Religious Revival

[Frank Dunkle] Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. It is a nearly full house, and that's always a pleasure. I'm glad to have quite a few visitors, and thank you, Miss Donnerberg. She's growing up. I have to call her that instead of Harmonie now. But nice to hear that special music. And I almost feel guilty. There's a special occasion. And it's wonderful coming to the Sabbath. We come out of the world. And I understand there's people in town for a wedding, and we focus on good things. And now, I want to call your attention to what's going on in the world around us. At least just a little bit. You've heard there, I think, a Chinese curse that says, "May you live in interesting times." And we live in pretty interesting times, right? Society is in a state of upheaval. Standards and morals seem to keep changing. And I understand several countries around the world are holding elections this year. But a presidential election in the United States will tend to dominate the news even outside of our country. It brings up a lot of discussion.

At this time with economic problems, that's a source of disagreement. But our people are also divided about things like immigration policies. We hear a lot about the legality of abortion. What being a man or a woman actually means? And so on and so on. Does it ever make you miss the good old days? Maybe I should hold my hands higher. I wanted to say welcome to those of you on the webcast as well. I appreciate that you're watching. The other day I was listening to the radio, and I don't remember who I heard say it. But they said, "Don't you miss the times when we had standards and values in the U.S., back when Bill Clinton was president?" I did the same thing. I laughed. Because I remember people my age and older when Bill Clinton was president that were saying, "Oh, our country's gone south, and we have no standards or morals." Now, this sermon isn't meant to cast aspersion on any of our former presidents. And to be honest, I don't want to talk about politics today.

But I do want to talk about the things changing rapidly and how that can change our perspective, thinking about our society around us and what is it they really need in the way of worshiping God. What religion does our country need? Because some people, I think, it's easy to say, boy, we need a good old-fashioned religious revival in the country, not only in America perhaps all the Western world. We might think wouldn't it be great to get back to our Christian roots? Now, I don't want to be too sarcastic. But I think that if we do wish for a return to religion in America or in the West, it might not look the way we wish it would. And there's where I want to look back in our Bibles today and note that there has been religious revival at times in ancient Israel. And unfortunately, sometimes it was a pretty sad story, one largely of mistaken identity.

Now, I'm going to go back almost backwards a little bit. I want to begin today in John 4. So the Gospel of John 4. I won't read the whole passage. But of course, this is an interesting story that only the Gospel writer John covers about Jesus Christ having a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well outside of Sychar. And we believe Sychar was probably the town in the Old Testament known as Shechem. And as I've been leading our students through the Pentateuch class, I'm always amazed how Shechem comes up again and again. But the Jews and the Samaritans were rivals. Had been by this point for nearly 400 years. Jews, they didn't like the Samaritans. Samaritans, they didn't like those Jews. Not only because of ethnic differences but there were some serious religious disagreements. And so, of course, this woman at the well is surprised, perhaps even that this group of Jews, a Rabbi and His disciples are there in the first place.

Generally, coming or going from Galilee down to Jerusalem, they would go down to the Jordan River Valley and take that road and go around where those Samaritans lived. Boy...never mind. So besides that being unusual that the Jews, they were there at all, for a rabbi to talk to a strange woman was pretty unusual. Now, we're going to pick up in verse 19 of chapter 4. Because after they talk a little bit, this woman comes to realize this is not a typical Jewish Rabbi. 

John 4:19 The woman says to Jesus, "'Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.'" And she says, "You know, our fathers worshiped in this mountain." And Sychar sits right there between Mount Gerizim and I believe Mount Ebal. "'Our fathers worshiped on this mountain. You Jews say in Jerusalem is a place where one ought to worship.'" 

So the Samaritans had built a temple on Mount Gerizim, at least according to some historical accounts. They even believed that that's where Abraham took his son Isaac and almost sacrificed him. They would teach that that's where Abraham met Melchizedek on his way back from the battle. The Samaritans were taught that the temple in Jerusalem was a fake. It's a counterfeit. We Samaritans have the true religion. You Jews are off track. So while this woman seems to have a genuine prophet of God available, she asked Him, "Who's right? Us Samaritans or you Jews?" Jesus is going to answer her question. He's going to tell her, yet the Jews have the right place, but He tells her something more. 

