What is a Revival? Part 1
Copied from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore
August 25, 2023
Annual Missouri Homecoming Conference 2023
Galatians 1:13, 14:
13) “For ye [Israelite brethren of the churches in the city of Galatia] have heard of my [Apostle Paul’s] conversation [way of life] in time past in the Jews’ religion [Judaism] how that beyond measure I [Apostle Paul] persecuted the church of God and wasted it:
14) And profited in the Jews’ religion [Judaism] above many my [Apostle Paul] equals in mine [Apostle Paul’s] own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my [Apostle Paul’s] father.”
What is the Jews’ religion? It is Judaism. Saul, before he was converted and changed his name to Paul, was in the Jews’ religion, which led him to persecute the church and blaspheme Almighty God. Paul was suddenly converted when he was on the way to arrest members of the Lord’s church and after a period of over four years became one of the hardest workers and writers for the New Covenant Church. He was a pure-blooded Israelite.
And what did the mixed-racial Jews do who remained in their synagogue of Satan? They continued persecuting the new church and its eternal God; including the man who later became the Apostle Paul.
Is that still true today? Who persecutes the Christians who have the truth of God’s word? Do the people who believe the Talmud and Kabbalah persecute Christians and are they the descendants of the ones who assassinated the Kinsman Redeemer of the Christian/Israelites?
Look at what the Messianic Jews say in their One for Israel website, with an article entitled “Messianic Judaism & Messianic Jews”, written by the founder of Lion & Lamb Ministries, Dr. David R. Reagan.(Remember the couple who talked with me as I was leaving, with my daughter, Bob Evans Restaurant that started this whole series of sermons? This was the website that they said that they agreed with).
The One for Israel website is based in Israeli which was started first as a website for Hebrew Bible College. It soon spread to an outreach of Israelis and Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.
Now, to quote from this Messianic website:
“The very first church was founded in Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago when 3,000 people responded to the first gospel sermon that was preached by Peter (Acts 2:14-41). It was a 100 percent Jewish church. Peter and all of Jesus’ apostles were Jewish. All the people who responded were Jewish. And the person who soon emerged as the leader of the Jerusalem church was the Jewish brother of Jesus named James.”
[If James, the half-brother of Jesus, was Jewish, then Jesus was also Jewish (Jews say that any one born of a Jewish mother is Jewish. James and Jesus were both born of the same mother--Mary).This Messianic website also failed to mention that there were no members of the “lost” ten tribes of Israel present, as they had been scattered, mainly across Europe, for seven centuries in a state of divorcement. They also failed to mention that these “lost” tribes were never called by the name of Jews. It was only a small portion of the three tribes of the house of Judah that were living in Jerusalem and the vicinity.
If that were true, and it is, then who were the people who attempted to assassinate Jesus the Messiah before the Passover? Unknown to most non-thinking Christians is that all the inhabitants of Judea were not of the same race. The problem is that they are all known as Judeans—both Judeans with a good genetic seed and Judeans with an evil genetic seed. Which one of two genetic seed Judeans are the following?
“Chief priests and Pharisees [Jews]…sought to lay hands on Him [Jesus].”
- Matthew 28:11-15: “Now when they [the soldiers guarding the tomb site] were going, behold, some of the watch came in the city, and she wed unto the chief priests [Jews] all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders [Jews],and had taken counsel, they [chief priests and elders (Jews)] gave large money [bribe] unto the soldiers. Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole Him away while we slept [how would they know who stole Him if they were asleep?].And if this come to the governor’s ear, we will persuade him, and secure you [there will be no penalty that you have to suffer because of this, just like what has happened with Hunter Biden; most of the American executives, Congressmen, judges, assistant prosecutors, etc.]. So they [the Roman Soldier guards] took the money, and did as they were taught [by the Jews]; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.”
- Mark11:18:“Scribes and chief priests [Jews]…sought how they might destroy Him [Jesus].”
- Luke 4:28-30:“All they of the synagogue [Jews]…might cast Him [Jesus] down headlong.”
- Luke6:6-11:“Scribes and Pharisees [Jews]…were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus.”
