#203-The Revival in These Last Days

Editor's Note: Apologize about the temporal gap of posts, just really busy lately. I also have one more post already written but i want to tweak it a bit, so expect that for Friday.


Firstly, visit this youtube video link  (embedding disabled) for a context of what I think we are dealing with, but note the words "Oh my God" are said 3-4 times, so if this offends don't watch.

Secondly, what does this have to do with us? Well I would argue that is how some of us (including myself at times) perceive our religious walk. The fire in the video obviously representing Hell, Dwight=God (knowing that if you light a match underneath someone, it will cause them to get going), the office=the last days.

Let me be more rephrase: There is this dominant notion that we are in the Last Days before Christ's return to earth, and the book of Revelation tells us the last days are to be defined by wars upon wars, messes upon messes, World War III, panic of panics...basically the first half hour of what is called "Black Friday" at a shopping mall, the day after Thanksgiving wherein all sorts of ridiculously extreme deals are going on and people NEED THOSE THINGS:

Is this not the kind of spunk we are operating in as a movement at times? We operate with a kind of vigilant militancy in sermons about this being the last days and pointing to various verses in the Bible to prove this and various events in the news to solidify these claims and they are all telling us that we need to be on some kind of raid breaking down every gate in order to save people. We need an end times revival.

And Here is my version of how I understand this kind of theology through history:

At the beginning of Christianity, Jesus was all up out of this boy in the ascension. Then He came back down through the Spirit in the Acts 2 day of Pentecost, but everyone knew Jesus was sooo about to come back from Heaven in fullness whenever he decided it was time. It was incredible. Things Were fantastic. God, apostles, people saved, miracles, One God. Then somewhere along the way they lost their way. Probably the second century. People started to intellectualize and institutionalize the Cross. It was not about Spirit revelation anymore, plus God became 3-in-1, and not just One. Catholic Church takes over Weird ideas are spawned. This happens for a long long time. Then the Reformation happened which kind of made the Catholic Church not so "Catholic" anymore, and we could all read and interpret the Bible, and Jesus would be back any minute...although things still were what they once were. A few hundred years later, Azuza Street Revival happens, just like in Acts. Miracles. And eventually a return to the revelation of Oneness. While things weren't perfect, with the Spirit out of it's slumber and alive in Pentecost, things were much better than before.

The problem is Jesus is so about to come back any minute. And we are working our tales off in panic to try clean up the mess of those 1800 years or so where the Spirit was for the most part absent in the workings of Christianity. 

Being Apostolic

So we are running the house trying to clean up the mess all the other Christians left us to clean up in their kind of Christian slumber and not caring what mess they left. People must be saved! We know we can do it! WE GOT THIS! GO GO GO GO!  DAD WILL BE HOME ANY MINUTE! By the time dad gets back, we can't let him know how messy things have been.

RUN AROUND IN A STRICKEN PANIC BECAUSE HE SO JUST CALLED US AND TOLD US HE WILL BE HOME SOON AND JUST NEEDS TO PICK UP A FEW THINGS FROM THE STORE (SCREAM LOUD NOW).

What can help us? I know: Revival. Has anyone seen the Revival around?  Anyone? (dog whistle "COME HERE REVIVAL" CLAP)

Someone lost the Revival? Well let's think about this for a minute. Who did we last with Revival and where was it at? Hmmm....there was definitely the 70's when all our hippy parents got sick of the drug scene and wanted some order in there lives. We definitely saw Huge revival then. Anyone else? Oh yes, we saw revival with the Africans pretty recently. And now even South America. But recently? Okay. Let's look everywhere around the house to find revival. We must find it! Check the cracks in the cushion couches. Don't panic. Not yet anyways. But be hurried. Like a fast-paced walk. Smile politely. Why are you looking in the oven?!? Who would have put the revival in the oven? Seriously?!? let's act rationally here people. Dad will be home in ten minutes. The revival will be our safety to cover up this historical mess. 

Logistics of the search? My Rationale: if we just act like we have tried hard enough searching for this revival, and attempted incorporating the latest modern innovations for Church Growth to locate the Revival (all those books at the book store about Church Growth? Think of them as an infomercial and you will never think about buying them), and we have prayed! Certainly we have prayed hard enough and long enough  to say "WE TRIED OUR BEST!" The Spirit will then tell us where the Revival is located. We will pick up. And utilize it. MILLIONS WILL BE SAVED! And not a moment too soon, because Dad will so be home by then.

Daddy Done Got Lost 

A few days ago, my dad was looking for his glasses pacing back and fourth through the house looking for them. We didn't know what he was looking for, we had our own lives to worry about. So there his man is, 5 years away from retirement, wondering the house as if he just heard a rumor the Holy Grail was secretly hidden by God within it. Checking counter-tops, bed-stands, couches, and bedstands again. Making the loudest noises ever in the process to let it be known to his internet-addicted children that he was searching for something important. After foot-stomping and breathing through his nose in frustration long and loud enough, I ask him what he is looking for. He said his glasses. I asked him if they were the tinted glasses that make him look like a creeper. He said no, but that he was looking for his regular glasses. I asked if they were the ones on his face already. He said they were and laughed at himself. The thing he thought he was missing (glasses) were already on his face and had been on his face for so long, he forgot what it was like without the glasses so much so, that he thought he had lost them. It is so for many of us on how we handle the concept of trying to find the revival by praying and shouting our way to hopefully stumbling upon it.

Suggestion....

PHIL COLLINS' with his cover of the Supreme's Number 1 hit "Can't Hurry Love" wherein the advice comes from his mother: "My mama said, "You can't hurry love. No, you'll just have to wait." She said "love don't come easy..." 



And also Romans. Romans 2:7. Something about patient continuance and also a further explanation about how there is not so much of a sense of panic in the first century churches (unless souls were endangered of being lost), but rather you get the sense that the Church genuinely trusted the Spirit for the whole Revival thing. Not on lighting fires in churches to scare people to go out and scare more people to get them to the church whereupon they will be scared all over again, but I am not in a preaching mood so take my stream of consciousness explanation just now for what it's worth and disagree because I am so realizing there are argumentative holes in this post, so let's see if you can figure them out, and out of stubbornness i will argue that I am right even though you are being more logical, but all of this will wait because I need MORE PHIL COLLINS!