James 4:21-24 "Jesus said to her, 'Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you'll neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you don't know. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews.'" The Jews have it right, BUT...and it's large in my notes. It's capital B, capital U, capital T. "'The hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit. Those who worship must worship in spirit and in truth.'" 

In other words, the question of which is the right temple where we should be sacrificing is largely irrelevant. God is not contained to a particular place. And with Christ's sacrifice...sacrifice, you know, animal sacrifice and those rituals are going to become irrelevant. The system will be replaced. I won't turn to the Book of Hebrews, but a lot of that book is about explaining that to the Jewish people. The point here is that going back to the religion of their fathers, that's not what God was intending, especially if it wasn't the right religion in the first place. And we could see from Jesus's words a national religious revival at that time wasn't what was needed. What's needed is moving forward, learning the way God wants to be worshiped, and doing that.

But we could ask, how did those Samaritans get so confused on the matter? Because does it pertain to anything we do today? I'm going to make the case that these Samaritans never really did know the right religion. That's why I'm saying a revival isn't going to help them all that much. I want to go back to 2 Kings 17 to discuss this. 2 Kings 17, we'll see...it turns out that these peoples living in the land of Samaria who believed they were descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, weren't the peoples that they thought they were. There might have been some mixed ancestry, but we're going to see what happened near the end of the kingdom known as Israel. No, you might be in 2 Kings. I'm in 1 Kings where I don't need to be. 2 Kings 17, will begin in verse 23. Actually, let me back up to...I'll start reading in verse 19. It's a lengthy enough passage, but I think it's important.

2 Kings 17:19-21 It says, "Judah did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God. They walked in the statutes of Israel which they made. And the Lord, the Eternal One, rejected all the descendants of Israel. He afflicted them, delivered them into the hand of plunderers till He cast them from His sight. For He tore Israel from the house of David, and they made Jeroboam the son of Nebat king. And Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord, made them commit a great sin." 

We'll look at that a bit later, but we understand that the united kingdom that King David and then his son, Solomon, ruled had been divided into two separate kingdoms. The dynasty began by Jeroboam is going to go off track by religion. 

2 Kings 17:22-23 "The children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did, did not depart from them," Amazingly, they could be pretty true to that religion until, "the Lord removed Israel out of His sight as He said by all His servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria as it is to this day."

At the time this was written, those Israelites had been taken away, never to return. 

2 Kings 17:24-26 "And then the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim," and other places hard to say, "place them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities," which gives us some idea of why the Jews looked at them the way they did not to say they should have had that attitude. "And it was so, at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Eternal. So He sent lions among them which killed some of them. And they spoke to the king of Assyria saying, 'Hey, the nations whom you've removed from the places and the cities of Samaria, these people there don't know the rituals of the God of the land. Therefore, He sent lions among them, and indeed they're killing them because they don't know the rituals of the God of the land.'"

Now, it's important for us to realize that these statements don't necessarily reflect something true about God. The peoples in ancient times tended to think that there were gods of certain areas. So they would say the god of the land, he dominates that area, but not everywhere. They were incorrect in that. There's only one God. The God rules everywhere. But their thought was, hey, we've got to figure out the God of this area so we can appease Him, and it'll save us. Now, the peoples that were moved out, maybe they know. So we pick up in verse 27.

2 Kings 17:27-28 "The king of Assyria commanded, and said, 'Well, send one of the priests whom you brought from there. Let him go and dwell there. Let him teach them the rituals of the God of the land.' And one of the priests whom they carried away from Samaria came, dwelled in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Eternal." 

But did he? Now, this priest, we're going to see later wasn't a descendant of Aaron, wasn't somebody who knew how to worship God, certainly not how to worship God in spirit and in truth. He's a priest descended from those established by Jeroboam when he wanted to turn away from that religion.

2 Kings 17:28-31 "So one of these priests came," in verse 28, "dwelt in Bethel and taught them how to fear the Eternal. However, every nation continued to make gods of its own, put them in shrines on the high places which the Samaritans had made every nation of the cities where they dwelt. The men of Babylon made Succoth Benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal," boy, these are a lot of interesting names. 

Let's skip down to verse 32. 

