We can learn an important lesson from the East African Revival, which
transformed a region 80 years ago. The people of Uganda call it Balokole. In
the Luganda language it means "the saved ones," but the word became
synonymous with the East African Revival-one of the most significant
Christian movements in modern history.
This revival had humble beginnings in September 1929, just before America's
Great Depression. Historians trace it to a prayer meeting on Namirembe Hill
in Kampala, Uganda, where a missionary to Rwanda, Joe Church, prayed and
read the Bible for two days with his friend Simeoni Nsibambi. They felt God
had showed them that the African church was powerless because of a lack of
personal holiness.
It is impossible to explain exactly what happened after this prayer meeting
or how the resulting spiritual fervor spread. When God comes, unusual things
happen. Within weeks after the Rev. Church returned to Gahini, Rwanda,
Christians gathered to pray and confess their sins openly. A heavy spirit of
conviction fell on the people. Whenever they repented for their sins and
failures they would weep uncontrollably, ask others to forgive them and
pledge to make restitution.
The weeping spread to farmlands and open fields. Unbelievers who visited
these gatherings were converted after they witnessed the sincerity of the
Christians. Repentance went deep. Husbands publicly apologized for adultery
and farmers repented for stealing cows from each other. Eventually, as the
revival spread from Rwanda to Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi, even the
centuries-old tradition of polygamy (which was still common among professing
Christians) was unraveled in some areas.
Balokole changed African Christianity forever. In a 1986 article for
Christian History, Michael Harper writes of the revival: "It's effects have
been more lasting than almost any other revival in history, so that today
there is hardly a single Protestant leader in East Africa who has not been
touched by it in some way."
I spent the past two weeks ministering in Uganda and Kenya, and everywhere I
went I met people who still talk about the East African Revival-80 years
after it began. It breathed resurrection power into dead, traditional
churches and triggered aggressive church-planting movements that affected a
variety of denominations.
Whether sermons were delivered from pulpits or under trees, six important
themes were emphasized in those days: 1) the blood of Jesus; 2) the name of
Jesus; 3) the cross of Jesus; 4) the Word of God; 5) the testimony of the
saints; and 6) the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
Leaders also stressed the message of 1 John 6-7: "If we say that we have
fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice
the truth; but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we
have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His son cleanses us
from all sin (NASB)." As was true in other spiritual awakenings in history
(such as the Asbury Revival in Kentucky in 1970), people stood in front of
each other and admitted their sins, no matter how embarrassing. The honesty
cut deep into human pride and dealt a fatal blow against entrenched sin and
religious hypocrisy.
After hearing more details about the East African Revival while I was in
Uganda last week, I was convinced that this type of movement is the only
thing that will pull the United States out of its current despair. We must
have a spiritual awakening, or we die. Political engineering, economic
policies, government bailouts and stimulus packages will not save us. No
politician, Democrat or Republican, will reverse our course toward
destruction.
Our only hope is that a backslidden American church-a church that is as
smug, blind and lukewarm as the Laodiceans--will "be zealous and repent"
(see Rev. 3:19).
What encourages me is that God, not man, initiated all the spiritual
awakenings of the past-including the First Great Awakening, which gave our
country its historic Christian identity. Yes, we play our feeble part by
praying, and we must storm heaven. Yes, awakenings come in response to our
weak attempts to repent, and we must passionately seek a fresh baptism of
holiness.
But we cannot manufacture revivals. Pentecostal fire comes from heaven
alone. It is a sovereign blessing from a God who loves us and desires to
rescue us from ourselves. We charismatics have generated a lot of our own
sound and fury in the past 30 years, but much of what we have created is a
shameful substitute for revival. We must become desperate for the real
thing.
Today our movement is mired in the shallow waters of self-centered, carnal
Christianity. May God mercifully send us our own version of Balokole. May
gut-wrenching repentance and public confession of sin interrupt our trendy
worship services. May this holy fire spread until the people of the United
States see genuine Christians living the message we preach.
J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. You can find him on Twitter at leegrady.
Useful link: charismamag.com
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