As the nation is convulsing in every kind of failure possible to mankind, calls for religious revival are springing up and growing louder.  And in that America is still the international leader in all areas of human life, what happens here normally filters into all other first and second world nations.  Bear this in mind as we proceed in this study.  As America decays spiritually, economically, politically and socially, her people’s need and yearning for God is once again stirring up her religious juices.  If memory serves, I counted 13 times that this happened within the 12 tribes of Israel before God finally had enough and sent His chosen people into military defeat and enslavement.  How many times has the United States followed in her ancestors footsteps?  As she is recovering from one God-sent problem (Covid-19) another is replacing it (invasion).  And just today (5/21/22) I heard about a disease called “monkeypox.”  Only time will tell what, if any effect that curse has on the nation.  Problems are abounding and increasing as our national leadership makes blunder after blunder.  With the onslaught of each problem, man realizes his need for divine intervention.  The religious juices are beginning to flow.

This predictable phenomenon inevitably arises when man finds himself in the midst of a crisis while watching another crisis form on the horizon.  When all his efforts fail, man turns to the church.  When he can find no help there, revival becomes his act of last resort.  To “revive” means to return from the dead.  In the church setting it means to change from inaction to action.  Action revs up people’s internal engines and sends the mind into a higher-than-usual gear (neutral).  The excitement of revival is being generated within the religious establishment’s hundreds of various and sundry units–Catholicism, Protestantism and her hundreds of different units.  Though they are all different, the religious organizations all agree that revival is what is needed in order to “bring the church, and maybe the entire nation, back to God.”  No one would love to see my beloved nation return to the Lord more than me.

However, I am reminded by the Lord that revival for revival’s sake will accomplish nothing except, in some cases, a temporary moment of relief before the next curse arrives.  The key truth is this: REVIVAL (BEING SPIRITUALLY RAISED FROM THE DEAD) MEANS NOTHING UNLESS IT IS FOLLOWED BY A TOTAL CHANGE OF LIFE.  Herein lies the problem with modern day revivals, traditionally known as “Great Awakenings” in which the Lord has manifested His power on behalf of this nation, only to have her stop her climb out of a spiritual abyss at ground level.  Instead of climbing “Jacob’s ladder (staircase)” to where God awaits, temporarily repentant man takes in a breath of clean spiritual air, concludes that he has arrived in God’s presence and returns to the death out of which God had called him.  That death is normal Christian life.

I have recently heard preachers talking about revival.  It appears that excitement is building within the religious establishment.  Internationally, religious men are calling the world to repentance and to “return to the church.”  The Catholic Pope had declared that there can be no peace on earth until all bow down to Mary.  Protestant leaders have their own gods to which people must kneel.  The emphasis is the same in both groups–“the church.”  Man, we are told, must return to “the church.”  Therein lies the problem.  It was “the Catholic/Protestant Church” that caused the Lord’s repeated curses to land on her and the nations in which she is located.  This website was created by God to make that fact known.  I have written over 1200 postings to that effect.  Is anyone believing God’s Words being proclaimed by this instrument of ministry?

Calls for revival are going forth from pulpit and podium.  The passage of Scripture normally used to call a nation to religious arms is 2 Chronicles 7:13,14 where the Almighty declares in no uncertain terms that it is He, Himself who pours out curses on sinning people.  He also makes it clear that there is only one way to stop the continuous flow: “If I shut up heaven so there is no rain, or if I send locusts to devour the crops, or if I send diseases among My people ….”  Note that it is the Lord who afflicts His people with such things as drought, floods, tornadoes hurricanes, freezes, wars, pandemics, invasion, etc.  Then He tells His people how to not only be delivered from such curses, but how to remain free of them: “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and TURN FROM THEIR WICKED WAY, THEN (AND ONLY THEN) WILL I HEAR THEIR PRAYERS … FORGIVE THEIR SINS AND HEAL THEIR LAND (REMOVE HIS CURSE).”  “I WILL HEAL THEIR LAND” is the “headline” everyone quotes.  Now let us do what no one else will dare to do–delve into the “fine print” where He tells us HOW to get their land healed.  In this case, much of the “fine print” is found in the same passage as the “headline.”  Alas, those who quote the four “fine print” commands refuse to obey three of them.  Let us see which one everyone obeys and which three everyone refuses to obey.

Note first and foremost that people must humble themselves.  Pride is what keeps church people from believing.  To humble oneself means that one must admit that he is not only wrong, but that he has been wrong all along.  It is pride that causes people to reject His ministers who tell them His Truth.  This, Jesus said in Luke 10:16, proves that they DESPISE BOTH HIMSELF AND HIS FATHER.  But pity the intrepid soul who dares to tell them the Truth.

Praying is not a problem.  This is the only command churchman will obey.  The problem is that, because church people do not believe the Lord’s Word, He has turned their heaven into iron which their prayers cannot penetrate (Deut. 28:23).  To seek God’s face means to place Him foremost in everything one thinks, says and does.  But that would put Him in charge, meaning that one would have to obey Him, meaning that one would have to obey command #3.  One would have to reverse course–to STOP SINNING, proving that they had indeed “turned from their wicked ways.”  “THEN– AFTER they have swallowed their pride, AFTER they have consecrated their thoughts, words and deeds unto Him, AFTER they have stopped sinning ….  AFTER CHURCH PEOPLE HAVE DONE ALL HE HAS COMMANDED THEM TO DO–THEN AND ONLY THEN WILL FORGIVE THEIR SINS AND SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS.  These “fine print” items are ignored by the church.  Why?  Because they are told every Sun God Day (Sunday) that, as a famous preacher said to his congregation: “You’re saved, that’s been settled.”  Another false prophets told his followers, “Don’t even try to be righteous, you’ll just make yourself sick.  You’re nothing but a society of sinners.”  And the church says, “Amen.”  Again, hear what God is saying: before He will forgive one’s sins one must humble himself, focus on the Lord, pray and stop sinning.  Satan tells the church that one out of four is all that is necessary.  For this reason I believe 1% of church prayers are answered, and I’m being generous.

Religious man never gets past the first command.  Pride stops people dead in their tracks.  Revival is the religious reprobate’s only relief from the weight of continuous sin and its God-sent aftermath.  Periodically, when things get really bad, man hypes himself into being more religious–reading the Bible more, going to church more, smiling more, giving more, etc.  But in the end churchman always returns to the cause of the problem and settles in for another session of business as usual–false Christianity, which Jesus warned about in Matthew 24:4,5.  He then warned about what would happen when, not if, man embraced false religion (so-called Christianity)–vss 6,7.  Over the past 2000 years during He has afflicted rebellious man with all manner of curses.  These, He warns, are merely the “beginning of sorrows” (vs 8).  Man must “turn (around) from his wicked ways” and go the opposite direction.  Revival is nothing more than a temporary season of super-churchiness.  History tells us that when the thrill wears off, man will slip back down into to his Catholic/Protestant abyss which God calls man’s “wicked ways.”

America and the world are today looking down the barrel of a gun at an on-coming bullet.  Revival will not stop it.  Only when men truly and permanently “turn from their wicked ways” and “live in newness of life” will true conversion take place.  Until then he is simply playing church.  And his pastor is smiling.  L.J.