2 Kings 17:32-34 "They feared the eternal and from every class," from every class not just the descendants of Aaron, "they appointed themselves priests of the high places who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. They feared the Eternal, yet they served their own gods according to the rituals of the nations from among whom they were carried away. And to this day, they continue practicing the former rituals. For they don't fear the Lord, they don't fear Him the way He wanted to be, nor do they follow the statutes or their ordinances, the law or commandment that the Eternal had commanded the children of Jacob whom He named Israel."

I'm going to lead off reading here, but it makes a distinction. There's a way that God wanted to be worshiped. He established a religious system. But the peoples that were brought into what would be known as Samaria, they practiced what later is called syncretism. Mix a little of this religion with a little of that religion, put it all together, put it in the oven at 350 for about 50 minutes, see what comes out. Okay, I just made that one up. It's not in my notes. Okay, so they weren't worshiping God the way He wanted. And this is part of the reason the Jewish people of Christ's time despised the Samaritans. We need to understand though, and what I wanted to point out here, they were not only bringing the false religion from the areas where they'd lived before, the good old religion of Israel that they thought they were learning, that wasn't, wasn't the religion God gave them. It wasn't the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the religious system that God gave at Mount Sinai for how to worship Him. It was a counterfeit, something that developed after Solomon died and the northern tribes of Israel had separated.

So now, I do want to back up and look at that a little. We certainly don't have time to recount how God led Israel out of the land of Egypt and brought them to Mount Sinai. But I sometimes speculate, why did He leave them in Egypt in the first place? Well, after being there for quite some time as slaves and then being brought out, God has a chance to start with a blank slate. Let me give you a government without a lot of common law being built up hundreds of years. Let me tell you this is the way I want to be worshiped and not bring any of the past in. So He gave them a government. He gave them laws. He gave them a ritual system centered on a tabernacle where sacrifice would be done. We should note, of course, that the Bible is clear in showing us that God always preferred obedience to sacrifice. And Christ said, "I want mercy and not sacrifice." The sacrifices that they had were always symbols of Jesus Christ's ultimate sacrifice. They were a learning device to help people learn God's way.

But that said, even with the system God gave them, you know, sometimes Israel worshiped the way He said, and sometimes they didn't. Most of the time, actually, they fell short. The nation reached a high point under what we call the united monarchy with King David. Well, Saul before that, but reached a high point under David, and David led Israel to worship God as He wanted. His son, Solomon, not only continued that practice but was able to direct building a great temple that replaced the Tabernacle. But after that, Solomon's son, Rehoboam, did not exercise the wisdom of his father. You know, he listened to the youth that he grew up with, and he didn't exercise good politics. And his stubbornness led to a rebellion by the northern tribes. They separated. They said, "What part do we have in David?" And they named one of the officers who served under Solomon, a man named Jeroboam, they made king. Jeroboam, though, once he was established as king...

By the way, we want to turn to 1 Kings 12. I was going to say if you're not already there, but why would you be, I didn't mention it. 1 Kings 12, will begin in verse 26. Because I don't want to recount the story. And it's a rather bloody story of Jeroboam wiping out basically the family of King Ahab. That's why I want to mention, you know...well, no, I just confused one of my stories there. Forget about King Ahab. He'll come up in a moment. Yeah, we'll get to... Yeah. So let's start in verse 26. 

1 Kings 12:26-28 "Jeroboam said in his heart, 'Well, now, the kingdom may return to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of the Eternal at Jerusalem, the heart of this people will turn back to their lord, Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they'll kill me and go back to Rehoboam, king of Judah.' Therefore, the king asked advice, 'Hey, what do you think I ought to do here?' And he made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, 'It's too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel,'" and then it says something interesting, "'Here are your gods, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.'"

I'm not going to turn there. But if you go back to Exodus 32, when Moses was up on Mount Sinai and the people despaired that he was ever coming back, they told Aaron, "Make gods for us." Made a golden calf and said, "This is the God that brought you out of the land of Egypt." It seems like they thought this is helping them worship the true God, but it wasn't. And I totally lost my place. Here we are. We're in verse 29.

1 Kings 12:29-33 "Jeroboam set one of those calves up in Bethel. The other he put in Dan. And this became a sin for the people. They went to worship before the one as far as Dan. Jeroboam made shrines on the high places, made priests of every class of people who were not of the sons of Levi. Jeroboam ordained a feast on the 15th day of the 8th month." Now, we're focusing a lot on the feasts of the seventh month that are coming up. This is a counterfeit, a fake. "A feast on the 15th day of the 8th month, like the one in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar, and so he did at Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made. And at Bethel, he installed priests of the high places which he'd made. He made offerings on the altar which he'd made at Bethel on the 15th day of the 8th month, the month he devised in his own heart. He ordained a feast for the children of Israel, offered sacrifices on the altar, and burnt incense."

