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The Lewis Awakening, Chapter
5. Notes of an address given at a meeting for ministers at
Oxford and Manchester. What thou wilt not revive us
again, that thy people may rejoice in thee. Psalms 85, verse 6. These words of the Psalmist express
the heart cry of many of God's children today. There is a growing
conviction everywhere. and especially among thoughtful
people, that unless revival comes, other forces will take the field
that will sink us still deeper into the mirror of humanism and
materialism. With that conviction, there is
also a deepening hunger for a fresh manifestation of God. Indeed,
so intense is the longing and so heavy the burden that the
words of the prophet Isaiah are frequently on the lips of God's
children. O that thou wouldest run the heavens, that thou wouldest
come down. We have seen man's best endeavors
in the field of evangelism leaving the communities untouched. True,
we may have seen crowded churches and many professions, but then
all that is possible on the plane of human activity, as has been
witnessed over and over again. It has been said that the kingdom
of God is not going to be advanced by our churches becoming filled
with men. but by none in our churches being
filled with God. Today we have a Christianity
made easy as an accommodation to an age that is unwilling to
face the implication of Calvary. And the gospel of simple believism
has produced a harvest of professions which have done untold harm to
the cause of Christ. We use all the modern means and
facilities for the propagation of the gospel. Our technique
and Christian work and witness has been developed to a fine
art. And during recent years, evangelize
has been heard from Congress, convocation, and assembly. But
as we look back over our much activity in church work and witness,
what do we see? Not flags of victory that tell
of communities won for Christ. Not congregations throttling
with spiritual life and the desert made to rejoice and blossom as
the rose. No, not flags, but gravestones,
like the stones of our Scottish Culloden that tell their pitiful
tale of frustration and defeat. So we are today faced with the
need, pressing, urgent, and awful, for God to manifest His power,
the need of a God-sent, Holy Ghost revival. Many years ago,
Dr. Henry Drummond wrote of a natural
law in a spiritual world. It seems to me that our great
need today is to rediscover a spiritual law in a natural world. The ills
that shake the very foundation of our civilization have their
roots in the spiritual and not in the material. Man has gone
wrong at the center of things and he must get right there.
Was it not Gladstone who said, my only hope for our country
is in bringing the human mind into contact with the divine
revelation? Now let us be perfectly clear
that only God can do that. Is this not the conviction that
finds expression in the words of the Psalmist? If there was
to be a revival, God must do the reviving. And it was God's
people who were to be revived. So revival has to do with God
and his people. The world has nothing to do with
revival. Only that which has life can be revived. I read in
a little booklet recently, we do not have revivals to get men
saved. Men get saved because we have
revivals. Let us now consider three aspects of revival. Its
origin, its agency, its outcome. The origin of revival, wilt thou
not? We do well to remember that in
the whole field of Christian experience, the first step is
with God. Thought, feeling, and endeavor
must find their basis and inspiration in the sovereign mercy of God.
To me, one of the most disturbing features of present-day evangelism
is the overemphasis on what man can do. And I believe this to
be the reason why we so often fail to get men and women to
make the contact with God that is vital. How few there are today
who, in the supreme moment of conversion or decision, become
conscious within themselves of a new and overpowering reality,
the knowledge of God having done a saving work within them. The
Apostle Paul puts it in clear light in his letter to the Galatians
when he writes, It pleased God to reveal His Son in me. The
fact of ultimate reality surely is this, that salvation is of
God. He is the God of revival and
we must look to Him and to Him alone. I have already referred
to the cry of the prophet Isaiah. His convictions were that the
mountains would flow and nations would tremble only when God came
down. In other words, he is just saying
that nothing will happen unless there is a mighty demonstration
of God. It is my own deep conviction that the average man is not going
to be impressed by our publicity, our posters, or our programs.
But let there be a demonstration of the supernatural in the realm
of religion, and at once man is arrested. I have seen this
happen over and over again during the recent movement in the Western
Isles. Suddenly an awareness of God
would take hold of a community, and under the pressure of this
divine presence, men and women would fall prostrate on the ground,
while their cry of distress was made the means in God's hand
to awaken the indifferent who had sat unmoved for years under
the preaching of the gospel. The Agency of Revival Will thou
not revive us again, that thy people? God is the God of revival. He is sovereign in the affairs
of men. But we must not believe in any conception of God's sovereignty
that nullifies man's responsibility. We are the human agents through
whom revival is possible. To say, as so many do, we can
do nothing, may be a very accommodating doctrine to them that are at
ease in Zion. But it will not stand in the
light of divine revelation. The Reverend Samuel Chadwick,
in his book, Humanity and God, writes, the operation of divine
sovereignty and the freedom of human will are not irreconcilable
to the wisdom of God. Our responsibility is not in
the explanation of mystery, but in obedience to obligation and
privilege. I wonder if we are really alive
to our responsibility and privilege. I have read that the Reverend
Robert Murray Marcini had the picture of the setting sun painted
on the dial of his watch and underneath written the night
cometh. Every time he looked at his watch, he was reminded
of his responsibility as a minister of the gospel and of the charge
entrusted to him. If we study the life of the early
disciples, we see how their whole being was animated and actuated
by one great purpose, to be at their best for God. They carried
the seriousness into their witness that the man of the world carries
into his business. or the explorer into his journeys
and toils, they live for God and for souls. I am disturbed
by the attitude of the church in general towards aggressive
evangelism or revival. By evangelism, I do not mean
just an effort to get people back into the church. This effort,
while commendable, does not get us very far. What I mean is something
much more. It is the getting of men and
women into vital, saving, and covenant relationship with Jesus
Christ and so supernaturally altered that holiness will characterize
their whole being, body, soul, and spirit. It seems to me that
the time has surely come when we must, with open minds and
true heart, face ourselves with unqualified honesty and ask the
question, am I alive to my responsibility as a laborer in God's vineyard?
