When we understand the history of the church and it’s past patterns of revival, it gives us clearer understanding of how to pray for revival, therefore I will be running through the history of the church and how revival was eventually birthed after seasons of darkness.
Right now, there is a great moral decadence in the church and all over the earth and we hear of things we never heard before, so the last great revival, already starting is really ready to be manifest over the Earth.
In the history of the pattern of revivals, we also see it starts with two trademarks – prayer and repentance. Revival cannot happen without an increasing awareness of sin, deep desire to pray and engulfing waves of repentance sweep over believers praying for revival. As we start to pray, we become more and more aware of the inner dark recesses of our souls, unless of course we are already powerfully touched and aglow by the Holy Spirit.
Early Church and Rome
As we know from the Book of Acts, the church experienced the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, empowering each believer with glowing fire within blazing to touch others and spread. The Gospel spread rapidly to Greece, parts of Asia and the South of India through Apostle Thomas. Signs, wonders, and miracles bloomed forth before a hungry lost world and thousands came to Jesus.
These mass conversions to Christianity made egocentric Nero, the emperor of Rome insecure. As he was eccentric, extravagant and a narcissist, while Rome was burning and Christians were thrown to the gladiators, lions, and covered in tar and burned as flaming torches, he would be inspired to compose poetry. The inhuman massacre of Christians caused the church to go underground in a place called the catacombs. In fact, they dug and constructed underground tunnels and chambers as swiftly as they could and hid there, having their worship services and studying the Scriptures in the maze of tunnels.
The persecutions continued until a new conqueror rose. He was known as Constantine the Great, originally from France, also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was a Roman Emperor from 306 to 337 AD. He was on a quest for conquering new lands to gain an empire.
He was in a battle with King Maxentius whose army was twice the size of Constantine’s. Constantine’s army arrived at the field bearing unfamiliar symbols on either its standards or its soldiers’ shields. According to Lactantius, Constantine was visited by a dream the night before the battle, wherein he was advised “to mark the heavenly sign of God on the shields of his soldiers … by means of a slanted letter X with the top of its head bent round, he marked Christ on their shields. Eusebius describes another version, where, while marching at midday, “he saw with his own eyes in the heavens a trophy of the Cross arising from the light of the sun, carrying the message, In Hoc Signo Vinces or “with this sign, you shall win”; in Eusebius’s account, Constantine had a dream the following night, in which Christ appeared with the same heavenly sign, and told him to make a standard, a symbol representing the first two letters of the Greek spelling of the word Christos or Christ
Constantine did exactly as instructed and he won the battle against King Maxentius. With this great victory, he converted to Christianity.
Constantine was the first emperor to stop Christian persecutions and to legalise Christianity along with all other religions and cults in the Roman Empire. . Things changed rapidly for Christians, they suddenly got high positions of influences in courts and palaces and in high places of government, became bishops holding power. So millions converted to Christianity knowing they would hold high positions of favour. For many, it was not a heart spiritual conversion but a head and calculated conversion. As people came to Christianity and the church, they brought with them their pagan practices into the church.
Over time, they brought in superstitions, religious traditions, and in time, the converted Roman Christians relabelled their idols with Christian names, the statue of Jupiter was labelled Saint Peter, and likewise others. Isis, who was an Egyptian goddess always depicted carrying her child Horus was now relabelled as mother Mary and baby Jesus. Idol worship is forbidden in the Bible as one of the ten commandments, yet this practice of idol making and worshiping crept in the Church in the 4th centuries. In the middle ages, Mary was venerated to the position of semi deity, speaking up for humans. At the Council of Nicaea, (325), the church commemorated Mary to the level of a goddess and co-mediator with Christ. There was a clear detour from the original Scriptures and the drastic change in the Church from the first century to the fourth century was humongous. Christianity degenerated and sin was rampant.
Revival in Rome: God raised up a monk from the Roman Catholic Church called Savonarola, Florence, Italy, 1496-1498. The sins of Rome and of the Roman Catholic Church gripped Savonarola to shock. At that time, Martin Luther was a young boy. Savonarola prayed, pleaded and cried out to God for change, often walking beside the River Po, crying out for the sins of the people. As Savonarola prayed, he wrote an article called “Contempt of the Word” where he paralleled the sins of the current age to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. He cried for revival. One day, God gave him a vision. The heavens opened and a Voice commanded him to announce the devastation to hit the church due to their sins. Filled now with the powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit, he began to preach openly before crowds of people. People on the streets started to be struck with conviction from the Holy Spirit, people from all walks of life, from royalty to laborers, men and women started to weep with repentance. Savonarola preached for eight years. He prophesied many things which came true. It was through the help of Savonarola that the people were taught of a democratic government to overthrow the wicked tyrannical rule of the present government. While lives transformed with heavenly glow, people sang, worshipped God, threw away worldly sinful books or obscene pictures etc. People had a renewed love for God.
