Thank you. Good evening. It's great to be with you, and thank you so much for coming out. This seems like a rather strange experience for me. My wife and I recently just flew around the world, actually, doing conferences to New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and back home, and now I walk across the street and do a conference. Can't get much better than this. But this is an important conference, because it's on a very, very important subject, something we desperately need, desperately need, and we've got to never cease praying for it. Revival. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said it was the greatest need of the church today. And I believe he could say that back in the 1960s. Thousand times more We we can say it today when the church has degenerated itself so far in so many places and the nation has and the world have gone even far further into all kinds of Insanity absolute insanity just talking with someone in this audience about the total loss of the moral compass and And we desperately, desperately need revival. So turn with me to Acts 2, verse 37 through 42, after Peter's sermon. I just want to read a few verses of what happened after Peter's sermon, where the first profound New Testament church revival in large numbers transpired. Hear the word of God. Now, when they heard this, this is Acts 2.37, they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did he testify and exhort saying, save yourselves from this untoward generation. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about 3,000 souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers. Let's pray again. Rend the heavens and come down, O God, and visit us even tonight, that revival would break out in our hearts and in our midst and that thou would do wondrous things and that we would not just be passionate for thy glory and for revival, but that we would know inwardly a sweet communion with thee as father, as son and as Holy Spirit and that our lives would be revived in the best sense of the word, that we would stop leaving our first love, that we would remember from whence we have fallen and repent and return and do the first works. Oh God, work mightily in our midst, in our hearts, and by extension in our churches and families, in our city and state and nation and world. Let thy kingdom come. and be with Brother Lee and myself as we speak now about this glorious subject, one so desperately needed and yet one so lightly esteemed by so many, even true Christians. Lord, forgive us for being used to not living in times of revival and taking it for granted that the revival will not come. But do send revival. Do revive us, cause thy face to shine upon us once more, and we shall be saved. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I'd like to try to do three things in this talk. First, I want to look with you using the Acts 2 revival as a bit of a lens as to the question, what really is a revival? What are the marks of revival? And then I wanna speak from my own limited perspective at what God is doing, at least in some places around the world today. And I hope you find that part interesting. And then thirdly, I want in closing to look at how we can be assets to revival by the grace of God, as well as how we can be hindrances. Okay, so that's where we're going. So first of all, then, what is revival? Well, in church history, since the Reformation, there are actually three different schools of thought, three major schools of thought. The first one prefers to speak of revival as renewal or continual revival. And that view, as Ian Murray explains, is the view that says revival is not an extraordinary thing. It's not something that occurs occasionally and periodically, but it belongs to the permanent essence of the New Testament age. In his book, Pentecost Once and for All, Murray points out that also some in the Dutch Reformed tradition, particularly Abraham Kuyper, embraced this view. And one reason why Kuyper did that is because of his view of presupposed regeneration. If all your children are saved from infancy, well, you've got a continuous revival, don't you? And so he too embraced this error. Richard Loveless is another one who says, well, the church has been in continual renewal since the New Testament age. But that is really hard to believe when you're a student of church history, because it just ain't so. There's been times of great darkness. Then there's been times of great light. This view certainly is not squaring with the New Testament age. Second view is that revival is something that happens, but it's conditional upon obedience. It's conditional upon obedience. Now, there are two groups within this group, so we'll call it 2A and 2B, for clarity's sake. 2A, are those who believe that revival can be secured by intense personal effort, evangelistic effort. So they would almost define revival this way, a period of energetic evangelistic activity. A trailblazer here is of course Charles Finney, for those of you who know your church history. A 19th century evangelist who basically said revival can be identified with certain phenomena that any minister who has a heart for revival could produce at any time through the correct use of the right means. Obviously this is an Arminian view. A man, man can instigate revival, the supernatural intervention of God. is not essential. In the Grand Rapids Press, must be 30 years ago now, I was amazed one day to open up the press at that point and see a whole page ad of an Armenian evangelist who was coming to town and underneath, he was carrying a briefcase striding along and underneath the ad it said, I'll spare you his name, because I don't want to degrade people from this pulpit. But he said, this man, this evangelist, carries revival with him in his briefcase. Carries revival with him in his briefcase. It's like something he could produce. And he was only supposed to stay here two days, but his next Revival was going to happen in Toledo, Ohio, and it was projected six days from then. And it said he'll stay another three days if revival breaks out. Well, he knows he can produce it, so of course he's gonna stay another three days. This is just a game. This is Arminian evangelism at its worst. Charles Finney did a lot of damage, a lot of damage on the American scene