Ideals for Revival Prayer Meetings — Bill McLeod

Revival Prayed Down, Preached Up, and Powered In

The messages I've been bringing, the titles, the theme has been given to me from others, and the one I have for this morning is, Ideals for Revival Prayer Meetings. I had a little difficulty with that, I'm not going to ignore it, I'll get to it a little later on.

Years ago I came across a sermon, and it is years ago, probably 30 years ago, the title of the sermon was, Revival, Prayed Down, Preached Up, and Powered In. I don't remember the sermon, that was 30 years ago, but I'm going to use those thoughts this morning, revival, prayed down, preached up, and powered in.

Preaching Revival Through the Word of God

I'm going to begin with preached up. Is it possible to preach up revival? In a secondary sense, it is very possible. Jonathan Goforth was preaching from 1 Peter 2, when revival first came to China in his day.

He couldn't believe what he saw happening as he was preaching on that particular text. Christ, who is his own self, bear our sins in his own body to the tree. He saw the whole congregation just melted down under the power of God.

Of course, there had been much prayer, and he would not take credit that his preaching did this. But in Psalm 119, there are seven texts that speak in that one chapter, that speak about the word of God reviving people.

The 50th verse, Thy word has quickened me, that is, has revived me. The word quickened means revived. Thy word has revived me. And then verse 93 in the same chapter, I will never forget your precepts, for with them you have revived me.

And God revives us through his word, a thought, a verse, a truth, whatever. And God bears witness to our heart, because the word of God is the sword of the Spirit. The agent of revival is the Holy Spirit.

The instrument of revival is the word of God. The object of revival is you and me. But the instrument is the word of God. I will never forget your precepts, for with them you have quickened me, you have revived me.

I was in South America, preached I think 105 times in nine weeks in two or three countries, and saw God at work in many hearts. About eight months after I got home, I got a letter from a man who told me he'd gone through one of my crusades in San Juan, and he said, it didn't affect me in the slightest.

All those Bible verses you gave us didn't affect me in the slightest. But he said the other night, God wakened me. And for hours, he said, those Bible verses were pouring through my heart that you gave us in that week of meetings.

And he said, God powerfully revived me. Well, that was a great blessing to my heart, because the word of God is like a time bomb. You never know when it's going to go off. Watch out. You know, sometimes there are certain parts of the Bible we don't read, because we know it's going to speak to us, we just deliberately avoid it.

You've got to stop doing that. I went to some churches in Mexico that have perennial revival. Do you know why they have? Because the missionaries said, the people in those churches, they will not read any further than they are currently prepared to obey.

So if they come across something, they know, I'm not doing that. They will not read any further in the Bible until they can say, I'm doing that. And I can understand how they'd have constant revival in churches like that.

Maybe we should adopt the same philosophy, let's not read any further than we're currently prepared to obey. What good does it really do, otherwise? You know, there's a man named Stoddard who was a relative of Jonathan Edwards in the United States, and in 27 years, his church experienced five powerful revivals, which resulted in hundreds of people being saved.

But this was not happening in other churches, and finally a bunch of pastors got together with Stoddard, and they said, now Brother Stoddard, why, why is God blessing you and not blessing us? The problem is they were laboring under the delusion that revivals come only from God.

Just whenever God, in a capricious mood or whatever, decides to do it, God does. There's nothing you can do to prepare for it. And Stoddard didn't believe that. And Stoddard said, Brother, listen, listen, God will come and revive if we want Him to come.

He said, our church, we fast for revival, we pray for revival, we preach for revival, we prepare for revival. And so about every five years, there would be a new awakening in the congregation. They couldn't accept this, at least, maybe, I think some of them did, but the majority could not because they were trapped by their own theology, respecting revival.

Well 2 Chronicles 7, 14, for one example, if my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

And there's many other verses like this we might adduce today, so we're not to sit around. Proverbs 1 .23, remember, we quoted that the other day, and the Lord said, You turn at my reproof, behold, I will pour out my Spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.

Any individual can experience revival. Thus saith the high and the lofty one that inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also there is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.

Dear people, listen, if we're humble, and we're broken, we're contrite, we're repentant, God will revive us. God is not capricious. God is sovereign, yes, preached up. We need to preach up revival. We know that's not all, but that's something, that's part of it.

