Who Do You Think You Are?

There really is no greater written work in the entire world than the Holy Bible.  I have yet to go looking in there for an answer and come out empty.  The stories are rich in symbolism and surprisingly pertinent to every aspect of our modern lives.  One particularly graphic story is found in Acts 19.  For purposes of clear illustration, I am quoting today from The Message Bible:

Some itinerant Jewish exorcists who happened to be in town at the time tried their hand at what they assumed to be Paul’s “game.” They pronounced the name of the Master Jesus over victims of evil spirits, saying, “I command you by the Jesus preached by Paul!” The seven sons of a certain Sceva, a Jewish high priest, were trying to do this on a man when the evil spirit talked back: “I know Jesus and I’ve heard of Paul, but who are you?” Then the possessed man went berserk—jumped the exorcists, beat them up, and tore off their clothes. Naked and bloody, they got away as best they could.

~Act 19: 13-16

Now you might wonder how this is applicable to our modern day Christian understanding in Western democratic nations.  It’s not every day we get to see demon possessed people going berserk in the streets, right?  (dripping with sarcasm).  

Yet we go right on doing the same thing as the seven sons of Sceva.  They were the sons of a Jewish High Priest.  By all rights, they should have had some serious authority over this demon-possessed maniac.  He should have trembled in the face of not one, not two but SEVEN ecclesiastical powerhouses confronting him directly.  They even presumed that if they recklessly threw around the name of Jesus, surely that should be the “magic charm” that would solve the problem. 

Interestingly, the word “Sceva” is a Hellenized version of the Latin word "scaeva" meaning “left-handed.”  I believe the Biblical imagery here is one of picking a fight with one-arm tied behind your back and striking out at a problem from the wrong angle. 

Today, we see many Christian people trying to confront deep-rooted demonic problems in their nations like the sons of Sceva.  They may be highly placed Christians in positions of respected authority.  However, they are not going into battle properly armed.  They are armed with “magic” incantations about rights, liberties and some poorly defined universal morality.  Others may even be picking up on leftist code words of “tolerance”, “fairness”, and “social justice” thinking this might give them the “upper-hand.”    

However, we don’t battle against “reasonable” entities that want to sit down and have a spirited debate with us in the name of governmental rights.  Here’s what the Bible tells us we battle against:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

~Ephesians 6:12

So, as anarchists and tyrants are fond of saying: “Don’t take a knife to a gun fight.”  While I don’t normally agree with this sort of character, it is important to go in properly armed:

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

~Ephesians 6:11-18

Pick up the right weapon, the Holy Word of God.  Aim with deadly accuracy, using sight with the plumb-line of Jesus Christ.  Have a solid steady firm footing…standing on the Rock of Ages. 

If you fight with anything less, like the sons of Sceva, you just might end up the victim of a powerful…

Left Hook.

________________________________________

Because you rage against me and because your insolence has reached my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will make you return by the way you came.

~Isaiah 37:29

The Bible tells us there is a time for all things and there is a time to preach and a time to pray but the time for me to preach has passed away, and there is a time to fight, and that time has come now. Now is the time to fight! Call for recruits! Sound the drums.

~John Peter Gabriel Muhlenburg

Pastor, Patriot, Soldier and Senator

~Posted by permission of Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly

Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly is the author of Repentance—God’s Strategy to Bless a Nation and Zeal to Repent!—A Key to Personal and National Restoration 

–Both are available for FREE at The National Day of Repentance website: www.dayofrepentance.org

or by emailing him at

jdalylaw@aol.com

GLOBAL WARMING -- STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

GLOBAL WARMING – STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

By James Wilson

(Note:  Newly elected President of California’s State Senate Kevin DeLeon

declared in his first speech his top priority – leading the fight against climate change.)

            What do you call it if you mix documented facts like no – none, nada – increase in the average surface temperature of the earth in the past eighteen years, or the reality that there has been no loss of Arctic ice in eight years while Antarctic ice covers more ground than it has in forty, with environmentalists like Al Gore?  With apologies to Paul Simon – still crazy after all these years.

            The University of Illinois’ Polar Ice Research Center found Arctic ice stopped losing ground between 2005 and 2006.  They report Antarctic ice grows – compensating for any loss – as it has for decades.  Patrick Michaels directs the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science.  Their research shows global warming stopped in the mid nineties, about a decade before Gore and friends boarded a train already out of track.

