REVIVAL PHENOMENON

REVIVAL PHENOMENON
A phenomenon is a special experience or event or even a miracle that takes place in the life of a person.
Some people talk about a salvation phenomenon and other people actually experience salvation’s miracle.
Many folks observe this miracle of salvation, in the life of friends and others and desire it for themselves.
Some come to that place whereby they too receive God’s gift and some never come to that place though they are truly interested.
In this message, “Revival Phenomenon’s” we will look at three thoughts:
I – A SALVATION EXAMPLE
II – A SALVATION EXPLAINED
III – A SALVATION EXPERIENCE

I – A SALVATION EXAMPLE
Acts 9:1 1 And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest,
2 And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.
3 And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:
4 And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?
5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
6 And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.
In this story, Saul, a Roman citizen and a very religious Jew, had a great hatred for Christianity. Whereas many people just ignore the facts of Christianity, hoping it will go away; Saul made it his life’s ambition to wipe it off the face of the earth.
He may have been the instigator of those who stoned Stephen to death in Acts 6-7. But, something phenomenal happens to Saul. He experiences a meeting with Jesus Christ.
In this salvation example, there is a confrontation, a conviction, a conversion and a commitment.
Saul is simply doing what he does every day and Jesus revealed Himself to Saul. Saul is convicted and literally knocked off his horse.
Saul inquires who this person is he is speaking with and the Lord Jesus reveals to Saul that it is He. This event of Saul’s conversion may have transpired over an hour or more. Saul surrenders his life to Christ and commits his life to the Lord. He says, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” This is a simple example of salvation.

II – A SALVATION EXPLAINED
Though the plan of salvation may be explained many times to a person, not until the Holy Spirit convicts a person and the light of God is revealed in their hearts, with a understanding of surrender and commitment to Christ, can a person be saved.
1) When God created man, He created man for fellowship, but man sinned in the Garden of Eden and that fellowship was broken. Throughout the Old Testament, God revealed how He would save man from his sins by the sacrifice of a lamb. That Lamb would come one day. He would be the Lord Jesus Christ.
2) Jesus came and died on Calvary to pay for the sins of man, for everybody in the world is guilty of sin.
The Jews had a very difficult time admitting that they were sinners. They believed they were good enough to get to heaven just like they were, wrapped in their religious clothing and good works.
A person must recognize and admit to Jesus Christ that he is a sinner, before salvation. Romans 3:23 reads, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
3) The law is a schoolmaster that reveals our lost condition before God. Anyone who reads the Bible, realizes, “I am lost. I cannot obtain heaven by my good works or religion.”
That lost condition reveals to our heart and mind that our sins have separated us from God. Romans 6:23 reads, “The wages of sin is death.” Death is a separation from God. It means a person will die physically and spiritually.
Physical death is heart wrenching, but spiritual death is horrifying. It is called the second death in Revelation 20:14-15. It is a horrible truth that a person will die and spend a billion years in a lake of fire, and that eternity of separation and suffering will just be starting.
Summarize this: Our sins separated us from God and nailed Jesus to the cross. Our payment is eternal death in hell forever.
4) In order for a person to escape God’s judgment, a person must receive God’s grace.
Grace is seen in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus left heaven and came to earth. He had to be born of a virgin to be our “kinsman redeemer.” He had to be kin to us.
He taught the people the ways of life and proved to the world He was the Christ by His many miracles and sings. Then He gave His life on Calvary for the sins of the world.
In order for man’s sins to be paid for there had to be a perfect, sinless, human sacrifice. All men are sinners except one, Jesus Christ. He died for man’s sins, was buried and rose again and lives forever more (I Corinthians 15:1-4, Ephesians 2:1-10).
5) Now, when a person sees and understands God’s magnificent love and under the 1) conviction of the Spirit realizes that his sins separation him from God and crucified Christ, that person begins a journey towards salvation.
Now, by faith, that person repents and 2) commits their lives to Christ or as John said 63 times, that person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is then 3) converted and his life is 4) changed. (Converted speaks of a barren field becoming a fruitful field.)
Paul said, “If we believe that Jesus died for us and was buried and rose again, and we trust Him as our savior, we will then openly and willingly 5) confess Him before others (Romans 10:8-11).
When a person understands all of that, they naturally, 6) “Call upon the Lord for salvation.” Romans 10:13 reads, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Do you understand salvation? Have you ever called on the Lord or cried out to Him to forgive you for your sins and ask Him to save your soul, with the unashamed confidence of confessing Him to others.
1) Have you ever under the conviction of God’s Spirit, saw yourself as a sinner?
2) Did you realize that being a sinner would separation you from God for all eternity? The labor pains of death, the burning pain of fire will part of that eternity.
3) Did you realize that Jesus paid for your sins when He gave His life on Calvary?
4) Was there a vivid time in your mind, a vivid time, not a cloudy, dusty time, but a time when you clearly remember the precious conviction of the Holy Spirit? And at that time, you willingly yield your life completely to Jesus Christ?
If not, don’t let Satan’s many religious ideas, or your pride take you to hell, when Jesus wants to take you to heaven.

