Revival Prayer
In this work Edwards speaks of the promise of God to bless His people when they come together to pray for revival. Throughout history this little work has influenced thousands of people and spurned countless little prayer groups to come together for meaningful revival prayer. Missionary pioneer William Carey tells in his biography that this work was one of the very things that inspired him to the mission field. Take special notice that Edwards challenges the reader not to seek revival per se, but to seek the very presence of God. When God comes, revival is there.
By way of disclaimer, I will say that I believe Edwards envisions more of an end-time “mass revival” movement than I am comfortable with. Perhaps this is due to his understanding of the two kingdoms. From a perspective now of over 250 years later, I would feel that such a “mass-church” concept has propagated an unhealthy ecumenism including such groups as Roman Catholics and sometimes even Mormons. While I believe that in the “last days” a great revival will come, I still believe that comparatively, the church will still look like a remnant—not a mass, one-world church.
Jesus said, “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth” (Luke 18:7-8)? Then there is the Isaiah prophesy, “Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah” (Isaiah 1:9). Also considering Paul’s thoughts to the Roman Church, “Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5).
One more thing…It should not be overlooked that one of the hallmark passages in this litany of revival prophecies quoted by Jonathan Edwards is that the prophecies of this revived church predict that they “will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” I feel that it would be a bit dishonest to take the praying part of the prophecy without the “beating-the-sword-into-plowshares part”. Rival historian, J. Edwin Orr took notice that the progress in the early revivals of the 1900s ended conspicuously when WWI began. Revival did not surface again on a large scale until after WWII. We cannot expect to be praying for revival in the hearts of people in “other lands” if we are shooting them while we pray. Could this be yet one more reason—why revival tarries?
All that being said—regardless of your belief about the size of the end-time revivals, the prophecies of Zachariah and Isaiah still stand; and these passages clearly speak of a praying people who trust the promises of God for His fullness and Holy Spirit outpouring. For that reason, I feel that this work is invaluable for its simple, straight-forward application of God’s design for true heaven-sent revival. The second part of this work is a living example of how revival praying was used to bring about a move of God in Scotland in 1744. I hope to put that in a future issue. ~Bro. Dean Taylor
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Dying and Resurrecting with Christ
Just as no living man can be buried with a dead man, so no one who is still living to sin can be buried together in baptism with Christ, who has died to sin. Therefore, those who are hastening to baptism ought to take care as a matter of first importance that they should first die to sin. And in this way, they can be buried with Christ through baptism, so they might say, “Always carrying around the death of Jesus Christ in our body so that the life of Jesus Christ might be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
Now the manner in which the life of Jesus Christ is manifested in the body, Paul himself makes known when he says, “But no longer do I live, but Christ lives in me.” This is the same thing the apostle John also writes in his epistle when he says, “Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” Surely in that passage it is not the one who shall have spoken these syllables and pronounced them in this common confession that shall seem to be led by the Spirit of God, but the one who has fashioned his life in such a way and has produced the fruit of good works, such that he has demonstrated by the very devotion of his own works and thoughts that Christ has come in the flesh and that he is dead to sin and alive to God.
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Face the Battle Singing!
Jehoshaphat was in sore distress. What to do!? The Ammonites, the Moabites, and the people of Mount Seir had ganged together against the children of Israel. 2 Chronicles 20:3 reads: “And Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah gathered themselves together, to ask help of the Lord …” They took this confrontation seriously. Jehoshaphat went into the house of the Lord, before the new court, to plead with God for His help. Had not God said that if evil should come upon them and they came into the sanctuary and called on Him for help that He would help them?
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