Revival Is Like Judgement Day by J. Edwin Orr

This message titled "Revival is Like Judgment Day" was presented by Dr. J. Edwin Orr on April 21, 1987. I'd be glad if you'd remember me in your prayers, that the Lord will give me strength for the occasion and bless the message that, shall I say, comes hot off the griddle. I just finished jotting these notes down before and after supper.

Now, I take it that you understand that D.L. Moody was a product of a great spiritual awakening. I was talking to Sydney Olstrom, the great Lutheran historian, and I told him I was researching the story of the 1858 revival. He said, "Who started that? Moody?" I said, "No, sir." "You surprise me," he said. "Not Moody?" I said, "Moody didn't start the 1858 Revival; the 1858 Revival started Moody." There's all the difference in the world.

You know that about 1884, Moody went to Cambridge University for a special meeting. Moody was scared of students; he couldn't spell. He spelled Philadelphia with an F. You don't see this in his books because they were all edited. They didn't think that publishing Moody as he wrote or spoke was glorifying to the Lord. So now, in these candid days, we have a different attitude. But when the Cambridge students heard that an illiterate American was coming, they determined to show him his place.

The first night, when the director of St. Mary's led in prayer, the students punctuated with "Hear, hear!" That's not proper in church, all right in Parliament. When Sankey sang, they sang a parody along with him. Moody preached on Daniel in the den of lions. Maybe he felt that way. But you know that the Hebrew word Daniel has three syllables: Daniel. The English word has at least two: Daniel. But Moody pronounced it with one: Danel. Oh, come on now, you've heard of Danel Boone and Danel Webster, haven't you? That was the American way. And every time he mispronounced the name Daniel, that brought the house down. They tramped their feet, they clapped their hands, they cheered, and Moody had to wait for silence. They were having a good time at his expense.

He told Sankey that night, "Sankey, I've got no hankering for this crowd." But he was no coward either. A thousand came to the first meeting to rag him, only 100 to the second meeting. I think it was a Wednesday morning. Mr. Gerald Lander of Trinity College sent in his visiting card, wished to see Mr. Moody. Moody said, "Bring him in." When Moody saw this young man, he recognized him as one of the ringleaders. So he said, "What can I do for you, sir?" He said, "Mr. Moody, I was one of those who thought that you were singularly unequipped to speak to gentlemen. But, sir," he said, "as I observed you on the platform, you were the only gentleman in the meeting." "Sir," he said, "I wish to apologize." Moody held out his hand. He said, "I'll forgive you if you come to the rest of the meetings."

C.H. Lander was in the front seat. Moody waited till Friday to give an invitation. The first man forward was General Lander, who became Bishop of Hong Kong. Out of that meeting came the Cambridge Seven, seven university students who became famous missionaries. They also helped Moody before, while they were in training, in his great campaigns. One of them was W.W. Cassels, who became Bishop of Sichuan.

Now, I want to stress this point. You heard of the Shandong Revival. Miss Olive was there, but that revival was felt in every province of China. And when it reached Sichuan, W.W. Cassels summed it up in five words, surprise, five words. He said, "It is like Judgment Day." Now, Miss Olive is right here, and she won't mind my referring to her. She remembers what she saw in China when she was a young missionary. It wasn't hooping and hollering; it was like Judgment Day, with weeping and confessing.

A lot of people think that revival is a tremendous time of excitement and a great roll call of converts and so forth. It begins like Judgment Day, with the Holy Spirit exposing all the sins of the church. Now, this is something we don't realize: that first stage of revival, after the prayer, is conviction of sin. Judgment precedes blessing.

Now, I've told you stories of the Welsh Revival. 100,000 people outside the churches converted and joined the churches in five months. Five years later, someone wrote a book to debunk the movement and complained that after five years, only 75% still stood. He said many were lost to mission halls and to the Pentecostals. Some of them couldn't stand the dryness; some people wanted to go back.

Now, have you ever heard of Campbell Morgan, the great Bible teacher? I met him personally. What did he say about the Welsh Revival? He said it was marked by confession, some very costly confessions. I was preaching in Riga, which is now the capital of Soviet Latvia, in 1935. I was speaking in Agenskalns in the Baptist Church. The pastor was my interpreter. While I was speaking, a woman suddenly cried out in the middle of the audience and collapsed. Her husband and several deacons and the pastor helped carry her out. I couldn't continue the meeting; I didn't know any Latvian. The pastor came back. He says, "I don't understand. She's one of the pillars of the church. She's our superintendent of Sunday school." The next day, he went to visit her. I was thinking, well, what did I say? I mean, why did that happen like that? I had never, to that moment, up to that time, seen prostration.