            In the midst of hysterical demonstrations – the People’s Climate March recently paraded through two thousand worldwide locations – more and more scientists recognize they bet on the wrong horse.  Dr. Steven Koonin was Barack Obama’s undersecretary for science in the Department of Energy before publishing a Page One story in the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review on the topic.  He says climate science and conclusions about global warming are anything but settled from his new position as director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University.  He warns the prevailing groupthink – his term – achieves nothing but the stifling of serious discussions leading to rational policy decisions.  Koonin notes the repeated claims of consensus on the subject, but says there is just no such thing.  He adds, “The climate has always changed and always will.”

            Koonin happens to believe, by the way, that human action does influence climate, although he does not call it the principal dynamic in change.  In fact, he maintains, human action can at most cause shifts of one to two per cent.  And he admits that while human contributions to carbon dioxide levels have risen by twenty-five per cent in this century the surface temperature is not increasing – as the computer models worshipped by the Gore school say it must.  He acknowledges the shift – from Arctic to Antarctic regions – rather than a net reduction in ice mass, as well as the fact sea levels are not rising any faster today – if at all – than they did prior to 1950.  And then we get to John L. Casey, President of the Space and Science Research Corporation and former White House national space policy adviser.

            Casey goes a lot farther than Koonin.  In his book, Dark Winter, he calls the climate change hysteria “the greatest scientific fraud in history.”  He contends the sun – a far more potent influence on climate than any human action – has entered a cyclical period of “solar hibernation’ that will alter climate within the next two decades.  He does not call it a coming ice age, but he says global crop damage will come and we are totally unprepared for it.  Why?  Because the politics – not the science – is all about warming and how much government should restrict human free enterprise in order to combat something we did not cause and cannot hope to control.  We can only – if we are crazy enough – control one another right back into a human caused stone age.

            Casey points out that science in the former Soviet Union is far more open to free inquiry and experimental verification – wherever the results lead the discussion – than is the United States today.

            Some will ask how our president does not know of these findings coming from his own present and former advisers.  Why does he keep making speeches to international bodies claiming human caused climate change is the foremost danger in the world today?  Perhaps a president who misses three in five of his national security briefings is just as inattentive to his science briefings.

            And the polar bears headed for extinction due to human excesses?  Their numbers have increased by about twenty-five per cent in recent years.

            The good news is that there is a God Who not only creates this world but lovingly maintains it and calls us into partnership with Him.  There is no Biblical excuse for wanton pollution or irresponsible use of resources.  Scripture says the heavens themselves declare God’s glory; a house build outside this revelation cannot stand.  The Son of God tells us to let our yes be yes and our no be no.  Only with honesty and humility can we discover and act on truth, and that always leads to good decisions for living.  The only alternative is to remain crazy.  And deadly.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

WORDS -- AND WORLDVIEWS -- HAVE CONSEQUENCES

By James Wilson

            I was excited when I heard Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearingen was running for controller of California.  She has been two terms worth of effective in Fresno and she held the fiscal and social values on which a resurrected California must depend. So it is with special sadness I withdraw my support after she changes her position on traditional marriage in a bid to gain support from the gay lobby.

            She says gay marriage is now the law; we must accept the new normal and address the “real” issues impacting California – in her words – the twin mountains of debt and unfunded obligations.  She says the controller has no power over marriage and so her position is irrelevant.  She is wrong – dead wrong – on at least three counts.

            First, the court overturn of Proposition 8 is not settled law.  The Supreme Court vacated the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturning Prop 8 and refused to rule on the lower federal court decision.  California’s constitution makes clear only a federal appellate court can throw out a constitutional amendment.  In other words, although state officials rushed to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, Proposition 8 is still the law in California.  On top of that, numerous state traditional marriage laws stand before federal appellate courts.  The odds are at least one of these laws will be upheld.  At that point the Supreme Court will be forced to rule and Prop 8 is back in the game.

            Secondly, there is wisdom in the saying, “Yuh dance with the one whut brung yuh.”   Swearingen’s base is the values voters who twice elected her mayor.  These people are horrified at her about-face.  If we learn anything from the current polarization of our culture it is that political figures who abandon their base must learn to live without it.  Politics as usual – changing position when expedient – is dead on arrival. This is what sank Meg Whitman’s run for the governor’s office. 

