Karen: I’m just wondering, do you like your job? Yep, I’m talking to you, listener. Do you like your job? If I’m not mistaken, there are some good things about your job and some not-so-good things. We’re going to talk about that today.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

Karen: In his prime, my husband, David Mains, was on radio six days a week or close to 20 years. Do you have any idea, David, how many programs that adds up to?

David: I’m not sure I want to know the answer. Anyway, you’d take six a week times 52, six times 52, then you have to go by 20. I don’t know what you come up with, but let’s leave it alone.

Karen: And you did like your job, didn’t you, Dave?

David: I hated the deadlines. There’s an emotional release once you do a program and then you walk back from the studio to your office and you think, “Oh man, I got to do this tomorrow.” And that was a huge pressure.

Karen: Constantly thinking about it.

David: Fortunately, Wheaton, Illinois is close to Chicago and there were many, many people who flew into Chicago and came to Wheaton. And I would hear about those individuals and invite them to be in the program with me.

Karen: Or the publishers would even contact you.

David: Quite often that was true, yes.

Karen: The broadcast, the Chapel of the Air was on, what, 500 stations daily?

David: Yeah, so people wanted to be on the program and that was an advantage to me. Lots of memories of different individuals and being able to go back into the archives and listen to them has been very thrilling to me. I probably did more guest programs with K. P. Johannan of Gospel for Asia than any other person I could think of.

Karen: He was a young man when you met him looking for people to support his vision for Gospel for Asia. Passionate about it and you were just very taken with him and everything you could to help him. And now that organization is one of the largest, if not the largest, mission-sending organizations in the whole world.

David: It’s huge and people liked his Indian accent.

Karen: It was charming. Whenever Englishmen came over, they were good people to have on. And we’re going to hear Roy Hessian today. Roy, he was amazing. I had not met him. He was 80 when I interviewed him.

Karen: And he was English. He was from England.

David: No question. Just as soon as he starts talking, you know that he’s from England. Wonderful just to listen to that accent, but he was very open. A genuine individual, a happy individual and brutally honest. Sometimes I would ask him a question and then he would talk in terms of his own shortcomings. I would be amazed that he was that open, but that was a part of the work that God had done in his life. So it was quite interesting. As you listen to this, my friend, you will pick that up again. And again, he’s talking about the whole topic of God doing a wonderful work in his life through the Holy Spirit and how, in very practical terms, that can relate to you. Let’s go to the first of three programs. We’ll condense them so we can get all the interview into a shorter amount of time. But I want to listen to the first of those programs and then you and I will talk once again, just responding to what we heard. Okay.

David: One of the most popular and helpful books on this subject came out way back in 1950. Only a little over a hundred pages. It was called The Calvary Road, and it’s still popular today, written by Roy Hessian. And Roy Hessian of the West country, near Plymouth in England, is my chapel guest this visit and will be for the next two days. Roy Hessian, what has been your experience with personal revival? Can you share that with us?

Roy Hession: I’d be very happy to because it’s the one theme that’s been preoccupying me for the last few years. I do evangelistic work, but above all, I’m concerned for the revival of the church in as much as I had to have and still have to have an experience of revival and that continuously. I’ve been doing evangelistic work full time as a story as to how I was called to that, but I don’t want to touch that. I’d had some very fruitful years, and many have turned to the Lord, much of it, of course, in England. And then after a certain high peak, I found a decline set in, and I somehow lost the power of the Holy Spirit and the liberty in proclaiming the gospel, which I had once known. And what I did was to try to make up for the lack of that power by my own efforts. I prayed longer. I studied harder. I preached more vehemently, but all to no avail. That lack persisted. A little new at the time that very state of decline was making me a fit candidate for the grace of God.

It was Philly who says, revival always presupposes a declension. Therefore, if a man can’t own up to declension, he is no candidate for revival personally. Well, I was experiencing the declension, but as yet was somewhat willing to admit it. Then it was God sent back to England some missionaries and African leaders from Uganda, Rwanda, East Africa, Kenya, and they came back expressly to share with the Christians of England what they’d been learning in revival. At that particular point, this was 1950.

David: And that was from the East African revival that we’re going on.

Roy Hession: Yes, they came back from the East African revival. Not merely these men to have a fellow, but to share with us what they’d learned. And it’d been going on for years. And it still goes on today, which is over 50 years. But the beginnings had begun and already a discernible movement was taking place. And these missionaries themselves were not the fathers of the revival. They were one of its many children. And very often, they were brought into the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ through the testimony and challenge of the Africans. That revival to this day is far more led by the Africans than by the missionaries.

