Date: 04-Jan-1995 04:55pm EST
Subject: David Wilkerson's Comments
In response to Mike "Moon" Wills on David Wilkerson (he cc:ed me, or I would not have seen his comments), I'd like to say that if I were a part of the lost and dying world, I would be far more likely to respond to the message of the gospel if it were delivered to me by people who had found true happiness and joy in the Lord, than I would if it were delivered by people who seemed to disdain having a good time. So why are we so down on ourselves for laughing in the Spirit?
One of the things that has amazed me about the current revival has been the incredible change in order of magnitude of people coming to the Lord for the first time. The only thing about it that has amazed me more is the number of critics that talk about a lack of results in this regard!
To take only one example, Randy and Paula White (pastors of South Tampa Christian Center in Florida), after being touched at a Rodney Howard-Browne meeting in July of 1993, reported a year later that within that year, God had brought to fruition a vision that Paula had when she had gone down under the power of the Spirit, and the Lord had asked her, "how many souls do you want?" and she said by the Spirit "fifty thousand." After this had happened, in her own natural thinking, she thought, "how can I ever get fifty thousand souls?" But it did happen, partly as a result of RHB's financial backing, that fifty thousand people, mostly children, came to the Lord through Randy and Paula's ministry, within a year after the time that Paula White had this experience.
Examples of this type can be multiplied many times over. I don't understand where people are coming from when they say that there is very little fruit of this kind in this revival. Statistically, this revival may already be one of the most successful in all of history with respect to multiplication of believers (in terms of the ratio of believers to converts), and I suspect we're only just getting started!
BTW, I'm not faulting Mike Wills--he's just repeating something that I keep hearing over and over again, but which is completely untrue as far as I can see. The instant the revival hit Toronto, immediately there was a different order of magnitude in the number of conversions to Christ at the Toronto Airport Vineyard than what they had previously experienced at that church. The same has been true in countless other churches that have also been hit by the revival.
So, keep laughing! Don't let them tell you that you can't laugh if you want fruitfulness! And we'll laugh together all the way down to the close of this age, knowing that the enemy has been totally defeated. You know, Martin Luther always used to say that the thing that the devil hates most is to be laughed at. When the devil appeared to him, Luther laughed at him, and that alone was sufficient to cause the enemy to depart. The devil wants to be taken seriously. He wants US to take it so very, very seriously that such terrible, terrible things are happening in the world. But God wants us to rejoice, and, in fact, COMMANDS us to do so! Aren't you glad?
Take care, and God bless you--
Richard M. Riss
RRISS@DREW.EDU