              The third and final count is worldview.  Swearingen is correct that the controller has no control over marriage policy.  But her switched position on marriage is a switch of worldview.  Homosexual lifestyles are deadly, as experience in nations embracing gay marriage demonstrate.  High rates of disease and death in the gay community are unchanged and low rates of heterosexual commitment are worsened.  Worldview is the lens through which we think – as opposed to something we think about – when making decisions.  A worldview that de-values marriage for political expediency can be just as fluid on issues of life, or fiscal policy and practice.  It makes trusting the leader difficult.

            The tragedy here is that I know Ashley Swearingen to be a decent person and a woman who really loves her Lord Jesus and the people for whom He died and rose.  I have met with her and prayed with her.  But I cannot vote for her, nor can I urge anyone to vote for her, in the face of her flip-flopping on key issues – regardless of their relevance to the job she currently seeks.  She remains a competent albeit untrustworthy executive, and arguably the lesser of two evils compared to her opponent.  But voting the lesser of evils is slowly strangling our state.  It is up to the political leaders to clean their own house and re-claim the integrity of their first impulse to enter public service.  It is up to the rest of us to expect no less.  Swearingen needs her yes to mean yes and her no to mean no.

            Herod and Ahab were two of the greatest kings of Old Testament Israel – from a secular standpoint.  They presided over a growing economy and held the enemies of Israel at bay.  They were condemned by the prophets for their lack of accountability to God, understood as a lack of integrity.  Their embrace of moral and spiritual expediency weakened the fabric of their culture from within enough to ultimately cause the destruction of their nation.

            Ashley Swearingen is neither Herod nor Ahab; she is not unscrupulous.  But our state’s structure and economy are already on life support, not to mention our families and our spirits in California.  God has spoken clearly about marriage – what makes it healthy and what does not.  She professes His Word – with this political exception.  But if she is fit to lead she needs to obey Matthew 10:32-33.  “He who acknowledges me before men I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.  But whoever disowns me before men I will disown before my Father in heaven.”  She needs to win her spiritual battle before she is fit to win election. 

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

IN THE BIRTHING ROOM -- REPENTANCE JUST AS CRUCIAL

By James Wilson

             The 4^th Great Awakening in American history is underway.  There have been a number of words from recognized prophetic voices published in the past few weeks and there is a compelling co-incidence to their witness.  We got the word ourselves when our prayer team made its monthly visit to the California State Capitol July 3.  One of our members reported a vision in which the Lord showed him two piles of dry bones on the floor – reminiscent of the famous passage in Ezekiel 37 – and while he watched the bones rose to form two skeletal bodies, one of them a man and the other a lion.  Putting aside the natural skepticism of many of our readers about revelations from God in capitol hearing rooms – or anywhere else – let’s track with the internal logic of the vision.  That too is supplied by God, but it is subject to rational critique.

The interpretation came to me instantaneously as the vision was described.  The man represented Jesus Himself and the lion the Lion of Judah.  Their rise to incarnation was clearly about the promised Awakening but the caveat is at least as important.  Attention was drawn to the skeletal nature of these bodies; that is, to their lack of flesh, skin, hair, and organs.  Clearly the Awakening is in its most fragile infancy.  The present outpouring of signs and wonders has been with us for some time; it does not constitute an Awakening by itself.  And there is much more at stake here than whether a bunch of charismatic Christians get to raise hands and shout glory to the Lord.  The call to the people of God to practice ongoing repentance – re-focus of our attention on God – is even more urgent than it has been the past several years.

There is a dark side to this season which also grows exponentially.  Jesus said the last days – whatever their duration – would feature worldwide wars and rumors of wars, and we have armed conflict on the five heavily populated continents.  We would see men calling evil good and good evil; look no farther than the outpouring of sympathy for Hamas as it shoves women and children in front of its own missile batteries as human shielding.  And we would see Christians hated by all for no other reason that that we bear the name of Christ; the legal assaults on American and European Christians in the name of political correctness pale next to the slaughter of the faithful in the Middle East but the source is the same and the escalation as certain.

Yet most of these so-called revelatory words are steeped in triumphalism.  There is no acknowledgement of ongoing need for repentance.  There is a childish obsession with the healings and the other goodies which are indeed part and parcel of any move of God in our midst, but which are anything but the whole package.  Jesus was quite clear that as history winds down there is going to be hell to pay as much as heaven to gain; nobody gets a free pass.  Any alleged prophet who claims it is all coming up roses for people of prayer is just as much a false prophet as the people who keep running up and down California claiming the drought is over despite the reality that reservoirs are less than half full and snowpack almost non-existent.  So what is the reasonable and at the same time faithful approach?  Just what it has always been.

