4. God’s Sovereignty in Revival
James Buchanan
The Holy Spirit is not limited to any one mode of operation in carrying out His glorious work, and His sovereignty ought ever to be remembered when we are considering a subject of this nature. Yet some, on the one hand, too much overlook this, as we think, when they insist with undue partiality and confidence, on a general and remarkable revival, as the best manifestation of the Spirit’s grace and as, in all cases, a matter of promise to believing prayer. On the other hand, others look to the quiet and gradual success of the gospel ministry to the exclusion – or at least the disparagement – of a more sudden and remarkable work of grace. The former have given too exclusive a preference to what is extraordinary and striking, while the latter have fallen into the opposite error, of too much preferring what is more usual and quiet.
We think it better to admit both methods of conversion and leave the choice to the sovereign wisdom and grace of the Spirit. It is equally possible for Him to convert souls successively or simultaneously; in adopting either
1Taken with editing, from the “Illustrative Cases of Conversion” in The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit. It is based on Acts 2:17,18. In last month’s article, Buchanan defined revival as involving two things: “a revived state of religion among the members of the Church, and the increase of their number by the addition of souls converted to God”.
course, He doubtless has wise ends in view. We have no sympathy with those who overlook the steady progress of the great work of conversion under a stated ministry and make no account of the multitudes who are added, one by one, to the Church of the living God, merely because their conversion has not been attended with the outward manifestations of a great religious revival. Nor can we agree with them in thinking that the Church has any sure warrant to expect the Spirit always to be bestowed in that particular way.
But we have just as little sympathy with those who reject all revivals as unscriptural delusions and profess to look exclusively to the gradual progress of divine truth and the slow advance of individual conversion under a stated ministry. Both methods – the simultaneous and the successive conversion of souls – are equally within the power of the Spirit; and there no doubt exist wise reasons why the first should be chosen in certain cases, while the second is preferred in other cases.
Several important purposes may be promoted by the sudden and simultaneous conversion of many souls and the concurrent revival of Christian congregations which might not be attained at all, or not to the same extent, by the more ordinary and gradual progress of the gospel. A time of general awakening affords, both to believers and unbelievers, a new and very impressive proof of the reality and power of the Spirit’s grace. It strengthens the faith and enlarges the hopes of God’s people; it awakens those nominal professors who are at ease in Zion; and it alarms and arouses the consciences of the irreligious multitude. For when many are suddenly arrested by the power of the Spirit, turned from the error of their ways, made to break off their sins by repentance, and are seen flying to Christ like doves to their windows, the mind of everyone watching must be impressed with a sense of the reality and importance of religion. And even the most ungodly will tremble for a time.
The Lord may use such a time of revival in many ways: to manifest, in an extraordinary way, the continued presence and the active agency of the Holy Spirit; to demonstrate God’s faithfulness in fulfilling the promises of His Word; to show the efficacy of believing prayer; to teach the Church the weakness of human instruments and the true source of all spiritual power; to enliven her faith and hope. God may do so when, through manifold trials and increasing difficulties, she might be ready to faint and be discouraged, as if the task of regenerating the world were left to be accomplished by inadequate resources. He would stir her up to greater efforts, in a spirit of lively faith and humble dependence, and to provide new evidence for succeeding generations that Christ is the exalted Head of the Church, and that all power is still given to Him in heaven and on earth.
These are some of the important practical lessons which times of revival in the Church may teach, lessons which might be deduced from the more ordinary operations of the Spirit under the regular ministry of the Word, but which are more prominently presented and more impressively enforced when, in the exercise of His adorable sovereignty, the Spirit of God comes like “showers which water the earth” or like “floods on the dry ground, instead of descending like “dew upon the grass”. And if these or similar ends may be promoted by such means, who will say that they may not be employed by Him who is “wise in counsel, and excellent in working,” and of whom it is written, “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all”? “All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will.”
That such religious revivals as occurred at the feast of Pentecost were to be expected subsequently, appears from those promises of Scripture which relate to “times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord”, which ensure the continued presence of Christ and His Spirit with the Church in all ages, and which declare that, “when the enemy cometh in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him”. And that such seasons of revival have occurred at intervals, along the whole line of the Church’s history, is a fact which is amply confirmed by historical evidence, and sufficient to obviate any prejudice arising from the idea that such an event is novel or unprecedented.
The history of the collective Church resembles the experience of individual believers in many respects, and chiefly in this: in both there occur seasons of growth and decay, of progress and declension, each bearing a resemblance to the course of nature, with its spring and winter, its seedtime and harvest. Thus, in the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, a reformation took place in the outward state of the Church which had its source in a revival of religion in the hearts of a few chosen men. Then simultaneously in Germany, Switzerland and Britain, the Holy Spirit said, “Let there be light, and there was light”.
J H Merle d’Aubigné wrote, “As in springtime the breath of life is felt from the seashore to the mountain top, so the Spirit of God was now melting the ice of a long winter in every part of Christendom and clothing with verdure and flowers the most secluded valleys and the most steep and barren rocks. Germany did not communicate the light of truth to Switzerland, Switzerland to France, France to England; all these lands received it from God, just as no one region transmits the light to another, but the same orb of
splendour dispenses it direct to the earth. Raised far above men, Christ, the day star from on high, was, at the period of the Reformation, as at the first introduction of the gospel, the divine source whence came the life of the world. One and the same doctrine suddenly established itself in the sixteenth century, at the domestic hearths and in the places of worship, of nations the most distant and dissimilar. It was because the same Spirit was everywhere present, producing the same faith.”