Persistent and Faith-Filled Prayer

And then, pray down. You know, in thinking about this, like ideals for revival, prayer meetings, I had a little difficulty with that, because we can have all kinds of people attending prayer meetings for revival, who don't know how to pray, who don't know what it means to pray in the Spirit, who are not walking with God, and they swell the crowd, but they don't do anything for the spirit of the meeting.

And so I thought it would be more important if we could talk about some things that God says are very important, respecting prayer. Beginning with Matthew 21, 22, All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

Now the world says, seeing is believing, right? That's exactly what they say. That's what Thomas said, except I shall see, I will not believe. And the chief priests, when they saw Christ on the cross, the elders and scribes, they said, come down, and we may see.

They wanted to see a miracle. Then they were prepared to believe if they could see. But the Bible distinctly says, believing is seeing. In John 11, Jesus said to Martha, said I now unto you, that if you would believe you would see the glory of God.

So believing is seeing. And again in Psalm 27, I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. So believing is seeing. Then Mark 11, 24, Christ said, what things soever you desire when you pray, believe that, and it's in the past tense in the original, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them.

That's how far our faith has to go. What things soever you desire when you pray, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them. Now that's relative to prayer. In Luke 11, we have the parable Jesus told about importunity in prayer, and someone has said that importunity is shameless asking, or asking that will not be denied.

The person who answered from within the house, trouble me not, is God. You don't always get an answer to your prayer. You may have to wait a while. And when the Bible says, weigh on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, wait, I say, on the Lord, in any language, dear people, wait means wait.

And the big trouble with this is, I'm in a hurry, God isn't, so wait. And maybe he says, trouble me not, or maybe he says, like he said to the Saraphenician woman, oh, it isn't right to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs.

I mean, most people would have been hurt, offended, gone home, and sulked for days. Not her. She said, truth, Lord, I'm willing to be a dog, a Gentile dog. Truth, Lord, if the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table, what did he say?

Oh, woman, great is your faith. And he gave her what she wanted. A demon-possessed daughter was healed. All right, so we have to believe. We have to be importunate in our praying. Then in Luke 18 .1, Jesus spoke a parable to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint.

One translation says, not to turn coward. There's an old saying, if your knees knock, kneel on them, and that's good. And so the parable he told was about a woman who came to a judge and she kept coming and coming and coming, and finally the judge said, though I don't fear God and I don't regard man, yet this widow, she keeps coming, she's going to wear me out.

So he gave her what she wanted. And Jesus used that to demonstrate something about prayer. Don't faint, don't give up, hang in there, keep believing, trust God. Believing is seeing. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open unto their prayers.

But the face of the Lord is against those that do evil. So if our heart is right, God's ears are open, you know something that's been a tremendous blessing to me? I noticed several years ago, this little phrase in the Bible, before the Lord, or before God.

Living and Praying Before the Lord

So what I began doing, I picked one of these texts over in Deuteronomy, now whenever I came across this verse, anywhere in the Bible, I made a note back there in Deuteronomy, finally the whole page, I had hundreds of references.

Before the Lord, before God, people sacrificed before the Lord, sacrificed animals, people sang before the Lord, people sat before the Lord, people stood before the Lord, people walked before the Lord.

And you know, God made that a tremendous blessing to me. You ever tried to persuade God to be present? It's a waste of time, people, he fills the heavens and the earth. You know, when people say God's a million miles away from me, oh listen, if he's a million miles away from you, then buddy, you're dead, you must be outside the universe, you know.

He fills the heavens and the earth. How do you have to sit to sit before God? I was down in one place, South America, and they told me I was to preach in a certain church, and they said, whatever you do, don't cross your legs, I said, why?

They feel you've lost your spiritual power if you cross your legs, well I thought he was putting me on, so I checked it out with somebody else, oh no, they said, he's not putting it on. In that particular denomination, they were an evangelical group, winning souls by the hundreds, but don't cross your feet, don't cross your knees.

Okay, well the meeting was long, and those South American churches, if you've got a guitar, and every second person has a guitar, and the other person would have it if they could afford it, and they bring them to church, and they have a whole section for the guitars, you know, whether they can play or not doesn't make any difference, nobody's worried about that, and so the meeting is long, the preliminaries are longer sometimes than the sermon is.

