Revival...What Revival?

Revival…What Revival?

Ah revival…what a buzz word in the church. Even when I whiz through the various strange and often funny Christian TV channels the word is just as much used as it was back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. It always gets the flock excited, sometimes to the point of orgasm in some cases…Oh yes I have seen that in the past too. Pentecostals can’t get enough of the word…pity there is no substance to back it up. You have got more chance of the Easter bunny turning up in drag than “revival” coming to you or your town, still it keeps the flock dropping the money into the collection and the pastor and his family business can continue for at least another year.

I first got exposed to the word back in 1990 through a series of local conferences know as funnily enough “Flames of Revival” which was organized by the potential renegade Assemblies of God superintendent at the time. Some big names from the states (never a good sign) were behind this as Wales was the place where it was going to all kick off. There were people, so called prophets from all over the globe to proclaim that North Wales was the place and also that the town where our little church 2 was situated was the “prophetic gateway” where the spirit of Christ would blow through like flames and change everything for the better. It was a time of excitement as churches who for many reasons did not want to associate with each other, began to get along and the hope was rising and so was the hype and the amount of teaching tapes you had to buy to keep up with the latest intelligence from Heaven HQ. In 92, Jini (my ex wife and fellow sufferer!), me and other members of church 2, headed off to the conference and to be honest it was an amazing experience. The word amazing is based on the mindset at the time, I now look back and think “What the hell was I thinking?”

We all left there excited, waiting for the coming harvest of souls and the defeat of the devil and his demons, prisoners set free, churches growing and all the towns changing into pretty well behaved Christian communities. Now, nearly 20 years on and nothing has changed at all. Still the same old churches, some with the same old heads running them, same old shit. I know that excuses can be made. Let’s have them then…”It was not God’s timing”…”We missed the window that God had opened for us”…”man got in the way of God”…”the devil caused this”, the list can go on and on and on. The reality is that we were all at that time dooped into believing what is quite simply a lie. Everyone got excited and books and tapes were sold, but eventually churches went back to their own pitiful state and the people had to wait until the next hype machine rode into town and they do ride in quite often.

We had the Toronto blessing and the Brownsville revivals, thou producing many a strange behaviour has had all but no effect on the external world at all. We saw the rise of Hillsongs, Australia with the mega successful worship group which must of sold millions of CD’s and still churn out the same old crap just to keep the machine rolling, then the emerging church and the NAR (the New Apostolic Reformation) who are just hell bent on taking over the world and making it a better place…well if you are a Christian, yes…if you are a homosexual, any other religious beliefs, a pagan or a atheist, then no. Then there was the Lakeland revival with its infamous tattooed preacher who despite all sorts of goings on behind the scenes and in public view, still is allowed to manipulate the masses.

Despite all these movement with little or nothing of substance to show revival is still big business. There is lots of money to be made and people to fool in the name of Jesus, who, if he is sitting up there, is looking down and thinking “What the fuck?”

Revival is a buzz word that is used to keep the people interested. If the reality of church life was “Be here on the Sunday, listen to the pastor church out the same old meaningless crap, do as you are told, read your bible every day, give your tithes and offerings, go home, pray, go to the home group meetings, help out in the church”, then and as I have found to be often the case, people will come and go. However; the word revival keeps everyone on tender hooks, anticipating, hoping and even believing. The problem is that after time, it finally hits you (that if you are not so deluded by their pastors and preachers spin on the subject) nothing is going to happen, nothing is going to change and you then have to admit that the revival that you have been spun all those years is nothing more than a lie, or a make believe dream that some one conjured up to make your church life more interesting.

If you are one of those still waiting for the revival you do have my sympathies as with all the dreams and visions and prophecies from so called “anointed” sources, it just has to be true. God must of said so. Well if he did he must have one hell of a sick sense of humour in making you wait years and years and years for your miracle.

