HOW
TO PRAY
R.
A. TORREY
CHAPTER
XI
THE
NEED OF A GENERAL REVIVAL
If we are to pray aright in such a time as this, much of our prayer should be for a general revival. If there was ever a time in which there was need to cry unto God in the words of the Psalmist, "Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?" (Ps. 85:6) it is this day in which we live. It is surely time for the Lord to work, for men have made void His law (Ps. 199:126). The voice of the Lord given in the written Word is set at naught both by the world and the church. Such a time is not a time for discouragement--the man who believes in God and believes in the Bible can never be discouraged; but it is a time for Jehovah Himself to step in and work. The intelligent Christian, the wide-awake watchman on the walls of Zion, may well cry with the Psalmist of old, "It is time for Jehovah to work, for they have made void Thy law." (Ps. 119:126, Am.R.V.)
The
great need of the day is a general revival.
Let
us consider first of all what a general revival is.
A
revival is a time of quickening or impartation of life. As God alone can give
life, a revival is a time when God visits His people and by the power of His
Spirit imparts new life to them, and through them imparts life to sinners dead
in trespasses and sins. We have religious excitements gotten up by the cunning
methods and hypnotic influence of the mere professional evangelist; but these
are not revivals and are not needed. They are the devil's imitations of
a revival. NEW LIFE FROM GOD--that is a revival. A
general revival is a time when this new life from God is not confined to
scattered localities, but is general throughout Christendom and the earth.
The
reason why a general revival is needed is that spiritual dearth and desolation
and death is general. It is not confined to any one
country, though it may be more manifest in some countries
than in others. It is
found in foreign mission fields as well as in home fields. We have had local
revivals. The life-giving Spirit of God has breathed upon this minister and
that, this church and that, this community and that; but we need, we sorely
need, a revival that shall be widespread and general.
Let
us look for a few moments at the results of a revival. These results are
apparent in ministers, in the church and in the unsaved.
1.
The results of a revival in a minister are:
(1)
The minister has a new love for souls. We ministers as a rule have no such love
for souls as we ought to have, no such love for souls as Jesus had, no such
love for souls as Paul had. But when God visits His people the hearts of
ministers are greatly burdened for the unsaved. They go out in great longing
for the salvation of their fellow men. They forget their ambition to preach
great sermons and for fame, and simply long to see men brought to Christ.
(2)
When true revivals come ministers get a new love for
God's Word and a new faith in God's Word. They fling to the winds their doubts
and criticisms of the Bible and of the creeds, and go to preaching the Bible
and especially Christ crucified. Revivals make ministers who are loose in their
doctrines orthodox. A genuine wide-sweeping revival would do more to turn
things upside down and thus get them right side up than all the heresy trials
ever instituted.
(3)
Revivals bring to ministers new liberty and power in preaching. It is no
week-long grind to prepare a sermon, and no nerve-consuming effort to preach it
after it has been prepared.
Preaching
is a joy and a refreshment, and there is power in it
in times of revival.
2.
The results of a revival on Christians generally are as marked as its results
upon the ministry.
(1)
In times of revival Christians come out from the world and live separated
lives. Christians who have been dallying with the world, who
have been playing cards and dancing and going to the theater
and indulging in similar follies, give them up. These things are found to be
incompatible with increasing life and light.
(2)
In times of revival Christians get a new spirit of prayer. Prayer-meetings are
no longer a duty, but become the necessity of a hungry, importunate heart.
Private prayer is followed with new zest. The voice of earnest prayer to God is
heard day and night. People no longer ask, "Does God answer prayer?"
They know He does, and besiege the throne of grace day and night.
(3)
In times of revival Christians go to work for lost souls. They do not go to
meeting simply to enjoy themselves and get blessed. They go to meeting to watch
for souls and to bring them to Christ. They talk to men on the street and in
the stores and in their homes. The cross of Christ, salvation, heaven and hell
become the subjects of constant conversation. Politics and the weather and new
bonnets and the latest novels are forgotten.
(4) In times of revival Christians have new
joy in Christ. Life is joy, and new life is new joy. Revival days are glad
days, days of heaven on earth.
(5)
In times of revival Christians get a new love for the Word of God. They want to
study it day and night. Revivals are bad for saloons and theaters,
but they are good for bookstores and Bible agencies.
3.
But revivals also have a decided influence on the unsaved world.
(1)
First of all, they bring deep conviction of sin. Jesus said that when the
Spirit was come He would convince the world of sin (Jn.
