Two years ago, within the first few months of the outbreak of Covid, I received news about Pastor Niko Njotorahardjo, the founding pastor of Geraja Bethel Indonesia.

I know him well because we co-chair Empowered21 Asia, a movement around the world that wants to empower the next generation to move in the power of the Spirit in the 21st century.

In fact, our goal is that by 2033, which is 2,000 years after Pentecost, every single person on earth will have a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ through an encounter with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ten of his most senior pastors, the older ones, passed away in one week because of Covid. They had attended a conference not knowing (about Covid) because this was even before the pandemic really became big news around the world.

When I heard that, I was really broken-hearted. I called him to talk to him and, as I talked to him, this is the word he gave to me.

The Third Pentecost

He says: “Pastor Khong, a huge revival is coming around the corner. It is called the Third Pentecost.”

For years he has been sharing about a dream about the third Pentecost. He said that the first Pentecost is, of course, Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit was mightily poured out and we saw the beginning of a powerful move of God recorded in the book of Acts.

He believes the second great revival was the Azusa Street Revival. Oral Roberts University spent a lot of time documenting the data. Tens of millions of people were getting to know Jesus Christ around the world as a result of that one revival in Azusa Street when the Holy Spirit broke loose.

But for years, Pastor Niko has been saying: “There is coming a revival that we’ve never seen before.”

He calls it the Third Pentecost, where God is going to move in every nation of the world at the same time, and the power of God is going to be manifested.

And every time we meet him, he talks about it with the same anticipation. Instead of being consumed by the big loss, losing some of his best men, he just said: “You know, the Devil is working hard. But God is going to come through like nothing before.”

A divine collaboration

So today, I want to share with you the part that we must play to get ready for this revival. It is coming.

Revival is a sovereign work of God. But there is still something that we can do to prepare our hearts for it and to flow into it.

The Holy Spirit cannot be controlled by man. The Bible tells us in John 3:8 that “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.” He’s talking about the Holy Spirit.

Yet I’ve discovered in my walking with God and trying to move in things of the Spirit, there’s an inscrutable relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s longing for Him that coexists.

Somehow, there is this divine collaboration because God has given us authority to rule over this earth and we have spiritual authority. And God co-labours with us, as we co-labour with Him.

Therefore, while revival cannot just be manufactured – it comes from God’s sovereignly – but it’s something that we can co-labour with God so that we can walk into this revival, we can experience this revival, and we will not miss this revival.

3 Ways to be ready for revival

How do we get ready for this revival?

John 7:37-39 is the passage I want to share today.

On the last and the greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

By this, He meant the Spirit, whom those who believe in Him were later to receive. Up to that point, the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. Yet Jesus said this to prepare the ground so that when the Holy Spirit comes, we learn and know how to flow with the Holy Spirit, so that we can get ready.

I believe that this passage gives us three things about how we can be ready for the revival, each of us individually and as a church, as a people of God.

#1 Thirst for revival

The first thing we must do is we must thirst for it.

Jesus said: “If anyone is thirsty, let them come to Me and drink.”

We must cry out for it. We must thirst for it. We must long for it like a drowning man longing for air, as a hungry and starving man longing for food, as a blind man longs for sight.

We will never be contented in terms of the size of our church and the size of the people, the number of people going into the kingdom of God. We’ve got to hunger for that. We need a fire for that. We need to lay hold of God. We need to say: “Lord, I’m not satisfied.”

As I read the New Testament, I said: “Where is the God of the book of Acts?”

I’m a decent preacher but it’s not going to do it. It’s not enough.

The cell structure is not going to do it. I often tell my people that the cell without the Holy Spirit is a dead cell.

I believe the cell is the right wineskin to receive the empowering of the Holy Spirit. You know why? Because without the cell, when the Holy Spirit comes, the power is always hovering around some high-level pastors who go around and do all the signs and wonders, while all the believers kind of watch.

But the cell structure allows that power to flow down so that everybody is mobilised to be a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the power of God is with them.

I’m part of the Empowered21 group council and we meet once or twice a year. Every time we meet, the word that was given by prophetic people, by evangelists, they said: “A great revival is coming.”

There’s been a word that says this revival is going to be in all the nations, and some even say it’s going to begin in Singapore.

I said: “Lord, if it’s going to begin in Singapore, let us not quench it. Let us be ready for it.

“Lord, if You’re going to do a great work in Singapore, Lord, count me in. Do not let me be so indifferent and so jaded after 40 over years of ministry and say, ‘Oh I’ve seen everything.’

