You must have heard it said at one time or the other that the Lord is going to visit His Church with revival, I have heard it said, I have preached it and glory to God it is true!

Over the centuries since Pentecost the Church has experienced what we call revivals, divine awakenings of spiritual fervor and activity, these revivals have brought great blessings to the Church.

But what really is a revival? Simply put a revival is an awakening, those that were spiritually asleep or dead are reawakened to faith, love, holiness and the presence and glory of the Lord.

Revival is for the Church, it is not a program like we hear sometimes of revival programs, it is an action of the Holy Spirit that restores the Church to her default state of spirituality and faith.

Ezekiel alludes to this in his dry bones account of Israel.

Then he said to me: "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.' Therefore prophesy and say to them: 'This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.'" Ezek 37:11-14

The early Church as we see in the Acts never needed revival as we preach today, because they lived in revival. In other words, the revived state is the normal christian experience, our confession of our need for revival is an acknowledgement that we have fallen away and need to be re awakened.

In the title of this article I have three words revival, restoration and reformation, these three are connected, I want you to see how they connect to what I believe the Lord is seeking to do today.

Revival restores the Church to life.

When Israel sinned and refused to repent they were driven out of their land but when they repented they were restored to their land. But reformation is a fundamental, deeper experience of the healing grace of God. When the Church backslides to such a degree that she descends into 'Egypt', it affects her fundamental structure. What God does in the Church then is more than just revival or restoration, He reforms the Church.

The work of Martin Luther and those of his period is often referred to as the Protestant reformation, this is because the changes it brought about affected the fundamental structure of how the Church operated up until that time.

The foundation of the reformation was the return to the bible as the sole guide of the life of faith. This singular act and its continued progression eventually led to the restoration of certain biblical elements , such as the gifts of the spirit, the restoration of Pentecost as the normal Christian experience, the healings and miracles, the restoration of the offices of the pastor, evangelists, teachers, the word of faith movement, the place and function of the local Church and others too many to mention were all fruits of the Protestant Reformation

Some of us would remember the ministries of people like Kathryn Kuhlmann and at this time Benny Hinn and the work they did in restoring the truth of the person of the Holy Spirit.

All these are examples of restorative works of God

However in this end times I believe we are going to see revival, restoration and reformation all together.

This is because what began with the protestant reformation centuries ago is being concluded with the apostolic reformation or as some call it restoration, this is the restoration of the Church to her default operational settings as delivered to us by the Apostles of the Lamb.

Old Testament Lessons

We can learn a couple of lessons from the Old Testament history.

God gave Moses a pattern by which to build his tabernacle, this was his perfect plan. (Exodus 25:40) and when it was time to build the temple, God gave David a plan by the Spirit by which Solomon would build the temple ( 1 Chronicles 28:12) but this temple was destroyed after the Babylonian invasion, when it was to be rebuilt in the days of Ezra, Haggai the Prophet and Zerubbabel, there is no mention that this temple was built in accordance to divine specifications, it was all man and not God.

Of course the Lord blessed the work as much as He could but it was not His perfect plan for Israel. The bible records that the young people who were alive at the foundation of the temple was being laid rejoiced for the great work that had been done but the older folks who saw the Temple of Solomon wept because of the difference in glory.

And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away. Ezra 3:11-13

Moses & David were types of Apostles and were also prophets.

The coming Apostles and Prophets will restore divine templates for the building of the Church, the impact of their work will change how many parts of the Church functions, this will lead to reformation that will enable the Church be a house fitted for the glory and purpose of the Lord. I have addressed some of these issues in my book The Church that Jesus builds, you can get it here

Repentance the way to revival

if my people, who are called by my name, will 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. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 2 Chron 7:14-16

Revival is the end of a process, it is God visiting His Church with His life that process begins with a deep seated repentance, an acknowledgement that we have missed our way and have walked in our own ways.

This is obvious when we consider the many evils that the Church has given herself over to but we also need to acknowledge the subtle errors ; our self seeking, self dependence, pride, our exaltation of the flesh over the spirit, denominationalism, lack of love for the brethren, self kingdom building, neglect of the word, exalting our beliefs and politics over His kingdom and His way

When Jesus says follow me, we cannot until we recognize that we have been going our own way before then, this is repentance, We cannot follow Jesus and follow our own way, He is not going our direction, we must follow His direction! Our own way is the way that seems right but the end of it is death, His way is the way of life. It is obvious which way we have been following when we consider the fruit all around us

Our only response to the cry for revival is to repent and follow

Paul called it Repentance from dead works and faith towards God.

The Coming Revival

The coming revival will bring reformation and restoration, it will bring healing to the Church and nations aligning them to God’s intended purpose for creation through Jesus in a way that has never been seen since the apostolic era, that is for those who will receive it.

Some time ago, the Lord gave me a vision of this revival, I share below a couple of things He showed me about this revival when I saw this vision over 10 years ago. This coming revival will be worldwide and is very imminent, I saw this revival as an aircraft that was about to taxi down the runway, the pilot had started the engine preparatory to taking off.

It would see people walking in the revelation of Christ- This is the hallmark of true apostolic ministry, apostles are special messengers of the Lord Jesus Christ. To be part of this revival you had to pay a price, you have to respond to a call to follow Jesus in a new way, you have to be willing to break ecclesiastical traditions, abandon long held notions and in some cases be willing to suffer some broken relationships.

Things that Jesus said would happen to those who chose to follow Him.

This revival will not be led by one person, it will be difficult to identify a leader in the way that we have with major works in the past. Its leadership will be very dynamic and fluid as led by the Spirit of Jesus.

One of the things the Lord showed me about this end time move is that it will begin in a very ordinary way, so ordinary that many would miss its beginnings. Another thing the Lord showed me is that many believers will ‘miss it’, I am not saying will miss heaven but rather their part in this great end time move of the Spirit even though they have been called to be a part of it.

There are many possible reasons for this but I think the one that jumps at me the most is that they were unwilling to leave the established thoughts and patterns of our religiosity to find Christ in the way that He wants us to find Him today

The great move of God that began through Jesus Christ was first directed to his own, he came to His own called people and called them to follow Him, it is so today, Jesus is standing at the door of the Church knocking and asking us to let Him in, he is inviting us to follow him.

It is in doing so we enter into revival and experience reformation

The coming revival will be accompanied by so much persecution because hell will be unleashed against the glory but it will not prevail. I believe that this revival will culminate in the return of the Lord and the beginning of the great tribulation.