♪ In every generation, there have been revivals, massive moves of the Spirit that changed the course of history. In every revival, there were believers like you who chose to answer the call to become the one in their generation. Discover your call to be the one in your generation. ♪ Welcome to Revival Radio TV, I'm your host Gene Bailey here with Greg Stephens. Welcome back, Greg. - Thank you. It's an honor to be here. - Thanks, Greg. Good to have you here.
You know, we were talking about some things, and I think this would be a great program for us to kind of dive into a little more history and a little more roots in the cause. You know, we know the cause for Revival Radio TV, our scriptures, Genesis 26:18. Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of Abraham, his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham, and he gave them the names of which his father had called them.
Now, usually when we go down this path, when I go down this path, I talk about the fact that it wasn't easy to build a well. It wasn't easy to dig a well. You know, it wasn't like you did it this afternoon and you had a well tomorrow. You know, it took a long time to dig it, then you had to line it with stones to get clean water. And so they filled in these wells, which was shutting down so much of what, you know, the life, the sustenance was the water.
Everything, you know, survived around water and around these wells. So talk about the cause. Is there not a cause? And relate that back to us here at Revival Radio TV. - You know, we see things on the news. We see things on FlashPoint. We hear the headlines. We see what's happening with riots, whether they're Black Lives Matter or Antifa, college campuses now supporting Hamas. And you see all of this stuff and you think, God, where are you?
And once again, it's because we were starting to re-dig those wells of Revival and those things from our founders. We've talked about the Constitution here on this program, re-digging that well and learning about where we came from. The Constitution is a covenant. It's a compact. It's a partnership where we, the people, partner with the people we elect to govern us, but not to control us. And so your partnership breaks down when you no longer have the same goal.
God started that when he created man, let us make man in our image. They made a partnership together to make us. And then he saw that man was alone and he said, "He can't do what I'm asking him to do because he doesn't have a partner." So he made Eve. That was the first partnership. Now we've seen marriage attack. And so we want these things. We pray to God for these things, but we haven't realized that the secret to it all, I really believe, is a cause.
That's what we had with our founding fathers. I would dare say that most every Revival, there was a cause that people were fasting for. There was something that they were meeting every day and began to pray about. - Well, you know, as you're saying that, I'm thinking about the Welsh Revival. Listen to this. Their system of government was corrupt. They were in the middle of an election season and it was horrible. The economy was bad and crime was up. Is any of this sounded familiar yet?
You know, that was the cause. And in the middle of that, you know, Evan Roberts and the great Welsh Revival is born because of where they were in that section of history. There was a lot of disaster in the economy. So they were looking to God. You know, the times were tough. They started looking back to God. - Somebody called somebody into remembrance. Somebody said, "If we'll go and seek God," if we'll begin to... somebody's re-digging a well is what they're doing, Gene.
So you see the same thing when Jesus is born. When he came to the earth, there's a Roman government, occupied Israel is what's happening. You have a King Herod who's not legitimate sitting on the throne. The priesthood is not legitimate in the order of the priests. So once again, you've got a man named Simeon and a woman named Anna who were daily in the temple praying. So they prayed him in. They prayed a revival in. So I think the best example, Ecclesiastes 4:9 says, "Two are better than one."
When we get together and begin to realize these things, and that's why I want to thank you for doing Revival Radio, because it's reminding us of where we came from. There's a story that's one of my favorites. When a little boy watching sheep, his father's name is Jesse. His name is David. He sends him on an errand.
He says, David, I want you to take these 10 loaves of bread, and I want you to take some corn, and I want you to take the cheese to their officer that's over where your brothers, and take it to the front. Gene, they'd been in battle, one side here and one side here in a valley between them with the Philistines for 40 days in a standoff, nothing happening. And little David shows up and he rides up there and he gives the gifts. Jesse became a partner right then with the Israeli Defense Forces.
And he brings this and he sends him on an errand, not knowing that that errand he ran is going to change the course of history. You and I are sitting here today as Christians, as believers in Jesus, because David will kill Goliath that day and he'll start the-- - Yeah, and it's interesting. David didn't know that was about to happen. - No, he had no clue. - He didn't go with that intent. - And his brother accused him of that. And he said, "No, I'm not that". But David makes a statement.