Well, the preliminaries got long, and all of a sudden I noticed I had my knees crossed, oh no, I uncrossed my knees, and I looked around the congregation, there wasn't one person that didn't have both feet flat on the floor like that, you know, then I noticed my song leader, he had his feet crossed too, so I nudged him, and feet, feet, you know.

About twenty minutes later, I still wasn't speaking, I had my feet crossed again, ah, forget it. Listen, how do you sit before the Lord? People, listen, you're sitting before the Lord right now, and His eyes are on you, and Paul said we speak before God in Christ, so I'm speaking before God in Christ.

People, that changes everything. So you sleep before God, the Bible talks about people eating before the Lord, you know, everything. A friend of mine went with another friend of mine to a restaurant to have a Coke or something, so before they had their Coke, this one fellow who was dean of a seminary in the States, he said, let's pray, so he prayed, and the other fellow who told me about this later on, he said, I said to him, do you always pray over a Coke, no, he said, but you know, you have a chance to have fellowship with Jesus, well I like that, eating a Coke before the Lord.

I'm not saying you should drink Cokes, but you know, by the way, they don't dissolve nails, I tried it, and they don't take tar off of cars, I tried that too, but I'll tell you something, it does take tar off of cars, and that's right guard, but I hope I don't get sued for that last statement.

Prayer as the Church's Central Work

Anyway, Acts 2, 42, it says they continued steadfastly, the converts did, in the Apostle doctrine, in fellowship, breaking of bread, and in prayers, today you've got to beg Christians to attend their own prayer meeting, I get into church after church where they're embarrassed if you ask how the prayer meeting is going, because they don't have one, or what we needed that night for our clubs, and everything, you know, listen, Jesus never said, my house should be called a house of preaching, or a house of singing, or a house of fellowship, or a house of good works, but he did say, quoted from Isaiah, so the Old Testament says it, the New Testament echoes it, my house should be called a house of prayer for all people, and dear people, if our churches are not houses of prayer, the preaching, the singing, the fellowship, and all this stuff, it doesn't accomplish anything that's really lasting, how can it?

A house of prayer, he said, for all people, let's make our churches houses of prayer, Romans 12, 12 says continuing instant, it means urgently, continuing instant in prayer, with a sense of urgency, one of the things this book, Operation World, has done, rather God has done for me through the book, is this, it gives me a sense of urgency, because it tells you what's going on in the countries, the needs there, there are some countries where Christians have been cruelly persecuted, even today, in Africa, other countries of the world as well, we need to know this, and it gives you a sense of urgency in praying, I mean we just don't get a sense of urgency by just praying, we have to make ourselves aware of some of the things that are going on in the world, and then we can pray with an intelligence, and pray with a sense of urgency, wasn't it Billy Sonny that said, the average Christian prays like a jackrabbit nibbling at a cabbage, you know, we say our prayers, now let's get on with the real business, I saw an interesting cartoon lately, and the preacher was in his office praying in a chair, and the secretary stuck her head in the door and she said, oh goody, I see you're not busy, but that demonstrates quite well how people look on prayer, it's a waste of time, so many good things you could be doing, what are you on your knees, that's how people feel, and many Christians share those ideas, unfortunately.

Now in Ephesians chapter 6, someone has called this all prayer, praying always, with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, and watching thereunto, with all perseverance and supplication for all saints, then Paul adds, and for me, all prayer, perseverance, it's something like importunity, the words of course are closely, the thoughts are closely related I'm sure, but the feeling I get of perseverance is, hang on, hang on until, pray until, until God answers.

