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with a word of prayer, and then we'll get started, all right? Father, we give thanks to you for this time together. We're thankful for Jesus, for the amazing salvation that we have in him. And Father, we know that we are debtors to your grace. And Paul says, I'm under obligation to preach the gospel. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. We know he's not ashamed of the gospel because he knows it is the power of God and the salvation for everyone who believes.
So fathers, we look at the issue of the 10 marks of the revival culture from the book of Acts. We pray this would be a great encouragement to all of us and that it would move us to pray earnestly for these marks to be present. in the world in which we now find ourselves, and we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
So I think this is an important topic for a couple reasons. One is, I know your church is praying for revival, as I am and so many other people are. And so, you know, what would it look like if God brought a revival? What would characterize a true biblical revival? And then secondly, there's a lot of talk nowadays about revival, the so-called Charlie Kirk effect, which I think is wonderful. And the question is, is this a revival? And then on various college campuses, like at Auburn University, Ohio State University, to name two, in the last year or so, there's been massive number of baptisms There would be preachers preaching, lots of Christian contemporary music and so forth, and 800 to 1,000 people making professions of faith and being baptized.
So what are we to make of those things? I earnestly hope we're in the early stages of revival. Randy and I and Diane were converted about over 50 years ago. I think y'all were converted in 1971. I was in 72. There was clearly a movement of God going on then. And my prayer would be that what we're seeing now is true revival. But well, I think we have to wait and see.
So all right, what are those 10 marks of revival? Now I get this all from the book of Acts. So the modifier is gonna be the same on all 10 marks, mighty, okay? So you can just write mighty once and then you can just ditto down the line, all right? The first mark of a revival culture is mighty praying. In Luke chapter 24, Jesus has been raised from the dead. He's about to ascend into heaven. He's with his disciples. And he says to them, now I want you to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins to all the nations. But I want you to begin right here in Jerusalem. So just as a side line here, it's great that churches support world missions. I know y'all do. Wonderful. Very, very important. But Jesus is saying, yes, you're to reach the nations, but you're to begin right here in Jerusalem. And y'all are doing that, praise the Lord. You're evangelizing here and you're supporting missions.
But Jesus says, after saying that, he says, but wait in the city until you've been clothed with power from on high. Now, why would he say that? After all, they've been with him for three years. They've seen him cast out demons, heal people of disease, raise people from the dead, preach these great sermons. He's given them authority in Matthew chapter 10 and then the 70 in Luke chapter 10 to go and to cast out demons and to proclaim the kingdom of God. I mean, if anybody seemingly is ready to embark on world evangelization, you would think it's his disciples. And yet he says, wait until you receive power from on high. Then in Acts chapter one, just prior to his ascension, he says, to his disciples, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be my witnesses. And you probably know the Greek word for witness is martyr. You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world. And then he's ascended into heaven. And the 120 are in the upper room and they're praying.
Now the question is, for what are they praying? It doesn't tell us specifically in Acts chapter 1, but when you put Acts chapter 1 with it and Luke 24 and several prophecies from the Old Testament, then you realize they were praying for power. In a revival culture, people are mighty in prayer for power, for Holy Spirit power.
In 1727, the Moravians, a group of Christians living in Germany, were bickering and complaining and divided. There's 300 of them and they were struggling. So they began to pray for revival and God brought tremendous conviction of sin upon the people and they were gathered in a meeting sort of like this. They began to confess their sins to one another, to repent, to ask forgiveness and so forth. And then about three or four months later in August of 1727, Nicholas von Zinzendorf, who was the head of the Moravians, suggested that we commit ourselves to earnest prayer, and 24 men and 24 women agreed that they would take one hour every day to pray for a mighty movement of God around the world.
All 24 hours were covered by these 24 men and 24 women. This prayer meeting went on for 100 years. During that 100-year period, this small group of Moravian Christians sent out over 300 missionaries. And by the way, when John Wesley was on the ship, going to colonial America and the storm broke out and he was absolutely terrified. He watched the Moravians who were simply sitting and singing and praising God during the whole thing. And he was stunned that they had that kind of faith.
