The relationship between prayer and revival is not routinely recognized by all students of past revivals. Some see prayer only as a burden God places on the hearts of His people when He is about to send revival; His people must be prepared for the coming of the sovereignly sent revival. According to this theological perspective, God sends revival when He chooses, and no amount of prayer can change the divine intention preordained in heaven.
Pentecostals, however, see a direct relationship between prayer, revival, and bringing the lost to Christ. No one, of course, can change God’s ultimate will by prayer, by bargaining, or by any other means. Yet God has clearly indicated His desire that His children should pray (Prov. 15:8), asking for those things they need and even desire (Matt. 6:7–13; Mark 11:24). When these desires are in line with His will, we can confidently expect an answer. A loving Heavenly Father would not encourage His children to pray and bring their petitions to Him only to have them ignored and continually denied.
Though God’s ultimate will does not change, and cannot be changed by any human being, God has chosen to accomplish that will through the prayers of His children. So one of the primary purposes of prayer is to bring human desires into conformity with divine intention and will. To know God is to know His will. Evangelism, or bringing disobedient and rebellious people back to obedient submission to their Maker, is at the center of God’s ultimate will: God is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). When winning the lost moves beyond intellectual affirmation to an all-consuming passion and into prayer, echoing the very heartbeat of God, the Spirit will begin to move in revival power. We need those “times of refreshing” that God has promised to people who repent and turn to Him (Acts 3:19).
Even though the Old and New Testaments both contain accounts of supernatural intervention that can be called revivals, some oppose such happenings today, claiming that they play upon emotions and lead to spiritual instability and irrational behavior.1 These same critics also object to the emphasis on crisis experiences, frequently stressed in revivalism. Yet the results of biblical revivals and the dramatic moving of the Spirit in response to intercessory prayer throughout the intervening centuries are evidence of a divine pattern for building and maintaining the vitality of Christ’s Church. Church history records increased growth and the rebirth of a new commitment following special periods of religious revival. Moral and social transformation have accompanied the major revivals, in Bible times as well as in subsequent periods.
In its strict definition, “revival” denotes a restoration of spiritual fervor and vitality after a period of decline. It is God’s will that His people love Him with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength (see Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). Any falling away from that wholehearted commitment calls for revival. God’s people must ever be encouraged to make that love and commitment fuller and stronger. Then, with the church revived, there will be the winning of the lost to Christ.2 The “dead in … transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1) need a quickening of new life, a resurrection. When we pray for a revival of believers that leads to the salvation of sinners, we know we are praying in God’s will.
Is there a sense of a burden lying upon men’s hearts which will not give them rest, but which makes them agonize in prayer? If not, then the night is not far spent, a deeper darkness still awaits us. For what use would a revival be if we are not prepared for it? It would pass over us without doing its work.3
There is great advance of the Kingdom through revival. Through revival spiritual life is renewed, revitalized. In the spiritual experience of a congregation or of individuals within it, there is an ebb and flow of commitment and intensity. As prayer times become less frequent and the desire to commune intimately with the Lord wanes, spiritual vitality cools and must be revived. Would to God there were no such thing as lukewarmness in the believer’s life! Consequently, each believer and each congregation must be challenged constantly to seek for revival and a greater yieldedness to the Holy Spirit. Providentially, prayer is that key to personal and corporate revival.
Revivals are seldom preceded by an awakening of the entire Church or local congregation to a sense of need. Instead, the burden and the agony of intercession fall upon the hearts of the few devout souls who, feeling the need, begin to entreat God in prayer for revival. As the burden is faithfully presented to God in prayer, the sense of spiritual need and concern for a careless and apathetic church becomes an agonized cry, “How long, O God? How long?” When the prayer becomes persistent and intense, God responds to the cry that He has ordained to bring in the revival He is wanting to send.
All human attempts to create or work up a revival are doomed to failure. There may be activity, but only a heaven-sent revival can accomplish anything of lasting value. If this is true, must we wait helplessly until God in His sovereign will decides to revive His Church?
Certainly not! God is ever ready and willing to revive His people. He waits only for their urgency and desperation to reach the point that He can send a revival to hungry hearts that will accomplish the purpose for which He revives His people: to further advance His kingdom.
