A Primer on Revival

John Angell James in 1861 in his Discourses Addressed to the Churches (pp. 544-545, 551) wrote:

I do not desire, I do not advise a bustling, artificial effort to get up a revival, nor the construction of any man-devised machinery . . .  I want God’s work, not man’s . . . I want no revivalist preachers (emphasis mine).

For a long time, men have distinguished between revival and revivalism.   Iain Murray in his Revival and Revivalism (1994, p. xix) differentiated between the two.  He said that revival was “the phenomenon of authentic spiritual awakening which is the work of the living God, ” while revivalism was “religious excitements, deliberately organized to secure converts.”   A few sentences later he writes:

[O]rthodox Christianity at an earlier date protested that revival and revivalism — far from being of the same genus — are actually opposed.

Earlier (p. xviii) Murray distinguished between the two this way:

[I]t was not until the last forty years of the nineteenth century that a new view of revival came generally to displace the old . . . .  Seasons of revival became ‘revival meetings’.  Instead of being ‘surprising’ they might now be even announced in advance, and whereas no one in the previous century had known of ways to secure a revival, a system was now popularised by ‘revivalists’ which came near to guaranteeing results.

So why did “revivalism” become confused with revival?  Bernard A. Weisberger and William G. McLoughlin wrote about this perversion in two books in the late 1950s:  Weisberger’s They Gathered at the River:  The Story of the Great Revivalists and Their Impact upon Religion in America (1958) and McLoughlin’s Modern Revivalism:  Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (1959).  Both of these men said that revivalist supporters wrote a fraudulent history that misrepresented the orthodox understanding of revival.  McLoughlin wrote in his preface:  “History has not dealt fairly with American revivals.”  Weisberger wrote:

There are numerous histories of revivals in the United States written by devout ministers or worshippers in the evangelical denominations.  They are, almost with exception, useless as history.

Based on this understanding, what is most often referred to as the First Great Awakening in the American colonies of the early to mid 18th century was an example of a revival.  On the other hand, most of what is labeled revival in what was termed the Second Great Awakening was actually only revivalism.  In the decades following the First Great Awakening, American preachers stated their opposition to what was merely emotional, contrived, or manipulated.  Murray writes (p. xx):

They foresaw the danger of revivalism long before it became a respected part of evangelicalism, and they would have had no problem agreeing with the criticism which has since discredited it.

Much false practice and perhaps even questionable offices were contrived from the revivalism that intended to reproduce what had occurred in the First Great Awakening, including revival meetings and those who lead them.  Before the revivalists and the revision of the doctrine and even history of revival, no orthodox saint would have thought that he could “schedule” a revival.

The Biblical Usage of the Term “Revival”

Many might be surprised to hear that the English term “revival” does not appear once in the King James Version of the Bible.   Eight times you have the word “revive” (Nehemiah 4:2; Psalm 85:6; Psalm 138:7; Isaiah 57:15 (2), Hosea 6:2; 14:7; Habakkuk 3:2), twice “reviving” (Ezra 9:8, 9), and six times “revived” (Genesis 45:27; Judges 15:19; 1 Kings 17:22; 2 Kings 13:21; Romans 7:9; 14:9).  You’ll notice that all of these instances, except for two,  are in the Old Testament—Romans 7:9 and 14:9 use the word “revived.”   Twelve out of the fourteen Old Testament usages are the same Hebrew word.  Only the two references in Ezra, translated “reviving,” are different Hebrew words.

The English statistics are a little misleading in lieu of a grammatical, historical interpretation of Scripture.  Our goal is to understand terms as the people would have understood them in that day.   “Revive” might be found eight times in the King James, but forms of the Hebrew word, chayah (pronounced khaw-yaw), are found 390 times.  It simply means “to have life.”  The first time that a form of chayah appears is in Genesis 1:24 and it is translated “living” as in “living creatures.”  Abraham used this Hebrew word in Genesis 12:12, when he said:

This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.