with his decisionism and so on. The problem with it is that so many people get persuaded they're saved by raising their hand, signing a card, coming down an aisle, and then they're told by the counselors up front that they have assurance of faith even though they felt nothing yet. And to undeceive those people, once they're convinced by man that they're saved, is a rare phenomenon. And so what ends up happening... It's not that no one ever gets converted under their ministries. We know that that does happen. God can make crooked sticks straight. But the problem is many thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people get deceived into believing they're saved. They don't show the fruits and they go their whole lifetime thinking they're saved. This is a very dangerous view of revival. But there's another view that maybe is not extremely dangerous, but it's not really the old view, the biblical view, I'll argue in a moment, which can fall under this conditional upon obedience. But it's not so much the obedience of faith Which Finney would say, if you just believe, and it's very easy to believe, of course. He doesn't tell you that believing is surrendering your whole being to the Lord, and that that's not a natural man's inclination. And that is obedience of repentance. This is the view of some UK theologians, particularly some Scottish ones. Jonathan Goforth and Duncan Campbell, in the middle of the 20th century, were very fond of quoting 2 Chronicles 7. Let me just find that text here to make sure I get it exactly right. 7 verse 14, you've heard it quoted often, I'm sure. And they said, if we just fulfill 2 Chronicles 7.14, then revival will come. Maybe they won't say it's automatic, but God promises it, and therefore it will come. If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Well, That is God's promise, but does that mean every time His people cry out to God for help, that this happens right away? Where's the sovereignty of God at play here? Now this is something, of course, that has a lot of truth in it. We are to exercise the graces of repentance and submission and consecration and obedience, but We're not at liberty to say when we do that, that widespread revival will automatically follow. Campbell puts it this way, a full and complete surrender to God is a place of blessing, but it's also the price of revival. So it's conditioned upon your repentance. Now that view, that view is certainly Not accurate either historically. There are many, many Christians who've been praying for revival around the world today. I know one man who's been praying for it for 60 some years and he said, I'm gonna pray for it until I die even though I've never seen it yet. He said, it's the only prayer in my entire life that God has not answered. He's a very godly man and he prays for revival with tears on a regular basis. Why hasn't it happened? God promises it. Yes, but God is sovereign. He comes at his time and in his way. Now, the third view is that revival is a sovereign outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of sinners in greater measures, substantially greater measures than is normally the case. Authentic revivals are not miraculously different from the regular experience of the individual believer who is saved by the Holy Spirit. Or the regular experience of the church, where maybe two or five or maybe 15 or 20 are converted in any given year. The difference you see is not in kind, but in degree. In an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, greater numbers of people are born again, greater numbers grow in spiritual maturity, in greater measure than usual. Spiritual influence is more widespread, conviction of sin goes deeper, generally speaking, feelings are more intense, the sense of God is more overwhelming, and love for God and for my neighbor is stronger than normal. In other words, all of the graces of the spirit that the church normally experiences in say average times is heightened and deepened and broadened. There's a greater outpouring of the spirit and of his graces in every way, shape and form. Now, when such revivals penetrate a society, a church, a nation, Inevitably, Satan targets those revivals with extraordinary efforts to squash them. So what you will find with every revival, I say every revival in church history that I've ever studied. And I spent a whole summer studying revivals, real revivals in church history one summer. And I couldn't find a single one where this wasn't true, that Satan comes along and tries to bring chaff among the wheat and does succeed to some degree so that unscriptural abuses, bizarre phenomena and spurious conversions come along with the surge of wheat in revival. So there's usually a winnowing season that follows revival. Nevertheless, nevertheless, the Spirit of God plays the predominant role, a great, a mighty, a sovereign, major role in authentic revival. And it's always done, I'll get to that in a moment. It's always done through prayer. He uses prayer and through preaching. Preaching the whole counsel of God from the servants of God. Now this is what we might call the old school view. The old school view of revival. That it's a special, magnificent work of the Holy Spirit. And that differs substantially from the first view that does not expect anything unusual in renewal or revival and differs from the second view which sees little need for supernatural intervention. This third view is a view of the book of Acts. It's the view taught by John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Davies, Martin Lloyd-Jones, G.I. Packer, Ian Murray, scores of others. who've written extensively about revival from the Reformation until today. Now, that raises a second question. What are some of the most important marks of this kind of old school revival? According to Acts chapter two, which is our model case study, of course. And I have seven of them I want to pass on to you that I think are important. So number one, I've hinted at already, is that authentic revival is always a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. Always. No one can walk around with revival in his briefcase. Acts 2 verse 47, could not be plainer. And the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved. Acts 13, 48. As many as were ordained to eternal