- John 5:15-19:“Jews…persecute Jesus and sought to slay Him [Jesus].”
- John 7:1:“After these things Jesus walked in Galilee [northern portion of Palestine]: for He would not walk in Jewry [southern portion of Palestine], because the Jews sought to kill Him [Jesus].”
- John 8:37: “I [Jesus] know that ye [Pharisees and Jews] are Abraham’s seed, but ye [Pharisees and Jews] seek to kill Me [Jesus], because My word hath no place in you [Pharisees and Jews].”
- John 8:57-59:“Jews…took up stones to cast at Him [Jesus].”
- John 10:26: “But ye [Jews] believe not, because ye [Jews] are not of My sheep [Israel], as I [Jesus] said unto you [Jews].
- John 10:31:“Jews took up stones again to stone Him [Jesus].”
- John 11:47-53:“Chief priests and Pharisees [Jews]…from that day forth they took counsel together for to put Him [Jesus] to death.”
Acts 9:23-25; Acts 23:12-31; Acts 26:21; I Thessalonians 2:14-15 are a few of many other verses that show that the Jews, not the Orientals, not the Negroes, not the Pacific Islanders, not the Hispanics, not the Caucasians, but it was the Jews—the wicked seed Judeans, who attempted to kill Jesus the Messiah, eleven of the original Apostles, the Apostle Paul, and all the members of His church .]
Back to the Messianic website:
“So, the very first believers in Yeshua [Jesus] were all Jews who continued to be observant Jews. What set them apart from other Jews was their conviction that they had found the promised Messiah…
But the attitude was destined to change, and that change began early in the 19th Century with the birth of Dispensational Theology in England under the guiding hand of John Darby.This theology was directly contrary to the Replacement Theology [the church replaced Israel] that characterized the Catholic and Protestant churches. It argued that God had never washed His hands of the Jewish people — that they were, in fact, still His Chosen People.”
[The wicked-seed Judeans (Jews) never were nor will they ever be His Chosen People. Dispensationalism wasn’t started by John Darby early in the 19th century, but by Francisco Ribera in 1590 AD. He was a Spanish Jewish Jesuit Catholic, whose mission was to nullify the Protestant Reformation. This futuristic interpretation was popularized by Cardinal Bellarmine and became widely accepted within the Roman Catholic Church.
John Darby picked-up this Jesuit teaching in the 19th century. He even visited America seven times and taught this false dogma and even held conferences where Cyrus Scofield and D. L. Moody also got on board. Moody established the Northfield Conferences that grew from 350 people to over 10,000. R.A. Torrey and C.I. Scofield preached at the conferences. It cannot be ignored that it was during this time that Dispensationalism became married to Protestant Fundamentalism.
This futuristic view eliminated the doctrine of the two seed lines who had the hatred of each other placed in their hearts by Almighty God. Now, they both, Old Testament Jews and New Testament church members, were said to be equal and were destined to rule in the future Millennial Kingdom together.What a time of fictious disaster that would be—two groups with contradictory opinions ruling together.
A big fallacy of this dispensational doctrine is that there would be a large majority of the Jews who will accept Jesus as their Messiah in the future. But Jesus never converted any of these antichrists in His ministry nor will anyone else; not even any dispensationalists.]
Back to the Messianic website:
“They [the Jews] were under God’s discipline due to their rejection of the Messiah, but a day would come when a great remnant would accept Yeshua [Jesus] as their Messiah. That remnant would then be regathered to their homeland [in 1948] to receive all the blessings promised to Israel. They [the Jewish nation in the middle East] would, in fact, serve as the prime nation of the world during the Lord’s millennial reign. Through them, blessings would flow to all the nations.”
[This paragraph shown above in the One for Israel website says that the present nation of Israeli would serve as the top nation of the world during the Lord’s Millennial reign (the Jews also will reign with members of the church who were raptured seven years before the start of the millennial kingdom). Palestine is not the Ashkenazi’s homeland—Ukraine is.]