There the form of chayah is translated “alive.”  It is obvious that Abraham means “physically alive.”   Let’s consider the twelve references of chayah in the Old Testament, translated some form of “revive.”

Nehemiah 4:2 uses chayah and there it is obviously being used metaphorically, because it is used to explain the rocks of Jerusalem being rebuilt up a wall.  It is used in a kind of mocking way to try to show the impossibility of the walls being rebuilt.

Psalm 85:6 is perhaps the classic passage in the Bible used to teach revival.  It says:   “Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?”  Psalm 85 is a post-exilic psalm composed after the return from captivity in Babylon.  Israel had been returned from exile, but she had not yet been restored back to her former condition.  She is praying to God that she would be.

In Psalm 138:7, David is praying that God would keep him alive (chayah) in the midst of troubles.

Isaiah 57:15 is the verse that gives the closest idea to what we would understand as modern day revival.  It reads:

For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

Here we read of spiritual and heart revival.  God by His grace will bring spiritual life to the person’s heart who is contrite and humble about his condition.  This sounds like it is talking about salvation.  A person will be quickened if he repents of his sin and turns to God for deliverance.

Hosea 6:2 speaks of the restoration of Israel.  It might seem like forever to her, but God would bring her back to life very soon, the quickness of which is communicated by the few number of days this is said that it would be occurring.  Hosea 14:7 is talking about the millennial kingdom resurrection of Israel.

In Habakkuk 3:2, the severity of God’s judgment brought fear to the prophet.  In the midst of the punishment, Habakkuk asks for mercy.  He pleads with God in essence to crank back up His saving work, to repeat the kind of activity that God had done for Israel before in order to deliver her.

In a root way, “revive” mean “to make alive.”  The strongest New Testament equivalent is “to quicken.”   Even looking at the Old Testament “revive” passages in a spiritual way, they seem to be speaking more about salvation than they do some kind of renewing work with believers.  A revival is when someone who is dead spiritually is quickened, something like what we see in Ephesians 2:1, 5:

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. . . . Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved).

If there is a revival in the New Testament, it is what we see in Acts 2 on the Day of Pentecost.  That day three thousand people were made alive.  They were all Jews.  It is even said to be a fulfillment of Joel 2 and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:16).   What happened in Acts 2 pre-fulfilled what will occur with the nation Israel before Christ sets up His kingdom on the earth.  The dry bones of Ezekiel will be quickened and returned to the land.

Everyone who is saved is revived.  Someone dead in sin is made alive at salvation.   An already saved person doesn’t need reviving because he is already alive and will continue alive forever.  A revival then would perhaps be a time when through preaching the gospel several are saved in a short period of time.   It occurs because the Spirit of God is convicting, believers are obedient to the Holy Spirit with bold preaching, the seed falls on good ground, and much fruit is produced.  There is no other explanation, especially a human one, for why this might occur, except for this scriptural one.  The New Testament doesn’t even use the word “revive,” so there is little to no emphasis on this as a recurring event.

Contrasting Ideas about Revival

I’m not trying to undo any historic opinion about revival.   Jonathan Edwards’ book, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, was prompted by the Great Awakening.  Edwards did not believe that the Great Awakening was either all truth or all error, but a mixture of the two, and that this is normal.  He wrote the book to address the question, “How do we discern between that which is genuine and that which is counterfeit?”  Most agree that a revival occurred during Edwards’ life, and he was concerned that there was enough false to write a book on it.

What we call revivals have transpired.   A whole lot of people have been made alive at a particular point in time.  The biggest part of the argument about revivals, however, I believe centers on the Calvinism versus Arminianism issue.  It also relates to covenant theology and dispensationalism.   Let me break it down for you.

Arminianism

Some might call this Pelagian as it applies to Charles Finney.  This is where we get a lot of human-centered problems that are criticized by Iain Murray in Revival and Revivalism, which he calls “revivalism.”  It is also about manipulating the conditions to make things happen like we want.    I don’t believe in revivalism as defined historically, which was the invention of Arminianism.  I also believe that this is major problem in fundamentalism today. There are a lot of difficulties here that I will deal with in a separate article later.