By the way, people have asked me if prostration is the same as being slain in the spirit today. I have to say, not quite. In Kentucky and Tennessee and over here in Spartanburg, South Carolina, people were slain in the spirit. Those who were slain were scoffers, wicked people under conviction of sin who fell on their faces before God. Sometimes they lay helpless for hours. It turned out that this woman and her husband had never been married. Oh, it was quite a story.

And I think back over my own experience. You know that about 1949, there was a wave of revival in colleges throughout the United States. It began in Bethel College, the Swedish Baptist, the General Conference, as they're called. What happened in Bethel College? I remember one night in Minneapolis, four of us: Billy Graham, at that time president of Northwestern Schools, Bill Dunlap of Presbyterian, Jack Frank of Forest Home, and I, four of us young men praying that God would send a moving of revival to the students of the Twin Cities. Billy went off for a campaign somewhere, but in Bethel College, on the Thursday in chapel, at the end of the message, a student got up and, ignoring me, spoke directly to the president, Dr. Wingblade. He said, "Dr. Wingblade, can I have a week off to go back to Iowa? I stole $1,000, and I can't live with this anymore." That was judgment, and every great revival is marked by judgment.

Have you ever thought of the verse that says if we were to judge ourselves, we should not be judged? If we will engage in self-judgment, we're escaping judgment, either if God should deal with us in this life or at the judgment seat of Christ. We don't hear enough about the judgment seat of Christ these days. Now, you have heard the verse, "Judgment must first begin in the house of the Lord."

I wonder if you've ever heard of a Sunday school teacher called Henrietta Mears. She and I started a group, a sort of Bible study prayer group for movie stars in Hollywood. I was their first chaplain. The second chaplain was Richard Halverson, who's now chaplain of the United States Senate. I remember on one occasion, those new converts raised this question. They said, "The Bible says judge not; we should never judge anybody." I said, "You misread the scripture. It says, 'Judge not, that you be not judged, for the measure you give will be the measure you'll get.' It's not a prohibition of judgment; it's a denunciation of hypocrisy, two-facedness. Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye and don't notice the beam in your own? In other words, there's no prohibition of judgment there. It means don't you judge unless you're prepared to be judged." That's the full sense of that word.

I think I can give you another passage of scripture that would help illuminate this: 1 Corinthians 5:9-13. I'm going to read it to you. You can read it in any version; you get the same message. By the way, we call this the first epistle to the Corinthians. Actually, it's the second, and the second is the third because he says in verse 9, "I wrote to you in my letter." That's his previous letter; we don't have a copy of it. "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral men, not at all meaning the immoral of this world or the greedy and robbers and idolaters, since then you'd need to go out of this world." In other words, before you buy a personal computer from somebody at the store, you don't ask him if he's living right with his wife. You can patronize Christians; sometimes it's wise so to do. But the Apostle Paul makes it quite clear we're not to separate ourselves from the world. We don't identify with them; we're Christians, they're not. He said, "But rather I wrote you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother if he's guilty of immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, or drunkard or robber. Don't even eat with him." In other words, you have to judge those who are defiant of God but call themselves Christians. Don't associate with them, and he ends up by saying, "Drive from among you."

Now, we'll come back to the detail of that particular man, but you see the difference between an association with the world and association with a brother. Now, you don't make hasty judgments; you have to listen to all the evidence. But if someone refuses to put things right, you have every right to challenge him, and then you simply withdraw association.

Now, in the old Mennonites among the Anabaptists, you've heard of the Anabaptists. George Peters, a Mennonite professor in Germany, spoke at our Oxford conference, and he said the Southern Baptists trace their descent to John the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan, but we Mennonites are better than that. We trace our descent to St. Anna, the mother of Mary. That's why we're called Anabaptists. I've got to say that the Mennonites practice shunning. In other words, if you won't behave, we will—I think the Amish still do this—we won't have anything to do with you. They don't shun the world; they shun a defiant believer.

Now, I was once having a conversation with Oswald Smith. I was his associate pastor in Toronto, but a long time after, he came to see me in Los Angeles. I said to Oswald, "I have a theory that if the children of God tolerate open sin in the life of a servant of God, the Lord commonly allows that person to be overtaken in some other fault that drives him out of the ministry." Oswald said, "How would you illustrate?" Now, I'll give you an illustration from the 1950s. I want to avoid any discussion of issues today in charity. What I said, there was a very popular young evangelist, as good-looking as Billy Graham, as good a preacher as Billy Graham, popular all over the states, but so greedy for money. Then my friend Armin Gesswein, a very mild-mannered man, rebuked him. He said, "Everywhere I follow you," he said, "I found there's a bad smell about your financial practices." And the man laughed in his face. He said, "Armin, there are enough big cities in America for me to visit only once." He was prepared to loot the churches and never to go back again. And I found this to be true, that if the children of God tolerate open sin in the life of a servant of God, the Lord allows them to be driven out of the ministry some other way.