16:7,8). Now we have seen that a revival is a coming
of the Holy Spirit, and therefore there must be a new conviction of sin, and
there always is. If you see something men call a revival, and there is no
conviction of sin, you may know at once that it is bogus. It is a sure mark.
(2)
Revivals bring also conversion and regeneration. When God refreshes His people,
He always converts sinners also. The first result of Pentecost was new life and
power to the one hundred and twenty disciples in the upper room; the second
result was three thousand conversions in a single day. It is always so. I am
constantly reading of revivals here and there, where Christians were greatly
helped but there were no conversions. I have my doubts about that kind. If
Christians are truly refreshed, they will get after the unsaved by prayer and
testimony and persuasion, and there will be conversions.
WHY
A GENERAL REVIVAL IS NEEDED
We
see what a general revival is, and what it does; let us now face the question
why it is needed at the present time. I think that the mere description of what
it is and what it does shows that it is needed, sorely needed, but let us look
at some specific conditions that exist to-day that show the need of it. In
showing these conditions one is likely to be called a pessimist. If facing the
facts is to be called a pessimist, I am willing to be called a pessimist. If in
order to be an optimist one must shut his eyes and call black white, and error
truth, and sin righteousness, and death life, I don't want to be called an
optimist. But I am an optimist all the same. Pointing out the real condition
will lead to a better condition.
1.
Look first at the ministry.
(1)
Many of us who are professedly orthodox ministers are practically infidels.
That is plain speech, but it is also indisputable fact. There is no essential
difference between the teachings of Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll
and the teachings of some of our theological professors. The latter are not so
blunt and honest about it; they phrase it in more elegant and studied
sentences; but it means the same. Much of the so-called new learning and higher
criticism is simply Tom Paine infidelity sugar-coated. Prof. Howard Osgood, who
is a real scholar and not a mere echo of German infidelity, once read a
statement of some positions, and asked if they did not fairly represent the
scholarly criticism of to-day, and when it was agreed that they did, he
startled his audience by saying:
"I
am reading from Tom Paine's 'Age of Reason.'"
There is little new in the higher criticism.
Our future ministers oftentimes are being educated under infidel professors,
and being immature boys when they enter the college or seminary, they naturally
come out infidels in many cases, and then go forth to poison the church.
(2)
Even when our ministers are orthodox--as thank God so very many are!--they are
oftentimes not men of prayer. How many modern ministers know what it is to
wrestle in prayer, to spend a good share of a night in prayer? I do not know
how many, but I do know that many do not.
(3)
Many of us who are ministers have no love for souls. How many preach because
they MUST preach, because they feel that men every where are perishing, and by
preaching they hope to save some? And how many follow up their preaching as
Paul did, by beseeching men
everywhere to be reconciled to God?
Perhaps
enough has been said about us ministers; but it is evident that a revival is
needed for our sake or some of us will haveto stand
before God overwhelmed with confusion in an awful day of reckoning that is
surely coming.
2.
Look now at the church:
(1)
Look at the doctrinal state of the church. It is bad enough. Many do not
believe in the whole Bible. The book of Genesis is a myth, Jonah is an
allegory, and even the miracles of the Son of God are questioned. The doctrine
of prayer is old-fashioned, and the work of the Holy Spirit is sneered at. Conversion
is unnecessary, and hell is no longer believed in. Then look at the fads and
errors that have sprung up out of this loss of faith, Christian Science,
Unitarianism, Spiritualism, Universalism, Babism,
Metaphysical Healing, etc., etc., a perfect pandemonium of doctrines of devils.
(2)
Look at the spiritual state of the church. Worldliness is rampant among church
members. Many church members are just as eager as any in the rush to get rich.
They use the methods of the world in the accumulation of wealth, and they hold
just as fast to it as any when they have gotten it.
Prayerlessness
abounds among church members on every hand. Some one has said that Christians
on the average do not spend more than five minutes a day in prayer.
Neglect
of the Word of God goes hand in hand with neglect of prayer to God. Very many
Christians spend twice as much time every day wallowing through the more of the
daily papers as they do bathing in the cleansing laver of God's Holy Word. How
many Christians average an hour a day spent in Bible study?
Along
with neglect of prayer and neglect of the Word of God goes a lack of
generosity. The churches are rapidly increasing in wealth, but the treasuries
of the missionary societies are empty. Christians do not average a dollar a year
for foreign missions. It is simply appalling.
