From Revelation to Relic

“Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution but also the tendency to mistake the form for the spirit.”
Jacques Ellul

“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.”
Vincent van Gogh

“What the first generation accepts with conviction, the second assumes, the third forgets, and the fourth denies.”
Howard Hendricks

“A church that lives by movement must beware becoming a monument.”
A. W. Tozer

It began as revelation, sudden light
A spark that stirred the soul to rise and move,
Then grew into a fervent, burning flame,
A revival sweeping through the hearts of men.
But time reshaped that fire to steady form,
Routine took hold, the passion turned to task;
The flame gave way to rules, engraved and cold,
Until at last the fire was dead, reduced
To relic, a silent witness of the past.

This is not just a poem of old cathedrals with hollow echoes. It is the slow death of what once burned. It is what happens when the holy becomes historic, when the breath of God is embalmed in architecture and liturgy and we call it preservation. It is how movements drift into museums, one sacred compromise at a time. And tragically, it often begins not with rebellion, but with reverence. I traveled to Strasbourg, France, and on a walk around the city happened upon the Strasbourg Cathedral, constructed between 1015 and 1439. The Gothic architecture arrested me: impossibly intricate, tall, and thick with centuries of human effort and religious devotion. It loomed, massive and delicate, and I stood quietly taking in its storied beauty. But something struck me when I considered what had started in flame and faith, in divine encounter and trembling obedience, and how it now stood more as monument than movement. You can tour it. Photograph it. Admire it. But you cannot feel the fire that once consumed its builders. What was born in revelation has settled into relic. What once called men to worship now merely asks them to marvel. And the danger is not just in Strasbourg or any other cathedral or building. It is in us.

Revelation: When God Tears the Veil
Every true work of God begins not with strategy or structure, but with the thunderclap of revelation. The veil lifts, and God is no longer a concept we manage, He is a fire we cannot touch. Abram did not launch a movement; he obeyed a summons (Genesis 12:1). Moses did not draft an agenda; he turned aside to see (Exodus 3:3). Isaiah did not pen a manifesto, he saw the Lord (Isaiah 6:1), and the sound of that revelation still reverberates in every trembling voice that dares to speak on His behalf. Revelation is never invited politely. It interrupts. It dismantles. It replaces what we assumed with what actually is. When Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, he was not rewarded for insight, he was commended for receiving what flesh and blood could never reveal (Matthew 16:17). Revelation is not discovered. It is given and received. Revelation is never sterile. It exposes. It rearranges. The kind that unseats idols and overturns assumptions. The kind that knocks a man to the ground and blinds him with light (Acts 9:3–4). It does not flatter, it fractures. And it is not just for prophets or apostles. The sheep know the Shepherd’s voice (John 10:27), and the Spirit still speaks to those who have ears to hear (Revelation 2:7). The danger is never in receiving revelation, but in assuming we can preserve it like an artifact. We want to handle it, polish it, enshrine it. We want to keep it in a box, like the ark on a cart (2 Samuel 6:3), forgetting that God was never meant to be driven by oxen or carried by culture. God is not a relic to be remembered. He is a consuming fire to be feared (Hebrews 12:29).

Response: The Only Acceptable Answer
There is no neutral response to divine revelation. It either splits you open or hardens you further. To encounter the living God is to be undone (Isaiah 6:5). To meet the real Christ is to cry out, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). The correct response is not comprehension, it is collapse. The crowd at Pentecost did not nod in agreement; they were “cut to the heart” and cried out, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37, ESV). When God speaks, the only right reaction is surrender. Not commentary. Not applause. Not tweeting a quote and moving on. Revelation demands a response deep enough to rewire us. But here is where the slow erosion begins, when we start responding to the revelation around us rather than the God above us, we end up admiring what should undo us. The early Church was not born in committee but in crisis, an upper room filled with waiting and fire (Acts 2:1– 4). The response was not polite but piercing. It shook loose language, comfort zones, and eventually their own blood. They were not gently inspired. They were wrecked and rebuilt. Once the response becomes reactionary rather than reverent, the drift has begun, and no one drifts into deeper obedience.

Revival: When Response Catches Fire
When response spreads beyond the individual, when holy fear moves through a people like wind through dry wheat, that is revival. Not the scheduled kind. Not a calendar event with stylized graphics and a guest evangelist. But the kind that splits the ground open and demands sackcloth. True revival is not loud, it is loud because it is true. The noise is not the goal; it is the byproduct of trembling. When the Spirit fell in Acts 2, they did not plan a branding campaign. The sound filled the house, fire rested on heads, and a sermon that was not supposed to happen birthed a Church that could not be silenced. This was not ministry with polish, it was ministry with scars. Revival is what happens when God bypasses our systems. When the sermon is interrupted by sobbing. When repentance breaks out without prompting. When the sinner trembles and the saint finally remembers holiness. Scripture gives us echoes of such moments. Josiah tore his robes at the hearing of the law (2 Kings 22:11). Nineveh repented from king to cattle at the cry of Jonah (Jonah 3:5–8). Ezra read, and the people wept (Nehemiah 8:9). No one had to hype the people. Heaven had drawn near. It is always short-lived if it is not stewarded rightly. The high places are torn down, yes, but unless the heart remains torn too, routine waits just outside the door. Revival, though, carries a shelf life if not sustained by surrender. It cannot live on yesterday’s tears. When the fire is not tended with humility and obedience, it does not extinguish all at once. It fades into something deceptively similar, the embers of habit.