One of the tragedies of today, is we have never had more church membership, more means of publicity, and more money to do what we want in our churches and we have never had more wickedness as we do today in our churches.
I don’t get excited over 100 million people in America professing church membership. I don’t get excited over 45 million people professing to be born again.
The FBI couldn’t find most of them on Sunday morning, much less Sunday, night, Prayer night and at revival meetings.

Way back before most of you were born, in 1954, the big quest of the Southern Baptist Church was “A million more in 54.” One preacher back then, 54 years ago, said, “If we get a million more like some we already got we are sunk.”
We’ve increased the sizes of most churches but we decreased the salt.
We have more love, or so we say, but we have less light.
Another preacher said, “The trouble with us Baptist is we are many but we aren’t much.”
Do you realize 20% of the members of most Baptist churches can’t be found?
Another 20% never attend church. 50% haven’t been to the altar to pray in years and another 50% never give a testimony.

Don’t you think it is strange to recruit new members when the crowd we have won’t come out and stand up to practice their faith?
Most new converts have to backslide to fit into most churches.

We need to take inventory.
Vance Havner said, “I believe it is time to give up preaching to the ungodly and preach to Christians to get right with God.
Jesus said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.” Christians we aren’t doing a very good job lifting up Jesus.
How do we lift Him up? We lift Him up in our hearts and then in worship. Then we lift Him up in our lives and lastly, our lips.

One preacher said, “I would rather wake up a sleeping church than arouse a sleeping world.”
Do you know what that means? It means if we get people saved out of the wicked world and bring them into a church that is not much different then the world, then it won’t be long before the new Christians would say, “Why go to church?” My worldly friend cuss, drink and partied, and so do these folks, so why go to church? That must not be!

