CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘‘Give Me Children or I Die’’

Revival is imperative, for the sluice gates of hell have opened on this degenerate generation. We need (and we say that we want) revival. Yet, though slick, shallow saints of this hour would have heaven opened and revival delivered on the slot-machine method, God has not mechanized His glorious power to fit our time-geared religious machinery.

‘‘We wish revival would come to us as it came in the Hebrides,’’ said a pastor recently. But fellow servant, revival did not come to the Hebrides by wishing! The heavens were opened and the mighty power of the Lord shook those islands because ‘‘frail children of dust . . . sanctified a fast and called a solemn assembly,’’ and waited tear-stained, tired, and travailing before the throne of the living God. That visitation came because He who sought for a virgin in which to conceive His beloved Son found a people of virgin purity in those souls of burning vision and burdened passion. They had no double motive in their praying. No petitions were colored with desire to save the face of a failing denomination. Their eye was single to God’s glory. They were not jealous of another group who was outgrowing them, but jealous for the Lord of Hosts, whose glory was in the dust, the ‘‘wall of whose house was broken down, and whose gates were burned with fire.’’

To draw the brooding Holy Ghost, a church group fundamentally sound in the Bible is not in itself a decoy. Beloved, we have thousands of such groups over the world. A girl of seventeen years and a boy of the same age may be equipped physically to parent a child, and even legally married. But does that in itself justify their offspring coming? Would they have financial security to cover all the need? And would they be mentally mature enough to train a child in the way he should go? Revival would die in a week in some ‘‘Bible’’ churches, for where are the ‘‘mothers in Israel’’ to care for them? How many of our believers could lead a soul out of darkness into light? It would be as sensible to have spiritual births in the present condition of some of these churches as to put a newborn babe into a deep freeze!

The birth of a natural child is predated by months of burden and days of travail; so is the birth of a spiritual child. Jesus prayed for His Church but then to bring it to spiritual birth He gave Himself in death. Paul prayed ‘‘night and day . . . exceedingly’’ for the Church; moreover, he travailed for the sinners. It was when Zion travailed that she brought forth. Though preachers each week cry, ‘‘Ye must be born again,’’ how many could say with Paul ‘‘Though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel’’? So he fathered them in the faith. He does not say that he merely prayed for them; he implies that he travailed for them. In the past century if the physical birth rate had been as low as the spiritual birth rate, the human race would now be almost extinct. ‘‘We must pray to live the Christian life,’’ we say; whereas the truth is that we must live the Christian life to pray. ‘‘If ye abide . . . ye shall ask’’ (i.e., pray). I know that ‘‘asking’’ includes making our requests for the salvation of loved ones, but prayer is more than asking. Prayer, surely. is getting us into subjection to the Holy Ghost so that He can work in and through us. In the first chapter of Genesis every thing that had life brought forth its kind. Then in regeneration should not every really born-again soul bring others to birth?

We evangelists get a lot of credit—and very often take what is not ours at all. A woman in Ireland who prays for hours, prays each day for this poor stammerer. Others tell me ‘‘Never a day passes but what I lay hold of God for you.’’ They have brought to birth many that are credited to me, whereas I very often only act as the midwife. In the judgment we shall be amazed to see big rewards go to unknown disciples. Sometimes I think we preachers who catch the eyes of the public will be among those rewarded the least. For instance, I know men who today preach sermons which they preached twenty years ago—which no longer gender life. Such preachers used to pray; one of these admitted to me some time ago, ‘‘No, brother, I do not pray as much as I used to, but the dear Lord understands.’’ Aye, He understands all right, but He does not excuse us because we are busier than He wants us to be.

It is true that science has alleviated some of the suffering that our mothers knew in childbirth; but science will never shrink the long slow months of child-formation. In the same way we preachers have also found easier methods of getting folk to our altars for salvation or for the filling with the Holy Ghost. For salvation, folk are permitted just to slip up their hand and, presto! the groaning at the altar is eliminated. For the filling with the Holy Ghost, men are told to ‘‘Just stand where you are while the evangelist prays for you, and you will be filled.’’ Oh, the shame of it! Brother, before the miracle takes place, true revival and soul-birth still demand travail.

