For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death

- Psalm 48:14 Jul - Sep 2018

Volume 4, Issue 3
Desiring Revival

In Ezekiel 22:30 there is an astounding statement that is made by God. 'And I

sought'. The weight of that statement can never be realized when we think of who is the one who
is seeking. The eternal God who made the heavens and the earth, of whom the angels and the
saints fall on their faces and worship day and night crying Holy. Holy, Holy. This eternal being,
the God of all power, mercy and sovereign ruler over all the universe, this great God is seeking.
When we talk about revival, we are faced with the bleak conditions and coldness that is around us.
Not only here in America but all around the world. We are faced with insurmountable odds that
seems to loom over us as Goliath did before David three thousand of years ago. But yet the verse
shines a glimmer of hope that God is searching for that man or woman who will make up the hedge
and stand in the gap. In Ezekiel's time God ends with 'but I found none'. Can we truly humble our-
selves and rend our hearts and not our garments and seek God? lest he pen's the same statement
upon our generation. May God help us to humbly seek His face, for God is willing and able to shew
himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him (2 Chronicles 16:9).

A Heart for Missions: “In the vast plain to the North I have sometimes
seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no mis-
sionary has ever been.” - Robert Moffat

Let him Sleep - Leonard Ravenhill

Solemnly and slowly, with his index finger extended, Napoleon Bonaparte
outlined a great stretch of country on a map of the world. "There," he
growled, "is a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! If he wakes, he will shake the
world." That sleeping giant was China. Today, Bonaparte's prophecy of
some one hundred and fifty years ago makes sense.

Today Lucifer is probably surveying the church just as Bonaparte did China. One can
almost behold the fear in his eyes as he thinks of the Church's unmeasured potential and I n st e a d o f Go d
b les s A me r ic a,
growls, "Let the Church sleep! If she wakes, she will shake the world." Is not the Church
le t u s pr ay Go d
the sleeping giant of today? h elp Am e r ica
His Soliloquy
The Lost Soul’s First Day in Eternity - J. M. Humphrey
At Last I am in hell. In spite of all my resolutions not to come, I am here to suffer the
just demands of a broken law. O God, can it be that I, who has taught the way of truth, virtue,
and heaven, should choose sin, hell, and eternal damnation??
Death and judgment are passed. The time of repentance has slipped away.
Mercy’s door is forever shut. I would not heed the warning voice of God, though it thun-
dered in my ear night and day from my cradle to my grave. I hardened my heart and said,
“I will not yield.” At last death came; I tried to repent, but my heart refused to shed a
tear. I passed into eternity a damned soul.
The worm that never dies has coiled its slimy folds around my naked heart and in it
fastened its venomous fangs. Merciful God, pity me. But the white winged angel of mercy has flown
forever. The fiends with their bony hands are grasping for my defenseless soul. Away, ye devils, ye shall
not touch me, ye shall not have my soul. Ah, they have me at last; it is useless for me to resist. Is there none
to deliver - none, Great God, none! I turned my back on Thee, now Thou dost refuse to hear my cry of an-
guish.
The flames of damnation are wrapping my soul in shrouds of eternal misery. O that I had a drop of
water to quench this raging thirst that consumes me, but there is no water here. Devils laugh at my agony
and exultant shout: “Enjoy the wages of sin!” FOREVER! O God, I have been here but one short hour and
have suffered more than a thousand tongues can tell; and must I forever suffer thus? Through the ceaseless
ages yet to come must I still suffer on? None to heed my bitter prayer; none to say it will soon be over? It is
forever! FOREVER!
The darkness is intense, broken only by the lurid flashes of divine wrath that are thrown like thun-
derbolts from the hand of a just God! I grope in the darkness to find Him, but plunge over the precipice of
despair onto the rocks below. Bruised and mangled I rise and stagger on in search of friends, but none are
found. All are my enemies. I scream for help and the only answer is the echo of my own sad cry and the yells
of delight from the throats of demons. Alone! Yet multitudes are here; they gnash on me with their teeth;
they trample me under their feet. I struggle to rise, and they dash me into the lake of everlasting fire. Alone!
Yes, alone! Without God, without hope, without heaven.
O that I had a moment in which to repent, but it will never be given. I have sealed my own doom.
God’s mercy was extended; I refused till too late. Now Eternal Justice is being satisfied. ‘Tis just. God is love;
is just and holy. He is clear, but I am guilty - damned, and that righteously.

