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[HOW TO PRAY, by R. A. Torrey]
CHAPTER XI
The Need of Prayer Before and During Revivals
If we are to pray aright in such a time as this, much of our
prayer should be for a general revival. If there was ever a time in
which there was need to cry unto God in the words of the Psalmist,
"Wilt Thou not revive us again, that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?"
(Ps. 85:6) it is this day in which we live. It is surely time for
the Lord to work, for men have made void His law (Ps. 199:126). The
voice of the Lord given in the written Word is set at naught both by
the world and the church. Such a time is not a time for
discouragement--the man who believes in God and believes in the Bible
can never be discouraged; but it is a time for Jehovah Himself to
step in and word. The intelligent Christian, the wide-awake watchman
on the walls of Zion, may well cry with the Psalmist of old, "It is
time for Jehovah to work, for they have made void Thy law." (Ps.
119:126, Am.R.V.)
The great need of the day is a general revival.
Let us consider first of all what a general revival is.
A revival is a time of quickening or impartation of life. As
God alone can give life, a revival is a time when God visits His
people and by the power of His Spirit imparts new life to them, and
through them imparts life to sinners dead in trespasses and sins. We
have religious excitements gotten up by the cunning methods and
hypnotic influence of the mere professional evangelist; but these are
not revivals and are not needed. They are the devil's imitations of
a revival. NEW LIFE FROM GOD--that is a revival. A general revival
is a time when this new life from God is not confined to scattered
localities, but is general throughout Christendom and the earth.
The reason why a general revival is needed is that spiritual
dearth and desolation and death is general. It is not confined to
any one country, though it may be more manifest in some countries
than in others. It is found in foreign mission fields as well as in
home fields. We have had local revivals. The life-giving Spirit of
God has breathed upon this minister and that, this church and that,
this community and that; but we need, we sorely need, a revival that
shall be widespread and general.
Let us look for a few moments at the results of a revival.
These results are apparent in ministers, in the church and in the
unsaved.
1. The results of a revival in a minister are:
(1) The minister has a new love for souls. We ministers as a
rule have no such love for souls as we ought to have, no such love
for souls as Jesus had, no such love for souls as Paul had. But when
God visits His people the hearts of ministers are greatly burdened
for the unsaved. They go out in great longing for the salvation of
their fellow men. They forget their ambition to preach great sermons
and for fame, and simply long to see men brought to Christ.
(2) When true revivals come ministers get a new love for
God's Word and a new faith in God's Word. They fling to the winds
their doubts and criticisms of the Bible and of the creeds, and go to
preaching the Bible and especially Christ crucified. Revivals make
ministers who are loose in their doctrines orthodox. A genuine wide-
sweeping revival would do more to turn things upside down and thus
get them right side up than all the heresy trials ever instituted.
(3) Revivals bring to ministers new liberty and power in
preaching. It is no week-long grind to prepare a sermon, and no
nerve-consuming effort to preach it after it has been prepared.
Preaching is a joy and a refreshment, and there is power in it in
times of revival.
2. The results of a revival on Christians generally are as
marked as its results upon the ministry.
(1) In times of revival Christians come out from the world
and live separated lives. Christians who have been dallying with the
world, who have been playing cards and dancing and going to the
theater and indulging in similar follies, give them up. These things
are found to be incompatible with increasing life and light.
(2) In times of revival Christians get a new spirit of
prayer. Prayer-meetings are no longer a duty, but become the
necessity of a hungry, importunate heart. Private prayer is followed
with new zest. The voice of earnest prayer to God is heard day and
night. People no longer ask, "Does God answer prayer?" They know He
does, and besiege the throne of grace day and night.
(3) In times of revival Christians go to work for lost souls.
They do not go to meeting simply to enjoy themselves and get
blessed. They go to meeting to watch for souls and to bring them to
Christ. They talk to men on the street and in the stores and in
their homes. The cross of Christ, salvation, heaven and hell become
the subjects of constant conversation. Politics and the weather and
new bonnets and the latest novels are forgotten.
(4) In times of revival Christians have new joy in Christ.
Life is joy, and new life is new joy. Revival days are glad days,
days of heaven on earth.
(5) In times of revival Christians get a new love for the
Word of God. They want to study it day and night. Revivals are bad
for saloons and theaters, but they are good for bookstores and Bible
agencies.
3. But revivals also have a decided influence on the unsaved
world.
