Hot Ashes in the Morning

“Command Aaron and his sons, saying, This is the law of the burnt offering: It is the burnt offering, because of the burning upon the altar all night unto the morning, and the fire of the altar shall be burning in it.

And the priest shall put on his linen garment, and his linen breeches shall he put upon his flesh, and take up the ashes which the fire hath consumed with the burnt offering on the altar, and he shall put them beside the altar.

And he shall put off his garments, and put on other garments, and carry forth the ashes without the camp unto a clean place.” (Leviticus 6:9-11)

I can’t help getting a picture in my mind as I read this of those old fashioned prayer warriors who would take their burden for revival to that secret place in God and burn like a fire all night long in a holy sacrifice until they were left prostrate in consecrated hot ashes before the Throne of God in the morning.

One of the hardest things to get across to most churches when I am preaching revival is this concept of deep prevailing prayer that finds an agonizing place of travail before the Throne of God.  It is easy to relay the principles of revival. I’ve practically got all the chapters memorized.  I can show anyone the blueprints for revival that God has written into His Word.  I can even tell you in passionate terms what the price for revival entails.  But what I cannot do is insert that deep abiding burden for souls into someone’s heart – the kind of burden that drives you to travailing agony before God.  God has to do that.

Throughout history, every revival has been preceded by faithful souls in travailing prayer.  This is not the quick and efficient microwave prayers that we are used to in church.  Those are convenient, but not effective.  Neither is it repetitious chanting asking for the same thing over and over again like a tape recorder. Those prayers lack the passion that drives through the barriers of spiritual warfare that hang over you.  No, travailing prayer is like what a woman goes through in childbirth. This is a total commitment of heart, body, mind, and soul in an agonizing labor to take hold of the hem of God’s robe and bring forth a living child.  Revivals are only borne from such prayer.

Only those whom God has carefully chosen can fulfill such a calling.  It is far too deep and heavy for mere mortal man to bear without the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Just as the priests could not carry the Ark of the Covenant without the assistance of the Spirit, so these secret warriors are driven to depths of agonizing prayer by the One who agonized before them on Calvary.

When we find sacrificial saints who become so consumed in the fire of prayer that there is nothing left by morning but hot ashes with the coals of fire still in them, then and only then, can we expect revival.

This is the heart and soul of true revival – not the showy expositions that the “would-be” revival preachers today are giving us. Yelling “Fire, fire, fire!” does not bring down the fire of God. He is not amused with such cheap antics.  Neither is God impressed with your efforts to show how powerful you are by pushing people to the floor to get them to be “slain”. Neither will making a show of the gift of healing bring repentance to a church who has lost her way in a Laodicean complacency.

The big names in today’s Charimatic movement are more show than substance, more circus than church, or as Ravenhill put it, more Hollywood than holiness.  How can we not be ashamed of our carnal attempts to circumvent the sacrifice that burns us to ashes?

Only travail and agony bring forth birth.  God does not deal in C-Sections.

“Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few;  Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.” (Matt. 9:37,38)

 

Brother Dale

 

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Day Four in Soroti, Uganda

Day 4 and 5 in Soroti, Uganda

Okay, I’m telling you ahead of time, that’s it’s going to be hard to believe all this stuff – I hardly believe it myself and I was the guy that was there.

I have been in northern Uganda for the past two weeks.  A week in Tororo, and a week in the bush 50 km outside of Sororti.  Last week was good, but not supernatural. If all I am coming here to do is to be good, then I have missed my mission.  Ah, but this week, way out in the bush has been getting more and more powerful in an increasing crescendo since I got here.

Yesterday, the services weren’t just pretty good, they were … um … great!  You know it’s good when you feel like you are in the midst of a river in a raging torrent and are being carried downstream. About 10 souls got saved yesterday, which is great in itself. But more than that, a lot of these simple, country folk have been transformed.  They may live way out in the bush, but they have a clear grip on the realities of life, and they fully understand what revival is, how much they need it, and what the price is that they will have to pay to receive it from God. Not many Christians in the USA are as sophisticated in this as they are.  Knowing the price and the desperation that is required to bring a true revival, they came up to the altar to commit their lives to whatever God asks them to do, no matter what the cost, no matter what it takes. You could feel the snap in the air of broken hearts before an Almighty God.  I anointed each one with oil and prayed down God’s commission on each of them.  These were serious people in a serious commitment. It was wonderful.

And then it started. I don’t know how the healing line started, but once it got going, you couldn‘t stop it. Now, remember, I don’t do tricks, miracles, or supernatural things. God told me once in Nigeria, “No miracles! If you do the miracles, they won’t hear the message.”  (Yeah, I really did hear Him say that to me.)  So I make no claims of the gift of healing to anybody.  But this is not the first time that God has intervened anyway.

