Why No Revival
We all understand there will be a worldwide revival in the
Tribulation. Millions of Gentiles (Rev. 7:9) will believe the
message of "the Kingdom" as preached by Moses, Elijah, and the 144,000
Jewish evangelists, of whom Paul and Jeremiah are types. The question
is, what about now, BEFORE the Rapture? John R. Rice used to say,
"We can have revival NOW!" But he never saw a nationwide revival a day
in his life. Neither did Billy Graham, Jack Van Impe, Hyman Appleman,
Jesse Hendley, or E.J. Daniels. They saw "souls saved," and local
churches were awakened sometimes, and once or twice (by having "union
campaigns") they were able to get a large number of "first time
decisions" and cause a stir in a small area. Nationwide revival since
the days of Billy Sunday has been a joke. The nearest thing to it was
Falwell's "Moral Majority" that actually got into a few high places
and "rattled the cages" for a while, but only for a while. Falwell
put a pressure on Congress that has survived his "Majority." Ethics
and morals became such an issue after 1984 that saddles were emptied
right and left anytime anyone could prove anything "immoral" on
anyone, but those days are over. Homosexual fornicators are
legitimate "elected representatives" of the people, as also are
cocaine "crack heads."
Bob Jones Sr.'s analysis of the revival situation is still mimicked by
his grandson. Senior's position was that all of the trouble was due
to the Liberals and Modernists, and Fundamental evangelists
cooperating with them. Senior's thesis was "All Christians can get
together on a few basic fundamentals so that no evangelist has to fool
with Liberals and Modernists. Just get the people together who agree
on the basics, and God will honor it just like He did the meetings of
Sunday, Torrey, Moody, and Finney. You don't need the Neo-
Evangelicals or Liberals." From that day to this, Billy Graham has
been a target of the Fundamentalists, and Bob Jones and company are
still trying to destroy anyone who disagrees with them on Senior's
position. What Jones Sr. wanted to do--that he could not do, and
Rice could not do--was REPLACE BILLY SUNDAY AS A NATIONWIDE
REVIVALIST.
God stopped with Billy Sunday. He didn't plan a "replacement." When
America voted to get drunk and stay drunk (1933), GOD DUMPED AMERICA
AS A NATION. She has not had one nationwide movement of the Holy
Spirit since then and is not going to have one even if she stops
abortion (which she won't), jails the Sodomites (which she won't), and
stops the drug traffic (which she won't).
If you want to know why BJU is powerless to do anything now but make
overtures to the Baptist churches in order to get students, it is
because the basic philosophy is WRONG, at least in regards to the work
of the Holy Spirit in revivals. If you want to know why an outfit
like PCS can turn out literally hundreds of graduates yearly without
effecting ANYTHING nationally or internationally, it is because of the
POSITION they have taken against the Holy Spirit, the Author of real
"revival." Their position is that the hope of America lies in
disciplined, interdenominational education and culture, "using" a Book
they do not believe, and using the "MAIN THINGS" from that Book to get
a group of Christians together to get their money and support.
That is the philosophy of modern "Christian education" ($$$).
It overlooks five things that have taken place since 1933 that Bob
Jones Sr., Bobby III, and John R. Rice failed to recognize and deal
with.
1. The crowds that Moody, Torrey, Finney, and Sunday preached to
believed the AV from cover to cover, including the cover, and the
UNSAVED people who heard them believed the Book was the word of God,
just like the Christians did. This explains why Torrey never equalled
Moody's work; Torrey would occasionally try to impress people with his
scholarship by giving them an "alternate reading."
2. The so-called "fundamentals" of BJU are NOT (and have not been)
the fundamentals of the independent Baptists, and BJU and PCS are now
dependent upon those local churches for support, exactly as The Sword
of the Lord is. The Southern and Northern Baptists fell apart; the
old line "militant" Presbyterians (Machen, Warfield, Wilson, et al.)
collapsed; the Methodists and Charismatics folded up; and all BJU can
now draw from for a LARGE enrollment is the independent Baptists: BOB
JONES SR. had nothing to do with the setting up of these works. The
men behind them were J. Frank Norris and Beauchamp Vick, who were
pastors, not evangelists, and they considered baptism by immersion,
Premillennialism, and eternal security as "fundamental" as the
Resurrection or the Ascension. Norris wouldn't "fit" with the student
body at BJU from 1929 to 1969. He would now. He has to. They need
his young people. Ditto PCS.
