America WILL Collapse, Unless…

John Knox prayed, “Give me Scotland or I die!”

George Whitefield prayed, “Give me souls, or take my soul!” Today, tens of millions of Americans Christians need to pray, “God, give us revival or we die!”

There is no hyperbole in that prayer. Without a national awakening, America as we know it is doomed.

In 1944, Rev. Peter Marshall declared, “Surely the time has come, because the hour is late, when we must decide. And the choice before us is plain—Yahweh or Baal. Christ or chaos. Conviction or compromise. Discipline or disintegration.”1

That was 1944, nine years before the first edition of Playboy. Compare that to the epidemic of internet porn today, affecting even our children. Marshall never could have imagined America falling this low. 1944 was a long time ago.

In 1959, Prof. Robert E. Coleman wrote:

In a day when unprecedented numbers of people have a form of religion while at the same time the church seems unable to stem the rising tide of degeneracy that threatens the land, the question must be raised: Why this paradox? Should not the church have influence for righteousness in proportion to her numbers? However one may seek to answer this question, it is obvious that what we need is not more religion, but more power. In short, we need real revival! [2]

And this was written before the counterculture revolution of the 1960s swept the nation. How much more urgently do “we need real revival” today?

In 1969 Dr. Bill Bright wrote, “We live in the most revolutionary period of human history…. Social band-aids and reform antiseptics give little hope for a cure or even an improvement. A revolution is needed…. You can experience this revolution. In fact, you can help bring it to pass.” [3]

Also in 1969, Rev. Tom Skinner wrote, “I’m convinced America is at her crisis hour. Revolution is inevitable. It’s just a matter of which faction is going to prove strongest and will win out in the end. I believe most Americans are so apathetic that they will just sit back and go to whoever wins the struggle.” [4]

What would these men of God say today? 1969 was also a long time ago. It was the year of Woodstock. And it was the year of the Stonewall Riots.

But I doubt that the most zealous gay activist in 1969 would have predicted that the Supreme Court would one day redefine marriage. Or that the White House would light up in rainbow colors in celebration. Or that a “married” gay man would run for president. Or that another presidential candidate would say that transgender rights were the civil rights issue of our day. Or that a famous male athlete would be declared woman of the year. Or that the American Library Association would endorse drag queens reading to toddlers. No way!

And 1969 was four years before Roe v. Wade. Put another way, 1969 was four years before a court ruling would allow for more than 60 million babies to be aborted in their mother’s wombs. How much more, then, do we need massive awakening today? How much more do we need a sweeping revival in the church that will spark a moral and cultural revolution in the society?

Where We Stand Today

Think about it for a moment. Even if Roe v. Wade was overturned, that would not change the hearts of tens of millions of Americans who would fight day and night for the “right” to abort. Even if we were able to push back against radical LGBT activism in the courts and the schools, that would not undo the damage that has been done. Nor would the LGBT community surrender any of the hard-earned victories they have won.

Back in the days of the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which was also a time before the internet, no one could have imagined headlines like: “20 Mind-Blowing Stats About The Porn Industry And Its Underage Consumers.” [5] Some of the stats cited include:

• 64% of young people, ages 13–24, actively seek out pornography weekly or more often.

• Porn sites receive more regular traffic than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined each month.

• Recorded child sexual exploitation (known as “child porn”) is one of the fastest-growing online businesses.

• 624,000-plus child porn traders have been discovered online in the U.S.

• The world’s second-largest free porn site also received over 42,000,000,000 site visits during 2019 alone.

Who can even comprehend evil and abuse and perversion on this level?

Then there is the tragic breakdown of the family unit, with massive implications for the nation. As reported by the Brookings Review in 1996:

In 1965, 24 percent of black infants and 3.1 percent of white infants were born to single mothers. By 1990 the rates had risen to 64 percent for black infants, 18 percent for whites. Every year about one million more children are born into fatherless families. If we have learned any policy lesson well over the past 25 years, it is that for children living in single-parent homes, the odds of living in poverty are great. The policy implications of the increase in out-of-wedlock births are staggering. [6]

Fast forward to 2016, and the figures are even more staggering:

In 2016, 28 percent of all births to non-Hispanic white women (i.e., white) occurred outside of marriage, a figure that is almost twice as high as the 15 percent of births among this demographic that were nonmarital in 1990. In 2016, 52 percent of all births to Hispanic women occurred outside of marriage, up from 34 percent in 1990 (a more than 50 percent increase). The percent of births that occurred outside of marriage also increased for non-Hispanic black women (black) between 1990 and 2016, from 63 to 69 percent (a nine percent increase), though a much lesser extent than for white and Hispanic women. [7]

And when you factor in the effect of fatherlessness on the children, including dramatically higher likelihoods of crimes, delinquency, violent behavior, and promiscuity, you’re talking about a mind-numbing national crisis. [8]

That’s why there’s only one real solution for the future of our country. We must have divine visitation. We must have revival. We must have awakening.

