Gospel Preacher Association. Dr. Talbert Moore founded that ministry. Brother Ronnie and I are privileged to be on that board, and I love him. I'm glad he's here. God bless you, preacher. Come on. Thank you, brother. God bless you. God bless you. Good to see you. I understand this is a kind of a fellowship meeting of some brethren from this Tri-Cities area, and Brother Brad, they probably question, what in the world are you doing bringing somebody from Mississippi up here to preach in our fellowship. Well a man I'm I'm embarrassed for him. So anyhow bless y'all. Thank you very much. I was blessed to to be invited to come and we do appreciate brother Brad so much and and in honor to get to be here and then asked to preach and then to see some people that I know a blessing to get this far from home. and up here in this mountain country. Now where I'm from, there's a hill right behind my house, our church, and it's called Wicker Mountain. But the only true part of that is the wicker part, it ain't no mountain. It's a hill. But that's the best we can do, so we call it a mountain. And if I tried to climb it, it would be like a mountain, I guarantee you that. But I'm really glad to be here. I'm glad to see Brother Dennis Petty and I love to aggravate him. And he said even yesterday at lunch I said I could remember when I was a little boy sitting on my mother's lap hearing Dr. Dennis Petty preach. And so he said I was a troublemaker. So anyway it's good to see him looking forward to hearing him. I heard Brother Jerry Atkins preach 45 years ago. Only time I ever heard him in my life. Only time I ever met him. And then come back here 45 years later and meet him. And told him last night, and I remembered the message he preached out of Exodus chapter 15 on the bitter water. And now I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can remember what he preached 45 years ago. And isn't that crazy? Brother Bob Sanders and I have been friends for a long, long time. Just met Brother Jim and him recently. Brother John Reynolds, so I know a few folks, enough to maybe help get me out of here if I need to get out in a hurry. But anyway, God bless you, thank you for being here. Acts chapter number four, if you have your Bibles, Acts chapter number four. I don't wanna feel like the little boy who had been so cantankerous all day and his mother was just about fed up with him and she told him, said, when your daddy gets in, you're going to get you're in trouble. And, and so sure enough, dad, dad got in. After a while, she told him said he's, you know, eight or nine year old, 10 year old, whatever it was, she just telling about how aggravating he'd been all day wouldn't wouldn't mind. So the dad wasn't in no mood to really deal with it. He said, Tell you what, you just settle here at this table. And mom will put your supper and me and mom's gonna sit over here at the supper table and enjoy our meal together. You just sit over there to yourself." So he did, and he didn't like it much, but he did. And so the dad and mom sat down and he prayed. And when they got through, the little boy prayed. And he prayed, Lord, thank you for preparing a table for me in the presence of my enemies. Now, I know I'm not among enemies. Amen. All right. I bring you greetings from the unity Baptist Church in Ripley, Mississippi, believe it or not. And we're extreme North Mississippi, just a few miles from the Tennessee line there. And so we're glad to be here. If I if I make it till July, we will we will be there 45 years in that same church. And so so we're blessed. And And I thought about that song, Finish Well. That's a great song. And from looking at a lot of us, this silver hair, some of us are not far from finishing. And I want to finish well. Thank you, brother. Amen. I want to preach on revival. Today, I was encouraged when you said that while ago about the church and revival. I believe in revival. I believe that it is almost an essential in some respects, and I'll talk about that as we get into the message. I know there are people that give up on revival. There are preachers that have given up on revival, and they won't even preach about it, won't even talk about it. I guess they won't even pray about it. And I've about come to the conclusion the guys that are doing that are fellows who have never, but maybe they've never experienced any revival. Because if you ever experience revival, you want more of it. And revival by nature is something that may come and it may not last a long time. But God can do more in a moment of revival, whether it's in one service, one week, one month, whatever it might be, than you can ordinarily do in years and years and years. And so there's a lot of mystery associated with revival. I don't come to you with all the answers. I come to you with a plea. I come to you with a prayer. I come to you today with a desire and a hunger to see something above the average, above the ordinary, above the normal, so to speak. And so I want to talk to you about that out of Acts chapter number four. The word revival is not found here, but I think we see evidences of it. And I am limited on time. We've got a couple other preachers, and he's been very gracious, and I've got to be mindful of that. But in Acts 4, you know, in the book of Acts 3, we have what we might call the first redeemed after Pentecost. Some of the first resistance. after Pentecost in chapters 4 and 5. Maybe the first rebellion, we might call it, in the church in Acts 5, 1 through 11 with Ananias and Sapphira kind of rebelling on the way things were. Some of the first rivalry in Acts 6 where some of those ladies were being neglected and some rivalry going on. Thank God they stepped up and took care of