Three Streams

THE CROSS AND REVIVAL by Jessie Penn Lewis

If we look back at the messages of the preceding meetings we can see why Revival comes into view at this juncture. In the Revival in Wales the outstanding theme was the message of Calvary. It is only when we see the Cross as the centre, and the basis of all the working of the Holy Spirit that Revival becomes possible. Let us now seek to understand some of the laws and perils of Revival even when we know something of the various aspects of the Cross. In dealing with this subject I will embody matter from a manuscript which was intended to form part of the last chapter of ‘War on the Saints’, and for some cause it was omitted. It has its origin in lessons learned in the Revival in Wales.

First let us define briefly that Revival, in its essence, is the outflow of the Spirit of God through the human spirit. This is in harmony with what Fausset, the well-known evangelical commentator, says about the human spirit. He writes, “The spirit of man is the receptacle of the Holy Spirit, and is the organ in which He dwells, and through which He works”. You will see, by this simple definition, how vitally all the truths of the Cross, and the laws of the spiritual life, which we have been considering, affect the question of ‘Revival’.

Now let us ask, What are the primary conditions for Revival, apart from prayer? First, the negative: the removal of all obstacles to the outflow of the Spirit. This brings in the work of the Cross applied by the Spirit of God.

Second, the positive: understanding how to co-operate with the Holy Spirit of God. This brings in the life-side of the Cross, the inflow of the Holy Spirit and the believer learning experimentally how to walk in the spirit.

Now as to some of the main ‘obstacles’. (i) In the spirit an unbending, unforgiving, grasping spirit. (2) In the life ignorance of what is right and what is wrong, so that things which hinder the Holy Spirit are tolerated. (3) In the service of God-unwillingness to speak of the things of God, and to testify.

For dealing with the obstacles is needed- (i) The cleansing of the spirit (2 Corinthians 7: 1), by the putting away of unyieldedness; the forgiving of those who have trespassed against us, the surrender of a ‘grasping’ spirit by giving up all to God. (2) The seeking of light from God upon ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in the life, and the putting things right as the light is given. (3) The surrender to God for obedience to the monitions of the Holy Spirit in the way of speech and testimony. Here comes in the Blood to cleanse all that the light reveals, and the Cross in its delivering power, setting free the believer by his identification with Christ in His death, applied by the Holy Spirit.

Now as to the perils of Revival: These again primarily may be briefly defined as, (i) the danger of acting or living by ‘feeling’, or the sensuous life, instead of the spirit-life; and (2) the peril arising from the spirits of evil counterfeiting the workings of the Holy Spirit. Alongside of the danger of becoming dominated by ‘feelings’ and emotions, the perils of Revival come mainly from the invisible world of spirits. The Counterfeiter is watching to counterfeit, and to insert his workings in the place of God’s workings. The fact became clear again and again in Wales, during the height of the 1905 Revival, that it was possible for God to begin with a pure work of the Holy Spirit, and for the counterfeiting spirits to insert a ‘counterfeit’ which the soul ignorantly accepted. In this way the same manifestations appeared, but the source was changed without it being detected. The changing of the source of the supernatural manifestations without the believer’s cognizance is therefore the main peril. A very small inserted ’stream’, or ‘tincture’ from the enemy, causes mixture which may not be discerned at first, but which sooner or later produces fruit in confusion and trouble.

In view of this danger-the principle danger-if we pray for Revival, we should pray God to prepare intelligent and spiritually equipped children of God to guide and help His people. Believers who know the ways of God, and who know the ways of the enemy, and are really endued by God with the power of discerning spirits, able to tell at once when the source of spiritual phenomena is changed. Such souls can discern when the spirit working in a meeting is changed from pure to counterfeit, and know how to deal with the spurious spirit, and how to bring the gathering back into the pure stream of God again. This occurred in the Revival in Wales many times, and those who watched the leadership of the one who was thus ‘discerning’ the spirits at work, marvelled.

I recollect once being in a meeting in England where the atmosphere was as pure as crystal. The spirit sense, when it knows God, can sense atmosphere, and where God is in great power there is a sense of the ‘terrible crystal’ Ezekiel spoke about. It then seems as if the atmosphere is so transparent that everything in it out of harmony with God seems repulsive and painful. The atmosphere of the meeting referred to was like this, when one who was present rose to pray, and immediately it seemed as if a muddy stream was poured into the meeting, filling the atmosphere with a sense of ‘thickness’, and the pure and beautiful clearly crystal sense of the Holy Presence of God was gone. That soul had prayed from the sensuous soulish life, and not from the spirit.

Those who have this acute and sensitive consciousness of what is ’spirit’ and what is ’soul’-or sensuous-can detect it in themselves by the sound of the voice, which becomes ‘metallic’ or harsh, when the believer draws upon his ‘natural’ resources, but when he speaks from the spirit there is an exquisite softness, and purity in the voice, which makes the tone beautiful. Ah yes, everything that comes from the Spirit of God is beautiful. There is nothing repulsive-nothing that you would shrink away from-so beware of forcing yourself to accept, as of God, what your spirit shrinks from as repulsive. So many to-day are being drawn into counterfeits because they do not remember this. Let us have a right conception of God’s presence. Where He is in power you get a foretaste of heaven, and this heavenly presence is felt by your spirit, not your soul, i.e., your physical consciousness. “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”

Alas! that so many to-day should be deceived as to their true spiritual state, by the effort made in many churches to appeal to the sensuous, and the natural love of the beautiful, through beautiful music, and attractive singing, which will count for nothing in eternity. If it is true that “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit”, of what avail is all the sensuous worship caused through the soothing, or satiating of soul-desires, with no real knowledge of God or His gospel. Let us see to it ourselves that our worship of God is in spirit, and in truth.

As we have seen, the chief peril of Revival is, that when God begins to work in abnormal power, the counterfeiter has his opportunity. It is then that, what a writer in America calls ‘the high order spirits’, the religious spirits, that ‘hover upon the Alps of the spiritual life’, hover about those who are entering realms of the spirit they have never known before. Not the gross and repulsive spirits, but refined and beautiful spirits, are the ones most to be feared. When Paul said that Satan had transformed himself into an ‘angel of light’, he plainly meant that Satan can appear to be light when he himself is all darkness. He can give ‘flashes of light’ and ‘floods of light’, and fill a room with light. Can you tell when they are from the enemy?

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