As the coming babe dislocates the body of the mother, so does the growing ‘‘body’’ of revival and soul-travail dislocate the Church. The mother-to-be wearies more as the time of the birth draws near (often spending sleepless but not tearless nights); so the lamps of the sanctuary burn the midnight oil as distressed, sin-carrying intercessors pour out their souls for a nation’s iniquities. The expectant mother often loses desire for food and, in the interests of the one she will bear, denies herself certain things; so denial of food and a consuming love to lie quiet before the Lord seizes believers shamed by the barrenness of the Church. As women in pregnancy hide from public gaze (or used to do so) as the time of deliverance draws near, so those in travail of soul shun publicity and seek the face of a holy God.

It is very obvious that Jacob loved Rachel far more than he loved Leah, but yet the ‘‘woman’s delight’’ was with Leah, for she had children. Consider how Jacob served fourteen years for Rachel, and yet that splendid devotion was no comfort to the woman stricken with barrenness. Undoubtedly Jacob proved his love by loading her with jewels, as the custom of the day was; but external nonentities were comfortless. And though Rachel was beautiful to look upon, for her son-less state she found no compensation in her own beauty or the admiration of others. The terrible truth remained that Leah had four laughing lads about her skirts; but at unfruitful Rachel men mocked and women shot out the lip. I can imagine Rachel—with eyes more red from weeping than ever Leah’s were, and with hair dishevelled and voice hoarse with groaning—coming before Jacob, annoyed about her sterility, humiliated to despair by her condition, and crying with a piercing cry, ‘‘Give me children or else I die!’’ (Gen. 30:1). That cry tore his heart as a sword would tear his flesh.

To spiritualize this, her praying was not routine but desperate, for she was gripped with grief, stunned with shame, and bowed low in barrenness. Preacher, if your soul is barren, if tears are absent from your eyes, if converts are absent from your altar, then take no comfort in your popularity; refuse the consolation of your degrees or of the books you have written! Sincerely but passionately invite the Holy Ghost to plague your heart with grief because you are spiritually unable to bring to birth. Oh, the reproach of our barren altars! Has the Holy Ghost delight in our electric organs, carpeted aisles, and new decorations if the crib is empty? Never! Oh that the deathlike stillness of the sanctuary could be shattered by the blessed cry of newborn babes!

There is no pattern for revival. Though babes are everywhere born by the same process, how different the babes themselves are—all new! no repeats! By the very same process of soul-grief and protracted prayer and burden because of barrenness, revivals of all ages have come—yet how different the revivals themselves have been!

Jonathan Edwards lacked no congregations and had no financial worries. But spiritual stagnation haunted him. The blemish of birth bankruptcy so buckled his knees and smote his spirit that his grief-stricken soul clung to the mercy seat in sobbing silence until the Holy Ghost came upon him. The Church and the world know the answer to his victorious vigil. The vows he made, the tears he shed, the groans he uttered are all written in the chronicles of the things of God. Edwards, Zinzendorf, Wesley, etc., were spiritual kinsmen (for there is an aristocracy of the Spirit, as well as of the flesh). Such men despised hereditary honors and sought the accolade of the Holy Ghost.

Political and military histories are wrapped up around individual men. History is sprinkled with the names of men who invested themselves with certain power and often made the world to tremble. Think of that evil genius Hitler. What kings he overthrew! what governments he tottered! what millions of graves he filled! To our age he was a bigger scourge than ten plagues. Hitler had one thing to do, and—he did it! The Bible says that in the last days when wicked men do wickedly, ‘‘the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits.’’ Not those who sing about God, not those who write or preach about God, but they that know their God shall be strong and do exploits. Not talking about food will fill the stomach; not speaking of knowledge will make us wise; not talking of God means that the energies of the Holy Ghost are within us. We do well to ponder the fact that revival comes as a result of a cleansed section of the Church, bent and bowed in supplication and intercession. It views an age shackled with false religion and sickened at the sight of perishing millions; then they wait—perhaps days, weeks, and even months until the Spirit moves upon them, and heaven opens in revival blessing.