life, this is just after 5,000 more were converted, believed. As many as were ordained, that's God's sovereign work, to eternal life, believed. So, revival is much like the conversion of your children. You can do all kinds of things to Put the means in front of your children that the Holy Spirit can bless, and you must do that. But you can't convert your child, can you? That's the work of God. It's the same thing with revival. You can use the means, and we're gonna talk about some of the means we need to use, but God has to bless it. God has to honor it sovereignly and graciously. No amount of human zeal, no amount of human anything can automatically produce revival. It is a rending of the heavens. It is a divine intervention among the affairs of men. Take Jonathan Edwards. He goes and preaches his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in one church, and dozens of people are saved under that sermon. People are just weeping in the pews. And God comes and visits them in a mighty way. He goes back home and preaches the same sermon in his own church and there's no movement at all. Well, what do you make of that? Are they just tired of Edwards preaching? No, it's the sovereign work of God. And every preacher will tell you that, that there are certain sermons, even if it's a mini revival, that God, maybe there's two or three or four sermons in a lifetime of ministry, that God uses to convert several people at once. Almost like a tiny little mini revival in a particular church. And you can't explain it. You can preach the same sermon elsewhere with just the same amount of freedom. And you'd never hear, not saying there aren't any, but you'd never hear of one conversion from that sermon. So revivals are altogether independent of human support or human sympathy. Because the wind blows where it listeth. That's like the Holy Spirit, Jesus says. And you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell from which it comes and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. It's sovereign, it's sudden. Revivals are wind-like in character. in Pentecost, the wind blew through the whole house. Symbolic of the Holy Spirit blowing through the whole soul of one person after another in revival. Now the closest thing I've seen in my life to revival was a youth camp in our churches actually about, I don't know, 15 years ago maybe. There were 40 to 50 young people whose fruits showed it later that they were genuinely converted at that one youth camp. And they went home and they talked to their parents and many of their parents were converted, especially in St. Catharines, Ontario. There were so many people converted. They didn't even have a minister at the time. One of my brothers was an elder there at the time, and he said, we just kept visiting people. And all we hear, oh, God's converting that person. Oh, God's converting that father, that grandfather, or that young person. And they would just go from visit to visit. They thought they're done visiting, and another one converted a few days later. Well, that certainly was at least a mini revival, if not a genuine revival. But it's the sovereign work of God. And I remember standing at that camp, not only beside my brother, but a couple of other ministers as well. And we looked at each other, we looked at each other at one point and we said, it's like we're spectators watching God working. They called me up, they woke me up at 2.30 one morning. And they said, there's a whole cabin of girls that are outside of their cabin on this patio. And they're all weeping over their sins. And they're all feeling their lost condition. And they need a pastor. And I went over there, sure enough, the whole cabin was emptied. Everybody was just weeping. Now were one of those two or two of those weeping because the others were weeping? Maybe. But the fruits of most of their lives show later this was the genuine work of the Holy Spirit, leading them to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a sovereign thing. Secondly, authentic revival is usually, though not always, preceded by a remarkable effusion of prayer. That's our responsibility. Not always, but usually. See, that's what's so disturbing, so distressing. in so many of our churches and my own as well. It bothers me more than anything else. I love my church, but I just cannot understand why our chapel isn't overflowing on our prayer nights. God loves to honor the prayers of his people when they're signed by more than one signature. A little book I wrote, The Family at Church. The second half of the book, I saw some out there. The second half of the book is talking about the importance of prayer meetings and how God often uses prayer meetings as a segue to revival. It pleases him to do that. He stirs up his people to pray and they cry out to God and then God sovereignly answers. In fact, the last great revival America has ever known, 1857, began in 1857 to 1859, began in New York. It began with six men getting together at a restaurant on their noon luncheon break to cry out to God for revival. That soon gathered 15, 20, 30 men, too many men for the restaurant to hold, so they broke out into two restaurants, and then four, and then 10, and then about 30 restaurants across New York City. And by the time the revival was done, it's estimated that there were 50,000 genuine conversions in New York City, 200,000 across the Northeast. It went as high as Maine, it went as low as Philadelphia, and went as far west as Chicago. And at the same time, that revival was going on in Wales, in Scotland, and other places in Europe. It's like the Holy Spirit just moved in the Western world. and did wondrous things. But in those places, you see, there was prayer by groups of the children of God. Some of the revivals in Scotland began with a group of children praying in a barn. Their parents were unconverted, but the Spirit was working in the children, and the children were then used for the parents' conversion. It's amazing stories. Matthew Henry put it this way, when God designs great mercy, he usually stirs up great prayer. William Grinnell says it more quaintly in a Puritan fashion, the cocks usually grow thickest, crow thickest toward the break of day. So sometimes when times are extremely dark, that's the encouragement for our day. It's so