Back to the Messianic website:
“The Jewish people were suddenly viewed in a whole new light as precious in the Lord’s sight and candidates for evangelization to prepare the way for a great remnant to accept Jesus as their Messiah.This new viewpoint prompted the establishment of missions designed to reach out to the Jewish people with the Gospel.”
[For the first time in the history of the world, the late 1800s, there were missionary societies started for the purpose of saving Jewish individuals—the descendants of the murderers of our Savior and Kinsman Redeemer. May God have mercy on our souls.]
IS A REVIVAL NEEDED?
A few Christians have begun to call out to God for revival in our churches and a great awakening in our society. But many Christians have never personally experienced a great revival and may wonder what revival entails. And almost all our churches are now false, for they are nothing more than integrated, interracial social clubs.
The word revival (RE – VIVAL) literally means RE-newal or RE-awakening. It is impossible to restore something that never existed. In other words, it is impossible to revive someone that was never alive. Revive comes from the Latin roots “RE”, meaning “again”, and “VIVERE” meaning “to live”. So, the word “REVIVE” means “to live again”.
If someone is revived from a heart attack, it means that the victim was near death, and in some cases their heart was beating irregular or even stopped beating; and then they were saved by a defibrillator or CPR. The person was revived.
Is that what a spiritual revival is? Are the followers of Christ suffering a spiritual heart attack and need help? A spiritual revival refers to a spiritual reawakening from a state of dormancy or stagnation in the life of a believer. It encompasses the resurfacing of a love for God. My question is: Can one love God and ignore His commandments and enemies?
POSSIBLE REVIVALS IN AMERICA?
- The Great Awakening, 1734-1743.
The first possible revival of historic significance in the colonies broke out in Northampton, Massachusetts before the Revolutionary War, where a young Jonathan Edwards was pastor.After a very slow beginning, eventually 30% of the towns were converted (over 100 towns) where it was stressed that there had been a “new birth” experienced in the heart.
John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield (Arminians) were tireless preachers. But many of their revival meetings increased the number of Africa slaves and free blacks who were exposed to and subsequently convertedto their kind of “Christianity”. This revival also inspired the founding of new missionary societies to different parts of the world to convert everyone in the world(universalism). This revival spread to Japan, India and the Far East, the Pacific Islands, Africa and Latin America.
This revival also promoted “new birth”Arminianism and universalism in the church in order to pursue the conversion of non-Israelites (universalism), so I don’t think that this was a valid revival. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Second Great Awakening, 1800-1840.
In 1800, only one in 15 of America’s population of 5,300,000 belonged to an evangelical church. The Second Great Awakening spread through Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee and southern Ohio in camp meetings. The Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon), The Christian Church, The Seventh Day Adventists and the Church of Christ had their beginnings or received a large increase in membership as restoration churches during these revivals that were held in the outside, without a tent or a building.
In 1824, Charles Finney began a career that would eventually convert half-a-million to Christ. But Finney erroneously said that any man could believe in Jesus Christ simply by being convinced through a sound argument—i.e. a man could change himself (Arminianism). Barton Stone, Alexander and Thomas Campbell, William Miller, Francis Asbury were some of the more famous preachers during this time.
But both blacks and women began to participate in these evangelical revivals associated with the Second Great Awakening. From these revivals grew the roots of both the feminist and abolitionist movements.
Since these revivals were integrated and women were some of the preachers, I would say that this was not a true revival. In addition, missionaries took the false gospel that this revival promoted to India, Burma, and other non-Israelite nations. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Businessmen’s Revival of 1857-1858.
In 1857, the North Dutch Church in New York City hired a businessman, Jeremiah Lanphier, to be a lay missionary. Concerned by the anxious faces of businessmen on the streets of New York City, Lanphier decided to open the church at noon so businessmen could pray. It grew slowly but steadily. Eventually he opened the church for daily meetings and all the space was taken. Then other churches began to also open for businessmen’s prayer meetings. Revivals broke out everywhere in 1857, spreading throughout the United States and the world.
But the meetings were devoted to prayer, hymns, and prayer requests only. They were also devoid of denominational influences and other contentious issues and were therefore referred to as “union” prayer meetings. They were also free of preaching and exhortation. This revival spread to the Caribbean islands, especially Jamaica.