It's in 1 Samuel 17. He says, "Is there not a cause?" And he said that to his brothers and he said that to everybody around them. And he realized there was something different about this little guy. There's gotta be a cause. I'll submit to you and to the audience with us today that what we see with young people on college campuses is they want a cause. They want something to believe in. That's what the Revolutionary War was about. That's what people praying for revival was about.
They were believing for a cause. You can get people to rally around a cause quicker than you can an object. But if there's a cause, you'll fight. You'll give your sacred honor, your fortune. You'll sign a document that will label you as a treason, which our founding fathers did. So David asked the simple little question, is there not a cause? And I'll say to you, I think there is. Jesus will come and answer that, the son of David. He'll say, "Yeah, there is a cause. It's you."
And so we were called to do what he did. "Greater things shall you do because I go to my Father." And I think it's vitally important that the body of Christ get in a cause. Now you asked me a long time ago when Revival Radio first started, what is revival? And how does revival end? And I remember I didn't have a really good answer for you and I've thought about it many times since then. Partnership is we have the same cause. We have the same goal. It breaks down because it's relational.
We're relational beings. God created us to be relational one for another. It breaks down when we no longer share the same goal. So if they can come in and refill our wells to where we don't have the same goal that we once had, I don't have the goal for America that the founders had. I see a different America. I have a different goal for church. I have a different goal for revival. I'll submit to you that that's how revival ends.
When we no longer share the same goals, when it's no longer about winning the lost or seeing signs, wonders, and miracles. When it becomes about, okay, well, while we're in this revival and things are flowing, let's build the new building. - Well, man has, it seems, especially when we don't... we haven't seemed to have learned this lesson that we want to control it. We want to steer it. I think the heart may be pure and like, hey, well, let's do this because that's the way God's moving.
So therefore overnight it becomes a format or a standard. This is the way it's going to work and this is what's going to happen. - And it will for a while. - And it will actually, and you think, well, this is what we're doing. - The greatest resistance, I used to go to the beach all the time. I lived in Southern California and I would watch the waves. I know that sounds like a boring thing to do, but it was actually very relaxing.
The greatest resistance to a new wave that was coming in was the previous wave going out. And I think that if we're not careful, that's what we'll do in the church, in the body of Christ. - We must open our eyes and see that. But this cause thing, let's go back to that. Because I'm thinking of what's going on in America right now on our college campuses. You can't help when you look at some of the video, although the quality is better now, back in 1968, it's almost the same look.
If you could equalize, - It's the same source. - If you could equalize the quality of the footage, I don't think you would realize it's any different because you had at the beginning of 1968, everything was great. There was a dress code. Guys wore ties and jackets to class. By the end, there's long hair, burning in the streets and riots and free love and everything had blown up. And that cause for the war.
And so now we've got this thing with Palestine versus Israel, which I gotta say, Greg, is so bizarre to me. People inerrantly come together for a cause that they may not even know. - There's something about a group and a mob. We're relational. - And the mob mentality. - And that's exactly what they're doing. But it's nothing new. - No, it's not new. - It's been around since Roman days and even before all the way to the Tower of Babel, if you wanna go back that far.
It's not a new thing. There's nothing new under the sun. It's what Solomon wrote. And the enemy, he only has that one thing. I mean, that's what he does. It's deception. And so he takes deception and packages it. When he said, when David said to his brother, is there not a cause? It was an indictment on his brother's fear, on his lack of faith, on the wrong motive, on being passive. And while that happened in 68, what was right behind it?
We had the Jesus movement hit in the early 70s, right behind that thing. Where sin abounds, grace does much more bound. And I would submit to you, you've seen it with your very own eyes. There are tens of thousands of young college age, patriotic kids that are going to turning point events. And they're out there. - They are out there. And it's almost shocking to us because they don't get the airplay from the mainstream media.
So you're like, whoa, look at this kid reciting, eloquently passages of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. These are great things. But you know, going back to David, Greg, I've also wondered, here comes this David, this kid to the front lines, who's bold as a lion. And he comes in there and he wants to know what is going on. And you're right, his brothers, it was an indictment on his brothers. But what about everybody else there? They were all cowering in fear.