George Mueller, the famous man of faith and prayer has asked this question, they said, Brother Mueller, do you ever give up when you start praying for something, do you ever give up? And he said, George Mueller never ever gives up because God is faithful, he prayed for men for as long as 40 years, he prayed for two men to be converted, and one was converted a year or so before George Mueller died, and the second guy was converted after he died, but he said, I never ever give up because God is faithful, Hebrews 10 says that, he is faithful of promise, there are 7 ,487 promises in the Bible, and we walk around with four flat tires, I mean it's crazy, we don't demonstrate to the world that God's real, wasn't it Mueller that said, stand as tall for God as you can, so that you can cast your shadow as far down the future as is possible, for the glory of God, some wise guys tried to figure George Mueller out you know, they weren't believers, and they spent some time studying him, studying his writings and all this kind of thing, listening to his preaching, and finally they said this, we think, we have figured him out except for one thing, we cannot understand his 85 ,000 answers to prayer, and I can understand they would have you know, I mean the average person in the world figures, well God might answer prayer once in a lifetime, you know, but daily, he had a list of 30 ,000 prayers that God answered the same day he prayed, I mean he kept this in a prayer ledger, a book he had, all these prayers, and before he died, I think when he was 85, he lived to be 94 I think, he had a list of 85 ,000 prayers, perseverance, but notice it says praying in the spirit, now there are some Christian people, good Christian people are teaching us that that means speaking in tongues, I don't believe that for a moment, I'll tell you what I think it means, I think that people, we have to pray when the spirit indicates, for what the spirit has in mind, because in Romans 8 it says we do not know what we should pray for as we are, that's the starting place of all true prayer, you know how I started praying this morning, I said dear God, I'm a dead stick, I'm as dry as can be, I am nothing, and if you don't touch me, I won't be able to pray, that's how I started, that's how I usually start by the way, and I mean it, I mean apart from God, Jesus said without me you can do nothing, you can't even pray, we can mouth words, but we can't really pray, Ephesians 6, 18 then, praying always with all prayer, and supplication in the spirit, and watching their unto, you know the Bible says watch and pray, watch and pray, there's a professor in Saskatoon, and Gordon Bailey, he'll be here tomorrow night I believe, Gordon was telling me he's prayed with this man, and the fellow will say, Gordon you watch and I'll pray, this goes on for an hour, then he'll say, now you watch and I'll pray, or whichever way comes out, you know, watch and pray, what does it mean to watch, I got a thought once by something from the book of Daniel, watching with the watchers, it says the Lord watched on the evil, we need to watch with God you know, then we need to pray, Hezekiah prayed, he didn't pray for Sennacherib, he prayed against him, do you ever pray against these evil things that are threatening to inundate us here in North America, I pray against the American Civil Liberties Unit and its counterpart in Canada, I pray against the women's libbers movement, the homosexual network, there are hundreds of homosexual organizations in the states and Canada, they've got a program, a hidden agenda, I pray against them, I pray against the bootleggers and the brewers, I pray against all these things that are evil, and I pray for, I got an interesting answer a while ago, I'd been praying for God to confuse the thinking of these people, and I read an article that was talking about the women's liberals movement, it was saying they were very confused because they were divided so badly, so I say, well, how are you, keep on praying, you know, but anyway, Hezekiah prayed against this man, and you know what happened, 185 ,000 of his soldiers woke up dead one morning, I mean brother, that's a big answer to a small prayer, translate that into souls being saved, 185 ,000 people saved because a man prayed, it's possible, Mueller said that 30 ,000 people were converted through his prayers, people he personally prayed for, 30 ,000 were converted through his prayers, what an encouragement, in Philippians 1, 4, Paul said, making requests with joy, do you pray that way?

Do you pray with joy? You can't make requests with joy unless you're walking with God, unless you're really expecting that God's in business, and God's going to do something. In Colossians chapter 2 it says, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

So much of our praying is groaning and mourning and asking for things, and Billy Sunday used to say, yank out the groans and throw in a few shouts, that's good, making requests with joy. I remember yet, you know Spurgeon used to say that sometimes in reading the Bible, a text would leap out of him like a lion out of a bush, you know, well I've had that happen too, and I'm not Spurgeon, I'm sure you've had it happen as well, some text, this one in Colossians, making requests with joy, years ago it just hit me between the eyes, and was a blessing for days, making requests with joy, I had been doing that, I've been groaning and mourning and all this kind of thing, you know, making requests with joy, because God is there, and God is working, and God hears the answers.

Prayer Without Anxiety and With Thanksgiving

In Philippians 4, 6 it says, be anxious for nothing, I saw a wall text one time, and it said, if you can't trust, then worry, be anxious for nothing, some of you don't have good health, commit it to God, the body is for the Lord, the Lord is for the body, we're told that, let's believe it, financial problems, the silver is mine and the gold is mine, God said, so, what are we worried about?

