Where are the ELIJAHS OF GOD? : Azusa : Leonard Ravenhill : A prophetic declaration of the coming reformation
Oh, my God! If in our cultivated unbelief and our theological twilight and our spiritual powerlessness, we have grieved and are continuing to grieve Thy Holy Spirit, then in mercy spew us out of Thy mouth! If Thou cannot do something with us and through us, then please God, do something without us! –Leonard Ravenhill
Reformation is coming. It must come. Where are the Elijah’s who are boldly and without apology calling us to the bloody cross, to the Upper Room and to the nations?
My friend J.D. King from World Revival Church in Kansas City just posted this on Twitter:
To see the advance of the Kingdom, Churches must change. If we keep doing what we have always been doing, we’ll keep getting what we’ve had. –J.D. King
Keep in mind a startling stat that should have had us aggressively changing the way we ‘do church’ decades ago: There are 19,355 cities in the United States, and NONE of them are experiencing revival! ZERO!
Let’s take that stat further- One source shows between 300,000 and 400,000 churches in our nation. How many come to mind that are in revival? Might there be some? Maybe. Probably. But, we’d surely hear about it. As with Azusa the news would spread very quickly:
They shouted three days and three nights. It was Easter season. The people came from everywhere. By the next morning there was no way of getting near the house. As people came in they would fall under God’s power; and the whole city was stirred. They shouted until the foundation of the house gave way, but no one was hurt.
Are we ready for such a move of God? Do we understand the cost? Consider the following happening today. How would we react?
Christians from many traditions were critical, saying the movement was hyper-emotional, misused Scripture and lost focus on Christ by overemphasizing the Holy Spirit.[9] Within a short time ministers were warning their congregations to stay away from the Azusa Street Mission. Some called the police and tried to get the building shut down.[10] Scholarly preachers spoke harshly of the revival meetings; such as R. A. Torrey who declared that this new Pentecostal movement was "emphatically not of God, and founded by a Sodomite." G. Campbell Morgan called it, "the last vomit of Satan." Harry Ironside said it was "disgusting … delusions and insanities." Clarence Larkin and many others were also openly critical. By the time the revival ended, it was thought by some that it was the result of Spiritualism. This was thought due to the fact that many occultists and spiritists attended the meetings and were comfortable in their midst.[15]
That was a report on one of the worlds most powerful revivals in history! Azusa! People were warned to stay away. It was declared to be not of God, disgusting and the vomit of Satan! My God. Are we really ready? I nearly have tears in my eyes as I write this. Please God, bring revival. Please, all of us, allow it.
From “A Call to Reformation to the Church of Colorado Springs”:
God has given the Church of Colorado Springs every resource necessary to initiate a fire of revival that will burn our city, our nation and our planet. We can all agree this fire is not raging- and the current structure in our city can neither initiate nor sustain a move of God of this magnitude. It’s time for a radical and momentous change in the Church of Colorado Springs. It’s time for a reformation.
The above is true not only for Colorado Springs, but for our nation. I wonder if we still think our current structure can hold the extremely holy and weighty arrival of God that is being prepared at this very moment. We must awaken, gather, pray and make our cities ready!
Every Christian will experience the shock of this reformation as it will invade our most personal spaces. Our lifestyles as we know them will soon end. They must. Those who participate with God by running well with others who are advancing aggressively toward revival will still feel the shock, but they will be in agreement with it.
Those who remain in their current position, living life as they have been in recent years, and who don’t deeply prepare and partner with God in the coming cha nge, will be shocked and will radically resist it. They will be extremely at risk of great offense. Control will be lost, what has been worked hard to achieve will be suddenly undone and the systems that have been a benefit to them will be shut down. Anger and maddening is coming as people’s demands are no longer met and God’s demands are introduced. Those who have used the church for their own personal gain instead of a place of offering to God are susceptible. Those who have already surrendered will dance and rejoice as God burns through them.
Matthew 11:6 (ESV) And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Here’s the note from the ESV Study Bible on the above verse:
The beatitude is a mild rebuke; John and his disciples must be open to God’s unfolding plan, even though Jesus’ ministry did not exactly match their messianic expectations.