In a revival culture, there's mighty praying. The second thing is there's mighty preaching. There's always, always in a revival, mighty preaching. You see it, of course, with Jesus. You see it with the apostles. You see it throughout the book of Acts, Peter and Philip, and of course, the apostle Paul and others are preaching. Now, what are they preaching? They're preaching Christ crucified. They're not preaching politics. They're not preaching morality. They're preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
Paul says, I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was within weakness and fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not a persuasive words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of spirit and power that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. Woe is me, he says, if I don't preach the gospel. Now preaching is proclaiming the truth about Jesus. You get good preaching every single week here. So you know what preaching is. I don't have to go into detail. But in a mighty movement of God, there's got to be mighty preaching.
So are we seeing that today? I think to some degree we are. Now there's always heretical teaching going on. There's always different nuances of it. It might not be as strong as it should be. But I look around and I see men like your pastor, lots of young men like that are really, really gifted and really committed to this. And then I look around and there's a lot of young men preaching on the streets. And I remember several years ago on Fox News, there was this, You got a guy named Greg Gutfeld, who's got a TV show. I never watch it because he's pretty godly, so I can't watch it. But anyway, he was on a show, and he said, I'll tell you who's really manly. He said, if y'all seen all these street preachers around New York City, they're everywhere. These guys are bold. So I'm encouraged that there is this beginning to see more and more mighty preaching.
But that's always present in a revival culture. Mighty praying, mighty preaching, and then mighty conversions. You know that when Peter preached in the day of Pentecost, they were struck in the heart. There's where the anointing of the spirit comes down. That's something we should always be praying for. Pray for your pastor that he'll have the anointing. And that means that when he's speaking, he's speaking the very words of God, and it's penetrating your heart, and it's doing whatever that particular text, the Holy Spirit inspired it to be, that's what you wanna see happen. The anointing of the Spirit.
And when Peter's preaching, the people are cut to the heart, and they said, what must we do? And he says, this year to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, And so we know that 3,000 were saved that day. Then we know that a few days later, the number was recorded that there were 5,000 saved. And then we know that the scripture in the book of Acts says that many were being added to the church daily, as many as the Lord our God would call.
In a revival culture, many, many conversions. During the great awakening, which started about 1735 with George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards and others, there were many, many conversions. There were only three million people living in colonial America at that time. And it was estimated that something like 80% of the people had actually heard Whitefield preach at some point. And it's also estimated that at least 10% of the American populace at the time was converted. Now you think about that for a second. We have 350 million people. If we had a great movement of God today and got the same number, that would be 35 million people. Think about that for just a second. If you saw 35 million people soundly converted, it would change this country.
In a revival culture, there's always mighty conversions. I go to a number of countries that are sort of closed to the gospel, so this is a recording, I'm not gonna say where they are. But in these particular countries, there's many, many conversions. One country, it says, the government says that it's 1% Christian. We know that it's at least 10% Christian. In the country of Nepal, 40 years ago, Operation World, which is a book about missions, said that there were 10 known Christians in Nepal. We're planting churches in Nepal, and now it's estimated that 15% of the people are Christian. There's 750 Bible colleges and so forth in Kathmandu, the capital alone. I was preaching there a couple of years ago to a seminary, a Presbyterian seminary sponsored by Korean Presbyterians. At the end, after preaching about church planting for a couple of days, I gave an altar call, so to speak, and I said, if you want to commit yourself to planting churches, I want you to come forward, we're going to pray for you. About 20 of the 100 came forward weeping and lying, you know, before everybody, we prayed for them. Today, recently, the nation of Nepal appointed Christmas as a national holiday. My point is, there's a mighty movement of God in these places. And if there is a mighty movement of God in this country, there will be genuine conversions where God takes out the heart of stone and replaces it with the heart of flesh.
It's not enough for people to make decisions. It's not enough for people to be baptized. Baptisms require, no question. But I think we all know that there are many people who make decisions and are baptized, but they give no evidence of Christianity. And so if we have genuine conversions, more about that in a moment, then that will be a mark of revival.