III – A SALVATION EXPERIENCE
THE SALVATION OF A GYPSY
Rodney (Gypsy) Smith was born in 1860, in a gypsy’s tent, raised on a gypsy’s camp and never attended a day of school! Yet he influenced the lives of millions of people for God through his powerful preaching. How could that be when ninety-nine percent of Gypsies could not read, nor did he own a Bible?
Rodney (Gypsy) Smith’s father was named Cornelius Smith and his mother was Mary.
Cornelius Smith and his wife, Mary, were gypsies during the 1800’s when 25,000 gypsies roamed England. They lived in their gypsies wagons and sold their gypsies goods.
Gypsy Smith was the fourth of five living children. He was saved out of a life of coning and fraud and deception.
He said “God called me to preach to the church to get right with God.”
Gypsy Smith wrote a book and told of the family life of gypsies in the 1800’s. I read the book this pass week. Listen to some interesting facts.
As I read, I was amazed at how close the family life and love life was in the life of gypsies.
-- He told that when couples courted, they did so only in the day light hours and in sight and earshot of their parents.
He told of their virtue and how they valued being virgins when they married. He told of the close relationship of couples.
-- They made most of what they sold by hand; working diligently many hours a day, except for Sunday. Though they could not read, nor owned a Bible, nor attended church, Sunday was a day of rest.
I want you to see how God’s spirit confronts, convicts, converts and changes Gypsy’s Smith’s family.
Mary, Rodney’s mother, had five children and was expecting the sixth, when two of her children came down with small pox. Cornelius, Rodney’s dad, set up tent for the family to live in, while he move the trailer or van down the road a tenth of a mile to care for his two sick children.
He hoped his wife would not take sick, for she was expecting. Mary would make meals and take them half way to the trailer and lay them on the ground and head back to the tent. Cornelius would then come and get the meals for him and children.
But, as the long days and weeks past, Mary began to edge closer and closer to the trailer. Then, she contacted small pox. Now, Cornelius had to take care of his expecting wife and two children. The baby was born, but left Mary to weak to live.
Listen to Gypsy’s words, “Mother knew she was dying. Our hands were stretched out to hold her, but they were not strong enough. Other hands, omnipotent and eternal, were taking her from us.”
“Father seemed to realize, too, that she was going. He sat beside her one day and asked her if she thought of God. For the poor gypsies believe in God, and believe that He is good and merciful. And she said, "Yes, I believe in God."
My dad asked her, "Do you try to pray, my dear?" She said, "Yes, I am trying, and while I am trying to pray it seems as though a black hand comes before me and shows me all that I have done, and something whispers, 'There is no mercy for you!'"
Gypsy said, but my father, who was not a believer, had great assurance that God would forgive her, and he told her about Christ and asked her to look to Him. He told her how Christ died for sinners and that He was the Savior of the world.
My father had learned those truths when he was in prison for three months. He believed the Bible and the preacher’s words, but had never accepted Christ as his own.
He tried to teach my mother, what he learned in prison. After my father had told her all he knew of the Gospel she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Then he went outside, stood behind the wagon, and wept bitterly.
When he went back again to see her she looked calmly into his face, and said with a smile: "I want you to promise me one thing. Will you be a good father to my children?" He promised her that he would; and again he went outside and wept, and while he was weeping he heard her sing:
"I have a Father in the promised land. My God calls me, I must go, To meet Him in the promised land."
My father went back to her and said: "Polly, my dear, where did you learn that song?"
She said: "Cornelius, I heard it when I was a little girl. One Sunday my father's tents were pitched on a village green, and seeing the young people and others going into a little church, I followed them in and they sang those words." That was twenty years earlier.
My mother could not read the Bible, but in her dying moments, the words of that song and the witness of her lost husband, allowed God to shine His light in her heart and my mother trusted in God’s amazing grace.
In her dying moments she sang the song again and again. "I have a Father in the promised land. My God calls me, I must go, To meet Him in the promised land."
Turning to my father, she said, "I am not afraid to die now. I feel that it will be all right.
When Monday morning dawned suddenly I heard my name called: "Rodney!" and running to see what I was wanted for, I encountered my sister Emily. She had crawled out of bed, for bed could not hold her that morning, and she said to me, "Rodney, mother's dead!"
I remember falling on my face in the dirt as though I had been shot, and weeping my heart out and saying to myself, "I shall never be like other boys, for I have no mother!"
At the time of my mother's death, my father was under deep conviction, but there was no light. He could not read, nor could any of his friends read, and there was no one to whom he could go for instruction and guidance.
All this time, to erase the conviction of God’s Spirit, my father was living a life of fiddling and drinking and sinning. He was under the deepest conviction.
He always said his prayers night and morning, and asked God to give him power over drink, but every time temptation came his way he fell before it. He was like the chaff driven before the wind.
His sister and her husband, who had no children, came to travel with us. She had learned to read a little. She could struggle her way through a little of the New Testament, and used to read to my father about the sufferings of Christ and His death upon the tree for sinful men.
She told my father it was the sins of the people which nailed Him there, and my father often felt in his heart that he was one of them.
I have seen father when we children were in bed at night, and supposed to be asleep, sitting over the fire with tears falling like ripples in mountain streams as he talked to himself about mother and his promise to her to be good.
He would say to himself aloud, "I do not know how to be good," and laying his hand upon his heart he would say, "I wonder when I shall get this burden removed?"
We lay awake listening, not daring to speak, and shed bitter tears. Many a time I have said the next morning to my sisters and my brother, "We have no mother and we shall soon have no father." We thought he was going out of his mind. We did not understand the conviction of sin. It was all quite foreign to us.
One day we saw two gipsy wagons coming towards us and when they got near we discovered to our great delight that they belonged to dad’s brothers Woodlock and Bartholomew.
They fell on each other's necks and wept. As they talked my father told them of his great loss, and they tried to sympathize with him.
Cornelius said, "Brothers, I have a great burden that I must get removed. A hunger is gnawing at my heart; I can not eat, drink, or sleep. If I do not get this burden satisfied I shall die!"
And then the brothers said, "Cornelius, we feel just the same. We have talked about this to each other for weeks."
Though these three men had been far apart, yet, God had been dealing with them at the same time and in the same way.
These men were all hungry for the truth. They could not read and so knew nothing of the Bible. They had never been taught, and they knew very little of Jesus Christ.
As the brothers talked they felt how sweet it would be to go to God's house and learn of Him, for they had all got tired of their roaming life. My father was on the way to London, and fully resolved to go to a church and find out what it was his soul needed.
His two brothers said, “We will go as well.” When they arrived, they parked their wagons next to a beer-shop. They went in and told the lady inside how God was dealing with them and ask if she knew of a place they could go to get help.
God had been dealing with the landlady of this beer-house as well. When the brothers spoke to her she began to weep, and said, "I am in the same condition as you. I have a book upstairs that will just help you, for it makes me cry every time I read it."