John 8:1-11 is a story of authentic repentance.  Pharisees who seemingly have nothing better to do on a weekday morning than look in someone’s bedroom window drag a woman caught in adultery before the Lord and ask permission to stone her.  Jesus uses the Law accurately when he says only the sinless may cast the first stone.    Only the woman actually repents – she steps across the line Jesus draws in the dust and remains by His side – while her accusers refuse to focus on Him and slink away in shame.  It doesn’t matter who has done well or poorly; it matters only that His grace is sought and accepted by each and all.

Two apostles stand out for rejecting a portion of pre-resurrection revelation.  Thomas is chronically convinced it will all end badly, despite what he has seen of Christ’s power to bless and heal.  Yet he is loyal and devoted to the end, saying, “Then let us all go and die with Him,” when Jesus determines to go to Jerusalem despite being warned against it.  One might say Thomas faces the darkness while doubting the glory.  Peter, on the other hand, is the first to confess Jesus as Son of God; he gets into trouble with the boss when he refuses to believe the Cross is coming.  Jesus rebukes Peter but lets Thomas slide.  Why is that?

Thomas’s rejection is wrong but not problematic for his faith.  He will hang in there with Jesus in the hard times – he always does – and when it turns out exponentially better than he can imagine it is just that – exponentially better in the Kingdom.  Peter’s rejection negatively impacts his faith; he is in for the wild ride but the plummet of Good Friday can shock him right out of the Kingdom if he is totally unprepared.  God wants us to enjoy the hurricane of signs, wonders and decisions for Jesus – not to mention the grace that will flow in many directions through the culture shared by the awakened Church.  But if we imagine the glory is all there is we risk missing even that when the hurricane of hard times makes landfall.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

If I Knew You Were Coming...Would I Bake A Cake?

If I knew you were comin' I'd've baked a cake
baked a cake, baked a cake

If I knew you were comin' I'd've baked a cake
Howd-ya do, howd-ya do, howd-ya do

~Lyrics to a 1950’s Song

My father used to sing this silly song to me when I was a small child.  I’ve since had the privilege of watching him sing it to my children also.  I never really gave the words much thought…just presupposing it was some nonsensical adolescent song meant to entertain the little urchins.  However, lately, it got me thinking.

This week in the news another Christian business owner was told, that in order to stay in business, he must violate his religious conscience and print gay pride T-shirts.  He was also ordered to undergo “diversity training” or, in other words, a government re-education program.  I guess this is deemed necessary in order to wipe his mind “clean” of those nasty thoughts of religious freedom of expression.  These are the same religious freedoms that our forefathers fought for and came to these very shores for. 

My…how far we’ve fallen.    

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you may have also heard about “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” a Christian bakery that has been forced to shut down because of their unwillingness to celebrate perversion in the form of their artistic cake-making abilities.

As “Pastor” Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church and liberal “Christian” Kirsten Powers of Fox News have suggested:

”Maybe they should just ask themselves, 'What would Jesus do?' I think he'd bake the cake." 

Really?  John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ’s ministry was BEHEADED rather than reverse his position on Herod’s scandalous “marriage.”

 Now Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, for John had been saying to him: “It is not lawful for you to have her.”

~Matthew 14:3

To suggest that Christ Himself would take a position LESS than His Repentance preaching predecessor is patently absurd and unscriptural. 

John answered their questions by saying, "I baptize you with water; but someone is coming soon who is greater than I am--so much greater that I'm not even worthy to be his slave and untie the straps of his sandals.

~Luke 3:16

Interestingly, in scripture, the Baker was ultimately executed by Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, while the Cupbearer was spared (Genesis 40).

So the chief cupbearer told Joseph his dream. He said to him, “In my dream I saw a vine in front of me, and on the vine were three branches. As soon as it budded, it blossomed, and its clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup and put the cup in his hand.”

~Genesis 40: 9-11

“This is what it means,” Joseph said to him. “The three branches are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your position, and you will put Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer.

~Genesis 40: 12-13

This Bible story is extremely symbolic.  If our religious convictions don’t withstand the squeezing pressure of crushing persecution, we will “Bake the Cake.”  Those that comply with this mandate will ultimately be “executed” by the Pharaoh of their Egypt land.  They may get a temporary reprieve (3 days indicates a temporary waiting period just like the Resurrection), but ultimately the evil of the culture will eat them up:

When the chief baker saw that Joseph had given a favorable interpretation, he said to Joseph, “I too had a dream: On my head were three baskets of bread.  In the top basket were all kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head.”