Then
there is the increasing disregard for the Lord's Day. It is fast becoming a day
of worldly pleasure, instead of a day of holy service. The Sunday newspaper
with its inane twaddle and filthy scandal takes the place of
the Bible; and visiting
and golf and bicycle, the place of the Sunday-school and church service.
Christians
mingle with the world in all forms of questionable amusements. The young man
and young woman who does not believe in dancing with its rank immodesties, the
card table with its drift toward gambling, and the theater
with its ever-increasing appeal to lewdness, is counted an old fogy.
Then
how small a proportion of our membership has really entered into fellowship
with Jesus Christ in His burden for souls! Enough has been said of the
spiritual state of the church.
3.
Now look at the state of the world.
(1)
Note how few conversions there are. The Methodist church, which has led the way
in aggressive work has actually lost more members than
it has gained the last year. Here and there a
church has a large number of accessions upon
confession of faith, but these churches are rare exceptions; and where there
are such accessions, in how few cases are the conversions deep, thorough and
satisfactory.
(2)
There is lack of conviction of sin. Seldom are men overwhelmed with a sense of
their awful guilt in trampling under foot the Son of God. Sin is regarded as a
"misfortune" or as "infirmity," or even as "good in
the making"; seldom as enormous wrong against a holy God.
(3)
Unbelief is rampant. Many regard it as a mark of intellectual superiority to
reject the Bible, and even faith in God and immortality. It is about the only
mark of intellectual
superiority many possess, and perhaps that is the
reason they cling to it so tenaciously.
(4)
Hand in hand with this widespread infidelity goes gross immorality, as has
always been the case. Infidelity and immorality are Siamese twins. They always
exist and always grow and always fatten together. This prevailing immorality is
found everywhere. Look at the legalized adultery that we call divorce. Men
marry one wife after another, and are still admitted into good
society; and women do likewise. There are thousands
of supposedly respectable men in America living with other men's wives, and
thousands of supposedly respectable women living with other women's husbands.
This
immorality is found in the theater. The theater at its best is bad enough, but now "Sapphos," and the "Degenerates," and all the
unspeakable vile accessories of the stage rule the day,
and the women who debauch themselves by appearing in such plays are defended in
the newspapers and welcomed by supposedly respectable people.
Much
of our literature is rotten, but decent people will read books as bad as
"Trilby" because it is the rage. Art is oftentimes a mere covering
for shameless indecency. Women are induced to cast modesty to the winds that
the artist may perfect his art and defile
his morals.
Greed
for money has become a mania with rich and poor. The multi-millionaire will
often sell his soul and trample the rights of his fellow men under
foot in the mad hope of
becoming a billionaire, and the laboring man will
often commit murder to increase the power of the union and keep up wages. Wars
are waged and men shot down like dogs to improve commerce, and to gain
political prestige for unprincipled politicians who parade as statesmen.
The
licentiousness of the day lifts its serpent head everywhere. You see it in the
newspapers, you see it on the bill-boards, you see it
on the advertisements of cigars, shoes, bicycles, patent medicines, corsets and
everything else. You see it on the streets at night. You see it just outside
the church door. You find it not only in the awful cesspools set apart for it
in the great cities, but it is crowding further and further up our business
streets and into the residence portions of our cities. Alas! now
and then you find it, if you look sharp, in supposedly respectable homes;
indeed it will be borne to your ears by the confessions of broken-hearted men
and women. The moral condition of the world in our day is disgusting,
sickening, appalling.
We
need a revival, deep, widespread, general, in the power of the Holy Ghost. It
is either a general revival or the dissolution of the church, of the home, of
the state. A revival, new life from God, is the cure, and the only cure. That
will stem the awful tide of immorality and unbelief. Mere argument will not do
it; but a sign from heaven, a new outpouring of the Spirit of God, It was not
discussion
but the breath of God that relegated Tom Paine, Voltaire, Volney
and other of the old infidels to the limbo of forgetfulness; and we need a new
breath from God to send the Wellhausens and the Kuenens and the Grafs and the
parrots they have trained to occupy chairs and pulpits in England and America
to keep them company. I believe that breath from God is coming.
The
great need of to-day is a general revival. The need is clear. It admits of no
honest difference of opinion. What then shall we do? Pray. Take up the
Psalmist's prayer, "Revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in
Thee." Take up Ezekiel's prayer, "Come from the four winds, O breath
(breath of God), and breathe upon these slain that they may live." Hark, I
hear a noise! Behold a shaking! I can almost feel the breeze upon my cheek. I
can almost see the great living army rising to their feet. Shall we not pray
and pray and pray and pray, till the Spirit comes, and God revives His people?