What is a Revival Church?

Typically, the Revival churches mentioned on this forum include all branches of the Revival 'family tree', although the various churches of the 'tree' do not recognise or talk to each other. They include 'The Revival Fellowship, The Revival Centres International, the Geelong Revival Centre, The Christian Assemblies International, and the many offshoots that carry the 'Revival' doctrine on with them.

In the 1940s ex-AOG pastors led by Leo C. Harris, were convinced of the British 'Israel theory' and formed the National Revival Crusade. They believed modern nations of British decent should realise their 'Israelite identity'. They also believed that the belief in Jesus, alongside with the 'Holy Spirit' experience of 'speaking in tongues' (ecstatic speech - glossolalia) was essential to be 'Christian' and a member of 'the' church. Baptism by full immersion into water was also mandatory.

Noel Hollins and Lloyd Longfield (neither trained in theology or ministry) rose through the ranks as the church evolved into the 'Revival Centres of Australia'. They believe themselves to be the only 'true' church and all others are 'apostate'.

Being a Revivalist

In the main, Revival Churches share the following beliefs with slight variations between them:

Salvation rules

- All members must exercise free vocalisation (speaking in tongues), a new 'language' of random morphemes that only God understands.
- All members must read a creed of beliefs before being fully immersed into a 'baptismal tank'.
- Revivalists believe that once someone is saved, they are always saved, but if Jesus returns and finds them 'slacking', they might not 'make it'.

Assembly rules and doctrines

- Members must only marry other church members
- Members are not allowed to read the material of other churches
- Members discovered to have had sex outside of marriage are ex-communicated, or banned for six months, or made to marry.
- Divorce is unacceptable under any condition
- Women are not allowed to deliver talks (sermons)
- Members are not allowed to drink alcohol of any sort.
- 10%, at least, of members' incomes are encouraged to be donated weekly.
- Members can be excommunicated for varying amounts of time for breaking various rules.
- The shunning of ex-members is encouraged.
- Easter and Christmas are not to be celebrated with any religious connection.

Revival Centre meetings

- Generally meetings are held Wednesday and twice Sunday, house-meetings on Friday, and all are compulsory.
- Meetings start with a half hour of religious choruses (short ditties) finishing with a hymn. Then there are 2 or 3 testimonies, and a 45 minute talk.
- The second half of the meeting contains the eating and drinking of the 'communal' body and blood of Christ, after another 'talk'.
- Youth group on Saturday nights - compulsory.
- Regular 'fasting' - Members go without eating for up to 3 days culminating with a 5 hour meeting of sermons and tongue speaking sessions.

Other Revival beliefs

- British Israelism - Europeans are believed to be descendants of the 'lost ten tribes of Israel'.
- Bible Numerics - the mathematics of bible words to prove their doctrine and the bible.
- The very 'soon' destruction of the earth when Jesus returns to set up his new kingdom.
- The Great Pyramid is a prophetic device foretelling the soon return of Jesus.

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The owners of the Revival Churches Discussion Forum reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason, and sometimes without explanation. People do get banned here and keep in mind that if I get annoyed, I bring out the axe. The moderator is a tyrant, sorry about that. I realise you come from churches that are notorious for putting people out of fellowship and I try to be sensitive about that, but it does not mean that the forum won't operate as normal forums do. People get booted, and that's a fact of life. I will play favourites because it's my forum, not yours... unless you donate towards the running cost of hosting the site, then I'll be especially nice to you. :)

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1. Treat others with respect.
You are to respect every other user on the board despite any personal, religious and political differences. The following will not be tolerated:

• Personal insults (I'll tap you on the shoulder)
• Ad hominems*
• Threats or promotion of violence

(*Ad hominem argument - criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.)

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The use of 2 or more posting accounts is prohibited. Using a proxy account (or sock puppet) to cause trouble will not be tolerated. If you can't say what you need to say with your user account then it probably shouldn't be said in the first place.

If it is found that you have registered a sock puppet account (by matching IP addresses) the second (and any subsequent accounts) will be deleted without notice and the primary user ID will incur an infraction.

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We don't really want to be bothered by Scientology lawyers and lawsuits because of posted copyrighted material. There are plenty of sites that already host those documents and they can be linked to. Posting "Fair Use" snippets is ok if you want to refer to something to make a point, just don't go posting the entire "History of Man".

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This is a violation of privacy and won't be tolerated.

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In this group of ex Revival church members we are bound to run into people who we knew in our former "lives" as Revivalists. Given the violations of privacy already rampant in the church it is quite likely that you may know of some personally embarrassing information about another poster. 

For example: you may have known poster "John" in the church and know that he had gotten into trouble for gambling or theft or promiscuity etc. To bring up these personally embarrassing things (whether true or not) as some sort of one-upmanship or as a form of retaliation in an argument is really bad form and will not be tolerated on this message board.

6. Link to long pieces of text where possible.
Instead of copying and pasting long pieces of text, snip the bit you want and link to the rest. Experience shows that the longer your post is the less likely it will be read anyway. Of course if your post (your own words) is quite long because you are telling your personal story, that is different. Personal stories will be always be read no matter how long they are because people are interested.

Media articles may need to be copied in full as the original article often disappears into the archives of the website after a week or two and some get deleted altogether.

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