3. The intrusion of television into the minds and thinking of the
Body of Christ as a replacement for the Holy Bible. "The light of the
body is the eye." To pretend (as John R. did) that conditions in 1970
were still the same because sinners' problems, desires, troubles,
etc., were the same as in 1930 was to live in a dream world. Radio
could never do one half the damage that TV did; radio was for the
"ear," and it was bad enough. TV completed the replacement of the
Bible in the home; a replacement that began with newspapers and
magazines back in the Depression. The comic books came from this era.
4. The end of doctrinal preaching in local pulpits in regard to
heaven and hell. Before 1933 a sinner under conviction had to travel
"a ways" to get a soothing, "coping and sharing and caring" message
that would emphasize his own ability to handle problems. The Baptists
preached hell, the Methodists preached hell, the Presbyterians
preached hell, and the Lutherans preached hell. So did the Churches
of God and the Assemblies of God and the Pentecostals. True, the
organized, denominational headquarters of the Presbyterians and
Methodists (and later Baptists) were taking the NCCC and the FCCC road
to Socialism, but the land was filled with local churches where the
afterlife (heaven and hell) were REAL. Heaven and hell are no longer
real to John MacArthur, Chuck Swindoll, J. Vernon McGee, Oral
Roberts, Rex Humbard, or even Falwell. The leaders in the "spotlight"
today don't often remind their listeners or viewers that many of them
are damned. Occasionally they will mention the matter--say once every
nine months, but the preaching of Cyclone Baxter McClendon, Sam Jones,
William Munsey, and Billy Sunday is gone. ETERNITY is so unreal to
Americans that only 48% of them believe in ANY AFTERLIFE AT ALL, and
that includes Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, and Seventh-day
Adventists. Christians in America are secularized. The TV did it for
them.
5. Finally, in their zeal to get control over the Body of Christ and
the local churches, the Christian educators (the intellectuals and
intelligentsia) decided that THEY should be the Holy Spirit and "guide
and lead" everyone into "all the truth" (for "you shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free," etc.). They conspired to
remove THE BOOK that had brought revival to America (Wesley,
Whitefield, Tennant, Edward, Cartwright, Finney, Sheldon Jackson, Sam
Jones, Morrison, Asbury, Moody, et al.) by doing what a Catholic does
when he wishes to get rid of the authority of Jesus Christ.
Catholics simply ELEVATE a competing authority (MARY, for example) to
such a place of honor that Christ's authority is nullified. With Mary
sharing Christ's attributes (as an NASV "shares" the authority of the
AV, or an NIV shares its authority), or TRADITION equal with the Book
(as the ASV or NKJV are equal to THE BOOK), final authority is
transferred, either from Christ to a church, or from a Book to a
SCHOOL.
This transfer is brought about by PROFESSION. You profess to believe
what you do not believe and then go to work destroying those who
believe what you only profess to believe.
And you think THAT will bring about a "nationwide revival"?
Anyone stupid enough to think that Communism, Catholicism, abortion,
Neo-Evangelicalism, lack of separation, or divisive "hobby horses" are
the main cause of powerless Christianity in America today is living in
the dream world that Bob Jones Sr. and John R. Rice lived in in the
1950's and 1960's.
There will be no revival in America until the apostates in charge of
training Christian young people go back to the Book and replant it in
their hearts and minds AT THEIR OWN EXPENSE. And if they are so
worldly and carnal (as they certainly are at BBC, PCS, BJU, etc.) that
they cannot give up their own egotistical, lordly, domineering, self-
opinionated, humanistic authority to make way for THE BOOK, you can
pray till hell freezes over, and you will never see any kind of a
nationwide revival.
