THE COMING GLOBAL AWAKENING

"There will be a Time, when the Church of Christ will come up from the Wilderness of various Sects, Parties, Nations, Languages, Forms, and Ways of Worship, nay of Crosses and Afflictions, leaning upon her Beloved, and in his Power bidding Defiance to all her Enemies.  Then shall that Church which now doth look forth as the Morning in its Dawn, after a continual Growth in Strength and Beauty, appear as a Terrible Army with Banners; but terrible to those only that despised her whilst she was in her Minority, and would not have her Beloved to reign over them."
                    -----A.W. Boehm, "Preface" to Johan Arnndt'ss True Christianity, 2nd ed.

Everyone is Talking About It
        David Cannistraci, in his new book, The Gift of Apostle, writes:  "Think of the wonderful things God did during the Reformation, the Great Awakenings in the United States, the Evangelical Revival in England and the Pentecostal and charismatic movements of this century. . .[but] an end-time move of God is coming that will eclipse all other revivals in history.  Robert E. Coleman agrees when he writes, 'It is possible to discern an outline of a future movement of revival that will make anything seen thus far pale by comparison.'  Another spiritual wave is about to come across the earth, and it will be the greatest wave ever."

        What is going on?  Apparently something of mass proportions is anticipated, and the firstfruits of it are already being manifested.  People of great stature from all over are predicted the Mother of all Revivals soon coming to the nations of the earth.  Could it be true?  Let's look at this imminent global awakening through the eye piece of established scholarship on revival, and make informed postulates as to whether the current tremors could be the foreshadowing of the Big One.

Who Said History Couldn't Be Fun?
        The purpose of history is to help us understand the present and plan for the future.  Historians always write with a desire to understand the present situation in her or his own setting, and an astute historian writes with an eye toward planning for the future.  Such is the use of history.  In fact, a good student of revivals should be able to take the principles learned from them and be able to identify and qualify current moves of the Spirit of God because such ability demonstrates more mastery of the material than simply analyzing a movement that occurred and is no more.  Catching a movement on the upswing and analyzing it as it happens or even before it does is a much stronger suit.  Current events are history, too.  Up to the minute every event funnels into the past to give the historian an understanding of the present and plan for the future.  A good futurologist is always an excellent historian.
        In order to understand the next revival, then, it is necessary to understand the historical precedents of revival and awakening in the Body of Christ.  We will synthesize here the current events and trends with historical precedent to cast a shadow and glimpse the outline of a coming global awakening.  Based on the information I have gathered, not only is such an awakening likely, we already are seeing the precursors pass before our eyes.

        Need a little evidence of a New Thing in our midst?  Let's take one of the most difficult places on earth for the gospel, where Christian children are sold in slavery to Muslim households, where the Muslim-dominated government is systematically starving and killing Christians in an effort to eradicate them from the country-- Let's go to northern Sudan by way of the internet, through DAWN Europa's regular email postings, and check the latest news (5/30/96).

Sudan: great openness for the gospel
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The government led by General Al-Bashir intends to systematically turn Sudan into a Moslem country, but according to church leaders, the great openness for the gospel in northern Sudan is continuing. Simply after showings of the Jesus film, which 3.21 million people saw in Sudan last year, 1.62 million - slightly over 50% - showed great interest in Christianity. Most churches are growing and, following a pastors' conference in May 1996, have decided to work together more
closely in systematically evangelising the country.
Source: Name and address withheld.

Sudan: Muslim Imam converts
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An Islamic teacher and priest (Imam) in Sudan told us that he converted to Christianity at the end of 1995. He told us nobody in the community has yet challenged his decision "because they all know me and are well aware that I understand Islam very well; they realise that I must have good reasons for converting." Following his example, other Moslems have also converted, and he has been leading another group of Moslems who want to learn more about Christianity. "The principle is amazing," he said. "Before my conversion, people recognised me as an Islamic Imam, now, after my conversion, I still have the same position, except I am a Christian Imam."
Source: Name and address withheld

        By Coming I mean making more tangible, more real to the observer and participant.  Could it also mean Parousia?  Could it mean the Coming of Jesus signaling the end?  Some who see how close we are to providing every person on earth with the opportunity to hear the gospel would agree with Matthew 24:14 that this could be the Last Great Awakening before the Lord comes either to rapture his Bride or set up his Millennial Kingdom, whichever way one's eschatological alarm clock is ticking.  Don't look for dates or eschatological predictions here.  While it may be appropriate, there is no room here for such a discussion.

