All right, let's go ahead and get started if we can. So I have a very, very difficult task right now. We've all had lunch. I know how that goes. If I'm sitting there, I'm having a hard time staying awake, all right? So I get it, but I'll do my best to keep you awake. So what I want to talk about now are the 10 marks of the revival culture. Now, my understanding is that the Book of Acts, what's going on in the Book of Acts is normative. In other words, that's what should be going on in today's church. And there's a great movement of God going on in the Book of Acts. So when we talk about revival prayer, we want to pray that God would bring into our churches the 10 marks of the revival culture. And I'm going to state these and explain and illustrate them. They all come from the book of Acts. These are things for which you should pray concerning your church. You should pray that God will bring these 10 marks to your church. And they all begin with the modifier, mighty. Mighty praying is number one. You see that throughout the book of Acts. So in Luke chapter 24, just prior to Jesus's ascension, after his resurrection, he gathers his disciples together again. He's been with them a number of times over the previous 40 days. And he's with them, he gives them his marching orders, as it were. We see a version of that in Matthew 28. But now in Luke chapter 24, he says to his disciples, I want you to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins in all of the world, beginning right here in Jerusalem. Their task is to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In Acts chapter 20, as he's speaking with the elders at Miletus, who are from Ephesus, he says, I did not shrink from declaring to you anything profitable in teaching you publicly and from house to house, testifying solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God, preaching the repentance toward faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance toward God. in faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. So he's urging them to preach to all the nations, beginning right there in Jerusalem. But then he says this, wait in the city until you've been clothed with power from on high. Now remember this, the disciples had been with Jesus for three years. They had seen him perform all manner of miracles. healing people of disease, casting out demons, raising people from the dead, feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread and a few fish. They'd seen him perform all of that. Not only that, they'd been with him for three years, and they said he never sinned. We were with him for three years. I got news for you. If you're hanging out with me for a while, you'll eventually say, oh, yeah, he's a sinner. Oh, yeah, I see that. We all have it. Jesus never sinned. Furthermore, they heard him preach these amazing messages, the Sermon on the Mount, the Olivet Discourse, the messages from John 14 through John 17. All of that, they heard all of that. In other words, not only that, but Jesus had appointed them to be apostles. He had set them apart. If anybody is ready to do ministry, you would think it's these men. Well prepared, called by Jesus himself, and yet he says to them, don't even think about it. Don't even think about going out and preaching until you've been clothed with power from on high. The word power is the Greek word dunamis, where we get the word dynamite. They must have the anointing. They must have power, even though they were well-trained and well-prepared. Then, similarly, in Acts 1, verse 8, again, right before his ascension, He says, you shall receive power, there it is again, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be my witnesses, and the Greek word for witness is martyr, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth. You shall receive power. Then, in Joel chapter two, Joel is prophesying, he says, that the Holy Spirit will be poured out on all mankind. Young men will prophesy dreams and old men will dream visions. They will prophesy, the Holy Spirit will come upon them. Then Jesus ascends into heaven, right before the very eyes of his disciples. Then we're told that for 10 days, these men and 120 people, including the women, gathered together in the upper room, And they prayed for 10 days. Remember, Daniel prayed for 12 hours. Ezra and Nehemiah prayed for days. These people are praying for 10 days. Now, here's the question. What were they praying for? What were they praying about? We're not told. But I can tell you, we know what it is when you put it all together. Luke chapter 24, Acts chapter 1, Joel chapter 2. Listen very carefully. These men who were well-prepared, well-trained, had been set apart for Jesus, they were told, don't go until you've got the power. They were praying for power. They knew they had to have Holy Spirit power. Because I want you to understand something. This work that God has called to do is utterly impossible. None understand, none seek for God, all have turned aside. Together they've all become useless. There's not one righteous, there's not even one. When we went to Connecticut in the fall of 2003, we got our little group of six families together. And I said, now listen, only 1% evangelical in the state of Connecticut. We're in liberal West Hartford. It's 30% Jewish, very affluent, very, very liberal. I said, I'm going to go ahead and put it straight to you. They're not buying what we're selling. They have no interest. So the only way we're going to make it is to pray and evangelize. There's no other way. So what are we praying for? We're praying for power. And so after I'd been there a couple of months, we had an all-night prayer meeting, from nine o'clock on Friday night to five o'clock on Saturday morning. We did a few of those. Those are hard. Along about three o'clock in the morning, it's really tough, I'll tell you. Then we said, okay, let's do like from eight o'clock Friday night to midnight, like once a month. See, I'm trying to make it difficult. And then we finally settled in on seven o'clock 730, I believe it was, to 9 o'clock every Sunday night after we had these community groups. And Greg and Laura used to come up from where they were in Connecticut. Mark's been there a few times. I think George has probably been there as well. And we prayed. And we always prayed for four things. I said, we don't need to take time for prayer requests. I said, here's what we're praying for. We're praying for lost people. We're praying by name for lost people. Number two, we're praying for revival. We're praying for our missionaries. And we're praying for church planting and church revitalization. So we would stand around in my kitchen for a little while drinking coffee or whatever. And at 8 o'clock, we'd start