Let's Talk About Asbury

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Justin Peters. I hope that this finds you and your family doing well today.

I want to thank you so much for joining me for this podcast. So today we're going to be talking about the

Asbury revival. This has been much in the news since its inception on February the 8th.

I was actually out of the country when it started in Israel on my recent trip there. But this thing has just spread like wildfire and everybody is talking about it.

Not only in the evangelical world, but also many Roman Catholics and even the secular news media is talking about this.

A number of secular outlets have reported on what is happening at Asbury University, and not the least of which is

Fox News by Tucker Carlson. So you know if something in the evangelical world has risen to that level that Tucker Carlson is talking about it.

This is a pretty big deal. Millions of people really are talking about it. People from all over the world have hopped on airplanes and flown into Kentucky to be a part of this

Asbury revival. And there's a lot of division as to exactly what this is.

And so I want us to talk about it on today's program. Is this a revival?

What is a revival in the first place? And once we establish that, is this what is happening at Asbury?

So let me say at the onset here that we do have caution.

I have cautions and the men that I'm about to introduce to you and interview, they have cautions as well.

Please understand, dear ones, that this is in no way a judgment on anyone's sincerity.

We have no doubt that many of the people involved in this are very, very sincere.

That is not the issue. We're not calling into question anyone's motives, their sincerity like thereof, none of those things.

We want to get to the truth. We want to talk about what true revival is and does this meet the biblical qualifications of a revival, of a true move of the

Holy Spirit and what He does, how He moves. Is that commensurate with what we are seeing at Asbury?

And so I wanted to bring in some trusted voices, some men that I know and trust and am honored to call, not only compatriots in the ministry, but friends of mine as well.

So I want to introduce them to you now, and I will introduce them in alphabetical order according to their last names.

The first is Scott Anial, Dr. Scott Anial. Scott has a number of degrees.

He has a Ph .D. in Worship Theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is the Executive Vice President and Editor -in -Chief at G3 Ministries, and he's authored several books there.

You see, Changed from Glory into Glory, The Liturgical Story of the Christian Faith, and Biblical Foundations of Corporate Worship.

Scott has actually written a number of books, and here is a screenshot of them. I may be missing some,

I'm not sure, but anyway, you can look these up. I commend them to you. Scott is a great guy.

I had the privilege of spending some time with him in Brazil last year on a trip there. Super, super great guy.

Very knowledgeable, and so I wanted to bring him in on this. Also going to be talking to Dr.

Josh Bice. Josh has earned a Master of Divinity and a

Doctor of Ministry D .M .N. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, outside of Atlanta, and he is the founder and president of G3 Ministries.

And last but not least is Matt Sykes. Matt has earned his

Master of Arts in Worship, and he is in the process of finishing his Ph .D. in Worship from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is actually writing his dissertation as we speak. Super great guy, and he serves currently as the pastor of discipleship and worship at Praise Mill Baptist Church, and just a great guy.

All three of these men are super fine guys. Josh and Scott, I spent time with, well I've known them for several years,

Josh longer than the other two, but spent time with them on various trips, and Matt got to get to know him a little bit when

I was at G3 recently, about a month or so as of this recording, doing some recording there.

So these are three really good brothers. Very knowledgeable, and so I want to bring them in.

We're going to talk about Asbury, and I would also say that I have no doubt, at least me personally,

I have no doubt that there very well may have been some people converted at Asbury when the

Gospel was actually preached, but we'll talk about how that was not the rule there at Asbury, much more the exception.

But any time the Gospel, the true Gospel is preached, God can use that to convert someone.

I have, I believe that there have been people converted under Benny Hinn's ministry, under his preaching at least.

I have heard Benny Hinn present the Gospel certainly well enough for someone to be converted, but that is not an endorsement of Benny Hinn.

He is still a false prophet and false teacher in every sense of the term, but it is, so it's not an endorsement or a commendation or a validation on any level of Benny Hinn.

It's simply that the power of God is the Gospel, and God can use that despite the instrument through which it might be delivered.

So I want us to talk about Asbury, what is going on there, what are the precautions that we should take, what are the concerns that we have, what it is, what it isn't.

I think you'll find this to be a very fair discussion, a very compassionate discussion, and very helpful as well.

Please do watch this, watch it all the way through to its conclusion. There's a lot of information here, we deal with a lot of things, and I think you'll be able to see as we go through that this is coming from the hearts of men who truly do care about Christ, care about his bride, and care about you.

Alright, thank you so much dear one. So without any further delay, here is our discussion about Asbury.

Okay, so Scott, Matt, and Josh, brothers, thank you all so much for taking your time out of your day and joining me for this important discussion,

I believe, Asbury and this so -called revival, some are calling it an outpouring, but it has been the topic of conversation in the evangelical world and even some circles in the

Catholic Church as well, I understand. So this is a hot -button issue, and there's a lot of division over it.

So thank you all for joining me, and welcome to the channel. And so I thought we would begin just by talking about what is a revival?

I mean, that word is used a lot, but what do we mean when we talk about a revival or an outpouring?

What does the Bible have to say about this, and where do we see revival in church history?

So I'll kind of tee that off, whoever would like to pick up the ball and run with it.

Yeah, Justin, I think this is a good question, because we, like you said, we talk about revival a lot.