“This is what it means,” Joseph said. “The three baskets are three days. Within three days Pharaoh will lift off your head and impale your body on a pole. And the birds will eat away your flesh.”

~Genesis 40: 16-18

If we are like the Cup-bearer…we will bring forth the sweet sacrament of suffering and sacrifice like the owners of “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” who chose to go out of business instead of compromise their beliefs.  We look towards the Promised Land for our reward and not at our Egyptian surroundings.  

  

So take your pick…

Eat the cake first and ruin your appetite for the meal?

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

~Revelation 19:9

Or grow up and eat the meat of God’s Word and get rewarded afterwards with sweetness…God’s eternal promises of goodness and mercy. 

But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

~Hebrew 5:14

Either way, we will eventually get our…

“Just Desserts.”

___________________________________________________

And you shall eat it as a barley cake, baking it in their sight on human dung.
~Ezekiel 4:12

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

~Patrick Henry

PRAYER:  
Heavenly Father, in Jesus' Holy Name, open our eyes to see Your line in the sand, Your dividing line between good and evil, Your plumbline, not the ways of the world.  May we have the boldness to fear You more than offending people.  May standing up for Your righteousness in public become a hallmark of Christians. May we in humility correct those in opposition so that they may  repent and know His Truth, escaping the snare of the enemy of our souls.  ~Amen

~Posted by permission of Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly

Pastor Jeffrey N. Daly is the author of Repentance—God’s Strategy to Bless a Nation and Zeal to Repent!—A Key to Personal and National Restoration 

–Both are available for FREE at The National Day of Repentance website: www.dayofrepentance.org

or by emailing him at

jdalylaw@aol.com

THE ROLE OF REPENTANCE IN AWAKENING

By James Wilson

            A pastor I know tells a story of his friend changing a tire on a dead flat road in Kansas.  While he worked he saw an approaching car two miles away.  He knew there was no chance it would hit him because he and his car were as visible as the other car.  His reasoning sustained him until the moment he was hit.

            He was drop-kicked fifty feet but sustained no injury beyond a few bruises from landing on pavement.  The driver stopped and ran to him, amazed he was okay.  When they both calmed enough to talk he asked her how she could have hit him when he was so visible.  She said it was the strangest thing; the more she focused on avoiding him the more inevitable hitting him seemed to become.  This true story forms a perfect illustration of our shared need to engage a lifestyle of progressive repentance.

            The Bible calls us to renounce sin simply because it hurts when we abuse ourselves or others.  But not bringing injury is not enough.  The more we focus on avoiding the sin we renounce the more inevitable becomes its return to power.  If we would be free we must re-focus on the God-in-Christ who comes into the world to set us free, just as that Kansas driver needed to focus on where she wanted to drive instead of where she wanted to not-drive.  This re-focus is the essence of repentance and – because life is littered with people changing flat tires in our path – it must be a lifestyle if we are to live in freedom.

Every awakening is preceded by a necessary season of repentance in the Church.  God is not waiting for the world to don sackcloth and ashes; we Christians are the model.  But Christians must get a clue we are seriously off course and begin to act on that clue in order to clear obstructions from God’s highway.  Our own book says judgment begins with us; the abysmal track record of Christians choosing abortion, divorce, and a host of idolatries speaks for itself.

When John the Baptist proclaimed the near arrival of the Son of God he demanded more from people than renunciation of corruption.  He called for fruit in terms of behavior imitative of the God in Whose image we are made, pragmatic fruit like feeding and clothing the poor.  These behaviors are not repentance, but they are hard evidence we are re-focused on God instead of ourselves.  Jesus said we must seek to become new wineskins in Matthew 9:17.  The wine represents the Holy Spirit, but first century wine was still fermenting when it was placed in skins.  If those skins are not new – and thus stretch-able – they burst from the expanding wine coming to full potency.  The take-away is progressive re-focus of our attention and energy on the One Who pours out His Spirit in us.  One person repenting launches an expanding life.  Many repenting make a culture opening for the Great Awakening God wants to lavish on His people.