What is more disturbing is the way that these preachers use “personal revival” or “breakthrough” as a means to exploit you. Here is an example. A woman has been faithfully going to church for let’s say 15 years, she has been suffering with a condition that is making her life a misery, she has been to see countless so called faith-healers and has been told many times to just hang in there for her breakthrough. Also these bastards expect something from her, oh yes mainly money, to “activate” God to work on her behalf but despite her faithful giving, she remains ill. She gives up and tells her pastor so. He comes back with the usual line “You were that close to the breakthrough, but you gave up just as God was about to deliver”. How there is not reports of pastors and preachers all over the world ending up in hospital with broken noses is beyond me as that has to be the ultimate insult to a person who has done everything they were told to do and got nothing in return. Well folks!!! That is revival and I will go a step further that is Pentecostal Christianity. It promises a lot and delivers very, very little.

When it comes to revival there is careful overuse of certain words. Anyone who knows anything about hypnosis just knows how prone we as human beings are to the power of suggestion and I remember these words to this day and the power they had over me.

REVIVAL

AWAKENING

RELEASE

BREAKTHROUGH

VICTORY

PUSH

BELIEVE

At least a good number of these words are spoken out in every meeting. It can be argued that they are the make up of the standard Pentecostal meeting but it is their repetitiveness that is the most concerning. Whenever the word “revival” is mentioned by any of these preachers, the excitement builds as if the people have been switched on automatically.

Whatever the arguments are the proof is in the pudding. I read a recent investigation in the Brownsville revival which looked into the external effects of the so called “revival” by The Pensacola News Journal/November 20, 1997
By Kimberly Blair and J. Lowe Davis which stated that despite the claims of the proponents of the “revival”, that it had boosted the area’s economy and brought healing to the sick and addicted. However; the boom in the economy can be easily explained as the news stations and the people flocked there and people will spend money (hotels, café’s diners etc), so in a way it could be said that the economy did boom but not because of divine blessing. Not one of the healing alleged during the revival (and any other revivals to mention it) have to this day been verified. There were reports of people who came to that revival with nothing, chasing a dream of personal revival and victory, their last throw of the dice only to seen their dreams pissed on from a great height. Reports state that they were not even given a roof over their head as they could not afford to stay anywhere.
“A lot will come and want gas money to get back home. We are not set up for that,” said Rose Compton, Brownsville Assembly of God business administrator.
“We have such a tremendous expense with employees and products we use. We don ‘t have the money for their personal needs.” but they did have the money to buy a $310,000 revival bus for Pastor John Kilpatrick…always the same old story. That “revival” was taking in about $3 million a year, according to the movement’s estimate of $12,500 per meeting. In 1996 the church’s 1996 total budget was $6.6 million and its revenue was $6.5 million.
Oh yes…I forgot to tell you REVIVAL IS BIG BUSINESS!!!!
Going back to the poor Christians who came there to get their “miracle”, they ended up in refuges having to live on free meal handouts and never received their miracle. It is said that the Brownsville crown gave a one off donation to the Jesus Care Centre who were helping these poor souls out during the time they were visiting. There were reports of people sleeping on the church ground in the hope of receiving their own “revival” or “victory”. They subjected themselves to that humiliation for a lie.
Another claim of the “revivalists” is that when revival comes it changes the atmosphere. I heard this spin in church 4 when it was based in Bagillt. Stories of the fact that crime had stopped when we were based there. Well if that were the case then there would have been the same effect in Flint when we, the anointed ones arrived back in Flint…well it didn’t. Nothing changed at all. Going back to the Brownsville “revival” as an example, right next to the church there were still signs of poverty and crime…again…no change, despite the claim that the “King of Kings” were amongst them. In fact according to local residents the church has done NOTHING in the community in the past two years prior to the “revival”.  It is like the churches 2 and 4, full of noise but little sense of community beyond it’s own walls. One of the proponents of the “revival” states that the influence of the power of God was cleaning up the area of prostitutes, drugs uses and criminal activity, a remark strongly disagreed with the local peoples around the church. Of course when you are so busy fooling people with your “revival” , you just don’t have time to do the real Christian thing known as “helping the poor” and “being good news”.  It seems to be that “revival” seems to improve the lives of only those in “high places” in the Pentecostal movement.

Love, peace and good times for you all :)