incredibly dark. that we're prone to think, well, God can never send revival. He's done with America. He's done with America. And he'd have every right to be done with America, take the candlestick and move somewhere else. But there's still a number of godly people in this land. God is not done with America. We are sending ourselves away. We need to pray that we don't send ourselves totally away. But God can come at the darkest times. And he often has done so in church history. When the great awakening happened in the 1730s and then 40s, the bigger wave came. It was a time of tremendous darkness. The Puritan age was done. The secularity had overtaken the people. And then God came. But also then, there were a number of godly people, ministers, elders, but also lay people. who saw the darkness of the times and stirred themselves up to prayer and cried out to God. That's what happened here. It's no coincidence that the 120 disciples were sitting in one room in prayer when the wind blew. This is our responsibility. Could lack of prayer be the, humanly speaking, the reason why we've witnessed so little revival for 150 years, so little expectation of God. I read once in George Whitefield's diary, his journal, I should say. It's a wonderful book, by the way, 700 pages of journal. He said, Lord, I've heard of no conversions under my ministry for two weeks. Lord, what's wrong? Two weeks? Two weeks. Great expectation, you see, from a great God. Number three, revival usually begins in the church with the reawakening and enlightening of those who've already been born again. You see, in Acts 2, what happens? The wind blows first where? through the 120, in the 120, those who are already believers. And if you study revivals, again and again and again, I won't say exclusively, but most of the time, God stirs up, often it's just three, four ministers. who've just suddenly become greatly anointed by the Holy Spirit, and they're consumed with the lostness of souls, and they feel the burden of souls, and they become like prophets in their own generation, warning, inviting, alluring, preaching with great freedom. or maybe it's a few elders, or maybe it's a few lay people, but God begins often among the believers, and the believers are burning with zeal like they were in their first love, and they get together, and they cry out to God, and God uses them. So there's a reawakening. You know what God said to the church of Ephesus in Revelation 2? And this, we need to examine ourselves here. Remember, I have someone against thee because thou hast left thy first love. Remember from where thou hast fallen. Remember, repent and return. And when God grants that grace to his own people to be enlivened again with the things of God and to walk daily with the consciousness of the need of souls and the great cry for revival, God often uses that among his own people to stir them up, and then through them stirs up the unsaved. We often get it wrong. We think, well, I wish God would send revival to the people out there. But actually, we should be praying, send revival to me, Lord. Send revival to me, Lord, and to my wife, and my children, and my circles, my extended family, my church. Now, It's a shame, of course, that personal revival is even necessary. It's such a good God to serve. How could we grow cold? How could we grow lukewarm? How could we live on such a substandard level? not confessing our sins daily, not appropriating by faith our riches in Christ, not obeying God's will unconditionally, not renouncing evil on a daily basis. If we would do these things by the grace of God, you see, we could have the highest joy, the deepest peace, the fullest measure of God's power daily in our lives, but we get used to. It's like a decent marriage. Maybe it's not an outstanding marriage. Maybe you're in a decent marriage. Scale of one to 10, it's a six or a seven, but you've taken it for granted. And your excitement for your spouse and the joy and the expressions of love have plateaued or they've even gone down perhaps. And you're living on a substandard level. And we can do the same thing with God. We can take him for granted. We grow spiritually cold. We become powerless. We lose sight of what's eternal. We become enamored with the earthly and the temporal. And God himself must come along and we must cry out for that to revive us with childlike faith, with heartfelt repentance, with unswerving obedience, with loving service. This ought to be our normal Christian walk. And number four, in authentic revival, remarkable spiritual growth results from the Spirit joining himself to the Word. Peter preaches and 3,000 are saved. The Spirit joins himself to the Word. And it's remarkable. This is the same Peter, by the way, who 53 days before couldn't stand in front of a poor servant girl. in the hall of KFS without denying the Lord Jesus Christ. Now he's boldly preaching by the spirit and 22 verses of his 35 verse sermon, 22 verses are nothing but quotations from the Old Testament scriptures. He's bringing them the word of God. He's bringing them law and gospel. He's bringing them the whole counsel of God. He's bringing them the word of truth and the spirit of truth joins himself to the word of truth to work with the word and to shoot the arrow into the heart, arrow of conviction into the hearts of the people so they cry out, men and brethren, what must we do to be saved? It's the word of God we need. We don't need new gimmicks. We don't need new things in the church to bring people in. That's always been a failure. We just need old fashioned, biblical, solid gospel preaching. Death in Adam, life in Christ, the drastic enormity and heinousness of sin, the glorious beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ, the joy of walking in the King's highway of holiness, just the great themes of Christianity preached from the word. In the power of the Spirit, that's what we need. Number five, did you notice how Christ-centered, you ever notice that, how Christ-centered Peter's sermon is in Acts 2? That's another mark of revival. Revival preaching is always preaching of the Lord Jesus. Yes, the fallow ground must be broken up. Yes, the law must be proclaimed. Yes, the tragedy of our fall in Adam must be exposed. Yes, the necessity of regeneration must be taught. Yes, people