***** This second part is broken into two sections due to its length! *****
Nearly 2000 years of church history has gone under the bridge of time, and there are still billions who have never heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. During this span of time, churches have come and gone, and denominations have risen and fallen like the ocean tides.
Around the start of the 1900’s, prayer for a change in the hearts of people through the means of revival was not necessarily producing the tangible results as some may have liked and it was not long before faithful study of the Scriptures was replaced by that which could be felt and experienced today. People were not satisfied with knowing the God of the Bible, but in some way had to have a fuller experience which would somehow change their lives with greater impact.
The Welsh Revival of 1904-1905 soon faded into a distant memory as the “revivals” on Azusa Street took place. The main differences between the two events was that with the Welsh Revival, while there were unexplained events that took place, one thing was certain – God was changing the hearts of individuals within the church. People were being gloriously saved. Bars and places of ill repute went out of business. The world sat up and took notice that these people had been with the Lord Jesus Christ.
However, with Azusa and similar meetings came a new set of criteria. Phenomenon, strange utterings, etc. were what people were coming to see in the churches – NOT to give praise, honour, and glory to the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. The main changes occurring had nothing to do with the salvation of souls, but with new teachings placing emphasis on feeling God. You could have experiences and accept your heart had been converted, yet with this came a denial that the life was required to change by the indwelling Spirit of God.
True works of God in the salvation of lost, wicked, depraved sinners was soon being substituted for the experiences of those who called themselves Christians. It was producing a generation of church goers who were content with “Christian-eze” on Sunday, but were free to live like the devil during the week because they were being taught they could simply come back and experience God again and be re-born again each week.
The preaching of the cross was replaced with preaching which allowed people to feel good about themselves and that took the matter of salvation out of the hands of the Sovereign God of the universe and made it dependent on the depraved minds of people who had no natural desire to love God or please Him.
So many pastors and members were duped into believing that feelings were a good substitute for living a life which was becoming more like the Lord Jesus Christ. Many of these were going to “revival” meetings, being “slain in the spirit”, speaking in “heavenly” languages, etc, and yet had never been made a new creation in Christ Jesus.
This was made evident by the fact that the Bible says that those who belong to Christ will produce fruit, but thousands and millions were not producing Christ-like fruit as found in Galatians 5:22, 23. Instead, many were showing forth that their experiences meant more than the Word of God and sadly many preachers instead of standing for the truth realized that it was easier to keep a crowd by pandering to the “felt needs” of those who came to “get some.”
Multitudes of ministers began to capitalize on this and decided that they could milk this “revival” phenomenon for all it was worth. Soon tent meetings and week-long church meetings were springing up across the country and thing called a “revival” were being scheduled. Much planning, much hype, but little to no prayer quickly showed that much of what the west has seen is NOT true revival.
(Continued in Part 2….)
1 Comment
June 28, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Could you please help me find the prophecies that were given at the Azusa Street Revival?
Thank you Iris