Pastor, Pastor, I got a question for you. I got something I want to say. It's like, this is kind of weird. OK, what is it? Pastor, I think we should pray that our church will be like the church in the Book of Acts. And he goes, all right, well why don't you pray that then? So she prayed a little simple prayer. Finished that off, he kept preaching, nothing, you know, nothing happened that day. But they kept praying. And they had found a little house, it was more like a shed, where they had kept horses, I believe it was, or cattle. And they cleared it all out of all the manure and stuff, and that's where they'd pray. little house was right next to the white man's country club. And so they go in there and pray. So now God was doing a great work in Erlo Steggett's life but He wasn't finished with them yet, all right? He hadn't finished them all. And so one Saturday morning he's going to gather there with his Zulu brothers and sisters to pray and there's all of his friends at the golf course. getting ready to tee off. Here's some more friends over here at the tennis court playing, another white friend. And then he's sort of embarrassed. He's going to go into this little shed and he's going to pray with his Zulu brothers and sisters and he's going to be on his knees pouring out his heart to God. He's embarrassed. So he says, I'm going to shut the windows and I'm going to shut the door. I don't want anybody seeing what's going on. So that's what he does, but as he goes in to pray, the Spirit of God speaks to him and says, if you do that, I'm not coming in. He said, all right, Lord. So he opened up the windows, opened up the door. There he is on his knees with his Zulu brothers and sisters praying for hours. Again, I was told this a year and a half ago when I was there. And I've read about this, but this guy gave me some more information. What happened was they're praying on that Saturday morning, and the guy said, it's like standing on a runway, and there at the end of the runway is a big jet airliner starting to take off, and it's coming right at you. It's getting louder and louder and louder. more and more powerful the closer it gets. He said that's what it was like. You could sense something happening. You could hear a sound. It got louder and louder and louder and it came in and filled the room and the room was filled with a rushing wind just like in Acts chapter 2. He said I was there I saw it. And they came out of that prayer meeting and there is the chief witch doctor of the community. standing there who had always been resistant to the gospel. This man falls on his knees and says, would you help me? And they began to pray for this man, the witch doctor. And there were legions of demons in this man. And the demons began to cry out. We know who God is and we know who Jesus is, but the Holy Spirit is too hot for us. Now this seems so odd to us. prayed and all these demons came out of this man. And he became a faithful follower of Jesus. And over the next several months hundreds, hundreds of Zulus who had no interest in Christianity came. They were being healed of disease. Demons were cast out. They went back to that little girl you know a couple of years before. They couldn't do anything. The demons came out of her. And lest you think I'm making this up, you can read all about it. Just get on the internet. You can read all you want to about it. It's a place called Kwasi Zibantu. Kwasi Zibantu in Zulu means a place of refuge. This went on in 1966. It's still going on today. Erlo Steggins is almost 90 years old now, by the way. usually, they built a 10,000 seat auditorium. It burned down a couple of years ago, they rebuilt it. They have a school. They have a college. They have all kinds of farming and fruit trees. They bring in kids who are, who've been murderers, who've been what they call over there, gangsters. like thugs or whatever, that's the word they use, gangsters. And these kids are getting saved and they come in and they put them to work. They have one, I preached at one near Cape Town, that's not the same one, but another one in Cape Town. And it's amazing and what they'll tell these kids is, you've got to go make restitution. If you stole from somebody you've got to go pay it off. And I have a friend who was preaching there recently and they have a choir. a choir of 18 to 22-year-old young Zulu men. Many of them were murderers. And they're all saved now, and they love Jesus. And one or two other stories about this place. So a couple of years ago, there was a young girl there. By the way, They were able to buy this property years ago from a farmer who said, yeah, I'll sell it to you cheap because this is worthless for farming because there's no, you got to have water for irrigation and there's no water here, so I'll sell it to you. So they bought it, this big piece of land. They got all this stuff going on. They've never asked for a dollar. It's all by faith. You can go there right now and you can stay for weeks if you'd like to. They'll put you up. I haven't been yet, but I want to go one day. It's a long way from Cape Town. It's a two-hour flight or whatever. One day this young woman comes to Errol O'Steggin a few years ago and says, God told me there's great wealth under this ground. Again, it seems odd. Look, he's a Lutheran. You know what I'm saying? And she said, there's great wealth. He goes, where? He goes, well, here, I'll show you. So they walk out. And she goes, yep, right there. That's where it is, there's great wealth. He says, OK. He kind of forgot about it. A year or two later, he said, oh yeah, she said there's great wealth right here. So he called up a geologist. He said, I want you to come out here. I want you to drill right there. What are we looking for? I don't know. I'm just told there's great wealth right there, so drill. He drilled down. He hit this massive underground aquifer of pure water. They had this major water bottling operation going on. I've drank the water before. You know, they ship it all over South Africa, these bottles, you know. Boom. They make all kinds of money with this. But here's the thing I want you to understand. This