The Clearing Podcast - Where Eagles Fly

The Westward Flow of Revival Tides

So…here’s what it comes to: You can take the stories of all these Revival tides, you can sew them together, and you can tell them as a continuing narrative. That’s my challenge this year and I hope to have completed it by year’s end.

And as you trace this story through the centuries, guess what! You discover that Revival tides tend to flow in a westerly direction around the globe. And the flow of Revival tides is about to complete the circle around the globe—ending right back where it began: in Jerusalem! Can you not sense the significance of the times in which we live?

In this video I tell, ever so briefly, the basic plot of the book I’m working on, Glory Through Time, Volume Two: The Forgotten Legacy of Transformational Revivals.

If you like my teaching, please help me get it circulated. Perhaps you can think of someone you could send this video to?—someone who would like to know more about past outpourings of the Holy Spirit?

Doug

REVIVAL TIDES

When you take the writings of the Revival historians and put them all together, you find that Revival movements have been a lot more frequent than most people realize. In reality, Revival movements have formed a kind of tidal pattern down through the centuries. The tide comes in; the tide goes out; then the tide comes in again, and so on. Every 40 or 50 years or so, God ordains a new Revival tide. He does this because He is merciful. He loves us.

In this video, I tell the story of the very first two Revival tides in history, which happened in Scotland. The tide came in, a completely new pattern, surprising everyone. Then the tide went out.Then 40 years later, the tide came back in, surprising everyone again. And so the pattern was begun, which grew and spread and crossed the ocean to America. As we look at this Revival pattern over the years, perhaps we could learn some lessons to prepare us for the next Revival tide. Many believe it is already upon us.

Awakening #10 – The Importance of Revival Historians

In this video I want to honor some unsung heroes. Most of you are not aware of these people. But God raised them up in my lifetime to do a certain work, and without their ministry, I could not write with confidence about the mighty deeds of God through history. My “Glory Through Time” writing would be dead in the water without them. They are Revival historians.

Remember how Jesus called His disciples to be “eye-witnesses” of His resurrection (Luke 24:48). The role of eye-witnesses is critically important to the Gospel of the kingdom, because God relies on credible witnesses to verify what He has done in real time. Without eye-witnesses, we can start to think that God doesn’t really do much of anything in the real world, that the Christian Church just traffics in opinions about God.

The Revival historian is the guy who goes back and reviews the written testimony of eye-witnesses during Revival seasons. Otherwise, that eye-witness testimony is lost to all future generations. He’s the guy who says, “Just the facts, ma’am.” He patiently reviews the written testimony of those who experienced outpourings of the Holy Spirit–just as Luke did in the Book of Acts. It is the patient research of Revival historians, poring over testimonies of eye-witnesses, that enable someone like me to piece together a narrative of the Kingdom of God as I am doing in Glory Through Time. I rely on the work of Revival historians because I want my narrative to be based on “just the facts.” One reason no one has attempted to write a continuous narrative like Glory Through Time is that there weren’t any Revival historians to do the hard and patient work that historians do to uncover the facts. In this video, I want to introduce you to these people who did all this prior work.

~Douglas~

Awakening #9 – The Rebirth of Prophecy

The basic theme of my Glory Through Time narrative is that, for the last 600 years, God has been drawing His people back to the life-in-the-Spirit, after 700 years during the Middle Ages, in which the Church opted for a Power-and-Might lifestyle. If that is true, then you would expect that there would be some signs of spiritual gifts 600 years ago, right?

In this video, I look at just two of the very first Reformers, George Wishart and John Hus, who both spoke prophetically as they were being martyred for Christ. I want to challenge you to think about this: why have Christian leaders forgotten or covered up these and the many other prophecies that marked the outbreak of the Great Reformation?

For prophecies there were–many, many of them, brought forth by the Holy Spirit in those days. I describe several of them in Volume Two of Glory Through Time. God was beginning to challenge the temporary triumph of Power-and-Might Christianity, which had become normal Christianity during the Middle Ages. And many of the leaders of the Reformation, though they didn’t call themselves prophets, did speak prophetically by the Spirit. And what they spoke did come to pass, too. It shows that there was something going on deeper than a reshuffling of church polity and doctrines. God was calling to people to renounce worldly power and learn instead how to walk in the Spirit. And the volume of His voice is increasing with each passing year.

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>

Volume One took the story to the transformation of the British Isles. Volume Two concentrates on the outpourings of God’s power in the Great Awakenings and Revivals of the last 600 years. King Jesus told a parable, recorded in Matthew 25, describing how the Church would grow drowsy and fall asleep; but then, they would wake up and realize that Jesus is coming back to fulfill His kingdom. In the midst of this awakening, the key issue would be “oil” which is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. What God has done to wake up His Church to the power of the Holy Spirit–that’s what Volume Two is about. The Great Awakenings.

Today’s video teaching introduces the Big Picture, the whole plot that required God to do some shock treatment to wake His people up out of deep slumber. Future teachings will hone in on specific seasons of Holy Spirit outpourings, of “times of refreshing from the Presence of the Lord,” as described in Acts 3:19-21. I believe it will be helpful for people to see just where we are in the total picture of Kingdom advance throughout history.

