What I love about this book is that it gives us a picture of what real revival is. Michael Brown describes the Brownsville Revival as full of weeping in repentance, humbling of self, faith in Jesus' work at the cross, and receiving Jesus' mercy. He tells of other stories of deep hunger for God to save people, weeping in prayer, and "truth-telling, however unpopular that may be". He himself hungers for more, but where is the church today and how might we get there?
On the one hand you have the church growth gurus focusing on very practical matters: which is somewhat important but decidely lacking. On the other hand, you have Pentecostals who believe they are living revival already! Why anything more?!
I said earlier I’d come back to further tests relating to the hypotheses of Romans. So just to bury the apparent reality of a carnal Christian, nail it, burn it, and destroy all traces of it, let me put forward three more tests that it needs to overcome.
Once again, I love the Pentecostal’s insistence that a professing Christian should not stay a ‘carnal Christian’ and should be ‘baptised in the Spirit’, because that typically means that they will counsel the professing believer to surrender to God and keep pressing into God until they experience something of God.
In Part 1 I asserted that carnal Christians could find no place in Scripture—not in the gospels, epistles, Psalms, Proverbs, the law or anywhere else. Maybe you are thinking: well, what about Romans 7:14-20? Surely that describes a Christian who is “slave to sin” (7:14), stuck in habitual sin (7:15)? Ok—let’s lay that out as a hypothesis.
I hate the understanding that you can just say a few words and we can know for sure that a person is born again and has God living inside of them, simply because they said those words sincerely. “Dear God, I admit I’m a sinner and I believe that you Jesus are God, and that you are the only way to heaven. Come into my heart, make me born again, save me. I’m yours.” It’s so mechanistic, legalistic and spell-like!