April 10, 2025 Show with Claude Ramsey on “The Significance of Revival in the Church”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors and Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions.

And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon, Cumberland.

County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 10th day of April 2025.

I am thrilled to have a returning guest today who has become a very dear friend of mine. I have said in all honesty without fear of being guilty of sinful flattery, exaggeration, or hyperbole that he is one of the most humble servants of Christ I have ever met.

He's also one of the most powerful preachers of the gospel I've ever heard, and I really look forward to our conversation today. And this brother in Christ's name is Claude Ramsey. He is the pastor of Reformata Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and he is a highly sought-after conference speaker, and he is the host of the Here I Stand Theology podcast, and today we are going to be discussing the significance of revival in the church, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Claude.

Ramsey. Mr. Arnzen, it's my privilege to be here with you. Thank you again for.

Letting me be back. Well, why don't you let our listeners know something about Reformata Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tennessee. All right, so we are a Reformed.

Baptist Church here in Knoxville, Tennessee. South Knoxville area would be the actual direct location. The church, we planted the church back in 2009, so I think we're coming up on year 16. We'll be celebrating year 16 in May of this year, and it's just been a, it has been a blessing.

Not to say that it's not been without its ups and downs and many nights in tears and being broke down, but it has been certainly worth it to see God's people grow and to grow in the.

Grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen, and as I said, Pastor Claude is one of the most powerful preachers I've ever heard, so I highly recommend, if you ever find yourself traveling through Knoxville or South Knoxville or live in that area, to pay a visit to this fine congregation, and the website is ReformataBaptistChurch .org.

That's R-E-F-O-R-M-A-T-A BaptistChurch .org. Now tell us about the two upcoming conferences that you have, that you are participating in, one of them being the Laborers Conference and the other being the Grace and Truth Conference.

Absolutely. So the Laborers.

Conference is actually coming up the 24th through the 27th of this month. It's going to be in Newton, North Carolina. You can go to LaborersConference .org, I think, and still register. It's an absolutely free conference.

And what the Laborers are, who the Laborers are, basically, Robert Knapp kind of founded and heads up the Truth and Love Network of which the Laborers are a part of, but the Laborers are a Thursday night kind of a podcast get-together of folks from Miami, from North Carolina.

There's actually a gentleman now that Rob has recruited to be a part of the Truth and Love Network in Austria, so the reach is expanding to a great deal. But it's basically just a bunch of brothers in Christ from different denominations.

I mean, we've got, I don't know if there's any Methodists in the group, but there are Presbyterians, there are Pentecostals, you know, there are Reformed folks, there are non-denominational folks. There's all kinds of folks, and really the goal is every other week now when the Laborers are on.

It's on Facebook at 8 o 'clock every Thursday and on YouTube as well. But we just kind of get together to demonstrate to the world that you can have agreements with your brothers or disagreements with your brothers in Christ, and you don't have to go away from the table hating them when it's all said and done.

Yeah, and that goes on a.

Lot, and sometimes the hatred burns the hottest when it's people who are very close in many areas, but they disagree on one thing. That seems to be when the.

Disagreements are more heated than any other time. Absolutely. And then, of course, there is the Grace and Truth Conference. That, again, is in, I think it's Longview, Texas. If you could look at the dates there, I think August 27th through the 30th, is that.

Right? I see August 27th as being the first day, at least. It's the one that's right there on the... Oh, here it is. Yeah, August 27th through the 30th.

You're right. Yeah, and I just got the privilege to, actually, just to be completely transparent. I mean, there's some, as you can, as you're looking at it there, if anybody goes to the Grace and Truth Conference site at Eventbrite .com, I think is where it is.

But there are some good preachers and some good men of God there. When Mark Goodson contacted me last year and asked me, did I want to come and be a part of this and preach at this, I was like, I literally said, he texted me, and I said, are you kidding me?

Because I thought, there's no way that I need to be in with these men. These men are smart, are bright, are intelligent, are good preachers of the gospel, and certainly, I'll just be like the third wheel there.

But nonetheless, I was invited, and I counted a great privilege in any opportunity that we get to stand and.