        By Global I mean making the gospel available to every people and every person on the planet.  The AD2000 & Beyond Movement has taken on the challenge to accomplish that task by the year 2000.  We already have a global movement of Christianity, and its been that way for over a century if you want to limit the discussion to geography.  The real barriers, however, the cultural barriers are still being penetrated, and we hope to see that finished soon.

        By Awakening I mean a community-wide  response to God's grace in the conversion of many and the reform of the community, using community as a generic term of any collection of persons from a family to a nation.

Pick a Framework--The Coming Global Awakening Fits It
        There are so many things that are pointing toward a general global awakening that one can choose Lovelace's model for revival, Pierson's Nine Theses, or Davies' Constants and Variables, and just the beginnings of this movement are showing a full red alert.  John Naisbitt's Megatrends can be adapted and used to show how this movement is real.  Because of our familiarity with them, we will use Pierson's theses.

Pierson's Theses of Renewal and Expansion of the Christian Movement
 
1-God's redemptive mission has been worked out in history through the normative use of two structures.
        In the new awakening, we are seeing a rediscovery of a model that propelled the Church into great numbers in the New Testamental period--apostolic teams.  David Cannistraci puts this rediscovery in perspective:  "In the 1950's, the Body of Christ was flooded with evangelists, and in the '60s and '70s the ministries of pastors and teachers seemed to come into their own in the worldwide Body of Christ.  In the '80s we witnessed the beginnings of a remarkable openness to the widespread operation of the prophetic ministry.  One office has yet to be restored. . . . We still need the office of the apostle to manifest in its fullness."  This recovery of apostleship has not been seen in the same way in which it is today.  George Whitefield was not really an apostle as much as he was a cheerleader for the Great Awakening.  No churches actually worked under his jurisdiction and calling.  John Wesley was much closer to an apostle in the New Testament sense, especially after his Methodists began to
form their own churches.

        In today's paradigm, the apostolic team forms the sodality which goes out and plants the churches, or the modalities and oversees them.  They work both intraculturally and interculturally.  These apostolic networks are the new paradigm for the twenty-first century and a key characteristic of post-denominationalism.  Elders and deacons are out; apostolic network oversight is in, very similar to the Antiochan model.

2-The renewal of the church and its expansion are interlinked.
        In earlier awakenings we saw the Puritan renewal send out people like John Eliot, the Pietists sending Ziegenbalg and Pluschau, the Great Awakening and Brainerd, and more could be named.  Peter Wagner says that "the fastest growing identifiable segment of Christianity in the 1990's on five continents is what has to be called the Postdenominational Movement."   Not only are they growing intraculturally, but they are sending missionaries, and they are allying themselves with the goals of the AD2000 & Beyond Movement.  One prime example is Larry Stockstill's church in Baker, Louisiana, called the Bethany World Prayer Center.  This church alone is producing all the prayer profiles on the 1739 Joshua Project peoples for the AD2000 Movement.  New Life Church in Colorado Springs finances the Christian Information Network which coordinates the prayer journeys into the 10/40 Window during each Praying Through the Window Thrust.  Mizoram in northeast India has committed to sending 3000 cross-cultural missionaries by the year 2000, and Taiwan has committed to sending 200 strictly to unreached peoples.

3-Renewal and expansion happen when the historical/contextual conditions are right.
        We are now at a strategic time in our history, as we teeter on a frail world economy.  China is a major threat and will take the Soviet Union's place as the great adversary of the United States.  Pollution of air, land, water, and other forms of the environment make our living spaces death zones.  David Bryant lists 170 dark prospects which point to World Revival from AIDS to extreme poverty to job insecurity to pornography.   William McLoughlin in his Revivals, Awakenings and Reform says, "Awakenings begin in periods of cultural distortion and grave personal stress, when we lose faith in the legitimacy of our norms, the viability of our institutions, and the authority of our leaders in church and state . . ."   We stand in need of revival quite like the US did just after
the Revolutionary War and just before the Second Great Awakening, and these elements make us that much more likely to see a global awakening on the way.