Prayer opens our hearts and minds to a sense of not only our own need but also the world’s. It prepares the soil of the soul for the seed of the Word. Revival then is the spiritual harvest. The burdened and persistent intercession of God’s people pleading for a revival is the surest sign that revival is on the way. Revival is not the result of humanly-devised methodology. It is a matter of hunger, intercession, prayer, and confession of need. We should pray, “O Lord, revive your work, and let the revival begin with me,” until the answer comes.
Revival in the Old and New Testaments
The revivals of the Old Testament recount Israel’s renewed zeal to obey God. There was renewal and recommitment after Solomon’s prayer of dedication upon completion of the temple (2 Chron. 7:1–11). There were revivals in the days of Samuel, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Ezra records the revival that occurred following years of praying for a return from captivity and the rebuilding and dedication of the temple (Ezra 9:1 to 10:14). Yet in all the revival instances of the Old Testament, there is no command to evangelize or reach out to Gentiles. It seems that the wayward Israelites were constantly being called to return to obedience and acknowledgment of God’s claim upon them as His chosen people.
New Testament revivals add a dimension that has been a pattern for the Christian Church down to the present. Evangelism is made easier as a result of true revival. It is true that God’s people need to be revived; but they are revived that they might be a part of the great work of the Kingdom: rescuing the lost from the dominion of Satan. Believers play a part in sharing the divine plan of salvation. “ ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’ ” (John 3:16). And as the Son of God was about to return to glory, having completed His mission of dying for the whole human race, He said to all who were or would be His spiritual brothers and sisters, “ ‘Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation’ ” (Mark 16:15).
Evangelism is more effective when preceded by spiritual awakening. It has been said that before a church can reach out and win the unsaved, there must first be a renewal and preparation of believers, from the pastor to the newest convert. It would be wonderful if churches could always maintain a high spiritual level. But, perhaps due to human nature, perhaps due partly to the pressures of the world around us, every congregation needs renewal from time to time. We need to be brought into that place of one accord that the Book of Acts mentions so frequently.4 Then, as revival leads to evangelism, the results will not be disappointing.
This does not mean, of course, that a believer must wait for revival to sweep the congregation before telling others about the peace and eternal life Christ has provided through His death and resurrection. In fact, when a believer steps out in winning souls, in obedience to the Great Commission, this will bring a sense of the need for power and for personal revival. This will stir the believer’s heart to prayer, and personal revival will be sure to come as well as the salvation of souls.
The greatest revival recorded in the New Testament began on the Day of Pentecost. In fact, the entire Book of Acts is a record of personal revival (enduement with power) and effective witnessing. The Early Church prayed for boldness to witness in the face of persecution (Acts 4:29). “After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (Acts 4:31). As a result of these repeated refillings and enduements with power, many sinners were converted and added to the Body of Christ (see Acts 2:41, 47; 5:14; 11:24).
The relationship between prayer and the revivals of the Bible has been well-documented in Bible commentaries. We now look briefly at the importance of prayer in some of the later moves of God, especially since the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Religious literature of the medieval church contains many accounts of monastics who devoted their lives to personal prayer and intercession. To the extent that these individuals combined their personal spiritual quests with evangelism, we do have historical accounts of revivals which brought the lost to Christ and reformed the moral climate of the times. Francis of Assisi (twelfth century), Savonarola (fifteenth century), and Madame Guyon (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) are examples of Catholic spiritual leaders who saw notable revivals (as renewal and as evangelism) in response to devout prayer that God would reverse the corruption and moral decay of the time.
Historians traditionally concentrate on the public aspects of events. Private letters and pronouncements may shed light on background influences, but such private statements, unless substantiated by additional unrelated sources, are held to be opinions and private interpretations. Consequently, prayer is frequently omitted as preceding and precipitating revival.
Yet the perceptive reader can make some logical deductions from references to increased devotion, ministerial callings, concern over the decay of contemporary society, and reports of supernatural confrontations with deity. Increased devotion to Christ and His Church develops as a prayer habit matures and intensifies. The certainty of a divine call to spiritual leadership comes from personal communion with God. A growing burden for the ungodly state of society leads to intercessory prayer. Repeated supernatural evidences of God’s presence in the affairs of devout believers affirms a personal relationship nurtured through prayer.