Proclaim the gospel, I'm gonna take that. Yes, well, I see that men that I have had on this program are on the roster with you. Brian Gunter's been on the show, Greg Mooring Jr. has been on the show, Kevin Hay has been on the show, Jacob Tanner, John Speed, Kofi Adubohan, Brennan Scalf, I've made several attempts to invite on the show, and something always came up.

And there may be others, but I can't see this entire list of the speakers. But that sounds like a great event, and I have an Even Bright website. Do you have anything more direct that isn't as complicated for people to remember?

I don't, I don't. If you just.

Google Truth and Grace, or Grace and Truth Conference 2025, there's going to be. Actually, I think there's two going on in 2025 with that title, but this is the one that we're part of, the one on the eventbright .com page.

Okay,.

Great. Well, I hope that many of you attend either or both of these events. And I just got word, one of the reasons I started to get distracted here, just this second, got an email from my dear friend and sponsor, Pike Lambeth of the New American Standard Bible Publishers, that he is shipping out free Bibles to the next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon.

That's going to be held on Thursday, May 1st, at the Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, featuring, for the very first time, Dr. Jason Lyle as our keynote speaker. He is a Christian astrophysicist and a young earth creationist, and that is something that brings joy to my heart, because it seems that there are very few Christian scientists, and I don't mean Christian scientists as in the cult, I mean scientists who are Christians.

There seems to be very few that are young earth creationists, and he is a thoroughgoing, literal six-day young earth creationist. And he is our speaker 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., and not only is the admission free and your lunch free, but every man who is attending will receive free brand new books personally selected by me and donated by Christian publishers all over the United States and United Kingdom.

And Dr. Lyle will have his own booth of free books there as well. So if you'd like to register, if you're a man in ministry leadership, just send me an email to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line and give me your full name, the name of the church you represent, and its location, and the number of men who will be joining you. That's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Well, we are discussing an issue that is a very important issue today. We try to always discuss important issues on Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, but this is certainly one of those that is extremely important, and it's actually an issue over which men in the body of Christ have disagreed for centuries.

It is the issue of revival, and today we are going to be specifically addressing the significance of revival in the church. And if you'd like to join the conversation with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you have a disagreement with your own church. You have a disagreement on their approach to revival, and that would be an obvious reason you'd want to remain anonymous. You might even be the pastor of a church, and you disagree with your fellow elders or your denomination on the subject of revival.

Well, those would be areas, and I'm sure there's others, where you would be compelled to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question from the Scriptures and from history, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Defining Revival and Distinguishing It from Revivalism

Well, it would probably be very wise for us to start with a definition of revival. All right, so for that, I would like to.

Actually, before the story, share, or before the definition, if I could, just share a preacher's story. Now, a preacher's story is a story, just to preface this, it's a story that isn't necessarily factual, but it conveys a point.

So this story, really, I wanted to kind of start with concerning revival was, you know, the story is told about a young man just newly called in in the ministry. He's on fire for God. He gets called to this little bitty country church.

You know, there probably ain't but, like, ten members at the church, and it's way out in the country. And there's a gentleman from the church that passes away, and he's required to preach this man's funeral.

Of course, he don't know him. He don't really know his surroundings real well yet either. And he gets directions to this little cemetery way out in the country. And he goes, he shows up to the graveside.

The folks in the backhoe are still sitting there. They've just dug the hole, and they're sitting there eating their lunch, but nobody else is there. And this young man gets out, and he just kind of looks around wondering, you know, if anybody else is going to come.

He knows he's supposed to start at a specific time. And the time comes, and he just determines, well, there's two souls here for me to preach the gospel to, so I'm just going to rear back and give them what the Lord's put on my heart.

And he rears back, and he preaches for an hour. He preaches from Genesis to Revelation. I mean, he lays it all out on the line, proclaims the gospel full force. When he gets finished preaching the gospel, he says the prayers, the amen is said.

He looks over to those two fellows sitting on the backhoe. He says, now, what do you all think about that? The two fellows look at him, and they just shake their head. And the one man looks to him, and he says, sir, he said, I got to tell you something.

