Prayer Explosion

The Coming Revival
By Bill Bright
New Life Publications
224 pages
ISBN 1 56399 064 4

The Coming World Revival
by Robert E. Coleman
Hodder & Stoughton
175 pages. £5.99
ISBN 0 340 65628 X

Prayer Explosion
By Colin Dye
Hodder & Stoughton
224 pages. £5.99
ISBN 0 340 64206 8

Bill Bright is serious! He is serious about God, about evangelism, and in The Coming Revival he is serious about fasting - calling 2,000,000 Americans to join him in 40 days' fasting for revival.
Fasting is undoubtedly the church's most neglected discipline, and Bright carefully covers many aspects of fasting, with advice on how to start, what type of fast to undertake, how to be sure (in a prolonged fast) that you are not damaging your health and, very importantly, how to break a fast. Read with discrimination, it could be very helpful for introducing many Christians to a new dimension of the spiritual life.
But among much that is helpful there is much that is less so. Sometimes he misses the obvious; while deploring the way schools and courts in the US have been forced to remove the Ten Commandments from display, he says nothing about Christendom's neglect of the fourth commandment - bad enough in the UK, worse in the US. Often, Bright is just wrong; his history is wrong (Jonathan Edwards was not dismissed from Northampton for calling people to repentance), his theology is wrong (I hoped the doctrine of the carnal Christian was long since exploded) and his emphasis is wrong - though he repeatedly says: 'Revival is a sovereign work of the Spirit of God' he still talks a lot about 'how to' - 'how to experience and maintain revival in your church' for example. I know Americans love 'How to...' books; but there is a difference between preparing for revival and thinking we can produce it by following the conditions; though he quotes Edwards, Bright has more in common with Finney. And why do today's Christians pepper their language with 'God told me...' so much? Bright is insistent that God has told him to call a fast; that, in fact, Bright's call to America is God's call to America. He needs to be more careful: 'They say 'The Lord declares,' when the Lord has not sent them' (see Ezekiel 13.1-7).
So: though very much an American book, this could be read with profit by those wanting to know more about fasting, but does need to be read with caution.
Finney is very influential too in The Coming World Revival by Robert E. Coleman. Coleman states: 'Where God's conditions are met, we can be confident that revival will come', and goes on to quote Billy Graham with approval: 'I believe that we can have revival anytime we meet God's conditions'. And in one chapter called 'Planning a Revival Meeting' he says: 'Let the community know that you plan a revival'.
Throughout the book, the word 'revival' has twin meanings that melt into one another: sometimes it is an evangelistic campaign, sometimes it is what most British Christians would mean by 'revival'. And the former is a guaranteed way to the latter. This book is a hotchpotch; sometimes it is about revival and sometimes it is about evangelism; sometimes it is about the church, sometimes the world, sometimes the individual. But all in all, it is not a good book on revival (look instead to Brian Edwards for that) and it is not a good book on evangelism; aiming at both, it hits neither.
Prayer Explosion by Colin Dye is sub-titled 'Power for Christian Living'. Dye is 'a leading figure in (charismatic) renewal of the church' and inevitably his charismatic theology permeates his writings. No doubt he would not regard that as a criticism - but it does mean that his writings do not sit comfortably with those who do not share this outlook. This book is no exception. I find many problems here; let me give you just a few. First example: Dye criticises adding 'if it be your will' to the end of prayers (pp. 69, 70, 77). For him, it is lazy: 'If it's not God's will then why bother praying, and if I don't know if it's his will then I ought to find out and, if it is, have enough courage to pray it.' He neither tells us how we can be infallibly sure of God's will, nor explains Jesus saying 'if it be possible' in his Gethsemane prayer.
Second, he speaks much about visions and, on one occasion, calls them the Word of God (p. 59) thus effectively supplementing Scripture. Third, the book is fuzzy; Dye seems to find it hard to stick to the point. The chapter entitled 'Who wants to go a boring prayer meeting?' makes some very good points - but does not live up to the title. And (also under the heading of fuzziness) there are times when he uses fine-sounding phrases that are more or less meaningless, for instance: 'I ask the Lord and as I am willing to come and stand in the gap I actually take up that position in the spiritual realm' (p. 110). Pardon?
There are better books on prayer; read Kelly's If God Already Knows, Why Pray? instead.

Gary Benfold

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