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Another Trait of Modern Revivals

7 June 2008 4 Comments

I was comparing and contrasting the revivals of old versus the new revivals (Toronto, Brownsville, Smithton, and Lakeland) and I noticed some interesting differences.

Yesterday’s revivals were aimed for the sinner and the backslidden Christian. Today’s revivals are aimed at trying to please Christians and attempting to act as secular as possible without crossing the line.

Yesterday’s revivals allowed the change in the person to be the testimony and witness. Today’s revivals give you a testimony and tell you that you are ‘touching God’ if you question.

Yesterday’s revivals produced legacies of lasting change and impacted their communities. Today’s revivals tend to produce untraceable ‘healings and blessings’ and revival junkies who live from one revival to the next revival.

Yesterday’s revivals produced changed cities and neighborhoods where vice related businesses shut down. Today’s revivals are held in areas in close proximity to vice-related crimes (they say the Brownsville church is in the red-light district of Pensacola) and no impact is made and the crime rates stay steady.

Yesterday’s revivals called out for genuine repentance to turn away from sin and live a Christian lifestyle. Todays revivals call out for more ‘mantra worship music”, more ‘manifestations’, and less preaching of the Word.

However, the new difference that has been noticed is that in yesterday’s revivals, there was only one ‘name calling session’ where the term ’sinner’ was used and conviction pointed at the sinner. In today’s revivals, all I see is name calling of disagreers ‘cessationalists’, ‘Chaucers’, ‘accusers of the bretheren’, ‘wilderness Israelites’, ‘witches and warlocks’, and finger pointing by revival leaders to those who disagree.

In fact, the people of yesterday’s revivals did not spend time even addressing the disagreers instead yearning for repentance. Today, many of the revival leaders spend more time in mantra worship and calling out their disagreers than preaching from the Word with a

Don’t judge us, but we’ll judge you with glowing hypocrisy.

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4 Comments »

  • Diane R said:

    Excellent!

    # 7 June 2008 at 12:51 pm
  • admin (author) said:

    One more thing that I need to add (based on watching the Lakeland Revival meetings last night) is that the revivals of yesterday could trace their legitimacy to the Scriptures. Today’s revivals attempt to justify their legitimacy by comparing their manifestations to similar manifestations that appeared in previous revivals.

    This is done via the reasoning that if the previous revival had similar manifestations and the body of Christ deemed them as being ‘of God’, then because the revival of today has the same manifestation, then they must by default be deemed as being ‘of God’.

    # 8 June 2008 at 10:29 am
  • Frequent Commenter Ken said:

    Doesn’t that lead to circular reasoning and self-reference?

    Besides, uber-Pentecostals have this idea that “If it’s stupid and crazy, it Must Be Of God! And the stupider and crazier we get, the Holier We Must Be!”

    My writing partner (a burned-out country preacher) preached his last two Sunday sermons against this sort of thing. One Pentecostal church in his area had started their own Lakeland knockoff (“Rhonda-Khonda-Shonda-Yoing-Yoing-Yoing!”) and the rising fuel & food prices were triggering a general Rapture scare in his area.

    Sermon title and theme? “Don’t Go Stupid On Me!”

    # 13 June 2008 at 12:25 pm
  • admin (author) said:

    One More Trait

    The revivals of yesterday handled their critics with the ‘message’ of the Word. The revivals of today handle their critics by finding out sin issues of the ‘messenger’ to expose them.

    The revivals of today believe that if you can somehow discredit and ‘kill’ the messenger, that automatically discredits and ‘kills’ the message even if the message is true.

    # 14 June 2008 at 11:38 am