You can still get people saved. I had over a hundred and fifty
professions of faith (first time conversions with about ninety of them
adults) last year, and have probably averaged two hundred conversions
a year for the last forty years. You can still see local
congregations "revived." But a mammoth, bussed-in, record-breaking
attendance is not NATIONAL REVIVAL even if you have one in the
nation's "ten largest churches." The liquor stores stay open; fourteen
billion dollars a year goes right there. The drug traffic continues
and will increase. No one is going to stop abortions now or later.
The crime rate, which tripled between 1964 and 1974 and doubled
between 1974 and 1984, will triple before 1995. Taxes will increase,
your guns will be confiscated. You will not have a national revival.
You can't, for the men in charge of training each generation of
Christians for "fulltime" service remove their authority from them the
moment they get them and replace it with the OPINIONS and PREFERENCES
of people who have no higher authority than pragmatic humanism. They
are then sent out into churches where the Sunday School literature has
been attacking the BOOK anywhere from twenty to fifty years. The
people you preach to do not believe THE BOOK; not even the saved ones
you preach to. Why should they? Bob Jones III doesn't; Curtis Hutson
doesn't; James Combs doesn't; Donald Waite doesn't; Doug Kutilek and
Jerry Falwell don't; Al Jennings and Ronald Walker don't; Dell,
Sherman, Dollar, and Henderson don't; Neal, Custer, Panosian, and
Afman don't; and neither do Farstad, Hodges, Scumner, Hymers, Hindson,
Hobson, Horton, or Huckleberry Hound. So why should you?
How do you make heaven and hell real to people who don't believe in
the Book you are preaching from?
You don't. They are secularized. The afterlife is nonexistent.
What fool would believe your preaching if he knew you didn't believe
what you were preaching, but were just using a Book because someone
else believed it?
Revival from your kind?
Don't get the folks in Glory laughing; they are busy shouting.
There will be no national revival in America. Educators will not make
the sacrifice: they will not bear the cross of ridicule and REAL
"separation." They will Pharisee their way through the separation and
bluff their way through the ridicule by leaning on "historical
positions." They will be the final authority themselves, and the Holy
Spirit will go "out the window." So said; so done.
"God is not mocked." These fakey little spiritual pretenders think
they are going to do it and get away with it because their enrollments
and incomes hold up as the age falls apart. That is why it holds up.
Their clientele are keeping abreast of their apostate pace. These
fakey little fakirs think they are "standing" when they are sunk in
the mud, hub cap high to a ferris wheel, and in their deluded madness
they are thrashing around and condemning everyone on earth who doesn't
agree with them as a compromiser, or a "trouble maker," or a church
splitter, or a "divisive" schismatic, or a heretic, or a "hobby horse
rider," and while they do this they think God doesn't know what they
are doing or WHY they are doing it. The Book they stole from the Body
of Christ judged "the thoughts and intents" of their hearts (Heb.
4:12-13). The problem wasn't the Bible believing people who knew a
thief when they saw one. The problem wasn't the Bible believing
people who stuck to the Book and refused to be moved from it by the
conjectures and opinions of those WHO HAD LOST THEIR FAITH IN IT. No,
the problem wasn't there. The problem was simply conceited asses who
wanted to get rid of a Book they were jealous of because of its power
and authority in the lives of the people they were trying to CONTPOL.
Such people were uncontrollable as long as their authority could be
carried in their pocket and consulted a hundred times a day. The
trick was to take this authority and reinvest it on a CAMPUS where the
faculty and staff (who did not believe the Book) could play substitute
for the Holy Spirit and get rid of any part of the Book that they
didn't like.
This is what has been going on since 1933. It will continue to the
Rapture.
God is perfectly aware of the entire operation from start to finish,
all those involved in it, all of those promoting and tolerating and
supporting it, and all of the motives and intents of those who profess
to be "godly" and "separated" while making a living as PROFESSIONAL
LIARS.
Revival in our time? "Revival now"?
You might as well ask God to bless Rock Hudson or Dolly Parton.
Don't waste your breath asking God to honor thieves and Pharisees.
They are in the money making business, and "revival" coming from their
mouths sounds to God like Judas and Gehazi talking about soul winning
and cross bearing.