happened because Erlo Steggit and the people there took seriously Isaiah 57, build up, build up, prepare the way. Remove every obstacle out of the way of my people, says the Lord, the high and holy one who lives forever, whose name is holy. For I dwell in a high and holy place, and I dwell in the hearts of the lowly and contrite. to revive the spirits of the lowly and to revive the spirits of the contrite. In Isaiah 56, but to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite and who trembles at my word. The other day I had a young man call me. In fact, it was real late at night. I saw my phone and I said, who is calling me at midnight? Well, the next day he emailed me. He's living in California, 11th grade kid. And we set up a phone conversation. He said, I was just reading your blog from 2011 on the banner of truth. And your title is, You Will Go to Hell. And I'm concerned about that. What do you mean, you will go to hell? And so we went through the whole thing. And I think the kid really is a Christian. But I said, but he was troubled by that. And I said, I said, this is a beautiful thing because God has made you contrite and you tremble at the word of God. That's what we need in our day. The thing that Erlo Steggett and his people came to understand is they had to be humbled, humbled. God hates pride. He hates Racial, cultural, theological pride. You know, a lot of us love our Reformed theology. Is it the most accurate form of theology? Absolutely, I believe that. Man, we could be puffed up with pride, let alone racial and cultural pride. Listen, this cultural, racial pride is everywhere. I was talking, I had a meeting the other day with a guy from Myanmar, Burma. And he's got a bunch of house churches going in Atlanta. And we're talking, I said, so he's, there's like maybe 15 or 20 different groups of, let's see, he's a, not the Karen, I said, he's another tribe of people there. And he said, there's like 30 variations. And I said, so I'm guessing that there's some tension between the different people groups there, even though they're generally of the same tribe. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, we don't get along. I go to India and the Telugu and the Tamil people who live very close to each other in Hyderabad have problems. I mean, this is not just an American thing. This is all over the world. I go to Uganda, there's like 25 tribes. I've been there so many times, I can kind of, okay, he's a Bugisu, he's Teso, he's Buganda. I can kind of look at them and say which one's which, and I know the Pekigorder. I know the Buganda on top. You know, that's the way it is. And God hates that sort of thing. But God can bring revival. And folks, I think you know, I think you would agree with me, if he doesn't bring revival, we have no hope. I mean, I just, I am appalled at where we are as a nation. Absolutely appalled. And we've got to have revival. So what we want to talk about tomorrow is an intolerable burden. that God would give us this intolerable burden. We cannot stand it any longer. And you know the beautiful thing here? God loves to take nobodies from nowhere. Do y'all qualify? So do I. We're nobodies from nowhere. That's what He loves to do. So I want to encourage you. And by the way, and you'll probably hear me say this more tomorrow, I don't know what God is going to do with our nation. We're here to pray. We're to seek God for revival. We pray He'll bring revival to this nation. We pray He'd bring it to New Jersey, to Somerset, and to the other areas around here. Yes, by all means. But I don't know what He's going to do. I don't know what He's going to do in your church. But I can tell you this, you can have revival individually every day. There's no reason not to, every day, filled with the Holy Spirit. And what I would love to see happen, wouldn't you? I would love to see this great, solid, reformed, Calvinistic theology that we believe is so powerful, but it tends to be in our heads. You know, it's not in our hearts a lot of times. Because it's not in our hearts, it's not in our hands and feet. We don't do anything with it. What I want to see is God wed this great theology with the power of the Holy Spirit. When you have that, you've got a powerful, dynamic movement that God can do great things. That's what we're about. That's what we want to see happen here at this church. We want to see it happen in individual lives. We'll have more to say about that tomorrow, so we hope you'll come. We'd love for you to come the whole time. I know sometimes it's difficult, but you come and you stay as long as you can. Again, I hope it's the whole time, but don't let, well, I can only stay half a day, so I won't come. No, no, no, no, no, no. You come. You come as long as you can. And let's expect God to meet us tomorrow. Let's pray together. Father, we pray. in the name of Jesus, thanking you for your mercy and your grace. Lord, you have saved us. You have delivered us from the domain of darkness, and you have transferred us into the kingdom of your beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins. This is astonishing, Lord. Sometimes we forget what we were like. You've been very merciful. So, Lord, I ask that you would meet us powerfully tomorrow Thank you for these dear saints who've come out tonight. And we pray that you'd bless them. We pray that your spirit would fall upon us tomorrow and on Sunday and in the weeks ahead. Lord, do a mighty work. We thank you, Father, for this church. We thank you for its great history. And Lord, we pray that you would do whatever you need to do in each of us, Lord, that we'd come today and tomorrow and say, Lord, have your way with me. Do whatever it is you need to do. Clean out, Lord, whatever it is in my life that's not right. Because, Lord, you're a merciful God. You tell us if we confess our sins, you are faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's amazing. Your grace is always greater than our sin, but we must repent. So Lord meet us. Thank you for these dear saints. Thank you for Jesus. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thanks for coming out tonight. Amen. Amen.