"This Is Not That!”

Illus: A man in Columbia, S. C., has spent a small fortune collecting antique car replicas. You cannot help noticing how each detail of each model is exactly in scale to the original cars they represent. In every detail they look just like the original cars.

You may wonder, what does that have to do with our text? Well, it has a great deal to do with our text. When God was pouring out His Spirit upon the church at Pentecost, revival broke out and the church experienced its greatest revival!

We have many good denominational churches stating that the church today is experiencing the greatest revival that the church has ever experienced!

They point at what they call “revival” today, that is sweeping the land, and they say the same thing Peter said -- “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.” However, when we compare what happened on Pentecost to what we have today we can only conclude, THIS IS NOT THAT!

Illus: That great old preacher, Vance Havner, who has gone to be with the Lord, said, “On the day of Pentecost, when the multitudes saw the early church filled with the Spirit, they asked, ‘What does this mean?’ Peter replied, ‘This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel.’ After his sermon the listeners asked, ‘What shall we do?’ We have tried to reverse the order today. We expect men to ask, ‘What does this mean?’ In our desperation, we have staged religious excitements and simulated religious ecstasies, but the multitude is not crying, ‘What shall we do?....Is this revival? Is this an outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Is this ‘That?’ The question is its own answer. The very fact that we ask implies doubts and uncertainty. If genuine revival ever comes, WE WILL KNOW IT! A true work of God is always self-authenticating. It bears its own credentials and needs no conference of experts to identify it.”

When God sent Pentecost, the disciples were so Spirit-filled that two notable things were accomplished:

(1) They turned the world upside down for Christ with their doctrine.

(2) They drove back the forces of darkness.

One example is clear in the book of Acts. Paul went into towns and God sent such a revival, that it put people like Alexander the coppersmith, who made shrines of brass to the goddess Diana, out of business.

Whereas the men and women of the New Testament church turned the world upside down with the doctrine of Christ, even dying for their faith, most would concur today that it is the churches that are turned upside down! Many are certainly not having much success at all in driving back the forces of evil.

Until the church can see the same results as the New Testament church had, we need to be careful about pointing at what we call revival and claiming that “...this is that...” If God was going to write about the church today, we all probably would agree that God would hardly describe it as a church that was turning the world upside down.

As we compare the awakening of our age to the New Testament Revival we find that “THIS IS NOT THAT!”

IF THIS IS THAT, then why is it that sin is not going out of business instead of growing at an unbelievable rate.

We have liquor in almost every restaurant, grocery store, and convenience store in the land.

• Pornography is one of the most lucrative businesses in the land.

• We have so many criminals that we cannot build jails fast enough to house them.

• We have more social diseases than ever before.

• We have more worldly minded Christians in the church than we ever had.

• We have more corruption on our television sets than we have ever had.

• We have more corrupted role models in our society than we have ever had.

• We have more crooked politicians than we have ever had.

• We have more churches compromising the Word of God than ever before.

• We have people in our churches today who are living such immoral lives that years ago would not have been allowed to join a church. Now they are allowed to hold very prominent positions in churches.

We are being told today that if we hope to reach the masses we have to be willing to compromise our Bible-based convictions. All across this great land, that God has blessed us with, many are appealing to mankind’s intellect, emotions, and curiosity, and when we get them all inside we count heads and call this “revival.”

Illus: In April of 1996, with a snicker in their voices, CNN news reporters broadcast some disturbing news about a Baptist University. What they did NOT say was, like all religious universities this one wanted to attract as many students as they could, but they had a problem secular universities do not have. THEY HAVE BIBLE STANDARDS. The university they reported on was built by Christians who wanted to provide a place for young Christian men and women to receive an education and become what God wanted them to become. However, they found it hard to attract students because fewer and fewer young people were left who were dedicated to the Lord enough to agree with the Bible standards that this university adhered to.