Avid: Now, how did this touch you?

Roy Hession: Well, that revival touched me because I invited these men to my conference to be the speakers. And I little knew that they get more concerned for the leader of that conference than anybody else. And they really began to counsel me. They began to share the little they’d begun to see of my need. And I wasn’t a state of need. I’d come into the state of declension. And I remember one of them said, “Roy, you need to repent.” I said, “Where do I need to repent?” In all honesty, I didn’t know I was working so hard. I was praying so much. I was preaching so hard, doing so much. They said, “Well, we don’t know where you need to repent. We could, of course, make a suggestion. You see, we’ve only just got to know you, but we’ve got to know enough as to be able to suggest at least one place where you might begin. And that’s in your relationship with your wife.” He said, “When we came on the campus, you said, ‘Fellas, get in the car. I’ve got to go to one of the other houses to make some arrangements.’ And in that house, we saw you, met you, talking to a young lady. We didn’t know by the way in which you spoke to her, whether she was your secretary or your wife. We suggest you might begin there because revival for us began in our most intimate relationship in the home.”

Well, I took it to heart and I had a wonderful victorious life message which had ceased to work. And I said, “I’m going to park that message. And I’m just going to respond to current light as it came.” And that current light came to show me sin where I hadn’t seen it before. And I began on a path of repentance. Yes, with my wife, my attitude. You see, I was a tense man. And a tense man is a difficult person to live with. And I had to see it wasn’t her fault in this or that it was me. And I began to take that to Jesus. And I, the evangelist, quite well known in England, began on a new path of calling sin, sin, and repentance. And that, of course, in turn meant I had to find a new power in the blood of Jesus Christ to deal with all the things that the light was showing up in my life.

David: And you deal with that so beautifully in this book, The Calvary Road. Again, it’s been out many years, still continues to be a help to people. Thank you for sharing so personally. There’s a certain sense in which that transparency is a part of revival. God works with you and then you share that and He’s able to work with others. I appreciate. We’ve started out on a good footing here. That makes me very comfortable. In the very beginning of your book, you continue this theme, you use the word brokenness. And you say that brokenness is always one of those first parts of revival. I need you to define what you mean by brokenness when you use the term.

Roy Hession: I think it’s very important to do that because it does occur, of course, in Scripture. There are several places where the broken and the contrite heart is spoken of. But unless we really explain what we mean, that word could become a cliche. People could get the impression of many tears and terrible experience. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s a matter of the will. Brokenness is the opposite to hardness. Hardness says it’s your fault. Brokenness says it’s mine. And it’s a struggle for a man to be willing to say that, especially when he’s professed so loudly that he’s right. The other fellows have got him wrong. When God wins a victory in his life, he says, “Fellows, I’m the one who’s wrong, not you.” They may be wrong, but that’s not his business. He’s the one who’s wrong. And very often, the wrong is his reaction to their wrong. They may be wrong in their actions, but he is wrong in his reaction, his anger, his resentment, his jealousy. And nothing is gained by confessing the other fellows’ sins is going to be me. And brokenness is me being willing to do that.

David: You haven’t changed this message. This is what you wrote in this book many, many years ago. Is brokenness something we take care of once and for all? Or does brokenness remain a constant daily necessity?

Roy Hession: It’s a daily necessity. As the light shows, it talks about walking in the light as he is in the light. Light is that which reveals, darkness that which hides. And when the light of God shows up something that’s grieves him, wrong in me, my business is to say, “Yes, Lord, you’re right. I’m wrong.” And that’s a daily thing. And as I do it, the blood of Jesus Christ is a daily cleansing for me.

David: I think that’s wonderful. Here’s a short quote we use by permission from your book, The Calvary Road. It says, “To be broken is the beginning of revival. It is painful. It is humiliating, but it’s the only way. It is being not I, but Christ.” And a C is a bent I. What did you mean by that?

Roy Hession: Well, this whole thought of brokenness is set against the scriptures that speak about the stiff neck. Be not stiff necked comes in one or other place in the Old Testament. And when a man is accused, you could almost see his neck going stiff. “No, I’m not. You’re not right.” And you know, when it touches, it’s my fault. Well, you can always see the head bowed too. And these brothers who came from East Africa came with a chorus, one of them composed it. And these are the words, “Lord, bend that proud and stiff-necked I. Help me to bow the head and die, beholding him on Calvary, who bowed his head for me.”

