Home » General

Revival, Rewriting, Reclaiming, and Revising

23 July 2007 5 Comments

I really wonder what the modern-day revivalists really want to do? Bring people to repentance and a closer walk with God or do they want to rewrite history forty years later?

It seemed after The Call (aka The Gall) took place on the ‘magical’ day of 7-7-07 to repent of 40 years since the hippies invaded the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Streets with sex, drugs, rock and roll, free love, and Vietnam war protests, there has been a new trend to go back every 40 years (God’s number of generation) and repent for what the last generation did (even though you did not do anything at all) and have another ‘repentance’ service to attempt to rewrite and revise history and attempt to reclaim America from the moral decay prevalent today.

If The Call 2007 was not enough, we now have the Real Summer of Love and in conjunction God’s Summer of Love where the trek continued from Nashville, Tennessee in a convoy with hundreds of young adults through Kansas and Arizona to California on a historic 35-day prayer and worship journey in order to hold another outdoor gathering on 8-11-07 in San Francisco in order to

pray for another Jesus Movement to erupt and bring in an unprecedented harvest.

What is it about Revival, Rewriting, Reclaiming, and Revising that obsesses the third wavers even though the Bible never mentions revival, rewriting history, reclaiming historical events gone awry, and revising history to push ‘the Christian alternative’ that happened? Nowhere in the New Testament was the church told to hold revivals, reclaim lost nations, rewrite Roman history, and/or revise what happened years earlier. The church of the New Testament was told to be the church to fulfill a great commission and die to the flesh taking up the cross and take care of the poor, widowed, and orphans.

What’s next on the 40 year reclamation list?

4-4-08, the 40 year anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death and we repent and re-repent again for the umpteenth time for racism where every white southern American protestant male is ‘racist by default’?

8-15-09 through 8-18-09, the 40 year anniversary of Woodstock where we repent once again for everything previously repented at The Call 2007 along with some third wavers planting spiritual property stakes around the borders of what used to be Max Yasgur’s 600 acre dairy farm to ‘reclaim the land’?

6-17-12, the 40 year anniversary of Watergate where we repent of dishonesty in government?

4-30-15, the 40 year anniversary of the ending of the Vietnam War where we ‘repent’ and apologize to Vietnam and try to claim Vietnam for Jesus?

11-4-19 to 1-20-21, the 40 year anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis and will we ‘repent’ for dabbling into the affairs of Iran?

7-19-20 to 8-3-20, the 40 year anniversary of boycotting the Olympic games in Moscow and will we try to win Russia for Jesus?

3-19-27, the 40 year anniversary of Jim Bakker’s resignation from PTL following revelation of the payoff to former secretary Jessica Hahn, whom Bakker’s staff members had paid $265,000 to keep secret her allegation that he had raped her where we repent for the evil of televangelists?

2-12-28, the 80th (2 times 40) anniversary of the beginning of the ‘Latter Rain’ / Dominionist movement where we fast and pray again for ‘Latter Rain Part II”?

Let’s quit reclaiming, reviving, rewriting, and revising history and instead usher ourselves back to the true Bible way of having church. Mega-crusades with 40 day fasts ending on the 40th anniversaries of historic events doesn’t cut the mustard or force God to finally be able to ‘move’ because the formulas worked out in advance. We can pray that people turn from their sin, but we can not no matter how hard we try repent for someone else’s sins in prayer. All we can do is to continue praying for the conviction of the Holy Spirit to fall on the unsaved to turn from their sinful ways while continuing to clearly present the gospel. What are we worshipping here, history or His Holiness?

5 Comments »

  • Triple_P said:

    Reminds me of how the king had to destroy that brass serpent Moses had lifted up on a pole, because generations later, the people began naming it and offering incense unto it. So perhaps God also will have to destroy the influences and mindsets of previous movements lest they become idols unto us.

    Remember, God told Jeremiah to “root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant” in Jeremiah 1:10, and you have to root out, pull down, destroy, and throw down before you are EVER able to build and to plant.

    The first words of God to give Joshua his calling [in the opening of Joshua's book] were “Moses my servant is dead”. It would do us well to heed those words, and figure out how it is we move on from our history into our destiny.

    And if we choose to continue to mourn Moses, and worship his brass serpent, we will continue wandering in circles throughout the wilderness, just as we did that same 40 years we already wandered there.

    And we will never make it into Canaan – the promises of God – so long as we follow the dead leaders and ignore the living ones.

    # 23 July 2007 at 4:51 pm
  • admin said:

    Steve:

    The Nehushtan, found in 2 Kings 18:4

    That really reminds me of something here. Nostalgia. It seems that the third wavers love nostalgic things that correlate to numbers of Biblical proportions while Pentecostals love nostalgia in reference to past moves of God in old brush arbors where today’s Pentecostal leaders are no where near the power and anointing as their predecessors (unless that person was the descendant of the predecessor in that case they went unopposed no matter how much of a heretic he really was).

    In some ways, I see many within the Reformed camp are acting the same way where men like John Piper, C.J. Mahaney, and Mark Dever are seen as less anointed than Luther, Calvin, and other contemporaries such as Sproul and Kennedy.

    Mario Murillo in his book Fresh Fire mentioned scripture from 2 Kings 2:1-17 about people wanting Elijah even though he had been taken up to heaven and Elisha now having the prophetic mantle Elijah once had concentrating on the scriptures (verses 16-18) where fifty men wanted to go search for Elijah thinking God had casted him upon some mountain or into some valley. He did a great job relating that there is a die-hard people who love memorabilia, paraphernalia, and nostalgia that are too busy searching for a ‘body’ of some great deceased evangelist or the ‘body’ of some epoch of history that they can not see the destiny that lays before them.

    Steven, that is exactly what appears to be going on. They appear to be wandering around in circles in a wilderness of ‘watching’ to find the perfect ‘time’ that matches their formulas because their perception of God is a God that can only move within their formula to take them to a promise land that some mega prophet forty years from now will repent over.

    I believe that God is wanting to bless his people with blessings and miracles not because ‘God’s Man’ is in office, not because the numbers match the formulas, not because someone repeated a cycle that a past move pioneered thinking that God has to meet them, not because thousands of people showed up at a mega-convention on 7-7-07 repenting for sins they did not commit but unwilling to repent for prophetic divinations they did commit. I really believe God wants to move on behalf of his people because we are His people and God wants to supply all our needs according to His riches in glory.

    # 23 July 2007 at 6:01 pm
  • Triple_P said:

    Interesting to note that the sons of the prophets said “Where is Elijah?”, but Elisha said “Where is the LORD GOD of Elijah?”

    # 23 July 2007 at 7:17 pm
  • Diane R said:

    Wonderful post…this has to be one of your most classic ones!

    # 24 July 2007 at 12:25 pm
  • Neil said:

    “They appear to be wandering around in circles in a wilderness of ‘watching’ to find the perfect ‘time’ that matches their formulas because their perception of God is a God that can only move within their formula ”

    I wonder if this has a tie into the third wave’s obsessions with gateways and portals where God can only show up at certain times and at certain places?

    # 24 July 2007 at 12:55 pm