Christians are in danger of romanticising past revivals by forgetting the controversies and missing-out on future moves of God by failing to learn the lessons of revival history. This is the conclusion of one revival historian after over a decade of studying moves of God.

“In the Church, we tend to glamorise past moves of God and forget the contentions that these outpourings brought about,” said British revival historian Mathew Backholer. “This leads people to create a romantic picture of what a future move of God may be like; resulting in some rejecting the very thing they have prayed for when it comes!”

After studying hundreds of revivals from every continent - by analysing old accounts, comparing reports, interviewing some of those involved and visiting sites of revival in many nations, Mathew Backholer believes that those who object to moves of God today do so for the same reasons that people ruled-out moves of God of yesteryear.

“The Welsh Revival was highly controversial and unorthodox,” said Mathew Backholer. “Wesley’s meetings in Britain and Whitefield’s in America led to unrest and the Azusa Street Revival challenged cultural, religious, racial and national prejudices which were all held widely at the time.”

Revival history suggests that those who rejected the great outpourings of the past, did so for common reasons each time - fear of God moving supernaturally, a dislike of physical manifestations, dread of being deceived, disapproval of the revivalists methods or ministry, and anger that ‘the peace’ is disturbed by preaching against sin and calling for repentance and faith in Christ Jesus.

Whilst the Bible commands that everything should be done decently and in order (1 Corinthians 14:40), we must remember that the man who wrote this did live through the riots and revivals of the book of Acts and there are always times of solemn commotion and Divine disorder (Ezra 3:13, 10:1).

“Revivals are always controversial events” said Mathew Backholer. “The devil never sits back quietly as his kingdom is plundered and yet we as Christians should be careful ourselves to learn from history, so that we don’t reject the next move of the Holy Spirit because of ‘the same old controversies’ that have followed every move of God.”

Mathew Backholer has summarised his findings in his latest book, Understanding Revival and Addressing the Issues it Provokes.