The time when we start devising something in our own hearts to worship God, there's potential for trouble. I don't think I'm telling an audience that doesn't know that already, but we want to be reminded at times. This might make it easier for us to understand, you know, perhaps many of those Samaritans in the days of Jesus Christ sincerely wanted to worship God. They'd been taught what was then a very old religion, that their ancestors assured them was the truth. And they had little reason to think that those pompous Pharisees and Sadducees down in Jerusalem knew better than they did. Turns out they were wrong. The Pharisees and Sadducees had some things right, but they were not much better off in a lot of other ways. But one of my main points here is that, you know, we might consider that many people in society around us today who consider themselves Christians are in a similar situation. They practice an ancient religion passed down to them by their ancestors. And many of them believe they're worshiping the way that God wants.

Of course, nowadays, we've progressed from that. Many in our society don't practice traditional Christianity or any form of Christianity. Islam has been on the rise. We have Buddhism and other Eastern mystical religions, not to mention what I would call the religion of atheism. It's becoming more and more common. And maybe we would think, oh, it'd be great if there'd be a great religious revival, if our nation would get back to its Christian heritage. How much would that be something really for us to applaud, though? In some ways, it would be. But that's what makes me think of this other story from the Old Testament I wanted to turn to. Because if you go through the Old Testament, and I'm thinking not Deuteronomy, although reading Deuteronomy is really good and I'm glad we're doing it, but after Israel was in the promised land, it doesn't take long to see that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn't do so well in obeying and worshiping the true God. Judah did better at times, especially on the occasions when they had a good king, Hezekiah or a Josiah would lead them back.

The northern kingdom of Israel, though, as we saw, they pretty much abandoned God. They went on from the counterfeit religion that Jeroboam had established to also adopting various false gods from the nations around them. Let's bring in a little Dagon, Chemosh, Moloch, Milcom, and other names. I could probably make up names and they'd sound pretty good. But what became very prominent after a time was Baal worship. Worship of, you could just translate it as the lords, but Baal became the thing. And King Ahab became one of the worst. Now, it's time for Ahab. I was getting ahead of myself. One of the worst kings of Israel who did much, he did a lot to establish Baal worship as Israel's dominant religion. And it seems there were a number of people in Israel, though, who were like, "Man, this Baal worship, they're way off track. That's not what we ought to be doing. We got to get back to the religion of our fathers."

Now, God was aware, and He warned Ahab through many different prophets, most notably Elijah. And I was tempted to just focus on Elijah because Elijah's fun. But I want to focus on the story where God appoints a new king and tells him, "Eliminate Ahab's dynasty." Now, Ahab came from Omri, then Ahab's there for a while. One of his sons becomes king, then another. But God will send a prophet to anoint one of the leading military leaders, a man named Jehu. I always like to say Jehu. Jehu, Jehu, Hebrew names. I'm hesitating because when I was a kid, my mom would tell us when we were acting up, "You're acting like a bunch of Jehus." I'm not sure if those two are related. Maybe she knew the Bible story better than I realized. But Jehu stomping out Ahab's dynasty, it's a violent, bloody story that we're going to skip past, so we can focus on him bringing Israel back to their religious roots. It's in 2 Kings 10. 2 Kings 10, and we are doing a fair bit of reading today, but it's important for us to know. 2 Kings 10, will begin in verse 18. As I said, this is after Jehu has taken control of power. Now, he wants to get the religion on track. 

2 Kings 10:18-21 So it says, "Then Jehu gathered all the people together, and he said to them, 'Ahab served Baal a little, Jehu will serve him much.'" Boy, I'm going to be a great Baal worshiper. "'Now, therefore call to me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all of his priests and let no one be missing. For I have a great sacrifice for Baal. Whoever is missing shall not live.'" But we see the insert. "But Jehu acted deceptively with the intent of destroying the worshippers of Baal. And Jehu said, 'Proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal.' So they proclaimed it. Then Jehu sent throughout all Israel and all the worshippers of Baal came. There was not a man left who did not come. They came to the temple of Baal, and it was full from one end to the other." 