4-Renewal and expansion are frequently triggered by a key person.
        This new global awakening stretches this principle a bit.  In the past the Wesleys, the Whitefields, and the Grahams led with many followers in their train.  This new movement of renewal is more like the Anabaptist movement or the Pietist or Puritan movement where no one key person ran the show, but everyone works together to accomplish the task.  Lone rangers cannot do the work that needs to be done.  There are many people doing the work, and they are doing it through networks of mutual accountability and task orientation.

5-Renewal and expansion are often accompanied by theological breakthroughs.
        Like the emphasis on the blood of Christ in the East African Revival, theassurance of salvation in the Wesleyan revival, unity in Christ with the Moravians, or personal conversion in Pietism, there are many theological breakthroughs now on the front burner.  One is the Fatherhood of God; the Toronto Blessing is now called the Father's Blessing and places an emphasis on God as Father to a fatherless generation of young people.  Others are in the areas of spiritual warfare.   New concepts and tools like strategic-level spiritual warfare, spiritual mapping, identificational repentance, and reconciliation are becoming commonplace terms in a religious world where they were unknown five or ten years ago.   And this identificational repentance in opening the eyes of the blind to the gospel seems to have some effect as the following story from the internet shows.

Turkish Iman wishes Christian reconciliation mission much success
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"The first high point of the 'Reconciliation Walk', which began at Easter 1996, was during a visit at a Turkish mosque in Cologne" according to Lynn Green, one of the walk's initiators. "Someone had contacted the local Iman and given him the printed message of reconciliation. The Iman spontaneously invited the 150 participants in the march into a spacious prayer room where 200 men and boys were sitting. Women and girls were present in another room, and the Iman had also given them the message to read." Green continues: "The Iman allowed me to explain that we had come to apologise for the cruel acts committed in the name of Christ during the Crusades. After the message had been read in German, Turkish and English, the Moslems gave us long and loud applause. "As I heard the nature of your message," said the Iman, "I was amazed and filled with hope. I thought to myself:  'Whoever had this idea must have experienced an epiphany, a visit from God himself.' It is my desire that this project be a very great success." Green: "In a private conversation, the Iman mentioned that many Moslems are starting to think again about their sins against Christians and Jews. He told us that our example shows them 'a way to deal with the sins of the past.' He also promised to send our message to all 250 allied mosques in Europe." The Reconciliation Walk is a Christian march attempting to bring repentance and forgiveness on the bloody trail of the Crusades 900 years ago.
Source and info: Lynn Green, Reconciliation Walk, PO Box 61, Harpenden, Herts AL5 4JJ, England

6-Renewal and expansion are often accompanied by new spiritual dynamics or re-contextualized forms of spirituality.
    Just as the Kentucky Revivals were a contextualized Scottish hoe-down and the East African revivals focused on the blood, something important in the culture, Hector Gimenez' Waves of Love and Peace church in Buenos Aires, with a membership of over 100,000 and 24 hour services, is an example of contextualization.  The youth meeting is from 2-4am, just the time the youth are getting out and seeing one another, and the service meets in a theater with loud rock music, and girls dancing on-stage as they sing like Madonna!  I attended this church and watched the people fight over seats to get up close to the platform and near the speakers and worship.

      Besides worship, dress is so casual that nowadays in many of the fastest growing churches, one dresses down to go to church.  Another example of this contextualization is the frequency of signs and wonders among those whose worldviews can handle the idea.  In Nepal recently, an example took place.

