THE COMING REVIVAL

(Acts 2:14-21)

In Acts 2 Peter not only speaks descriptively about the present activity of the Holy Spirit, he speaks prophetically about future events in the last days, quoting the biblical prophet Joel. In this sermon on the future, preached at Greyfriars Presbyterian Church on 6 April 2003, minister Rob Yule shows the surprising implications of Peter's message. In contrast to optimists, who say the world is getting better, and pessimists, who say the world is getting worse, the Bible envisages world events getting simultaneously better and worse, as we move towards a time of great trouble on earth, during which many will turn the Lord and be saved.

People's attitude to the future perhaps owes as much to their temperament as to their worldview. Optimists believe the world is going to get better and better. They point to great advances in science, medicine and technology, and to progress in advancing democratic ideals, human rights, or women's liberation throughout the world.

Pessimists, on the other hand, say the world is getting worse and worse. They point to wars, climate change, global pandemics, poverty and deteriorating social values. Given the propensity of the media to tell bad news rather than good, the pessimists can usually point to more evidence than the optimists.

The Bible's view of the future is realistic. It is neither optimistic, nor pessimistic, but a combination of both. The biblical prophets - like the prophet Joel quoted by Peter to explain the coming of the Holy Spirit - say that in the latter days the world is going to get better and better and worse and worse. Not one, or the other, but both simultaneously.

A Great Outpouring of the Holy Spirit

First, the world will get better and better. Joel and Peter say there will be a great revival, a worldwide outpouring of the Holy Spirit. '"In the last days," God says, "I will pour out my Spirit on all people."'(Acts 2:17-18). The 'last days' or 'end of days' is the period leading up to the coming of the Lord. At that time there will be a move of the Holy Spirit that is universal and all-embracing in its scope.

Joel says the Spirit will be poured out on 'all flesh' (Joel 2:25, AV). This is the way the Hebrew Bible speaks of all humanity. All kinds of people will be impacted by the Holy Spirit in the last days. People of different races. People of different ethnic groups. People with different social backgrounds. People with different personal interests. Not just church people, or religious people, but people we'd never expect, will be impacted and inspired by the Holy Spirit.

'Flesh' is also the word the New Testament uses to describe sinful humanity. In the last days there will be many surprises, as people who are far removed from God, living very sinful lives, are touched and transformed by the Holy Spirit.

In the Jesus People Revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s many hippies, surfies, dropouts and misfits were swept into Kingdom of God. They had rejected Western society, and conventional churches. They had thrown off cultural conventions and moral restraints. Many were pursuing pleasure in indiscriminate sexual relationships. Others were seeking religious experience in Eastern religions or the occult. It was a wild and heady time.

When God's Spirit moved among many of these hippies and beach people from 1967 onward, thousands were dramatically converted. I have heard estimates that over 3 million came to faith in Jesus in the space of eighteen months in that turbulent time on the Pacific West Coast of the United States. Many of these new believers were Jews - the beginnings of modern Messianic Judaism. Joseph Finkelstein was one of these hippie converts. The house church he started in Philadelphia earned the nickname 'Fink's Zoo', because of the unlikely and colourful characters who gathered there.

Here's David Chernoff's description of what happened when they came to the 1971 conference of the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America:

Joe Finkelstein showed up with twenty-five hippie young people - just saved - wild as anything. We were shocked. We were from a more conservative background. Here he pulls in with twenty five Jesus freaks ... and some of them were still getting delivered. We saw miracles at that conference. We fellowshipped all night.' (Quoted in David A. Rausch, Messianic Judaism [New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 1982], p. 74.)

The prophet Joel foretells a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit on 'all flesh' in the latter days. Brace yourself for some surprises. God is going to recruit some unlikely people.

A Great Shaking of Heaven and Earth

But things will not only get better and better. They will also get worse and worse. There will be a great shaking; awful portents in the sky and on the earth. 'I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below ... The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.' (Acts 2:19-20, NIV).

People used to think this was symbolic language. The Gulf War of 1991 - the first war to be fought on television - put paid to that. Apocalyptic images were all over our TV screens. Scenes of carnage and destruction, burning oil wells, blazing fires and towering columns of acrid black smoke. The 'blood and fire and billows of smoke' of biblical prophecy became virtual reality.