Makes me curious, I'd like to see that building. I wonder if it was like those big metal buildings we used to keep the Feast of Tabernacles in. I imagine a sea of folding chairs. They're all in there.

2 Kings 10:22-23 "He said to the one in charge of the wardrobe, 'Bring out the vestments for the worshippers of Baal.' And they brought out the vestments," the special outfits. "Jehu and Jehonadab, the son of Rechab, went to the temple of Baal. Said to the worshippers of Baal, 'Now, search, look out, make sure there's no worshippers of the Eternal.'" 

I'm saying Eternal for the Tetragrammaton. I don't want to get into the discussion of whether it should be Yahweh or Jehovah or something else. It's the God of Israel, the true God. Don't let any of them be in here, only the worshippers of Baal. 

2 Kings 10:24 "So they went in to offer sacrifices and burn offerings. And Jehu had appointed for himself 80 men on the outside. And said, 'If any of the men whom I've brought into your hands escapes, whoever lets him escape, it'll be his life or the other life.'" 

It doesn't describe these men that much, but I suspect they're like the army rangers or the SEAL team of their day. They're only 80 of them, but they're going to take out all these people.

2 Kings 10:25-28 "And as soon as he made an end of offering," in verse 25, "Jehu said to the guard of the captains, 'Go in and kill them. Let no one come out.' They killed them with the edge of the sword, and the guards and the officers threw them out, went into the inner room of the temple of Baal. They brought out the sacred pillars of the temple of Baal and burned them. They broke down the sacred..." Let me say that in English. "...sacred pillar of Baal, tore down the temple of Baal, made it a refuse dump. To this day, thus, Jehu destroyed Baal from Israel." Let's get rid of that false pagan religion. We're going to get back to worshiping the true God. I'm sure Jehu thought this, many people did. 

2 Kings 10:29 "However," this is verse 29, "Jehu did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who'd made Israel sin. That is the golden calves that were at Bethel and Dan. And the Lord..." 

Well, from that time on, God does make a promise to Jehu because he had gotten rid of Baal worship and gotten rid of the dynasty of Ahab. My point here though is as they were getting back to the good old religion of Israel, it was the golden calves. And they probably didn't see it.

They said, "Yeah, let's get back to our religious roots, do what we should do." Their return to God was not at all a real return to worshiping the true God of the Bible. They thought it was. And they were quite willing to use violence to enforce this religious revival. If we think back to what we read in 2 Kings 17 about when these other peoples came in, and they said, "Hey, we don't know how to worship this God, the God of this land, these lions are a real problem." You know, I was complaining about ants earlier this summer, lions are a lot worse. So they sent a priest who taught them how to worship those golden calves. "This is the way the God of the land," he told them. So no wonder there was confusion for the Samaritans in Christ's day. They're descended from them. And this woman at the well perceives that Jesus is a prophet. So she asks Him, "Okay, the Jews have it one way and we've got it another way. Which is the right way?" Well, He told her, "Well, the Jews are on track, but there's a different way for me either. Moving ahead, not back, we want to worship God the Father in spirit and in truth." That's something we want to understand.

We live in a time and a place where there are a lot of different religions. And tolerance is what we hear preached and talked about. But a lot of these religious groups don't get along too well, and just those claiming Christianity have some pretty serious disagreements among them. That's been part of our country's history for quite a few years. I want to put on my history teacher hat to talk about that for a little bit. Talk a little bit about Christianity in America and its history. The very earliest colonists that came to America would have called themselves part of the Church of England, Episcopalians. Now, these are people coming to Virginia in the 1600s, early 1600s. And they weren't coming to deal with religion at all. They sort of took that for granted. And of course, their religion was the best, and they didn't mind imposing it on any American Indians that they could or the African slaves that were brought in. It's worth us remembering that this church called the Episcopalian in America today was basically not much different than the Roman Catholic Church. The only reason it was a separate church was Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife. And of course, the pope wasn't keen on that. So he said, "I'm going to start my own church. Give myself the divorce I need."