He'll come through, people, we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, let me tell you, I'll forget what I was going to say, and just put it on the back burner, it may not come off, something better came to my mind, out of India, I talked with a young man, and God had called him to be a pastor, and the church wanted him to come, but he couldn't go for six months, and so I said, well, now, tell me something about this, you know, the questions we ask here in North America, how much will they pay you?

And he looked embarrassed, and he said, well, we never talked about that, he said, they're a very poor church, they probably won't be able to pay me anything, but maybe a little bit. Oh, will you have a house to live in?

Well, no, he laughed, no, no, no, he said, but somebody might have a room, and if they don't have, I can sleep under a platform, he said, I've done that before, oh, no parsonage, I said, how big is your library?

And he held it up, a little Bible, four by six, falling apart, and dear people, he was, oh, I asked about a, you know, I knew he wouldn't have a car, so I said, will you have a horse, or a donkey, or a bike, or something?

No, he said, I don't have any of those, I'll just walk, and people, he could hardly wait to go. Let me give you a contrast from North America, from a Canadian city, a pastor was invited to a candidate in the church, which he did, and then they talked about finances, and he told them he'd been getting 45 ,000 where he was, and he couldn't come for a dollar a year less than that, and so they negotiated, but he would not back down on this, he insisted it had to be what he was getting now, he could not come for anything less than this, and they hangled, and all the rest of it, and finally, they wanted him badly, so they called him, you know, I said to myself, my God, how do you look at this?

You know, sure, we preachers have to be supported, but it should never be a concern of the preacher, because his God owns all the silver, and all the gold in the world, the earth is mine, and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein, that's all God's.

So, you know what, what's his name, oh, Transworld Radio, anyway, he said, whoever he is, he said, it is never a question of finances, it is only a question of, is it the will of God, and if it's the will of God, do it, and the money will come in, he's absolutely right, it's never a question of money.

One of the first churches I had, one of my guys, he was the treasurer, and he was quite, he was Irish, I've got a little Irish in me, too, from my mother's side, and he said, Pastor, don't you forget that we are supporting you.

I said, no, you're not. He said, what? I said, no, you're not. He said, we pay you every month. I said, suppose you don't pay me every month, what then? You'll starve. No, I won't, I said. I said, you didn't call me here, God called me here, and God will pay the bills, He always has.

All right. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. It really helps me when I start praising the Lord, when I'm praying, it helps me to pray.

When I start to think, you know, all the blessings of God, He daily loads us with benefits, it says in the Bible. He's blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly things in Christ. He's done so much for us.

Praying for All People and Walking in Holiness

And then we walk around, someone said to their face, so long that we could eat dry oatmeal porridge out of the end of a four inch gas pipe. Dear people. So, with joy, with thanksgiving, it's great. Then, in 1 Timothy 2 .1, I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving them thanks, be made for who?

For all men. I heard about a fellow, his program was, he'd pray, every day he'd pray, Lord, bless all the carpenters, and bless all the plumbers, and bless all the truck drivers, and bless all the school teachers.

Then he'd start witnessing. What do you do? He'd ask a fellow. Well, I'm a truck driver. Well, I prayed for you this morning. You did? Well, we never met till just now. Oh yeah, I prayed for you this morning, you know.

He said it was a real opener for getting into people's hearts, you know. I can see how that would be. For all men. Do you know what we need to do as Christians? We need to pay for all our praying for a year, and listen to our prayers at the end of the year.

It'll shame us into something better. Because most of our praying revolves around our families. And beyond that, we get to the church. And beyond that, we don't get it all. When did, listen, let me ask you a question.

When did God set Job free from his problems? What does it say? When he prayed for his friends, exactly. When he prayed about himself and complained and all that for days on end, he said, wait some months.

So it went on for months. He didn't get anywhere. But when he prayed for his friends, God set him free. The Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends. Why is that in the Bible? That's in there to challenge us and help us for all men.

And then 1 Timothy 2, 8, Paul said, I will therefore, and that takes you back in the context, therefore takes you back in the context, I will therefore that men pray everywhere. Listen, you meet a friend in a store, why not have a little prayer there?

You know, you meet a friend in the street, why not pray? I remember five of us flew down from Saskatoon to Toronto. We stopped in Winnipeg for an hour or two, and we just had a prayer meeting in the rotunda.