He said, we've been putting in septic tanks for 25 years. I've never.

Seen nothing like that. Well, let me, since you've told the joke about a burial, let me tell you one. All right, go right ahead. A groundskeeper in a cemetery notices this man who has been coming into the cemetery every day at the same time, five o 'clock sharp, every day.

And he is kneeling in front of a tombstone, and he is crying his guts out. And he keeps crying out at the top of his lungs, why did you have to die? Why, why, why, why did you have to die? And then finally, after days of witnessing this, the groundskeeper works up the courage to approach the man, and he gently puts his hand on the man's shoulder and says, sir, please forgive me for intruding on this very private and intimate moment of deep grief.

But I've been working in this cemetery for 35 years, and I've never seen anyone mourn as deeply as you are mourning. May I ask, is this the grave of your wife? And the man says, no, it's the grave of her first husband.

Why did you have to die? Why, why? By the way, for those of you who can't hear, Pastor Claude is laughing hysterically. It's one of those silent laughs. But anyway, continue with our definition of revival.

Oh, goodness. So time and circumstance are important when it comes to revival, and I want to make it, I'd like to make it known, too, that what we're talking about, we've, you know, we essentially kind of, our layout, we're going to look at what is revival, why we need revival, what revival is not.

So more improperly, maybe what revival ain't. Number four, why the church needs revival. And basically going through those four to five points to really get our head around what revival is. And I would say in short, revival is truly a move of the Spirit of God when God chooses to make His, to move and to change hearts and change minds.

So, and I know that you had mentioned earlier, Chris, that revival is a highly debated topic in Christian circles. And I think a lot of times that tends to lean toward the challenge of the idea of revivalism, maybe versus actual revival.

By the way,.

Have you read that wonderful book by Ian Murray, Revival and Revivalism? I haven't.

I've read the Puritan Hope, but I haven't read that book yet. Oh, you've got to get.

It. It's been out for probably at least 20 years or more. I'll put that on my list. That's a Banner of Truth book, and he, in fact, I had the very great honor and privilege of hearing Dr. Murray speak on the subject of his book years ago at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, where I used to be a member before moving to Pennsylvania.

And he conducted a three-day conference on revival and revivalism, and he was comparing in the book and at the conference the evangelistic ministries of two men from history who were very, very different.

One was Asahel Nettleton, who was biblically Orthodox and was on the side of the issue that was the true and genuine side of revival, and a false teacher, Charles Finney, who was a false teacher and a heretic.

And yet, Finney, unfortunately and tragically, is far more well-known today in the body of Christ and is usually, outside of Reformed circles especially, exalted as a great hero of the church. Yeah, isn't he referred to as the father of revivalism?

He could be. I haven't heard that specific phrase, but who knows, maybe Ian has it in his book, and it's been so many years since I read it. I don't remember that, but it's amazing how even independent fundamentalist Baptists, who rightly despise Roman Catholicism, exalt Charles Finney as one of their heroes, when Finney was more of a Pelagian than the Roman Catholics are.

Yes, sir. It makes no sense that they—it must be because most of them have never read a word of Finney. Absolutely, or not.

Read anything else about him. They just read the name and they go on with it.

Yes, and that reminds me, for those of you listening who want to find out a lot about Charles Finney, you can go to my website, irontreppanziromradio .com, type in Finney, F-I-N-N-E-Y, in the search engine, and at least one interview will come up, and the one I'm speaking of specifically is my interview with Jerry Johnson, an apologist and documentarian, and we are discussing a documentary that he created about Charles Finney, exposing the heresies of Finney, so I think that you will be highly educated by that.

But if you could continue—sorry, I keep.

Interrupting you, brother. No, that's okay. I'm enjoying this. I'm enjoying this, and again, I appreciate the book recommendation. I'll get on Amazon when we're done and order that, and go to the site and bookmark that.

Do me a favor, order it.

From cvbbs .com, since they're sponsoring the show. Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Yeah. Yes, it's a Banner of Truth book, and if they don't have it in stock, they can instantly get it, because Banner of Truth is only five minutes away from cvbbs, so order it from cvbbs .com if you could, and make sure you mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and you will get an additional discount.