that. I want to talk about the first revival, at least from my perspective and what I'm looking at today. That's the way we're going to address it. The first revival, and this is obviously after Pentecost, in the early days of the church. Now, the fires of Pentecost surely are still burning pretty fervently. But, you know, you can be in pretty good shape and still need revival. And I don't know that we can ever get to a place where we just say, well, you know, we don't need it. We don't need it. And I've been in some low places and some high places. And never, never a time would I would reject revival. Oh no, please Lord, if you've got more, you've got more than Lord we wanted. So I wanna talk to you about that. I don't have time to define revival. Many of you would probably be able to do that better than I would. It can be defined as a refreshing. In fact, right here in Acts chapter three, he talks about that in verse 19, that your sin may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. If the Lord is present, it'll be a time of refreshing. And we need his presence. Revival can be a refreshing. It can be a renewing. That's another good Bible word, isn't it? The renewing of your mind. And so there's revival in that sense. Revival, restoring. He said, he talked about that in the 23rd Psalm. He restoreth my soul. He talked about that in Acts chapter number 6. That a man who is overtaken by fault may need to be restored. A revival of restoration. I've seen some churches have been in some situations where we needed a revival just to rescue us from drowning in the depravity of the world all around us. Some refining. There's another good Bible word out of Malachi. And we need sometimes a refining revival to purge, to purify the church. Some repairing. Sometimes we just need a revival to repair some things. You know, just like the Lord when Peter cut that guy's ear off, and the Lord repaired it right there. And he took that guy's ear and stuck it, I don't know if he knocked the dirt off or not, and put that ear right back on, but he repaired it. As far as we know, there's no evidence the guy ever had any problem with that. If the Lord repairs something, he's fixed it. He can fix it. And rejoicing, redeeming, and so a lot of things can be said about this, I want to talk to you from Acts 4 and verse 29, 30, and 31. We'll confine our thoughts primarily to those scriptures this morning. Acts 4, verse 29. You're familiar with the situation, the persecution that has already begun. These two men, Peter and John, have been released by the Sanhedrin high priest and The Bible says that in verse 23, being let go, they went to their own company. So they went to the church, and the Bible says, and they reported what had happened to them. And then we come down to verse 29. And now, Lord, as the people have cried out, now, Lord, behold, they're threatened. Grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word. By stretching forth thine hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and they spake the word of God with boldness. Now you can go on and we won't have time to do that today but in verse 32 and following and you can find really a lot of the results of this revival that took place here in the text that we just read some where there was a union of the people uniting of the people and unselfishness among the people and then auctionizing to the people great power the Bible said they had great power on them and an uplifting of the people great grace was on them and so some good things came out of this let me just say three or four things to you this morning about this first revival And we might have what we could call a pattern here. You know, what a lot of people call the Lord's Prayer, I like to call it the model prayer. Because part of that prayer, the Lord never had to pray, did he? And talked about the forgive us of our trespasses. The Lord never had to pray that. So it's a good model prayer. Now you can pray that model prayer, or you can follow the pattern that the Lord gives us in that prayer, and every prayer I would say I ought to have some of those truths in every prayer, every time we pray. But that certainly is a pattern we might confine here, and I believe we can, a pattern for revival in this text that we have before us. I want to talk about this first revival, and I want to say that it was situational, a situational revival. And by that I mean, he says in verse 29, And now, Lord, behold their threatenings. So they've got what? They've got a situation. A situation that has come about as a result of their being obedient to the Lord. Why in Acts 3, Peter and John go down to the temple. That guy has been down there for, verse 22 of chapter 4 said the man was above 40 years old. And so all these years, But they go by on this particular occasion, and this man gets healing, and the touch of God comes upon him. Peter said, man, don't you know, don't you know I'm a Baptist preacher? Silver and gold have I none. But such as I have, I give to thee. And so he gave him Jesus, amen. And so, well then of course, the old guy jumps up, man, he's all excited, You know what happens in following and then the Sanhedrin, all of them call them in and that first resistance we call it. And so they've got a situation. It's not a situation that came about as a result of disobedience on their part. It's a situation that has come about because of obedience on their part. Now if we've got a situation that's come about because of our disobedience, we're just going to have to repent. I mean we're just going to have to get right with God. And instead of so much maybe praying for revival, we just need to pray for some repentance. And let's just get right with