The New Century Awakening 1904 -1912

April 5 2006 -

Wednesday night at our Bible Study we discussed some heavy things. It was amazing as we grappled with the issues of spirituality in the church... and in the community.

We talked about Mindset, Mindspace and Mindshare... powerful things in our life today. I will write more about this later. But what was pointed out -our minds are full of much. One person suggested that perhaps we need to defrag our minds of all that has cluttered there over the years. Good idea - the same as we do for our computer hard drives when it starts to slow down.

As we have been studying Revival over these weeks we have seen again and again that God has arrived on the scene to revive the church. Many of the major revivals happened when the good church attendees became Christian. No kidding - the church attendees didn't know God.

They knew about God. They knew about church - but they didn't know God in a personal way.

As we considered "The New Century Awakening 1905 - 1912" we looked at the mighty move of the Holy Spirit has he touched lives around the world. Instead of being in Britain or the United States - God began to move in far away places. The first noted was in Bermuda and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) at the same time. This happened among Boer prisoners of war. Distance was no problem for God - it was 10,000 miles apart.

Then the next place was Wales - where the Welsh Revival was simply amazing. From 1904 to 1905 God moved powerfully to transform whole towns and cities. Check out these - http://www.church-growth-modelling.org.uk/ - then click on the How Did the Welsh Revival of 1904-5 Start? The results are amazing! Yet something that we noticed - within one generation the people had lost what had happened.

Looking at the chart here we see that the cycle of revival is very clear. As you proceed around the circle in a clockwise manner you can see where God offers Deliverance at the top... then the renewed/revisited church is touched.... and so on.

In Judges 2 we read of Joshua's death and what happens next. An entire generation turn their back on God and walk away. Remember these are the Children of the Children of God.

Judges 2:10-12
10 But finally all that generation died; and the next generation did not worship Jehovah as their God and did not care about the mighty miracles he had done for Israel.11 They did many things that the Lord had expressly forbidden, including the worshiping of heathen gods. 12 They abandoned Jehovah, the God loved and worshiped by their ancestors-- the God who had brought them out of Egypt. Instead, they were worshiping and bowing low before the idols of the neighboring nations. So the anger of the Lord flamed out against all Israel. He left them to the mercy of their enemies, for they had departed from Jehovah and were worshiping Baal and the Ashtaroth idols.(TLB)

As we discussed this we looked at our own church and how true this was for us. There were some very frank and honest exchanges tonight. Very stimulating to say the least.

We looked at India also - at the same time there was powerful move of God's spirit as well. One person that was written about was John Hyde. Check these sites for more info... http://www.watchword.org/smithers/ww32a.html and
finally... http://jonasclark.com/john_hyde.htm

One of the radical things that John Hyde did was to ask God for one soul every day to be saved through his ministry. At the end of the first year there were over 400 Saved, Baptized and had become members of a church. The next year he asked God for 2 per day to be saved. That happened too. Then he began praying for 4 per day... and God worked again.

This revival was great and covered a world with God's great love.

He died early at 47... but he accomplished so much for God. Why... if he was doing God's work did his heart literally move from one side of his chest to the other?

There is a question that looms in my mind about this business of God moving. Why should one person be responsible for something happening? In two cases that we have above - Evan Roberts in Wales and John Hyde in India seem to both be responsible for the move of God that took place in their area of ministry. Where were the rest and what were they doing?

Is it that... there is only one that is ready and can still hear from God? Is it that God makes that same choice over again - "Moses....", "Gideon....", "Paul...." All of these were called of God - personally and specially. In Paul's case he was even fighting against God and had destroyed and was destroying the church people. That is puzzling to me. How about you?

What is God calling you to do?