The revival being widely hoped for, and in some cases predicted, did not begin with COVID-19.  It began many years ago while the Almighty was administering His curses on modern man because of his rejection of Him.  The call for revival has been a chorus heard repeatedly throughout the world.  The Coronavirus merely brought the need for some kind of religious movement into sharper and more immediate focus.  As the pandemic spreads and death figures increase, more and more voices are calling out for and predicting a national revival.  Some are predicting a world-wide religious movement in which men and women by the millions will have a “come to Jesus moment.”  I do not doubt this.  We have seen religious fervor break out as thousands of people fill the streets, singing, praying and quoting Scripture.  “Great Revivals” have been part of the American and global landscape for centuries.  Sermons have been preached and witnesses have predicted modern revivals like those of days of old when great “movements of the Spirit” swept across nations around the world.  At various times, smaller, regional revivals have taken place throughout the civilized world resulting in temporary but heightened religious excitement.  Today Bible-waving, globally-recognized church leaders are calling for revival which, they proclaim, is the only real solution to the world’s ever-increasing, ever more deadly problems.

But that is not what God says.  According to His Word, “revival” is the last thing this world needs.  The word “revival” carries two meanings.  The suffix “vival” comes from “viva” meaning “to live.”  The prefix “re” means to return to a former condition.  The word “revival” in the religious sense means to return to a former religious condition.  In church circles it means to return to “that old time religion.”  People, especially the elderly, speak about the days of old when great preachers would shake their pulpits and pound their Bibles while beseeching the unsaved ( “lost”) to “come to the Lord” and the saved but sinning (“backslidden”) to “return to the Lord.” We are told, even by the deadest of Catholic and Protestant people, that those who are hurting need to either turn to the church or return to the church–to their spiritual “roots.”  Many want to return to the time when people filled pews and tears filled eyes, when grown men rushed to the alter where they confessed their sins and vowed to obey the Lord thereafter.   Response was often impressive as the fire of revival would sweep through an area.  Men, women and children came forward and “got saved.”  However, after revival fervor died down the “fire” usually disappeared within a month or so.  Therefore there would be another revival.  Revivals were normally held each spring and each fall.  “Brush arbor revivals” were a religious staple in Southeast Missouri where I grew up.  Men would built coverings made of brush, limbs, etc. under which people sat while listening to a fire-breather “from out of the area” who would try to save the lost and revive the backsliders.  After all was said and done, everything quickly returned to normal, meaning unscriptural preaching and teaching, sinning and repenting.

The foundational problem concerning revival involves two questions: REVIVAL OF WHAT? and  RETURN TO WHAT?  What roots are church people supposed to return to?  The Lord, writing through His “Holy men of old (who) spoke as they were moved upon by the Holy Spirit,” answers those “what” questions, albeit indirectly.

In 2 Chronicles 7:14 we find Christendom’s favorite prayer offered up to the Lord when the fabric of human life begins to unravel due to the most recent curse God has poured out on sinners.  When listening to someone praying “the prayer,” one will notice that the previous verse and the following verse are ignored.  In verse 13 we are told WHO does the unraveling–God Himself.  Verse 15 tells us WHEN the Lord will hear the prayers of those doing the praying.  Let us examine verse 14 where God lays out some hard facts.  Then we will determine how those facts fit in with the effects of the revival so many people are calling for and predicting.

First, let us understand that not everyone whom the Lord calls “My people” are His Very Elect.  Read The Two Faces of the Church.  Key word–Faces.  The Apostle Peter speaks to the fact that only a minutely few of those in God’s church are true saints.  As Peter tells us, only the righteous within the church will be saved, and they just barely.  As he points out, lack of self-judgment based on God’s Word is the reason (1 Pet. 4:17,18).

In verse 14 God accuses His people (then and now) of pride.  Pride is idolatry–the worship of and service to oneself.  Men do this when they judge God’s Word and overrule it.  In Luke 10:17 Jesus said that this was proof that such people despise Him and His Father.  God also points out that such idolaters do not pray to Him in an attitude of humility and obedience.  For this reason He turns the heavens above them to brass which their prayers cannot penetrate.  Next, He accuses church people of being wicked and commands that they turn FROM their wicked ways.  Then, and only then, will He hear their prayers (vs 15).  The key word is “FROM.”  “From” is the word that determines whether revival will be good or bad.  The question now becomes, TURN FROM WHAT TO WHAT?  The church knows neither FROM what she MUST turn nor TO what she MUST turn because Satan pulled his Bait and Switch trick on her almost two thousand years ago and has kept the church masses Biblically ignorant ever since.  Through his false prophets (“hirelings”–Jn. 10:12,13/ “ministers of righteousness”–2 Cor. 13-15) he has maintained total control over “the church.”

Now let us examine exactly what religion Satan is pushing his church to RETURN to and what ROOTS he is wanting them to reembrace.  Let us see exactly what life (viva) he wants his parishioners to embrace (re) again.  To gain first hand information about this subject one need only enter the first church one sees and listen to the words of the hireling standing behind the pulpit.  That is what Satan is proclaiming church people must RETURN TO, embrace and practice.  His is a call to return to obedience to church doctrine, not to God’s Word which, as this ministry has proven through some 1800 postings, is the exact opposite of what is being preached and taught as “the word of the Lord.”  See the Introduction to this website for a list of beliefs and practices that Satan wants church people to RETURN TO.  What he desperately wants to keep them from knowing, believing and obeying are the doctrines and practices which God recorded between the covers of His Holy Bible.  Satan has been supremely successful in his quest to rule those within “the church.”  For proof, study the Bible, visit any church, and listen.  Where God says, “Go right,” Satan says, “Go left.”  The church obeys him, all the while “knowing” that, though she is not obeying God, heaven is her destination because the God Whose Words she rejects has saved and rebirthed her.  Only Satan could concoct such a convoluted mess and sell it to billions of people.

As the nation and the world, including the “Christian world,” staggers through yet another curse from God, let us not get caught up in the “return to the Lord,” “return to your roots,” “return to the church” anthems being put forth by Satan’s spokespersons.  He wants the church and the nations in which she abides to return to the religion that has kept them continually digging themselves out from under God’s curses.  And still, churchman does not learn because his lenient, “it’s all good” god of the church has insulated him from the strict, “Only My way is good” God of the Bible.  Sin, churchman is told, is in because Jesus has already paid the price for it.  “So sin and grin, my church friend, for in the end, you still win.  Pie in the sky, sin till you die, for in the sweet by and by, you’ll still fly.”  I take credit (or blame) for that religious bit of rap which is the unspoken anthem of the Counterfeit Church.

In response to the calls for revival, let us dig ever deeper into God’s pure Truth which is His Word–His “voice” (Jn 17:17).  Let us learn His Truth, believe it and obey it unto the end without wavering (Mat. 10:17).  Then, at the return of Jesus Christ, we will be saved, born again and taken to Jerusalem where we will assist Him in building the Kingdom of God from whence we will rule, first the earth for 1000 years, then the entire universe forever.  Read The Kingdom of God and God’s Very Elect: Future Caretakers of the Universe.  Key words–Kingdom and Caretakers respectively.

Do not allow Satan’s representatives to pull you into or back into “the church” where church where you will hear heathen beliefs proclaimed as “Thus saith the Lord.” If you have not been lured into such citadels of sin, enter not.  If you have come out of such an abyss, do not be like the sow that returned to its mire and the dog that returned to its vomit (2 Pet. 2:22), which will characterize you if you answer Satan’s call to revival.  L.J.