I don't think there's anything new Under the Sun I think clearly we see the same patterns reoccurring today and throughout the church history starting on the day of Pentecost so to speak with the beginning of the church.
I'm not a big fan of using the term false revival or false outpouring of the spirit because we clearly have nothing in the new testament showing us what one looks like so we all come up with different ideas and assumptions based upon our theology or our interpretation or guesswork on what a false outpouring may look like and then we apply that preconceived idea to things we see today this is not biblical hermeneutics, nor would we say that this is even biblical theology but more based upon plan private interpretation.
False Christianity is probably a better expression for what we can see demonstrated in the Bible and what is mentioned in early church father's writings about what the false prophets were what the false teachers were and what did they teach these are the same things that still happen today.
I've mentioned this before but I'll mention it again it's the Judaizers that were the false religion in the first century and that penetrated into the church and probably become a part of orthodox Christianity even this becomes dead orthodoxy where you have all the technical doctrines of Christ correct but you've added to it Old testament law and tradition this is what the Pharisees did this is what the Judaizers did this is what the early church did under the papacy and even under the early orthodox. This type of religion results in the end the great apostasy mentioned by the Apostles and created a dead formal religion that was devoid of outpouring of the holy spirit they quenched the miraculous and come against the true Saints and children of God and persecuted them this is still what goes on today one way or another within christendom.
So within the Christian religion as a whole today any denominational form of Christianity that doesn't have out pourings of the spirit happening and are very formal and dry are probably one of the closest things to the first century false teachings that the apostle Paul mentioned and taught against.
Outpourings of the holy spirit and revival are the sign of life within true Christianity.
Biblically speaking and historically speaking we have gnosticism this was false Christianity that Rose up as a form or an alternative to the original biblical New Testament Christianity and even an alternative, separate from dead orthodoxy.
This became a powerful force but was greatly challenged
and even persecuted by the orthodox and the Catholic church these were mentioned historically as the false prophets and false apostles, marcion, Simon magus and many others were part of these false gnostic version of Christianity we don't have a demonstration on what a false outpouring of the spirit looked like in the scripture or even is there was such thing, and I've not aware of any of the church fathers mentioning it but these were enough between the two to get an idea on the spirits that were operating, the seducing spirits and the doctrines of demons that Paul prophesied would come into the church and John talked about the spirit of Antichrist these were all fulfillments of those spirits and those movements.
And these spirits operate today the fruit is the same the teachings are the same and that is how we know what we're dealing with because the Bible and the early church fathers show us what the false Christianity is .
When we add to this by our own assumptions and we start to put born again christians and baptised in the spirit Pentecostals charismatics into the same false teaching category because we don't agree with their teachings or their worship methods we are in serious error ourselves because we're not using the Bible nor the history of the early church fathers as the gauge and the blueprint to apply today.
Going Beyond what the scripture gives us we set ourselves up as little popes and then we create a doctrine that's not taught within scripture and then we wheel that doctrine around as if it's the infallible word of God and all it is is an interpretation based upon eschatology and then miss applying a lot of the apostles teaching because they had direct relevance to the false teachers and the false prophets of the first second third fourth century and beyond they were specific and should remain that way.
I actually think it's a mistake to say that within true revival that it's always going to produce some holiness on mass, because clearly we see within the 40 years of the first revivals starting on the day of Pentecost we see some of the greatest heresies creep into the church and false Christianity due to the groups that I've just mentioned become a popular form of false Christianity and this is all a result of the greatest revival in the first century.
And not only that when we take all the letters and the epistles of the apostles into account we see there were serious sin within the church that they were dealing with so the revivals didn't produce clean churches the churches had big problems the churches under James and Peter were seriously plagued with legalism and Judaizers, Paul had to rebuke Peter for teaching false teachings and he said that many of them got caught up in the same hypocrisy.
And it's clear in Paul's churches that they were not free from sin there was many problems with carnal sinful Christians who were true believers whom Paul treated like true believers he never called them heretics though he may excommunicated some he even allowed some to come back because of his heart and mercy he had for Christians.
Jonathan Edwards lamented the state of the church during the first great awakening and how bad it had backslidden but that he hoped that there would be another outpouring coming and as a prophetic man here foresaw the second outpouring of the spirit that would come.
Revival is Messy And every single one has been.
The great sin of the church has always been to reject revival in favor of tradition and dry religion, and this is done to degrees, some are very extreme in rejecting revival others reject in their heart, and therefore they don't become a part of what the spirit's doing on the earth, and are somehow content with functioning within a ministry or within a church that is not experiencing the Glory of God, but preferred to function from an old dried up wine skin with old wine of the last season or the seasons beforehand.
That itself is also not a good place to be in, this is a place where the true spirit of prayer and supplication the true spirit of travail is non-existent and people rely on a very faint anointing that's based upon God's grace and mercy to continue to save people out of his kindness not out of his preference.