praying. And we'd pray for an hour. And God would give us great unction in our prayers. There'd be anywhere from 10 to 15 to 20 people there every week. And then after a few years, I got the idea, because I used to do this in South Africa, why don't we have a one-week evangelistic intensive? That's what I used to do in Cape Town, South Africa, with a college ministry there. Let's just go all out in evangelism for a whole week. So we brought Mark Grasso in, George came, a bunch of people from the church at Upper Darby came, some people from Birmingham came, and they would train our people in evangelism. And we would, first of all, the first couple of years, we'd go into the north end of Hartford, which is a really, really tough place. I mean, a couple of years after we've been going there, I was watching one of these documentaries on TV, and they're talking about drug wars, and they're talking about Hartford being a drug capital. I said, and I start looking, I look and I said, I've been right there. I know exactly where that is. It was a rough place. But you know, we found people really open to the gospel. You know, when you're in difficulty, when your community's in trouble, somehow or another, God begins to humble you, and you begin to realize, we have a great need. These people are really open. And we took our people down there because we knew they were open, and it was a great training ground for evangelism. But after a couple of years, I said, now we got to step it up a little bit. We're going to make it really difficult. We're going to go into fashionable, 95% white West Hartford, affluent, liberal West Hartford. And we went door to door in West Hartford. One funny story about that, Martin knows where I'm going with this. Mark brought a couple of people with him from his church. One woman's name's Betty. Betty's Ugandan. And I love Betty. In fact, when I was in Uganda one time, I was preaching, believe it, I was preaching to 50,000 people. And I finished preaching, and Betty says, Al, Al, I couldn't believe it. Turned around, there's Betty. I said, what are you doing here? You're supposed to be in Philadelphia. No, I got a home here, too. So I took tea at her house the next day. It was pretty amazing. Anyway, so Betty is on my team. We're going door to door in this very affluent area of West Hartford. Also, there was with us an elder from the church, a man named Shabu. He's from India. So there's Betty in her traditional African garb. She had the long dress on. She had something in her hair. There I am in my traditional American dress, a polo shirt. And then here's Shabu, Indian fella, with a big black beard and some long white gown on, his traditional Indian garb. And we're going door to door, and nobody wants to hear us. I knock on the door. Hey, please get away. And Betty said, these people are so rude. I said, yeah, they're usually. Yeah, but they seem to be more rude than normal. I said, this is really something. Then I said, wait a second. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Look at the way y'all look, Shibu. Look at you, you got this big black beard going, you got this long white gown. You know what, Shibu? They don't know the difference between an Indian and a Middle Easterner. They think you're a terrorist. That's why they're not letting us through the door. Next time you come here, you got to get rid of the white gown. You know? But the point is, is it was powerful. And people say, did anybody come to Jesus in West Hartford and join your church through those activities? And the answer is no. Well, then it must have been a failure. No, not at all. For several reasons. First of all, God's word never returns empty. It always accomplishes what he desires. Paul says sometimes the word is a saver of life unto life or a death unto death. So when people hear the word and they reject it, it's on their head. But secondly, secondly, God did bring conversions in other ways. The next to the last Sunday I was there, we had 16 people join our church, and 12 were by profession of faith. Here's my point. This is why I stress personal evangelism to churches. Because you see, if you're faithful, God will give you converts. The Father, listen to this, the Father chooses people before the foundation of the world to be saved. Election. In due time, 2,000 years ago, Jesus died on the cross for those elect. Now, the Holy Spirit will apply the electing grace of God through Jesus Christ to people in a particular place and time. He knows he's going to do it, but he always works through people. So when it's that person's time, the Holy Spirit will direct that person to someone who will share Jesus with them. That's why Mark Grosso and George Petronius see conversions all the time, because they're faithful. That's exactly what it is. They're there, they're available. And so that's what I, that's what I say to people. You don't be faithful, but it all starts with prayer because I, you know, we just, we, we say this, but it's really true. Listen, they're dead. Don't be mad at them. They're dead. You know, when you go to a funeral, you ask the corpse, hey, would you like a sandwich? And nothing happens. Don't go, you stupid idiot. Why don't you eat the sandwich? Well, they're dead. What do you expect, right? So when you give the gospel to somebody, of course they're not interested. Of course they despise what you're saying. Don't worry about it. And besides that, 2 Corinthians 4 says they've been blinded by the devil. They can't see the truth. And you couldn't see it either until God had mercy, right? So you've got to pray. And here's the beautiful thing. What I would tell our people, listen, they're dead. They're not buying what they're selling. We've got to pray. It gives you boldness. You go, what do I have to lose? Let's go out there, where are those people the Holy Spirit's prepared? Where are those people whom the Father's chosen before the foundation of the world? Let's go out there and see who they are. And you go out with a sense of expectancy. Ooh, that one might be one. Oh, here's another one over here, perhaps. We don't know, so we go out. But it all starts with praying, and that's what you see in the book of Acts. Mighty pray. Number two, the second mark. of a revival culture is mighty preaching. Now, in the Reformed church today, I don't see a lot of mighty preaching. I see a lot of good teaching. I see a lot of good lecturing. But what I don't see is preaching. Now, what's the difference? Teaching is important. Teaching is a dissemination of information. We need good information. But preaching is to the heart. It's not to the mind merely. It's not to the will. Those flow from that. But it's to the heart. And you'll never change somebody by just addressing their head. It's got to reach their heart. For example, I have a six-year-old grandson. Let's say that Avery comes to our house and he spends the night and I say, Avery, do you know how to make up your bed? No, Oma, I don't know how to make up my bed. They call me Oma, which I was okay with until one time I was on a plane coming back from Europe and I was watching a movie that was in Dutch, but I was reading the American subscripts and I noticed that they kept using the word Oma and then I noticed that Oma is the Dutch word for grandmother. It's locked in now. They call me Oma all the time. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm a Dutch grandmother, I guess. Anyway, so let's say that Avery's at our house and I said, you know how to make up your bed? No Oma. I said, okay, look, here's how you do it. I show him exactly what to do. I said, now let's practice. So he practices making up the bed. Now he knows how to make up his bed. He has it in his head. But here's my question to you. Does that mean that it necessarily translates into Avery, in fact, actually making up his bed? And the answer is no. Why not? Because it's got to be something he wants to do in his heart. So the preacher has to preach to the heart. And that's what you find Peter doing. Peter, I remind you, is a coward. denied Jesus three times, and some little 14-year-old girl said, hey, weren't you with Jesus? No, not me. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you were. You've got a Galilean accent. I'm pretty sure you're down here in Jerusalem, but you got the wrong accent for right here. I think you were with Jesus. No, I wasn't. And then he curses him a third time. I don't know who you're talking about. And yet 40 days later, the Holy Spirit comes on him, and he preaches with boldness. So what you should pray. For Greg and your pastors is that they have the anointing of the Holy Spirit on them. What is the anointing? It's hard to define. You just know it when you see it. God speaks through the preacher to the individual, and they know that God is dealing with them. Here's another thing. In teaching, you're merely giving out information. In preaching, you're preaching for a verdict. The preacher is to be like a prosecuting attorney. He's a covenant prosecutor. Now, if I am a prosecutor for the state of New Jersey, and you have been indicted on some kind of corruption charge, and I am appointed to that case, then my job as a prosecuting attorney is to put you away for 20 years. That's my job. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to garner all of the information, all of the evidence, all of the witnesses that I can to bring that to bear so that the jury is convinced, they are convicted that you in fact are guilty as charged. So that's the job of the preacher. He's to preach the law of God to the unbeliever, first of all. He's looking for what? A conviction. He wants him to be convicted, not just to feel terrible about himself. because later on he's going to come in with the good news of the gospel. But you got to start there. The same way the preacher is a coveted prosecutor to the believer, the third use of the law. He's speaking to the Christians like I was doing this morning. Have you left your first love? Well, if you're a Christian, you have the first love, but did you leave your first love? So a preacher is preaching for conviction. He's wanting a verdict. Now once that happens, then he becomes The defense attorney. Then he comes and says, well, listen now, listen. If you embrace Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, he will forgive you. Yes, you are guilty, but he will forgive you. And if you're a Christian and now God has shown you your sin and he's brought conviction upon you, then you also need to repent, not for salvation, you already have that, but in order to be clean with God once again. So that's what preaching is to do. Think of it like this. We've never had more good information than we do now. Through the internet, you can get all the great sermons. You can get guys reading the sermons of Augustine, Calvin, and everybody else. We've got all this information. We've got all these Bible conferences. We've got Bible colleges. We've got online seminaries. All of these things, and these are all great. There's a lot of garbage on there, of course, but there's a lot of good. And you would think if knowledge was merely the only thing we needed, that we would have a revival going on in this nation, that everyone would be seeking after God. But that's not happening. Why? Because knowledge is not enough. And the only way, the only way that you can preach to the heart is when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Listen, when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, whether you're a preacher or not, three things happen. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit, even as an individual, people come under conviction, sometimes by your very life. I remember a couple of years ago when we were at the PEF conference, and I think Tony was there, if I'm not mistaken, and I was with Dr. Krabendom, and there was a well-known preacher that was preaching there. And he said to Henry, he says, I've always been intimidated by you. And what he meant by that was he's such a holy man. He's just zealous, you know? And this guy's saying, I'm coming up short. I'm not what you are, you see? So that can happen to an individual. So when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, you do what the Holy Spirit does. The Holy Spirit convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. The Holy Spirit is also the one who regenerates people. You've got to be born of the Spirit. So when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, sooner or later, somebody gets saved. That's the way it works. And then not only that, but you're also, the Holy Spirit gives you the fruit of the Spirit. So when you're living out your life and you're speaking truth into people's lives, Christians begin to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. They grow in sanctification, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, holiness, and so forth. That's what happens in a person's life. So what I urge you to do is pray for your preachers to have the anointing and that they would preach, that they would not just be satisfied with, I gave a good exegetical sermon. It's right down the line, it's orthodox, it's reformed, it's exegetical and all of that. It's good, that's the foundation. But pray that the God, the Holy Spirit will pierce the hearts of people. In a revival culture, there's mighty praying, There's mighty preaching. And number three, there's mighty conversions. In John chapter 14, Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, he