God has stirred upon many of our spirits that there will be another world revival soon, but it is tarrying because many, many in the Body of Christ are unprepared with divisions, factions, dry of love, self life and coldness. Unprepared to rise together and pray for it, unprepared to support one another, unprepared because of doctrinal wars with one another, unprepared because of spiritual pettiness, jealousies and competition. Before I start, I want to say, we cannot make a revival happen, the Holy Spirit ignites a revival and spiritual awakening through the grace and mercy of God, but we can be effectual intercessors standing in the gap to pray for it. The power of repentance unleashes the River of Revival.
When we start praying for revival, a deep work starts in our own lives and we start to see dark dirt corners in our soul and soon the Holy Spirit works within to wash out the dirt in us. Revival always starts with a work within us first. Soon after a cleaning work within us, the fire on the altar comes on blazing forth within us, and then the Holy Spirit takes that fire to spread it to the world. Over the centuries, we have seen that prayer has birthed all the revivals.
The Hebrew word for revive is chayah which means to live, have life, remain alive, sustain life, nourish and preserve life, live prosperously, live forever, be quickened, be alive, be restored to life and health. According to that definition, revival is not just a one-time shot of faith in a lifetime, revival is a continual deep work within us of nourishment, preservation, drinking Living Waters and eating the Bread of Life daily, spiritual quickening and restoration to life.
I would describe it as a powerful spiritual awakening first of a very heightened awareness of the dreadful sinful condition of our souls and then a mighty spiritual awakening to the glory of God. Revival days are not normal days but very supernatural where God manifests Himself to not only His church but all people.
A supernatural outpouring of the Holy Spirit pours out in torrents to a community and spreads. Miraculous conversions transpire, soul saved like never before, awareness of sin deepens to crying conviction, the love and unity of the Body of Christ increases in leaps and bounds. Suddenly old feuds are broken, healed and love pours out, healing, miracles, dreams, visions are multifold and prayers which were never answered get answered.
What churches could not achieve for years suddenly materializes overnight. Another frightening fact about revival is there are many reported cases of mockers of God and of the revival suddenly being found dead in their beds the next morning. It reminds us of Ananias and his wife Sapphira, in Acts 5.
The fruit of pure true revival is always repentance, reconciliation to God and to one another, unity, love, and purity of life along with a supernatural birth of harvest not only of new souls to the Kingdom, but also a new rising of preachers, teachers, evangelists, more people wanting to study the Bible, a suddenly springing up of Bible studies nearly everywhere, singing, worshiping. People have even heard angels singing along with them. Armies of youth march off to Bible colleges or mission fields. These were the fruits of the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s revivals. In the 1970s, there was a kind of revival washing the world but by the 1990s, I think it largely faded.
Today, though mighty evangelists claim revival is happening, we see a rise of rottenness and sin both in churches and in the world around us like never before. Many years back, a few of us were having a discussion about revival and one Bible college student said loudly, with his voice touching shrill pitches, “There is no word in the Bible ever mentioned about revival, so this is a myth. This only happened in the book of Acts!”
I said “Well, we have had many centuries of recorded revival, very similar to the Book of Acts, and uh, maybe we may not directly find the word revival, but revive us O Lord is mentioned all over the Bible. Also the Word Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible, but that does not negate its reality.”
The man said nothing but kind of gave me a cold glare and the conversation ended stiffly and silently. I was saddened at the dead-end of the conversation.
This man, stuck with his stack of doctrine of papers flooding above his head never explored the Bible to see the greatest revivals happened when Peter preached and 3000 were struck to their hearts and turned to God, and the 3000 preached and more were added to the church. History has shown that when there is a powerful manifestation of the Holy Spirit such as in revivals, the principle of multiplication abounds where thousand to even a few millions come to Christ.
This happened in 1904 revivals which swept through the world and in India too, with Sadhu Sundar Singh, Bhakt Singh, and many others, as well as the Billy Graham crusades where more than a million lives were impacted. When Jonah went to Nineveh, the entire city eroding in wicked deeds was soon was soaked in repentance after hearing Jonah’s message to repent and turned their hearts to worship the God of the Heavens and Earth. This was an outstanding account of revival in the Bible of a nation that did not even follow God.
Revival comes from the waterfall of God’s grace pouring down on a nation, taking its course through first a stream, then widens like a river, which runs through a nation, running its course, it cannot be stopped, no one can stop a river and like a river, it enriches the shores and riverbanks that it touches. A true spiritual revival born in the power of the Holy Spirit will always impact eternal change.
Church committees can plan and stir up a revival, hold massive conferences and seminars to stir up the people but because they are doing it in the energy of their flesh and not praying, no repentance, not much lasting change is effectuated. Interestingly today, people are predicting great power and anointing will come on all believers, which is true, but they leave out the most important part, before this anointing, there has to be a great repentance before revival because self righteousness is flourishing like fungus in many churches.
We need a revival where many will turn to God, seeing their own unholiness and like Isaiah cry out, “Unholy, unholy, I am undone I am and be overcome by the beauty and holiness of God!
I remembered another conversation with a Bible scholar who announced gleefully, “In the last days, there will be a great falling away and many will go to hell. The road is narrow and few will find it, WOE TO THEM!”
Again, another conversation ended in a black hole because this scholar did not believe there was hope for anyone, but an elected few and he was quite triumphantly waiting to see millions go to hell.
Well, this did not deter me from praying for revival and the burden for a spiritual awakening of the nations has never left me. Over the last ten years I have been praying fervently for this without having a friend to agree with me on this.
Yet since 2016, God has wonderfully enabled me to meet people with the same vision, prophesy and prayers. It was then that I felt strongly impressed upon by the Holy Spirit to write this.
To be continued…
Rita F. Kurian
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