They didn't know what to do. So they're just as a group, their cause was, let's be in fear together and let's stay in protect. - Well, the comment was made, what happens to the guy who kills him? - Yeah, what do I get? - Yeah, and that's their mentality. What do I get? Well, you get to marry the king's daughter and no taxes for life and da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And David didn't care about all that. His thing was, is there not a cause? I mean, it's not about what we get.
It's this guy, these guys are squatters on Judah's land. You know, that's what he was upset about. And he will speak covenant. Who is that uncircumcised Philistine? You know what I mean? It's just because he had a boldness about him. Now, the same thing had happened when they came into their promised land. Remember, they were delayed for 40 years. They had to walk in the wilderness because 10 guys came back with their giants in the land and walled cities and were like grasshoppers in their eyes.
And two guys said, "No, we're well able to do this." And so that same pattern, see, that's the same pattern. I will submit this to you. You can re-dig wells that are not good wells. They're bitter wells. And that's what we're seeing play out a lot. I think that's what these men did that day. They re-dug that bitter well instead of good wells. And David is a guy who came and shook... There has to be some revivalist, you call it being the one.
There has to be that person that will come along and just say something bold and spark you into action. I think that's what David did that day. Well, if you're not gonna do it, I'll do it. They tried to give him armor. - Yeah, and you're right. What we're seeing at America's Ivy League schools, universities, as well as across the nation is we're seeing the re-digging of the Marxist well and the socialism wells that we thought, our generation thought, man, that'll never happen here.
We'll never go down that path again because we were old enough to remember, but young enough to take it to the next generation. We know what happens down there. And yet here's a whole generation frantically digging the well because this is the best thing ever. And it's not, history's proved it that way. So yeah, here we are. So the church is overlaid. So let's go down this path. I know you got more notes, but I wanna ask you this. The church is overlaid current day. And we want the revival.
We want God to show up and we wanna pray and see God move. How do we do that, Greg? Because there's a lot of good people, but they've been in church the whole time. They never got out of the building. So really, they've become, I submit this to you that I believe the church, the devil's been fine with us being in our four walls. - Oh, he'll let you have a megachurch. - Yeah, even a megachurch, just don't get out of there. Don't affect your city. - Don't take it outside.
And I think that's where we've messed up. And if you look at the Jesus movement, I mentioned it's 71, 72 in that range. Where was it? Baptizing in the ocean, out on the city streets. It was out in the marketplace. That's what Jesus ministry was. It was out in the marketplace. And we've been asking God to do what he told us to go do so many times. And then we wonder, why is it taking so long? Why is it not happening?
We didn't realize that God will take college professors or teachers, he'll take full-time ministers and disguise them as college professors or teachers and put them in a classroom. We didn't see that what we do is ministry. We have ministers and then the rest of us. There's been a separation. - Never really has. - And that can't be, because the work of the ministry happens out there, not in the church.
Church is where we come to mend our nets, to get ourselves prepared to go back out into the harvest field. Jesus said it a long time ago. Look, the harvest is ready right now. Pray for laborers. That's been our problem. We've not equipped people to go out and be Him in a courtroom, be Him in a police department, be Him whatever, an astronaut, whatever it is. We've looked for professional preachers, if you will. And then we pray for revival all the time.
Well, revival usually started sometimes not by a preacher. - Yeah, in fact, Seth Joshua, in going back to Wales, prayed for God to do something in Wales and let it not come through a member of the clergy. - Why would he say that? - Because he knew, in fact, there's some... I don't remember the verbiage, but he said, because it will become tarnished. It will be manipulated. It must be pure.
You know, let it come from somebody not through the church so that it will be pure, unadulterated move of God. - And Jesus will model that for us. He's not a Levite. - No, he's not. - When he was on the earth, he could not go into the holy place to the temple where his presence was. He couldn't go in there because he was of the wrong tribe, right? He didn't have choice seats in his own synagogue because that was for the Pharisees.