David: It’s wonderful.

David: Did you sense, Karen, that he was more open than most people? I certainly did.

Karen: Well, he’s very forthright about his own deficiencies. I mean, I think that’s the point of what he’s saying is that we have to recognize that about ourselves, our human flaws. I think that’s one of the things that makes him so attractive as an interview process. One of the things that strikes me, David, is we’ve aired a variety of people we interviewed in the past who are now dead Christian leaders. I’m struck by the quality of their faith and I’m challenged by it.

David: Let’s well sit. Go ahead.

Karen: I think that in contemporary, I was thinking after we listened to these interviews earlier, why do we have such sort of a superficial Christianity that, and maybe I’m being too judgmental. Maybe it’s me. It is I who have a superficial Christianity. And I think so much of our time has spent in front of this screen world. We have technological tools available to us and that detracts from the amount of time we spend in the word, letting it convict us and mold us and move us. And when I hear these people from the past with their deep passionate faith and Roy Hession, with his honest evaluation of himself, makes you want to weep over your own lack. I think that’s a good thing, you know, to feel that way.

David: I have that same response. I’m looking back and I say, “God, how grateful I am to you that I had an opportunity to meet these people.” And the interesting thing to me, Karen, is that after the interviews were done, often I would have opportunity to speak with. They were as straightforward as you could possibly imagine. They were people who I mean, they didn’t revel in saying these are my problems. But I mean, for him to say, “I was a very tense man.”

Karen: Yeah, it was it. It is hard to live with a tense

David: man. And here, these leaders said that I wasn’t treating my wife in a way…

Karen: And I needed to repent.

David: Yeah, it just those are remarkable words.

Karen: You know, it reminded me how frequently the international Christians that I’ve had the privilege of meeting and getting to know have challenged me so much just by their lives. They don’t take Christianity for granted. They come from places where there have been sweeping movements of God. We need to bend our knee to the learning process that goes on by learning from our international Christian brothers and sisters.

David: When you think of the people who have had in the program, Helen Rosevere, her life, there’s no way to listen to her speak without being challenged deeply to be better than. One of the things that I liked about Roy Hessian was also he was not hesitant to use phrases that seem dated. We don’t like to talk about the blood of Jesus.

Karen: I don’t know anyone who does that. We may not be in the church groups that use that kind of terminology and understand that kind of theology. We did. We used to be. I used to be in them. I don’t hear it much in the church world where we land.

David: I could hear much in the way I talk.

Karen: In the way I talk. Right. Hearing that made me say, “Karen, where are you? You know what? You need to go back to the Lord and say, ‘Give me an understanding and a desire and a hunger to be a passionate Christian that maybe I was earlier in my life, but it’s become not mundane, but I’ve worn this garment for so many years that maybe it’s become too familiar.’”

David: Yeah, let’s go back once again and listen and listen closely. This is not a conversation. I mean, this is a prominent person. His books have sold literally millions and millions. He wrote a number of books, but that’s the one that has been most popular and still is. But listen to him, not just casually, but almost stop what you’re doing and listen to him and hear his words and let them sink deeply into you. I had opportunity to listen to him over and over as we were preparing this podcast where I knew he would be featured and I had the same experience you did. I just thought, “Where am I, David? I’m such a shallow person compared to these individuals. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for the opportunities to be able to be around individuals like this.”

David: Chapter two of your book, that chapter is called Cups Running Over and it’s a word picture about new life in Christ. Now, I want you to explain for us, please, what you mean by cups running over, okay?

Roy Hession: This is an expression that became current in the early days of revival in East Africa. That revival, by the way, continues unabated on a larger scale than ever before, although they’ve had very painful vicissitudes. But cups running over did become a phrase. It is, of course, taken from Psalm 23, “My cup runneth over.” And it was used and still be used to express the joy and the liberty that’s come to a person who’s been newly washed and made clean in the blood of Jesus Christ. It was first used when, a dear friend of mine, he’s still alive, Dr. Joe Church, he’s in retirement in England, and he was one of the early leaders of the revival. And he gave it a great, we called them convention, open air convention in a natural amphitheater. Thousands and thousands were there. And he gave the picture of Jesus coming in to that gathering with a golden water pot on his shoulder, in which was the water of life. And he suggested that if you need to be filled, that you hold out your hand in the shape of a cup. And he bade them imagine that Jesus was coming down the rows with the golden water pot, and they held up their hands as if it was a cup. And he would tilt the water pot and fill the cup until it ran over with the water.