If the way God moves is contrar
y to our expectations (or demands) we are at risk of offense. Offense is a very serious issue. An issue with eternal risk.
Proverbs 18:19 (NKJV) A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, And contentions are like the bars of a castle.
The answer to the maddening? Night and day prayer and worship. David played the harp, and Saul’s demonization was resolved. In our cities, we must have centers of prayer-fueled revival that will facilitate the weight of the glory of the Living God. The night and day anointed worship that comes from such ministries will ease demonization in their city. The maddening will cease.
Leonard Ravenhill is a hero of the faith. He unapologetically and without fear of loss or fear of man declared the often irritating and potentially offensive messages of God.
The following was pulled from an article titled “Where are the Elijahs of God”:
To the question, "Where is the Lord God of Elijah?" we answer, "Where He has always been – on the throne!"
But where are the Elijahs of God? We know Elijah was "a man of like passions as we are," but alas!” we are not men of like prayer as he was. One praying man stands as a majority with God! Today God is bypassing men – not because they are too ignorant, but because they are too self-sufficient.
Brethren, our abilities are our handicaps, and our talents our stumbling blocks!
Out of obscurity, Elijah came on to the Old Testament stage, a full-grown man. Queen Jezebel, that daughter of hell, had routed the priests of God and replaced them with groves to false deities. Darkness covered the land and gross darkness the people, and they were drinking iniquity like water. Every day the land, fouled with heathen temples and idolatrous rites, saw smoke curling from a thousand cruel altars.
Elijah lived with God. He thought about the nation’s sin like God; he grieved over sin like God; he spoke against sin like God. He was all passion in his prayers and passionate in his denunciation of evil in the land. He had no smooth preaching. Passion fired his preaching, and his words were on the hearts of men as molten metal on their flesh.
Brethren, if we will do God’s work in God’s way, at God’s time, with God’s power, we shall have God’s blessing and the devil’s curses. When God opens the windows of heaven to bless us, the devil will open the doors of hell to blast us. God’s smile means the devil’s frown! Mere preachers may help anybody and hurt nobody; but prophets will stir everybody and madden somebody. The preacher may go with the crowd; the prophet goes against it. A man freed, fired, and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic because he speaks against his nation’s sins; unkind because his tongue is a two-edged sword; unbalanced because the weight of preaching opinion is against him. Preachers make pulpits famous; prophets make prisons famous. The preacher will be heralded; the prophet hounded.
Ah! brother preachers, we love the old saints, missionaries, martyrs, reformers: our Luthers, Bunyans, Wesleys, Asburys, etc. We will write their biographies, reverence their memories, frame their epitaphs, and build their monuments. We will do anything except imitate them. We cherish the last drop of their blood, but watch carefully the first drop of our own!
The man who can get believers to praying would, under God, usher in the greatest revival that the world has ever known.Churchgoers, sermon-sick and teaching-tired, leave the meeting as they entered it – visionless and passionless! Oh God, give this perishing generation ten thousand John the Baptists!
Just as Moses could not mistake the sight of the burning bush, so a nation could not mistake the sight of a burning man! God meets fire with fire. John the Baptist was a new man with a new message.As a man accused of murder hears the dread cry of the judge, "Guilty!" and pales at it, so the crowd heard John’s cry, "Repent!" until it rang down the corridors of their minds, stirred memory, bowed the conscience and brought them terror-stricken to repentance and baptism!
After Pentecost, the onslaught of Peter, fresh from his fiery baptism of the Spirit, shook the crowd until as one man they cried out: "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" Imagine someone telling these sin-stricken men, "Just sign a card! Attend church regularly! Pay your tithes!" No! A thousand times no!"
Oh, my God! If in our cultivated unbelief and our theological twilight and our spiritual powerlessness, we have grieved and are continuing to grieve Thy Holy Spirit, then in mercy spew us out of Thy mouth! If Thou cannot do something with us and through us, then please God, do something without us! Bypass us, and take up a people who have not yet known Thee!"
