Unsettled Christianity

So, you say you want a religious revival?

That is the ‘prophesied’ event that so many hold to, but they wish to do so in an unbiblical manner. Instead of reading the bible, and finding the heart of God, they would trust an election to bring about revival. They would fill the hearts and minds of the unlearned with great promises and zeal while leading them away from what God requires of a national revival.

In biblical times, which is especially important to us who profess biblical Christianity, we read of many times when national Israel – which in those days, was the only Israel – would backslide and leave God, forsaking the covenant with Him. So many times, would God come back to Israel, and plead with her to return to Him. As He always did, He made conditions.

The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Israel was still obeying the law in these areas, and yet, God has said that it didn’t matter. Religious observance does not bring one into a right path with God. Before these things would matter again, Israel had to do something, had to restore something:

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.

How clear then the picture that if Israel wanted a religious revival, they had to first cease from evil, learn the good, seek justice, relieve the burden of the oppressed, take up the cause of the orphans, and protect the rights of the widow. You say you want a religious revival in this country? Israel was given a promise if she would take heed:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.  (Isaiah 1:1-18 KJVA)

And again, in Jeremiah, we read of the right way to a revival,

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, Stand in the gate of the LORD’S house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all ye of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.

Israel was faced with expulsion, yet God gave them a means of remaining:

Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these. For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour; If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:

Again, we return to a common theme among the prophets, to seek justice for those that are without – the poor, the orphans, the widows, the oppressed. Here, though, God tags His requirements with two other issues – do not trust in religious means as a path to revival. And if Israel would do these things, then:

Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.  (Jeremiah 7:1-7 KJVA)

And in Amos,

Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes; That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek: and a man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name: And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god.  (Amos 2:6-8 KJVA)

From the LASB:

God condemned Israel for five specific sins: (1) selling the poor as slaves (see Deuternomy 15:7-11; Amos 8:6), (2) exploiting the poor (see Exodus 23:6; Deuteronomy 16:19), (3) engaging in perverse sexual sins (see Leveticus 20:11-12), (4) taking illegal collateral for loans (see Exodus 22:26-27; Deuteronomy 24:6, Deuteronomy 24:12-13), and (5) worshiping false gods (see Exodus 20:3-5).

And then, of true religion, we have the Apostle James,

If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.  (James 1:26-27 KJVA)

If any of this country, or any country – they are all equal in the eyes of God – seeks a true religious revival, let him first start with the poor and the oppressed, and learn what Micah learn,

Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?  (Micah 6:6-8 KJVA)