Edwards or Finney: Does God Send Revival, or Do We Prepare for It?

Christians have argued about revival for nearly three centuries. Where does it come from? Does God simply decide to visit a people, or does he wait until the church meets certain conditions?

Professor Gary Maxey frames the debate through two famous names.

Jonathan Edwards: revival as sovereign gift

Jonathan Edwards saw great revival in his church in the 1730s. He held that revivals are always unexplainable acts of a sovereign God. The Spirit moves where he wills, and we cannot explain it any more than we can explain the wind (John 3:8). When Edwards wrote about the revival that broke out in his church, he called the account A Narrative of Surprising Conversions. The word surprising tells the story. The people did not see it coming.

Charles Finney: revival as response

A century later Charles Finney took another view. In his Lectures on Revivals he taught that revivals could be predicted, because they are the response of a covenant-making God to conditions he has laid down. If we do our part, Finney said, God will do his. The verse Finney's followers often quote is 2 Chronicles 7:14: "If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land."

Professor Maxey's answer: both are correct

Asked which man is right, Professor Maxey says both. There is mystery about when and how revivals break out. Yet God has also established principles we can study and follow. If we follow them, he believes, we can be assured of seeing revival sooner or later.

The Ugandan experience supports this. When Bishop Festo Kivengere was asked why the East African revival lasted so long, he answered that he could not explain it. It is God's work, he said, and not a technique. The same revival included believers who confessed, returned stolen goods and put away sin. Both truths sit together.

Why this matters for Nigeria

If revival were entirely up to God, we could only wait. If it depended entirely on us, we could produce it by effort and hold a program every year. Professor Maxey rejects both extremes.

He argues instead that some things help usher revival in and other things hinder or stop it. Nigeria's long wait since the Civil War Revival, he says, is not an accident. There have been hindrances. The first task is to find and remove them.

The conditions in 2 Chronicles 7:14

The verse names four actions.

1. Humble ourselves. This means owning our spiritual need and dropping the pretense that all is well. 2. Pray. Professor Maxey means focused prayer, not noise. It is penitent prayer, which draws near to a holy God. 3. Seek his face. The search is persistent. Revival often takes weeks and sometimes months or years, and he says we must be willing to seek until it comes. 4. Turn from wicked ways. Prayer without repentance, he writes, is a waste of time.

God's promise follows: he will hear, forgive and heal the land.

The practical meaning

You are not required to decide which theologian is right before you pray. You are required to do what the verse says. Humble yourself this week. Pray with a purpose, not for a price. Seek God's face until you stop looking at the clock. Turn from one sin you have been carrying.

Then leave the timing, the place and the surprise to him.

Drawn from the teaching of Professor Gary S. Maxey.