Four Doors to Revival — E.A. Johnston

Doors as Pictures of Spiritual Reality

I believe a door can have much significance to it. The front door of your house often says a lot about what's on the inside. I remember a castle-like house whose front door was imported iron from Spain and it weighed well over 100 pounds and cost over $5 ,000 just for the front door of that magnificent house.

A door also carries the significance of a reality. A door is one of two things. It's either closed or open. You are either shut outside it or let inside by it, depending on how well you know the owner.

A Closed Heaven Over the Church

And I look around today at the moral chaos in our society and the spiritual declension in the church and I see very plainly a large closed door. We operate today in the church in the West beneath a closed heaven.

We haven't seen real genuine revival in America in over 160 years. God has shut the door, removed His presence from amongst us because the churches in America used to run on the power of prayer and by God's Spirit.

But we figured out a long time ago it was quicker to get the job done by money and manpower. So we became a self-reliant church. And God has left us to our own devices. And you can see where that has gotten us.

The Need for National Revival

The title of my message today, friends, is The Four Doors of Revival. And I think it's one of the most important messages I've ever preached. I've been on the battlefront for God for many years now and I know what it's like to experience the power of God in a meeting.

I've seen the faces of a congregation before me so altered with solemnity and conviction and alarm that it looked just like a cannonball had been shot down the center aisle of that church. I've seen God show up in His manifest presence and alter not only the life of a church but the life of a community.

But I long for a national revival. I've been in church for over 60 years and I've seen the sad spiritual decline fall over our churches like a thick black plague. I want to talk about the path to revival because, friends, if we don't see a national awakening in this land we won't have a nation to live in.

America will be regulated to the ash heap of history just like ancient Rome and ancient Greece who were both titans of their times, titans of their civilizations and who both imploded upon themselves in utter annihilation.

The Promise of 2 Chronicles 7

I'm going to read you a familiar passage of Scripture and please do not allow your familiarity with it to deaden you to it. God makes a declaration in 2 Chronicles 7 .13 where He says, If I shut up heaven that there be no rain or if I command the locusts to devour the land or if I send pestilence among my people.

Let me pause here, friends, to ask a couple of questions. In our churches today, are we living beneath a closed heaven in the withdrawn presence of God? Is there a pestilence among the people today that just won't go away?

Now, you can answer those two questions any way you want to and come out with an opinion on the state of things in this country. I've learned that Almighty God never places His people in a jam without a divine purpose behind it and He has a way to lead them out of that trouble.

The Four Conditions for Revival

I'm going to list the four doors to revival and you can listen to me or not listen to me. You can agree with me or not agree with me. I'm not here to gain your approval. I'm here to wake you out of your spiritual stupor.

I'm going to read our text for today and then, like we say in the South, I'm going to give you the oil straight from the can. Here now is the Word of God and may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His Holy Word.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Well, first, we have to make some assumptions here. God is saying if we do some things, then He will do some things. But if we fail or choose not to do those things, then He won't do a thing. He won't even hear us, much less heal us.

Do you hear what I'm talking about, friends? Let me ask you, friend, does our land need healing? Do our churches need the presence of God? This passage speaks of four closed doors that the stiff-necked people of God are unwilling to pass through.

For whatever reason, they just won't do it. I think things have gotten so desperate, so deplorable, so disgusting, so disturbing, so degenerate that it's time we did the stated things or we will implode as a nation, just like corrupt ancient Rome and perverted ancient Greece.

We will join them on the ash heap of history. I don't even see where America is mentioned in my Bible in the end times. I see Gog and Magog, China and Russia. What happened to us? Well, let's examine these four closed doors one at a time.

Door One: Humbling Ourselves

Door number one is humble themselves. The first thing the church refuses to do is to humble herself. Why? A self-reliant church is a church out of step with God. In Amos we read, Can two walk together, except they be agreed?

The answer is no. God hates pride and lists it with witchcraft. Our spiritual pride won't allow us to pass through door number one, and we have to go through this door if we have any hope of gaining entrance to the other three.

Years ago I was sitting in a hotel room with Richard Owen Roberts and I said to him, Do you know what mystifies me? And he said, What mystifies you? And I said, What mystifies me is the sleepy-headed pastor who refuses to get his people assembled in the sanctuary of God for nights of desperation and humility in prayer.

And Richard Owen Roberts said that mystified him as well. Does a nuclear bomb have to annihilate one of our major cities before the people of God humble themselves, before God, in nights of desperation and prayer?

Door Two: Returning to Corporate Prayer

Door number two that the church refuses to pass through is pray. When the churches in America killed off the weekly prayer meeting, they turned off the only engine they had to operate the church. That's why so many churches are out of gas today.

They don't have a clue what corporate prayer really is. They think it's a three-minute exercise where you tip your hat to God and that's the end of it rather than laying hold of God and entire nights of desperation to see answers to prayer.

Intercession is a lost art today in our churches. We refuse to pray the way God wants us to because to pray that way means we just can't have the time. We just don't have the time. We're too busy. But what costs counts and what counts costs and real intercessory prayer costs something.

Door Three: Seeking God's Face

The third door the church refuses to pass through is seek my face. I believe we can have as much of the Holy Spirit as we want so long as the Holy Spirit can have as much of us as he wants. But the church refuses to pass through this third door because of the bright light on the other side.

Imagine you're in a dark room and you're groped for the doorknob and you finally find it and you open the door. Suddenly the room is filled with light because all the bright light on the other side has passed into the room.

The church refuses to pass through the door of seeking God because we don't want the spotlight of the Holy Spirit to expose us to shine upon our sinful lives. We just don't want that kind of scrutiny.

We like our little pet sins and want to keep it that way. Keep them close to our bosom. And that leads us directly to the fourth and final door that the church refuses to pass through. And this is the door of repentance.

Door Four: Repenting From Wicked Ways

Turn from their wicked ways. Jesus had a last word to his churches in the book of Revelation. And if you read it you will see what that word is. And that word is repent. The proud, sin-laden church of today refuses to admit any wrongdoing as sin because it feels it has no need to repent.

It just doesn't feel its need. And if you're not going to the doctor for treatment in a remedy for an illness, you won't go if you don't think you are sick because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing.

And knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.