Ministers and Revivals - 11 Serious Charges

I posted previously about my recent purchase of several old issues of the God's Revivalist. I've found that many of the articles in these papers are contemporary with some of the issues that are taking place today in the Church.


Below is an editorial by Martin Wells Knapp (founder of God's Bible School) from the September 19, 1901 issue.

Any minister who has the Holy Ghost can have a revival, if he will. The reason Churches and preachers do not have revivals is because they want something else more than they want them. The ministry is largely to blame for this state of things. We do not say these things censoriously, but in tender love. We call attention to them, and ask the readers of the God's Revivalist to pray that these worms, which are eating into the very vitals of the Church, may be destroyed. Modern minsters are guilty of the following things, which are proving mighty barriers against real spirituality and the spread of Pentecostal revivals:

Many of them have dared to take upon them the work of the ministry, unsaved, unsanctified, and uncalled to it.

They have contumaciously presumed to substitute education for the gift and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Some of them hypocritically profess to be real Christians and true ministers, while living in known sin or in spiritual adultery with the fairs, festivals, and fandangos of a fallen Church and Christless world.

They sacrilegiously encourage and aid in the substitution of Church-joining for regeneration, and are parties to deceiving unsaved Church members into the belief that they are born again and have a title in heaven.

Instead of preaching out of pure devotion and love to Christ and souls, many of them preach for pay, caring more for the fleece than for the flock.

Instead of feeling unworthy of the least place in the kingdom of heaven, many of them itch for the offices and emoluments of a worldly Church, and cater to unchristly influences for self-promotion. Instead of feeding the flock upon the riches of the Word of God, they seek to tickle their fancies by lecturing on scientific and secular themes, or by entertaining with the news of the day.

Instead of practicing and proclaiming salvation from all sin, many of them teach that it is impossible to be saved from sin in this life, and thus aid the devil in substituting a sinning religion for a religion of the Son of God.

In determined defiance to the Holy Spirit and His plans of meeting the expenses of God's kingdom they commit their people to fairs, festivals, and other worldly expedients, which are destructive to spiritual life.

Many of them treacherously vote with saloon m en, intrenching this awful evil in the land, thus becoming parties to the most gigantic, murderous conspiracy in existence. Their hands are red with the blood of souls and bodies of people that are being damned through this awful curse. God can no more co-operate with them in extending His kingdom than He could directly with Satan himself.

Instead of preaching the gospel, they apologize for it, or preach only parts that may please the people.

Instead of receiving the fully-sanctifying baptism with the Holy Ghost, and proclaiming it, they deride those who do, characterizing Pentecostal manifestations as wildfire and fanaticism.

Instead of encouraging a paper like God's Revivalist, and circulating it among their people, they warn them against it, lest their eyes be opened to the truth, and themselves exposed.