Martin Luther is recognized and acknowledged as the major figure of the Protestant Reformation (beginning in the sixteenth century). Yet there were significant awakenings of spiritual fervor before his time, leading to the conclusion that prayer and personal devotion played a significant part in reviving nominal Christians and bringing sinners to accept Christ as Savior.
The Brethren of the Common Life, founded in the Netherlands in the fourteenth century, are a good example of those who began praying and pressing for reform and revival. According to church historians, they were noted for their piety (i.e., commitment to the devotional life) and holy life-style. Their influence, propelled by prayer and personal communion with the Lord, continued into the seventeenth century when many of the Brethren welcomed the Protestant Reformation and joined hands with Lutheran reformers.
The eighteenth century witnessed outstanding revivals, both in England and in America: the Great Awakening in America and the Methodist Revival under the Wesleys in England. Historians record that during the Great Awakening, fifty thousand people (one-fifth of the population of New England) were added to the Church as new believers.
The prayer and preaching of Jonathan Edwards contributed much to the Great Awakening in New England. Prior to the beginning of the revival in 1734, religion was in sad decline. The devotion and fervor of the Pilgrim settlers of a century earlier had cooled. Unconverted individuals who made no profession of salvation were admitted to church membership. As in Old Testament days of decline, God chose a man to carry the prayer burden and proclaim the call to repentance. Edwards described his conversion experience as a personal relationship with God that continued throughout his revival ministry:
There came into my soul … a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before.… I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him for ever! I … prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do, with a new sort of affection.… From about that time … my mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of His person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in Him.… The sense I had of divine things would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning in my heart; an ardour of soul, that I know not how to express.5
Edwards’ continuing practice of prayer and communion with the Lord is matched by the testimony of David Brainerd in his memoirs. This great man of prayer spent entire days praying and fasting for the native New England Indians. A typical example follows:
Jan. 1, 1744. In the morning, had some small degree of assistance in prayer. Saw myself so vile and unworthy that I could not look my people in the face, when I came to preach. O my meanness, folly, ignorance, and inward pollution!—In the evening, had a little assistance in prayer, so that the duty was delightful, rather than burdensome. Reflected on the goodness of God to me in the past year, etc. Of a truth God has been kind and gracious to me.… O that I could begin this year with God and spend the whole of it to his glory, either in life or death!6
After years of praying and suffering physically without seeing results, Brainerd finally saw revival come to the Indians in 1745. “I stood amazed at the influence which seized the audience almost universally; and could compare it to nothing more aptly than the irresistible force of a mighty torrent.… Almost all persons of all ages were bowed down with concern.… A principal man among the Indians, who before was most secure and self-righteous, and thought his state good, … was now brought under solemn concern for his soul, and wept bitterly.”7 Revival eventually came in response to persistent praying. Yet Brainerd paid the ultimate price for his devoted ministry to the Indians. He died at age twenty-nine, having spent his life praying for their salvation.
The outbreak of revival in England followed that in America by only a few years. In fact, John and Charles Wesley, along with their fellow evangelist George Whitefield, had witnessed the miraculous turn to God in the American Awakening. But the revival in England began with a small group at Oxford University called the Holy Club. Whitefield described in his journal a meeting of Holy Club members and other seekers on January 1, 1739: “Had a love-feast with our brethren and spent the whole night in close prayer, psalms and thanksgiving.”8 John Wesley described the same prayer meeting with additional details:
The power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement at the presence of His Majesty, we broke out with one voice, “We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.”9
The established church in England was no more spiritual than the American church at the same time. There was drunkenness among the clergy as well as among the entire population. Popular entertainment was vulgar and obscene. Brutal and savage mobs roamed the streets, engaging in violence and immorality; the mobs openly opposed the message preached by the Wesleys and Whitefield. England, like Western society today, was desperately in need of revival.
