CHAPTER FIVE
Revival in a Bone Yard

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones . . . and, behold, there were very many . . . and lo, they were dry . . . And He said unto me . . . Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord . . . So I prophesied as I was commanded . . . and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army’’ (Ezekiel 37).

Does history, sacred or profane, offer a more ridiculous picture than this? Here is hopelessness incarnate. Who ever had such a dumb audience? Preachers deal with possibilities, prophets with impossibilities. Isaiah had seen this nation full of wounds and putrefying sores; but disease had galloped on to death, death to disintegration, and now these disjointed bones spell out despair. Written over the whole situation in large capitals is I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y. Now obviously no faith is required to do the possible; actually only a morsel of this atom-powered stuff is needed to do the impossible, for a piece as large as a mustard seed will do more than we have ever dreamed of. Again and again God asks men to do not what they can, but what they can’t. To prove that no sleight of hand does it but that they link their impotence to His omnipotence, the word impossible is dropped from their vocabularies.

Prophets are lone men: they walk alone, pray alone, and God makes them alone. For them there is no mold; their patent rights are with God, for the principle of divine selection is ‘‘past finding out.’’ But let no man despair; let none of us say, however we may have been or have not been used, that we are too old. Moses was eighty when he took command of an enslaved and broken people. After George Mueller was seventy, he went around the world several times and, without the aid of radio, preached to millions of people.

As for Ezekiel, he called no committee and sent out no prayer letter; he solicited no funds and loathed publicity. But this situation was a matter of Life and Death. (So is evangelism today—therefore, let every preacher beware lest his ‘‘theological-juggling’’ act send his hearer home saying, ‘‘He is a clever fellow!’’ and yet leave him in complete spiritual darkness.) To this mountain of bones, then, Ezekiel was asked to say, ‘‘Be thou removed!’’ So he said and so it was. Here was a curse—had he a cure? Here was death—could he bring life? This was no pretty declaration of doctrine. Dear believers, listen. The world is not waiting for a new definition of the Gospel, but for a new demonstration of the power of the Gospel. In these days of acute political helplessness, moral lawlessness, and spiritual helplessness, where are the men not of doctrine, but of faith? No faith is required to curse the darkness or give staggering statistical evidence that the dikes are down and a tidal wave of hellish impurity has submerged this generation. Doctrine?—we have enough and to spare, while a sick, sad, sin-sodden, sex-soaked world perishes with hunger.

At this grim hour, the world sleeps in the darkness, and the Church sleeps in the light; so Christ is ‘‘wounded in the house of His friends.’’ The limping Church militant is derisively called the Church impotent. Yearly we use mountains of paper and rivers of ink reprinting dead men’s brains, while the living Holy Ghost is seeking for men to trample underfoot their own learning, deflate their inflated ego, and confess that with all their seeing they are blind. Such men, at the price of brokenness and strong crying and tears, seek that they may be anointed with divine eyesalve, bought at the price of honest acknowledgment of poverty of soul. Years ago a minister put this sign outside of his church, ‘‘This church will have either a revival or a funeral!’’ With such despair God is well pleased, though hell is despondent. Madness, you say? Exactly! A sober church never does any good. At this hour we need men drunk with the Holy Ghost. Has God excelled Himself? Were Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Hudson Taylor special editions of ministers? Never! If I read the Book of Acts aright, they were just the norm.

The atom bomb seems to have disturbed everything— except the Church. By overstating the sovereignty of God and blundering on in an atmosphere of stagnant dispensationalism, we safeguard our spiritual bankruptcy. All the while hell fills. With Communism in the world, Modernism in the churches, and Moderatism crippling the fundamentalist groups, will the Lord look in vain for a man to stand in the gap, as Ezekiel did? My preacher brethren, these days we are more fond of travelling than travailing, hence—no births. God send us, and that right early, a prophet out of step with a church which is out of joint.

The hour is too late for another denomination to be born. Right now, God is preparing His Elijahs for the last great earthly offensive against militant godlessness (whether political or wearing a mask of religion). The last great outpouring of revival, Holy Ghost born and operated, will be new wine bursting the skins of dried-up sectarianism. Hallelujah!

