This moment in time, in 2024, feels like being caught up in things too big for us. Tides are turning. Culture is changing. Certainly this must be our doom.
Armies once numbering in the thousands now number in the dozens. Able soldiers have gone home or switched to the other side.
The spiritual power has departed from the sanctuaries, though not completely. A remnant of glory remains though it seems to fade.
Compromise, secret sin, and lukewarmness appear as the hallmarks of the modern era.
Though a remnant remains, true, and steady, hidden like resistance fighters in thousands of congregations across the globe. They are the remnant.
A tidal wave, a wall of water seems to dwarf the sleepy remnants of the body of Christ, just on the horizon, towering over us, threatening to sweep in at any moment.
Yet hope remains, while the body is true.
It feels like Mordor at the edge of the Osgiliath. It feels like the withdrawal at Dunkirk. It feels like the battle of Britain. It feels like Thermopylae or the battle of Hoth.
We all know what is needed. Revival is needed. But what would it take to get there?
Would it take praying for 24 hours straight? Would it take fasting for 40 days? Would it take deep corporate repentance? Would it take sorrow and tears? Would it take sleepless nights? Would it take strenuous activity?
Yet I feel so tired and drained, and beaten by the recent battles in my life, the thought of revival seems a far off reality. I'm sure many of you can relate.
If you're the remnant out there, the last four years since the deep dive of 2020 have meant severe trials and tribulations, struggles, and stretching, and humbling experiences. You've been deeply humbled. You've been purged of double-mindedness. You've been driven to your knees in prayer. You've been crushed internally. Your hopes have been dashed to pieces. Yet you had to keep going.
You've hit the edge of your ability to stand it, and then it went beyond that. You've been shaken to the point of being on the edge of sanity. Circumstances have burst past your upper limits and left you in a puddle on the floor.
I know, I've experienced it.
Your entire soul has felt like it were hot in the refiner's fire, like a series of black and blue bruises across your whole body.
God is getting us ready for something. This something requires us to be thoroughly tested, and shaken to the point that we are unshakable. He is getting us ready.
We weren't ready in 2020. And we found ourselves in retreat.
How about now?
I find myself looking at the future and wondering how I could face it. Each day I bear the concern of the situation we live in each day. Declining corps. Disappearing finances. Lists of soldiers remain, but the seats are empty. Unpaid bills stack up. Prayers and prayers go up, but the enemy fights desperately everything we attempt. Even strenuous effort with unsaved men and women seem to yield only limited results. Fellow denominations around us seem poised toward either apathy or apostasy. Multicolored flags appear on buildings of once faithful denominations. Bland tautologies appear on historic chapels, once complex and glorious theologies reduced to "in this church we believe science is real, kindness is everything... etc." Children disappear from the corps. Families weaken. Elders and the infirmed make up the body. Even our movement seems utterly divided, unable to hold the center. What once appeared as bold, cutting edge, and visionary now appears old, tired, empty, declining, even pathetic. A history so glorious it marched through the streets in the thousands, now so few.
Clarity is power. -Billy Cox
I was walking down a street, and on the other side of the street I saw the endless marching troops of The Salvation Army in 1800s England. And then I saw myself and a few others on the other side of the street, walking, and there were so few of us.
I did not expect to carry the weight of this decline on my soul. So it is best we let Him carry it. Only God could.
Yet I feel so beaten up by the battles of the last five years that I can't even think of the future, much less make some sort of plan or strategic initiative to try to turn the tide. Lately it's been one day at a time. Just put one foot in front of the other. And God has been beautifully faithful in that.
There will be a time to plan the defeat of the enemy. There will be a time to plot revival fires throughout the land. I hope that time is soon. I really do. I long to plot the downfall of Satan, and triumph of the church, in the Spirit of truth. Those days will come.
I pray they come quickly. The center cannot hold. It reminds me of a song by Kings of Convenience, they wrote, "Your kind is gonna fall, Your ship is sinking fast and all your able men are leaving" -Kings of Convenience, "Rule my World", Declaration of Dependence.
Can a brighter day come? I believe it can and it will. But first we must face the great deep before the plunge. We find ourselves at a turning point in human history. Will we be swept along by it? Nothing is inevitable. Decline and fall is not inevitable. Our God can change it all. History turns on heroes. Will you be one of those heroes?
Wait on the Lord. Don't give up. Now is not the time to leave this work behind. Now is the time to dig in and go deeper with God. Now is the time to believe in the impossible. History turns now. God is at work. Can you perceive it? He is making a way is the desert. Wait on the Lord. History turns on heroes. God sets up heroes. He has fashioned you for this time. You were called for a time such as this! History is turning, turning and turning, always turning...
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" -Yeats, The Second Coming