Because of this and the complete lack of preaching or teaching, I can’t consider this revival as being a true revival. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Confederate States Army Revival, 1861-1865.
The two nations fought each other in the deadliest war ever fought by either country. Over 620,000 soldiers lay dead. A series of Christian revivals took place among the Confederate States Army in 1863. It is generally regarded as part of the Third Great Awakening. There was a huge difference in the theology of the North and South—Arminianism vs. Calvinism. The churches in the North had gone into great apostasy.
The revival was encouraged by Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and by the middle of 1863 it had spread to all the Confederate armies. By the end of the war, 150,000 confederate soldiers had been converted.
It was the closest to a real revival that I could find anywhere in American history. But nothing was said about who God’s enemies are, but that could be forgiven due to the circumstances of possible imminent death in the battles that took place during the War. It was too bad that the South did know about the enemy of Christianity as they had some antichrists in their army and government who betrayed them.
- The Urban Revivals, 1875-1885.
Dwight L. Moody participated in the Great Revival of 1875 as it swept Chicago. Moody, born on a farm in 1837, in Northfield, Massachusetts, and left and worked for his uncle in a shoe store in 1854. He was raised in the Unitarian Church and when he was grown, he became involved with the YMCA and worked there until the middle of the War of Northern Aggression. He had great success selling shoes in Massachusetts, so he went to Chicago to have more success. While there, he became interested in a Sunday School for uneducated children with less than ideal family situations, and poor economic circumstances. Soon the Sunday School outgrew the converted saloon used as a meeting hall. As the classes grew, associates encouraged Moody to begin his own church. Eventually, on February 28, 1864, the Illinois Street Church (now the Moody Church) opened in its own building with Moody as pastor.
Moody met his wife, Emma Dryer, who was a successful teacher and administrator. She helped Moody in his missionary and church duties. In the fall of 1871, Moody lost much of what he had built in the great Chicago fire.
The next year Moody made his first trip to the United Kingdom. He returned the next year with his family and preached in England and Ireland. Moody was revolutionary in his evangelistic approach. While he was preaching in Ireland, Catholics and Protestants were constantly at odds with each other. As the revival swept into Ireland, Moody won praises of both Catholics and Protestants.
After two years overseas, the Moody family finally returned to the United States and began their ministry once again. They eventually settled in Chicago where their schools and church grew exponentially.
Dispensationalism spread in the United States during the late 19th century through the efforts of evangelists like C. I. Scofield, James Brookes and Dwight L. Moody, the efforts of the Niagara Bible Conference, and the establishment of Bible Institutes. Moody helped shift dispensational theology from Darby’s Calvinistic rigor to a non-Calvinistic view of human freedom in personal salvation.
Moody Bible Institute now boasts a large international student population with over 2000 students from more than 50 countries and six continents, including Brazil, China, Ecuador, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Thailand and South Korea. For these reasons, I do not consider this revival to be valid. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Revivals of 1904-1906.
Word of the Welsh Revival of 1904-1906 spread to Welsh-speaking settlers in Pennsylvania in late 1904 and revival broke out. By 1905, local revivals took place in Brooklyn, Michigan, Denver, Schenectady, Nebraska, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Taylor University, Yale University, and Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. Billy Sunday, who became a key figure about this time, preached to more than 100,000,000 people with an estimated 1,000,000 or more conversions.
The Reverend Billy Sunday learned the craft of evangelizing with an apprenticeship at the Chicago YMCA (of which evangelical Dwight Moody was a co-founder), and by 1896 had become a professional evangelist. For the next 40 years, Sunday preached a Presbyterianism that represented the more American side of that denominational tradition—a broad, somewhat tolerant, not highly doctrinal, moralistic, patriotic, and often optimistic version of evangelical Protestantism.
This revival spread to Korea, China, India and other non-Israelite lands, so I don’t consider this revival to be valid. They were preaching the wrong gospel. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Azusa Street Revival, 1906.
In 1900, William J. Seymour, an African American Holiness pastor, blind in one eye from the effects of smallpox that he had received after he had moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, joined the Church of God Restoration Movement. This group embraced a radical doctrine that included faith healing and a belief in the imminent return of Christ, an event that would be indicated by the integration of races in worship.