Acts 2 in Nepal
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A small YWAM team visited Nepal and Bangladesh from 24 March to 13 April 1996. During their evangelism, they experienced phenomena which, according to their report, "the team had never experienced on this scale. During one evening meeting, the team offered to pray for their listeners, including many children from the surrounding villages. Many of the children were touched by the Holy Spirit and fell to the ground, where they had wonderful visions of a garden, the cross and Jesus. Some even had adventures in which they were part of the scene. One girl, for example, saw Jesus coming from heaven and giving her new clothes before inviting her to walk with him in a garden. Another girl fell down and began to sing. In our team," according to one of the members, "there was a Nepalese student who had studied in Korea. He told us that the girl was singing 'Jesus loves me' in Korean. Later, the girl, who was completely illiterate and had never attended school, started to sing the same song in English. The events attracted many more children and adults the next day, many of whom were Hindus. Everyone wanted prayer, and many fell down, cried, repented of their sins or saw visions, then excitedly told their friends and family what had happened, encouraging them to also go to the prayer meetings. Many people had questions which reminded us of Acts 2."
Source: Herman Arentsen, CompuServe 100306,3556

7-Renewal and expansion are contagious in contexts where information is easily distributed.
        The days of reading a book written by a man involved in a revival a year ago in New England are over.  Now we see it and read about it as it happens.  This is the day of the Information Age that Naisbitt said would come.  The World Wide Web and the Internet are prime information locations.  Some of the material for this paper comes directly from the internet.

        In an example of using the internet for revival and expansion of the Kingdom,  I saw a note on an internet missions news service from Germany that the first real evangelistic efforts in 400 years were about to begin in Belgium.  In middle school I had a penpal in Belgium to whom I shared the gospel repeatedly with no good results.  When I heard of the evangelism, I replied to the address on the screen with my old penpal's name and address and requested someone to go and speak with her and her new husband about Christ, and tell them
Gene sent them!  Within two days I received confirmation that my note had been forwarded electronically from Germany to Belgium to the people in charge of her area of Oost-Vlaanderen where there would be a visitation to her home within the week to share the Gospel with her!

        Daily posts tell of revival events worldwide the night before, and the only thing holding up the information now is the time it takes to type it into the computer.

8-Renewal and expansion are often seen to have been accompanied by new leadership patterns.
        The Log Colleges are being revived.  In much of the post-denominational world, there is an aversion to seminaries, and leaders are turning to their own ministry training schools where they raise their own homegrown leadership from within their structures.  This kind of education can be excellent in ministry training and in getting committed people, but it can be dangerous in leaving a small pool for leadership by not going outside the organization for talent.

        These new leadership patterns have been duplicated worldwide as the cost of higher education skyrockets and many apostolic networks believe they can do a better job anyway.

9-Renewal and expansion are often seen to have begun on the periphery of the ecclesiastical structures of the day.
        The post-denominational pattern arose at the periphery and is still largely there, as the newer, faster growing churches are the most radical, and the converts are peripheral.  A good example of this comes from the online email news service from DAWN Europa:

First Christians among the Sahrawis
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In 1975, the old Spanish colony of Western Sahara was invaded by the Moroccan army, which now controls 90% of the area. Only 40,000 members of the Sahrawi, the local population, came under Moroccan government; the other 150,000 fled to Algeria, where they live in refugee camps. In 1995, at the AD 2000 conference in Korea, a Spanish team lead by Paco Garcia decided to "spiritually adopt" the Sahrawis and take responsibility for evangelising this previously unreached people group. A missionary was sent out shortly afterwards, who recently reported that the first Sahrawi had been baptised and that two others had been saved - the first known Sahrawi Christians.
Source: Paco Garcia, FAX (34) 56-535951

        First he states where we are as a global church, factors of our present reality.
        1-We are moving from regional churches to world churches, i.e., globalized Christians understanding one another in new global ways.

        2-We are moving from sporadic growth to a global awakening, and the signs from China and the Commonwealth of Independent States tell the tale, with these places in the future affecting our theology and practice.

        3-We are moving from static churches to churches that change, with a missiological shift in axis from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, the involvement of women in ministry, and a move from orthodoxy to orthopraxis.

        Deiros describes our Protestantism in Megatrends style as moving from modern to post-modern, from denominational to post-denominational, from rural to urban, from mainline to Pentecostal/charismatic, from bourgeois to lower class, from foreign to autonomous, from institutional to a Kingdom mentality, from a
minority position to a majority position, from secular to spiritualized, and from small churches to megachurches.