What else will turn the rising tide of opioid addictions? Or stop the vile sin of human trafficking? Or put broken families back together? Or heal the deep divisions that are tearing us apart?

In 1985, evangelical leader Carl F.H. Henry wrote:

Speaking for a national morality movement, an evangelical leader recently remarked: “The United States has turned away from God. It mocks God. It worships a twentieth century Baal…incarnated in sensuality, material goods, and immorality of every kind…” Yet only a few years ago we were told that a new evangelical awakening had dawned in America; this very decade, it was said, is the decade of the evangelicals.” [9]

That was more thirty-five years ago. And now, with the renewed rise of evangelical influence, which began with the 2016 election of Donald Trump, where we do find ourselves today? We are more hated, more reviled, and more marginalized than ever.

Witchcraft is on the rise. Radical feminism is on the rise. Marxism is on the rise. Transgender activism is on the rise. Mobocracy is on the rise. Abortion extremism is on the rise. The cancel culture is on the rise. We are in one of the darkest places that America has ever seen. Political victories alone cannot save the nation. [10]

Revival Can Turn the Tide

The good news is that American history has also been marked by great awakenings and revival movements, without which we would have crashed and burned a long time ago. The same thing can happen in our day.

To give one case in point, our nation was powerfully impacted by a prayer revival that swept the country in 1857-1858. Before that time, according to the revival scholar James Edwin Orr, the churches were becoming worldly and internalized, and immorality, violent crime, spiritualism, corruption, and atheism were on the rise. Does this have a familiar sound?

Jeremiah Lanphier, a retired businessman-become-missionary, acting in obedience to the Spirit’s prompting, began to promote a weekly “Lunch Hour Prayer Meeting” for revival. Only six attended the first meeting, and twenty the second. But within several months, tens of thousands were praying seven days a week. The revival spread from city to city, jumped across the ocean to England, Ireland, and Wales, and shaped the history of our nation.

I have read that, from 1857-1858, over one million non-church members came to faith, in addition to one million formerly nominal church members who also came to faith. In fact, at the height of the revival there were reportedly more than 50,000 new births a week.

As a result of this revival hitting Chicago, the forty-year ministry of D.L. Moody was born. And within a decade, slavery was legally abolished.

But there’s more. As I noted in my 2017 book Saving a Sick America:

It is reported that in the early 1800’s, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall wrote to Bishop Madison of Virginia, “The church is too far gone ever to be redeemed.” His observations were quickly swept away by the Second Great Awakening and seem shockingly ill-advised in retrospect. So much for the esteemed justice’s foresight.

One century earlier, Rev. Samuel Blair, who became chaplain of the Congress of Pennsylvania, stated, “Religion lay as it were dying, and ready to expire its last breath of life in this part of the visible church…” This was shortly before the First Great Awakening, led by the great philosopher Jonathan Edwards, which radically impacted the society. “Religion” hardly expired and breathed its last breath. [11]

And these are only two striking examples out of several others that could be provided from our own national history.

The bottom line is this: No matter how dark things look, God can turn the tide. But we must get desperate. God will fill us in accordance with our hunger, but if we are filled with other things, we will have little room for Him. How hungry are we?

During my years in the Brownsville Revival, it was easy for us to believe for almost anything. After all, the testimonies we heard were so staggering, often impacting scores of young people within the same school. What if those sparks ignited into holy flames across the country?

These were the kinds of stories we heard day and night for years. Aletha R. wrote:

I was 18 and asked to be a chaperone on a youth trip to a revival and was told we would go to the beach, too. All my 18 year old ears heard was FREE BEACH TRIP so I agreed. To my dismay the first day they woke us up super early to get in line outside a church building…the sun wasn’t even out yet and there were people in line already waiting for evening service! We sat out there in the hot Florida sun for 12 hours before we were allowed inside—I wasn’t the happiest but I knew whatever was happening had to be good. Worship was powerful and the message Steve Hill preached was intensely convicting. (I ran up to every single altar call that week!) By the end of the week I was getting baptized and declaring that I would never go back to my old ways. Up to that point I had been saved about a year but still struggled to not be drawn to the world and my old ways. I got saved because I didn’t want to go to hell, but I was constantly giving in to temptation. Lots of shame and guilt as well as fear that I wouldn’t “make the long haul” as a believer.

After that week I was set on fire and hungered and thirsted for nothing but Him. The long drive home I wept cleansing tears the entire 12 hours—I couldn’t even go inside the Cracker Barrel for the lunch break because I was in the back of the van being touched by His Spirit weeping. I didn’t know my body could produce that many tears…some of the kids bought me Kleenex boxes and I used every single tissue before I got back home. Afterwards, there was a marked difference in me—holiness living was a byproduct but overall I was a woman unchained and liberated. No longer bound by my flesh and desire—completely set on fire for Him. [12]

Why can’t God do this again today, except on a much larger scale? Is His arm shortened? Is His power reduced? Certainly not! And to ask again: What would happen if stories like this were multiplied by the millions across the nation? America would be shaken from coast to coast.