And when you think of it that way, his cousin though was a Levite. And I'll say this to you, when Jesus came to the Jordan River that day and John, a Levite priest, anointed by the Holy Ghost, anointed Jesus from Judah, the son of David, Lion of the tribe of Judah, I believe that the anointing changed because it says the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove. You know, he wasn't a dove, but it descended like a dove. That the anointing transfer from the Levite to Judah happened right then.
So we have a different priest now. We have a different covenant. Each of us, Revelation chapter one, two, three says are kings and priests. And we are to go subdue kingdoms. We're to go minister to people. So when the priesthood changed, the anointing changed. And we haven't taught people. I'm just going to say, I've been a pastor. I was a pastor for 14 years. We didn't teach people well enough that it's not about us. It's about you.
My job is to equip you to go minister to people that you're cutting their hair. I told a guy who's a hair guy. I don't know. They call him barber. I don't know what you call him anymore. But I said, "You have your hands on more heads in a week than I ever will. I won't lay that many hands on heads praying for people, but you do, and you can minister to them." That's what we haven't taught people. That changes America, Gene. That's a revival. It's not just a revival. That's a revolution.
- It leads to a reformation. Of a reformation, exactly. One guy got a revelation from the Word, "The just shall live by faith." And if you read it in the original Hebrew, it doesn't say that. And if you read it in the original Greek, it doesn't say, "The just shall live by faith." It says, "The just by faith shall live." I'm justified by faith. Now I live. It puts all of the thing back on him. I'm doing this for him. It's his faith. It's not my faith. It's his faith.
- Explain how we go from here, Greg. How do we get this in our daily life? - Amos 3:3 says, "How can two walk together, excepts they be agreed?" That means the streams have to come together into one stream. How can two walk together lest they be agreed? So we're not gonna agree on every single thing, doctrinally. We're not called to do that. But we can agree on one thing, that Jesus is Lord. That God is our Father. That he died, he rose. I'm crucified with him. I was buried with him.
I rose with him. I'm seated with him. And I reign with him in life. So we can agree on that. It says, "People perish for a lack of knowledge." We've gotta teach people these things. God elects humans as partners in implementing his plan on the earth. That was his choice from the beginning. And we've gotta see that I am called to do that. Now, I'm called to do that as a news anchor. I'm called to do that as a teacher. I'm called to implement his plan as a college professor.
I'm called to implement his plan. We used to think only preachers, only pastors, evangelists, missionaries, those are the only people called of God. - Oh yeah. And the rest of us, we just have to support them. - And the singing guy. And the rest of you give so they can do that. Well, that goes back to the Levitical way. Levites never received an inheritance in their promised land. The rest of the tribes provided for the Levites. That's where we got that system. But that's an old covenant way.
And it's the way it worked, that's the way God set it up for that purpose. And they lived in the cities and they would bring the presence of God back to the people because the people, when they came with Moses to Mount Sinai, they backed away from the presence. They go, "No, no, no, no, you represent us now." So God said, "Okay, I'm gonna give you, we'll do Aaron right there. And his sons will always be those people that will represent me to you." And so they would go work in the temple.
They would go back to their cities and they would bring the presence back to them and the anointing back. But that all changed with the new priesthood. We've never realized that that changed. We still have tried to live by that Levitical method in a new covenant, but we have a new covenant. So God elects humans as partners in implementing his divine plan on the earth, illustrating that God values a collaboration and a joint effort. We are co-labors with him. We're joint heirs with him.
Jesus said, "Greater work shall you do." It was His plan that the disciples' church would be bigger than His. - Wow, Greg, but you and I both know that you're getting into a lot of where people live and that we've seen it. We've seen a lot of jealousy in the church and churches between against each other. And everybody will agree with what you just said. The streams of ministry. Yeah, absolutely. I can walk with you, but then I have to walk it out.
- If you really want revival, if you're really serious, then you won't care. - And that's my cause. That's why this program is here. If you really want a revival, nothing can keep you from it. If you really want it. - No, he wants more revival more than we want revival most of the time. - It's almost like we're at a Martin Luther 95 thesis again, time in history where we've got to have somebody that goes, no, this is not right. Because we've lived.