THE FULLNESS OF THE SPIRIT

When Ignatius was on trial at Rome, he was asked by the Emperor, ‘What is the meaning of your
name, Theophorus?’ (God-bearer). He promptly replied, “He who has Christ in his breast’. And all Christians
are God-bearers, whether they realize it or not. The unspeakably glorious mystery of an in-dwelling Holy
Ghost is the possession of even the weakest and most failing child of God. The mistake has often been made
of looking upon the incoming of the Holy Spirit as an experience subsequent to conversion, as an arbitrary
bestowment rather than a necessary vitality. But the Scriptures plainly teach that the Holy Spirit is a universal
gift to all believers, one without which they cannot be believers at all. At the same time, we recognize the fact
that to possess the Holy Spirit is one thing, but to be filled with the Spirit is quite another. Before Pentecost
the Holy Ghost had been given to the disciples. Christ had breathed upon them and said, ‘Receive ye the Holy
Ghost’. But Pentecost made an unspeakable difference to them. The visible tongues of fire were only em-
blems of what had passed within. What new creatures they then became! How their gross conception of
Christ’s kingdom was purged away, and how they were raised from earthliness to spirituality! Their intellects
were flooded with Divine light, their souls throbbed with Divine sympathies, and their tongues spoke so won-
derfully of the things of God, and all who had known them previously were amazed saying, ‘What meaneth
this?’ They were all raised to a new altitude; a new energy and force possessed them. Each one became
strong as an iron pillar, ‘the weakest as David, and the strong as the angel of the Lord’. They met together as
the sincere but timid and partially enlightened followers of Christ, but they left the upper room full of light,
and power, and love. They were now filled with the Holy Ghost as an all-illuminating, all-strengthening, all-
sanctifying presence. The baptism of fire has consumed their inner depravity, subsidized all their faculties,
and filled to the full each capacity with Divine energy and life…
Almost all prominent Christian workers, whose labours have been pre-eminently owned of God, bear
witness to the reception of a distinct blessing which they received subsequent to conversion, and which inau-
gurated a new era in their spiritual life.
NEW TESTAMENT HOLINE SS - THOMAS COOK
 LOVING JESUS - HAN S R. WALD VOG EL A B IRTH FRO M AB OVE
This may sound like heresy in some
I Corinthians 16:22. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let
quarters, but I have come to this conclu-
him be Anathema Maranatha.
sion that there are far too many among us
Revelation 2:4. Nevertheless I have somewhat against who have thought that they accepted
thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Christ, but nothing has come of it within
their own lives and desires and habits! This
“If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ…” Now let’s go kind of philosophy in soul-winning, the idea
through the rank and file of this meeting tonight, and, say, let me feel your
that it is "the easiest thing in the world to ac-
pulse. You know, a lie detector will quickly detect if there’s a lie in your sys-
cept Jesus" permits the man or woman to
tem. But here’s a love detector that detects quickly whether you’re in love or
not. Or, you can detect people that are in love naturally. accept Christ by an impulse of the mind or of
the emotions. It allows us to gulp twice and
But “if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ...” Oh. That love, the Bible sense an emotional feeling that has come over
says, “passeth knowledge.” If human love can quicken the pulse of a person us, and then say, "I have accepted Christ."
and can make them to be so careful… I’ve seen the worst bums turn into
These are spiritual matters about which we must
“dudes” overnight - I have - fellows that would never think of cleaning their
be legitimately honest and in which we must seek
fingernails, or pressing their pants, or shining their shoes. Overnight, they
became gentlemen par excellence. They couldn’t talk “Brooklyn brogue” any- the discernment of the Holy Spirit. These are
more; they had to speak the “Oxford tongue.” Just human attachment, some things about which we cannot afford to be wrong;
human affection will turn a bum into a prince. Of course, he doesn’t stay that to be wrong is still to be lost and far from God. Let
way. It’s just skin-deep, that kind of stuff. us never forget that the Word of God stresses the
importance of conviction and concern and repen-
But the love of Jesus Christ, oh that wonderful love without which no man
tance when it comes to conversion, spiritual re-
can get saved. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all
thy mind, with all thy soul, with all thy strength” sounds like law. It isn’t law, generation, being born from above by the Spirit of
it’s a love affair. It’s a proposal of Almighty God to a poor beggar on the God!
dunghill - to you and to me. - A. W. Tozer

PRAYING TILL WE PRAY - A.W . T OZ ER

Dr. Moody Stuart, a great praying man of a past generation, once drew up a set of
rules to guide him in his prayers. Among these rules is this one: "Pray till you pray." The dif-
ference between praying till you quit and praying till you pray is illustrated by the American
evangelist John Wesley Lee. He often likened a season of prayer to a church service, and
insisted that many of us close the meeting before the service is over. He confessed that
once he arose too soon from a prayer session and started down the street to take care of
some pressing business. He had only gone a short distance when an inner voice re-
proached him. "Son," the voice seemed to say, " did you not pronounce the benediction
before the meeting was ended?" He understood, and at once hurried back to the place of
prayer where he tarried till the burden lifted and the blessing came down.