Calvinism

This is where I have found that I have a problem with Iain Murray, and, therefore, anyone who agrees with him.   I believe that his and others’ fundamental problem with Finney and perhaps to a lesser extent, any revivalists, relates mainly to his Calvinism.  Murray shows strong agreement with Samuel Davies and his meaning of revival.  What is that?  Murray writes concerning early American preacher, and short-time president of Princeton, Samuel Davies (pp. 21-22):

In speaking of the meaning of revival it is also essential to note that what Davies and his brethren believed about revival was not something separate from, or additional to, their main beliefs; it was, rather, a necessary consequence.  Such is man’s state of sin that he cannot be saved without the immediate influence of the Holy Spirit.  Regeneration, and the faith that results from it, are the gifts of God.  Therefore, wherever conversions are multiplied, the cause is to be found not in men, nor in favourable conditions, but in the abundant influences of the Spirit of God that alone make the testimony of the church effective.  No other explanation of revival is in harmony with the truths that are ‘the essence of the Christian scheme — the utter depravity of man, the sovereignly-free grace of Jehovah . . . . There is a sovereignty in all God’s activity of his people.  Revivals are not brought about by the fulfillment of ‘conditions’ any more than the conversion of a single individual is secured by any means of human actions.  The ‘special seasons of mercy’ are determined in heaven.

Calvinists define revival according to their five points with a special emphasis in this case on unconditional election.   The opposition to revivalism for a Calvinist galvanizes around the non-Calvinism of revivalism.  For an event to be called a revival, man can’t be involved.  Murray writes (p. 21):

[T]here are times when the Spirit is given in exceptional measure and that such times may come suddenly, even when deadness is general in the church and indifference to biblical religion prevails in society at large.

I believe this no-condition belief clashes with what we read in Scripture.  The one passage in Scripture above that treats the concept of revival more than any other, Isaiah 57:15, says that God revives the spirit and heart of the humble and contrite ones.  The verse specifically says that conditions of humility and contriteness precede revival.  That clashes with a Calvnist view of revival.

A few times Jesus explained why the seed would not penetrate the soil, the gospel would not be received by a human heart.   In Matthew 13 He said that the ground was either thorny, stony, or hard.  All of those are conditions.  Jesus says that those conditions relate to the result of fruit bearing.   In Luke 13, when asked why only few would be saved, Jesus said that men must strive to enter in at the strait gate.  That reads like a condition.  Of course, the Calvinist may say, “You don’t understand Calvinism.  We don’t mean no conditions.”  Well, you can’t have it both ways.  When you say no conditions, then the explanation from Jesus should be no conditions.  Here and several other places, we see conditions.

Covenant Theology

Much of the explanation for revival among the early American Calvinists takes in their covenant theology, especially seeing Israel as the church in Old Testament prophetic passages.   Murray refers to a sermon by Davies (p. 21):

There are eras, said Davies, when only a large communication or outpouring of the Spirit can ‘produce a public general reformation’.  Thus, preaching on ‘The Happy Effects of the Pouring Out of the Spirit’ from Isaiah 32:13-19, he argued that ‘the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is the great and only remedy for a ruined country — the only effectual preventative of national calamities and desolation, and the only sure cause of a lasting and well-established peace’.

This type of interpretation of the Old Testament, that does not differentiate between the church and Israel, also affects interpretation of the Gospels and Acts.  Murray writes (p. 19):

It is through Christ as mediator and head of his body that the Spirit continues to be communicated to the church and that his ‘actual influence’ is known.

At that point, Murray then writes this in a footnote (p. 19):

Bishop Moule wrote:  ‘We are not to think of the “giving” of the Spirit as of an isolated deposit of what, once given, is now locally in possession.  The first “gift” is, as it were, the first point in a series of actions, of which each one may be expressed also as a gift.’  Were it not for this truth, prayer for the Spirit (Luke 11:13) would be meaningless.