God. Let's get right with God. And so, but that's not the case here. These people, Peter and John, are down there trying to fulfill the great commission. And they're going into the hotbed. I mean, they're going into hostile territory. But they're going in it with a boldness for God and with a determination to fulfill the commission that the Lord had given them. And so out of this act of obedience now this resistance has arose. And so they've been threatened they've been told not to not to be preaching Jesus anymore. They go back to their company to the church and then hear this happened. And so as as they are approaching God now Lord behold their threatening. Look at our situation. Look at our situation. Could I ask you today have you ever had a situation or maybe you have a situation, and it might be so desperate that if God doesn't send revival, it's not going to get fixed. Now, if you've been around any length of time, and most of you men have, you know what I'm saying is true. There are situations that we look at in our churches, in our lives, in our homes and families that if we don't have a situational revival, that we're going to suffer some terrible consequences. I'm talking about the fact that some doors of churches are going to be closed. I'm talking about the fact that in some homes, marriages are going to be divorced. I'm talking about situations of a domestic nature. I've got people in my church right now, the church where I pastor, that really, really need a revival. in their home, brother, and if they don't have it, I'm concerned, and I'm not talking about people that just got married two or three years ago, I'm talking about and dealing with people that have been married 30 years and 40 years, that marriage is coming apart. Now you may not have that up here in the mountain country, but whatever can happen, we're dealing with it where I'm from. And I'm telling you, the average and the ordinary is not going to fix it. Amen? And we need a situational revival. It may be because of domestic problems. It may be because of division. Now I'd say we need revival in the church in general. If for no other reason, just because of the division that's within a lot of our churches. Starting with your own local church. And I've seen that, you know, 45 years in one place and that's not even the first church I pastored. I pastored another church four years. I know what some of you are thinking, brother, you must have been a little boy. I was three year old when I started pastor. And I was a lot more peaceful than I am now. And I've seen situations that if God didn't come on the scene and heal it, then that division would be so bad. You'd have, you know, if you got a church that's just got the aisle in the middle and you got this side and that side, then you got some on this side, some on that side. And they're good. And then when you get one that's got three sections like this, you could even be divided one, two, and three. And good night, we've got one, two, I think we've got four or five sections in ours. And I don't need that kind of division. I don't need that kind of division. And you don't either. But what I'm saying, it's in the local church. But I've seen this happen. I've seen revival happen. And people within that local fellowship, that had fallen out with each other over something that may have happened in two or three previous generations. And God fixed it, Brother Kennedy. I have seen God do that. And many of you have too. A situation revival. Take care of a lot of the division. Maybe some of the domestic problems. Homes and families. Other situations. Depletion. Preachers, especially after COVID. Church doors have closed. Some of them haven't closed, but they thought about closing. And they've got members that left with COVID that have not been back. Before COVID, we thought they were pretty good members. Come to find out, maybe they weren't what we thought they were. Depletion. And only revival is going to fix some of this, friend. The average and the ordinary is not going to fix it. We need a moving of God, a revival, if I can say that to you today. and doctrine. Well, we need a revival that will get the church established in good old-fashioned Bible doctrine again. Amen. Now, there are evidences in the Bible of the situational revival. I'm not just making this up. I'm not making this up. Look, just in the book of Psalms, David said, Will thou not revive us again? that thy people may rejoice in thee. And apparently David was thinking of some particular situation. Among his people, the nation of Israel, God revive us. But in the same book of Psalms, there's a verse that says, though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive what? Me. That's a totally different situation. But the word revive is used in both places. I'm saying there are situations that call upon. Your church may need revival because of this or that. The church down the road may be going through something completely different. Your church may be struggling financially. You're barely able to meet the budget. The treasurer has to look each week before they pay you your check to make sure the check won't bounce. Now, that's a situation. Well, maybe not. Okay. From where I come from, that's a situation. When the preacher can't get his paycheck, that's a situation. I'm sorry, apparently I have spoken in language you do not understand. I didn't know I was amongst a bunch of millionaires. I didn't know all you guys had it made like that. Huh? It is true. But the church down the road, they may have plenty of money in the bank. But they're fussing, and they're fighting, and you got two or three groups in there trying to make a grab for the power of the church. And if