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Revival, says Dr Barry Chant, is simply living out our new life in Christ and being fair dinkum about our faith. Amazing things have happened in Australian history when the church has done just this.

As part of the Canberra Declaration’s ‘Great Southland Revival’ podcast series, I recently had the chance to catch up with Dr Barry Chant, a former Australian Pentecostal pastor and a prolific author on the topic of revival.

Has Australia Been Visited By God?

I began by asking Dr Chant his reaction to the popular misconception that Australia has never experienced revival. He responded with two amazing stories of revival that many Australians have never heard of:

A whole nationwide revival is something that is rare. But there have been outpourings of the Spirit, times of visitation. I’ll just mention two…

One was in 1875 in Moonta in South Australia, a town 100km north of Adelaide, maybe a bit more. It was a strong Methodist town, originally pioneered by Cornish miners. If you go there today, you can still see a Cornish Methodist church there that seats 1,200 people — a massive church in this small country town, big enough for the whole population to go to church.

In 1875, on one Sunday morning there was a funeral service… the girl’s name was Katherine Morecombe. She had died and they did her funeral as part of the Sunday morning service. And 15 young people gave their lives to Christ in that service that morning. And then that night, the theme was repeated and more people came to Jesus. And then they began to hold extra meetings, and eventually the whole community was touched, the whole town was touched. All denomination churches were touched by it, hundreds of people came to Christ, just in a little country town.

The other one that I’ll mention has also not been well documented but it took place about 25 years later or a bit more, in 1902, in both New South Wales and Victoria. There was a decision by churches to set up what they called the Simultaneous Mission. In New South Wales the figures are not well documented, it seems like there were about a dozen tents in which they had kerosine lanterns (there was no portable electric lighting in those days), peddle organs… But they went all around the country and they also used community halls… They didn’t want to do it in church because they wanted to use venues that people could feel comfortable coming to.

Over 12 months throughout New South Wales, something like 25,000 people recorded decisions to follow Christ. Now they probably didn’t all do it but even so, 25,000 responses is a pretty good level of response in Australia. Then Victoria had a similar response. Victoria had an American preacher as well who came in and he had very successful, large evangelistic meetings…

There’s obviously plenty of room for visitations galore in our land. At the moment we could do with a lot. But the [idea] that we’ve never had any, it’s just not historically true.

Is Australia Ripe for Revival Today?

Another topic I was eager to discuss with Dr Chant was whether or not Australia is ripe for revival today, given that we have lost the Christian foundations we had when past revivals swept through. His response was very encouraging:

God can do the impossible. We’re seeing that in the United States at the moment. Who would have thought, even a year ago, that there’d be such a major reaction against the widespread abortion freedom in America? And now we’re just seeing all over the country changes there that you never would have dreamed possible a couple of decades ago.

Paul’s words in Romans 5, where he says, “where sin abounds, grace does much more abound”. That’s encouraging I think, because the fact is that light shines brightest when it’s darkest. Maybe the darkness and wickedness that surrounds us — maybe it’s a great time for a visitation of God. So I’m not at all discouraged in that sense. God’s in control. He’s the Almighty God, the everlasting Father, He’s the Prince of Peace. And so we don’t lose faith in those things, no matter what’s happening around us.

What Can Australians Do to Foster Revival?

The final question I put to Dr Chant was what can Australians do today to foster revival. He told the story of a revival that took place in Borneo which, he explains, “happened when people began to face up to the reality of their sin”. Dr Chant continued:

That’s a scary one. I think it’s nice to talk about revival with healings and miracles and everything else. But when it comes back to the fact that God confronts us in our evil and our wickedness and our sin, that’s a frightening thing, but that’s part of what it means to be truly revived.

A theme that came through clearly in our conversation — and Dr Chant’s books on revival (see, for example, This is Revival) — is how normal revival can and should be. When I asked him what we can do to encourage revival, he responded:

Do what Christians ought to do. Pray. Read the Bible. Love one another. Forgive one another. Help one another. Avoid sin. Put pride to death. Don’t give in to sensual pleasures… Just live the life in other words… I think that’s revival, just living the new life in Christ…

I think if Christians everywhere began to be fair dinkum… about our faith and really excited about Jesus, really excited about what the gospel is, and really willing to be filled with the Spirit and to follow Jesus wherever He leads us, that’s got to make a difference.

Watch my full interview with Dr Barry Chant here.

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Photo by Nathan Mullet.