Routine: The Erosion We Learn to Ignore
Here is where it turns. Subtle. Unalarming. Acceptable even. We keep singing the songs, but they no longer break us. We pray, but not because we must. The Spirit still whispers, but we grow numb to His interruptions. We do not reject the fire, we just assume it will keep burning whether we tend it or not. Routine is not always evil. The Sabbath was a routine. So were the feasts. But the trouble comes when routine begins to shape our expectations of God rather than our reverence for Him. We schedule Him. We structure Him. We no longer ask, “What would You say today, Lord?” We ask, “How long is the service running?” The ark remained in the temple in Eli’s day, but the lamp of God had nearly gone out (1 Samuel 3:2–3). The routine continued. And the Lord bypassed Eli entirely. He spoke instead to a boy not yet in ministry. Because revelation does not honor office. It honors obedience. Jesus warned of this drift. “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me” (Mark 7:6, ESV). The motions remained; the intimacy had died. God does not indict their songs, but their distance. We confuse movement with life, familiarity with faithfulness. We keep quoting what was said at the mountain while ignoring the fire no longer on the altar.

Rule: When Holiness Becomes a Policy
By now, we no longer remember the wonder. We have systematized the sacred. We build walls around yesterday’s flame, not realizing we have cut off the oxygen. What began as holy response becomes enforced regulation. What was once spontaneous is now mandatory. We build manuals out of miracles and call it discipleship. And somewhere in the background, the Spirit grieves. Rules are not inherently wrong. Scripture is filled with commands. But when rule becomes the mechanism for preserving what only Spirit can sustain, we have drifted into the Pharisaical; whitewashed tombs with ornate traditions, utterly vacant of life (Matthew 23:27). Jesus told them plainly: “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!” (Mark 7:9, ESV). It is possible to be theologically precise and spiritually dead. The church in Sardis had the reputation of being alive, but was told, “You are dead” (Revelation 3:1). Rule without intimacy becomes rigor mortis. The very stewards of Scripture became its silencers through endless rules that lacked the breath of life. We do not multiply His presence through multiplication of systems. And God will not be managed.

Relic: Reverence Without Reality
Here is the tragedy. We polish the bones. We guard the tomb. We curate the absence. The band still sings. But no one weeps. No one repents. The room is filled with light but absent of fire. The Bible is read, but never pierces. The words are familiar, but they no longer break chains. What once was presence has become performance. And we confuse memory with maturity. Eli did not oppose God, he simply stopped noticing Him. The ark was captured while he sat in his seat (1 Samuel 4:17-18). Revelation had moved on, but he stayed where he was, comfortable in his knowledge, detached from its weight. And when David tried to retrieve it by mimicry, not obedience, Uzzah died (2 Samuel 6:6– 7). God’s holiness will not be handled like cargo. He will not ride in on the carts of our good intentions. The disciples wanted to build tents around the glory on the mountain (Mark 9:5). But Jesus descended. Because glory is not meant to be caged. We have carved the altars of yesterday’s flame into monuments, and we guard them with conviction, even while the Spirit has long since departed. This is the final form of drift: where the form remains but the faith has withered. We reverence the altar, but we no longer sacrifice. We quote the creeds, but do not tremble. We recite the psalms, but forget how to sing them to the Lord.

How Do We Return?
Not to the fire of emotion. Not to nostalgia. Not to a previous decade’s language. But to Him. The voice to Ephesus still speaks: “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5, ESV). First works are not a strategy. They are a posture. A return to obedience not as obligation, but as overflow. A return to prayer not as duty, but as hunger. A return to Scripture not as ammunition, but as breath. God is not asking us to recover a feeling. He is calling us back to fear. To trembling. To unedited dependence. Isaiah 57:15 says it plainly: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit.” If we will not be high, He will dwell low with us. But we must come down from the fortresses we have built in His name. We must ask: Are we encountering God, or merely admiring Him? Are we alive with revelation, or do we simply carry its fossil?

Dear reader, we cannot fossilize the fire and still call it faithfulness. Revelation cannot be inherited. It must be received afresh. The Spirit is not transmitted through tradition. He moves on the breath of God alone, not on the breath of our programs. He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Let us not be found rehearsing the songs of revival while the King knocks at the door, waiting for someone inside to hear. “Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God” (Revelation 3:2, ESV). Let the relic break. Let the rule be surrendered. Let the routine dissolve. Let the revelation come again. Not just to stir. But to reign.