they don't have revival, then I'm just saying, you see what a different situation. Revive us, revive me. Out of Habakkuk, and I have that in my notes. He said, Lord, revive thy work. Completely different situation. In the midst of years, make known. In the midst of years, God, remember mercy and revive thy work. There are churches I know of where there's one man doing all the work in the church. And that's the pastor. And the reason he's doing it is because somebody in the church has concluded that we pay him a salary and he ought to do the work and just leave us alone. And when it comes to preaching, they really don't even want him to work too hard at that. And they sure don't want him going overtime. Just give us a little sermonette. We'll be satisfied. I mean, we pay you to really give something, but we don't require it. We don't require it. You'll just visit the hospital and, you know, marry our young and bury our dead. That'll be sufficient. Don't get overzealous on all this preaching stuff and all of that. Am I making any sense whatsoever? Good night. A situational revival. Let me hasten, let me hasten and say something about a supplicational revival. In verse number 29 he said, And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants. Now, Lord, behold. It says in verse number 31, and when they had prayed, when they had prayed, supplication. I don't know that there's ever been a real revival without somebody was praying. Now I know this, there's enough record of revivals in Bible history and church history to know that whether it was the great Hebrides revival in 1949 to 52 and those two elderly ladies by the name of Peggy and Christine, 82 and 84 year old had been praying for years for revival in the Hebrides island. Finally, the burden got on the men of God of the church. They began to meet in a barn and pray. And God moved on their hearts. And they got right with God. And then Duncan Campbell was brought in. And the great Hebrides revival. I'm not making this up. You can Google it. Google it. You could buy books on it. On the great Hebrides revival. Duncan Campbell came to America and preached in numerous conferences and meetings and talking about the great move of God. What about the great Welch revival? 1904 and 05 it began with prayer and maybe people had prayed before him, but Evan Roberts On his knees on his face before God in a little Bible college where he was going And he started not to even go to the service that night in the meeting They were holding but but he did and while he was there a man was preaching Seth Joshua I believe was his name and he was preaching with the emphasis on bend us and Bend us. And that fell upon his heart and he cried to God, bend me. And then he went home to his home church. And the great Welch revival broke out. He prayed for 100,000 souls to be saved. And they say that over 100,000 people were added to the churches of Wales in those days. And all this has been documented. J. Edwin Orr documented all of this. The great G. Campbell Morgan attended some of those services. And this all began with prayer, with supplication. Notice, now Lord, behold their threatenings grant unto thy servant. And when they had prayed, when they had prayed, see. And so we're not going to experience real revival, I don't believe, do you? Without us really praying? and getting serious with God about them. And so a situational revival. A supplicational revival. Let me talk about a spontaneity of revival. I tried to coin a new word, spontaneical. Now spontaneous, spontaneity, that's in there. Well, you can put that in there now, I just coined a brand new word. Had to come to the mountains to do it, but it'll work. Have you ever, and you may even need an interpreter from me, I don't know, maybe they're understanding some of what I'm saying. Have you ever been in a meeting, and I mean, there was just a spontaneity, a spontaneous move of God in the service, You ever been in something like that? Now, I'm telling you, it'll ruin you in a good way. I have seen that in our own church. I've seen it in other meetings. Now, this happens not without God, so just go with me to the very end, and we're not far from the end. We're not far from the end. In fact, I've got my watch here, and I got my phone with a timer on it here. So I'm very careful about this. All right. Here's a definition of spontaneity. Spontaneical I think is similar. People begin to move. That's what happened right here. What happened right here. Spontaneity occurring as a result of sudden inner impulse or inclination. without premeditation or prompting or external stimulus including man-made manipulation. Now can I give you that again? And all this is within the work of God now and my last point I'll wrap all this up right here. This is not man-made stuff I'm talking about. It's not man-made manufacturing that I'm talking about. I'm not talking about me and you pumping things up. I'm not talking about us being smart enough to get this done or being whatever. But I'll tell you, when there's a spontaneity on the part of God's people to just... Brother John Reynolds gave an invitation last night after he preached in that great message, John 5. There was at his invitation, obviously, but with no manipulation. But there was a spontaneous move of many of us. And I came down along with a lot of others. You know why? I felt an inner impulse, an inclination. Brother Canada, without premeditation. I did not sit down and over last night before the service and let's go to I'm not going to offer to that or glory to God I'm going to the altar tonight. I had not given a lot of thought about it. I was just excited to wait on the service and see how God developed the service. But