must be commanded to repent and believe the gospel. But the heart of all preaching is to preach the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in all his riches, in his person, his names, his offices, his states, his natures, to lift him up high, to placard him before the people. because the Son of God, by the Spirit of God, has the power to set men and women, boys and girls, teenagers, free. Free. Sinclair Ferguson used to say to us at Westminster Seminary often, brothers, spend the best energy of your lives preparing to preach Christ and then preaching Him. Best energy of your life. Preaching the fullness of Christ. And you know, one thing I studied that summer, I studied the preaching of those men of God who were used for revivals. I was fascinated by that. And I didn't find a single preacher among them all who kind of withheld the gospel from people. but every single one of them, I don't care, you talk Edwards, you talk George Whitefield, you talk Howell Harris over Daniel Roland or whoever they may be, they preach Christ to the full, Christ to the full. We must never shortchange the biblical gospel by preaching the New Testament without the old, by proclaiming the cross without the resurrection, by offering forgiveness without the spirit, or by calling for faith without repentance, But nevertheless, all of these doctrines and all the doctrines of the Bible ought to lead us to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord Supper form in our Dutch Reformed Liturgy has an incredible sentence in it that has often impressed me. It says this, we do now lift up our hearts on high in heaven to the right hand of the Father wither all, all, no exceptions. All the articles of our faith do lead us. In the ancient world, they said every road leads to Rome. In the biblical world, we ought to say every road, every doctrine, every truth leads to Jesus. This was Paul's testimony in all his epistles. Every problem he dealt with, with the Corinthians, the answer, Jesus. It's always Jesus. This is the gospel, the old gospel that we need preached in all its fullness. Six, spirit work revival is honest with the souls of men for the call to repentance is always coupled with the rediscovery of truth. Rediscovery of truth. The men and women break into Peter's sermon. He doesn't say amen at the end of verse 36. He's convicting them by the spirit of their sin. He's saying, you with your own wicked hands have taken and crucified the Lord of glory and they're smitten in their hearts and they just break out in the sermon and say, men and brethren, what shall we do? That's not uncommon in revival that people are so smitten that they just break out, cry out in agony or they break out in desperation. when the gospel becomes real, when sin becomes real, when God becomes holy. So that's what they did. You see, metanoia. Peter says, repent. Metanoia is the strongest word for repentance. It means radically change your mind, turn around your life, unconditionally return to God. Do it about face in the direction of your life. Fall before God. Sorrow over sin. Confess it, forsake it. Cast yourself upon the mercy of God. That's what repentance means. It's a divine gift, but it's also a lifelong commitment. And then finally, number seven, spirit work revival is always accompanied by saving faith. 3,000 believed, 3,000 surrendered their lives. Wherever there's revival, people lay down their weapons, they surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ. When revival happens, Hebrews 11.33 is fulfilled. Faith subdues kingdoms, works righteousness, obtains promises, stops the mouths of lions. Well, those are the seven marks that flow to us naturally out of Acts 2 as marks of revival. Now that brings me to the question then, is there revival today? And if so, where and to what extent is it taking place? Well this is a tricky question because there's not a certain number that suddenly, if that many people are saved, you say this is revival. Theodore Frelinghuysen in New Jersey, just before the Great Awakening, had 200 people in his church saved. And church historians always call this a revival. Well, there are places where that's happening today. What's not happening today is major worldwide revival. But in various localities, there certainly is revival taking place to some extent. So let me give you a quick walk around the world here. From my perspective, it's very limited, of course. But in America, there's a mixture. America is not nearly as far gone in terms of religious conviction and God-fearing people as Europe as a whole. There are many revivals going on in some churches even as I speak tonight. But generally, there's not revival. There are sometimes very large, beautiful conferences where thousands of people who are very hungry for revival come together and are greatly blessed. One of the greatest of those I've been to was our Puritan conference out in Los Angeles, quite frankly. Last year, 20 some hundred, 2,000 some people there, and people online from 168 nations all around the world, and there was a spirit about that conference. that you can't put into words. It's just like the Holy Spirit was moving in that conference, changing people, moving people to worship Him. Another conference down in Fort Myers just a few months ago, there was supposed to be 1,000 people and 2,000 some people showed up. Oh, we had tables and tables of books. Every single book was sold on the second day. There was just a movement of excitement. People were just drinking in the Word. I got up at the last talk and I said, well, I'm sorry that all our sets of broccoli are gone, but I'll give it to you at the same price. I'll come down and if you want to sign up for it, if there's a few of you that want to sign up for it yet, I'll meet you at the table. I got down there and there were two lines of people, like from here to halfway in the audience. I go, what are all these people doing here? Well, they all want to buy broccoli. You've got to be kidding me. We sold 160 sets of Bronco on just a word from the pulpit. Is that just salesmanship? I don't believe that for a moment. I've done that many times in many conferences. God was at work in that audience. I mean, God's at work in an audience. They do want to read. They do want to fill themselves up with