How to Have a Revival: By America's Leading Evangelists

The kind of revival we need is a revival that will restore to our people the old-fashioned fear of God in the human heart, and reverence for the name of God, such reverence that you will no longer hear the name of God taken in vain upon the lips of men- from the White House down, on the sidewalks and in the places of business! Oh, my heart trembles when I hear how men in America, supposed to be Christian America, take the name of God in vain! Everywhere you go your blood is made to run cold with the irreverence and the lightness with which men use the name of God. 0 God, we need a revival that will restore reverence and the fear of God to our people! We need a revival that will stop the flood tides of sin, the lawlessness and ungodliness that are literally swamping our nation and the world. We need a revival that will restore the love of chastity and purity and restore a moral conscience to our people! We need a revival that will put an end to the dead formalism in our churches and make them soul-winning stations for God, a revival that will set them on fire with the power of the Holy Spirit, that will break the hearts of our people for a lost world. We need a revival that will restore a sin-consciousness to our people. We need a revival that will cause those who call them-selves Christians to walk again with God, to separate themselves from the world, hold high the banner of righteousness and real Christian living. Oh, how we need to seek again the old paths and walk in them, not merely because they are old, but because they are right. We need a revival that will restore unto our people a sense of discrimination between right and wrong. Our people, both saved and unsaved, have all but lost their power to discriminate between that which is right and that which is wrong. The Word of God says, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isa. 5:20). In other words, it is a sad day in the life of any people when they lose their sense of right and wrong. You know, we are in a day when nobody thinks very much about sin. Sin has lost its exceeding sinfulness in the thinking of nearly everybody. Even the church leaders have lost their sense of sin. O God, how we need to come back to realize the awfulness of sin! Sin that nailed the Son of God to the cross must be exceedingly dark and wretched and black in the sight of Almighty God. If it took a remedy like that to save this old world from sin, I tell you sin is no small thing. We need a revival. We have got to have a revival-or else! Now let me put my message under three simple, homely headings. We need, first of all, a prayed-down revival. Secondly, we need a preached-up revival. And thirdly, we need a powered-in revival."