Eventually he went to Los Angeles in 1906 to be a candidate for a pastoral job. But after he preached that speaking in tongues was one of the signs of the Holy Spirit, the pastor locked Seymour out of her church. He began prayer meetings in a nearby home and what they called “the second blessing,” fell after many months of concerted prayer.
Eventually, the interracial crowds became so large they acquired a dilapidated Methodist church at 312 Azusa Street where daily meetings continued for three years. The resulting Pentecostal Movement and the later Charismatic Movement, which both exploded worldwide in the 20th century, both trace their roots to this revival.
In 1900, southern churches were completely separated by race. Christianity had divided along the color line. But in Los Angeles, white bishops and black workers, men and women of different races, Asians and Mexicans, white professors and black laundry women gathered at a former AME church building on Azusa Street in downtown Los Angeles. This interracial congregation worshipped under the leadership of the black pastor, William J. Seymour.
For over three years, what historians call the Azusa Street Revival, conducted three services a day, seven days a week. Word of the revival was spread abroad through The Apostolic Faith, a paper that Seymour sent for free to some 50,000 subscribers. So many missionaries spread the word from Azusa that within two years the movement had spread to over fifty nations, including non-Israelite nations, such as China, Korea and India.
I can’t accept this to be a valid revival as it promoted integration in the church, speaking in “tongues” and other races being in the church. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Post-World War II Awakening.
After World War II, in 1947 and 1948, Pentecostals experienced two strands of an awakening, one the Latter Rain Revival and the other the Healing Revival. Large numbers of evangelicals also experienced revival resulting in many conversions. It was at this time that a great generation of Christian leaders emerged. Bill Bright began Campus Crusade for Christ. In 1949, Billy Graham’s distinguished career, which popularized evangelical Christianity for a new generation, exploded on the scene during his Los Angeles crusade sponsored by the Christian Businessmen’s Committee. An estimated 180,000,000 people attended his nearly 400 crusades, and millions more viewed on television. This revival was popularized by Bill Bright and Billy Graham.
This revival spread to nations like Vietnam, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and others during the same period that the Healing revival was enjoying its heyday. For this reason and the increase in ecumenism leads me to say that these revivals were not valid. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Charismatic Renewal and Jesus Movement.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s more revivals of national scope developed. The first strand was the Charismatic Renewal, which spread far beyond Pentecostal and Holiness churches to college campuses, the Catholic Church and mainline denominations. The second strand, the widely publicized Jesus Movement, emphasized turning from drugs, sex and radical politics to taking the Bible at face value and finding Jesus Christ as personal Savior.
The hippie-movement, sponsored by the Communist party, was not a valid revival. The generation that had rejected the establishment continued to do so as Christians. As the movement matured and participants became more involved in churches, most became part of the newer denominations such as the Vineyard Churches and Calvary Chapel and the Jews for Jesus Messianic movement. The movement promoted rock & roll music in the church and inter-racial worship for all—blacks, whites, Jews, Muslims, Asians, Pacific Islanders, etc. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Mid-1990s Revivals.
Despite the widespread secularization of society since the Cultural Revolution that began in the late 1960s, in the mid-1990s a series of revivals happened mostly to Charismatic and Pentecostal groups. In 1994 it was The Toronto Blessing, with uncontrolled laughing, in 1995 ushered in the Melbourne Revival on Florida’s Space Coast, the Modesto Revival, and the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola, Florida, which recorded 100,000 conversions in two years. College Revivals swept across America, starting at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas.
People from about sixty different nations came to worship at Toronto to witness uncontrolled laughter, shaking of limbs, fainting, and groaning. Another false integration revival. A mockery of true Christianity. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
- The Promise Keepers Revival.
This most publicized of the mid-1990s Revivals, began in 1991 when 4,200 men descended on the University of Colorado to be challenged to live up to their faith. In 1993, 50,000 men assembled from every state and 16 nations.