They're sitting down, people walking by, people sitting next to us so hot. We had a great time of prayer there, you know. Everywhere. That's the word. Everywhere. People, if we'd learned to do that, I think we'd see far more of the power of God.

When Christians meet, what do we talk about? We talk about the weather, we talk about our kids, we talk about the political situation, we talk about the war in the Gulf or something else, you know. But we don't pray.

I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands. That's part of praying. Holy hands. Without sin. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. He that covers his sin shall not prosper.

Whoso confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy. Are you hiding sin? Covering it up? People, deal with it. Years ago, a lady told me how her husband would not give her money to give to God. So she was taking money out of the paycheck and hiding it under the carpet and then giving it when she could.

And God convicted her that she was something like Achan. She should not have been doing this without consulting her husband, even though he didn't believe in giving. And so she had to deal with that. It's not a big thing.

I counseled a fellow in Chicago. He told me if there's a law in Chicago, I've broken every law in Chicago. If I give myself up to the police, I'll be in jail the rest of my life. And I urged him, do it anyway.

Cast yourself in the mercy of God. He said, them that honor me, I will honor. Those that despise me will be likely esteemed. I talked with a man one time in one of my meetings, and God had spoken to him about making restitution.

He talked to a judge friend of his and said, if I give myself up, what am I facing? He said, you're looking at 11 years at least in jail. He did it anyway. He never spent a day in jail. God took care of the whole thing for him because he was willing to stick his neck out just to be right with God.

And sometimes you meet people who say, one fellow said, I've got so much garbage in the past, if I start cleaning up the garbage, I'll be busy until Christ comes. People tell me this sometimes. People, do it.

Do it. And God will be with you in the doing, and your heart will be blessed. You'll be enriched greatly. And then in Hebrews, Jesus, it says, who in the days of his flesh, when he offered up supplications and prayers with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death and was heard in that he feared.

So he prayed with strong crying and tears. When Jesus prayed in the garden, it says he found the disciples and it says they were sleeping for sorrow. Why? I mean, what was the sorrow? I think the sorrow came as they listened to the Savior pray and saw his sweat like drops of blood falling on the ground and heard him praying with strong crying and tears.

Revival as a Work of the Holy Spirit

And they fell asleep for sorrow. They didn't understand what was going on. Revival preached up, prayed down. And before we, I think, before we get people into prayer meetings to pray for revival, people, we need to get our people to understand what prayer is.

Because it spreads like wildfire. When people start having answers to prayer, definite, concrete answers to prayer, they tell their friends. Their friends get concerned. They'll spread like wildfire, powered in, not by some platform personality.

Do you know there have been some great revivals where God revived the nationals and the missionaries were bypassed? That's happened, you know. Maybe because there was pride there. I don't know. But sometimes this has happened.

It's God that has to do it. Where did Pentecost come from? In the Gospel of John, Jesus breathed on the disciples and said, receive ye the Holy Spirit. But I don't think they received the Spirit at that moment.

I think that was Pentecost in embryo. Now, I'll tell you why. Because at the same time as he did this, he said, as my Father has sent me, even so send I you. But they didn't go then. He didn't send them then.

They didn't go after Pentecost. Now, I don't think they received the Spirit then either. But he breathed on them. On the day of Pentecost, the resurrected Christ breathed on the church. This was not embryo anymore.

This was the reality. And so Peter said, therefore, about Christ being at the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has shed forth this, which you see and know.

So Pentecost was a Jesus Christ happening. He did it. He said, I'll send the Comforter. And that's what he did on the day of Pentecost. And any genuine revival, which is really just an extension of Pentecost, has to come from the same source, from our Savior, Jesus Christ, who I'm sure wants to do it.

Building a Culture of Revival Prayer

I deal for revival prayer meetings. Let me just share what we did in Saskatoon prior to the revival there, and then we'll sign off. Five years before the revival in 71, I started a deacons prayer meeting Saturday night for revival.

We had ten deacons. We averaged about seven. Some of you have heard this before. You'll have to hear it again. Here's what happened. The first prayer meeting we had Saturday night, next day was Sunday.

Sunday morning we had a very powerful, unusual moving of the Spirit of God in the congregation. It was just as if God was saying, you're on the right track, stay with it. Stay with it. And then I began to tell people regarding the Wednesday night prayer meeting, I used to say, well, I arranged things so we had nothing else.