I personally have constantly to remind myself that I can be
a very busy man and yet a very idle minister. How easy it is
to live more or less in the enjoyment of God's free grace and yet not
realize that we are called to fulfill a divinely appointed
purpose. Our commission is to declare the whole counsel of
God in the midst of men, to open their eyes and to turn them from
darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. That,
brethren, is our privilege and our task. And yet we must confess
that too often the great things of God have not been the predominating
things. The lesser things of life have
been allowed to absorb our interests, and the lure of the lesser loyalty
has blurred our vision and robbed us of our passion to win souls
for Jesus Christ. What, then, is the essential
to recovery and revival? Surely a wholehearted desire
to be right with God to stand before him in an adjusted relationship. I am convinced that if we are
to see the hand of God at work, we must give to our lives the
propulsion of a sacred vow and what Hezekiah of old say, now
it is in my heart to make a covenant with the Lord God of Israel.
Brethren, the new truths that grip us this morning must find
expression and embodiment in a new dedication. That is, if
we are to be men whom God can trust with the revival, As a
young student in Edinburgh, it was my privilege to sit under
the ministry of the late Dr. Alexander Stewart of St. Columbia. Who will I recall the
subduing sense of the presence of God that came over us as that
prince of preachers called us to our task. Upon you, said the
doctor, Christ lays the great task of evangelizing. We talk
of the great trust of human life, the tremendous responsibility
of an engine driver. the sea captain, or the leader
of an army. There is entrusted to them the
care of human lives, but to us there is entrusted the charge
of human souls, souls to be brought to Christ for pardon and healing
through His precious blood, to be sunlit by His presence and
consecrated to His service, then at last to be set as gleaming
jewels in the crown of His eternal glory, or, because of our lack
of vision, be allowed to wander further and further from God,
and, as the years go on, trample out the lingering image of our
Maker, and at last be shut out forever in the dark despair of
unending woe. Perishing, perishing, Thou who art not willing, Master,
forgive and inspire us anew. Banish our worldliness, help
us to ever live with eternity's values and view. May God help
us to make this our prayer. The Outcome of Revival Here I
may be allowed to give a word of personal testimony, indicating
what revival has meant to me. Some years ago, along with Dr.
Thomas Finch, I was speaker at the Edinburgh Convention for
the Deepening of Spiritual Life. We had come to the closing meeting,
and I had given my address. As I sat listening to Dr. Finch
giving his last message, I suddenly became conscious of my own fitness
to be on that platform. I saw the bareness of my life
and minister. I saw the pride of my own heart.
how very humiliating it was to discover that I was proud of
the fact that I was booked to speak at five conventions that
year, how deceitful and wicked the human heart can be. That
night, in desperation on the floor of my study, I cast myself
afresh upon the mercy of God. He heard my cry for pardon and
cleansing, and as I lay prostrate before him, wave after wave of
divine consciousness came over me and the love of the Savior
flooded my being. And in that hour I knew that
my life and ministry could never be the same again, nor could
I ever doubt the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Brethren, explain
it as you will, to me it was a baptism from on high, and if
in any small measure God has been pleased to use me, it is
all because of what he did for me that night, when two things
became clear to me, Christ's willingness to save thee, whosoever,
and the awful state of the eternal lost in hell. That is what revival
has meant to me personally, and is not that just what happens
in a general sense in the community. Revival, said Professor James
S. Stewart, is a new discovery of
Jesus, God becoming real in the midst of men. I have known the
spirit of God laying hold of a community in such a way that
you would hardly meet a person who was not seeking after God.
Is it not of the reality of God's presence and revival power that
Paul is writing, for God who commanded the light to shine
out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Brethren, is this light visible
in us? Are our lives, are our churches,
lights that mark the road that leads men to the Lamb? In closing,
let me use a simple illustration. Some years ago I was on holiday
on the island of Jura, J-U-R-A. While there, I had the use of
a very fine sailing boat. One day with my daughter, I sailed
past a lighthouse that seemed to stand erect out of the ocean.
It being high tide, the rock on which it was built was covered.
While passing, the thought occurred to me. That lighthouse could
be as treacherous as the rock on which it is built, but for
the light. It was the light that made the
difference. The structure was perfect, and
the building the work of a master. but a positive danger to navigation
apart from the light. Is the lighthouse a far-fetched
comparison, or do I see in it a representation of the institution
we call the church and the vocation we call the ministry, without
the anointing of the Holy Spirit, a positive danger in the community,
with the anointing giving direction, because men see God?" End of
chapter 5. End of the book, The Lowest Awakening,
1949 to 1953, by Duncan Campbell. Having been read by Peter John
Parousis, also known as Brian Dean. None of my audios are copyrighted. Please feel free to make as many
copies as you desire, to the glory of God.
The Lewis Awakening 1949 - 1953 - by Duncan Campbell - Chapter 5 of 5
Series Duncan Campbell
The Lewis Awakening 1949 - 1953 - by Duncan Campbell - Chapter 5 of 5 - Duncan Campbell's own account of the revival written in 1954
| Sermon ID | 311102045130 |
| Duration | 15:05 |
| Date | |
| Category | Audiobook |
| Language | English |
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