IN THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 3:19 we read, "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord." Whatever else we say about revival we have to recognize this, that revival is an act of mercy in the sovereignty of God.
There is a vast difference between revival and evangelism. When we speak of revival in America we think of church advertising, "Our revival will begin next Sunday night at a certain time and it is going to finish the next Sunday night at a certain time." Obviously this is something purely mechanical, it is something which men have engineered. I think that one of the offenses of revival, in the historic sense, is that it cannot be organized. As Doctor Tozer said, "When revival comes it changes the moral climate of a community."
You can have revival that covers a church -- Spurgeon had that. You can have a revival that covers a city. You can have a revival that covers the whole nation -- and I am thinking in this context more than in the other contexts (though sometimes revival spreads from here to there -- like fire spreads.) Revival cannot be organized -- evangelism can be organized. Revival cannot be subsidized -- evangelism can and usually it must be. Revival cannot be advertised -- evangelism can. It may cost millions of dollars, as it often does, to have one of our huge, modern, so called revivals. You have to pay vast sums of money for time on TV, for example -- perhaps a million dollars a night. That's incredible, that's unthinkable to me in the context of Biblical revival, or even historical revival.
Why doesn't revival need to be advertised? For the simple reason, that fire is the most self advertising thing that there is, whether it is a physical fire or a revival fire. It draws people like a magnet.
Leonard Ravenhill (1907-1994) - Preached in America for revival until his death. One of the foremost authorities on revival in the 20th century, namely with the book “Why Revival Tarries.”
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