One cannot help but sense the urgency, the desperate need felt by Isaiah as he penned these words. This is a cry, a prayerful cry born of a spirit that lived in challenging times.
We have heard of revival, we have feasted on the marvellous histories of revival and we are the beneficiaries of revivals in the past but we have never experienced revival.
Can we be content to carry on to end of our days without ever experiencing revival, or at the very least without a real burden and desire for God to work? How many of our fellow countrymen and women are dying without Christ? How many of this world’s billions are going out to a lost eternity every day?
We feel the encroaching darkness as our nation turns its back on God, tolerating and even legislating for unspeakable depravities. Evil is called good and good is called evil. The spiritual man is designated as being mad. Truth is fallen on the streets. The people follow a lie. Satan is having a field day.
The church chooses to lie indolent and careless. We are so content with mediocrity. We just want to keep going. Taking the citadels of the devil by storm are not on the agenda. There are some who are simply worldly living for the moment, for material prosperity or sensual pleasure. There are others who believe the day of revival is past and we we must simply stutter on toward the end of time as a broken remnant. We have become like Samson. The Philistines have put our eyes, we grind in the prison house of God’s second best.
The evangelical church today is losing her youth while the old who have held the fort faithfully are promoted to glory. We are presiding over the decay of evangelical religion in 21st Century Britain without a burden for the trend to be reversed.
And how is the trend to be reversed? Only by revival.
Revival is the need of the hour! This is a work that must begin in the heart of the Church.
Like Ephesus, the “fundamentalist” church of Asia Minor we have left our first love.
“Return at once, when I reprove, Lest I thy candlestick remove; And thou, too late, thy loss lament; I warn before I strike, Repent." John Newton
Like Sardis, the “failed” church of Asia Minor we have a name that we live but we are dead, the power of the Spirit has gone as He went from Samson when the Philistines came upon him.
“All thy works and ways I search, Find thy zeal and love decay'd; Thou art call'd a living church, But thou art cold and dead.” William Cowper
Like Philadelphia the “Church of the open door”, we must hold fast what we have, seize our opportunities before the Lord comes and we lose our crown.
“Thus saith the holy One, and true, To his beloved faithful few; "Of heav’n and hell I hold the keys, To shut, or open, as I please. I know thy works, and I approve, Though small thy strength, sincere thy love; Go on, my word and name to own, For none shall rob thee of thy crown.” John Newton Like Laodecia, the “Lukewarm” Church we have been materially blessed but we are spiritually impoverished and Christ is outside the door waiting to come in.
“See at thy door I stand and knock! Poor sinner, shall I wait in vain? Quickly thy stubborn heart unlock, That I may enter with my train. Thou canst not entertain a king, Unworthy thou of such a guest! But I my own provisions bring, To make thy soul a heavenly feast." John Newton
I use these examples not to criticise our local assembly nor our denomination or any other group of believers. I believe these examples are indicative of the dire condition of the Church in the United Kingdom today. We are in serious and desperate need of revival.
But to say we arnt facing real challenges would be to accept the lie.
The place of prayer has too many empty seats midweek. Only one or two come to pray with the preacher before the service begins. There are too many things that are unimportant clamouring for our attention and they are winning.
To say that we are not in need of revival is to be as blind as poor old Samson.
BUT even for Samson there was hope! At the last he would give his life, overcoming the Philistines as the Spirit of God returned. The final act of full surrender would define Samson’s ministry.
How do we want to be defined? By our our carelessness and prayerlessness? By our acceptance of mediocrity as being the norm?
OR are we willing to cry out one last time for power of God…
“Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down,
Isaiah 64:1
that the mountains might flow down at thy presence”
THE BURDEN
Isaiah had an obvious burden for his people.
With prophetic insight he looked into a future generation when the Babylonian hoards would rampage through the holy city burning and stripping Solomon’s majestic temple.
Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness,
Isaiah 64:10-12
Jerusalem a desolation.
Our holy and our beautiful house,
where our fathers praised thee,
is burned up with fire:
and all our pleasant things are laid waste.
Wilt thou refrain thyself for these things, O LORD?
wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?
He was also painfully of the sin, which would result in this catastrophe.
behold, thou art wroth; for we have sinned:
Isaiah 64:5-7
in those is continuance, and we shall be saved.
But we are all as an unclean thing,
and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;
and we all do fade as a leaf;
and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
And there is none that calleth upon thy name,
that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee:
for thou hast hid thy face from us,
and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.
Isaiah knew that God had dealt harshly but justly. He had a spirit of realistic humility. This only served, however, to sharpen the burden and intensify the passion.
If there was to was to be a recovery God must work. This is what revival is – a work that God alone activates. We are cast upon His mercy as poor undeserving souls. Therefore we must cry to Him.
THE BELIEF
Isaiah believed that the mountains could and would be melted by the awesome presence of God.
We are facing enormous mountains today. The mountains of atheism, secularism, the LGBT lobby and their depraved philosophy, abortion – the list is endless. There are the mountains represented by the religions of this world and their billions of followers. There are the mountains of sin, the addiction – to pleasure, to shallow interests, to immorality.
The biggest mountains are in our our own hearts, our own spirits. Our apathy and our carnality, our idolatry and our sensuality have taken our hearts away. Like the people of Israel we have gone with Absalom and not with Christ. The King has been deposed. Revival is where the King returns to His throne once again.