When I pray for healing, I like to ask them if they got healed.  If they didn’t, we pray some more.  If they did, we move to the next one. At first it was headaches, and I’ve never met a headache that couldn’t be healed. Then it moved on to bigger things. I knew we were on a roll when one lady told me as she came up that she didn’t need me to pray over her because she had already gotten healed just standing in the line! That’s when I realized – OMG! — every single person that came forward was getting healed!

And then the blind lady came up.  Wow. She was over 80 years old. Her eyes had that milky white glaze over them and she could hardly see. By now, though, I am on a roll, so here goes … I anointed her eyes and prayed. When done, she starts to walk away and I stopped her. “Can you see?” “Yes, it’s better.”

I don’t know where I got my holy boldness from, but I said, “Well, come back here. God doesn’t do things half way.”  I kept thinking that even Jesus had to pray twice over that one guy. So we prayed again.  And this time, she could see clearly.  “Are you sure?” She looked at me with a grin that said of course she was sure! (Boy, did I feel stupid.)

Okay, I’m jazzed, right?  But, oh man, today it gets even better because today they came and stood up to give testimonies of what happened yesterday.  The someone who was deaf got healed, no less than three crippled were healed, the blind lady can see, others had debilitating sicknesses that were washed away, and many others that I either could not understand or had an even harder time believing.  But I got most of them on video so that everyone will know that I’m not making this up!  We are talking about over 50 miraculous healings!  Everybody who came up got healed.

That ain’t all.  They have had a drought since September – not a drop of rain.  Now, rain is a picture of revival. (Think Elijah on Mt. Carmel).  Well, Bishop Girado Ukulol keeps saying that the rain has been following me like it did last week in Tororo. Today he pointed outside to the clouds that were forming. He said that the Bible says that the clouds are the dust of His feet, and that God was walking this way.  Sure enough, right in the middle of my message, it started to rain.  Not a whole lot, but it did rain. Now, that doesn’t seem like a big deal to most of us, but to them, this was incredible because they haven’t seen a drop for months!  But get this! They had fully expected it! That’s where the level of their faith is!

Right now, it is 8 pm. I am back in my hotel in Soroti. Bishop Girado has gone back to his hometown to get his van to take me to the next place.  He just called me to tell me that the people are still there in the church that we just left. Services ended 7 hours ago, but they say that the anointing of the Holy Spirit is still there and is so strong that no one wants to leave!  Does that sound like something we’ve heard about in times past?

Brothers and sisters, keep praying and keep looking up. Revival is coming. It will come to Africa first, but God will use them to provoke the rest of the world to jealousy. The process here in Africa has begun. God is moving, and I have a feeling that no one has ever seen the power unleashed like it is about to be unleashed here in the (former) Dark Continent.

Please keep me in your prayers. My back Is killing me, my guts are strained and hurting from standing so long, and I end each day in total exhaustion. But I gotta keep going. Please hold me up.

Praise the Lord,

Brother Dale

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Turned unto Fables

“A religion of mere emotion and sensationalism is the most terrible of all curses that can come upon any people.  The absence of reality is sad enough, but the aggravation of pretence is a deadly sin.”  – Samuel Chadwick

Sound like any of the churches you’ve been to lately? Or like some of the televangelists that swarm the airwaves with their sensationalism? Or like our new wave of “revivalists” who lead us like Pied Pipers to emotional displays of excitement rather than bringing us to the altar of repentance where true revival can only be found?

Somewhere in our pursuit of religious goals, bigger churches, and more prosperous ministries, we compared price tags and chose the one that promised the biggest bang for the cheapest price.  It was a simple decision. Why labor and agonize for long lonely nights in secret with God for intangible results claimed by an invisible faith, when for the cheap price of a superficial show of faith mixed together with an instant sensationalism we can have the proven attraction of a Hollywood extravaganza?