In the meantime, the wicked pope, cardinals, bishops, and priests were furious and wanted Savonarola executed. They captured him, savagely tortured him, forcing him to recant, which he did not. They tore sockets out of limbs, put his feet on burning coals but the brave monk did not recant. In the end, Savonarola along with two other monks was executed before thousands of people. They died boldly, glorious, victorious with the power of God upon their lives.
The Word of God Revival: The Bible was not originally withheld from the people, but in time, when they saw differences between what the church was practicing and the Word, they challenged it, and in that interest, they decided not to make the Bible available to the people. From the 5th century to the 15th century, it was taught that only religious leaders were qualified to explain the Bible to the people. In the meantime, corruption rose in the church, and this time of spiritual, cultural, social and economic deterioration is known as the Dark Ages, the church filled with pagan traditions.
Peter Waldo: He was a man who brought Word of Revival in the 1100s, Sources relate that he was a wealthy clothier and merchant from Lyons and a man of some learning. Sometime shortly before the year 1160, he was inspired by a series of events, firstly, after hearing a sermon on the life of St. Alexius, secondly, rejection of transubstantiation when it was considered a capital crime to do it, thirdly, the sudden and unexpected death of a friend during an evening meal. From this point onward he began living a radical Christian life, giving his property over to his wife, while the remainder of his belongings he distributed as alms to the poor.
At about this time, Waldo began to preach and teach publicly, based on his ideas of simplicity and poverty, notably that “No man can serve two masters, God and Mammon.” he condemned Papal excesses and Catholic dogmas, including purgatory and transubstantiation. He said that these dogmas were “the harlot” from the Book of Revelation. By 1170 Waldo had gathered a large number of followers, referred to as the Poor of Lyons, the Poor of Lombardy, or the Poor of God. They evangelized their teaching while travelling as peddlers.. They were often referred to as the Waldensians or Waldenses. He taught that the Bible should be taught to all the people, freely available to them in their own language.
The Waldensian movement was characterized from the beginning by lay preaching, voluntary poverty, and strict adherence to the Bible. Between 1175-1185 Waldo either commissioned a cleric from Lyons to translate the New Testament into the vernacular, the Arpitan (Franco-Provençal) language, or was himself involved in this translation work. Regardless of the source of translation, he is credited with providing to Europe the first translation of the Bible in a ‘modern tongue’ outside of Latin.
In 1179, Waldo and one of his disciples went to Rome, where they were welcomed by Pope Alexander III and the Roman Curia. They had to explain their faith before a panel of three clergymen, including issues which were then debated within the Church, such as the universal priesthood, the gospel in the vulgate or local language, and the issue of voluntary poverty. The results of the meeting were inconclusive. Waldo’s ideas, but not the movement itself, were condemned at the Third Lateran Council in the same year. The leaders of the Waldensian movement were not yet excommunicated.
Driven away from Lyons, Waldo and his followers settled in the high valleys of Piedmont, and in France, in the Luberon, as they continued in their pursuit of Christianity based on the New Testament. Finally, Waldo was excommunicated by Pope Lucius III during the synod held at Verona in 1184. The doctrine of the Poor of Lyons was again condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, when they mentioned the group by name for the first time, and declared its principles to be heresy. Fearing suppression from the Church, Waldo’s followers fled to the mountainous regions of northern Italy.
The Roman Catholic Church began to persecute the Waldensians, and 80 were tried and sentenced to death in France. Following this, the Waldensians became critical of Catholic belief. They eventually merged with various Protestant churches that were forming in the late 16th century. Centuries later, many Waldensians were killed as well.
Martin Luther: The Holy Spirit stirred up people to call for revival, reform. In Germany, in the 1500s, God touched a monk, Martin Luther. He relentlessly tried to earn his salvation through good works as the Roman Catholic Church taught, yet always found that he failed miserable and punished himself harshly.