Fourthly, a revival culture has mighty assemblies. In Acts chapter 4, it says that the people gathered together. Where they gathered together, the place was shaken. And they began to speak the word of God with boldness.
In a revival culture, there's a mighty assembly. And by that, we mean there is a felt, palpable presence of God in the worship services. And this is not manufactured. It has nothing to do with emotionalism. It has nothing to do with being manufactured by music or anything of that sort. It's a felt presence of the glory of God in that place.
And I remember speaking about this a number of years ago at a church. And the pastor afterwards said, let me give you an example of that. He said, we took a number of people with us to Cuba and we were going to do some mission work there. And so we walked into church on a Sunday morning and we found out that the people had been praying for the pastor's wife, praying and fasting for the last three days because she was dying of cancer.
And so he said, we came into the service And we walked in the back door and we're going to sit on the front row like this. And he said, there was about 10 of us. And he said, as we walked in and moved toward the front, all 10 of us were weeping. Now, these were Presbyterians who don't weep easily. They don't show a whole lot of emotion. And he said, I've never felt anything like that in my life. The presence of God.
I'll bet you've experienced that from time to time in your personal life. And you know, Lloyd-Jones used to say that when that happens, The church, people want to know, what's going on at that church? People who are unconverted will come in and see that.
Ian Murray in his first volume of his biography on Lloyd-Jones tells the story that on a Sunday evening, Lloyd-Jones always preached evangelistic sermons on Sunday night. So this is when he was in Wales, Aberavon, Wales. And he says, on a Sunday night at six o'clock, there's a service and the bells are ringing to let people know the worship's starting. And there was a woman who was a witch on her way to a seance that night, and she was intrigued by this church. She'd heard about it, and so she went in. She sat on the back row, and she heard Lloyd-Jones preaching an evangelistic sermon. She was intrigued. She kept coming back week after week after week.
About six months later, she's converted. out of being a witch, leading seances and all sorts of things. And when she joined the church, Lloyd-Jones says, what was it that attracted you to this church? And she said, the moment I came in, I could sense a clean spirit in this place.
When the Holy Spirit is present, it's a mighty assembly in the presence of God.
Now, the fifth mark of a revival culture is mighty holiness. You see, the people began to, as Paul puts it in 1 Thessalonians, they turned from their idols to serve the true and living God. You probably know that Paul lays down the Christian sexual ethic in the book of Romans and in other places. First Timothy, Second Timothy. And why did he do that? Because, see, the Jews were well aware of the wickedness of adultery, fornication, homosexuality. They knew all that. That was laid down in the Old Testament law.
So who's he writing to? He's writing to the Roman world. And the Roman world was utterly wicked. There's no small children here, so I can say that they would have, these men would have, you know, young boys if they were, you know, you know what they were doing. It's very common. It was very accepted. Utterly wicked.
And Paul lays down the Christian ethic, in Romans 1 especially, and At the time, they said, this is odd. This is odd speech. What's all this about? We don't have to do that. But over the next 300 to 400 years, the Christian ethic began to take hold. It took a long time. And finally, one of the Roman emperors, I think it was Theodosius, I'm not sure, codified the law against homosexuality and so forth. It took a while, but the point is, is that when true Christianity comes into a culture, there is godliness, there is holiness, there is biblical morality.
So one of the things I'm looking for in the present movement, when I see athletes talking about being Christians, And I'll see all these people being baptized at universities and so forth. I want to know this. Are they forsaking sexual sin? Are they forsaking pornography, fornication, not to mention lying, stealing, cheating, and so forth? Are they putting all that aside? Because if they're not, it's not real.