The biblical prophets, from Joel to Jesus, predict convulsive events in the last days. Isaiah says 'the rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light' (Isaiah 13:10, NIV). The prophet Haggai (2:6) and the writer to the Hebrews (12:26) both warn that a time is coming when God 'will shake the heavens and the earth.' Bible teacher Lance Lambert calls this the 'Great Shaking'. The book of Revelation (7:14) calls it the 'Great Tribulation' - which simply means 'Big Trouble.' David Pawson, in his book When Jesus Returns, lists these troubles under four headings: 'disasters in the world, deserters in the church, a dictator in the Middle East, and darkness in the sky.' The social stability we once took for granted will be a thing of the past.

A time of great darkness is coming on the world, that will cause many to panic and fear. As Bob Dylan sings, 'It's gettin' dark, but it ain't dark yet.' Jesus said, 'There will be great distress, unequalled from the beginning of the world until now - and never to be equalled again.' (Matthew 24:21, NIV). 'People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world.' (Luke 21:26, NIV).

When you attend a play or a performance, you know that the action is about to begin when the house lights go dim. When Jesus' coming is near, you'll be able to tell, because the house lights will go down. Many will be afraid of the darkness, but believers will be expectant, knowing that the object of our hopes and desires is about to be revealed for an unbelieving world to see.

A Great Turning to the Lord

Thirdly, the Bible tells us that it is precisely as things get worse and worse that they will get better and better. It's when all human hope has been exhausted that people will 'call upon the Lord and be saved.' (Joel 2:32, Acts 2:21, NIV).

The great revival which is coming on earth, foretold by the biblical prophets, will not happen when world conditions are good, but when they are bad. According to Joel and Peter there will be a widespread turning to the Lord, but it will happen in the days of turmoil leading to the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. At that time of unparalleled distress and uncertainty, which Jesus describes as the 'birthpangs' of his messianic kingdom (Matthew 24:8), people will cry out to the Lord. In the midst of the Great Tribulation, 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'

There will be two harvests, not just one harvest, in the latter days. The same climatic conditions that ripen the wheat also cause the weeds to flourish. There will be a harvest of wickedness and unspeakable evil, strutting and flaunting itself; sneering at what is noble and pure and praiseworthy, scorning natural law, basic restraints, and even humanity itself. Things will get worse and worse. But there will also be a great end-time revival. Many will call on the name of the Lord and be saved. Things will get better and better!

There is a widespread view that Christians will not experience this coming time of Big Trouble, that they will be air-lifted out, leaving unbelievers to suffer social upheavals and God's judgments. I cannot see this in the Bible. We are not promised immunity from trouble, but preservation amid trouble. 'In this world you will have trouble,' said Jesus. 'But take heart! I have overcome the world.' (John 16:33, NIV).

Rapture teaching seems to me to be part of a mindset of immunity or escapism that is widespread in our selfish, pleasure-seeking age. With the great Bible teacher David Pawson, who has studied this matter thoroughly, I would rather make the mistake of preparing God's people to go through tribulation and be proved wrong, than commit the more serious error of promising escape from tribulation and misleading them into a false sense of security!

Eitan Shishkoff pastors Ohalei Rachamim ('Tents of Mercy') messianic synagogue in Kiryat Yam, Israel. He was one of those Jewish hippies in the late sixties, farming on a commune when he came to faith during the Jesus People Movement. What I am calling the 'Coming Revival' Eitan Shishkoff calls the 'Final Harvest' (Prayer for Israel New Zealand Newsletter, 129 [March-April 2003], p. 8):

'A final harvest is before us. The "end of days" and a final harvest are often linked in the Word of God. ... I am personally convinced that we must pray with passion and determination until God grants a supernatural, broad scale harvest of lives into his Kingdom. ... While appalled by what feels like the "beginning of sorrows" I am also inspired by Yeshua's statement in Matthew 24, linking earthly disasters and wars with the preaching of the Gospel in every nation.'

Coming events will test our faith. We'll need to keep our eyes on the Lord and not on the waves. Jesus said when these things begin to happen we need to 'lift up our heads', because our redemption is drawing near (Luke 21:28). Our focus should be not on the trouble and difficulties, but on the opportunities these will provide for making known God's saving grace in Jesus Christ. In those days this simple message will be best: 'Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.'

Rob Yule, 6 April 2003

© 2003, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church