Revivals, though changed, can still work miracles

John Hatcher is pastor of Outreach International Center, 1091 South Jeff Davis Drive, Fayetteville, Georgia 30215. 770-719-0303

By John Hatcher
Contributing Writer

Against popular trends, our church will be hosting a revival meeting beginning Sunday, Sept. 26 and lasting for three days. It’s rare these days to hear of a church holding a revival meeting. But here we go bucking the trend.

We are thrilled that Bishop Dennis Lyons will be holding the meetings. Bishop Lyons is from Kentucky where he has been a force of reconciliation between various factions in and out of the African-American community. Please read about our revival meeting in an article on the next page.

Let me invite you to come. I promise it will be different and refreshing.

Back to revival meetings. Most of what we know as a revival meeting is not what our forefather Christians experienced. One of the most famous series of revival meetings happened in Kentucky at the turn of the 19th century, called the Cane Ridge Revivals.

Revival meetings did not take place for a week during the evening. No sir! The revival meetings would last several weeks from early in the morning to late at night. Ten thousand people would show up at some of the revival meetings. At times, 500 wagons surrounded the site of the meeting. The crowds were so large that five or six ministers would be disbursed in the crowd to preach. Often, revival attendees would wander from one minister’s sermon to another’s sermon. People would come for the revival meeting as far as 400 miles away.

Many normally rigid Presbyterians succumbed to the manifest power of the meetings, falling down on some occasions. On other occasions they would run around the meeting site and shout to the top of their lungs. That must have been a sight to see.

Methodists and Baptists got on board the revival wagon and Kentucky was changed. Visitors to Kentucky in the early 1800s discovered that the state was the moral of all states and that one would hardly hear foul language or see a drunk. I find it’s interesting that the Cane Ridge Revival was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky.

We just don’t see that kind of revival today. I’m praying that our folks and their guests will come to our “revival” meeting three nights, much less than three weeks. Not all day, either, but a couple of hours at night. One of things that has changed about church and revival affairs, we ministers don’t dare expect our people to chunk everything else and give it all up for a series of revival meetings.

The nearest thing to a Cane Ridge Revival I’ve experienced was at Brownsville Assembly of God Church in Pensacola, Florida. It started Father’s Day, June 18, 1995. Since that day and for several years afterwards, approximately 3,000-4,000 visitors attended the revival each night. According to Evangelist Steve Hill, who preached over 650 messages during the revival, the Brownsville Revival had over 1,720,000 visitors to the services and more than 108,000 responded to the altar calls. The Revival attracted visitors from more than 17 nations and boasted about 100 foreign visitors each night.

I remember so well one of the three visits I made to Pensacola to experience the Brownsville revival. My wife and I waited in line beginning at 3 p.m. and the church’s doors didn’t open until 6 p.m. As soon as the doors were opened, the entire bottom floor was filled in a matter of seconds. Think about it: would you stand in line three hours just to get a seat for a revival service. The answer to that question probably holds some of the reason we don’t have great revival meetings these days.

More than in the year 1800 and more than in 1995, our land calls out for revival. As a nation, we are divided right down the middle. We are asking the people to vote on whether marriage should be between only a man and a woman. We have made it legal to kill unborn children. Rank vulgarity finds a friendly home in television land even before the kiddies go off to bed.

We need a revival. What God wants is for his people to cry out for revival. 2 Chronicles 7:14 continues to hold out its promise: “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sins, and heal their land.”

That’s what we need so desperately: a healing of our land. The questions is this: how bad do things “gotta” get before we hit the floor and cry out to a God who anxiously waits to hear us?

John Hatcher is pastor of Outreach International Center, 1091 South Jeff Davis Drive, Fayetteville, Georgia 30215. 770-719-0303