And I think that's another reason why Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians, because these were pagan people. You know, who are being converted, they're in the church, but he says, I need to remind you that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. For neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor liars, nor homosexuals, or those who are effeminate, or thieves, or drunkards will ever enter the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were justified, you were sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
In other words, yeah, some of these people had made professions. But apparently they're going back the other way. Paul said, wait a second now, hold on. If you're really a Christian, then you've got to put that stuff away. And if you're not putting it away, you're not saved. And so that's what I want to see. Are the people who are making professions, are the people who are going to Turning Point USA, and I think that's a great organization, are they being sexually pure, are they getting married? Are they bringing children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? Are the wives being faithful to the husband, the husband being faithful to the wives? That's what I wanna see. If that's not happening, this isn't revival.
And so there's mighty holiness. And then also, number six, there's mighty generosity. You know, we're told in Acts chapter 5 that the people held everything in common. No, that's not a ploy for socialism or communism. Nobody made them do it. Nobody taxed them to death to get that to be done. They willingly did it. In a revival culture, people hold their money and their time loosely. When I moved to Connecticut a number of years ago to plant a church, I knew that Connecticut was a very rich state, and the USA Today newspaper, by the way, does that even exist anymore? It was before, you know, before we had the internet. It was an article, and it said that the most generous state in the Union, as far as giving to benevolent causes, is Mississippi. Mississippi is the poorest state per capita income in the country. Connecticut, on the other hand, is the most wealthy state, and they give the least amount of money. There's something about the people who don't have as much. Oftentimes, they're very generous. And by the way, there was a lot of Christians in Mississippi, whereas there are not many in Connecticut. So that's something else to do. to do with it.
But you see, in a revival culture, people are free with their money. They're not holding on to it. They're free with their time. Here's another thing I've noticed, that when you're younger, you typically don't have as much money as you may have later on in life. So you don't have a lot of money to give to the Lord's work, but you give your time, which is wonderful. Then here's what I've noticed, because I'm now 73, and I've noticed that people my age, now a lot of people I know have a lot of money, it's no problem at all for them to write a check, a big one, no problem. But giving up the time, it's a different story. Time becomes the great value.
In a revival culture, people hold their money loosely. If there's a need, give it up, give it away. I know in our churches, when I pastor churches, we would give, when you counted everything together, we'd give about 30% of our money away. And I think y'all do a good bit, if not that more, maybe more. But anyway, but at the end of every year, we'd give it all away. If there's money in an account for missions, it went out the door. And I think that's the way we should live. In a revival culture, God just raises up people who will do that.
In a revival culture, number seven is mighty evangelism. In Acts chapter eight, it says that a persecution arose And while the elders stayed in the city, the people went out from the city. And it says there that they were, literally the word is evangelizing. Now it's interesting because you see Jesus told them to get out of town. You remember in Acts chapter one, he says, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem. That's good. But eventually guys, you need to get to Judea and Samaria and then other than most parts of the world, apparently they were hanging around Jerusalem too long. And Jesus says, get out the door. He brought a persecution, get out the door. And in a revival culture, everybody's sharing Jesus in one way or another.
1948, Duncan Campbell, who was a Presbyterian evangelist from Scotland, was preaching at a church, I think, in Glasgow. And on the Isle of Lewis, people wanted him to come and preach. And so while he's in the midst of these meetings in Glasgow, he turned to the pastor and said, I've got to go. What do you mean? You're supposed to be preaching here. Yeah, I got to go. Where are you going? I got to go to Glasgow. God wants me in Glasgow. He said, okay. So he gets on the boat and he goes to the Isle of Lewis. And over the next three years, God did an amazing movement of the spirit. Just hundreds of people converted. The place, actually, a house would be shaking. This sounds odd to us, but that's what they said. A lot of witnesses said it happened. And then the people would stay up all night and pray. You can't do that long. You got to go to work. But they would do it a little bit. And then he moved from one town to the next. And the revival was so much on the minds of the people. Everybody knew about it. that the local mailman, as he's walking around delivering mail every day, somebody say, Mr. Mailman, what happened last night? Oh yeah, well, so-and-so got saved last night. And everybody's talking about what God's doing.
This went on for three years. The effects of that revival are still being felt today on the Isle of Lewis.
