Revival Can Save a Nation
By Al Whittinghill
For hundreds of years, historians and scholars have carefully studied and evaluated the factors that have caused the decline and death of great empires. Their careful conclusions are readily available to those who really want to know them.
Scholars like Edward Gibbon, who wrote the classics, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Arnold Toynbee who wrote, A Study of History, have set forth in great clarity and detail that twenty‐one of the last great empires on earth all showed the same common signs of decline just before they dissolved and disappeared from world history. This simply cannot be refuted by any honest person!
History is littered with the remains of once great empires, each one having had their turn at the very helm of the world, rising so high, yet today they are only a memory. Will this be true of America?
Many historians have catalogued the “commonalities of calamity” or “the pathology of death” for human societies, and the diagnosis is alarming! Nations do not really die…they dissolve, a slow process of erosion. They self-destruct due to disintegration caused by dangers lurking within.
Here’s a list of those common symptoms of the end, harbingers of death shared by all twenty-one of the last great extinct societies:
The Social Symptoms:
- An increase in lawlessness and promotion of the wrong people.
- Loss of economic discipline and self-restraint; greed.
- Rising government taxes and regulation, growing bureaucracy.
- Decline in the relevance and quality of education.
The Cultural Symptoms:
- Increase in materialism and selfish luxury.
- Weakening of the foundational principles that built the nation and made it great.
- Policies based on feelings and not moral discipline.
- Loss of respect for established authority.
The Spiritual Symptoms:
- Rise in immorality and perversion.
- Lure of alien gods and exaltation of man.
- Decline in value placed on human life as evidenced by abortion, brutality, loss of natural affection, care for the elderly.
Nations ready to die are plagued by lawlessness, economic insolvency, loss of values, self-centeredness and the breakdown of social order. Peace and order become impossible to maintain, despite a deluge of “new laws” to stem the flood. The Barbarians then come in/infiltrate, and the nation cannot resist. It loses its moral fiber and the will to sacrifice is no longer present. There are well-worn paths to disaster. These are stark warnings to any nation and reminders not to make the fatal movement away from God as Lord of all. The old expression, “No man loves his alarm clock!” is appropriate here.
A nation that does not fear God has no chance! The nation that does not fear Him has forgotten Him. The reason that history repeats itself is that most people do not listen the first time! Someone has said, “The future cannot be seen clearly without the past.” (See Job 8:8-13, Ecc. 1:9-10) It was Aristotle who first said, “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” The lessons of history are meant to lead us to the Lord of history. It is really His-story, and it practically shouts at us that every individual and nation is accountable to Him.
God repeatedly warns a nation, and pleads with that nation, before He removes it, but history shows that nations seldom listen! The great hope is that God will send a mighty move of His Spirit in the nation and revive it to blessedness and a right relationship to Him.
In America, true revival will not come by simply becoming aware of our great need for it. It will not come even if we are successful in pointing out all our present grievous sin and error. It will not come because of multiplied meetings to encourage us, and to make us want revival; even sing about it.
Revival will come only in God’s sovereign grace when the people of God recover God’s revelation of who He is. We must have fresh revelation of God through His Word…Jesus Christ, the Lord. Inherent in this revelation will come the glorious realization of who He wants His people to be. Then, the people of God must choose to authentically respond to Him in such a way as to allow Him to clear up the discrepancies and contradictions. Submitted to Him, the Church will once again become “salt and light.”
Friends, in our day we seem to have lost sight of who He is. And because we don’t see His holiness there is no fear of God. Because we don’t see our unholiness there is no brokenness. Because we don’t see His forgiveness there is no joy. Because we don’t see His plan there is no purpose.
Let each of us realize today: America is in grave danger and is repeating the mistakes of nations long gone. In fact, we are outdoing them in their error. And the fact that we have had so much blessing and Truth from God only makes us more accountable to Him.
