What Is Revival? The Parable of the Lost Coin, Luke 15:8-10

⁸ “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? ⁹ And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ ¹⁰ Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

In 1866 Robert Thomas, a Chinese-based missionary from Wales, who understood the mission of Jesus to search out the lost, went to Korea to distribute Bibles. As his ship came close to land, Korean soldiers began to attack, catapulting heated pieces of metal on board the vessel, causing it to catch fire. The crew abandoned the ship. Most died in the water, surrounded by floating Bibles. But Robert Thomas was able to take some of those Bibles in his hands and wade to shore. There he pressed them into the hands of his attackers, who beat him to death.

The soil of Korea drank the blood of a martyr on the very same spot where 40 years later, a revival took place. Despite that murderous reception, revival broke out in Pyongyang in 1907. The 50,000 Christians in Korea quadrupled in 10 years, and by 2024 totaled over 16 million Christians in South Korea. Today Seoul is home to 10 of the 20 largest churches in the world. Over 20 churches are planted daily, and every morning one million Koreans awake at 5:00 a.m. to pray for revival to spread throughout Asia and the world.

Is revival just growth or is it something more?

Jonathan Edwards defined revival as “a surprising work of the Lord and his major way of extending his kingdom.” J. I. Packer writes that “revival is a work of God restoring to a moribund church, in a manner out of the ordinary, those standards of Christian life and experience, which the New Testament sets forth as being entirely ordinary.” William De Arteaga describes revival as “an occasion when the Holy Spirit descends upon and invigorates a Christian community for a period of time. The congregation knows something special is happening. Unbelievers are converted, and those who have already accepted the gospel are renewed in their devotion.”