Revive UK

I returned thoughtfully from our prayer meeting this week. Naturally, there was only a handful of us, but we petitioned God to move in this land and bring the lost to Himself. Britain is a spiritually parched nation and its people, though wealthy and technologically advanced, are morally decayed and spiritually impoverished. I switched on my computer to see someone on social media had ‘liked’ the following event: REVIVE UK | LONDON with Daniel Chand. Its blurb reads:

God has instructed us to pioneer Revival Gatherings around the United Kingdom. We believe now is the time for an end time harvest of souls and an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

We hear about evangelistic Gospel crusades, outpourings and revival gatherings in other countries, however, we want to let you know it's time for the UK!

More than ever before, we need a move of God's Spirit & Power. 

I’m not really sure that any huge, end-time ‘harvests‘ are promised. Still, if this wasn’t bold enough, it continues 

The UK shall be saved 

From what?

I looked up Daniel Chand, and could find no reference to dodgy theology. There’s a few videos of him walking around the streets of Hackney at night telling a bus driver that Jesus ‘thinks he’s amazing’, and praying for new converts before wandering off to find new ones. He has a nice voice and an earnest appearance. Still, the video accompanying the London event shows a woman (who turns out to be Mrs Chand) on the stage with her eyes closed, speaking in a dramatic manner:

This is what many of you have been praying for. This is what many of you have been hungry for. A move in our nation like never before.

Mr Chand then adds 

Gone are the days of weak Christians, friends. We’re breaking out into the United Kingdom…There’s going to be a monumental shift over the United Kingdom, because this is what we want.

The video then shows a lady doing a cartwheel on stage and the words Prophetic WorshipAnointed Preaching and Signs and Wonders appear. 

I really hope he’s right. I hope the long-haired woman with the quivering, ‘prophetic’ voice and dramatic pointing is correct: that a great move of God is coming to Britain. Yet I've heard it all before. Great boasts of what God is going to do through some big-shot preacher in a large, hired hall. Now for my prophetic insight. That hall will be filled this week, not by unbelievers coming to Christ, but believers desperate for affirmation. They’ll satisfy their desires to see God ‘move’ by witnessing a few healings on stage and some fiery words from our friend Mr Chand. The following week, Britain will be the same.

Some reading this may think me a wicked sceptic, dampening God’s work of revival. I assure you, I seek growth and revival as much as the next man, but I fear that godless Britain is more ripe for judgement than blessing. If we reckon the 1960s as the approximate point at which we began departing from our Judaeo-Christian heritage, we are now not far off a full generational lifespan of rebellion. I’m not here to offer 70 years as a period of judgement or apocalypse, I merely observe that God owes us no favours. The Church is compromised and apostate, the nation secular and illiberal. I wonder if Amos’ prophecy to Israel in 8:11 is not also relevant to our misty isle:

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.

If Chand is right and Marsden wrong- that the UK is due the biggest revival in its history this very week- then I shall rejoice at being corrected.