In revival culture, everybody's sharing Jesus. So I bet a lot of y'all are like me. When you were first converted, you loved to tell people about Jesus. I remember I was converted when I played baseball at the University of Alabama, and it was night and day. I mean, I was talking to everybody about Jesus. We had a reunion just a few years ago at a game in Tuscaloosa. And so I was talking to one of the guys who was Jewish, Mike's his name, and he says, hey, Al, what have you been doing all these years? Well, I'm a preacher. Yeah, I kind of figured you would be. You're always trying to get me saved, and I'm Jewish. I said, well, Mike, you need to be saved. And then he said, yeah, you know, we used to talk about you. I said, yeah, I know. I said, what do you mean, though? He said, well, you know, we'd see you over there in the batting cages, and we'd say, Whatever you do, don't get caught alone in the batting cage with Baker.
But you know, when you're filled with the spirit, you can't help it. Right. And y'all have experienced that, but I bet you've also experienced what I've experienced. Sometimes I don't still have that same edge. You know, you say, when you're filled with the Holy spirit, you do what the Holy spirit does. What does he do? He exalts Jesus. He exalts Jesus. And when you're filled with the Spirit, because the Spirit is the one who convicts of sin, righteousness, and judgment, when you speak, stuff happens.
Now, when I say that, that doesn't mean that every time you speak, somebody's convicted and they fall out on the floor and cry out, what must I do to be saved? No, I don't mean that. But when you're speaking, when you're filled with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of those that are hearing you. Like yesterday when we were at the abortion clinic, I guarantee you people heard us. And I don't mean just heard, I mean heard. And we may not know that now, we may know it later in this life, but one of these days we'll know in heaven. Because the word never returns empty.
In a revival culture, Everybody is talking about Jesus because Jesus is the most important thing in their lives. I used to tell my congregations, you can tell a lot about what's important to you. What do you talk about and what do you spend your money on?
Now, in revival culture, you're filled with the spirit. there is mighty evangelism.
Number eight, in revival culture, there's mighty societal impact. If I had to, if somebody pressed me to say, what's your favorite chapter in the Bible? I might say Acts chapter 19, because Paul is on his third missionary journey and he's in Ephesus. And we know that Ephesus was the center of the worship of Diana or Artemis, a false goddess. And there in Ephesus was the temple of Diana, which was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Archaeologists tell us that it was probably 300 feet long, about 150 feet wide. They had columns that were about 60 feet high, and some of them were gilded with gold and silver. This was quite an impressive building, all for the worship of this false goddess Diana. Not only that, we know there was massive demonic activity there. Lots of demonic possession, witchcraft, and all of this. And Paul goes in there and he asks the people if they've had the Holy Spirit. We don't even know if there's a Holy Spirit. He lays hands on them. The Holy Spirit comes upon them. Some think that's when they're converted. I personally think maybe they already were, but they just didn't have the Spirit's presence and power.
But anyway, And Paul begins to preach. He goes to the Jews first, they're not buying it. Then he goes to the school of Tyrannus, and he begins to teach his people, and they go out and they evangelize. And there's such a movement of God that many, many people who are involved in witchcraft and demonic activity are converted.
There were many exorcists there. And they would ply their trade. And they're watching Paul do this. And there's sort of a humorous story there where there were seven sons of a man named Sceva, who was probably a false prophet. And they're watching Paul. Paul casting out all these demons. And they like this, they've learned something new. Because you see, they had this book that they would use. Shakespeare, 1500 years later, in one of his plays, refers to it as the Ephesian writings. Very prominent, but everybody knew about it. It's a book where all these... spells, and incantations, and use of fetishes they would use to try to get rid of this demonic activity.
And so these seven sons of this false prophet are watching Paul, and they see a man who's demon-possessed. And they say, in the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, we command you to come out. A lot of y'all know the story because you're already laughing. The demons from the inside speak and say, Paul we know, Jesus we know, but who are you? And the man begins to beat these seven sons of Sceva and strips them naked. And they run away in shame and fear. So much for just being able to copy the apostle Paul.