I remember hearing a long time ago, pastors saying, "Church was never meant to be a bus terminal. It's meant to be a bus station." You come in, you get recharged. You go back out. - That's right. - It's not supposed to be where you just go and park and you stay there. But that has to take some maturity at every level. At every level of parishioner as pastor, as teacher, all of those things have to understand their place and not diminish the other one.
- When Jesus was calling the disciples, he was walking down the shore of Galilee and he sees fishermen who fished all night and they have caught nothing. And they're mending their nets. They're tired. Listen, if you've worked all night and you didn't catch anything and you didn't bring a paycheck home today and you got to go back out tonight and do the same thing because they fished at night because of the braided line. We'll do the nets later. We didn't break the nets in any way.
So we'll do the nets later. We'll come back early and do the nets. Let's go sleep. They didn't do that. They stayed. Jesus saw something in those guys. The same word in the original language for mending the nets is the same word over in Ephesians for equipping the saints. It's the same Greek word. My job, if I am an under-shepherd as a pastor of the great Shepherd Jesus, my job is to look for people who will mend nets to go fish. And Jesus, what'd he say to them?
I'm going to make you fishers of men. He partnered with them. Now it's going to take three years before they start catching men. But he's now training people that he saw would be diligent to mend the nets even though they hadn't caught anything. My job at the church, when I realized that, my job every Sunday is to mend nets and to prepare them to go fishing. That's all it is. And so I saw myself then as a servant to them, a co-laborer to them. It's like we have a bass club, Gene.
We're fishers of men, but we never put our boat in the water. We trailer our boats, this absurd analogy, but it fits. We trailer our boats to our church parking lot and we talk about fishing and we pray about fishing and we preach about fishing. - We wear fishing clothes. - We wear fishing clothes and we have the most beautiful bass boats you ever saw, but we never put them in the water because they could hit a stump or something. - Yeah, that's right.
- Well, they're supposed to hit stumps and that's supposed to happen. But we're talking about, is there not a cause? So let me ask you, is there not a cause to save America? - Yeah. - Is there not a cause to save our children from being tormented to trans their gender? Is there not a cause to see people not go to hell and go to heaven? Is there not a cause bigger than ourselves? And I think that's a cry today. That's what young people are looking for.
- Amen. - If we can give them a cause, they'll be there. - Pray for us, Greg. - Father, we thank You. First of all, we repent for seeking our own and not the things of God. And Lord, we will pick up Your cause. You partnered with us from the very beginning and You gave men a blessing to be fruitful and multiply. You gave us partnerships. And Lord, we take up the cause of revival in this land. Lord, let it be me.
Let it be Gene. Let it be the people that are watching us right now to light a fire somewhere across America that it burns and takes hold of this land. That we will be the United States of America and we will walk in the covenant that George Washington proclaimed. You will be our God and we will be Your people. May it be so. In Your name we pray. Amen. - Amen and amen. All right, so listen. One of the things that you can do, the partnership.
You know, Greg, I haven't done a good job of this in all these years we've been on. We haven't really opened this up for people to come alongside what we're doing. Yes, Revival Radio is a program sponsored by the Victory Channel. They pay our salaries and everything here. Well, we wanna pay our own way. And the costs that are incurred will be a blessing back to the Victory Channel and Brother Copeland and KCM.
So if you would like to be a part and with your financial donation, it's very, very simple. If you wanna mail a check, just simply make it out to Revival Radio, Fort Worth, Texas. Send it in the mail to Revival Radio, Fort Worth, Texas, 76192, that's all the address you need. If you wanna text your gift, just text it to 36609 with the code RRTV and the dollar amount and we'll get it.
And of course, if you'd like to pick up the phone and call, you can just call 877-281-6297 and tell them, I wanna make a donation to help Revival Radio TV stay on the air and be a part, not just stay on the air, but to continue to expand and continue to see God do something in this world. And of course, you can always go online. If you wanna use the website, go to govictory.com/RRTV. It's right there on your screen. Thank you, Greg, for coming here today. That's a good word.
Let's be the partners that we need to be and let's see God do something amazing. Revival is here. ♪