The habit of breaking off our prayers before we have truly prayed is as common as it is unfortunate. Of-
ten the last ten minutes may mean more to us than the first half hour, because we must spend a long time get-
ting into the proper mood to pray effectively. We may need to struggle with our thoughts to draw them in from
where they have been scattered through the multitude of distractions that result from the task of living in a
disordered world.

Here, as elsewhere in spiritual matters, we must be sure to distinguish the ideal from the real. Ideally
we should be living moment-by-moment in a state of such perfect union with God that no special preparation
is necessary. But actually there are few who can honestly say that this is their experience. Candor will compel
most of us to admit that we often experience a struggle before we can escape from the emotional alienation
and sense of unreality that sometimes settle over us as a sort of prevailing mood.

Whatever a dreamy idealism may say, we are forced to deal with things down on the level of practi-
cal reality. If when we come to prayer our hearts feel dull and unspiritual, we should not try to argue our-
selves out of it. Rather, we should admit it frankly and pray our way through. Some Christians smile at the
thought of "praying through," but something of the same idea is found in the writings of practically every
great praying saint from Daniel to the present day. We cannot afford to stop praying till we have actually
prayed.
 A Holiness Revival! - Andrew Murray
A holiness revival! What was the great evangelistic revival in England through White-
field and Wesley but this? They had together at Oxford been members of the "Holy Club".
With their whole heart they had sought deliverance from the guilt of sin, but also from the
power of sin. When their eyes were opened to see how faith can claim the whole Christ in all
fullness, they found the key to the preaching which was so mightily effectual for the salvation of
men. What John Wesley did for the Methodism, General Booth, and his disciples, did for the
Salvation Army. Looking at the material on which he had to work, it was amazing how, with his
teaching of the clean heart and full salvation, he was able to inspire tens of thousands with a
true devotion to Christ and the lost. There may be great differences of doctrine, but no one can
be blind to the seal God has set upon the intense desire to preach a full salvation and an entire
consecration.
Vignettes of the Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century - Edwin Paxton Hood
When the Great Revival arose, the Church of England set herself, everywhere, in full array against it; she
possessed but few great minds. The massive intellects of Butler and Berkeley belonged to the immediately preced-
ing age. The most active intellect on the bench of bishops was, no doubt, that of Warburton; and it is sad to think
that he descended to a tone of scurrility and injustice in his attack on Wesley, which, if worthy of his really quarrel-
some temper, was altogether unworthy of, his position and his powers.
Thus, whether we derive our impressions from the so-called Church of that time, or from society at large
we obtain the evidences of a deplorable recklessness of all ordinary principles of religion, honour, or decorum.
Bishop Butler had written, in the "Advertisement" to his Analogy, and he appears to have been referring to the
clerical and educated opinion of his time: "It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons
that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious;" and
he wrote his great work for the purpose of arguing the reasonableness of the Christian religion, even on the princi-
ples of the Deism prevalent everywhere around him in the Church and society. Addison had declared that there
was "less appearance of religion in England than in any neighbouring state or kingdom, whether Protestant or
Catholic;" and Montesquieu came to our country, and having made his notes here, published, probably with some
French exaggeration, that there was, "no religion in England, and that the subject, if mentioned in society, excited
nothing but laughter."
Such was the state of our land, when, as we must think, by the special providence of God, the voices were
heard crying in the wilderness. From the earlier years of the last century they continued sounding with such clear-
ness and strength, from the centre to the remotest corners of the kingdom; from the coasts, where the Cornish
wrecker pursued his strange craft of crime, along all the highways and hedges, where rudeness and violence of
every description made their occasions for theft, outrage, and cruelty, until, as we shall see, the whole nation be-
came, as if instinctively, alive with a new-born soul, and not in vision but in reality something was beheld like seen
by the prophet in the valley of vision - dry bones clothed with flesh, and "standing up an exceeding great army," no
longer on the side of corruption and death, but ready with song and speech, and consistent living, to take their
place on the side of the Lord.

Holy Spirit’s work in Revival

Back in the days of the Moravians, on Aug 13, 1727 as they were waiting on God,
suddenly they had a Pentecostal outpouring in that meeting when the Spirit fell on them
and set their hearts on fire on the people gathered there (75 of them). They felt “A sense of
the loving nearness of the Saviour instantaneously bestowed”. There was no confusion,
no tongues, but made missionaries out of them, which took them all over the world and
set the world on fire. The Historian writing on that event said “In 20 short years, that bunch
of Moravians did more for missions than all the Church put together in 200 years”. After that event,
they started a prayer meeting and divided it into 4-hour time periods, and kept it going for 24 hours a
day for 100 years” - Taken from the sermon by A.W. Tozer titled “What difference does the Holy Spirit make?

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