During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, when the words “born again” had suddenly become common in popular speech, I was often asked in interviews whether America was undergoing a revival. George Gallup, Jr., the president of the American Institute of Public Opinion, had reported that fifty or sixty million Americans claimed to be born again, and the secular press was discovering that “born again Christians” might be a political force in the nation.
“Is something significant happening?” they asked. “Are we seeing a genuine religious revival?”
Whenever I have been asked that question my answer has always been, “No.” And the reason I say no is quite simple: there is no national consciousness of sin. In fact, there is hardly any personal consciousness of sin—very little in the churches and none at all in the world—and there has never been a revival without this essential element.
Are there fifty million real Christians in America? I do not know; there may be. I think there has been a great deal of effective personal evangelism in our time, particularly among the young who have been influenced by such evangelical student movements as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Navigators and Campus Crusade for Christ. That is good, but it is not the same thing as revival. When revival sweeps over a people the first evidence is a profound awareness of sin and sorrow for it. This was true of the Reformation and of the first revival in recorded history, the revival in Nineveh in response to the preaching of the prophet Jonah.
When revival came to that city, the people declared a fast and donned sackcloth, a sign of mourning. Even the king took part. Then the king issued a decree which said, “Do not let any man or beast, herd or flock, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish” (Jonah 3:7-9).
The first evidence of a true movement of the Holy Spirit is an awakened conscience, leading to genuine sorrow for sin in God’s people. It is only after this that revival comes.
This is what happened in Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s day, and it is why it is proper to speak of this as having been a true revival. There were three parts to this revival. We have already seen the first element, the prominence given to God’s Word. In this chapter we need to study its profound impact upon the people.
The working of sorrow for sin in the people as a result of the reading and teaching of God’s Word was observed in the last chapter, but there it was turned aside or held back by Nehemiah and the Levites. When Ezra read from the Law of Moses the people must have recognized how far they had fallen from its standards and how guilty they were in the sight of Almighty God. This had affected them even to the point of tears: “The people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law” (Neh. 8:9). But that day had been intended as a day of praise and thanksgiving, and for that reason Nehemiah rebuked the tears and sent the people away “to eat and drink, to send portions of food [to those without] and to celebrate with great joy” (v. 12). It was only after this—in fact, it was after the celebration of the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles from the fifteenth to the twenty-second of the month of Tishri—that the special day of penance described in Nehemiah 9 occurred.