Revival and Riot
I have been saying for five years that we are going to see revival and riot in America. Sometimes one will occur because of the other, or one will happen at the same time as the other. The contrast between light and darkness is more pronounced; the divisions are stronger in our culture. The pressures of the spirit are intense, the kind that produce both healed lame and prison, outstanding generosity and Ananias and Sapphira moments.
When the revival broke out at Asuza Street in Spring of 1906 a great earthquake hit San Fransico at nearly the same time. When the day of Pentecost arrived for the early church, an immediate crowd response occurred as well, a response of misunderstanding to what was prophesied in Joel.
In the midst of revival, good people also get carried away into excess, a sense of making the atmosphere something completely about them the same way Simon did with Philip and Simon Peter. Revival reveals people moving in deep spiritual realities but at the same time struggling with the deep personal issues that spiritual reality reveals: everybody has to go deeper in freedom when revival arrives.
The move of God in our generation will have more of an impact upon the general population, more quickly, because of media. In this way, revival will result in riot, a immediate response of rejection by those who have opposition to spiritual things on the forefront of their minds. An explosive atmosphere will be produced by the move of God that a match of exposure will set off with deep impact.
Political Exposures
The move of God does not remove political spirit divisions immediately. The political spirit thrives upon competition, comparison, and contention. Negative advertising works, and religious people are not content with advertising their brand of spirituality when God begins to move in ways they haven’t experienced. The move of God is a threat.
The political spirit is about “winner takes all” and “get them before they get you.” Some of these political dynamics continued to operate within the church even after Pentecost, or even because of Pentecost! That is, Pentecost exposed this cultural atmospheric condition with a mind to purge it from the culture.
Political exposures come to rout out the production sources of atmospheric conditions. “What is the source and resource of this condition?” can be answered in surprising ways, but it will be exposed to be confronted! Certainly, Pentecost brought the apostles face to face with the sources of a the political spirit that crucified Jesus.
