Herald International
A Spiritual Awakening – The Answer To World Evangelization
With every passing day our world becomes more chaotic than ever before. We are living in a dark hour of civilization. The spiritual darkness deepens daily. We cannot survive on materialism only.
We desperately need a spiritual renewal. Nothing but a genuine awakening can save us. Our prayer should be, “Wilt Thou not revive us again: that Thy people may rejoice in Thee?” (Psa. 85:6).
God’s children must learn afresh the necessity of having a right attitude toward our responsibility to a lost world. We must throw our arms of love around the millions of anguished, aching, affection-starved, sin-benighted people. It is time for us to sweep silence, indolence and laxity aside, and move full speed ahead with the Gospel.
Satan has put a high-priced tag on souls. Let us not be selfish or slow, but pay the full price to rescue the lost millions. Let us make the commission of Christ the center and circumference of all we do. The supreme objective of every Christian should be to carry out the Great Commission. There is something wrong with the program that preaches the Gospel again and again to those who have heard it over and over. It is wrong to confine our Gospel to our little corner of the world.
The Key Is Heaven-Sent Revival
May the Holy Spirit help us to see that this is essentially a spiritual matter. The key to the missionary problem is heaven-sent revival. No amount of worldly wisdom can be a substitute for the power of God. God’s best blessings and full power are for us today. It is going to take a fresh filling of God’s Spirit, a new surrender to the will of God and a broken heart of love and compassion for a lost world to turn the tide.
Too long we have depended upon the wisdom of man, rather than the power of God. We need more than human strategy or statesmanship. We need more than clever schemes and plans. Too long we have substituted human mechanics for divine dynamics. We need less elaborate equipment and more spiritual power. The primary need of the hour is to return to New Testament principles and practices.
The Gospel cannot go farther until we Christians go deeper. World evangelization will only follow world revival. A spiritual awakening is the only satisfactory answer to world evangelization. A deep love for souls, implanted by the Holy Spirit, is the only thing that will drive out our love of ease and self-indulgence. The missionary enterprise is a divine enterprise. It must be executed with divine power.
Revival will sweep away indifference, formality, selfishness and fruitlessness. It will invariably put missions in its proper place and priority. Revival will never come until we reach a place of spiritual desperation.
We preach about and talk about revival but are not willing to pay the price to experience it. We have everything but revival. We need a holy heartburn, a heavenly visitation. We need a spiritual housecleaning and heartwarming. Our world is drunk with the wine of man’s making. We are not to be drunk with wine, but to be filled with the Holy Spirit (Eph. 5:18).
We have too many stiff necks and hard hearts. Christ can take our burdened hearts and turn them into burning, believing and blest hearts. It will take an anointed, spiritually-empowered church to save a dying world. It is time to turn the tide, to reverse the trend, to change the course of our crumbling civilization.
Revival of the spiritual life is the deep root of all. A spiritual awakening is the only answer to the missionary problem. When revival comes, it will sweep missions before it and will cause Christians to give missions its rightful place.
Why should there be a paucity of workers, insufficiency of funds and scantiness of supplies? Is it not our lack of love, lack of vision, lack of power and lack of revival? Revival will sweep away dead, spiritless, heartless religion. It will make us burn with holy emotion and devotion.
Revival will get rid of the cold and carnal formalism of our day and replace it with fruit, power and love. When revival comes, we will not have to be urged to obey the Great Commission which has so long been neglected. Sacrificial giving and going will only follow spiritual living. There is a vital relationship between missionary success abroad and the spiritual life of the church at home. A revived church will lengthen its cords and strengthen its stakes (Isa. 54:2).
In times of revival there will be no place for fruitless trees in the garden of God or idlers in His vineyard. We will not want to rob God of our influence, money or time. We will give Him our fullest love and loyalty.
Revival will not come without fasting and prayer. We must at all cost put God first. Too long we have been pampered, padded and protected. It is time we pay the full price of Pentecost and experience its divine, dynamic and mighty power.
Awake! Arise!
Brothers and sisters, it is time to awake and arise out of generations of neglect. Let us speed the Light, spread the Gospel and share the Truth. We are too accustomed to the soothing lute, rather than the sounding trumpet. May God give us new courage and conviction, new vision and burden and a new desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We must run to the rescue of a lost and perishing world. The zero hour has struck. In Jesus’ name, let us lift up a standard and break through all the defenses of hell.
Time is running out. A world is waiting to be won. God is ready to pour out His power upon His people. Let us match the demands of the hour with a deeper dedication and an all-out commitment to obey the Great Commission.
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The preceeding article was written by Fred D. Jarvis (1914 – 1990), a missionary to China and Japan and a founder of Christian literature ministries. He had a passion for souls and traveled throughout the world to share the Gospel. He was also a dear friend of the ministry of Herald of His Coming as he counseled and worked and prayed with the Moores and helped expand the ministry of Herald International into additional languages. Brother and Sister Moore referred to him as Herald International Editor-in-Chief.
Although he had great ambition for God’s kingdom and exhorted people to be rich toward God, he himself knew much of sacrifice for Christ’s sake. He wanted to “live simply” that others might “simply live.” He was a man of faith and vision. “Impossible” was one word he would cut out of the dictionary, for he believed in the God who said, “All things are possible to him that believeth” (Matt. 9:23).
Please join the Herald staff in giving thanks to the Lord for Brother Jarvis and for all who were instrumental in establishing other language editions of the Herald. Pray as well for the Lord’s protection, provision and fresh anointing to be upon everyone who is currently working with these editions.