Why Revival Tarries – Chapter 3

Ravenhill starts this third chapter discussing two indispensable factors for successful christian living, vision and passion.  Men battle human carnal criticism and storm the heights of devilish opposition to spread the Gospel in places where the good news has never been proclaimed.  Why?  Because they have caught a vision and contracted a passion.

He then goes on to spend the majority of the third chapter talking of Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah chapter 6.  He states that his vision is three dimensional:

It was an upward vision – he saw the Lord; an inward vision – he saw himself; and an outward vision – he saw the world.

It was a vision of height – he saw the Lord high and lifted up.  A vision of depth – he saw the recess of his own heart.  And a vision of breadth – he saw the world.

A vision of holiness.  A vision of hellishness.  And a vision of hopelessness.

Oh that the church would grasp this, he throws out many statistics in order to stir up passion for the gospel in our heart, one of which is heart breaking and breath taking, he says almost a million people in the world die each week, most without Christ.  Is this nothing to you? Were you blown away when I stated that there are so many who die each week who have never heard of Christ, if you weren’t, you need to repent and cry out to the Lord to give you a heart for the Lost.  May we be a people, a church who desires that the name and fame of Jesus be spread to every tribe, every tongue, every nation, every where, because He is worthy to be praised by all!

He closes the chapter with a story, I want to quote it and I pray that the Lord would use it to spread a passion in your heart, remember brothers, we are not professionals!

Charlie Peace was a criminal.  Laws of God or man curbed him not.  Finally the law caught up with him, and he was condemned to death.  On the fatal morning in armley jail, Leeds, England, he was taken on the death walk.  Before him went the prison chaplain, routinely and sleepily reading some Bible verses.  The criminal touched the preacher and asked what he was reading.  The Consolation of Religion, was the reply.  Charlie Peace was shocked at the way he professionally read about hell.  Could a man be so unmoved under the very shadow of the scaffold as to lead a fellow human there and yet, dry-eyed, read of a pit that has no bottom into which this fellow must fall?  Could this preacher believe the words that there is an eternal fire that never consumes its victims, and yet slide over the phrase without a tremor?  Is a man human at all who can say with no tears, You will be eternally dying and yet never know the relief that death brings?  All this was too much for charlie Peace.  So he preached.  Listen to his on the eye of hell sermon.

Sir, addressing the preacher, if I believed what you and the church say that you believe, even if England were covered with broken glass from coast to coast, I would walk over it, if need be, on hands and knees and think it worth while living, just to save one soul from an eternal hell like that!

Brothers and sisters, where is our passion?  How can we read over these things flippantly, how can we read of the garden of Gethsemane and the Crucifixion of our Lord with dry eyes.  Oh Spirit come and move our hearts to not take lightly these things, come and stir up affections in our hearts for Jesus, please give us a passion for Your Glory and Your Name.  Please let us truly see that everything really comes down to this;  knowing You and making You known!  Forgive us for our lack of passion in evangelism, forgive us for focusing our attention on ourselves, and forgive us for being hearers of your Word only and not doers.

You have had much grace on me and for that I am thankful, please stir up a passion in my life to boldly proclaim the Gospel of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ!  Stir up a passion in the readers for the same, let us be a people who weep for those that don’t know you and who live lives worthy of the Gospel until you come or until we go home to be with You.