Revival + Trouble
Today is “book release day” as we release “The Nations Rage: Prayer, Promise, and Power in an Anti-Christian Age”. I began writing it a year ago, when Covid-19, racial tensions, rioting and looting in cities, armed militias, and national political tension were not the predominant storyline of that particular cultural moment. The premise of the book was simple: there is a future revival coming to the earth, the likes of which we have never seen before in Church history. However, there is a biblical and historical case to be made that the times and seasons of the Church with or in power happen to be the times when the nations most resist or persecute the Church. To say it another way, great revivals have historically caused great trouble for the body of Christ.
If there is a great revival coming - perhaps the greatest revival in the history of the world - what kind of trouble or resistance could we expect from that level of global outpouring?
If you track with what I believe about the end of the age, then you may have already guessed: the Great Tribulation, or the greatest time of trouble in human history.
This is, admittedly, a bit of a radical premise. The idea that the Great Tribulation is caused by the Great Harvest is not one commonly presented - that there will be historic glory and historic trouble. As believers, we need to take both seriously, and prepare for both spiritually.
What makes me pause and wonder is the genesis of what I wrote last Fall. As I looked to make the case for the Church in power and the threat she represents to fallen man and their own power base, I began to reflect on the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the rise of powerful dictators out of those lawless contexts. I began to write about Cultural Marxism, a movement I had heard almost nothing about yet seemed to express a powerful and dangerous evolution of Marxism from its early roots and ideology to a more modernized expression of necessary revolution. I wrote about things that, at the time, no one seemed to be talking about. I wondered if folks would think that I was crazy. I wondered if I was crazy to attempt to point to the areas of rage against the Church that would be troubling for us in the “days to come”.
Like everyone else in the world, I did not know that those days would be now.
We are, as a people, in a critical moment historically. The question, as ever, is how will we respond. The two predominant narratives demand either a social justice response or a political one. I believe that the Lord is calling us to go another way - the way of John the Baptist. He is calling us to the way of repentance and spiritual preparation. This includes the way of prayer, and of the heart. Why? The days that are now upon us demand heightened sensitivity and responsiveness to the Spirit with lives sharpened by prayer rather than dulled by compromise or idle entertainment and boredom.
This book is an important resource for you and for your friends and family to begin engaging in the storyline of where things are and where they are going with new urgency and focus.
The time is short, and the end of the age is upon us.
If you want to go deeper in this subject, I encourage you to pick up my latest book. You can order it today: The Nations Rage: Prayer, Promise, and Power in an Anti-Christian Age.