Australian Revival Prayer Network,14.08.2010
Introduction
Despite some impressions to the contrary, there have been many revivals in Australia. Christian historian Stuart Piggin, tabulates 71 local revivals in the nineteenth century and records many episodes of revival up to our own time[1]. These moves of God raised the moral standards of whole communities e.g. debts were paid, alcohol consumption dropped, illegitimacy and crime decreased.
The Methodist evangelist, Alan Walker, who still burned with a passion for Christ when I heard him in his 80’s, led the Mission to the Nation in the 1950’s, this was launched Melbourne with an overflow crowd of more than 6,000 and simultaneously broadcast on 23 radio stations. When the Mission came to Sydney, 25, 000 joined in a march of witness. It is estimated that Walker, reached a million people at a time when the total population was about 10 million. It is not surprising then that when Billy Graham visited in 1959 all the churches without exception worked together, marshalled intercessors and record crowds in major venues e.g. MCG 144,00 where people attended one meeting, saw thousands come to Christ.
A Personal Journey
My journey with respect to revival begins when I was converted in 1972 while at university. These were the times of the Jesus Movement. All over the Western world young people were leaving behind sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, and turning passionately to Jesus. I saw most of my friends and family come to Christ. When the first time I first walked into the Pentecostal Church that was to become my spiritual home the presence of God was a tangible reality (at that time many people thought of Pentecostals as some sort of a dangerous cult). People were being healed, demons were coming out of folk, missionaries were being released. Thousands of Christians in the more traditional churches were being revitalised by an experience of the Holy Spirit in what was called the Charismatic Movement. In my opinion, all these movements proved to be a disappointment.
Jumping forward to 1988, as our family travelled from Brisbane to Perth by car, talk of revival seemed everywhere. Many Christians felt that as we celebrated 200 years of national identity that year God was going to do something special. Certainly, when I arrived in Perth witnessed explosive growth amongst the young people I was preaching to, but this work never matured.
In the 90’s some folk thought the Toronto Blessing, then Rodney Howard Browne, were heralds of revival, but the overall state of the church, if anything, became less rather than more holy. In those years we were thrilled to hear of revival amongst the indigenous people in the Pilbara region of W.A., especially when the pubs went out of business for lack of customers. I asked an aboriginal friend about this the other day, he remarked, all those blokes involved are either now dead or in prison!
I have been involved in many movements of prayer that we thought could be a “seed bed” for revival. In the last dozen years or so 2-300 pastors attended Prayer Summits, I was the Prayer Coordinator for the Franklin Graham Festival in 1998 which broke all the attendance records at the Burswood Dome. Many of us have believed God for around a decade for a dedicated 24 hour a day 7 day a week Prayer House; it now looks like this will soon become a reality. There have been many other ventures to promote unity and prayer in Western Australia, e.g. Church Together.
What Has Gone Wrong?
Something has gone missing in the Spirit over the years. I encountered my friend the evangelist Russell Sage the other day, and we shared experiences of past days when we thought the presence of God was actually going to overwhelm and kill us. Other friends remark that they don’t see people healed with the frequency like they used to.
I believe that we are in a cycle that happens to the people of God from the book of Judges (e.g. chs. 2, 3, 4, 6, 10) to the present day. When we see ourselves as economically prosperous and politically powerful we forget the Lord and turn to idols, only when our enemies overtake us do we cry out to God.
When PM John Howard opened the Hillsong building in 2002 it was obvious that Pentecostal Christianity had become a significant factor in Australian politics. Those who have carried past revivals, Evangelicals and Pentecostals, have entered into a lifestyle at peace with the easygoing laid back style of mainstream Aussie culture. When our professing atheist Prime Minister Julia Gillard said on national radio and TV recently, “we are all hoping, wishing, praying for the recovery of Kevin Rudd from surgery” we were all reminded our votes were important. There are too many idols in the church, of money, sex, power, and too much prayerlessness, for anyone to expect revival to break forth in the major institutional denominations.
On the other hand I see the Lord stirring up young people in prayer and fasting and willingness to sacrifice their lives to Christ, raising a generation that will move past the temptations of physical prosperity and a comfortable lifestyle.
What then are the prospects of revival? This is what I believe the Lord is saying.
Prospects for Revival
The spiritual movements of a generation ago, which I remember so vividly, were powerful moves of God, but their foundations made sustainable revival impossible. They all forget that Jesus came to die and the Spirit was outpoured not to bring us to themselves, but back to the Father.
I am sensing that the spiritual breakthrough we are seeking will come in a specific way. In the last few decades God has sovereignly brought all the families of the earth (Gen 12:3) to the shores of this nation in order to draw us together under his one Fatherhood (Eph 3:14) in united prayer across all perceived differences of colour and culture. The spiritual strongholds that have always held this continent back from its divine destiny will be broken when we see indigenous people, Europeans, Asians, Africans…coming together as one in Christ and radiating the buoyant family spiritual joy of delighting in the one “Abba Father!” (Rom 8:16; Gal 4:6). It is in this atmosphere that the infinite passion of the Lord to have many more Australians as his children will break forth upon this land. Only when the heart of the Father is revealed as our “Abba!”, a word which does not mean “Daddy”, but the relationship between mature children and their father, will all the nations cry out together “we were born in the city of God” (Ps 87). This is where the strength of a new joy will be found to witness to an unbelieving nation that there is a God in heaven who has loved them to the point of death.