During that time, though, there were in England a great many people that wanted to purify the Church of England. They saw practices that they said, "This is not right." They tended to use the term papist for practices that the Roman Catholic Church used. So these people wanting to purify the church became known as Puritans, one of the major causes of the Civil War in England. But a lot of them traveled to America as well. So they colonized primarily New England. And it's been said they came to the New World in search of religious freedom. And I want to hesitate because I hate to ruin people's illusions, but we want to understand what religious freedom meant to them. Puritans wanted the freedom to practice their religion, their brand of Christianity. They wanted freedom for that religion. They were not at all interested in allowing any other types of Christianity or other religions to exist in their towns. If you do a study on it, you can find these Puritans... And I don't mean to put them down. I've got a lot of admiration for the Puritans and their good traits. But they sure didn't like Baptists. And Quakers, they were the worst.

Well, according to the Puritans, you can find them seizing those heretics and running them out of town. If they dared to come back, they would be whipped. They'd be tarred and feathered. They were sometimes branded, and there are even cases of execution. As I said, don't think of all the Puritans as prone to violence, but they tended towards intolerance because they were getting back to the religion of the Bible as they saw it. Of course, there are other traditions. Pennsylvania is named for William Penn, who was one of those Quakers that the Puritans didn't like very much. So he took the land that he controlled in America and made it a haven for the Quakers. And they tend to be pretty open for other religions as well. And when I say Quakers, they called themselves the Society of Friends. Rhode Island, it's separated from the rest of New England because Roger Williams wanted to have a place, really, for what we would call religious freedom. You can practice any kind of Christian religion, and he'd even let Muslims show up if they dared.

What's intriguing, if you study the course of American colonial history, Rhode Island had a little bit of a contentious relationship with the other colonies. The other colonies thought, "Those Quaks in Rhode Island, we don't know what they're going to do." Well, some of them saw it that way. And to move on, over the years, different waves of immigration brought different varieties of Christianity to America. And we won't take time to discuss that so much. But with that background, we could see as time would progress, there would be different periods of religious revival. The big one that most historians in my era focus on would be from the 1730s through the 1750s, called the Great Awakening. And it's because somebody invented the alarm clock that year. Thank you. Had to have a little release from the tension. Now, the Great Awakening was a great religious revival. It spread through the colonies and even affected various different religions. It included having some very dynamic, powerful speakers travel, and they'd often preach out in open fields where crowds would gather, and there might be hundreds of them, even thousands.

Sometimes they'd be invited into a church where they would preach and people got serious. Many people who'd been lackadaisical about religion said, "I've got to get determined. I've got to start something new." Several new churches did form. Interesting, you had this contrast between what were called the new lights and the old lights. But that also led to a fair bit of strife and contention, not everyone was excited about those traveling preachers and having others come and take away their congregants. They didn't like the emotional response. That's not religion. You've got to study. You've got to be serious. Some people doubled down on the good old religion that they had and became less tolerant than ever of those newfangled ideas. You know, in a number of cases, laws were passed by the local communities to squelch and control that. You know, sometimes even violence would break out. If we look back through American history, American history scholars have noted waves of religious reform have come every so many years.

As I said, the one in the 1750s was the first one that really stands out and perhaps the biggest. Well, maybe I should question that. The one in about the mid-1800s might be considered bigger. There were all kinds of reform movements. You know, teetotalers, alcohol is bad, we've got to get rid of that. Women's rights. Reforming of prostitutes was a big movement. And, of course, abolition, which ruffled some feathers, you know, even leading to the Civil War. We tend to look at abolitionism and ignore all the other things because the Civil War is pretty important. You know, so with that, the Reformation died down. Some historians say the 1890s was another big period. There's debate about whether the 1930s was or was not, also the 1950s. I've heard some people even propose the 1980s were another recurrence of that. But what I might want to ask is, could we possibly have another wave of revival coming? And believe me, I'm not a prophet. You know, I want to be inspired preaching, but God didn't give me a message. But if we had a period of getting back to our Christian roots, what would that be like? Would this new zealous Christianity match the teachings of this Book, the true teachings? Or would it be like the Puritans of the 1700s?

Now, the Puritans were right to oppose the ritual practices of the Church of England, but they also were very strict in enforcing Sunday worship and very strict about a lot of other practices that were not what Jesus taught. Would a big religious revival in America and Europe be similar to that of King Jehu? Jehu stomped out Baal worship, but then he enforced worship of those golden calves. And that's where sometimes I wonder if a religious revival in America could look like that? I'm posing a question, not giving an answer here, but would we see a reintroduction of blue laws, as they used to be called, closing down most businesses on Sundays?