“O God, don’t let me become a barrier. Lord, I want it. I want a fresh touch of the Holy Spirit in my heart.” 

And I remember God told me to listen again to a message preached by Jonathan Edwards entitled: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I read that years ago while I was in seminary because I majored in homiletics, in preaching.

So, I went to YouTube to search for a voice rendition of it. And as I listened to it, the Spirit of God came upon me and I cried and I cried because God showed me how gracious a God He is.

You know, if you don’t understand the anger of God, you will never understand the grace of God. You won’t understand that in spite of the hatred God has against sin, against all who are associated with sin, you’ll never understand what drove Him to die for us. 

And then I started to cry for the people in my life who do not know the Lord.

Deuteronomy 32:35, that’s his main text: “Vengeance is mine and recompense. Their foot has slipped in due time, for the day of that calamity is at hand, and the things to come hasten upon them.”

God has no obligation to save us. Because we have rebelled against Him, and the wrath of God is poured out upon us justly. And if He didn’t do anything, He would have been correct in allowing us to go into eternity without hope and with torment.

Some of us we feel like we’re doing God a favour by going to church and serving Him and giving our lives to Him, receiving salvation. We don’t understand the extent of God’s wrath.

Every revivalist feels like that. And when they feel like that, they are compelled to say: “Oh God, do whatever to not let them fall into hell.”

I just pray that this will stir up a deep sense of compassion because you and I are the object of God’s wrath. And yet, we were wonderfully saved when we gave our lives to Jesus.

He demonstrated His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the one that brought so much pain and hatred and wrath in His heart because of the sin, so that we would develop a sense of urgency in the preaching of the Gospel. 

#2 Believe revival is coming

The Bible says: Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from Him. Notice the words “whoever believes”. It does not say “whoever prays and fasts 40 days and 40 nights will receive the Holy Spirit”.

He doesn’t say “whoever is really holy, the Holy Spirit will be poured out on them”. How many of us feel like we’re holy enough to receive the Holy Spirit in power?

It is precisely that we’re not holy enough that we need the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can walk by the Spirit, so that we will not yield to the lust of the flesh. 

“Whosoever believes.” If you believe.

The greatest obstacle to revival is unbelief. You look through the Gospels, you see how often the Lord Jesus tells his disciples: “Ye men of little faith.”

Faith is what turns everything. When the two blind men came to Jesus for healing, Jesus said in Matthew 9:29: “According to your faith, let it be done.”

And he said in Luke 18:8: “When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on earth?”

It was just over a month ago that the Lord was speaking to me on this. My heart was so grieved with myself, with my church, with where we are. And it’s not a negative thing. It’s a thing that comes with a desire for more of God and more of God’s purposes.

I shared this with my close group. Every Friday, I pray with Bishop Rennis and Edmund Chan. We always try to make it. Once in a while, we’ll miss it. But for almost 20 years now, we’ve been praying – praying for each other, praying for each other’s ministry and health, as well as what the ministry will be in the future.

And as I shared with them, Pastor Edmund said: “I affirm that. Because last night, the Lord woke me up three times early in the morning to speak to me about revival.”

God showed him Ezekiel 37, the vision of the dry bones in the valley. And in Ezekiel 37:4-5, Ezekiel was told to do this: “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

“Thus says the Lord to these bones, ‘Surely I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live.’”

So, Edmund just said: “It’s pure futility to try to organise a bunch of dry bones and fit them into some committees and try to give them goals. They’re dry bones.

“They need to receive God’s supernatural resurrected power.” 

And so what God says: The first thing you need to do is to now declare by faith all the promises that God has given to us.

#3 Pray for it

And God showed Edmund a second part of that passage. 

In Ezekiel 37:9, He said: “Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, Son of man, and say to the breath, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’”

What do you mean by prophesy to the wind? The wind there is ruah. It’s the Spirit of God.

You see, God says: “Prophesy to the body.” It’s a Word from God, from His Holy Spirit. But then God says: “Now prophesy what God has prophesied to us back to Him.” That’s intercessory prayer.

We have got to believe that God is going to visit us. Believe, receive it, believe, pray, declare, pray.

This excerpt is adapted from a sermon preached by Pastor Lawrence Khong, Apostolic Overseers at Faith Community Baptist Church and Chairman of LoveSingapore on the final day of LoveSingapore‘s Summit 2022.

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