believes in me, the works that I do shall he do, and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father. Now, I don't think that's talking about doing greater miracles than Jesus. I don't think we can do that. I don't think it's talking about greater holiness than Jesus. He's perfect and we're not. So what's it talking about? There's no indication, although we can never always use an argument from silence, but there's no indication that Jesus saw many, many people converted. For example, in John chapter six, there was a large crowd following him and he says, unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you have no part with me. What happened? They all left him. And Jesus said, you guys going to lead me to Peter? He said, no, where else are we going to go, Lord? You alone have the words of eternal life. But almost everybody else had left him. And when he's hanging on the cross, there's only one of his disciples. Everybody else has run away. There's a few women there. I mean, there's no indication that he had lots of conversions. And yet there's Peter, when the Holy Spirit comes upon him, he preaches. And on one day, the day of Pentecost, at least 3,000 were saved. A few days later, we're told there were 5,000 in the church. And then we're told that people were gathered to the church every day, as many as the Lord was calling to himself. In a revival culture, there are many conversions. Now, I was converted in 1972. I don't know that I would call 1966 to 1972 a full out revival, but I can tell you this, there were thousands of people converted in the United States during that period of time. In 1972, the Southern Baptist Convention had 350,000 adult baptisms, the most they've ever had in the history of that church. There was a movement of God going on. There were people getting saved all over the place. It started on the West Coast. during the days of the hippies and the drug culture, and it began to make its way all the way across the United States. A movement of God. In a revival culture, lots of people getting saved. I mentioned earlier about India, 30,000 a day. I've been working in these churches there, and just the last year we baptized 98 adults out of Hinduism into Christianity. And when you get baptized in a Hindu culture, it's a big deal. It's a huge, I'm turning away from all that I know and I'm following Jesus. There's a revival culture in South America and Africa and many, many other places. We don't have it going on right now because we're not seeing conversion. I know some church say, oh, I had all these people say, well, if they're saved, it ought to be changing things. And it's not. So that's how I know it's not real. But in a revival culture, Mighty praying, mighty preaching, mighty conversions, and number four, mighty assemblies. In Acts chapter four, it says the people were gathered together, and they were praying, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. And the place where they were gathered together was shaken. And they began to speak the word of God with what? Boldness. In a revival culture, there's a mighty assembly. Now, here's what I mean. That doesn't mean that it's just an emotional experience. It means that you sense the presence of God there. I have a friend, I was telling this story one time, and he's from First Presbyterian Church in Macon, Georgia, and he's the pastor there. It's a typical well-to-do downtown church, and he took a bunch of people with him to Cuba one time. And he said the church people had been praying for a week, because the pastor's wife was dying of cancer. And they came to the church on Sunday morning. People, like I said, had been gathered for many, many days praying. And he says, they walked in the back door, and there was a place for them to sit in the front. It's just a small church, maybe a couple hundred people. And they walked down, and he says, by the time we got to the front, we were all crying, tears flowing down our faces. He said, you could feel the presence of God there. Now, my great preacher that I love the most is Martin Lloyd-Jones. A lot of y'all have been so encouraged by his ministry. Back in 1997, we took about 20 young people with us to Cambridge, England to do an outreach there. And it was a young man that was working on his doctorate. He's one of the top transplant surgeons in the world now. He was doing some research there at Cambridge. He and his wife were attending this Baptist church. He says, listen. We went with him that Sunday morning. He says, I want you to come over to our house Sunday night, our flat. We've got something. We've got a treat for you. I said, OK. We get over there Sunday night, my wife and I. And there at this little meeting is the Lord and Lady Catherwood themselves. And you're saying, OK, who is Lord Catherwood? who is Lady Catherwood. Well, I don't care who Lord Catherwood was, but Lady Catherwood is the daughter of Martin Lloyd-Jones, the great Welsh preacher. And this guy knew that I would be wanting to talk to him. So I kind of monopolized the next hour and a half. I'm asking her one question after another about her father, about his ministry, because I've read all about it. And I was so interested. She was filling me in on all this stuff. I said, listen, I have one more question for you. Ian Murray, in the second volume of his biography, says that there was a revival going on. Actually, it was the first volume. There was a revival going on at Aberavon, his first church. Tell me about it. She goes, well, it started when I was only about three or four years old. So I don't remember all of that about it, but she says, I do remember this. You could feel the presence of God in there. And then Murray tells the story of this, A fortune teller on her way to a seance one Sunday night, and she hears the bells of the church ringing, and she decides she's going to go in. She just feels drawn to the church. And so she goes in and sits on the back row. Lloyd-Jones always preached evangelistic sermons on Sunday night. And she listens, and she's intrigued, and she starts coming back every Sunday night for a year. This fortune teller involved in seances. in touch with evil spirits and so forth. Finally, she's converted and she joins the church and she's baptized and Lord Jones says, tell us what was it that drew you to the church? She said, the first time I came in, I could sense a clean spirit in this place. And I got news for you. When the Holy Spirit in revival comes down upon a church, it doesn't matter what your worship style is. None of that matters. What matters is you sense the presence of God. And unbelievers, according to 1 Corinthians 14, will come in there and watch what's going on. They want to see power. And I believe we can have that if we'll seek it and believe it. You know what our problem is? Most of us in our reformed churches, we know all this stuff. We know we should pray, but we really don't expect anything to happen. That's what I've noticed. We should expect things to happen. When children pray, they expect things to happen. Years ago when we were in Georgia pastoring a church, we had this single man coming to church, or excuse me, he was a missionary, and he was there for a missions conference. And at the end of the conference, I said, we did a Q&A time, I said, so okay, so Tim, is there anything we can pray for you about? Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I'd like to have a wife. He was like 30 years old, single. I said, okay, we'll start praying for you to have a wife. And over the next month or two, there were a couple of mothers in the church who said, you know, my five-year-old boy's been praying every night since that meeting for Tim to have a wife. And so about a year and a half later, Tim calls me. He's back in the United States. I said, how are things going? He says, great. He goes, by the way, I'm getting married next month. I said, I told him what happened. I said, I want you to call. Here's the numbers. I want you to call these two little boys and tell them that you're getting married because they've been praying for you for every night. And he called them. And you know what? They didn't jump up and down with joy. They said, oh, great. That's good. We expected that. Isn't that right? They expect that. And Jesus says we're to be like little children. The older we get, we get cynical, okay? Little children just believe God. That's how we should be. So one of the things I want you to get from this is you should pray for power and expect it to come down on your preacher. Now you know what we'll do? We all tend to move away from it, okay? We can get very motivated, but you know, the world starts working on us. The next thing you know, we're kind of off where we ought to be. You know what our biggest problem is? We suffer the affliction of affluence. All of us. I don't care what our economic status is, compared to the rest of the world, we are very rich, all of us. And so now my brothers and sisters in India suffer the affliction of poverty, and it is real, and it is a problem. But we suffer the affliction of affluence. What do I mean? Well, we just have a lot of options. Back in the 1950s, the organization that I'm with and George and Mark are with, PPF, Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship, used to have 12 or 13 men who would travel all over the United States and they would preach Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday through Friday morning of Bible study, Monday through Friday night preaching, and then Saturday and Sunday. They'd have like eight or nine days of meetings, morning and evening. And during about the middle of the week, people start getting saved in these churches. Now, what do you think would happen today if I said, yes, I'll come to your church, but what I would like is for all of your people in the church to be committed to come every morning at 6.30 a.m. and every night for eight days. People say, that's not going to happen. Why is that? It doesn't necessarily mean that because people are worldly, we just have a lot of other stuff going on. Back in the 1950s, there was no color television. Hardly anybody had one. Most people didn't travel much. They stayed right there. Most people didn't have a whole lot of money. There wasn't a whole lot of options. Girls didn't play sports at all. Boys played maybe basketball, baseball, or football. That was it. Now, I'm not being, I'm not criticizing or anything, but now, you know, we've got music lessons. We've got dance lessons. We got baseball. We got soccer. We got all this stuff going on. They're not bad things. We got all the media stuff going on, all these things that suck up our time. The good becomes the enemy of the best. So that's the affliction of affluence. But what we've got to have is a mighty movement of God. And when God, when you ask for the Holy Spirit to come down and to fill the presence of your church service, then people will come because they want to be there. And that will override all this other stuff. In a time of revival, mighty praying, mighty preaching, mighty conversions, mighty assemblies, number five, mighty holiness. Those of us who are elders know that we're dealing with spiritual and emotional problems all the time in churches. I remember when I pastored churches, there was one couple in particular, and our church in Georgia, I'll bet you over a period of three years, I'll bet you we spent a thousand man hours in trying to help this family. They were just, the woman couldn't keep her mouth shut. The man was rude and harsh. I mean, the whole family was utter dysfunction. Now, listen, they knew the Bible. Boy, they knew that Westminster Confession. I'm going to tell you the truth. They knew it all, but boy, their lives were a mess and we're dealing with them all the time. And the church is still having trouble with them even to this day. In a revival, that stuff goes away. I'm not saying that people don't sin, but the major problems go away because people are seeking after holiness. And there's unity in the church, and people, they put away these secondary issues because they're focused in on Christ. That's holiness. Mighty holiness. In a revival culture, there's also mighty generosity. It says that the people there in the church held all things together, and they shared with one another. Not socialism or communism. They wanted to. There's two people in the book of Acts referred to as having the fullness of the Spirit. When you talk about the fullness of the Spirit, that gives you the impression their lives are characterized by the Holy Spirit. They're dominated by the Spirit. You cannot explain them apart from the Holy Spirit. And those two people, first of all, the first one's Barnabas, the son of encouragement. It says that he had the fullness of the spirit that he gave his possessions away. He didn't have to, but he just gave it away. Why? Because he just wanted to, because he loved Jesus. That's why. There's another man who's referred to as having the fullness of the spirit. His name is Stephen. What did he give away? He gave his life away for the sake of the gospel. In a revival culture, people hold their money and their time loosely. It's not that important to them. You know what I've discovered the older I get? It's pretty easy just to write a check for a ministry. What's hard is to give up my time. The older we get, we love our time, you know? Well, in a revival culture, people just give it up. because they see God