Gang, when you hear about the end times and the end days, what do you typically hear from when speaking with the standard prettiness rapturist as it pertains to nations, governments, and land?
“This nation, all nations, and this earth are going to one day burn up and be consumed by fires, so there is really no point in doing anything except trying to win as many people as possible to Jesus.”
And yet, one of the premiere scriptures that is used for revival is 2 Chronicles 7:14.
if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their people.
“Wait a minute!”, you say. “That’s not the verse!”
It ends with the phrase “heal their land”
And we missed the punch line, so much that Rebecca St. James has codified everything BUT THAT PUNCHLINE into a really catchy cut.
Jesus I am broken now
Before you I fall I lay me down
All I want is you, my all
I cry out from the ashes
Burned with sin and shame
I ask you Lord to make me whole again
For you say if I will come and will
Pray for you
There’s forgiveness when I
Turn from me and pray
For you say if I will come and will
Pray to you
You hear me and heal me when I pray
Your ways are not my own
But I long for them to be
So this what I pray
One with you you’ll make me
Melt me away ’til only you remain
For you say if I will come and will
Pray for you
There’s forgiveness when I
Turn to you and pray
For you say if I will come and will
Pray to you
You hear me and heal me when I pray
Did you see it?
Read the verse again.
If they will Humble themselves And pray And seek me face And turn from their wicked ways Then I will hear from heaven Forgive their sin And heal their land.
Now the sin being forgiven is one thing. Even being healed is another. Us redeemed? No problem.
But land that will one day burn up?
That land being healed?
That’s a bit outside of our zone, comfort, and theology.
How many sermons have you ever heard preached about revival in this age before the age to come that involve the land responding to revival?
Not many stories of how the land reacts are our there.
Of those those that do get told, the land often doesn’t fare well from our consumer-oriented, human souls-first-or-only revivals that focus on building buildings by taking on further debt.
Such as the Brownsville Revival.
But G-d wants to impact more than just healing, delivering, saving, and redeeming humans.
He wants to heal the land as well.
Whether or not you like the idea of believers interacting with land, that is a missing part from much of the current teaching on revivial.
I pray that changes.