        Howard Snyder and Daniel Runyon make similar observations in their ten trends that will affect the Church.   They see us moving from regional churches to a world church, from scattered growth to broad revival, from Communist China to Christian China, from institutional tradition to Kingdom theology, from clergy/laity to a community of ministers, from male leadership to male/female partnership, from secularization to religious relativism, from the nuclear family to family diversity, from church/state separatism to Christian political
activism, and from threatened nations to a threatened planet.

The New Frontier
        We are entering upon a new day.  Never before have the prospects been so bright for a global awakening.  So much more could be written here, but space and time do not permit.  David McKenna of Asbury College, in his book, The Coming Great Awakening, writes about the new challenges we face:  "Times have changed:  our frontiers are no longer local; they are global.  No longer can we think about a Great Awakening in American history as a local phenomenon of revival, renewal, and reform.  Rather, we must see ourselves as part of a
worldwide awakening."

        The one significant challenge to this growth after the 21st Century begins is Islam.  Will they be engulfed in the Global Awakening?  Gordon Aeschliman writes, "Islam will present the twenty-first century's greatest
challenge to the Christian church.  Islam cannot be ignored; it will not simply go away.  Yet, head-to-head confrontation is not the solution.  In the years ahead, we Christians will need to seriously equip ourselves to positively respond to the challenge that Islam raises."

    Pablo Deiros reminds us that historically speaking, between 632 and 732 AD, Islam surrounded Christianity, threatening to devour it.  Today with Latin America, China, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the former Soviet Union experiencing the most tremendous church growth ever and the fact that more Muslims have converted to Christianity in the last ten years than in the previous 1500 combined, Christianity is surrounding and infiltrating Islam, and the Islamic fear will result in a new confrontation in the coming global awakening.  Thankfully, many are now trying to avert jihad with identificational repentance for the Crusades, praying for dreams and visions of Jesus for Muslims which they are having, and in other ways, but the threat will mean an increase in martyrs.

        Indeed, we must see ourselves in a brave new world, not a brave new neighborhood.  We are now world citizens in a worldwide fellowship of believers who will continue to pray for a coming great awakening.  Behold, it is coming soon.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bryant, David.  The Hope at Hand:  National and World Revival for the 21st Century. Grand Rapids:  Baker, 1995.

Cannistraci, David.  The Gift of Apostle.  Ventura:  Regal, 1996.

Davies, R.E.  I Will Pour Out My Spirit:  A History and Theology of Evangelical Awakenings.  Tunbridge Wells:  Monarch, 1992.

Deiros, Pablo A.  MC582:  Dynamics of Church Growth in the Majority World. Syllabus, Winter Quarter 1996.  Pasadena:  Fuller Theological Seminary School of World   Mission, 1995.

Kane, J. Herbert.  Wanted:  World Christians.  Grand Rapids:  Baker, 1986.

Lovelace, Richard F.  Dynamics of Spiritual Life:  An Evangelical Theology of Renewal.  Downers Grove:  Intervarsity Press, 1979.

McCormack, Colm J.  The Post-Denominational Symposium.  Unpublished notes from the Symposium on the Post-Denominational Church, Pasadena, CA, May 21-24, 1996.

McKenna, David L.  The Coming Great Awakening:  New Hope for the Nineties. Downers Grove:  Intervarsity Press, 1990.

McKenna, David L.  Megatruth:  The Church in the Age of Information.  San Bernadino:  Here's Life Publishers, 1986.

Miller, David.  "Latin America's Sweeping Revival."  Charisma & Christian Life.  Lake Mary, FL:  Strang Communications, Vol. 21, No. 11, June 1996, pp. 32-38.

Naisbitt, John.  Megatrends:  Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives.  New York:  Warner, 1984.

Pierson, Paul E.  MH520:  Historical Development of the Christian Movement. Syllabus.  Pasadena:  Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission, Winter  1996.

Pierson, Paul E.  MH521:  History and Theology of Evangelical Awakenings.  Syllabus.  Pasadena:  Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission, Spring  1996.

Snyder, Howard R. And Runyon, Daniel V.  Foresight:  10 Major Trends That Will Dramatically Affect the Future of Christians and the Church.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1986.