If the Spirit could touch Aletha and her friends like this more than twenty years (she is still on fire now), why couldn’t He touch you and your friends today? And if He could do it for ten or twenty or a hundred or a thousand, why not for tens of millions?

Listen to Tom W.’s Brownsville Revival story. He, too, is still burning bright more than twenty years later:

Before I knew them, my would-be youth pastor, his brother (a worship leader), and his father (who got saved at the 1970 Asbury Revival) were all involved with a Methodist church in Tulsa. They got a hold of Brownsville Revival tapes around 1996 and they were greatly impacted by God. They visited the revival and were massively touched by the Lord. They went home and started to become more radical in their capacities at the Methodist Church, which led them to being essentially shown the door from the church.

However, due to young people praying and worshiping at a birthday party they attended one Saturday night and God moving powerfully, they decided to meet again the following Saturday night. And again. And again. Eventually, they were meeting every Saturday night and God brought along dozens and over several years, hundreds (if not thousands) of searching youth through the doors of rented buildings on Saturday nights. The group took dozens of trips down to Brownsville and each time many (like myself) were touched powerfully by the Lord.

One time (rather famously), the group was praying so much that they had to pull over their caravan of vans in Clarksville, Arkansas to a Citgo gas station, making quite the scene, with students laid out under the power of God on the ground at the gas station.13 My youth pastor (Sam Mather) created the Revival Fire tape, which was copied and re-copied and went all around the world, touching unknown thousands. [14]

The ministry reached into the public schools and several high school youth groups (including mine) were led and influenced by those who had been to the revival. When I got saved in Fall ’01, there was a definite move of God at my school, which was directly and indirectly impacted by the revival. I went to Brownsville (albeit on the tail end of the revival) in March ’02 and I was greatly affected by the power of God there and under the preaching of Steve Hill. The ministry lasts to this day and for those around my age that were touched by the ministry, the revival is a deep meaning shared experience that we will never forget. It ruined us. [15]

Can you imagine this happening in city after city and in county after county and in neighborhood after neighborhood and in family after family, with whole schools and churches touched by the power of God? It would be a national awakening.

The good news is that, without a doubt, God can do it again—and much, much more than we could ask for or imagine. The bad news is that the clock is ticking on our nation, as we are dangerously close to complete implosion.

So our prayer today is, “Do it again, Lord! Revive us or we die!” Do we have another choice?

Notes

1. Peter Marshall, “Trial by Fire: The Message of Elijah for Today,” Lamplighter magazine, Lamb & Lion Ministries, March–April, 2007, 5–6.

2. Robert E. Coleman, “Introduction,” in Henry C. James and Paul Rader, Halls Aflame: An Account of the Spontaneous Revivals at Asbury College in 1950 and 1958 (Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, 2013), 13; accessed January 1, 2021, https://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruitsheritagematerial/66.

3. Bill Bright, Revolution Now! (Campus Crusade for Christ, 1969).

4. Tom Skinner, Words of Revolution (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970).

5. “20 Mind-Blowing Stats About the Porn Industry and Its Underage Consumers,” December 4, 2020, https://fightthenewdrug.org/10-porn-stats-that-will-blow-your-mind.

6. George A. Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen, “An analysis of out-of-wedlock births in the United States,” August 1, 1996, https://www.brookings.edu/research/an-analysis-of-out-of-wedlock-births-in-the-united-states.

7. Elizabeth Wildsmith, Jennifer Manlove, and Elizabeth Cook, “Dramatic increase in the proportion of births outside of marriage in the United States from 1990 to 2016,” https://www.childtrends.org/publications/dramatic-increase-in-percentage-of-births-outside-marriage-among-whites-hispanics-and-women-with-higher-education-levels.

8. See, for example, https://www.fatherhood.org/father-absence-statistic and https://fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-consequences-of-fatherlessness/.

9. Carl F.H. Henry qtd. in Michael L. Brown, It’s Time to Rock the Boat (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 1993), 40.

10. For an overview, see Michael L. Brown, Jezebel’s War with America: The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide (Lake Mary, FL: Frontline, 2019).

11. Michael L. Brown, Saving a Sick America: A Prescription for Moral and Cultural Transformation (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2017), 183.

12. Aletha Rosemarie, Facebook comment, November 15, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/DrMichaelBrown/posts/10157515917425685.

13. “Appearance of the Holy Spirit,” http://www.people.vcu.edu/~dbromley/brownsvilleholyspiritLink.htm.

14. Revival Fire Tulsa Ministries, “Revival Fire: side 1” (https://archive.org/details/RevivalFireSide1) and “Revival Fire: side 2” (https://archive.org/details/RevivalFireSide2). If you have never listened to this compilation, I strongly encourage you to do so.

15. Tom Watson, Facebook comment, November 15, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/DrMichaelBrown/posts/10157515917425685.