I do not know any Scripture which would warrant the thought of any special “revival” so-called, before the Lord comes for His saints. The passage quoted from Joel by Peter in Acts 2 covers the whole Pentecostal period, and cannot be of complete application till the approach of the great and notable day of the Lord. It will then be fulfilled. But, if the Lord be still on high in order, as the “quickening Spirit” (1 Cor. 1:5) “to give repentance and the remission of sins” to all who believe on Him, we may count on the precious activity of His saving grace at any time till that longed-for event, just as we can trace it, as a gladdening river, throughout all these dark centuries of His absence,
His life-giving, and life-sustaining power has never, blessed he His name, failed for a moment, spite of the evil days of the Church’s history here, nor will it fail. But a moment comes when He will rise up and shut to the door, to the eternal confusion of those who “believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
No, I see no prediction of any great “revival”—or, indeed, of any prophetic event prior to the Rapture. The coming of the Lord personally is, I believe, the immediate hope set before us. Then, surely, if we love Him we shall not only pray for divine reviving, but in our measure we shall do all we can, by every means, to spread the glory of His name.
He may deign to use human instrumentality, a Luther, a Wesley, a Moody, or others whose names are little known but whose obscure labour may have affected permanently, and for untold good, the very heart of Christendom.
“Father,” said a boy, “the world is very bad.” “Improve it by one, my son,” replied that father. God and one means “Revival.”