Pentecost Today? – The Biblical Basis for Understanding Revival is written by Iain Murray and published by The Banner of Truth Trust (Hardback 226 pages).
While I’d been aware of Iain Murray’s book, I hadn’t considered reading it until I saw Tim Challies’ interview with Paul Washer. Among other things, Challies asked Washer what five books had most influenced his faith. Pentecost Today was his fifth book. Washer said it was one of the best treatments of revival and the power of the Holy Spirit he had ever come across.
Personal revival and the influence of the Holy Spirit have been uppermost in my mind. Before this I’d read D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ “Joy Unspeakable.” ML-J’s book began to stoke a fire inside me. Likewise, Pentecost Today? does not disappoint. I often refer to Desert Island books – books other than the Bible I’d take with me to a desert island. These books are growing in number – I’d now need a Desert Island Book Suitcase – and Pentecost Today? would be among them.
The book is divided into Seven Chapters:
1) How Do We Understand ‘Revival’?
2) Charles G. Finney: How Theology Affects Understanding of Revival
3) Our Responsibility and God’s Sovereignty
4) The Holy Spirit and Preaching
5) The Interpretation of Experience
6) Hindering Revival: Evangelical Fanaticism
7) Six Things Revival Will Bring
Appendices
1) Extraordinary Gifts
2) Co-ordination of Grace and Duty
3) Presbyterian Doctrine on Regeneration, Inability and Free-Agency
Every chapter has sub-headings. For further information and a glimpse into the book see Banner of Truth. As implied by the contents above, Murray’s very important first chapter explores Three Views on how revival comes about. In summary he writes:
The first view virtually excludes revival, while the second goes to the opposite extreme and treats revival as if it was everything. The historic understanding avoids all these pitfalls. It neither underrates revivals nor exaggerates them. It accepts the permanency of the Spirit’s presence and in so doing does not undervalue the ‘normal’. It remembers ‘Lo, I am with you always’, and is therefore not discouraged from continuing in the path of ordinary Christian work. Yet, at the same time, in the words of Dr W. Patton, it believes in mighty outpourings of the Holy Spirit:
They are to be regarded as glorious additions or supplements to the ordinary workings of spiritual forces; in which God seizes upon a conjuncture of facts and favoring occasions, to work saving results on a large scale and with great rapidity, exalting the faith of his people and striking terror into the heart of his foes. In the United States revivals have thus been conspicuously used, at eventful periods, to save the land from prevalent infidelity and worldliness.
In his book Murray explores several famous revivals and discusses their pros and cons. He also introduces readers to the likes of John Flavel, Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, John Wesley, George Whitefield, Dwight L. Moody, and other people who powerfully experienced God’s presence at times in their lives, in order to encourage and-or convict them. For this and other reasons this book is a feast. My copy is heavily marked and full of sticky notes. I will be reading Pentecost Today? again and again.
P.S. I also recommend watching Paul Washer’s testimony A Liar and a Coward. The video-audio is corrupted towards the end, but it has a transcript. Washer speaks about a personal experience he had one night. It was so powerful that he tells his audience:
Now, whatever you want to say, I can tell you, my preaching on the streets, everything changed. Do I still struggle with sin? Yes. Do I carry revival around in my pocket? Absolutely not. But the presence of the living God is more real to me in this building right now, than the presence of all of you put together.
May God be more real to all of us than this passing world currently is!
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Pentecost Today?: The Biblical Basis for Understanding Revival
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