• We have traded the agony of deep travail in prayer for a cheap and easy “name it and claim it”. We “speak the word” like sorcerers expecting God to jump at the snap of our fingers to bring us blessings, but for the things that God cries for, our hearts are strangely silent.
• All night prayer meetings these days means a half hour for each of us shared for a few hours or so, not the desperate cries for lost souls that rang out until the dawn broke.
• Contending before God and storming the Throne of Grace in spiritual warfare is now a lost art (at which we breathe a sigh of relief for its loss).  Our revival prayer meetings today are merely a subdued time of murmured prayers and shared insights with a backdrop of praise music instead of the times of intense warfare that used to crash the gates of Heaven for revival in times past.
• We have left the secret place of the Most High for our stages with lights, glitter, and a more “professional” production.
• The altars of repentance that once beckoned to lost souls desperate for Salvation have now become magnets for “pity” lines to assuage our weakened church members that they are “loved”.
• Our focus has turned away from the desperate masses of the lost and has been redirected to a self-oriented doctrine of prosperity, blessings, and wealth…for ourselves.
• We have broken the constrictions of old fashioned strong doctrine for the warm and friendly fields of ecumenism, not only with the harlot church, but even with Hindus and Muslims.
• We have turned Hell from an everlasting furnace of torment that awaits the multitudes into a place of discomfort that only a very few will ever go to…and certainly not anyone we know.
• We have dismissed the fearlessness of holy boldness as rude and unbecoming because it is too unsettling to our comfortable ways.  Instead we have trained our pastors to study to be nice, warm, and accommodating so that they not offend anyone.
• We are more concerned with being conciliatory than a lightning rod of God’s judgments, and so we swarm to those who claim to have a “prophetic spirit” and will tell us what we want to hear but we are repulsed by brash prophets who carry forth a word of rebuke.
• The Love of God is no longer the keeping of God’s commandments, but is pictured as a warm, fuzzy emotion that, along with a cheap Grace, is waltzing the Church into a lukewarm apostasy.
• The Fear of God is no longer the fear and trembling and dread of the Almighty, but is now “awesome respect”.

In short, we have become sophisticated. And this is what is found in the Assemblies of God, the Pentecostals, and the new rash of “evangelical” churches – the ones who are supposed to be alive!

Does anyone realize how desperate we are for a revival? Not a churchy imitation of fake sensationalism like we see in today’s “revivalists”, but a God-fearing, Heaven-sent, flesh-crucifying broken cry for the holiness of God?  But who do we have that is desperate enough to drop to their knees and pour their hearts out at the altar of repentance for God to have mercy on us? Who among us will contend before God in secret travail until God answers? Has our desperate passion for the lost died?

We have forgotten how to pray. And our revivalists are more interested in a show of emotion, pressing people to the floor so they will be “slain in the Spirit”. Instead of yelling “Repent! Repent! Repent!”, they holler out “Fire! Fire! Fire!” as if they were magicians calling down the fire of God.  That’s not how Elijah did it.

Are there any of us who realize how far we have drifted?  We depend upon a carnal production rather than the unction of the Spirit, and our preachers cover up the loss with manufactured speeches that are passed off for sermons which are forgotten five minutes after the congregation has passed through the doors. They depend more upon their scholastic abilities than a crucified dependence of the anointing of the Holy Ghost, and as a result, have lost the power that once thundered over our pulpits. Were there any lives that were changed, any hearts broken, any sin exposed and cleansed, any souls saved? Did the Blood flow?

Does anyone care?

“And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.” (Ezekiel 22:30)

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3,4)

 

It is not a question of whether we agree or not, whether we will utter our “Amens” or bob our heads up and down – it is a matter of what you will do about it.

Brother Dale,
www.RevivalFire.org

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Gully Washer

It rained today.  I mean it rained!  It was what we call in Texas, a Gully Washer!  The thing is, here in northern Uganda where I am, it hasn’t rained for months and everything is dry and dusty. This month was supposed to be the rainy season, but not only has there not been even a drop of rain or a hint of clouds, the forecast is for continued drought until at least the month of May sometime.

The problem is that their lives depend upon that rain.  No rain; no crops. No crops; people starve. 

I’ve been here for a week preaching revival.  My message has been simple and clear – revival is coming as it is written in the Books of Joel and Isaiah, but there is a price we as Christians must pay to receive it.  But once it comes, it will be like a double portion of the latter rain.  God is going to pour out the Latter Rain like we have never seen since the beginning of time!

Now, it’s one to hear something like that, even when you can read it for yourself in the Word of God, but the reality of faith can sometimes struggle with wobbly legs to stand up on its own. 

But then it rained today.

Yeah, you get the picture.  When they saw the clouds gather, they got excited.  When it started raining, they started believing.  When a deluge started pouring down with wind and hail, they were hollerin’, “It’s a sign from God!” 

Well, I’m not into stuff like that. I figure if it is a sign from God, great, but I have always figured that if He wanted me to know something, I reckon He’ d tell me.  If it’s just some coincidence, well, that’s okay.  I’ll take whatever help I can get.

The truth is, I ain’t so sure it’s not a sign from God.  It might be just like Him to do something like this to get their attention.  The people in this area of the world have seen much more than their share of trouble, and I guess that has a way of numbing you somewhat. They believe Brother Dale when he shows them in the Bible that revival is coming, and it’s nice to hear that God is going to pour out His Spirit, but where was God when we were suffering and dying?  It makes it a little tough to open up in simple naïve faith when the hearts of your people have been crushed.

Ah, but rain. Now that’s something they can believe in.  And not just rain, but a real Texas-sized Gully Washer! 

Sometimes, you just gotta go with what God gives you.

 Brother Dale

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