Folks, I want to talk with you plainly tonight about something that is stirring a lot of hearts in Scotland and across the border in England. There has just been a big night at SEC Armadillo in Glasgow, billed as revival. Worship. Prayer for the nation. A message. A ticket on the door. A leadership day the next morning. I was not in that hall. I do not need to have been there to tell you what it was not.

It was a meeting. It may have been a sincere meeting. God can use a sincere meeting. But it was not revival.

Real revival is not the kind you put on a calendar, with guests lined up and a night of religious feeling arranged in advance. A church can hire a hall. The saints can sing. People can pray for their country. None of that is wrong in itself. But revival is another order of thing. It comes suddenly, and it comes sovereignly, when God is pleased to move, usually after His people have been brought low. My heart still burns when I think of Scotland from 1859 to 1861, and of the Hebrides. Nobody sold that. Nobody branded it. God came. Sin became heavy. Christ became precious. And the lives stayed changed after the singing stopped.

Isaiah put the offer of God this way: “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1). When God visits, He does not put a price on the door and call it awakening. I am not saying a church may never cover the cost of a venue. The labourer is worthy of his wages as scripture says. I am saying we must not take a produced night and name it revival, You cannot force or bully the Holy Spirit. You cannot import Him with a lineup, a sponsor, and a good sound system. “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,” says the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 4:6).

Test the night by fruit, not by atmosphere. The Lord Jesus said, “Therefore by their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:20). Fruit is not a full hall. Fruit is repentance. Fruit is open Bibles the next morning. Fruit is people different on Monday, when the coach has gone home.

Now let me give you a better word than emotionalism. Emotion is not the enemy. David danced before the Lord. The psalms are full of feeling. Peter wept. The danger is experience-led religion. That is religious feeling put in the chair where the Word of God should sit.

You see it in the liberal, softened religion of our day. Sin is talked about as messing up our lives, not as falling short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and not as the thing whose wages are death (Romans 6:23). The cross is pressed as a picture of love, and not as Christ made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Holy Spirit is sought as an atmosphere, a warmth, sometimes a tongue or a wave of joy, rather than as the One who convicts the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment (John 16:8).

Paul did not tell Timothy to open a discussion group. He said, “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). An Alpha course evening can be kind and get people interested. It is not the same as preaching or getting into the meat of Scripture as Christianity Explored does. A course built on conversation, with a weekend set aside for spiritual experience, will often give people a feeling and call it assurance. But folks, assurance is not a feeling. Assurance is Christ, received by faith, and a conscience made honest before God.

Experience-led religion is dangerous and also blurs the different offices of the church. The New Testament is glad for women to speak truth, to serve, to pray, to prophesy, and to labour in the gospel. But folks you need to understand the gift is not office. Pastor, elder, overseer, and shepherd are names for the same trust, and that trust is given to qualified men and men only (1 Timothy 3:1–5; Titus 1:5–9). When a night for the churches puts a woman forward under the title pastor, it is not a small custom, you dismiss the Word of God. It is a claim the apostles did not make. We can say that plainly and still refuse to make it personal.

Jude tells us to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Wide unity that will not draw a line on the gospel, on the Spirit, or on who may shepherd the flock this is not the unity of the Spirit. It is a coalition. Coalitions fill halls. They do not awaken nations.

Set next to that kind of night theat was at SEC Armadillo in Glasgow, is a free evangelistic meeting is more useful. Franklin Graham is in Manchester, at Co-op Live, on 3 October, on the God Loves You Tour. No ticket. The aim is preaching Christ to people who do not know Him, with local churches bringing friends and counselling those who respond. That is closer to an old gospel crusade than to a branded revival. I would rather a sinner hear the cross freely than buy a seat at a night that calls itself awakening.

And here is something that ought to encourage a Calvary heart. Skip Heitzig is in Manchester. He is not the preacher of the arena night. The public bill is Franklin, with music from Michael W. Smith, Charity Gayle, Faith Child, Dennis Agajanian, and the Tommy Coomes Band. Skip’s work was the day before. On Friday 2 October, Franklin gathered over 200 pastors and church leaders at the Concorde Conference Centre at Manchester Airport for a Preach the Word conference. Skip spent that day leading the sessions, encouraging those men to proclaim the Word of God and to share the gospel in their own communities. That is the side room. The ministers’ meeting. The same kind of gathering a supporter might be invited to, as some of you were years ago in Falkirk. It is not the arena. It is a pastor opening the Book with pastors, the day before the preaching.

I thank God for Skip I get so much from his teaching of the Word, he has been around for years and you can find his teaching online, as he give overviews of Books of the Bible and with Scriptures he teaches verse by verse. If a day in Manchester was given to telling ministers to preach the Word, that is a better use of a platform than a night that only stirs feeling and emotions. It still does not make Saturday revival. A crusade can be used of God. It is still a planned meeting. Lasting fruit depends on the message preached, and on the church the hearer is sent back to.

And here I am careful, folks. These worldwide crusades carry the smell of Rome the Catholic church, they are never platformed but sometimes listed in cooperating-churches listing and takes in a ecumenical company, and enquirers are commonly sent back to the church that brought them. Historic campaigns in this stream have long been willing to treat Roman Catholic churches as partners, and to return seekers to them and this is where I am weary.

Rome does not preach justification by faith alone, but adds works for merit as good works, and the sacraments to the finished work of Christ. A clear Gospel message on the night does not heal a follow-up that walks a person back into that false church system.

It is my prayer if a catholic goes, they go with your eyes open. Hear the gospel. I plead don’t hand new believers to a church that cannot tell them they are saved by grace through faith, apart from works.

So how do we break through all this? Not by hiring a bigger hall or venue. Not by answering one production with another. And not even by wishing we could get down to Manchester for the pastors’ day, though I understand that wish.

Breakthrough, if God gives it, starts with His own people. “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). Humble. Pray. Seek His face. Turn. That is the order. Confession before campaigning.

Then keep the Word in the centre, become Bible strong. Study chapter by chapter by verse by verse. Find a church that says Sin named as sin, the cross preached as a finished atonement, the Spirit tested by conviction, not by a weekend atmosphere. If you have a  living room or kitchen table in Scotland, a Bible, and people who will stay and study the Word, that is enough for God to use. I hear of Gen-X of the young are hungry for the Word. Feed them the Book, not a brand.

And pray as if the Holy Spirit means to come. You cannot force Him. You can ask, and not lose heart (Luke 18:1). Pray for conviction of sin in Scotland, Pray for men who will open the Scriptures and stay there. Pray that believers already inside weak churches grow uneasy, and come back to the Word.

Then watch the fruit. Repentance. Open Bibles. People asking to be baptised. Lives different when the lights go down. That is how you know the real thing from the branded thing.

God is still the same. He is more ready to pour out His Spirit than we are to seek Him. Let us not settle for less than the real thing.

The Lord bless you, and the work of your hands.

Peter