John Wesley has been called the “Horseman of the Lord.” In a day when there were no hard-surface roads, he traveled by horseback an average of eight thousand miles a year, preaching no less than a thousand times every year. With such a busy schedule, how did he find time to pray? Yet pray he did! Although Wesley’s journal is primarily an account of his public ministry, there are sufficient references to prayer to indicate that this great man of God was a man of great prayer. He rose every morning at 4 A.M.—even after a preaching service the night before. He frequently preached an early morning service outdoors, sometimes at 5 A.M., and then an evening service around 6 P.M. This schedule accommodated the long work days of the common people he ministered to. The intervening time was spent preaching at jails and institutions and at other activities, “improving the time.” Prayer was no doubt a high priority then and during his many hours on horseback. Two representative passages from Wesley’s Journal are germane:
Saturday, 10 [September 1743].—There were prayers at St. Just in the afternoon, which did not end till four. I then preached at the Cross to, I believe, a thousand people, who all behaved in a quiet and serious manner. At six I preached at Sennan … and appointed the little congregation (consisting chiefly of old, grey-headed men) to meet me again at five in the morning. But on Sunday, 11, a great part of them were got together between three and four o’clock: so between four and five we began praising God.10
Saturday, 30 [December 1780].—Waking between one and two in the morning, I observed a bright light shine upon the chapel. I easily concluded there was a fire near, probably in the adjoining timberyard. If so, I knew it would soon lay us in ashes. I first called all the family to prayer; then going out, we found the fire about a hundred yards off, and had broken out while the wind was south. But a sailor cried out, “Avast! Avast! The wind is turned in a moment!” So it did, to the west, while we were at prayer, and so drove the flame from us. We then thankfully returned, and I rested well the residue of the night.11
Along with the call to evangelism and ministry, God gives the burden to pray. To be successful, the ministry must be bathed in prayer.
The names of leaders and revivals begin to proliferate at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But prayer was still the stimulating force behind each significant move of the Spirit. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, morals and religion had undergone a widespread decline. The college campuses were no exception. Schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, first founded as religious training institutions and headed at times by some of the leaders of the Great Awakening, were no longer true to their original mission. The colleges were centers of atheism and unbelief. Spiritually and morally, conditions on campuses and in society generally were deplorable.
The decay of the times became a burden of prayer for over a dozen men in the New England region. They called for a nationwide “Concert of Prayer,” asking God to intervene; ministers of many denominations participated. Reports of revival—called by some the Second Great Awakening—began circulating. The events on college campuses were especially noteworthy.
Students on the various campuses began Christian fellowships. They were persecuted at first, but gradually the tide turned. “They committed themselves to mutual watchfulness, ardent prayers, frequent fellowship, mutual counsel and friendly reproof. In most cases, they were tiny societies. For example, three students at Brown University formed a ‘college praying society,’ which met weekly in a private room.”12 TimothyDwight, the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, became president of Yale in 1796 and led a return to vital Christian experience; one third of the student body made a profession of faith in 1802. That same year, half the students leaving Yale entered the ministry. Similar stories of revival came from other campuses: Amherst, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Williams. The commitment to prayer, by even a small group on each campus, resulted in dynamic evangelism and many conversions. The revival and awakening continued to touch generation after generation of students on many campuses, as devout administrators and faculty were chosen with care. The collegiate sermon became a regular part of student worship, and campus-wide prayer days were scheduled in each term.
On a summer afternoon in 1806, at Williams College in Massachusetts, five students met off campus for private prayer. On their return to campus, a sudden thunderstorm forced them to take shelter under a haystack. While they waited for the storm to pass, they prayed about a way of reaching the lost of the world with the message of salvation. The eventual result of that Haystack Prayer Meeting was the formation of the first American missions society, a pattern of cooperative missionary endeavor followed by many church groups since that time.
The college awakenings in the United States were but part of a worldwide awakening at the same time. Yet their continuing impact through committed graduates who took their places as leaders in society was monumental. Today’s Christian colleges and Bible institutes have a rich heritage as well as a grave responsibility to uphold.