Wonderful. So, concerning revival, I know revival isn't a New Testament word, for sure, but I would say this, like the doctrine of the Trinity, revival is a conceptual truth found in the Bible. I mean, for example, if we were just to skim through just a few texts very briefly, in Ezra chapter 9, we find it when the children of Israel had returned from Babylon, and after they finally get the temple rebuilt, it's like 60 years, Ezra shows up after that, and you know, some things really begin to go down, and in Ezra chapter 9, verse 8 and 9, the Bible says, but now for a brief moment, favor has been shown by the Lord our God to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place.

Now, I know the King James says a nail in his holy place, but he goes on to say this, that our God may brighten our eyes, and that he may grant us a little reviving in our slavery, for we are slaves, yet our God is not forsaken us in our slavery, but he's extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God and to repair its ruins.

So in the Old Testament, we see that word reviving used, and we understand the concept of that, and it's a restoration of strength, and really we're just coming off a maybe a little over about a year and a half series at the church through the book of Ezra, in which we looked at the book of Haggai and Zechariah as well, because this reviving that God brings about to the children of Israel during the time of rebuilding the temple is brought about by the preaching of God's Word to them.

It's a proclamation of God's Word. Another place we find in Psalm 19 7, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul, or converting the soul, bringing life to the soul. So conceptually, we see revival in the New Testament.

We see it in the New Testament in Paul's communications with Timothy. In one of Paul's letters to Timothy, he actually says, you are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phagellus and Hermogenes, and Paul says, may the Lord grant mercy to the household that loathes us, for he oft refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains.

But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly, and he found me. And Paul says, may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day. And you well know all the service that he rendered to us at Ephesus.

So Paul is speaking about a refreshing, a reviving, if you would, a restoration, a renewal within the spirit and within the heart and the minds of God's people. So if I were to just make a plain statement, I'm just talking about a plain Bologna and Jesus statement, it would be this, that I would define revival as a stirring of God's people by God's Holy Spirit, and that stirring of God's people by God's Holy Spirit would be to a deeper love for him and a greater desire for sanctification and holiness.

I think that's important when we consider revival that we understand that, of course, revival is for the church, and the purpose of revival is to increase our conscious awareness of the person, the character, and the nature of God, of the fact that he is holy.

And when we consider that, and when we consider his holiness and just the magnitude of who he is, to think this, that God loves me, I mean, that is an incredible thought when we think about it, Mr. Arnson.

I mean, amazing. So revival is God's Spirit working in the Christian man, in the Christian woman, in the Christian boy, and in the Christian girl to compel us, to drive us to a greater love for God, and that produces, I think, a greater sanctification in.

The lives of believers. Well, we have to go to our first commercial break, and if you have a question, send an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence, and we're going to now hear from some messages from our sponsors, including one of our latest sponsors, and one of our largest sponsors, Lebanon.

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That's royaldiadem .com. Don't forget to mention Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. We're now back with Pastor Claude Ramsey of Reformation Baptist Church in South Knoxville, Tennessee, and we are discussing the significance of revival in the church, and we do have some questions, but I wanted you to give an overview of what you said earlier about a definition of revival, and then move on to why we need revival today, and then.

We'll take some questions. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I would, again, I would succinctly summarize it, as I mentioned earlier, maybe just to tweak the phrase a little bit, but it is a stirring. It is a moving of the Holy Spirit of God in the hearts and the minds of His people, and as I was thinking about this, this is just how I think, but I think a lot of times when I consider revival in my heart, in my mind, to consider what it is and what it looks like and so on and so forth, I think about the power of the Spirit in revival as being like watching kind of like a time-lapse.

If you're listening and you've ever watched a time-lapse video of anything, of the sun going down or the sun coming up, or of flowers blooming particularly, I mean, I see revival in that way, in that, I guess, in that mode of visualization where the leaves and the petals of sin are shed from the believer, and the beauty of the flower of the gospel is made manifest in our lives.

