The Ten Greatest Revivals Ever: From Pentecost to the Present by Elmer L. Towns & Douglas Porter & Elmer Towns

Author:Elmer L. Towns & Douglas Porter & Elmer Towns
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, General
ISBN: 9781569552179
Publisher: Vine Books
Published: 2000-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The World War II Revival, 1935-1950

Whenever God intends great mercy for his people, he first sets them

praying.

Matthew Henry

Some great revivals seem to be associated with a war. The Laymen’s Prayer Revival,

for example, prepared many Americans spiritually for the trials of the Civil War. The

World War II Revival has taken its name from the second great conflict of the twentieth

century, but the dangers of war weren’t the only factor that gave impetus to the revival.

The Background of the Revival

The global collapse of colonialism began after World War I, when the political face

of Europe was changed and great empires were losing their ability to control their colonial conquests. It was not that Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal could no longer

control the emerging nations that they had ruled for 400 years. Rather, a new spirit of

independence was sweeping the world.

The people of every nation wanted to rule themselves. In the past, the missionary

had gone hand in hand with foreign traders, soldiers, and diplomats, but now native

churches sought national religious leaders and wanted to rule their own congregations. The

rule of Western civilization began to give way to indigenous leadership. Western political

ways were thrown out, and the native way of doing things began to reemerge.

When the foreign politicians left, foreign businessmen arrived selling soft drinks,

sleek cars, and a multitude of Western products. Quickly, the clothes, tastes, and practices of foreign nations became Westernized. What colonization couldn’t do from the top

down, commerce did from the bottom up—transforming the thinking of entire cultures.

World War II brought a vast multiplication of new inventions and products to help

win the conflict: drugs, plastics, prepackaged goods, new technologies in communication

and transportation. After 1945, these products were used to make life easier. Every new

nation sought to develop national radio, television, and highway systems, and they all joined the United Nations.

Meanwhile, shorter working hours, better and easier working conditions,

conveniences, and newly discovered wealth diverted people’s thoughts from God. The

church found it hard to keep abreast with the population explosion, and in many places

found itself in a minority situation. Christians desperately needed revival.

The mushroom cloud of August 6, 1945, ended the war, and shortly thereafter a

split developed between the First World (the United States and its allies) and the Second

World (Russian Communists and their allies). So-called Third World countries became

the focal point of humanitarian aid and development.

The church had for many years borne a great portion of the burden of such

assistance; in 1963, for example, UNESCO reported to the United Nations that 85 percent

of all schoolchildren in Africa were in Christian schools. World affairs were becoming in

many ways more secular, however, and what the church had done for the world tended to

be forgotten. The United Nations and other nonreligious organizations became the

primary catalyst for international humanitarian efforts.

In academic circles, the growth of rationalism-that is, thinking apart from divine

revelation—and evolutionism—a form of science that denies God’s creation of the world-led

to the influence of liberal theology throughout Christendom. The denial of biblical

authority made its entrance first into the seminaries of the larger denominations, but

eventually it trickled down to the churches.

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