at work. Mighty generosity. And when you've got a revival going on, the church has enough money. You know, the missionaries have enough money. The local church workers have enough money to do the work they need to do. In a revival culture, there's not only mighty generosity, but number seven, there's mighty personal evangelism. In Acts chapter 8, when the disciples are dispersed because of persecution, the apostles stay behind, you get the impression that God thrust them out because they're hanging in Jerusalem too long. Because you remember earlier, he says, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, right in that area, Judea, Samaria, and the innermost parts of the earth. Well, now by Acts chapter 8, they're still hanging out in Jerusalem. Well, they're not doing what they're supposed to do. So God brought a persecution and drove them out. And now it says in Acts 8, verse 4, that they went about, and the Greek word is evangelizing. Not just the apostles or the evangelists, everybody's evangelizing. And when you look at 1 Peter chapter 2, it says, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you might proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You were once not a people, but now you are a people. You once did not receive mercy, now you have received mercy. Now, who's he talking about? Well, some people would say, well, you know, Matthew 28 is talking about the apostles, so maybe today you could say, The church elders or the evangelists are supposed to be doing evangelism. But in 1 Peter 1, he starts off by saying, those who have been dispersed, who are the called, who have been kept in Jesus Christ, who have been sprinkled with his blood, in other words, everybody. All of us are to proclaim Jesus. And you see, we tend not to do that, but when the Holy Spirit comes, when there's a mighty revival culture, everybody's talking about Jesus. You can't help it. You read back in those times of revival, you'll see that the Fulton Street revival I was talking about last night in New York City, Those men would come out of that noonday prayer meeting, and they'd just go out telling people about Jesus. They were filled with the Spirit. Listen, when you're filled with the Spirit, you do what the Spirit does. You can't help it. And here, again, just to remind you, I don't know what God's going to do in the church, I don't know what He's going to do in the community or our nation, but you and I can have revival every day in our personal lives. What do you do? Wouldn't you blow it? Wouldn't you get sidetracked? God, I've gone back to folly again. Lord, please forgive me." And you repent, and you say, fill me with the Spirit, and He'll do so, and you move on your way. All right? Mighty personal evangelism. Number eight is mighty societal impact. When true revival comes, a community, a city, a nation are transformed. Acts chapter 19, Paul's at Ephesus. This is a place of satanic worship. They're worshiping the false goddess Diana. One of the ancient, one of the wonders of the ancient world was there, the temple of Diana. Archaeologists tell us it was about 300 feet long. About 150 feet wide. It had 69 columns. They were about 60 feet high. Many of them were gilded with gold and silver. This was a magnificent structure. And people would come from all over that general area to worship this false goddess and to be involved in sexual immorality in the name of this false goddess. It was a wicked, vile place. There was also a problem of demonic possession. It was rampant in the area. There were many exorcists plying their trade, trying to cast out demons and so forth. They even had a book called the Ephesian Writings. that had all these sayings and canticles and things you say in order to kind of ward off the demons. In fact, interestingly enough, Shakespeare, 1500 years later, refers to this book in one of his plays, and he refers to it as the Ephesian writings. Everybody knew about it. Paul comes into this area, and he says, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? They said, we don't even know if there's a Holy Spirit. He laid his hands on them, they received the Holy Spirit, they began to speak in tongues. Now, what were they speaking? Well, you go back to Acts chapter 2, they were speaking other languages. That's like me going to Russia and all of a sudden start preaching in Russian without any training at all. That's what's going on. When it says in Acts chapter 8 that they also began to speak in tongues, or in chapter 19 they began to speak in tongues, We know it's the same type of tongue because how you use a word in the beginning of a conversation, unless you delineate it using it in some other way, you automatically assume it's still going to be used the other way. So that's what's going on in Acts chapter 8 and Acts chapter 19. They're speaking other languages. Now, there's demons everywhere. And Paul is going around casting out demons. And you probably know the story, one of the more humorous stories in the Bible. So these seven sons of a man named Sceva, he probably is a false prophet. They're checking out Paul. Ooh, I see how he's doing it. Oh, so they find this man who's demon-possessed. And they say, they walk up to this man with all these demons in him. In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, come out of him. What do the demons say? Paul, we know. Jesus, we know. But who are you? and they attack the man, these men. And these men are stripped naked and they run away in embarrassment and shame. Paul had the real thing. Paul's handkerchief would be touched on people and they would be healed. And that's where some of these guys today try to get that same idea, but they're not Paul, all right? They don't have the anointing like Paul did. But the point is that as Paul's preaching, People are getting saved. So many people are getting saved that they are turning in and the witch, these people, these exorcists are getting saved. They're taking all the fetishes they use in worship. They're bringing them all together. The Ephesian writing books, all these very valuable books that are helping them. They put them in a pile and they burn them. That's the first book burning. You know, what they're saying is we're departing from all the stuff of our past. We're seeking after Jesus. We're putting all that behind us. So many people are being saved that the silver industry is going south. You see the silversmiths were making trinkets of Diana and selling them. Nobody's buying them anymore because everybody's getting saved. They don't want that kind of stuff. So now they've got a real problem. This has been a destination religious place. They make an all kind of money on the tourist trade. That's going away. Now the silversmith industry is