truth of God, the truths of God. So these are just two examples. There's many encouraging things. People are asking, well, what about the Asbury revival? I don't wanna go into all those details, but remember, where God does revival, there's always wheat with a chaff, and there's always chaff with the wheat. And I'm not going to tell you, because God alone knows, that there was no one converted in that revival. I'm sure there were, from everything we've read and heard. But at the same time, you see, revival's more than getting a tingling feeling. It's more than having people drive across country because they want to partake of the revival. I have a close friend who sent someone to that revival to check it out. And here's what the friend said. He said, well, there was at the beginning of it a sweet spirit, a scripture-driven spirit that seemed like it was the real thing. But by the time all the tourists arrive, it got corrupted by revival tourism. Now, today, it doesn't seem like it amounted to all that much, from our perspective. But you see, many revivals don't last a long period of time, and God can still do great things, sometimes even in situations where it's not altogether sound, necessarily, but the Holy Spirit can still use it. But what's key, what's key when you go through a revival is to look at what happens two months later, four months later, six months later with those who claim to have been saved in that revival. Are they manifesting the fruits of revival? That's what's important. Let's move south. You go to Brazil. We've had the privilege of being there a couple dozen times. And I've seen tens of thousands of people coming to the Lord in Brazil. We were just down at a conference there recently. 2,000, again, 2,000 some people at the conference. But there were 150,000 people who've listened to those sermons. And in the previous year, 1.7 million, by the time the whole year rolled around, listened to those sermons. 1.7 million, just a brazilians. Is God doing something? Of course God's doing something. Tens of thousands are coming out of Pentecostalism and out of the Roman Catholic Church into the Reformed faith. Books are being published by a score of publishers, good books, godly books. And it's quite remarkable. It's quite remarkable. And now it's been spilling over from Portuguese-speaking Brazil to Spanish-speaking Latin America as a whole. Colombia, Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina. It's spreading, spreading through these countries. A kind of revival, a kind of return, not just to the Reformed faith, but people are wanting experiential. Preaching and teaching like the reformers and the Puritans. It's wonderful. On our own little seminary here, we've had nine seminaries from Spanish-speaking countries come to us and say, we want the experiential emphasis. Can we use your courses? So now we've entered into an agreement with them. In all nine of these seminaries, their basic MA courses are gonna be all from Puritan reform. They're gonna be dubbed and translated. from course to course, and the professors will talk after each hour lecture with the students. This never would have happened 10 years ago, much less 20 years ago. What about Europe? As a whole, Europe is quite dead. From our appearances, conferences are small, churches are small, 6% of the people going to church in most of the countries in Europe. It's unbelievable. At least America still has a 40 some percent church attendance. Although, of course, many unsound churches. But Eastern Europe, quite a bit of stuff is going on in Hungary, Poland. And there are some bright spots in the UK. The Aberystwyth Conference gets 1,200 people. That conference is very alive every year. And God's presence has been felt there many a time. France. You know, I had a man ask me to come and do a conference in France. I asked, how many people could you get? Because France seems very dead. He said to me, well, I've got four people or five in my church on a good day. But he says, we'll advertise in Australia, and we'll advertise in Switzerland, and maybe we can get 40 people if we really work hard. Today, there's a conference in France. I'm privileged to be invited to go to, trying to find a way to do it next year. St. Clair Ferguson and Paul Washer were just there last year. 500 people showed up for that conference. 500 people in France. Is God beginning to visit France again? Same thing in Germany. Germany was so dead. And now we're doing two conferences in Germany, one of 1,000 people, another of 500 people. It's not the numbers. God has to move. But if you can't get anybody there, You know that much is going on. That's encouraging. 10 years ago, you couldn't have got 50 people in Germany or France to any reform conference. So is the Lord beginning to blow mini revival again in Europe? I hope so. Africa is hit and miss. There's a lot of bright spots in Africa. There's more than 1 million ministers in Africa that want further theological training. Training men from Africa is like pouring water into a huge hole. There's just no end to it. There's so much hunger. Meconua College is the bright spot with Dr. DeVries doing long distance courses with men and mentors all around Africa. Hundreds of them. And there's room for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands more. Zambia is a bright spot with Conrad Mbewe and Ronald Kalafungua, great preachers of the gospel. Godly men leading a great movement, establishing a college now to train young people in the ways of God. Asia. You can hardly measure how much is happening in China. A lot of it's unsound, but There's some encouraging things there. Korea was a really bright spot some years ago. Unfortunately, a lot of the Korean preachers now are imitating American TV preachers. But there's still a lot of spiritual life in Korea. Singapore is growing. Hungary. New Zealand. Largest conference I ever heard of in New Zealand was 100 people. New Zealand's very dark. We just came back from a conference of 1,000 people in New Zealand. 