The True Basis for a Genuine Revival
By L. A. S.
THE Michigan Christian Herald says there is a deep and widespread conviction in religious circles that “a great revival is coming. The Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congregationalists, the Christians, are all expecting it and planning for it.” The Herald hopes that the Baptists (for which church it speaks) will not be left behind in this work. Truly, there is nothing more needed to-day than a great revival of genuine religion; but we may well inquire, Upon what foundation could such a revival, should it come, now rest in the popular churches? The foundation of former revivals, in those churches, now no longer exists. Have those who are expecting and planning for such a revival taken this fact into consideration? That is to say, the foundation of faith in the Bible as the infallible Word of God, upon which former genuine revivals have rested, and upon which every genuine revival of Christianity must rest, has been swept away in those churches by the “higher criticism.” A new theology has come in, so that, as one writer has expressed it, we now have “infallible scholarship, instead of an infallible Bible;” “modern thought,” instead of a “Thus saith the Lord;” “culture, instead of conversion;” “the natural in all things, the supernatural in nothing;” “a pantheistic god instead of a personal God;” “everybody coming out right anyhow, and nobody on the wrong track except those who cling to the faith once delivered to the saints.” No revival of Christianity upon such a foundation of belief as this is possible. To have a real revival the churches must return to the old ground of absolute belief and confidence in the Bible as the infallible Word of God, and the all-sufficient rule of Christian faith. This means that they must accept what the Bible says without calling any statement an error, or a human idea, or spiritualizing it until it has no definite meaning. And this, in turn, means that they must accept the plain doctrine of the second literal coming of Christ, and its nearness as revealed by prophecy, the equally plain doctrine of the seventh-day Sabbath, and, in short, the whole reform message of Rev. 14:6-12,—the remaining part of the reformation from Rome which was not accomplished by Luther and his colaborers. They must6separate wholly from Rome, and come back over wholly to the ground of true Protestantism. Upon that ground—the ground of the third angel’s message—a glorious and world-wide revival is now in progress.