As I write this Word for the Week for the 50th week of the year, I thought about how 50 is the number of freedom, the Jubilee. In the biblical Jubilee, all debts were canceled and all slaves were freed. Why can’t we ask God for a Jubilee now? The world is burdened with unprecedented and unsustainable debt, and even worse, it is burdened by unprecedented sin. As great as this sin and debt is, it is not beyond the power of the cross.

     There is an equation that can turn pending disaster into the greatest of all blessings. It is:

     Repentance + hunger for God = revival.

     Repentance is the result of the realization and acknowledgement of our transgressions. This is the opposite of what Adam and Eve did when they sinned, which was to hide and cover themselves. Repentance is when we run to God and not away from Him when we fail.

     Revival means to revive—either from sleep or from the dead. Both are needed at this time. Much of the church is asleep, and some churches are dead and are only breathing because of artificial life support. We need reviving. We must have revival!

     Of course, great churches and great things are taking place in the body of Christ. However, with research showing that only about 6 percent of those who claim to be Christians have a biblical worldview, we obviously have a very basic problem. This is also about the same percentage of those who know their calling and ministry with even less walking in it. At this time, less than 50 percent even attend a local church, and much less have the kind of vital local church life we need for true Christian maturity. We need a revival!

     In the visions I have had of the future, I was shown far more revival than calamity. I don’t think I have ever felt the kind of urgency and seriousness for anything like I feel for our West Coast at this time. Even so, I know that revival can preempt many of the things presently destined to come upon us. We need companies of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefields, Evan Roberts, William Seymours, Frank Bartlemans, and Maria Woodworth-Etters.

     When the Lord prophesied the judgment that was to come upon Jerusalem, He lamented how often He had tried to gather them like a mother hen gathers her chicks. The implication was that if they would gather to Him, the destruction of Jerusalem would not have to happen. The Lord is doing many things right now to gather His people, and we must respond and gather together to Him.

     I was shown more than twenty years ago that one thing the church could do to buy more time was to fulfill the commandment to “honor your fathers and mothers.” This is the only commandment with a promise, which is that it would go well with us and we would dwell long in the land that the Lord has given to us (see Deuteronomy 5:16, Ephesians 6:2-3). This is in the Old and New Testaments. When I shared this in a church in Pasadena where Lou Engle was on the pastoral team, it encouraged him to write a book that helped to spark The Call, which has now gathered hundreds of thousands in stadiums and in Washington D.C. to pray and fast in repentance before the Lord.

     Think about that—along with the great Promise Keepers movement or the International Day of Prayer and March for Jesus. If these things had been done in biblical times, they would have been written about in canon Scripture. Think how powerful it would be to read in the Bible about hundreds of thousands gathering before the king’s palace to repent of their sins and call upon the Lord or gathering in great stadiums all over the nation to pray and fast before Him. This would be one of the highlights of the Old Testament, and we have seen this in our own times.

     These have received the attention of heaven, and the Lord has heard and He has given us more time. Even so, we must do more than just gather once every couple of years in big meetings. We must gather together in our own local churches continually, drawing closer to Him and to one another. We must resolve in our hearts that we will obey the two great commandments: to love God above all things, and to love one another.

     We cannot love God if we do not know Him. The more we know Him, the more we will love Him. Neither can we love each other if we do not know each other. We must resolve that above all things these two we will do and grow in continually. If the great tragedy at the end is that the love of most will grow cold because of lawlessness, let us resolve to grow more and more in our love for God and one another, rejecting the spirit of lawlessness that is stealing His people’s love.