However he said he may come to some cups and you look in and shake his head sadly and pass on because that cup is stained, it’s dirty and aired Jesus can fill that cup with the water of life those stains of sin have to be cleansed. Some people say, “Well there’s not sin that’s just part of my makeup.” “No,” he said, “You’ve got to call it sin.” And as you confess it he cleanses it with his blood and he fills what he has cleansed with the water of life and that came to be a phrase that when a man was newly cleansed he says, “Praise the Lord by cups running over today only because the blood of Jesus had been applied.”

David: And you do so well with that in your book the Calvary Road in Chapter 2 cups running over in fact we reprinted chapter 2 cups running over in our monthly a Revelry Magazine and here is this picture in detail of Christ filling one’s life but not being able to do that if sin is there. Are you talking about big sins like murdering someone or possibly committing adultery say or thievery? Are you talking about everyday sins that will keep Christ from filling that cup?

Roy Hession: Everyday sins the big and the little there’s no difference in his sight and many of them are not sins of action but sins of re-action. Maybe the wrong action with somebody else’s but my reaction to their wrong is wrong too. Jealousy or anger or resentment, and that is enough to stain the cup and prevent him filling it but if I confess that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin.

David: Do you think the average Christian today regularly does confess sin or is this something that’s somewhat foreign to Christian thinking?

Roy Hession: Well, it was a bit foreign to my own evangelist that I was. I wouldn’t have said repentance was an essential part of my Christian life and for that reason the blood of Jesus Christ wasn’t all that tremendously important as it is now. This is all my hope and peace now nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my righteousness nothing but the blood of Jesus. And I have been helped to walk this way calling things by their name and proving there is power, wonder-working power in the blood of Jesus Christ.

David: It’s wonderful. In this chapter cups running over you use a term regularly you talk about continuous revival. Now some people think of revival is happening at a point in time and then you can kind of bask in the warmth of what took place. That’s not what you’re talking about is it?

Roy Hession: No, continuous. I mean what’s the thing that’s in the past is in the past it’s not affecting me in the present but Jesus is alive in them in the present and his blood has never lost its power. This revival movement is the biggest demonstration of continuous revival. They have recently celebrated their 50th anniversary of revival. They didn’t call it that but it so happened that certain gatherings were just about the 50th year after. And that revival is going on as never before for one reason – because the blood has never lost its power and they on their part have been willing to go on repenting. Indeed I have friends who’ve written to me in the passage say and they end their letter, “Yours, repenting and rejoicing.”

David: It’s wonderful. You’re listening to Roy Hession who is the author of the Calvary Road and he’s talking about the revival that began many years ago in East Africa and continues today, during some very difficult days of persecution too and some of those lands in East Africa but it’s a wonderful thing. Let’s go back to you personally, Roy Hession. I assume you have held your cup up to Christ recently if I use that word picture. When did you do this and how did you do this? Just to be very practical for people.

Roy Hession: Well the Lord has shown me something that I haven’t really seen as sin. Now that’s what God’s dealings. He shows you something to be sin that you haven’t seen as sin. I’ve got been living now for the last few years in a seaside town near Plymouth and it has one of the largest Baptist churches in Great Britain. And that’s the church I attend. The minister is a friend of mine. And we’ve been there the last few years and I have not been filling my diary up to fill as so much as before. And I’ve had many spare Sundays. And I have attended that church. And you know I haven’t appreciated it. I haven’t been really blessed by it. I haven’t enjoyed their style of singing. It’s orthodox and I could express reasons lax here. And the other day the Lord showed me. At the bottom of it all is that you have not been drawn in. You’ve been usually out there at the front. Now you’re just sitting in the pew and I was preaching and preparing that message about. When you’re invited to a feast don’t sit down in the highest room but rather sit down in the lowest room. And you ought to love it because there you’re going to find Jesus. And the Lord showed me, “You have been restive because you’ve not been out there at the front. And you’ve not been willing to embrace happily the position of the lowest room.” And I call that sin and that was put under the blood. And I found there’s a new something because of that fact and that’s put me on the track of some other things in my life, unsuspected forms of self and every one of them is sin. But the blood of Jesus has never lost its power and is strong enough, mighty enough, sufficient enough to bring even me into the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ again.

David: You live what you preach don’t you bless you it’s so good to have you as a guest. Have you ever experienced revival beyond just the personal Roy Hession? Have you ever been in a situation where many people are experiencing revival many cups running over?