1,000, where'd that come from? I said to my wife, I'm 70 years old, going around the world is a drain on the physical system. Honey, this is gonna be our last trip going around the world. We came back. When we arrived back home, The pastor of that thousand people church said, call me up, I've got to tell you about the revival that happened here in this church after you left. We need you to come back. I go, what? So I called him, he says, yeah, the families are, families throughout the church are beginning family worship and they're changed and they're being transformed by the family worship Bible guy. We want you to come back. What do you say? Of course, of course you go back. You have to. But you see, this is a spot where I didn't expect anything. And God is working in this church and in the people that came to that conference. Something's going on. This is the grace of God. Well, how can we help promote revival today? Let me conclude with this question. I'm gonna give you, real quickly, 14 things. Prayer and prayer meetings, we already talked about that. Go to the prayer meetings of your church. Get together in small groups to pray and pray with your friends. Pray, pray, pray for revival. Pray with Stephen Lee's group that prays every day for revival. I think it's at noontime. And pray with them or Jeff Johnson is gonna start something in the south. Number two, ask the Lord to begin with you, to begin with you. We already talked about Revelations 2, 4, and 5. Number three, commune with God's people about spiritual experiences. Just stir up your heart, have real fellowship. Yesterday I went out to lunch with a missionary from Italy. I've done a conference for him and he's visited me a couple times, he's here. Just wanted to touch base. I just thought I was going out to lunch. You know, we had a two-hour, it was always supposed to be one hour, it was supposed to be back. We had a two-hour lunch, and he was sharing his experiences with me, and I was sharing my experiences with him. And we just bonded, it was so sweet. A fellowship on both sides. And I wouldn't have thought of hugging this man before. I wasn't that close to him. I'll tell you, he hugged me and I hugged him with a bear hug by the time we were done. And we said to each other, this was really enlivening for our own souls. Talk about real things. Share your hopes, your fears, your struggles, your joys, your communion with God, with other people. Number four, speak about Christ wherever you go. Wherever you go, you know my dad was pretty good at that. He used to say to me as a teenager when he knew I was called to the ministry, he'd say, remember when you're in the ministry to talk to everyone, also the little children, don't pass the little children by. Just today, a family is walking out of the seminary, a D-Min student with a, I never met him before, wife and five children, so you shake hands, right? Just had small talk and they're walking away and I went to walk in the building. I thought, what? I didn't even say a spiritual word to those kids. So I turned around and I said, hey, come on back. I got something to share with you. So I talked to the kids. I said, do you love the Lord? Do you know? The only way to live is to be like Caleb, to follow the Lord fully. Took the young boy by the shoulder, eight years old. I said, will you ask the Lord if you could follow him fully all your life? Talk to the little girls. Ask them, what do you have to hate the most? What do you have to love the most? One girl said, my own heart. I go, no, no, you have to hate sin and you have to love Jesus. But you see, you take every opportunity to teach, to spread the word. Sometimes that little boy, eight years old, 20 years from now, his dad might come back to me and say, you know that little word you said to my son? That impacted him. You sowed the seed by all waters. Try, try with every encounter you have to say a good word for the Lord. Actually, I learned that from Dr. James Greer, even more than from my dad, who used to teach, he was vice president of this institution right here. this seminary, and he taught for us some courses, a very godly man, and Greer said, I made a promise to the Lord that every single person that would come in my way that I have an opportunity to talk to, also on airplanes, I will try to evangelize, no matter how busy I am. And it really smoked my conscience, so I started doing this about 30 years ago, and now my wife often does it, because she's often sitting in the middle seat, and the other person's at the window. And it's unbelievable, it's unbelievable. 90% of people, at least those who don't have their earplugs in. are willing to talk about real things. When you first just approach them and ask them about their life and their work and their family and their kids and you show an interest, show you care, and then you just say, you know, what church do you go to? Are you a Christian? Just openly, or are you a Muslim? Or whatever, what are you? What religion do you believe in? What do you think life is all about? And you've got them trapped there, don't you? I mean, they can't go anywhere. And you know when the plane's gonna land, so you gotta know how much time you have to move to the gospel. But the more you do it, the easier it gets. Speak a word to everyone. Ask God to help you. We've had some failures on the plane, of course. People have rejected it. A couple people turned their shoulder away. Well, okay, you don't force your way in and leave them be. They've rejected it. But we've also had some pretty interesting experiences. One lady was a flight attendant. She's sitting right in front of me, and you know how the flight attendants turn around and face you, and it was a very small plane, like we're just face to face almost. I asked her how long she's done this. She said two years. I said, well, what'd you do before? Oh, she said, I did liturgical dances for churches. That was my career. Oh. Okay. Well, what made you quit that? Well, she said, I couldn't dance as smoothly as I could before, and I was getting a little too old for it. Do you miss it? Well, I don't know, she said, but I do know one thing, my life is empty. Wow, what an opening. So I talked to her for 20 minutes, and she said to me, I didn't even ask her, she said to me, she said, Before I walked out of the plane, she said, do you have any sermons you could send me? I go, yeah. So I sent her 10 sermons. I thought I'd never hear from her again, right? Oh no, she said, she sent back $50. I didn't ask for any money. $50 worth of sermons, send me 10 more. I