Now, this may make you pause and reflect. Why would the children of God tolerate open sin in the life of a servant of God? I'll tell you why: because he draws a crowd. That's why. Sometimes sponsors will put up with anything, anything that's not an open scandal. They may know what's gone wrong with the man, but if it's not public, they'll put up with it because he draws a crowd. And why do they want to draw a crowd? Well, they may say they have spiritual reasons, but often it's material reasons, often.

Now, let's take an example of this from the passage in First Corinthians that I read to you. Here we have, in the fifth chapter, the first verse: "It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that's not found even among pagans." It was a kind of incest. I was reading the other day that Mary Tipper Gore, wife of Senator Gore, in her crusade against viciousness in the media, pointed out that Elvis Presley used to sing a song called "Little Sister," which sort of celebrated the idea that sometimes when a fellow's dating a girl, he can fall in love with her little sister. That could be still legitimate; he could even end up marrying the little girl and not her older sister. But Mary Gore pointed out that today they're singing about incest between brother and sister. So far has the world fallen. What a descent into shame.

Now, this case in Corinth—Corinth was a very wicked sort of place—but in this passage, it says there is immorality among you, even the sort that you don't find existing among pagans, that a man's found living with his father's wife. Now, there was only one in the congregation guilty of incest, but the Apostle Paul goes on scolding. He said, "You're so arrogant. Don't you think you ought to mourn?" In other words, you're guilty of not being ashamed that this situation should happen among Christians. And he says, "Let him who's done this be removed from among you," or as you find at the end of the chapter, "Drive out the wicked person from among you." Now, that was excommunication on the grounds of flagrant immorality. Our churches used to practice discipline, but there's very little of it today. Generally, things are covered up or hushed up, but judgment is called for in this case.

Now, in case you think this sounds harsh, may I tell you there's a sequel? And if you turn with me to the second, or as I think it should be called, the third epistle to the Corinthians, the first one being missing, 2 Corinthians 2:5-11. Now, the Apostle raises up the subject of his previous letter. "But if anyone has caused pain, he's caused it not to me, but in some measure—not to put it too severely—to you all." In other words, you've all been hurt by this. "For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough." In other words, they clearly had obeyed the Apostle and had excommunicated this brother. But now he's saying, don't overdo it.

I've always been guided by a verse of scripture when I find a brother in trouble: "If your brother be overtaken in a fault, let those that are spiritual restore such a one." But repentance is essential. And remember, I think I'm getting to be well known in all sorts of circles besides Southern Baptist for preaching a sermon on repentance. The word repent means to change your attitude. It doesn't mean to feel sorry. The word does not mean to feel sorry; it means to change your attitude. That's the meaning of the word repent.

So he's saying the man has repented. Apparently, he got back a letter updating him with all the information about Corinth, and he says, "This punishment by the majority is quite enough." He says, "So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him so that he may not be overwhelmed by excess of sorrow." Sometimes when a person is disciplined by the church or shunned by people who have rebuked him, he's brought to not only repentance but deep depression. He begins to hate himself. So Paul says in verse 8, "So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you're obedient in everything." Now listen, "Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, to keep Satan from gaining the advantage over us, for we're not ignorant of his designs." Satan so cleverly tries to pull a fast one if he can see any opportunity in the weakness of a brother or some peccadillo or some major sin. He'll take advantage of it.

So you see, there was a sequel to excommunication. He repented, so he was forgiven, and not only forgiven, comfort him. That means given strength. Now help him, restore him. I remember a friend of mine years ago who was very indiscreet in some of his relationships. I wrote to him quite frankly, and I said, "If you're repentant, I'll be glad to help you." And I helped him set up a mission board, and for years after that, he did a good work for God.

Now, from this passage, you find what the Apostle Paul is talking about. He says you have to judge those who are immoral or covetous. You know what the word covetous means? It means greedy or cheating, idolatrous, those who make an idol out of something, reviling or drunken. That's like addicted. The scripture is very clear about this.

So I'm going to switch to another side, not merely the question of sexual immorality but to that of covetousness. I'll speak as frankly as I can. We're cursed today with what I call the prosperity culture. You know how they say, "Abraham is the type. God wants me to be as wealthy as Abraham." Well, I thought to myself, you know, Abraham had at least 600 people working for him. In fact, he had an army, and he went and defeated several other kings in that area of the world. He had quite a lot of subordinates. They couldn't all be Abraham. And I don't think God calls all of us to be Abrahams. To say that Abraham is the type makes nonsense of the Gospel