A two-week 4-Sure revival, sponsored by the North Grand River Baptist Association, features evangelist William Blackburn. The revival began Sunday at Gallatin First Baptist Church and moves to Coon Creek Baptist Church on Wednesday.
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William Blackburn Ministries is a evangelistic ministry that conducts church revivals and area wide crusades across the United States. Bro. Blackburn preaches between 35 and 40 revivals a year, but calls himself an “evangelist” rather than a “revivalist.”
“The reason being, the main calls of God are for prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers,” he said. “There’s no call for revivalists.”
Saved at the age of 36, Bro. Blackburn began preaching at 37.
“I was a business man up to then,” he said. “I’d been saved for a year, when the Lord called me to preach. The first year I began a gospel rescue mission, then I received a calling to preach the salvation message and became a full-time vocational evangelist in 1985.”
For the past 19 years, Bro. Blackburn has preached the gospel of Christ across America in churches of all sizes. He has conducted over 750 single church revivals plus numerous area wide crusades.
It used to be customary for churches to schedule a revival each fall and each spring. Revivals are planned much less often today. Bro. Blackburn feels this trend signals that churches have lost their taste for a straightforward and powerful presentation of the Bible, and gone, instead, into an entertainment- type ministry.
“The Bible talks about how in the last days, men will not listen to strong Biblical preaching,” he said. “People want preachers who will entertain them. The whole mind set today is to please people so that they’ll come and give and support the church. Old fashioned, pointed, convicting preaching makes people uncomfortable; it stirs people up too much.”
Bro. Blackburn points out that of the 43,000 Baptist churches, only 7,000 held a revival last year.
Bro. Blackburn’s observation, as he has preached across the nation, is that real revival, like real godliness, is in decline.
“People practice a superficial type Christianity, based on feeling and emotions,” he said. “Not upon the word of God. Real Christianity is on the decline.”
Bro. Blackburn says the only way to know you are saved is to be saved God’s way, by the Holy Spirit. “When you are truly saved, the Holy Spirit dwells within us and bears fruit in our lives,” he said. “The fruit of repentance, righteousness, holiness and godliness. It’s not just because you went down the aisle and made a profession of faith and got baptized. The question is, did God convert your heart? The Bible teaches us to examine ourselves and test our salvation. Does your life match what the Bible says salvation is? If it does not, then you need to be concerned.”
Bro. Blackburn has been labeled “the number one harvest evangelist in America today.” His ministry gained some notoriety due to the extraordinary revivals he led in Hot Springs, Ark., and Laurel, Miss. At the Laurel revival, there were 1,275 recorded, counseled salvations and more than 600 of those were baptized. The Hot Springs revival saw 600 professions of faith in Christ – including 406 baptisms.
The revivals at Laurel and Hot Springs each lasted over two months. Out of all his revivals, Bro. Blackburn said he’s had 12 others that continued on for a month.
“The pastor of each of those churches made a commitment on the front end that the revival would last as long as it took,” he said. “Any church can experience that kind of success. But churches today have so many programs and activities, it’s difficult to make that kind of commitment.”
Bro. Blackburn says a revival, to be effective, should be at minimal two weeks long.
“It’s the McDonald’s mentality again,” he said. “No one wants to wait upon the Lord or seek the Lord. Everything has to be on their schedule.”
For the upcoming revival, Bro. Blackburn will be at Gallatin Sept. 16-18; at Union (Coon Creek), west of Edinburg, Sept. 19-22; at Princeton 23-25; and at FBC, Trenton, Sept. 26-30. At present, he said he has not been able to gain any sense of how successful this two-week revival will be.
“It’s the first time I’ve done anything like this,” he said. “I’ll be in four different churches over a two week period. I don’t know what to expect. If interest compounds interest, it could explode exponentially. I’ll have to wait and see what happens. It just depends on how supportive the churches are of each other. It could be a revival for four individual churches, or could really impact the whole area. It would be great to see a powerful move of God in your area.”
Bro. Blackburn thinks there is disagreement developing among churches and ministers as to what it means to be saved, and it’s a trend that concerns him.
“A great debate is going on,” he said. “There are two counts. One count, the one I’m in, believes you have to be born again. It’s a radical thing that changes your life. You become a new creature. When a person meets God and is saved, it causes him to live for God and serve God.
On the other count, people believe they have a ticket to heaven, no matter how they live their life. It is based on one moment of faith. The believe that even though they’ve been saved, they can live like everybody else in the world. God loves them so much, He’ll make exceptions for them, bend the rules for them. They believe that since they have a body of flesh they can’t be perfect and there’s no need to try.
But the Bible teaches that the man who lives for the world is not truly born of God. Even if we can’t be perfect, we must strive to live as holy and godly as we can. Without holiness no man will see God.”
Bro. Blackburn emphasizes the need of persons who are already faithful churchgoers to be sure they have been saved.
“If you look at the four gospels, each of the gospels is written to a different segment of society,” he said. “The Gospel of Matthew is written to the “religious” jew, who has a form of religion but does not have God. They are not born of the Spirit of God. It’s a major subject for me and my contention because it’s my life story. I grew up in church, but was not born again until age 36. I had a form of religion, but I was not really born of God. I had to examine myself, test myself. Peter speaks of backsliders who had forgotten that they were purged of old sin. The assurance is that we can repent those things causing concern and get right. God commands us all to examine ourselves, to make our calling and election sure.”
Bro. Blackburn classifies himself as an old fashioned preacher. He preaches the same messages that Jesus preached.
“One day we will stand before God and give an account,” he said. “God commands men to repent and turn their lives around. We are either born of the Spirit of God or lost for eternity. Hell is hot, heaven is sweet and Jesus saves.”
Whether you are an unchurched heathen, a backsliding Christian, or a faithful follower of Christ, the North Grand River Baptist Association invites you to hear Bro. Blackburn preach at one — or better yet — all four of the area churches.
“I’m excited about the spiritual impact that this revival is going to make upon this area,” said E.J. Barnes, director of missions for North Grand River Baptist Association. “We are praying that there will be real revival in all God’s churches and that spiritual awakening would come about in our communities, where people would know Jesus Christ and live according to His will.”
“When real Christians hear that old fashioned preaching, it stirs something in their heart,” said Bro. Blackburn. “They know its true. It reminds them of how God has rescued them and saved their soul. What makes the good news good is the bad news — how much trouble a lost man is in with God. What makes the good news really good is God’s grace — He sent His son to save him.”