THE NEED FOR REVIVAL
Jim Ayer
The man huddled on the cabin floor was slowly freezing to death. It was high in the Rockies in southwestern Alberta, and outside a blizzard raged. John Elliot had logged miles that day through the deep snows of the mountain passes. As he checked for avalanches, and as dusk and exhaustion overcame him, he had decided to “hole up.” He made it wearily to his cabin but somewhat dazed with fatigue, he did not light a fire or remove his wet clothing.
As the blizzard blasted through the cracks in the old cabin walls, the sleeping forest ranger sank into oblivion, paralyzed by the pleasure of the storm’s icy caress. Suddenly, however, his dog sprang into action, and with unrelenting whines, finally managed to rouse his near-comatose friend.
The dog was John’s constant companion, a St. Bernard, one of a long line of dogs famous for their heroics in times of crisis. “If that dog had not been with me, I would be dead today,” John Elliott says. “When you are freezing to death you actually feel warm all over, and do not wake up because it feels too good.” The Prairie Overcomer, published by the Prairie Bible Institute, Three Hills, Alberta Canada.
How many in the church today are so cold they actually believe they are warm? Am I such a person? Are you? I would submit to you that the world is falling apart around us, and the church is not far behind. But we don’t recognize the fact because we have become accustomed to the “cold”. The world is freezing the warmth of God from our very bones…but we are unaware.
In the second book of Chronicles chapter twenty, verse twenty, we read this wonderful promise: “Believe in the LORD your God, so shall ye be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper.
Keeping the preceding word of the Lord in mind, I invite you to read these statements from the pen of inspiration. These are the kind of statements the church members of old stoned and sawed the prophets asunder over. They plugged their ears so they might not hear. Nothing they did changed the validity of the word of the Lord to His church, however. I found the following statements very gripping.
Christians should be preparing for what is soon to break upon the world as an overwhelming surprise, and this preparation they should make by diligently studying the word of God, and striving to conform their lives to its precepts. . . . God calls for a revival and a reformation. —Prophets and Kings, p. 626.