Speaking of stirring, I think it was Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon who said, there are, is such thing as good stirs, stirs for the better, stirs which help us to remove the evil consequences of stagnation, and there are at certain times, as Spurgeon said, there are at certain times blessed blowings, and I love how Mr. Arnson, how he puts this, there are blessed blowings of the sacred wind from heaven through the garden of mankind.

Edwards, I think, referred to revival as being a surprising work of God, or we might refer to him again in another way, as Edwards said, a special work of the Spirit of God, and one more important note on this point is that revival, I think it's very significant that we say this, revival is a secondary event in the life of the Christian.

Revival is not to be confused with regeneration, so what I mean and what I intend to say is that everyone needs to understand that revival doesn't happen first, but regeneration happens first. You must be born again.

That's what the scriptures tell us, because with the new birth comes new life, and revival, just by function of the word and the prefix, means to do again, so before you can be revived, you must first be vived, so to speak, if you get what I mean there, and revival is a renewing or a restoring, if you would have it, of the life that has been given to us by God.

Another term that we could use here would be refreshed. All right,.

Let me ask you a question in relation to what you've said. We have many Pentecostal and Charismatic brethren who would not disagree with a single word you said, and yet there can be, not always, but there can be a very serious distinction between what you and I and our fellow Reformed brethren would expect to see in genuine revival and what they would expect to see and claim to have seen.

There have been things called revivals, even within our lifetime, that have been driven by Charismatics and Pentecostals, where some very bizarre and even heretical and even blasphemous things have occurred, and yet the advocates of these events—sometimes the advocates are surprisingly from among us in the Reformed faith, who are looking at those things from the outside and still giving them a seal of approval, which amazes me—but in spite of these very bizarre events, they will be claimed as genuine revival because people's lives have changed, at least according to the reports of many people.

Whether they're truthful or exaggerated or false, I don't know, but I have heard, you know, there have been people who have come to repentance and faith during these seasons of so-called revival, people who have radically changed in their lifestyles, people who just seem like a night and day change, where it really seems that the people, according to the accounts of advocates, are new creations or recommitted believers who are more on fire in a genuine sense of on fire than ever before.

So how do you respond to that? So, to what you were.

Talking about there, even revivals of our day, I think probably the most recent and most publicly talked about quote-unquote revival in the recent years would be maybe the Asbury Revival that went on, and that, you know, they had, you know, everybody coming in from out of state, people were lining up to get in the chapel and doing all these things.

Are you talking about the recent one?

Because there was obviously an Asbury Revival so-called a century or so ago.

Oh, no, I'm talking about the recent one. Okay. Yeah, and I can't remember exactly what state it was in exactly, but in any case, there was, you know, it was because of media, it was highly publicized, and people were literally going there and waiting, I mean, lined out the doors into parking lots, so on and so forth.

It's a college, but they were they were touting revival. Now, the thing is, as you were talking about, I think concerning revival, revival, genuine biblical revival has a true and a lasting effect, and what I mean by true and lasting means, I mean, it's more than just, which would go down to that third bullet point that we have to talk about what revival is not.

Emotionalism is not.

Revival. Would you agree? Oh, yeah, of course, and that's why we have to be careful and be clearly precise and explanatory when using words like stirring. That's a very popular word amongst Charismatics and Pentecostals, and it's based on how you feel.

You know, you'll have people who feel the presence of the Holy Ghost just because they and everybody in the church are excited, and they start dancing around and clapping their hands, and they just got the goosebumps, and they, you know, it's contagious when you see people just filled with joy.

Now, keep in mind, I'm not completely condemnatory of that expression of faith and worship, because I think very often Reformed churches could learn from that, and we, more than anybody else, should be praising God with enthusiasm and excitement because we understand just how depraved humans are prior to their regeneration, and we, more than anybody, believe that God deserves 100 of the praise, honor, and glory for our salvation, and we don't contribute an ounce to it other than our sin that's being repented from.

So, I just wanted to make sure I say that because I think there is a legitimate criticism of Reformed people acting as if they are at a funeral during every worship service. I just wanted to throw.