going away. And the people, the Chamber of Commerce is really upset. We've got to do something about this. They stir up the crowd. A riot breaks out in a sports stadium of some sort. Archaeologists tell us that there was, in fact, a sports stadium in Ephesus. It's had about 25,000 people. And it says there, Luke tells us they're there for two hours and they're crying out. Deanna of the Ephesians is the greatest. They're going on for two hours. They'd be like us today. Beyonce's the greatest. Beyonce's the greatest. That's what's going on. They're looking for Paul to kill him. If they could find him, they would kill him. In other words, The gospel changed everything. You know what that'd be like today? Every year I go to Salt Lake City where all the Mormons are and we preach there. That'd be like the Holy Spirit falling on Salt Lake City and the whole Mormon religious industry collapses and there's nobody buying it anymore. And those big, huge buildings in that big temple, in that temple square area, is turned into a gospel generating worldwide evangelistic ministry. That's what they'd be like. By the way, when I was in Salt Lake City in August, I was with a couple of street preachers. And we go down on a Sunday afternoon into the temple square area. We're going to the little museum there. And I like to street preach, but these guys, these guys are really fervent. They look around, you could tell they're like a thoroughbred horse in the gate, ready to run. I said, you guys want to preach, don't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, you know, you preach, they're going to shut you up and put you in jail like 15 seconds. Well, they didn't preach, but we started witnessing to people, passing out gospel tracts. We walk out of there. A few minutes later, five men dressed in suits came up to us and said, were you men inside there? What were you doing? Well, we're talking to people. What were you talking to them about? And one of the guys with us, by the way, had been an elder in the Mormon church for 20 years. He got saved. He's now an elder in the PCA church. It's amazing. Now you talk about a guy who knows that menace, you know, Mormonism. He does. And so they say, well, you're not supposed to be doing that. And this PCA elder, he used to be a Mormon, says, wait just a second. You say that you're a church of Jesus Christ. We're a church of Jesus. Why can't we speak here? What's the problem? We're not going to get into theological arguments with you. So we went on to another place and we're witnessing some more. One guy can't, he can't, he can't stop. He just has to tell people about Jesus. And finally they said, you guys got to leave. You got to get out of here. But if God would pour out his spirit and bring about a great awakening in Salt Lake City, that's what it would be like. The whole city's transformed. That's what was happening in Ephesus. My dear friends, that's mighty societal impact. And if God chooses to do that, then look, there's nothing wrong with the political process. There is a place for that, but it never works. In the end of the day, it just never works. I remember, I remember when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, my evangelical friends said, now we're going to overturn Roe v. Wade. We're going to see this amazing things happen. 1994, the contract in America and all those Republicans were put in Congress. Now we're going to see the repeal of all these wicked laws. That didn't happen. We're worse off now than ever. That's not going to get it done. All that legislation can do is restrain evil. My illustration is this. 1964 Civil Rights Act, that was a good thing. Absolutely good thing. It forbid businesses from not serving black people. That was going on. I remember it. I remember it vividly. I was like nine or ten years old, but I remember all that going down. That's a good thing to have that law. But that law will never cause a white man to love a black man. or vice versa, it won't. The only thing that can really do that is Jesus Christ in our hearts. He changes all that, right? That's the need. That's the need. So in a revival culture, there is a mighty societal impact. Number nine, there's mighty leadership. Have you noticed how God raises up the apostles? Then he raises up all these workers who go around with Paul. At the end of Paul's letter to the Romans, he mentions many of them. He's always talking about them. Colossians 4, he mentions several of them as well. Archippus, Epaphroditus, Epaphras, Timothy, all these guys are mentioned. In a revival culture, there's plenty of pastors to go around. There's plenty of missionaries. There's plenty of Sunday school teachers. There's plenty of nursery workers. I mean, you've got everything you need in a revival culture. God raises up these people. By the way, you see that happening right now in China. Probably you've heard, maybe you've heard of the Back to Jerusalem movement. The 1040 window, this area of the map from China back to Jerusalem is where all of the major unreached people groups of the world now exist. Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and that whole area. And there's a couple of Chinese pastors who spent together about 50 years in prison because of their faith. They're now out of prison. They're old men now. And they believe that as you look at the history of the world, you can see that the gospel has sort of moved westward, generally speaking. And now it's come back around to China. But there's this large area between China and Jerusalem where the gospel generally has not penetrated. There are some exceptions, of course, but that's generally where it is. And these men have a vision of God raising up thousands of Chinese missionaries to go into these areas and preach the gospel. By the way, I have a couple of friends who are very far up with the National Christian Foundation. They help people give their money away. And they've been to China a number of times talking to billionaire Christian Chinese businessmen who are having a hard time getting their money out of the country. because they want to give it away to the work of the gospel. And my friends are helping them figure out how to do that. And what they want to do is they want to fund these missionaries to go all in these areas and preach the gospel. And listen, I'm a white guy. I probably couldn't get in there, but these Chinese people can, you see. And then somebody said, well, look, these could be very, very hostile environments. Aren't you afraid? And these Chinese pastors who've been beaten and put in prison for 50 years, they said very humbly, well, no, we've sort of gone through that already. They're not worried about it, you know? Amazing, you know? But in a revival, and that's what God's doing. In that culture, God's raising these people up. I go to India, and I say, every time I went there, I said, all right, I want to see you double the next time we're here, you know? When I went there the first time two years ago, we had seven churches. And then we had, now we've got 23. Now we got another 47 preaching stations. And our goal is to have 100 churches in 10 years. It's a revival culture. In a revival period, God raises up the laborers. They just want to go. But number 10, the 10th mark of a revival culture is mighty opposition. Now, if you're seeking God in prayer, and you're preachers preaching with power, and you're seeing conversions, and there's mighty assemblies, and there's holiness of life that's beginning to transform the society, and there is holiness, and there's generosity, and everybody's telling people about Jesus. You got all these people going out. I promise you there's gonna be opposition. And one of the major opponents to revival is you and me. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked man forsake his ways, the evil man his thoughts. Draw near to God, he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. To this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit and who trembles at my word. You will seek me and you will find me if you search for me with what? All your heart. Believe that. If you seek him, he will let you find him. Seek him every day, individually. And whatever happens around you, you can have power. Your church can have power. Our problem is we go back to folly. And God knows that, so that's why we have to repent every day. You can have revival every day, so can I. A second opponent to revival is the devil. Now, you know, when you're asleep, it's like the old adage, let a sleeping dog lie, don't wake him up, you know? Well, look, you know, if your church is asleep, just kind of going through the motions, the devil's not going to bother you. But you know, when you got things going on in the church, the devil tries to stir things up. You ever notice that? That's how you know something's going on. When he starts giving you a hard time. We must be doing something right, the devil's after us. So realize, listen, the devil hates you. He hates your family, he hates your church, he hates the gospel of Jesus, but greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. We don't need to fear him. Now, I have a friend, a Ugandan pastor. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story. She goes away, and she comes back with a chicken in her hand. And she cuts the throat of the chicken. She begins to sprinkle blood all over the place, pronouncing a curse. And some of the men working there are terrified. Oh, no, what are we going to do now? The pastor is not worried about it at all. He says, that has no power over me. Jesus is more powerful. Let me have that chicken. He took the chicken. He took it home, and he ate it for dinner that night. You know, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, right? Right? Amen. But you're an opponent of revival, the devil's an opponent, and the world's an opponent. Now, listen, as long as you're in your church and you sing your hymns and your praise choruses and you pray in the church and you have church service and you preach and all that, they're not going to bother you. Yeah, but the moment you're at the water cooler at work, and you start telling people about Jesus, or the moment they say, hey, what do you think about same-sex marriage? And you tell them what you think, you could be in trouble. Listen, 20 years ago, if you saw a couple of people at work who seemed to be homosexual, and you reported them to the HR department, they might get fired. If you do that today, who's going to get fired? You're going to get fired, right? That's how it is. When you stay on the reservation, nobody's going to bother you. You get off the reservation and you start speaking about Jesus, you start speaking about the issues of the day in the name of Jesus, the world hates it. The world will oppose us and we should not be surprised by that. If the world hates you, remember that it hated me more than before it hated you. If you are of the world, the world will love it so, but because you're not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you. That's the way it is. But there's one more opponent to revival. And I would suggest it's the biggest opponent of all. Yes, we're an opponent of revival. Yes, the devil. Yes, the world. But here it is. The lukewarm Laodicean church is the biggest opponent to revival. You see it in the days of the prophets. Who's going after Isaac? Who threw Jeremiah into the well? The religious leaders of the day. Who gave Jesus a heart? Listen, the prostitutes and the tax gatherers loved the guy. Who hated Jesus? The religious leaders hated him. When Paul is Attacked who's attacking him the Jews are stirring up the Gentiles against him when George Whitfield is run out of the church and he has to preach in the streets and in the fields who was after the Organized Church. It's always been that way. Listen the Organized Church the the general church is Opposed to revival. They want a nice church. Yeah, a lot of really believe the Bible but they you know, we don't want to go too far with this thing and So don't be surprised. There's always been sort of a church within the church. There's always sort of been a remnant. You know, people are really faithful. But that's what we pray for. And I want you to learn to pray for your church, that you'll be a place of mighty praying, mighty preaching, mighty conversions, mighty assemblies, mighty holiness. Mighty generosity. Mighty personal evangelism. Mighty societal impact. Mighty leadership and mighty opposition. Now when we pray that way, I believe that God will work in our lives. But here's what's going to happen. You'll pray this way for a while and then you'll find yourself kind of moving away from it. That's natural. It's like when you're going on a diet, you kind of forget it, you know, and you kind of you got to kind of get back to it. That's the way it is here. OK, you blew it. Yeah, you know, you're not where you need to be. OK, I repent. I come back. Let's start over. And the beautiful thing is God's grace is always greater than our sin. Amen. Always. So what I'd like us to do is to break into groups again. The group that was in there, if you'll stay in here this time, and the group that was in here, if you'll go in there, and let's pray for about an hour, okay? And so what I'd like you to do this time is pray those 10 marks of the revival culture in the church, okay? So if you need to take a short break, go ahead, but that group, you'll go in there, and our group will be here, okay? Oh good.