Roy Hession: Yes. I hesitate to try and chalk up successes. That’s one of the tendencies that I’ve got to recognize as a sin. And if I think too much about that’ll be the end of it all. And I think one of the reasons people don’t see more is because they’re wanting it too much. It should be enough to have Jesus and in Jesus all else. And he will take care to the overflow to others.

David: Beautiful. Your answers are always good. Roy Hession, you make this topic sound very simple, the topic of personal revival. Would you say that it really isn’t all that complicated?

Roy Hession: It certainly is not complicated. And we don’t really need to impose anything else than what we find in Scripture. One John 1:7 says “If we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s son cleanses us from all sins.” Now in John’s writings light and darkness are not vague synonyms for good and evil. Light rather is that which reveals, darkness that which hides. And God is light, the all-revealing one. And if you’re prepared to walk in his light and say, “Yes” to what his light may reveal as sin you’ll go on in the light. And if you prepare to simply walk in the light saying yes Lord you’re right I’m wrong in that matter the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all sin and you can’t be more right with God than what the blood of Jesus makes you when you call sin go on doing it and you’ll go on rejoicing.

David: Now Roy Hession in your book you say that if God is to bless the reader through these pages he must come to them with a deep hunger of heart. He must be possessed with a dissatisfaction of the state of the church in general and of himself in particular especially of himself. Now I’ve read that in a lot of other places why is it that revival so often begins with this sense of dissatisfaction?

Roy Hession: Well, to ask the question is almost to answer it. In the very nature of the case if you get to enjoy the meal your wife has prepared for you’ve got to have a nice appetite. And you’re going to be hungry. And perhaps you need to have a few unfortunate experiences of other people’s cooking and now you come back to the one who’s cooking you know does satisfy. And therefore the same is true, grace is flowing like a river. Millions there have been supplied but you’ve got to be hungry, you’ve got to be need. And I want to tell you those are the times when I get blessed. I do not get blessed when I read my Bible as a matter of duty for my daily quiet time. When I come feeling bad those are the times when it speaks. Living it. And again and again I have to say to the Lord, “I want to tell you something. I’m not in spiritual good shape.” “Just fine,” says the Lord. “Anything more?” “Well, I haven’t got much peace.” “Anything more? Come on. let it all come.” And when I come like that grace meets me because when I admit that I’m in that position, in the very nature of the case, I become a candidate for that marvelous grace of our loving Lord. Grace it exceeds our sin and our guilt. Grace is not God’s reward for the faithful. It’s his gift for the empty and the feeble and the failing. And when I’m feeling like that I’m just the one that’s going to get blessed.

David: Take that phrase “grace meets you.” Explain what you mean by that for someone who maybe doesn’t know what grace is.

Roy Hession: Grace is the undeserved favor of God. And you are no candidate for grace unless you are undeserving. You can’t be too down too wrong for grace. That’s where Jesus gets his glory. Not in the number of good Christians he pats on the back but in the failures that he restores.

David: Beautiful. In this book the Calvary Road it’s come out, oh long time, back 1950. That’s almost 40 years. You talk about the self-satisfied Pharisee and the dissatisfied publican in the parable Christ told. You remember that chapter and protesting our innocence?

Roy Hession: Yes. Well that is what we all naturally do. We naturally justify ourselves. Therefore you’re no candidate for God to justify. God justifies the ungodly. Have you ever heard a greater apparent contradiction? God who justifies the ungodly. He who told the earthly judges, what you shall justify the innocent but condemn the wicked, is here doing the very opposite. I’m setting my court of grace. It’s in order to justify those who run godly. He declares those to be right who admit they’re wrong. And to see that gives you a bigger incentive than ever before to take the place of the wrong one.

David: So always then self becomes a hindrance to revival, doesn’t it? Whether it’s selfishness or self-effort, self-indulgent, self pity all those self-worths.

Roy Hession: Or self-righteousness. Yes the things you’ve just mentioned all begin with self and they are all sinful. And it’s not without significance. That the central letter of the little word sin is I

David: It’s a big problem, isn’t it? To somehow come beyond that dissatisfaction. That’s a good thing. When we are dissatisfied, we aspire for something more and God fills that in us. If we don’t have any dissatisfaction we don’t aspire for anything more.

Roy Hession: But I don’t like the word aspire. That looks if I’m going to get better I come empty. But dissatisfaction draws me to the one who’s got something good for those who confess their failures.