The book was “Pilgrims Progress.” As my dad and two brothers sat in the street, not able to read the book, a young man came by and offered to read from the book to them.
When he got to the point where Pilgrim's burden of sin drops off as he looks at the cross, Bartholomew rose from his seat by the wayside and excitedly walking up and down, and cried, "That is what I want. I want my burden removed. If God does not save me I shall die!"
All the brothers at that moment felt the conviction of sin, and wept like little children, but still were not saved.
On the following Sunday the three brothers went to a Methodist Chapel, three times. In the evening the Rev. Henry Gunns preached.
Speaking of that service, Cornelius says: "His points were very cutting to my soul. He seemed to aim directly at me. I tried to hide myself behind a pillar in the chapel, but he, looking and pointing in that direction, said, "He died for thee!" People were invited forward to receive Christ, and in the prayer time and invitation, the preacher came to where I was sitting and asked me if I was saved.
I cried out, "No; but that is what I want." The preacher tried to show me that Christ had paid my debt, but the enemy of souls had blinded my eyes. Instead of receiving Christ by faith I went from that house of prayer still a convicted sinner, but not a converted one."

We now resumed our way to London, my father put his horse in somebody's field, intending, of course, to avoid detection of this wrongdoing by coming for it early in the morning.
That night he dreamed a dream. In the dream he was traveling through a rugged country over rocks and boulders, thorns and briars. His hands were bleeding and his feet torn. Utterly exhausted and worn out, he fell to the ground.
A person, then, in white raiment appeared to him, and as this person lifted up his hands my father saw the mark of the nails, and then he knew it was the Lord. The figure in white said to my father, showing him His hands, "I suffered this for you, and when you give up all and trust Me I will save you." Then my father awoke.
The following morning, when he went to fetch his horses his tender conscience told him very clearly and very pointedly that he had done wrong. As he removed the horses from the field and closed the gate he resolved "That shall be the last known sin I will ever willfully commit."

My father was now terribly convicted. He told all the other gypsies that he was through with his roaming and wrong doings, and that he meant to turn to God.
They looked at him and wept. My father sold his horses, being determined not to move from that place until he had found the way to God.
Says my father "I meant to find Christ if He was to be found. I could think of nothing else but Him. I believed His blood was shed for me, but I was not saved."

Then my father prayed that God would direct him to some place where he might learn the way to heaven, and prayed as he went. One morning he went out searching as usual for the way to God. He met a kind man mending the road, and began to talk with him.
As God would have it, the man was a Christian, and said to my father, "I know what you want; you want to be converted." "I do not know anything about that," said my father, "but I want Christ, and I am resolved to find Him."
"Well," said the working-man "there is a meeting tonight. I shall come for you and take you there."
In the evening before leaving, my father said to us, "Children, I shall not come home again until I am converted," and I shouted to him, "Daddy, who is he?" I did not know who this converted, guy was.
I thought my father was losing his mind, and resolved to follow him. The Mission Hall was crowded and everyone was singing. My father marched right up to the front, boldly.
The people were singing the well-known hymn – "There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Emmanuel's veins, And sinners, plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains."
The refrain was, "I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me." "I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me."
Conviction fell on my father and in the agony of his soul he fell on the floor weeping and praying and calling out to God.
Then he lay there on the floor for half an hour, without moving. I was in great distress, and thought my father was dead, and shouted out, "Oh dear, our father is dead!"
But presently he came to himself, stood up and, leaping joyfully, exclaimed, "I am converted!" He walked about the hall looking at his flesh. He said, it did not seem to be all quite the same color to him and shouted that his burden was gone.
When my father got home to the wagon that night he gathered us all around him. I saw at once that the old haggard look that his face had worn for years was now gone, and, indeed, it was gone for ever.
Father sat down in the wagon, as tender and gentle as a little child. He called his motherless children to him one by one, beginning with the youngest, my sister Tilly.
"Do not be afraid of me, my dears. God has sent home your father a new creature and a new man."
He put his arms as far round the five of us as they would go, kissing us all, and before we could understand what had happened he fell on his knees and began to pray.
Never will my brother, sisters, and I forget that first prayer. I still feel its sacred influence on my heart and soul till this day.

There was no sleep for any of us that night for Father was singing, "I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me," and we soon learned the song too.
Morning, when it dawned, found my father full of this new life and this new joy. He again prayed with his children, asking God to save them, and while he was praying God told him he must go to the other gypsies that were encamped on the same piece of land.
That day my father went to about twenty families. When dad finished, thirteen gypsies professed to find Christ that morning as their Savior.

Many people know of God’s salvation experience. Many have had it explained time and time again.
Many folks have felt God’s conviction time and time again, and could see the light beyond the door of repentance, but never opened that door.
My question for you this morning is this: “Can you give a personal example of what God has done in your life?”
Could you stand today and tell of the day of your confrontation with Christ?
Can you tell of that conviction, that conversion, that commitment and that change when you willingly and joyfully called on the Lord to be your savior?
Gypsy Smiths’ testifies of the change in his father and brothers all the days of their lives after they were converted.