You can see how the covenant theology affects the interpretation of Luke 11:13 where Christ mentions praying for the Spirit.   Jesus had not yet sent the Holy Spirit, so the apostles’ asking for the Holy Spirit was a legitimate prayer within the will of God like our praying for the kingdom to come.  However, once the Holy Spirit came, we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost at the moment of our justification.   All believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit simultaneous with salvation.  The way Murray explains it, we should keep expecting more and more outpourings of the Holy Spirit (pp. 19-20):

Thus, although the Spirit was initially bestowed on the church by Christ at Pentecost, his influences are not uniform and unchanging; there are variations in the measure in which he continues to be given.  In the book of Acts tiems of quickened spiritual prosperity and growth in the church are traced to new and larger measures of the influence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 4:31-33; 11:15-16; 13:52-14:1), and so, through Christian history, the church has been raised to new energy and success by ‘remarkable communications of the Spirit of God . . . at special seasons of mercy’.

Speaking of these non-revivalist Calvinists, he continues:

For these men the words ‘effusion’, ‘baptism’, and ‘outpouring of the Spirit’ were synonymous in meaning with ‘revival of religion’. . . . Thomas Murphy wrote, it was ‘the baptism of the Holy Ghost which caused the infant Church [in America] to become animated by the most fervent piety’. . . . [R]evival consists in a larger giving of God’s Spirit for the making known of Christ’s glory.

I have to admit that I had thought ignorantly that the Keswick movement of the nineteenth century invented the second blessing theology.  It is obvious that many at least eighteenth century Calvinists believed in a second blessing,  a baptism of the Spirit subsequent to salvation that was accompanied by significant external, tangible consequences.

A Literal, Grammatical-Historical Interpretation of Scripture

I would use the word dispensational, but it really is the conviction of a literal interpretation of Scripture, of course, taking into consideration figures of speech.  This literal hermeneutic separates the institution of Israel from the institution of the church.  The two are separate entities in the Bible.   The outpouring of the Spirit on Israel hasn’t happened yet.  We can’t take those promises to Israel in the Old Testament and relate them to an ongoing occurrence in the church.

The revival of the New Testament age isn’t a recurring outpouring of the Spirit.  The normal body life of the church has included large numbers of conversions in a very short period of time.   In the New Testament we saw it only in the church of Jerusalem in the first nine or ten chapters of Acts.  Since then we have had certain periods where churches have seen the same, but that doesn’t mean that any obedient church isn’t revived.  This is where I find myself at times agreeing with Murray, when he writes (pp. xx, 22):

This school of preachers held that the Holy Spirit has appointed means to be used for the advancement of the gospel, pre-eminently the teaching of the Word of God accompanied by earnest prayer. . . . They believed that strict adherence to Scripture is the only guard against what may be wrongly claimed as the work of God’s Spirit.

When Do We See Revival?

I believe it is wrong-headed to look at the regular obedience to the Word of God in the local church as something less than revival.  This is where the no-condition explanation for many new converts, I’m convinced, falls short.  A major contributing factor is the conditions being ripe for revival.    Very often people turn to God when they are broken by tough external circumstances.   A revived state that is just an obedient Christian life in a local church may lack the pizzazz required to be called revival.

You have revival if you have a church that loves the Lord and regularly and boldly proclaims the gospel throughout the community and beyond.  Those are life endowing activities.  Do we always want more to be saved?  Yes.  But we don’t pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to surprise us with a sudden burst of new conversions.   We keep praying scriptural prayers and continue in obedience to the Great Commission and we have revival.  Revival shouldn’t be measured by the numbers but by the spiritual state of the church—boldness in evangelism, husbands loving wives, wives submitting to husbands, children obeying parents, fruit of the Spirit, and the body of Christ manifested through the mutual spiritual giftedness of its people.  We must be content that this is revival too.