Decline of North Atlantic Caucasian Christians. (Part 3)
In the history of awakenings and revivals the spirit of prayer has been the key factor. Evangelism was successful when it was present on either side of the Atlantic or in the third world during the Modern Missionary Movement or the Golden Age of Evangelism. It cannot be simulated or produced by any method of man. The Great Intercessor in heaven alone is able to send it upon gathered saints in prayer.
Yet even when Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards, or Finney preached during the Great Awakenings, not one of them ever tried to convince a respondent to the Gospel that he or she was now a child of God. They always waited for God’s Spirit to give the assurance through His inner witness that He now indwelled the believer. They went to no ends to be patient and never tried to pre-empt the Spirit’s work.
They were loath to ever convince the new seeker with logic, Bible verses, or pressure that he was already regenerated. They let the seekers agonize in conviction without haste. They knew, as I did in New Guinea nearly 60 years ago, that when God moves in evangelism the Spirit’s work cannot be rushed or duplicated.
By all means quote the glorious promises to press upon the smitten sinners the hope, but the final work of regenerating conversion is alone the peculiar work of the Holy Ghost. To interrupt that work by impatience is to hinder the work of God with false hope.
Today, since the novel quick methods of the preacher as the sole persuader now makes a newborn Christian. These preachers of our day try to do it all themselves, using the Scriptures to make the respondent acknowledge then acquiesce to the overtures of God.
These evangelists are forced to do this themselves because the spirit of prayer is absent in their congregations, having abandoned the necessity of its presence in enabling intercessors to pray together for the lost. The old power house of the early church and that of true evangelism throughout church history has been forsaken.
The Plea of Our Great High Priest and Intercessor by the Prophet Joel.
“Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord…therefore also now, says the Lord, turn you even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning…And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God…who knows if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar…And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.”
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( Joel 1:14; Joel 2: 12-17; Joel 2:28, 32.)
The spirit of prayer produces the unspeakable boldness and travail which shakes the place where they are gathered, and is the very catalyst that precipitates an outpoured awakening of the lost. Not until we open our churches again to free prayer and the free gathering of saints is there any hope of the return by the spirit of prayer. In the meantime we go through the motions, bypass the inner witness of the Spirit that comes through the new birth or radical, real conversion.
http://bonitabiblemission.worthyofpraise.org/the-decline-of-w…istianity-part-3/