(1) First of all, they bring deep conviction of sin. Jesus
said that when the Spirit was come He would convince the world of sin
(Jn. 16:7,8). Now we have seen that a revival is a coming of the
Holy Spirit, and therefore there must be a new conviction of sin, and
there always is. If you see something men call a revival, and there
is no conviction of sin, you may know at once that it is bogus. It
is a sure mark.
(2) Revivals bring also conversion and regeneration. When
God refreshes His people, He always converts sinners also. The first
result of Pentecost was new life and power to the one hundred and
twenty disciples in the upper room; the second result was three
thousand conversions in a single day. It is always so. I am
constantly reading of revivals here and there, where Christians were
greatly helped but there were no conversions. I have my doubts about
that kind. If Christians are truly refreshed, they will get after
the unsaved by prayer and testimony and persuasion, and there will be
conversions.
WHY A GENERAL REVIVAL IS NEEDED
We see what a general revival is, and what it does; let us
now face the question why it is needed at the present time.
I think that the mere description of what it is and what it
does shows that it is needed, sorely needed, but let us look at some
specific conditions that exist to-day that show the need of it. In
showing these conditions one is likely to be called a pessimist. If
facing the facts is to be called a pessimist, I am willing to be
called a pessimist. If in order to be an optimist one must shut his
eyes and call black white, and error truth, and sin righteousness,
and death life, I don't want to be called an optimist. But I am an
optimist all the same. Pointing out the real condition will lead to
a better condition.
1. Look first at the ministry.
(1) Many of us who are professedly orthodox ministers are
practically infidels. That is plain speech, but it is also
indisputable fact. There is no essential difference between the
teachings of Tom Paine and Bob Ingersoll and the teachings of some of
our theological professors. The latter are not so blunt and honest
about it; they phrase it in more elegant and studied sentences; but
it means the same. Much of the so-called new learning and higher
criticism is simply Tom Paine infidelity sugar-coated. Prof. Howard
Osgood, who is a real scholar and not a mere echo of German
infidelity, once read a statement of some positions, and asked if
they did not fairly represent the scholarly criticism of to-day, and
when it was agreed that they did, he startled his audience by saying:
"I am reading from Tom Paine's 'Age of Reason.'"
There is little new in the higher criticism. Our future
ministers oftentimes are being educated under infidel professors, and
being immature boys when they enter the college or seminary, they
naturally come out infidels in many cases, and then go forth to
poison the church.
(2) Even when our ministers are orthodox--as thank God so
very many are!--they are oftentimes not men of prayer. How many
modern ministers know what it is to wrestle in prayer, to spend a
good share of a night in prayer? I do not know how many, but I do
know that many do not.
(3) Many of us who are ministers have no love for souls. How
many preach because they MUST preach, because they feel that men
every where are perishing, and by preaching they hope to save some?
And how many follow up their preaching as Paul did, by beseeching men
everywhere to be reconciled to God?
Perhaps enough has been said about us ministers; but it is
evident that a revival is needed for our sake or some of us will have
to stand before God overwhelmed with confusion in an awful day of
reckoning that is surely coming.
2. Look now at the church:
(1) Look at the doctrinal state of the church. It is bad
enough. Many do not believe in the whole Bible. The book of Genesis
is a myth, Jonah is an allegory, and even the miracles of the Son of
God are questioned. The doctrine of prayer is old-fashioned, and the
work of the Holy Spirit is sneered at. Conversion is unnecessary,
and hell is no longer believed in. Then look at the fads and errors
that have sprung up out of this loss of faith, Christian Science,
Unitarianism, Spiritualism, Universalism, Babism, Metaphysical
Healing, etc., etc., a perfect pandemonium of doctrines of devils.
(2) Look at the spiritual state of the church. Worldliness
is rampant among church members. Many church members are just as
eager as any in the rush to get rich. They use the methods of the
world in the accumulation of wealth, and they hold just as fast to it
as any when they have gotten it.
Prayerlessness abounds among church members on every hand.
Some one has said that Christians on the average do not spend more
than five minutes a day in prayer.
Neglect of the Word of God goes hand in hand with neglect of
prayer to God. Very many Christians spend twice as much time every
day wallowing through the more of the daily papers as they do bathing
in the cleansing laver of God's Holy Word. How many Christians
average an hour a day spent in Bible study?
Along with neglect of prayer and neglect of the Word of God
goes a lack of generosity. The churches are rapidly increasing in
wealth, but the treasuries of the missionary societies are empty.
Christians do not average a dollar a year for foreign missions. It
is simply appalling.
Then there is the increasing disregard for the Lord's Day.
