Setting Up Tents for the Revival
The old revivalist preacher Leonard Ravenhill used to demarcate between those who prayed for revival to come down and those who believed revival to be something they could whip up. Clearly, he advocated the former over the latter. For years, I’ve appreciated his warnings concerning an attempt to accomplish in the flesh what can only be done by the Spirit. And in the majority of contexts within which Ravenhill was preaching, I still appreciate his admonitions. He has something like the Galatian error in his crosshairs and so should we. No Christian matures out of his or her all-consuming need for the Lord. No Christian arrives at a place of being able to tell the Holy Spirit, ‘You can let go. I’ve got it from here.’
But there is a doppelgänger to the Galatian error and that is the acknowledgment of an embodied existence. One can imagine a new Christian who volunteers at a soup kitchen every Friday being warned by the well-meaning evangelist that his dishing up lasagna isn’t going to get him into heaven, nor does his pot-scrubbing prove that he actually loves his neighbor. Of course it won’t. Of course it doesn’t. Hypocrisy exists. A wrong view of good works is possible. But, as we know from Scripture, if he truly loved his neighbor, he would do something like dishing up lasagna. Countless examples abound at this point and, for the most part, Christians across the board would agree with one another.
Something different emerges, however, when it comes to the issue of visible church unity. Over the years, I’ve been repeatedly told that visible church unity is the desire of God but it can only be accomplished by the Spirit of God. Having said this, the critics then went on to explain how attempts at ecumenism, trying to put multiple Reformed confessions under the same roof, treating Roman Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters like equal family members even if the gesture isn’t reciprocated, even allowing for confessional diversity on a session were man-made attempts at whipping up a revival that only God could send down. The more I’ve heard this, the more convinced I’ve become that these men are confusing the Galatian error for the Jamesian mandate.
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. - James 2:14-17
When the famed missionary, William Carey, first began to investigate the idea of a calling into missions, the story is told that he presented the local ministerium with this concept of global evangelism, only to be quickly rebuked for proposing that man should take it upon himself to do only that which could be done by the Lord. A Rev. John Collett Ryland reportedly answered the young cobbler with the retort, “Young man, sit down; when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid and mine.”
One can’t help but hear the ghost of Rev. Ryland echoing his refrain in the mouths of many a well-meaning sectarian minister. “Young men, sit down; when God pleases to bring about church unity, He will do it without your aid and mine.” I don’t think that is how it works. It’s true that a person having begun in dependency upon the Spirit can wrongly believe that they might continue to be made perfect in the strength of the flesh (Galatians 3:3). It’s true that some people might wrongly believe that if they hire a band and rent the hall then the Spirit of God is obliged to show up. But, when it comes to working for visible unity in the church, it seems the much better part is not found in the Gnostic reflex of separatists, but in the ongoing work of setting up tents for the revival.
