Can Trump Presidency Fuel a National Revival?
By Dr. Mark Denison
The capacity for a new political leader to usher in national revival has been a subject of debate across generations. With a culture saturated with relativism, the slippery slope toward spiritual and moral collapse is a ship long since sailed. Turning Ship America back to her Captain will be no easier than turning the Titanic away from the iceberg. And we know how that turned out.
But we know God can bring revival. The question is how. Can political change bring a moral and spiritual revolution? Can the new Donald Trump be the old Artaxerxes, a man of little faith, but used by God to do big things?
Let’s consider the experiment of 1916 – an election of 100 years ago. The contestants were Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes. America’s moral decline and propensity for public drunkenness were at stake. A vote for Wilson was a vote for everything pure. And the “pure” vote won.
President Wilson signed into law prohibition, bringing an end, once and for all, to the social enemy of the day. The movement had been led by rural Protestants and social Progressives. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union and Anti-Saloon League celebrated with raised Bibles. The 18th Amendment was the nail that sealed the coffin – alcohol in America was dead.
Except it wasn’t. Political strategies, though well-intended, did not bring national revival 100 years ago. Do they ever?
Billy Graham says no. During a 1952 taping of Hour of Decision, Graham said, “I’m absolutely convinced that no matter who’s elected, America is not going to be saved unless we have a moral and spiritual revival. No nation has ever improved morally without a revival.”
So what will a national revival entail? I see six ingredients that are always baked in the cake if the cake is to rise. If revival is to come to America, she must be desperate for these six things.
- The need for truth: Absolute truth is a hill on which to die. Strongholds must fall. When God’s children depart from absolute truth, this quenches the very Spirit who must bring revival. Worshiping God is not enough; he demands to be worshiped in absolute truth.
- The need for love: When believers are Bible-taught but not Spirit-led, revival will not come. Christian leaders need a Master’s degree less than a degree from the Master. Orthodoxy is critical, but no more so than a people who are desperately in love with God and his purpose.
- The need for holiness: A. W. Tozer said, “The Holy Spirit is first of all a moral flame. It is not an accident of language that he is called the Holy Spirit, for whatever else the word ‘holy’ may mean, it does undoubtedly carry the idea of purity.” R. A. Torrey said it like this: “The gratification of the flesh and the fullness of the Spirit do not go hand in hand.”
- The need for prayer: A prayerless Christian is a powerless Christian. Every great movement of God has been at its roots a movement of prayer. God ushered in his first revival when the 120 gathered – and prayed.
- The need for power: Charles Spurgeon said it best. “What can a hammer do without the hand that grasps it, and what can we do without the Spirit of God?” With the Holy Spirit comes power (Acts 1:8), a power that changes hearts and nations alike.
- The need for Christ: We must be desperate for Christ. Life is a battleground, not a playground. The time for complacency has passed. No revival has ever come apart from an absolute desperation for the one who proclaimed himself to be “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). And it never will.
Can revival come to America? Absolutely? But it won’t happen because Donald Trump is President; it will happen because Jesus Christ is King. If revival sweeps our land, it will not begin in the White House, but God’s House – and only if we as believers get desperate.