If true revival comes it will make the Church a bull’s eye for the world, not just a blessing. Attacks will come from the world outside and from the worldly inside the Church. But, God will own His Church in manifest power and there will be fresh demonstration of Resurrection Life in His Body. She will worship the Lord “in the beauty of His holiness”, and the Gospel will go forth in power! Just imagine what the Church would be like if our wonderful Lord had His way! Oh, we need an epidemic of the Glory of God!
It is time for the Church of the Lord Jesus to heed the Scriptures afresh! We must deal with the real issues of the heart…the ones that have kept us from heavenly intimacy with and passion for our Lord.
The world is waiting to see the New Testament Church, clothed with power from on high and brimming over with the joy of Resurrection Life. Revival in the Church! It is the only hope for our nation and the world.
Isn’t it true: the Church cannot have a message for the heart of the world until the Lord has the heart of the Church? God must ignite us or we will be ignored by the world!
God loves a Church aflame; He cannot abide the lukewarm! It is time to seek the Lord; to let the Holy Spirit burn the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 into our being.
Lord, send revival, and let it begin in me!###
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Rev. Al Whittinghill is a Southern Baptist evangelist with Ambassadors For Christ International. One of the greatest desires of his heart is to see Heaven sent revival….a genuine move of God in the Church of Jesus Christ, both here in America and around the world. His ministry website address is: alwhittinghill.com.
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Editor’s Addendum:
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of smooth-talking soothsaying self-proclaimed “prophets” dotting the spiritual landscape today, who, as the false prophets God excoriated in Old Testament days, prognosticate “peace and safety” or, in these days, continued “prosperity and security,” despite the undeniable overt abject spiritual decline transpiring in America in this hour. Both the Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal camps are replete with aggressively selfishly-ambitious self-purporting “prophets,” who strive with murderous and almost barbaric aggression to climb to the top of the prophetic mountain in a prophetic version of the children’s game, “King of the Mountain.” These utterly false and self-condemned prophets now have the exponentially expansive worldwide web to proliferate their antichrist foolishness and fallacious bunkum. And, be assured, utter foolishness and fallacious bunkum it is to state or with minced oratorical cajolery intimate that divine judgment upon America is not waiting in the wings held in abeyance only by the fathomless patience, mercy, and grace of an Almighty God, barring a quick and thorough repentance of God’s people, per 2 Chron. 7:11. As someone rightly said, “God would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah if He does not judge America!”
Don’t believe these false prophets who are agents of Satan and not sent by God!
God’s Old Testament warnings vocalized through Israel’s prophets who prophesied out of their own heart, spirit, and soul are resoundingly reverberating through the ages screaming at America and particularly the American church today:
Ezekiel 13:1-16
(1) And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
(2) Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy, and say thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts, Hear ye the word of the LORD;
(3) Thus saith the Lord GOD; Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing!
(4) O Israel, thy prophets are like the foxes in the deserts.
(5) Ye have not gone up into the gaps, neither made up the hedge for the house of Israel to stand in the battle in the day of the LORD.
(6) They have seen vanity and lying divination, saying, The LORD saith: and the LORD hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word.
(7) Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a lying divination, whereas ye say, The LORD saith it; albeit I have not spoken?
(8) Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because ye have spoken vanity, and seen lies, therefore, behold, I am against you, saith the Lord GOD.
(9) And mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and that divine lies: they shall not be in the assembly of my people, neither shall they be written in the writing of the house of Israel, neither shall they enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the Lord GOD.
(10) Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered morter:
(11) Say unto them which daub it with untempered morter, that it shall fall: there shall be an overflowing shower; and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall rend it.
(12) Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you, Where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?
(13) Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even rend it with a stormy wind in my fury; and there shall be an overflowing shower in mine anger, and great hailstones in my fury to consume it.
(14) So will I break down the wall that ye have daubed with untempered morter, and bring it down to the ground, so that the foundation thereof shall be discovered, and it shall fall, and ye shall be consumed in the midst thereof: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
(15) Thus will I accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that have daubed it with untempered morter, and will say unto you, The wall is no more, neither they that daubed it;
(16) To wit, the prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and which see visions of peace for her, and there is no peace, saith the Lord GOD.
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