About International Awakening Ministries
International Awakening Ministries (IAM) was incorporated in 1985 By Richard Owen Roberts, a life-long student and proponent of Christian Revival and Spiritual Awakening and a group of similar minded men. The two terms – Revival and Awakening – are sometimes used as if they meant the same thing: in The United Kingdom a movement was called the Evangelical Revival whereas in North America the same movement was called The Great Awakening. More technically, a revival in the church generally results in an awakening in the world. IAM’s activities are distinctly tied to the revival of the Church and a spiritual awakening in the world and are intended to promote true worship, praise and obedience to the Lord God Almighty as revealed in Holy Scripture.
In his first book on revival Mr. Roberts spoke of revival as an extraordinary movement of God the Holy Spirit producing extraordinary results. Indeed we must now say that revival is nothing less than God Himself in the midst of His own people, causing deeper levels of repentance than ever before known, preaching even more soul searching and sound, prayer an altogether different level and holiness that is not only genuine but impactful.
Records of revival are plentiful in the Old Testament, and abound throughout the history of the church since the time of Christ. Every age and century of the Christian Church has experienced them. Revivals have in fact made for the preservation of the Faith and the continuation of the Church.
Revival is most certainly needed whenever there are proofs of spiritual death in and around the professing church; whenever there is actual decay or dormancy in the energy or activity of its members; whenever there is the absence of progression in those habits and feelings and principles that distinguish the divine life. This is most certainly the case as it exists today. Growing evidence of the need of revival can be found in the growing conformity to the world in the passions, policies and practices of the Church. Today’s church is also marked by a general disinterest is all the thing that make for true Christianity including holiness, concern for the glory of God, the redemption of lost souls, a deadness of the devotional life and an overall lack of spirituality and divine concern. Indeed, it is evident that at no time in Human history was revival more needed than today.
Today’s church has the gall to parade a dwarfed and shriveled Christianity before the world, as if it were the very Church for whom Christ died and rose again. Tragically, much that appears todays as organized religion is nothing but paganism in prophet’s clothing.
The nonsense of this hour needs to end? We must return to the God the Bible reveals, the salvation the only begotten Son of God purchased, and the true holiness Jesus the Messiah intended in the Church He introduced.
The goal of IAM is to help, but it is an absolute fact that only the Lord Himself can give us the revival we need.
While International Awakening Ministries stands ready to help in whatever ways it can, the following seven ways seem crystal clear at the moment:
1. To help the Church to come to grips with the fact that the Scriptures alone are necessary.
2. To help the Church to discern the difference between accurate Biblical teaching and truly preaching the Word of God.
3. To assist the Church in the worship and service of the God that really is rather than the false gods of the human imagination.
4. To map out the way of true salvation taught in Scripture and to show the significance of genuine service that God Himself requires.
5. To demonstrate the true meaning of the manifest presence of God in the midst of God’s own people, and to show of the absolute urgency of the same.
6. To help people realize the actual active existence of two kingdoms now at war and the place of regeneration in the same.
7. To demonstrate correct thinking about heaven and hell, love and wrath, repentance and faith, and to show God’s plan and purpose in each.
About Mr. Richard Owen Roberts
As one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject of revival, Mr. Richard Owen Roberts has dedicated his life to studying and promoting Christian revival through publications, sermons, and prayer.
Roberts received his formal education from Gordon College, Whitworth College and Fuller Theological Seminary. Richard Owen Roberts is the President and a founding Director of International Awakening Ministries and has been the pastor of churches in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and California. During the years he served the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference as Minister-at-Large, he was instrumental in the formation of two churches in the Albany capitol district: the Bethlehem Community Church of Delmar, New York, and the Clifton Park Community Church in Clifton Park, New York.
In 1975, Mr. Roberts and his family moved to the Wheaton, Illinois, area. He worked with the Billy Graham Association and Wheaton College in the formation of the Billy Graham Center Library. His own private collection of over 9,000 volumes relating to movements of religious revival provides the nucleus of the Graham Center Library.
Mr. Roberts, and his family, have now moved to Powell, TN where he hopes to develop an International Awakening Headquarters where leaders could come and pray for, and be taught on Revival, as well as have access to his library of over 150,000 books relative to the subject.
From his youth, Mr. Roberts has been a student of spiritual awakenings. He has authored, edited and/or published numerous volumes relating to revival and revivalism. These include:
- Revival – summarizes Mr. Roberts convictions and concerns about this urgent theme
- Revival Literature: An Annotated Bibliography with Biographical and
Historical Notices – details over 5,000 titles on revival - Whitefield in Print: A Bibliographic Record of Works By, For and Against George Whitefield; with Annotations, Biographical and Historical Notices, and Bibliographies of Associates and Contemporaries – forms a literary history of the Great Eighteenth Century Revival.
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