Charles G. Finney was one of America’s foremost evangelists. He was born in 1792 into a home having no Christian influence. He became first a school teacher and then an apprentice in a law office in New York State. As he studied for the bar exam, he discovered that the Bible was the foundation for American law. Purchasing his first Bible to help him prepare for a law career, he became convinced that the Bible was the very word of God. At the age of twenty-nine, he surrendered his life to Christ and left his planned career to preach the gospel. He was licensed to preach at the age of thirty-one. Revival immediately accompanied his preaching. People were swept into the kingdom of God in revival after revival. One of his most famous was held in Rochester, New York, in 1830. One hundred thousand people were reported as being added to area churches as a result. A contemporary, Lyman Beecher, said of the supernatural move: “That was the greatest work of God, and the greatest revival of religion, that the world has ever seen, in so short a time.”13
Prayer was the primary ingredient in Finney’s success. Everything he did was preceded by prayer. On one occasion, when he was teaching a class at Oberlin College, he was asked a question about a biblical passage. Confessing that he did not know the answer, Finney immediately knelt down and prayed before the class. He then rose to give the answer the Lord had given him.
Finney’s classic work, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, contains whole chapters on the subject of prayer and its importance in revival: “Prevailing Prayer,” “The Prayer of Faith,” “The Spirit of Prayer,” and “Meetings for Prayer.” From “The Spirit of Prayer” comes this affecting passage:
Oh, for a praying church! I once knew a minister who had a revival fourteen winters in succession. I did not know how to account for it till I saw one of his members get up in a prayer meeting and make a confession. “Brethren,” said he, “I have been long in the habit of praying every Saturday night till after midnight, for the descent of the Holy Ghost among us. And now brethren,” and he began to weep, “I confess that I have neglected it for two or three weeks.” … That minister had a praying church.14
For the believer who earnestly desires an effective prayer life for evangelistic outreach, the writings of Charles G. Finney rank second only to the Bible.
In spite of Finney’s preaching and the Spirit’s work in reclaiming lost souls and putting spiritual vitality into the communities Finney was invited to, the cycle of spiritual decline had set in by the 1850s. In James Burns’ noteworthy volume Revivals: Their Laws and Leaders, he observes, concerning the decay and ungodliness of the times:
Sick in soul, men turn with a sigh to God.… Slowly this aching grows, the heart of man begins to cry out for God, for spiritual certainties, for fresh visions.… Within the Church itself, also, through all its days of defection, there have been many who have not bowed the knee to Baal, who have mourned its loss of spiritual power, and who have never ceased to pray earnestly for a revival of its spiritual life.… Gradually, however, the numbers are found to increase; prayer becomes more urgent and more confident.… Longing for better things becomes an intense pain; men begin to gather in companies to pray; they cease not to importune God day and night, often with tears, beseeching Him to visit with His divine power the souls of men, and to pour into the empty cisterns a mighty flood of divine life.15
The great revivals associated with D. L. Moody began with prayer, when a contemporary, Jeremiah Lanphier, experienced just what James Burns described. Feeling a strong burden for the sad spiritual state all around his downtown New York mission, Lanphier invited acquaintances to join him in a noonday prayer meeting every Wednesday. At the first prayer meeting, on September 23, 1857, six people were present. The second week, there were twenty; on the third Wednesday, forty. The noon meetings were changed from weekly to daily. The attendance grew to a hundred. Other prayer meetings were held at other locations. By January 1858 attendance at the original location was so large that simultaneous prayer was scheduled in three different rooms. The majority of those attending were businessmen.
Marked by fervent and continual prayer, the revival came to be known as the prayer meeting revival. The revival meetings and multiplied conversions are reported in the many accounts of Moody’s ministry. Every level of society was affected. Colleges where Moody preached experienced marvelous visitations. The revival was marked by lay influence. In the two years of 1858 and 1859, one million conversions were reported in a total population of thirty million. Another million church members were revived. The revival was interdenominational, with participation from all the major Protestant groups. These ten features of the revival were noted in The Methodist Advocate of January 1858:
(1) [F]ew sermons had to be preached, (2) lay people were eager to witness, (3) seekers flocked to the altar, (4) nearly every seeker had been blessed, (5) experiences enjoyed remained clear, (6) converts were filled with holy boldness, (7) religion became a daytime social topic, (8) family altars were strengthened, (9) testimony given nightly was abundant, and (10) conversation was marked by a pervading seriousness.16
However, the cycle of revival and decline of religious fervor continued. By the end of the nineteenth century, even though the results of Moody’s ministry were still evident, American society was in need of another divine visitation. The mainline churches as a whole had lost their evangelistic zeal, expecting to change the world through political and social action rather than through the return of Christ to set up His millennial kingdom. The few who believed they were living in the end times and that the Second Coming was imminent felt impelled to win their generation to Christ before it was too late. They began intensive study of Scripture, praying that God would show them how they might evangelize their generation and give them the spiritual power to turn a sinful generation back to God.
