Marks of a Need for Revival
John Bonar (1799–1863), a Scottish minister, wrote this sobering description of a church and culture in need of revival. These descriptions bear a striking resemblance to the western church today. May God stir us up to seek such a work in our time.
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There are times when a revival is more instantly required, and should be more anxiously sought .
If, for instance, in any place or at any time, men who had long heard the gospel, and it may be long enjoyed special privileges, should become not only careless, but confident in their carelessness; not only negligent of the word of God, but contemptuous of it; not only doubters or rejecters, but scoffers of God's holy truth.
If things present and temporal fill every avenue and employ every power of their immortal mind, and this be boasted of as true wisdom.
If every question receives a readier hearing than the question of their own state towards God.
If as often as it is pressed upon them it is adjourned and disposed of as if there was nothing in the world which should cost a man less trouble, or which he might more safely postpone to the future.
If with a retention of more of the forms of religion, Divine truth has lost the hold it once had over men's minds, Divine ordinances have ceased to have even the power which they once had among them, and they walk in the midst of them, yea touch and taste and handle them with the coldness of a second death, more deep than heathenism itself.
If this coldness has stretched its nightshade over the Church herself, and the things which remain are ready to die in her very bosom—if she has become careless of purity of doctrine and relaxed in purity of discipline; if she seeks to accommodate her teaching to the ever-shifting spirit of the age, and her practice to the taste of a world that knows not her Lord.
If these and such like dismal features mark the state of religion in any place or time, then, beyond all question, at that time and in that place there is a peculiar necessity for all who love the Lord and the souls of men to seek a time of revival. Where Satan holds his seat most firmly there is most need for the power of Jehovah to be revealed. Where darkness is most visible, there it is most desirable to penetrate with the light of life. Where men have most grieved the Spirit of God, most quenched his influences, most striven against them, there is it most needful that he should not depart lest all should utterly perish in their own corruption.