I have just finished watchng the video and I feel the various speakers have summed up quite accuratelythe state of the modern church, specially in the western world. By and large the visible church is full of those who are at ease in Zion and who serve God in order to gain rather than serve out of love and devotion.
Much of the modern "Christian" scene is man centred rather than God centred, feeling centred rather than word centred, full of human endevours rather than dependence upon the Holy Spirit, worldliness instead of Godliness, inclusive rather than exclusive. The final speaker was making references to Micah and the Danites at the close of the book of Judges and the phrase that runs through that section is "There was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes". This sums up our modern mindset.
It can be diffilcult taking parts of message and joining them together with different people's messages. But from what I heard it addresses the heart of the matter. The Lord works through his own people and is neither thwarted by their antics nor obstructed by their slothfulness. On the other hand he does not necessarily respond indirect proportion to our holiness or devotion. If he did we would be even worse of than we are today.
But if we are not living consistantly, we cannot expect God to bless. If we are not taking God's claims seriously then we cannot expect those we witness to to do so either. If we are not good ambassadors for God then it is shameful. If we do not as children reflect our fathers image then we need to think again about what we profess. If our faith ammounts to nothing more than head knowledge or intellectual assent to few historical and theological facts then it is not the dynamic Christianity of the NT, the early church, the reformation or Christianiy during times of great expansion such as the18th century revivals.
Ian Paisley began the video by urging the church to waken up. The Lord's people do need to waken up as they have become slothful, comfortable and somewhat insulated from the world around them.
In many ways the church has become a club. For some people their thing is the golf club. For others, their thing may be the bowling club or the amatuer dramatics society or whatever. And for other others their thing is the church-viewed on as simply another club.
Revival is a matter very close to my heart. There are spurious revivals and sometimes man would try and manipulate revivals. But I am convinced that genuine revival from God can come. And it will come simply through the preaching of the word-nothing more. Or to qualify it, through the Holy Spirit blessing the preaching of the word.
As I consider the parables of the kingdom there is hope for revival. We read in Rev about a great crowd standing before the throne from every tribe and tongue. Representatives from every language group. This is a huge encouragements to those working with unreached people groups. The promise from scripture that their work will be rewarded by converts from those groups in glory. But they will only be there because the word was proclaimed to them.
Jonathan Edwards is known as the theologian of revival and his works are well worth studying. In his works he outlines narratives of revival and signs of true and false revivals. His 5 works were
1. A Narrative of Surprising Conversions
2. Thoughts on the Revival in New England
3. The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God.
4. A History of the Work of Redemption
5. The Religious Affections
He also recorded David Brainerd's diary which describes a revival among the Indians
Anyway I did not mean to digress as much as I have done. Getting back to the video clip.
What I wrote in the first couple of paragraphs are generalisations. There are some churches which do take the Christian life soberly and the claims of God seriously. I felt the speakers were quite right to say what they did say. Each one has their own style, some more powerfully or dramatically than others but their words are true and need to be heard today.
Sometimes in reformed circles we tend to emphasise God's work, God's glory etc. But we also need to emphasise our convictons and commitment to serve the Lord. These convictions/commitment after all come from the promptings of the Holy Spririt.