David: I agree with what you say, it’s a good correction. Your book the Calvary Road is about revival. You use that word a lot but you don’t equate the ongoing experience of revival with an emotional high. Now is revival ever emotional?

Roy Hession: Of course. Life is full of emotion, sometimes sad, sometimes glad, sometimes shouting. And you’re given good grounds for which to shout and praise. Not that I’m wanting people to shout necessarily. But there’s solid ground for it. When grace shows me my righteousness has been absolutely unassailable before God in the person of Jesus Christ, I’ve boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, that I needn’t go struggling and striving and mourning. That’s something worth praising for. So, it isn’t just an unaccountable emotion, that’s the point. You’re given solid rational grounds for your joy.

David: That’s really well said. Your answers are wonderful. Let’s talk just a little while about the blood of Jesus. You come back to that again and agai.n I’m not sure the average person is conscious of the value of Christ’s blood in terms of daily living. Do you sense Christ blood being operative in your life on a say weekly basis?

Roy Hession: Yes. Well indeed. I don’t think you could have asked me a more important question. What is it meant by the blood of Jesus? Because some people are a bit squeamish about preaching about the blood. And when they’re called upon to sing about the blood, they sort of lose their enthusiasm because some people can’t bear the sight of blood. The first time a nurse is present at an operation she’ll probably faint. And yet the Christian is all the time glorying in the cross and in the blood of Jesus Christ. Now what does it mean? That’s a famous Old Testament incident, the Passover, the firstborn dying in every house except where in that particular Jewish home has taken a lamb, slain it and sprinkled the blood upon the door. And God said, “When I see the blood I will pass over you.” Now in the instructions given for the slaying of the lamb and the sprinkling of its blood, these words occur, “The blood shall be to you for a token.” A token of what? Because apparently it isn’t the physical blood that’s important. It is that of which that blood is a token. What is that? It’s a token of judgment met. God said judgments coming in every house, but the blood said a lamb’s been slain here. The judgment that should have fallen on the eldest son has fallen on the lamb and you can’t come in a second time. And the blood is a token of that fact the judgment has been met. It’s as simple as that. It always speaks of the finished work of Christ. I love a hymn we sing in England “Jesus the sinner’s friend. We hide ourselves in the God looks upon thy sprinkled blood.” It is our only plea because the blood is a token that all the judgment that was, mind you, has already been met and finished with.

David: Amen. And that’s true in our lives on a daily basis, isn’t it?

Roy Hession: Yes and there’s a shedding of the blood once for all but we’ve got to sprinkle by faith the blood. Claim it but everything that would otherwise put us out of fellowship with God.

David: Am I out of line and asking you what your age is?

Roy Hession: 80.

David: You’re 80. My! And this was written in 1950. That’s a long time ago. You are optimistic about what God was doing among his people when you wrote the Calvary Road. Are you still optimistic about what God is doing?

Roy Hession: I never knew or thought that he would use that book as he has used it. I’ve been after it, not of the book, but of the working of the Lord and the hunger of the saints of God. They’re hungry as never before and I want to spend my remaining days in helping to lead people back to Calvary, back to the blood, back to Liberty, back to revival.

David: Yeah amen. And just the recent popularity of the book is a good sign that people are listening to your message, the message about Christ in his blood. I have one last question for you, Roy Hessian, in closing you have any thoughts that can kind of summarize. What we’ve been saying about revival?

Roy Hession: Well, first it must begin with the individual and not with the other fellow but with me. He may be wrong but I’m wrong to probably in my reactions to him. It begins with me. Then secondly, I think I need to say, repeat indeed, what Finney said, “Revival always presupposes a declension.” And therefore, in the nature of the case the man who is most ready to admit there has been a declension is the more likely to be a candidate for revival. It’s got to begin with the admission of my need. I would like to say very forcibly, revival is not a green valley getting greener, but a valley full of dry bones being made to live again and those bones to stand up a mighty army. Not a green valley getting greener but a valley full of bones being made to live again. Not a good Christian becoming a better Christian but a man who’s prepared to confess, “Mine is a valley full of dry bones.” I’ve heard people admit. It’s broken their heart to, “Mine is a valley full of dry bones.” I’m a minister maybe but it’s a valley full of dry bones. But just splendid brother. Praise the Lord you’re ready to confess it. If you realize it that gives you your qualification for Jesus. He belongs. He’s a specialist, this Jesus in sin. This is where he excels when you take that place, you’re a candidate and you are not going to be disappointed.

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