Promise Keepers was founded in 1990 by Bill McCartney, then the head football coach at the University of Colorado. His daughter was pregnant by his star brown-skinned (Samoan) quarterback who choose not to marry her. McCartney started this revival to combat racism. It almost succeeded.
Promise #6 says that: “A Promise Keeper is committed to reaching beyond any racial, denominational, generational and cultural barriers to demonstrate the power of biblical unity.”
Since this revival taught men to go and find a person of another race and hug them to end racism, I consider this revival as invalid. Nothing was said about who God’s enemies are.
SUMMARY
All these revivals were not true biblical revivals. In fact, they were the opposite of a true revival—they led America into more false doctrine. Almost all of them were Arminian and universal which invited other races and had women taking forbidden parts in their services. In addition, they were nothing more than ecumenical movements of all kind of different Christian churches holding opposing and contradictory doctrines. They mentioned nothing about who the enemy of God and His church has been for over 6,000 years.
There might have been a few people who were really motivated by the crusades, tent and stadium meetings, but overall, it proved to be much more disastrous than beneficial. They preached the wrong gospel, employed the wrong methods, and got the wrong results. I would call them Judeo-Christian revivals.
PAST GOOD REVIVALS
- December 16, 1838 in South Africa when 464 Afrikaner farmers made a covenant with their God and defeated 17,000 Zulu warriors who wanted to annihilate them at the Battle of Blood River. Not one Afrikaner died; about 10,000 Zulus did.
- The House of Judah in Jerusalem was spared totally annihilation by the most powerful army in the world by the LORD’s death angel which killed 185,000enemy soldiers in one night.
- The Presbyterian church in Scotland made a National Covenant in 1638 so that the King of England could never be the head of its church—only Jesus Christ could! Thousands were executed.
- On June 17, 1242, twenty-four wagons piled to its top with thousands of volumes of the Talmud and other Jewish books (over 10,000) made their way slowly through Paris near Notre Dame Cathedral. The collection was immeasurable. At a time when every book was written by hand, this represented generations of Jewish learning and work. By the end of the day, an enormous pile of Jewish writings covered the plaza. A crowd gathered to watch the multitude of books set on fire. What a gigantic fire that was!
CONCLUSION
Could you see that happening in America? What if there were a trial of the Talmud in a city in America with Jewish rabbis trying to defend it? Their rabbis have a lot of dangers to Christianity that they must ward off from the Jewish “holy books.” We were warned about this over 500 years ago by Martin Luther.
What does the Talmud say about our Savior and Redeemer? It says that He is now in hell boiling in a cauldron of filthy bodily fluids. The Bible says many things of praise to the Son of God, while the Talmud says that He was an imposter and a bastard, the illegitimate son of a whore [Mary] and a Roman soldier named Pandera.
America, in my opinion, has never had a real revival. It has had a lot of Judeo-Christian revivals, where the emphases have been on how many individuals of every race have been converted. It has never emphasized who their genetic enemy is.
America seems to be afraid to mention that the Jews are the problem. Jews are behind Communism, International banking, starting wars, pushing multiculturalism, promoting homosexuality and pornography, hating Jesus the Christ, hating His followers, hating His church, and they are head of the nation’s central usury banks, in charge of the nation’s money supply, in charge of the two-tier indictment system, etc.
Our increasingly corrupt society, and a succession of blind and/or traitorous leaders, have caused the birthright lands God promised to us, to be overrun by aliens. It is not just by accident that our people, throughout the whole Western World, are on the path to oblivion. The Jews, who Christ called “serpents”, “children of the devil”, “offspring of vipers” is secretly leading the revolution in Israelite lands.
Why did the Apostle Paul change 180 degrees? When he was in the religion of Judaism, he persecuted the New Covenant church. After he became converted, he left Judaism and became a new man with a new life.
Christian-Identity is one Christian church which can consistently teach what the Bible says to His covenant people. It is the only one that can produce a true revival, because it is the only one that will identify its ancient enemy.
To have a true revival there must be:
- Only the real covenant people of God must be a participant, and
- The enemy of Jesus the Christ and His followers must be identified.
To be continued.
Blessed be the LORD God of Israel.