“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down.” What a remarkable prayer from the prophet, Isaiah. It is a prayer the Church should be praying in our day. What did Isaiah mean when he asked the Lord to rend the heavens? This phrase means to rip open or tear open the heavens.
The birth of Christ and the second coming of Christ are the two events that bookend the idea of God ripping open the heavens to come down to humanity. However, there are multiple times that God has done this throughout the history of Christianity. It began in Acts 2 on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came as a mighty rushing wind and fell as fire upon the believers in the Upper Room, and it has continued with special seasons and events throughout history.
In the 1500s, God awakened the righteous soul of a man named Martin Luther, and God used him to spark the flames of the Protestant Reformation that swept all of Europe and changed history. God ignited men like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards during The Great Awakening throughout the American colonies in the 1700s, helping shape and form the foundations of a godly nation that would be called The United States of America. At the beginning of the 1800s, God would pour out His glory upon the people of Cane Ridge, Kentucky, as revival fires spread across that region of the country.
One hundred years later, a young man in Wales, by the name of Evan Roberts, began to pray, “Lord, bend me.” He presented himself to God saying, “I have built the altar, and laid the wood in order, and have prepared the offering; I have only to wait for the fire.” God answered this prayer in February 1904, as one of the most significant revivals in history broke out. About the same time, a small congregation was gathering in Los Angeles, California, in a small mission church on Azusa Street. Their pastor was a one-eyed African American named William Seymore. Isn’t it interesting that God used a half-blind pastor with a name like Seymore? Such fire came to Azusa Street that neighbors literally called the fire department, because they could see flames within the church. God sent a mighty revival through these willing vessels. At the close of the century, God chose to rip open the heavens once again over Pensacola, Florida, at the Brownsville Revival.
Notice how these examples of past revivals have centered upon men or certain geographic regions. Will God rend the heavens once again before the coming of Christ? I believe the next revival we will see will not be limited to a central figure nor a central location, but will be global. I join in Isaiah’s prayer, “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence” (Isaiah 64:1).