Rafael Martinez is a bi-vocational
Church of God minister, in Cleveland, TN. Like me, Raf doesn't
think much of the so-called revivals of The River Movement. When
once he was challenged about his opposition to Brownsville, etc.,
he wrote a very forceful reply. It is given here, with his permission.
>>Don't think your time would be better spent canvasing your neighborhood and city streets, winning souls for Jesus, than critiquing and criticizing such a move of God as Brownsville?<<
I responded:
"Don't you think the time a lot of people in the CHURCH currently spend running from every church claiming to have "the River" could be spent doing the same? Don't you think a lot more churches that spend most of their time organizing "revivals" and "campmeetings" would win a LOT more souls by getting those same folks off their posteriors and into the streets?"
I remember when I was with the Pioneers For Christ, a fantastic Lee College student evangelistic outreach, leading a summer missions trip from June to August 1988 and our witnessing team got pegged to publicize a "campmeeting" in the Northern state we were sent to, in the middle of a large metropolitan area. We were told to pass þyers out advertising the meeting. And as we arrived downtown to do so, we found literally hundreds of Deadheads (Grateful Dead fans) in the town and discovered from them that their rock gods were going to give ONE concert that night (the only one in North America all year). My team and I were immediately pressed to do some outreach that night. Mind you, it's just me along with a skinny kid from Canton, Ohio, a tiny little girl from the vastness of central Pennsylvania, and three Southern gals from Georgia and South Carolina. That's all we were, trying to be prayed up and and as ready to get the Gospel out as we possibly can. So what do we do?
Well, we start rather naively thinking that the Pentecostals we were having meetings with might like to help. There was no way they couldn't have not known of the deluge of Deadheads þooding their city - it was in the papers, the news, and the teeming tie-died bands of them swarmed everywhere. So we ask for volunteers after the service, which was a whopper of a time in which the youth choir got happy, the shouting was lusty, the tears þowing, and the preaching like that of an Old Testament prophet. All in all, it seemed to be a good "revival" service that was challenging Christians to return to their Þrst love. We think, praise God, the saints will rally to get the Gospel out tonight! So several hundred Full Gospel people heard the call from the Master of Ceremonies to assist in the seeking and saving that which was lost. Guess how many responded?
Zero. Not one believer came forth. Not one.
We left after standing at the altar for several awkward moments, all alone. The two beautiful twin Georgian girls who were on my team, with Baptist roots, looked at me with an amazedly quizzical look that haunts me to this day. I couldn't look at their eyes too long after having expressed conÞdence that Holy Ghost revived Christians would join us. But as we left, we passed a knot of about twenty singing, gabbing, tongue talking "Pentecostals" who asked us if we were going to reach out. When we responded, hoping they were going to join us, they whooped, went "Glory", "Bless You Brothers" and þowed in the "Spirit" outside - to their cars. That shocked me big time then (it doesn't now, since I have learned that many people in "revival" are more concerned about how good they or their four feel after they leave than if it ever touches the lost).
And as painful as it was, I really didn't care. We smarted, but we didn't care. A resolve not my own made me straighten up. I looked at the slack, shocked faces of Alan and the girls and said, "let's go. If they won't compel them to come in, we sure will." We trusted God, girded up our loins and took our few hundred tracts and did our best to be a witness to literally thousands that night. The masses streaming out of the downtown ballpark where they were stopped us almost a quarter mile from it. People were literally all over the streets, the sidewalks, elbow to elbow. What an opportunity. We had many wonderful encounters. We didn't win anyone. But we were a witness. We got to confront with the Pearl Of Great Price wandering young kids, shaggy 60's refugees, and metalheads trying to meet chicks all without a clue, buzzed by doobies, and chasing something Jerry Garcia would never help them catch. IMHO, I think that was more of a witness of "revival" than the Saints In Revival we were with.
I love what Nick Park, the overseer of the Church of God in Ireland once wrote:
"We say to our people in Ireland: 'If you say you are Þlled with the Holy Spirit, then we want to see evidence that you have a passion to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. And if you do not have that passion and concern, we do not care if you pray in tongues every day, you are not a real Pentecostal.' Sometimes people get offended by my saying that, but we have to go by the words of Jesus. - Acts 1:8."
Thanks, Nick. Just what I was getting at. Seeking and saving that which is lost is what we should be doing as the fruit of revival, not subsidizing the merchandising of "Revival" in nice, bright packages, Visa and Mastercard accepted. And deÞnitely not just wandering out with our holy goosepimples and rhemas dancing in our heads. When I can hear of veriÞable reports of Christians en masse "þowing"out of their churches (starting with Brownsville and Toronto) several evenings - weeks on end, really, and not after Father's Day or after six months of prayer - and INTENTIONALLY going into the worst neighborhoods in town and witnessing until all have heard the Gospel in their communities (hey if the anointing is so strong, it should begin there, right?), then I might see justiÞcation for the noise being called "Revival" I hear þoating in the land.
Until then, I am weary
of hearing the word. The Body of Christ doesn't even know what
that means.
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