Are we really in the last of the last days? Can we be certain? How often have you heard someone say recently, “There is no biblical evidence predicting a great last day’s revival.” as they then go on to describe the corruptness of the culture around us? I may have agreed with some of that myself. However, I found myself inwardly feeling like I was self-contradicting. That’s because at the same time I felt a deep burden in my heart springing forth from a great love that I have for this country and my fellow man to pray for a national revival. Do I believe for a moment that this sense of supernatural love for a nation whose evils grow more wicked every day and for a people who criticize and mock me for my faith in Christ comes from me? Unless I want to diagnose myself with acute schizophrenia, then I had better recognize Paul’s desire “To know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:19 (NKJV) I had also better acknowledge the as the song says; “I know He lives because He lives within my heart!”
What then could possibly be the cause of this contradiction of doctrinal belief and spiritual experience? I believe that we are simply guilty of falling into the same misconception of every Christian generation of believers since Christ rose from the dead. The misconception is what I call a “dispensation misplacement.”
As I explain this, I want to be very careful to emphasize the spiritually advantageous need for every generation coming up to believe that Christ could return at any time. Many theologians believe that when 1st John 3:3 states, “And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as he is pure,” It is referring to the rapture. They believe that John was stating that those believers who believe Christ is coming back soon will live godly lives. Our forefathers believed that Christians should be actively purifying themselves from the things of the world, by God’s power even though they have been already declared righteous by the gift of their salvation.
Modern church history shows that several generations have come gone while believing that things were so evil during their own generation that they had to be living in the “last of the last days”. Then to everyone’s surprise as many prayed in the same way my first paragraph describes, God sent within those generations great revivals that looked very different than the revivals of the previous generations. A prime example was recently displayed in movie theaters across America through a movie called “The Jesus Revolution.” It clearly showed how many of the church folk of that day rejected that new revival, believing that it was some sort of deception of darkness. However, God did once again reveal to us His ability to sift over the years the chaff from the wheat and remove through much heat and many trials the dross from the gold. Countless are the senior saints today that came to Christ in their flannel shirts and bell-bottom jeans with sometimes bare feet, who now are serving as deacons and elders in their local churches.
In my opinion, we have a very similar mindset as previous generations!! We are seeing how wicked our world is. How many babies are being aborted? By biblical standards today’s gross immorality has gone places that could have never been biblically defined because such extremes seem to have never existed before. We can go down Paul’s last day’s list in 2nd Timothy 3:2-5 and this generation scores an evil “10” on each point listed, but still our hearts seem compelled to cry out to God to send yet one more last day’s revival! The prayerful conclusion that I have come to is “God, what does Heaven have to lose? Please give us another season of dropping our nets in the water Lord for a catch. So what if some flop off the boat and back in the water? Perhaps like during the Jesus Movement the ones we can keep in the boat will be the leaders for a better tomorrow!”