Even fines and penalties for those who don't show up at worship services on Sunday? I don't think I'd care for that. I'm a little tight with my money. Would there be laws against holding worship services on the seventh day of the week? Could there be restrictions preventing those who don't profess the Trinity from engaging in commerce? When I said that, many of you probably thought of what we find in Revelation 13 about not being able to buy or sell unless you have a mark on your right hand or in your forehead. I don't know for sure if that's what would happen, I don't know if there will ever be a religious revival at all, but I will say I'm not real impressed with what our morals and our religion in America and Europe are like today.

We do need people to wake up. And that's why it's important for us to have a powerful message through whatever media we can use to reach out and tell people what this Book does teach. People need to wake up. We need a revival. Sadly, we live in a post-Christian society, post-Christian. To me, that sounds pretty sad. But as I said, would a return to the good old-fashioned Christianity of our American history be much better? Would that be somewhat like Jehu's revival? Worshipping the God of Israel by way of golden calves. As I said, I'm posing questions of which I don't know I know the answer to. But I am sure of what we do really need. We need what Jesus told that woman at the well. We need to worship God in spirit and in truth. And when I say spirit and truth, it doesn't mean not following God's laws because God's laws are Spirit. And Jesus Christ said, "The words that I speak are Spirit and they are life." We need that. God doesn't want us to return to the ritual sacrifice of ancient Israel. And He never did want the rituals and teachings that many churches in our history had. When Christ returns to this earth, when He establishes the 1,000-year reign that we will commemorate in just a few weeks at the feast, He's not going to institute a return to any of the religions that most people have known. The people will learn something new. If you'll turn with me, let's read in Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah 31, beginning in verse 31. 

Jeremiah 31:31-33 shows us the direction ahead for us and for our peoples. "'Behold the days are coming,' says the Lord, 'when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers and that day when I took them out by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them,' says the Lord, 'but this is the covenant that I'll make with the house of Israel after those days. I'll put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I'll be their God, and they shall be my people.'" 

How is God going to write His law in their hearts? Is it...? No, not with one of these. It's with His Holy Spirit. He'll put it in there, and it'll be part of us. He'll put His Holy Spirit in us, and that will still require obeying God's laws. Let's add Ezekiel 36 to this. Ezekiel 36, beginning in verse 26. I'm going to begin in verse 26, although earlier God is talking to Israel about how He's going to bring them from the places where they'd been, where they'd been scattered, bring them together. Those who survive into the millennium will finally be the model nation that God always wanted Israel to be. And He says in verse 25.

Ezekiel 36:25-28 "I'll sprinkle clean water on you and you'll be clean. Cleanse you from your filthiness and from all your idols. And I'll give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit within you. Take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." He's speaking in metaphor here, by the way. It's not open-heart surgery. But He says, "I'll put my Spirit within you, cause you to walk in my statutes. You will keep my judgments and do them. Then you'll dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers. You shall be my people and I will be your God." 

That's the way ahead. God wants to establish that relationship. Show us how to obey His laws and make us able to. Now, I should note the prophecies I just read at Ezekiel and Isaiah do focus on the nation of Israel. But God's Kingdom is going to rule the entire world. I'll just note that in Joel 2 is where it says He'll pour out His Spirit on all flesh. God's Spirit is going to be available to everyone who lives. That's what we're looking forward to. That's how mankind will finally get to know God, be able to worship him, worship Him in spirit and in truth. So what we need most in the world right now isn't a great religious revival, depending on how you define the term. We don't need to look back. Really, we don't need one political party or the other to be victorious. They both have good things. They both have really bad things.

When I say both I'm speaking from an American point of view. If you're outside of America listening to this, I understand our system seems really bizarre to you, to a lot of us too actually. But we don't need either party to be victorious to accomplish God's will. What we need and what we really need very dearly is for Jesus Christ to return. We need for Him to return and take command of the whole world. When that happens...sometimes I look and think it might be happening relatively soon. When that happens, God's Spirit will be poured out. The knowledge of God will fill the earth the way the waters cover the sea. And at that time humanity, all men and women and children, will finally learn how, they'll finally be able to worship the Father in spirit and in truth.