Note that Ezekiel was Spirit-led. As a man, he must have shuddered at the appalling sight of mountains of dry human bones. But pivoted on Ezekiel’s faith was the destiny of thousands if not millions—pivoted on faith, mark you, not prayer. Many pray, but few have faith. What holy tremors must have rushed through his soul at this sight! Only heaven and hell were spectators. Surely if Ezekiel were living today, he would have had a press photograph of this! Next, with a love of statistics, he would have counted the bones; when things had begun to move, he certainly would have called others to see him operate (lest men fail to give him the right ranking with national evangelists!). Not so Ezekiel. Listen to this: ‘‘I prophesied as I was commanded’’ (there is the crux of the matter—he was a fool for God); ‘‘O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’’ Madness? Yes, insanity—of virgin purity! He said to the bones, ‘‘Hear!’’ though they had no ears! Ezekiel did as he was told. To save our faces, we of course modify God’s commands, and so lose our faces. But Ezekiel obeyed; and God, as always, operated: ‘‘there was a great noise.’’ Well—that would suit us. But Ezekiel did not mistake commotion for creation, nor action for unction, nor rattle for revival.

With only one breath from His omnipotent lips, God could have raised this heap to life, but no—there were to be many operations. First, ‘‘Bones came together, bone to his bone.’’ (No mountain of bones now.) Such phenomena would almost put us into hysterics; not so Ezekiel. But what good are skeletons? Can these fight the battles of the Lord? At this stage would they bring honor to His Name? Too often today blind guides count ‘‘skeletons’’ who come to the altars— moved certainly, but not yet born. At their few, hot tears we exhort, ‘‘Believe this promise.’’ But as yet they have no life. Even so, flesh must come upon the skeletons; then skin must cover the flesh. And the result is that we have a valley full of—corpses! Any good to God? Not yet. They have eyes but cannot see, hands but cannot fight, feet but cannot walk. So are those who are seeking—until this last thing happens: ‘‘I prophesied again.’’ Ezekiel held on; he resisted doubt. Instead of being discouraged both at the skeletons and at the corpses, he took it that God was with him. Alone with God— he prevailed. ‘‘He prophesied as commanded and the breath came into them and they L-I-V-E-D!’’

But who today can say, ‘‘I prophesied as I was commanded, and they L-i-v-e-d’’? We boys can get crowds. Our slick advertising, artistry, and strutting—our radio, music, build up, and what have you—see to that. Why brethren, we don’t even know whether or not He has commanded us to enter the ministry. Have we a pain in our hearts for perishing men? Does the toll of eighty-five people dying without Christ every minute turn our moisture into drought, take away our garment of praise, or give us the spirit of heaviness? Can we at this moment look up into the face of the living God (for He is looking down on us) and say, ‘‘Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel’’? Can we actually say, ‘‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me’’ anointing me to preach? Do we count in hell? I mean, Would demons ever say, ‘‘Jesus I know, and Pastor I know!’’ Or, as we preach, do they say, ‘‘But who are ye?’’

The political crystal-gazers give us no cheerful predictions, and the world’s senior statesmen are whistling to keep up their courage. John Citizen stands bewildered as a spectator, seeing the Russellites, the Millennial Dawnists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses peddling their poison at his door. Christian Science—which is neither Christian nor yet scientific— jostles with the Roman Catholics and Seventh Day Adventists to claim their right to lead him to heaven. John Citizen has heard of the Gospel with the hearing of the ear, but his eyes have never seen and his soul has never felt the power of a divine visitation. He has every right to ask, ‘‘Where is their God?’’ What shall we answer him?

One of the most painful things I know is to face up to truth. We are well conditioned to doctrine. Most of us know what the average preacher will say next. But a razor is blunt, compared to Spirit-edged truth. Ministers, and others in different parts of the world, all seem to have the same note of mourning, because of the ineffectiveness to a lasting degree of modern evangelism (even though it be fundamental)— flash-bulb evangelism we might call it—brilliant for the moment, but ah! but . . . !