listened to them on my drive to the airport every morning. Who can tell? sat next to another lady, she's from Iowa, and she's living in Texas. I said, so what church do you go to in Texas? Oh, she said, I believe in the Bible, I believe in Christianity, but my Christianity is God, my Bible, and me, that's all I need. I said, really? But you believe the Bible? Oh, yes, she said. Genesis 1 to Revelation 22? Oh, yes, she said. I said, well, what if the Bible says you shouldn't You shouldn't abandon gathering together the people of God in church. I know my Bible well. My parents brought me up. I know the Bible doesn't say that. I said, okay. Read here Hebrews 10. Wow, she says. Don't forsake this. I never saw that text before. I said, well, no problem. I said, you live in Texas, and I tell you what, I'm a minister, and I've got resources at my fingertips. Since you believe the whole Bible, I will give you the best Bible-believing church in your whole area. Just give me your name and your email, and I'll send it to you. Oh, thank you so much. She gives it to me. I get a letter back two weeks later. I'm going to this, it was a conservative PCA church. I'm going to this church and I just love it. I can't believe I didn't go to church before. My parents brought me up doing it. I don't know how I got out of it. Thank you so much. You're such a blessing to me. It's great. Now, they don't all go that way. But the point is, you sow the seed beside all waters. And if every Christian sowed the seed beside all waters, do you understand what a different nation this would be? Five, use tracts. Keep them in your pocket, but don't just hand tracts out to people before you talk to them. It can make them more angry. You have to earn the right to talk to them by being interested in them. But also, give away books. One of my favorite things to do is after I talk to somebody, I promise to send them some books. And sometimes they write back then, and they tell you what they get out of it. Not always, but you never know. It's more seed. Six. Counsel people all kinds of people are in trouble all kinds of people have problems Sometimes you don't get to the gospel right away But you're counseling them about some problem and that that earns you the right to speak to them about further details about the gospel Seven, hospitality. The New Testament church used that. Other churches use it. Today, it's a very effective means of evangelism. People get suspicious when you come door to door. But if you get your neighbors around you and you show them hospitality, and you invite unconverted neighbors, and you have supper with them, and then you say to them after supper, okay, now we go in the living room. We have some family worship, so please join us. You can sit here. You don't ask them. You just say, you can sit here, you can sit there, and you start family worship. And most of them will say, I've never seen anything like this in my life. And maybe they won't like it, but many of them will have respect for it, and some will be impressed by it. Who knows? Would that be the beginning of them saying, my life is empty? You don't know. Friendship evangelism. Some churches have used that very effectively. What you do is you invite everyone in the entire block to come for a hamburger cookout. And you get to, it's called meet the neighbors thing. And you tell them, we'll try to, we'll have a meal and we'll try to talk about real things in life. Maybe half the people will come. And you can start talking to people about the Lord. It's better to do that than invite them to church right away when they're not used to church. You need to build something. a friendship, and through that, the door will go open more quickly for attending church with you. Use your social media, not for all kinds of shallow purposes, okay, some things are everyday things, that's fine, but use it also for conveying spiritual things. Be a witness on whatever websites you're on. And then, your Sunday school in your local church. Could you teach there? Could you go out and pick up kids there? Could you help out in some church ministry? Some Bible study group? Some word and deed group? Or some ministry of mercy? Could you do something to help spread the gospel through your church ministries? Maybe a prison ministry? Maybe a jail ministry? Maybe you could help out in Christian education? All right. Those are just some ideas. I'm sure there's many, many more. But let me just close now by saying this. We have many opportunities to help out, but we also have many ways we can be hindrances. Many ways we can be hindrances. When we're satisfied with mere tradition, we can be hindrances to revival. When we fail to be intercessors for the eternal well-being of our neighbors and others, we can be hindrances to revival. When we're simply unbelieving, or think the Lord won't use our words, and therefore we hold back. Out of unbelief, we are hindrances to revival. I wanna close this talk with just a quote from J.W. Alexander, which he wrote in the midst of the 1857 New York revival, and then with a poem by Fanny Crosby. Here's the eight questions that JW Alexander asks at the end of his track on revival. And I'll let him ask them to your conscience right now. Are you an enemy of revival? Do you rejoice in revival? Are you a subject of revival? Do you pray for revival? Are you helping forward revival? Does your heart care for the fruits of revival? Do you seek to honor God? in revival. Does your faith in life show that you are living in the age of the spirit, an age of potential revival? Fannie Crosby. Come, spirit, come in mighty power, as on the blessed day of old when fell the Pentecostal shower that gathered thousands to the fold. Oh, for a mighty rushing wind to fill this consecrated place that sinners lost might seek and find the gate of hope, the door of grace. Oh, for a power that heals the heart, that takes away the dross of sin, that we may, like the world, depart and let the King of glory in. Dear Savior, from thy throne on high, now, now grant the power for which we call, till shouts of rapture fill the sky, and thou, Lord, art all in all. Nothing but the power of the Holy Ghost can sanctify and keep through a Savior's love and light within our souls the flame that burns on the altar of heaven above.