In time, as a monk he had to take his doctorate in the Bible and become a professor at Wittenberg University. During lectures on the Psalms (in 1513 and 1514), he had to study of the Book of Romans.
In this struggle for vice over good, one day as he was reading Romans 1:17—the words seemed to leap out of the page and ignite his spirit in a powerful new way. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
On meditating on the Scriptures more and more, he began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. On this understanding, he was born again and had an experiencing of “entering paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open.”
On the heels of this illumination, came many more.. To Luther the church was no longer the institution defined by apostolic succession, but it was the community of those who had been given faith. Salvation came not by the sacraments and rituals but by faith. He pointed out the many errors in the existing Roman Catholic church which were not consistent with the original Scriptures. Outraged cardinals and a pope ordered him to recant, which he did not, eventually married Katharina, an ex-nun, had six children. His teachings led to a mighty revival in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, France, and the British Isles. It could be said that Martin Luther brought a reformation in Christianity and brought back the original Scriptures to the common people. As we are aware, many pagan practices had crept into the Roman Catholic Church such as idolatry, worship of Mary and elevation as our intercessor, the high glorified positions of church leaders such as cardinals, bishops and pope all came from a Roman culture that glorified status and rank, unlike the Church of Jesus Christ.
A new movement and awareness of the original Scriptures spread. Martin Luther spent his life preaching and organizing the new church. He did not make drastic changes to the old one to avoid mass confusion.
He died peacefully of a stroke that deprived him of his speech, and he died shortly afterwards at 2:45 a.m. on 18 February 1546, aged 62, in Eisleben.
The Wesley Brothers in the 1700s: Again revival fires ebbed two centuries after Martin Luther and John Calvin. Sin started to resurface again, and spread through the nations again. Rioting, killing, civil upheavals, crime, robbery, and brutality mushroomed. England was steeped in crime and violence at the time of the French Revolution.
On New Years Day, in 1739, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield and many others met together, praying through the night and at 3 a.m., the power of God fell down on them, fell to the ground, overpowered by the Presence of God, crying tears of joy in Christ’s Presence. Over the weeks that followed, they started open-air preaching where thousands in England would gather to hear them. Crowds of 20,000 would gather and weep with tears of conviction. Initially, John Wesley was alarmed when people fell down under the power of God, but came to realize it was a sovereign work of God in which he must not interfere or try to stop.
Charles Finney greatly impacted America in the mid 1800s. People got so convicted by sin that they could not sleep. Weeping, sobbing, and crying for God where people became alive to God’s Presence was commonplace. In one event, a man blaspheming the revival fell down dead. The revival kept spreading. In Northern Ireland in the 1800s, great conviction of sin, and glorious conversions happened all the time. Business came to a standstill as people gathered in cottages on the hillsides, singing, praising God and praying. People did not sleep for nights, and drunk men were awed by the Holiness of God and gave up alcohol instantaneously. Thousands upon thousands gathered together, praying and crumbled to the ground by God’s Power. No one was making it happen, there was no leader. The Holy Spirit was the Leader.
The cloud of God’s presence hung over many parts of the United States in the 1800s, especially near the east coast near the sea. It is said that during those days while sailors approaching land, they would feel a powerful holy presence around them, even though they knew nothing of the revival. As the ship would be about to land, the captain would call for a minister and as the glory of God covered them, sailors would repent of sins and gloriously turn to the Savoir, Christ.
In India, Pandita Ramabai, a Hindu-covert, a great Indian social reformer in the 1800s to 1900s, built a home for the widows. She was a woman of great prayer, raising up a movement to pray for revival when she heard how revival was spreading like wildfire over the Western countries. After much prayer, her girls got touched and awakened to the Glory of God, stuck under conviction of sins and experienced the joys of salvation. One of the girls was set aflame, looking as if she was engulfed in flames, so another girl ran to throw a bucket of water on her, to find that she was inflamed in spiritual fire, not literal fire!
Revival spread all over to Scotland, Ireland, the USA, China, Korea, Indonesia, Africa, and many parts of the world, the Spirit of God was transforming communities.
Today, we believe through the Bible, prophesies and the Holy Spirit’s witness that the greatest revival is about to come upon the Earth, it has already started…but it will become so evident to all, like pouring Rain all over the Earth..Many of us have seen the Rain pouring down, heard the Rain, and anointed prophets of God have spoken of it. Friends, lets be ready!!!
Rita F. Kurian
Bibliography: Studies on Revivals…
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