~Douglas~

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>

Q: What’s worth doing in life?

What I have discovered in my research is this: The kingdom of God is a complete, divinely ordained strategy for the transformation of nations. It has a unique pattern taught and lived by Jesus. This king behaves differently than all other kings who ever lived, yet He is very much a king, not a religious leader. And His kingdom has its own power source—the Holy Spirit.

All other earthly enterprises operate out of worldly power. Many of these claim to be motivated from love and justice, yet they depend on worldly power to get things done, and worldly power corrupts. In this video I compare the kingdom of God with Critical Race theory, which is Marxism with a racial twist. Let’s stick with the kingdom of God!

Oh, and, by the way, I will be having a book-signing event this Sunday, December 12 at my church, The River in Toano, located at 8824 Richmond Road just west of Williamsburg. If you are in the area y’all come. I’ll be sharing a bit about how I Came to write Glory Through Time, and where I am in my production of Volume Two. Service is at 10 am.

See the newest Newsletter Release with Video Teaching.

And while I’m at it, my new book, Glory Through Time, Vol. One (A Narrative of the Kingdom of God) is published by TBN. Buy yourself one, and other copies for Christmas presents! It is available NOW through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and wherever books are sold.

~Doug~

Awakening #7 – Where will Revival Happen?

If there is going to be a major move of the Holy Spirit in the near future, where will it happen?

In this teaching I answer that question with another intriguing question: Why did the American Great Awakening happen only in the Northern colonies and not in the South? Find the answer to that question and you will know the answer to the first. We can always learn God’s ways by studying His deeds in the past. Same God. Today, yesterday and forever.

And while I’m at it, my new book, Glory Through Time, Vol. One (A Narrative of the Kingdom of God) is about to be published by TBN in the next week or two.

~Douglas~

Power Sources – Awakening #6

Our country is unique, in that the founders of the United States of America had experienced the power of God in the Old Country, and they were familiar with how God works through the Holy Spirit.  They may not have possessed all the gifts of the Spirit that many do today, but they had experienced Revival and spiritual awakening from God, and, because of that, they had completely new and unheard-of ideas about God’s power at the heart of a nation. This awareness of God’s powerful presence went well beyond just the “Protestant” or “Catholic” or “Presbyterian” labels–as though denominations were just arguing about different traditions.

The real issue was: What is your power source? Do you trust the King of England, or the King of Kings? The people who had experienced the King of Kings, and had been persecuted in the Old Country for their experience of God were extremely important in the founding of our country.

Many had fled Britain because of their fresh experiences with God’s power. In this teaching, I tell a bit about how that affected the United States and established new principles for our life together as “a Christian country.” And it led directly to the first Great Awakening, which was entirely in the northern colonies. More about that next month…

~Douglas~

The First Modern Awakening – Awakening #5

Just now, I am writing about the first modern Great Awakening, one that most of us have forgotten all about. It happened in Scotland during the latter part of the sixteenth century, and, through three waves of Revival, ended up transforming all of Scotland as a nation. This video tells this vastly important story, in brief. (In Volume Two of Glory Through Time, it will take eight chapters!) I am telling these stories to show you the people who began to surrender their lives so that God could use them to bring forth, in their generation, the Kingdom of God in all its transformational power.

My goal in writing Glory Through Time is to reawaken the memories of what God has done in previous generations so that we can catch the true vision of the Gospel of the Kingdom that is not “worked up,” but “prayed down.” And we can learn many, many lessons from those years to inspire and encourage us in our prayers.

Incidentally, Volume One of Glory Through Time is making good progress toward publication by Trilogy Books, the publishing arm of Trinity Broadcasting Network. I believe it will be out by August.

Religion? Or Kingdom? – Awakening Series #4

The Bible doesn’t lie. It presents a vision so radical, so superhuman, so straightforward, that it is hard to accept full strength. It’s implications are earthshaking, if we have the courage to listen to this vision, surrender to it, and live by it. It will turn us into heavenly beings, fully prepared to meet God face to face one day. That is a tall order, but the Bible does it well, if you’re willing to read through to the end.

What makes the Bible so transformational is this: it conveys the vision of the Kingdom of God. That vision will possess you if you let it. It was intended to possess you. If it doesn’t possess you, something is wrong.

Here’s what’s wrong. We have taken the vision of the Bible and turned it into a religion. Not The Kingdom.

But as the Christian Era draws to a close, God is drawing our attention to The Gospel of the Kingdom again. Are we listening, you and I? Are you willing to let the Kingdom of God possess you?

This video presents the reason for my next book, Glory Through Time, which I describe as a Narrative of the Kingdom of God. It tells story after story of ordinary people who have surrendered their lives to King Jesus and we’re empowered to win whole nations to Christ. —and most of these stories have been completely forgotten by a generation of people who want Christianity to be “just one of the great religions of the world.”