“The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from thy throne,
And worship only thee.
So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.”
William Cowper
“Give me the faith which can remove
and sink the mountain to a plain;
give me the childlike praying love,
which longs to build thy house again;
thy love, let it my heart o'er-power,
and all my simple soul devour.”
Charles Wesley
The Lord alone can break down the mountains of sin and unbelief which suck the precious blood of spiritually out of our souls; filthy parasites that they are are!
We must believe that the King will come to His temple again, that He will cleanse it as He overturned the moneychangers’ tables all those years ago.
Let us pray that the mountains will be melted, that hearts would become like wax - that the Lord would come down!
The Blessing
Isaiah believed God! He anticipated a day of coming blessing – an answer to prayer unimaginable in its glory.
When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for,
Isaiah 64:3-4
thou camest down, the mountains flowed down at thy presence.
For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear,
neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee,
what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
The story of the Fulton Street Prayer Meeting in New York in 1857 remains one of the most thrilling examples of what God can do. Steve Pettit in BJU Today tells the story quite beautifully.
It was exactly noon on Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1857, at the Old North Dutch Reformed Church on Fulton Street in lower Manhattan. For three months Jeremiah Lanphier had gone into every business, shop and boardinghouse inviting people to pray on that particular Wednesday. But as he entered the church at noon on Sept. 23, no one was there.
Most of the churches in the heart of New York City had moved to the suburbs when their affluent members had left the city. In fact, the North Dutch Church had relocated out of the inner city too but decided to leave a mission work in their old building in lower Manhattan. This section of NYC teemed with businesses, immigrants and laborers, and Lanphier (a businessman himself) was tasked with reaching them for Christ.
It was 12:10, and still no one had come to pray.
The California gold rush of 1848 had turned men from God to riches. But by 1857 economic times were hard; businesses were closing; 30,000 men sat idle in NYC. Slavery was ripping the country apart—the threat of war was looming. There was desperation in the air.
Lanphier had decided upon a prayer meeting because nothing else he tried was bringing people into the church. He was discouraged, but prayer was his solace. If it encouraged his heart to fellowship with God, maybe others would feel similarly.
Lanphier said, “In prayer we leave the business of time for that of eternity.”
It was 12:20, and still no one had come.
Jeremiah Lanphier, with no theological training but a deep commitment to the will of God, sat down in the empty church building and began praying.
Finally, at 12:30 five men walked in to pray.
There was no fanaticism, no hysteria.
From a human perspective, nothing extraordinary was happening, and certainly there was no idea that this would begin one of the greatest revival movements in American history. It was just six men quietly, earnestly seeking their God on behalf of their city.
The next Wednesday, 14 people attended the prayer meeting.
Within six months there were anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 men and women out of a population of 800,000 praying at 20 different prayer meetings daily around NYC.
For a period of time, it is estimated that 10,000 people were being converted in NYC each week.
The prayer meeting united people across socio-economic lines at a time when little was uniting Americans. It was a group acknowledging their dependence on God and simply communing with Him.
The format was simple: individuals prayed aloud for unsaved family members or coworkers by name. Hymns were sung; testimonies were given. But prayer was the main focus.
Because NYC was a business hub—as it still is today—merchants and businessmen came from all over the country to do business in the great city and were swept away by the tide of revival they found there.
A visiting merchant from Albany was selecting goods when the noon hour came. He requested that the wholesaler work through the noon hour so he could return to Albany by the evening riverboat, but the response from the wholesaler was: “No! I can’t do that. I have something to attend that is of more importance than the selling of goods. I must attend the noon-day prayer meeting. It will close at 1 o’clock, and I will then fill out your order.” They both attended the meeting, and the visiting merchant was converted. When he returned to Albany, he immediately started a noon-day prayer meeting in that city.
Prayer meetings spread up the East Coast to New Haven, Connecticut; Boston; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; New Jersey; and Washington, D.C. They also spread to the newly developing West—Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis and Omaha. And as far away as Ireland.
Headlines in newspapers across the country carried the news of revival:
“Ice on the Mohawk River Broken for Baptisms” (Schenectady, N.Y.)
“Firemen’s Meeting Attracts 2,000” (Newark, N.J.)
“Revival Sweeps Yale” (New Haven, Conn.)
The New York Times, in an editorial dated March 20, 1858, stated the following about the revival:
“The great wave of religious excitement which is now sweeping over this nation, is one of the most remarkable movements since the Reformation. … It is most impressive to think that over this great land tens and fifties of thousands of men and women are asking themselves at this time in a simple, serious way, the greatest question that can ever come before the human mind: ‘What shall we do to be saved from sin?’”
Within 18 months of the first prayer meeting in the Old North Dutch Reformed Church, it is estimated that 1 million souls across the United States had come to Christ.
So why is this story relevant to us today? What’s the lesson?
The Lord used one dedicated man who believed his God was capable of more than he could ask or think to usher millions into the kingdom of heaven.
Jeremiah Lanphier was not a man of exceptional talent. He looks very much like the unsung, maybe under-appreciated church workers in every church. But he believed in a big God.
How long would you or I have waited in that empty church? How big do we believe our God to be?”
Clogher Valley Free Presbyterian Church 