Women of the Bible who had been barren brought forth its noblest children: Sarah, barren until ninety years of age, begat Isaac; Rachel’s cutting cry, ‘‘Give me children or I die!’’ was answered, and she bore Joseph, who delivered the nation. Manoah’s wife bare Samson, another deliverer of the nation. Hannah, a smitten soul, after sobbing in the sanctuary and vowing vows and continuing in prayer, ignored Eli’s scorn, poured out her soul, and received her answer in Samuel, who became the prophet of Israel. The barren and widowed Ruth found mercy and bare Obed, who begat Jesse, the father of David, of whose line came our Saviour. Of Elizabeth, stricken in years, came John the Baptist, of whom Jesus said there was no greater prophet born of women. If shame of childlessness had not subdued these women, what mighty men would have been lost!

As a child conceived suddenly leaps to life, so with revival. In the sixteenth century Knox parodied Rachel’s prayer, crying, ‘‘Give me Scotland or I die!’’ Knox died, but while Scotland lives, Knox will live. Zinzendorf, chagrined and shamed at the loveless, fruitless state of the Moravians, was melted and motivated by the Holy Ghost until—suddenly revival came at about eleven o’clock on the Wednesday morning of August 13, 1727. Then began the Moravian revival, in which a prayer meeting was born that we are told lasted one hundred years. From that meeting came a missionary movement that reached the ends of the earth.

The Church of our day should be pregnant with passionate propagation, whereas she is often pleading with pale propaganda. To be sure, methods of child delivery have altered with the advance of science; but again we say that science, that darling of the doctors, cannot shrink the nine months of child-formation. Brethren, we are beaten by the time element. The preacher and church, too busy to pray, are busier than the Lord would have them be. If we will give God time, He will give us timeless souls. If we will hide in our soul-impotence and call upon His name, He will bring forth our light as the noonday. The Church has advisers by the carload. But where are her agonizers? Churches, boasting an all-time high in attendance, might have to admit an all-time low in spiritual births. We can increase our churches without increasing the kingdom. (I know a family where all the children are adopted. Many of us preachers have more adoptions than births.) The enemy of multiplication is stagnation. When believers lacking births become burdened, and when soul-sterility sickens us, then we will pulsate with holy fear, and pray with holy fervor, and produce with holy fertility. At God’s counter there are no ‘‘sale days,’’ for the price of revival is ever the same—travail.

Surely this ruined race requires reviving. I am fully aware that there are those who in their sleepiness will swing back on the sovereignty of God and say, ‘‘When He moves, revival will come.’’ That is only half-truth. Do you mean that the Lord is happy that eighty-three people per minute die without Christ? Have you fallen for the idea that the Lord is now willing that many should perish? Do you dare to say—what to me is little less than blasphemy—that when God decides to lift up His heel and scatter His enemies, then a mighty visitation will come? Never! Quote part of a text and you can make the Bible say anything. For instance, ‘‘God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.’’ Stop the verse there, and it means ‘‘God is able to do it, but as yet He is not bothered so to do.’’ This verse, misquoted, leaves the lack of revival on the steps of God’s throne. But finish the text . . . ‘‘able to do—according to the power that wor-keth in us,’’ and it means that the channel is blocked; it means God cannot get through to this age because of lack of power in the Church. So lack of revival is our fault.

Finney said: ‘‘God is one pent-up revival’’; so we can have revival ‘‘according to the power that worketh in us,’’ for we ‘‘shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon [us].’’ This is not power merely to do miracles, for before Pentecost they did miracles and cast out devils. Nor is it just power to organize, power to preach, power to translate the Scriptures, power to enter new territories for the Lord. All this is good. But have we Holy Ghost power—power that restricts the devil’s power, pulls down strongholds, and obtains promises? Daring delinquents will be damned if they are not delivered from the devil’s dominion. What has hell to fear other than a God-anointed, prayer-powered church?

Beloved, let us put away all trifling. Let us forget denominational issues. Let us ‘‘give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word,’’ ‘‘for faith cometh by hearing.’’ Shamed at the impotence of the Church, chagrined at the monopoly the devil holds, shall we not cry with tortured spirits (and mean it): ‘‘Give me children, or else I die!’’ Amen.