It is what happened to Peter in Matthew 14 and Paul in Acts 9 – in its discomfort and its amazing-grace promise.  When Jesus calls Peter steps out of the boat and begins to walk toward his master on the water.  The moment his mind drifts to his problem – a man cannot walk on water – he looks down and begins to sink.  The moment he looks back to Jesus and takes His hand, he can and does walk on water.  I like Paul on the Damascus Road even better.  Paul has been serving God as he understands Him most of his life; yet he detours into vigilantism.  The Spirit knocks him onto his backside and asks why he is kicking against the goads instead of serving the goatherd.  The fruit of Paul’s process of re-focus is the life of contentment and the confidence he can do all things in Christ who strengthens him described in Philippians 3 and 4.  Nobody wants to be knocked on their backside, but if we repent instead of kick the rewards are incredible.

One thing we need to remember at all times, returning to that Kansas highway.  The man was unhurt beyond a few bruises; that is a miracle by any conception.  God has given us a season of miracles – of all kinds – beyond any season in history.  There is going to be discomfort as we look up – rather dazed – from the pavement on which we have landed.  But the deposit of grace is already in our pockets and more abundant life is the promise in our hearts.

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net

REVIVALS AND AWAKENINGS IN AMERICA

By James Wilson

             The American colonies were the fruit of an English revival rejected by the English people and government.  The Puritan vision was of a reformed and re-vitalized England brought about through enthusiastic embrace of the Living God.  When the Puritans found themselves despised they came to America and set up a culture of that embrace, believing that when those they left behind saw what God did with them they would hunger for the same.  The Pilgrims were more radicalized, but their sense of a city on a hill – observed and hungered for – was just as strong.  Yet revivals do not form nations; awakenings do.

            The first American Great Awakening rocked the Atlantic seaboard in the 1730s and 40s.  It began in the pastures of the Connecticut River Valley as the Holy Spirit ignited preaching with signs and wonders.  The Spirit drew hundreds of thousands and the emphasis was on receiving and growing a relationship with God in the Person of His Son.  These relationships were as intimate as they were dynamic – and uncomfortable for observers.  People coming under the Spirit would frequently cry out, weep, laugh, and convulse on the ground.  Fruit was that jails tended to empty as people became less inclined to commit crime, families tended to come together as parents became parents and spouses re-committed to loving and faithful marriage.  Colonists saw themselves as Americans rather than British ex-patriates.  This social and spiritual cohesion enabled Americans to fight a revolutionary war and write a Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

            Just as the first Great Awakening formed an American identity, the second formed an American character in which concerted efforts from barn raisings to spanning a continent to walkers on the moon were simply viewed as the American way.  Public schools and social welfare movements were its creations.  It birthed a commitment to live in freedom for all – the commitment that abolished slavery and struggled for another century to make manifest what they had mandated.

            Revivals often lead to Awakening – when they are not managed to death by the very people who triggered them – but revivals are confined to the Church while awakenings hit the streets and transform cities; they often begin outside institutional churches.  The charismatic revival of the sixties featured thousands being healed, renewed in their faith and – in many cases – coming into a relationship with Jesus for the first time.  But the cities at its heart – Los Angeles and Seattle – were no different after the revival than before it.  The Toronto Blessing that rocked churches all over the world is a formative influence on my own character and approach to God – but Toronto remains the city it was pre-1994.  Many want to hail the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 as an awakening, but that revival was destroyed by the failure of leaders to confront the racism that strangled it.  Los Angeles remained as it had always been, only bigger and richer as oil and entertainment industries came of age there.

            It can be argued – and I would – that Azusa Street was resurrected in the charismatic renewal triggered by Dennis Bennett.  This revival led into the Jesus People, which is the third Great Awakening in America.  

            The Jesus People began outside the Church – on the beaches of California and Oregon.  It began with drugged out hippies who had radical encounter with Jesus and took Him along wherever they went.  They birthed modern worship music, a renewed emphasis on families, and a normalized view of signs and wonders on city streets.  The modern recovery movement and the Messianic movement among Jews are from the Jesus People.  The idea of vision preceding product in the business world is fruit of this movement, as is the movement for reconciliation with people groups and across all dividing lines.  Jesus People picked up where Azusa left off and got it right re racial integration.

            I do not mean to imply the Awakenings are cool and revivals are not.  Both have a place of honor in the Kingdom of God.  But the one tends to be a fuller manifestation of the larger Kingdom while the other is more instrumental to it.  Awakenings tend to be rejected by the larger Church until the fruit comes into the bin while revivals tend to dramatically stir the Church – or at least the streams in which they come.  The kiss of death for either is the urge to manage and tame them by leadership.  But the kiss of life from the Lord comes – always – in response to a season of repentance from that cross-section of the Body hearing the promise of the Lord without seeing its manifestation. 

James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at

praynorthstate@charter.net