when that came and that message and the way the invitation was presented I had a sudden inner impulse. and inclination, without premeditation, or prompting, or external stimulus, without any manipulation. I felt like I need to move. I just need to get out here and talk to the Lord. Let me show you something right here. Look, if you will, in verse 29. The word, and. And now, Lord, behold their threat. And then he said, and grant unto thy servant. Verse 30, stretch forth thine hand, and that signs and wonders may be done. Verse 31, and when they had prayed, the place was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. And they spake the word of God with both. Now there's a lot of spontaneity there. I mean between the saints and the Lord himself, there's a lot of spontaneous combustion going on in this place, so much so So much combustion of the spontaneous working of God that the place was shaken. The place was shaken. That's what it says in your King James Bible. Right there. That's what it says. There are times through the Bible and church history where this kind of thing has happened. Read Nehemiah chapter. I don't have time to read. I wish I did. have time to read Chapter 8, that meeting at the Watergate, and where they built the pulpit of wood. You remember that? Read that when you get a chance, if you're interested. Read that and notice the spontaneous moving that was taking place. Where the presence of God was real, so much so that there began to be a moving and a crying out of the people. Bring us the book! Bring us the book! What would that do for you Sunday morning, preacher? If your people gathered and there was such a presence of God and a spontaneous cry from the people and before you could step into the pulpit and they're saying bring the book! Bring us the book. Bring us the book. Forget the announcements. Forget the program. Forget all of that. Bring us the book. Bring us the book. Bring us the book. And he opened the book and read it for hours. For hours. And they were still there. That kind of spontaneous combustion. Well, get used to it. Cause in Revelation 4 and 5, I done read it. I read it again this morning. A lot of spontaneous stuff gonna happen. You get to heaven. And this happened. And that happened. And this happened. And sometimes we'll find ourselves on our faces before God. Other times we'll have our hands raised in Christ. Just a lot of spontaneous. I've been on Sunday morning sitting in the preacher's chair The program was unfolding, music and singing. I'm sitting there not suspicious, not even suspicious that God's up to something. In August of 09, we had assembled. I got up Sunday school hour. I got up to say something just before we dismissed the Sunday school. I wasn't suspicious anything was going on. I mean, I was at church. I had my outline. Had my Sunday school lesson, I'm ready, let's just do what we do. And then one of the men spoke up right before we dismissed to go to class, he said, Pastor, can I say a word? And I knew the man, he's a good man, I knew it'd be all right. Some, if they raise their hand, you say, oh Lord. This ain't gonna be good. Whatever good we got going, it's fixing to fall flat But it's a good man. I knew this would be good. And he did. He got up and testified and he and one of our men had been to the jail that morning to preach. And he wanted to tell me something that had happened, wanted to tell the church something that had happened that morning. And he did. And he told it. And the devil had resisted it. But God blessed it. He got through it. He sat down. Then another man just jumped up. And he said, Preacher, let me say this. And he got up. And it's not one of these, just a testimony service. And I'm all for that. But this was more than then this man got it. Then when he sat down, then another man got it. Well, we don't blow the program now. I mean, if we go to Sunday school, it's gonna be cut way short. What do you do? I mean, good night. What do you do? Well, thank God the spontaneity just kept on happening. And we finally and about an hour and a half just stopped, just stopped and said, Look, we'll just hook back up tonight. We did we get and then the youth got in on that night. And then for four weeks, we had a moving of God. And I just told him that Sunday night, I said, Look, I'm coming back tomorrow night. I said, I'm gonna be here probably around 637. If you won't show up fine, if you don't fight, and they was better than 100 150 people showed up at night. And we did that off and on for about four weeks. And now I'm hungry to see that again. And I've had little glimpses of it since then. But but nothing quite like that. But I'm telling you, spontaneous. Now, I've got to say this, and then I've got to go. I got to say this. It was spiritual in the sense that in the bottom line, verse 31 says, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, that this is not something man made or concocted by man, that this is God. But there's a what? Now there's a when, it says in verse 31 when they prayed. Then there's a what, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, which means to influence, to supply, to furnish. And then there's a who, and that who is the Holy Ghost. Now if we're gonna have revival, it's gotta be Holy Ghost revival. Or it could be like a lot of other stuff out there today, it could be a lot of junk. But if the Holy Ghost is supervising, If he's the agent, if he's the administrator, it'll not only be good, it'll be exactly what we need. Amen. Thank you. God bless these men, their ministries, this church, this dear pastor. Get glory for yourself. Bless the men that are to preach. We'll thank you in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.