It is fast becoming a day of worldly pleasure, instead of a day of
holy service. The Sunday newspaper with its inane twaddle and filthy
scandal takes the place of the Bible; and visiting and golf and
bicycle, the place of the Sunday-school and church service.
Christians mingle with the world in all forms of questionable
amusements. The young man and young woman who does not believe in
dancing with its rank immodesties, the card table with its drift
toward gambling, and the theater with its ever-increasing appeal to
lewdness, is counted an old fogy.
Then how small a proportion of our membership has really
entered into fellowship with Jesus Christ in His burden for souls!
Enough has been said of the spiritual state of the church.
3. Now look at the state of the world.
(1) Note how few conversions there are. The Methodist
church, which has led the way in aggressive work has actually lost
more members than it has gained the last year. Here and there a
church has a large number of accessions upon confession of faith, but
these churches are rare exceptions; and where there are such
accessions, in how few cases are the conversions deep, thorough and
satisfactory.
(2) There is lack of conviction of sin. Seldom are men
overwhelmed with a sense of their awful guilt in trampling under foot
the Son of God. Sin is regarded as a "misfortune" or as "infirmity,"
or even as "good in the making"; seldom as enormous wrong against a
holy God.
(3) Unbelief is rampant. Many regard it as a mark of
intellectual superiority to reject the Bible, and even faith in God
and immortality. It is about the only mark of intellectual
superiority many possess, and perhaps that is the reason they cling
to it so tenaciously.
(4) Hand in hand with this widespread infidelity goes gross
immorality, as has always been the case. Infidelity and immorality
are Siamese twins. They always exist and always grow and always
fatten together. This prevailing immorality is found everywhere.
Look at the legalized adultery that we call divorce. Men
marry one wife after another, and are still admitted into good
society; and women do likewise. There are thousands of supposedly
respectable men in America living with other men's wives, and
thousands of supposedly respectable women living with other women's
husbands.
This immorality is found in the theater. The theater at its
best is bad enough, but now "Sapphos," and the "Degenerates," and all
the unspeakable vile accessories of the stage rule the day, and the
women who debauch themselves by appearing in such plays are defended
in the newspapers and welcomed by supposedly respectable people.
Much of our literature is rotten, but decent people will read
books as bad as "Trilby" because it is the rage. Art is oftentimes a
mere covering for shameless indecency. Women are induced to cast
modesty to the winds that the artist may perfect his art and defile
his morals.
Greed for money has become a mania with rich and poor. The
multi-millionaire will often sell his soul and trample the rights of
his fellow men under foot in the mad hope of becoming a billionaire,
and the laboring man will often commit murder to increase the power of
the union and keep up wages. Wars are waged and men shot down like
dogs to improve commerce, and to gain political prestige for
unprincipled politicians who parade as statesmen.
The licentiousness of the day lifts its serpent head
everywhere. You see it in the newspapers, you see it on the bill-
boards, you see it on the advertisements of cigars, shoes, bicycles,
patent medicines, corsets and everything else. You see it on the
streets at night. You see it just outside the church door. You find
it not only in the awful cesspools set apart for it in the great
cities, but it is crowding further and further up our business
streets and into the residence portions of our cities. Alas! now and
then you find it, if you look sharp, in supposedly respectable homes;
indeed it will be borne to your ears by the confessions of broken-
hearted men and women. The moral condition of the world in our day
is disgusting, sickening, appalling.
We need a revival, deep, widespread, general, in the power of
the Holy Ghost. It is either a general revival or the dissolution of
the church, of the home, of the state. A revival, new life from God,
is the cure, and the only cure. That will stem the awful tide of
immorality and unbelief. Mere argument will not do it; but a sign
from heaven, a new outpouring of the Spirit of God, It was not
discussion but the breath of God that relegated Tom Paine, Voltaire,
Volney and other of the old infidels to the limbo of forgetfulness;
and we need a new breath from God to send the Wellhausens and the
Kuenens and the Grafs and the parrots they have trained to occupy
chairs and pulpits in England and America to keep them company. I
believe that breath from God is coming.
The great need of to-day is a general revival. The need is
clear. It admits of no honest difference of opinion. What then
shall we do? Pray. Take up the Psalmist's prayer, "Revive us again,
that Thy people may rejoice in Thee." Take up Ezekiel's prayer,
"Come from the four winds, O breath (breath of God), and breathe
upon these slain that they may live." Hark, I hear a noise! Behold
a shaking! I can almost feel the breeze upon my cheek. I can almost
see the great living army rising to their feet. Shall we not pray
and pray and pray and pray, till the Spirit comes, and God revives
His people?
