Here’s the quote regarding revival from last Sunday’s sermon.
It’s from Revival, Their Laws and Leaders by James Burns and written around 1909. It asks the question, “Do we want revival, do we really?”
“To the church, a revival means humiliation, a bitter knowledge of unworthiness and an open humiliating confession of sin on the part of her [pastors] and people. It is not the easy and glorious thing many think it to be, who imagine it filled the pews and reinstated the church in power and authority. It comes to scorch before it heals; it comes to [convict] people for their unfaithful witness, for their selfish living, for their neglect of the cross, and to call them to daily renunciation and to a deep and daily consecration. That is why a revival has ever been unpopular with large numbers within the church. Because it says nothing to them of power, or of ease, or of success; it accuses them of sin; it tells them they are dead; it calls them to awake, to renounce the world [system] and to follow Christ.”[1]
[1] James Burns. Revival, Their Laws, and Leaders, Baker Book House, Rev. 1960.