But then there was such a movement of God that so many of these people involved in witchcraft were becoming Christians. They brought their books and they brought their fetishes and they're worth today's money, thousands and thousands of dollars. what they used to ply their trade. And they put it all there and they had a book burning and a fetish burning. They're saying, we're departing from all of this. We're not holding on to any of this. It's all gonna be burned up because we are seriously following Jesus. Pretty impressive.
And then not only that, but then now they got a real problem in the town because the town made a lot of money on this worship of Diana. You know, there's, you know, people, you know, St. Louis loves to have a tourist trade, right? That brings in a lot of money. And so the tourist trade was people coming from around that area to Ephesus to see the temple of Diana and to perform all their wicked stuff in the temple. Lots of money, and there were people who were really enterprising. They were making little silver trinkets of Diana, and they were selling them to people as a religious artifact.
But so many people are becoming Christians. Nobody's buying them anymore. And now the business owners are really upset. They're losing money. They've lost their income stream. Now, what are they going to do? And they go to the city officials and say, look, you can't let this happen. And they stir up trouble. And they're in a riot breaks out at a sports stadium and architects or archaeologists have unearthed that sports arena and it sat about 25,000 people. We don't know how many were in there. But the place was filled up with people whipped up into an emotional frenzy, saying, Diana of the Ephesians is the greatest. This went on for two hours. That would be like today, people going to a concert of Beyonce and saying, Beyonce is the greatest. Or what's that other girl who's real popular? One that's gonna marry the football player, Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift, and I'm a Swifty or whatever.
And riots are breaking, they're trying to find Paul, because they want to kill him. Now, that's what you call a revival culture. You know what that'd be like? That'd be like, God bringing that kind of power on the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. And all these buildings, you've been there to preach, you know, we tried to preach there and they were about to arrest us for being in the house with Mike and he couldn't help it. I mean, he was wanting to preach, you know. That'd be like all these buildings, the administrative buildings, their tabernacle and all their stuff turned over to the true preaching of the gospel. That's what it would look like. Mighty societal impact.
I remember a couple of years ago, people were saying, well, you know, we think there's a movement of God in New York City. I said, well, we'll see. I'm not saying it. I'd love to see that. But from the book of Acts, Got to be mighty societal impact.
Number nine is mighty leadership. In a revival culture, God raises up preachers, teachers, evangelists, elders, deacons, women in the ministry who have ministered of women and children and so forth, diaconal ministry to the poor across the board. In a revival culture, a church always has plenty of nursery workers and whatever else the church needs. God just raises them up.
Somebody did a survey, did a doctoral dissertation actually on the Expo 72, which y'all went to. And they were just saying, what happened as a result of that meeting? This was a meeting in Dallas, Texas in the July of 1972. 50,000 or 60,000 students, high school and college students, came there for a week, learned how to share the gospel. Bill Bright spoke, Billy Graham spoke, a bunch of other people. And a guy did a doctoral dissertation studying it. He found in the state of South Carolina alone, There were 300 people who had been at that meeting and expo that were ministers and missionaries. It's an amazing movement of God.
In a revival culture, God raises up many, many workers. And then number 10, is when God does all this work, mighty praying, mighty preaching, mighty conversions, mighty assemblies, mighty holiness, mighty generosity, mighty evangelism, mighty societal impact, mighty leadership, when he does all of that, the last one is mighty persecution.
Paul, everywhere he went, he got beat up. Five times, he says in 2 Corinthians 11, he received 39 lashes from the Jews. R.C. Sproul said one time, you know, people didn't have photos back then. People had heard about the Apostle Paul, but many of them had never seen him until he came to town and maybe they were suspect if this is really the Apostle Paul. Well, all Paul had to do was take off his shirt and show them his back. Oh yeah, okay, this is the real deal. In some of these countries I go to, there's massive persecution. One of these countries, the president vowed, or that country vowed several years ago, he's going to eradicate Christianity. It's growing even faster now. A couple of the men that I know over there have been beaten, jailed, burned, and yet they keep preaching the gospel. In a revival culture, there is mighty opposition. There's persecution.