Although there were significant revivals in the twentieth century apart from the Pentecostal outpouring, there is little dispute that the Pentecostal revival has been the greatest single dynamic in transforming a lethargic Christianity into an evangelistic force reaching around the world. Charles Fox Parham began preaching a holiness and healing message in 1889. His study of the Word and the biblical accounts of revival and evangelism sent him on a search for biblical truth that had been lost. He was especially interested in what others were teaching about the Holy Spirit.
In the fall of 1900, Parham opened a Bible school in Topeka, Kansas. His fascination with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit led him in December of the same year to give students of the school a special assignment: determine from a close study of Scripture the evidence for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. The study was accompanied by extended times of waiting upon the Lord. The study concluded that the baptism in the Spirit provided power for service and that speaking in tongues was the single outward evidence that always accompanied the Baptism experience.
Beginning with a watchnight service on December 31, students began receiving the experience and speaking in tongues. Parham and his Spirit-filled students began sharing their new-found experience wherever people would listen. Miraculous healings took place in some of the meetings, confirming to the hearts of many what they were reading in Scripture.
At the same time that Parham was preaching the Pentecostal message in the Midwest, a group began meeting in Los Angeles to pray for a spiritual awakening. They prayed for a full restoration of New Testament Christianity and a last-days outpouring of the Holy Spirit. William J. Seymour, a Baptist holiness preacher who had sat briefly under Parham’s teaching, shared his beliefs about the Holy Spirit with the group holding meetings in a decrepit building on Azusa Street. Many disagreed with Seymour’s teaching, as they had with Parham’s, but the outpouring continued. Events at the meetings were spontaneously ordered by the Spirit, and the number grew as word spread concerning what God was doing.
Many of the early Pentecostals were strongly opposed to church organization or association with any denomination. But with the proliferation of independent preachers with sensational practices and questionable theology, the more levelheaded participants became concerned that such abuses would dissipate and destroy the great spiritual work that had begun.
In April 1914, a group of about three hundred Pentecostals met in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to form the Assemblies of God, a group that would eventually become the largest of several Pentecostal groups born in the early twentieth century. As with the preceding revivals since the Protestant Reformation, the Pentecostal revival was birthed from a prayer burden that rested heavily on a handful of devout and seeking believers.
The evangelistic outreach accompanying the Pentecostal outpouring has been phenomenal. Millions around the world have been called out of pagan as well as nominally Christian religions to become witnesses and evangelists themselves. The fire of the Spirit has burned back into mainline denominations, originally aflame with vital Christianity themselves.
Prayer—revival—evangelism. The sequence has been the same in all the great revival moves of history, a sequence that should not stop short of evangelism: bringing lost souls to know Jesus Christ. As James Burns notes, revival without evangelism falls short of the needed impact:
Often we say that before we can reach out to win the unsaved we must first have a renewal of grace among our church members and officers, including the pastor. Surely no congregation can ever go too far in seeking the betterment of those whose names appear on the rolls of the home church. But experience shows that the majority of our efforts toward revival without evangelism prove disappointing.… People, like their minister, have come closest to God when they have been most actively praying and working for the salvation of their relatives, friends, and neighbors.17
1. What is at the center of God’s ultimate will, and why?
2. What is a revival and why are revivals needed?
3. What part does prayer have in bringing a genuine revival?
4. What is the relationship between revival and evangelism?
5. What was special about the Great Awakening in America?
6. How was the Wesleyan revival different from those that preceded it?
7. What were some things Finney experienced and taught about revival?
8. How was the Pentecostal revival of the twentieth century different from those that immediately preceded it?
9. What is the secret of continuing Pentecostal revival?