(J.D King) In September of 2009, I had the privilege to travel to Los Angeles, California, and visit some of the original sites where the historic Azusa Street Revival transpired. As I shared some of my personal experiences online through Facebook and other forms of social media, one of my friends asked me to reflect on why the Azusa Street Revival ended.
The question of why religious revivals end is one that comes up often and usually elicits a number of different responses from people. Obviously the gradual breakdown of something that God has been in the middle of can be a mystery. So as I share my reflections, I cannot claim to have complete insight into these things. In the case of the waning of the Azusa Street Revival, there was a number of things that hindered it. I would like share a few of them below. READ MORE
Because these type of revivals only stirr up the emotions. As tri-partite beings we have a body (flesh), soul (mind, emotion & will) and a spirit (conscience, intuition & fellowship). God dwells in our spirit and scripture tells us that you can only serve God in spirit and in truth (truth as in subjective reality). So anything that just stirrs up the emotions dies out. How many of us can say we go to these charismatic gatherings we get so stirred up in our soul that we feel like we’re on fire for God and although there is benefit to an extent such as healing and repentance, that feeling is only temporary. We never stay in that state, and its not where we serve God in any case as mentioned above. The sin nature dwells in our flesh, Paul and John makes this quite clear in the epistles, man’s personality is in his soul, genesis says “and man became a living soul” and God lives in our spirit, this also Paul makes clear in the epistles as well as John in revelation 1 “I was in spirit on the Lord’s day..” this is small letter spirit referring to his spirit which is in dwelt by God’s Spirit and not spirit as in the Holy Spirit. So true true revival happens in the spirit, and it happens every morning when you come to the Lord, he revives you in your spirit. Thus you get revived daily. Pauls said althou the outer man may be decaying, the inner man is being renewed (revived) day by day (2Cor 4:16). This inner man is your spirit which is regenerated with God’s spirit in Jesus Christ. Paul said that the last Adam (Jesus Christ) became a life giving Spirit in 1Cor15:45. Thus we receive Christ in our spirit. Yes evetually the Spirit which is in our spirit permeates the soul thus spreading to all part of our being even our body. But the key here is it stems from our spirit, and this revival last, because it is daily. But anything that stems from our emotions wont last and it will be like having a high only to come crashing down e evetually. God bless you all.