Planning a Revival by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 24, 1903

Planning a Revival

By L. A. S.

A “NATIONAL Lenten gospel campaign” has been inaugurated by the “National Central Committee of the Twentieth Century National Gospel Campaign,” which has its headquarters in New York City. This committee includes almost every well-known clergyman and evangelist in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. The object of the campaign is to promote through existing organizations and agencies, a “national gospel awakening,” “for the spiritual, moral, and social rescue of the unsaved millions of our beloved country.” This campaign is to be initiated on “Ash Wednesday,” February 25, which has been appointed a “day of humiliation and prayer.” On that day special prayer is to be offered in the churches for certain specified objects, among which are “an immediate entrance of all Christians upon a campaign of personal work in seeking and winning lost souls, ‘beginning at Jerusalem’—at home—and reaching out to the ‘outermost parts of the earth.’” Also, “for a mighty outpouring of, and enduement with, the Holy Spirit,” to be experienced by “the church throughout the entire nation.”

In short, it is designed that there shall be a great religious revival extending over the entire country, similar to those experienced under the leadership of eminent revivalists in former times. A great revival to mark the opening of the twentieth century has long been contemplated, and this is the effort to realize the desired blessing.

No intelligent observer can shut his eyes to the fact that tremendous changes have taken place in the religious world since the days of the great revivals of the last century. Within the church, as a whole, there has been a wide drifting away from the former standards, so that the church to-day is not prepared, as a whole, to work along the lines that were followed by the Protestant church in its earlier days. Upon every side are to be seen the evidences of this truth. A new complexion is upon everything. In a hundred places the old safeguards against worldliness and spiritual delusions have been broken down, and a tide of error has come in which threatens to engulf all before it. Strange doctrines of which our pious forefathers knew nothing are taught and received by multitudes. New delusions are sweeping over the land, and vast numbers are joining themselves to movements which are Christian only in name. A change has come in the attitude of the church toward God’s Word. The higher criticism has come in, and has established itself in all the leading denominations. What revival can come from the higher criticism? What church in which the higher criticism is accepted can go to sinners in the power of the Spirit, pointing them to an infallible word by which they must finally be judged? What church that holds to it can manifest the old-time spirit and make use of the old-time methods? Can any such thing as a great Christian revival be possible in the present state of the Christian church?

These are questions which lie at the foundation of a sober, candid consideration of this subject. There are, we know, many earnest Christian men enlisted in this movement, who long to see the old-time power manifested in the church, followed by the old-time results. We believe, however, that the church as a whole must get back into the pathway of primitive Christianity and of God’s special message to the world, for this time, before it can as a whole do successful work for God, and carry out the great program of evangelistic work which, under the lead of this inter-denominational committee, it has undertaken.

L. A. S.