You know, Paul in, I think it's Acts 14, he's on his first missionary journey. He's in Pisidian Antioch, and then he goes to Iconium, then Lystra and Derbe, and I think he's in Lystra, and he gets taken out of the city and stoned. They're gonna kill him. That's a form of execution. That's like taking him out, let's give him a lethal injection. And it says there that he was unconscious. And then he wakes up. Now, I don't know about y'all, but if I'd just been stoned within an inch of my life, I think I'd say I've had enough for the day. I think I'll take a break. Paul wakes up and goes back into the city and preaches and goes to the next place. Wow. That's a revival culture.
So how does this come about on the front end? There has to be the Holy Spirit. None of this happens without the Holy Spirit. But secondly, what comes out of those 10 marks of revival culture is church planting. Always church planting. You'll notice how Jesus does not say, go into the world and plant churches. He says, go into the world and make disciples. But it's a given, it's understood that when you are making disciples, they've got to come together as a church.
And so some of these places I go, I'll give you one example. We started in this country 10 years ago. with seven church planters, and we pay them $250 a month. And they give us a report every month. We expect them to be out in the villages 25 to 30 hours a week evangelizing. Now, 10 years later, we have, I think, 125 church planters making $250 a month. We haven't even given them a cost of living raise. You know? And they live on that. Now we have 450 churches, another 300 preaching points. You'll notice there's only 125 or 50 preachers, but there's like 450 churches. How are we doing that? Because they all pastor like three or four churches, that's why. That's how we do it. And a church was giving them motorcycles so these guys can go from one place to the other pretty quickly. And it's amazing. And they're not emotional. It's not like they're jumping up and down. No, no, no. They're just straightforward. And I'll say to them, I'll say, you're in a revival culture, but you don't even know it because this is all you've ever known. It's like, you're like fish in water. They don't know they're in water. This is all they've ever known.
Now, wouldn't you like to see that again? Listen, we've had this before in our country. There's been several revivals. 1735, again in 1741, it went to about 1755. The Second Great Awakening, I believe it started in 1791, right after the death of John Wesley. It went to about 1863, right in there. And then if you want to count the Azusa Street Revival, probably not real good, but there was some good from 1904. The Welsh Revival went on at the same time then and also in 1859. I think this is what we saw in the United States from 1966, Chuck Smith out of California, all the way across the country to about 1975. I think that was a movement of God. We've had them, but we need them again. So here's my challenge. Y'all already doing this, which is good, but continue in mighty praying and pray for God to bring these 10 marks to your community and to our country. If this doesn't happen, we may limp along as a culture, you know, for a few years, But all I know is I look at what's going on in Western Europe and England, it's not pretty.
I've been saying for a long time that in Revelation 1, Jesus says, you've left your first love. If you don't repent, I'm going to take the lampstand out of its place. The lampstand's the church. The Middle East, North Africa, Europe, were all strongly Christian at one point. They didn't follow through. And he's taking the lampstand away. There's some Christians there. And hopefully we're gonna see more. There's some encouraging signs.
But even some imams in England are saying it's just a matter of time. Because the Muslims are having eight and 10 children. The typical person in England has 1.8. Children, it takes two, I think it's two at least to maintain your culture. They're losing ground. And you've got all these cities in England that have Muslim mayors. Now we got one in New York City now. Yeah, not good.
So we need to pray. So I want to challenge you. You got a lot of people come to your prayer meeting, like 30 or 40, which is awesome. Stay at it. Maybe you start another. If you can't come on Wednesday night, maybe start another one with a smaller group of people. I don't know. But pray and pray these 10 marks. God, would you bring about all these marks? Amen.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for our time. Thank you for these, your saints. Thank you for what you've done in the past, and we pray you do it again in our culture today. And Lord, would you prepare us now for worship? We love you, Jesus. Thank you for saving us, and we pray in your name, amen.
10 Marks of the Revival Culture
Teaching about revival culture, primarily from the Book of Acts
| Sermon ID | 112425043568066 |
| Duration | 49:01 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Language | English |
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