Maybe we have a breath of life—of revival—in the churches, but we are not getting awakenings amongst the godless millions. We do get special trainloads, mainly of believers or church-goers, to our mass evangelistic efforts, but we need a General Booth to get to the up-and-outs, as well as to the down-and-outs.

The old saints used to sing,

‘‘Blest are the men of broken heart,

Who mourn for sin with inward smart.’’

Herein are three very vital issues: Broken Hearts, Mourning, and Sin. First, ‘‘a broken and a contrite heart God will not despise’’; in fact, God only uses broken things. For example, Jesus took the lad’s bread and brake it; then, and only then, could it feed the crowd. The alabaster box was broken; only then could its fragrance escape and fill the house—and the world. Jesus said, ‘‘This is My body which was broken for you.’’ If such was the way the Master went, should not the servant tread it still? For in saving our lives, we not only lose them, but we lose other people’s too.

And next, mourning for sin! Jeremiah cried, ‘‘Oh that my head were waters,’’ while the Psalmist says, ‘‘Rivers run down my eyes continually.’’ Dear brethren, our eyes are dry because our hearts are dry. We live in a day when we can have piety without pity. It is passing strange. When a couple of struggling Salvation Army officers wrote to William Booth telling him they tried every way to get a move and failed, he sent this terse reply, ‘‘Try tears!’’ They did. And they had revival.

Bible schools don’t teach ‘‘tears.’’ They really cannot, of course. This is Spirit-taught; and a preacher, however weighed down with degrees and doctorates, has not gotten far unless he knows soul-bitterness over the sin of this day. A repeated cry of David Livingstone was, ‘‘Lord, when will the wounds of this world’s sin be healed?’’ But are we griefstricken in prayer? Do we soak our pillows, as John Welch did, in our soul travail? The scholarly Andrew Bonar lay on his bed on a Saturday night in Scotland, and as people below tramped the streets from the taverns and shows, he used to call from his tortured heart: ‘‘Oh! they perish, they perish!’’ Alas, brethren, we have not so learned Christ. Many of us know only a slick, tearless, passionless, soulless round of preaching, which passes for the minister’s office these days.

Thirdly, what of sin? ‘‘Fools mock at it,’’ says the Book. (Only fools would do so.) The Schoolmen of the Church have classified ‘‘seven deadly sins.’’ We know, of course, that they are wrong, for all sin is deadly. Those seven sins are the womb out of which seventy times seventy million sins have been born. They are ‘‘the seven heads’’ of one monster, which is devouring this generation at a terrifying rate. We face a pleasure-doped youth, who couldn’t care less about God. Cocksure with a pseudo-intellectualism, and insulated with a cultivated indifference to spiritual things, they also, alas, flaunt the accepted standards of morality.

It would be comic, if it were not tragic, to read that a certain film star (who is closely associated with scanty dress) refused to see the premiere of her own picture because she was upset at some of the indecent strips in it. (There is a demand for this stuff, hence the supply.) Remember that in Greek mythology, Augeas was king of the Epeians and noted for his immense wealth of herds, including twelve white bulls, sacred to Helios. For many years the stable for these bulls remained uncleaned. Then Eurytheus imposed upon Heracles the task of cleaning out all his stalls in one day. This Heracles did by turning loose through them the rivers Alpheus and Peneus.

Even so, to our knees, O Christians! Desist the folly of sprinkling today’s individual and international iniquity with theological rose water! Turn loose against this putrefaction those mighty rivers of weeping, of prayer, and of unctionized preaching until all be cleansed.

There is sin in the camp. There is treason today!

     Is it in me? Is it in me?

There is cause in our ranks for defeat and delay;

     Is it, O Lord, in me?

Something of selfishness, garments or gold,

Something of hindrance in young or in old,

Something why God doth His blessing withhold;

     Is it, O Lord, in me?

     Is it in me? Is it in me?

     Is it, O Lord, in me?