We use that word, and awakening, and these kinds of words, often without defining them.

And we have to also remember that we find those words in Scripture, things like awakening and prayers for God reviving us.

But in some ways, we are sort of putting those terms on things that happen in Scripture or in church history.

But I think we see them, right? We see prayers, for example, in the Psalms of people crying out and saying,

Lord, will you not revive us? Will you not turn our hearts? And really, what they're praying for is that God will lead us towards repentance, that God will lead us towards a pursuit of Him, when perhaps there's been a period of time in which we've not been pursuing

Him. And so we find prayers for that. And then I think you clearly do see examples in Scripture of that happening.

In the Old Testament, it happens with Israel. You see periods in which the nation is following after false gods, and then

God turns them, and there's a season of repenting under the preaching of the

Word, and then they begin to follow after God again. So I think it's perfectly acceptable to call that a revival, in which

God is reviving His people and turning them back to Him. So I think we do see examples of that kind of thing in Scripture, for sure.

Okay. All right. Yeah, I would totally agree with that. I think that—I think it's sometimes, you know, the case where some scholars or theologians want to quibble over the terminology.

You know, they'll perhaps make a distinction between a revival and an awakening.

You know, an awakening being that idea of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon a group of people, bringing and resulting in salvation.

And we see this at Pentecost, and we see it again throughout church history, whereas some would say, well, you know, in the

Psalms, we're seeing the people of God who were the people of God being restored or brought back into a right standing with God, and that's a revival.

Again, I'm not going to really quibble about, you know, the distinctions. But what I would say, and I think

Scott makes mention of this, is that we always see historically the people responding to the

Word of God. It's the Word of God calling the people of God back into a right standing with Him.

And so what we don't see is just, you know, this movement that's driven by emotions and, you know, all sorts of other cultural things.

We see it really driven by the Word of God. And I think that that's historic, and we can even see that in the

Protestant Reformation as well. Okay. All right. That's helpful. That's helpful.

What about things like the Great Awakening or the Second Great Awakening, Matt? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I think we see, you know, when we look at the

Great Awakening, we see, you know, when we read history books, we see what's happening there.

We know about Jonathan Edwards and his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and the preaching of that, where it's told that he, you know, preached it almost sort of just very, you know, even -keeled, not much inflection in his voice as he preached it.

Of course, we don't know. We don't have any recording of that, but probably all of us have read the sermon, and we know the emphasis there is on the

Word of God, a realization of our sin, our depravity, and our need for true repentance.

And you know, there's reports of how people responded to that sermon, you know, with sort of violent emotional reactions, if you will.

And I think with that, all of it, it's hard to know what's happening in a moment.

You know, when we take one, you know, a day or a couple of weeks even, and we see lots of response, especially visceral responses such as that, to know whether this is genuinely producing the fruit of repentance and salvation in people's lives.

So it's very difficult for us to measure something like that in a short period of time. We have to wait.

We have to wait and see what kind of fruit those individuals are bearing from that event, whatever it might be.

And so I think, you know, Edwards wrote about this, right, when he was in response to what was happening with the

Great Awakening. And of course, it turned out that some of the people who, many of the people who responded in that moment, you know, continued and persevered in the faith.

But many of them didn't, you know, years and even decades later. And so I think we see a lot of good things happening when we read about the

Great Awakening. And it's easy for us to sort of caricature the Great Awakening, especially as we compare it to the

Second Great Awakening. But in general, when you look at what happened in the Second Great Awakening compared to the

First Great Awakening, there's a lot more methods and new measures, as Finney titled them, being employed to try to get people to a crisis moment, to make a decision.

And of course, we know that Finney... Charles, speaking of Charles Finney... Yeah, Charles Finney.

Yes, exactly. Charles Finney didn't, you know, didn't believe in the total depravity of man.

He didn't believe in, you know, original sin. So it's an understanding of what we are like in our moral state apart from Christ.

That is at the root, I think, of this question. And so we saw a lot of probably false conversions from the

Second Great Awakening. And so many people have said that that wasn't a true revival or it wasn't a real Great Awakening.

It was sort of a manufactured thing. I think, you know, there's definitely some value in looking at those two periods and comparing them to each other to sort of see what is revival like.

What should it look like? What should responses be? And how do we measure those in the long term? Yeah, I think that's a really important distinction.

Ian Murray's well -known book Revival and Revivalism, I think, articulates that distinction really well.

There's a difference between true biblical revival, which Edwards said was a surprising work of God.

It was not scheduled. It was not planned. They didn't hold revival meetings.

No, Edwards was simply preaching expositional sermons on justification. And God, in His sovereign wisdom, chose to save a lot of people at one time.

And people did respond, you know, emotionally. But Edwards looked at that and he said, the emotion itself is a sign of nothing.

It's just what happens sometimes when people come under deep conviction. As Matt pointed out,

Edwards was really quick to say the true sign of revival is not going to be what happens in the moment in the service.

It's going to be whether or not there's fruit and perseverance in the lives of these people long term.

And you contrast that with the revivalism of Charles Finney and those in that period, where they were trying to create something by scheduling meetings, by holding protracted meetings, by having come forward altar calls and anxious benches, and trying to engineer certain things to move people to a point of crisis in which they would then experience revival.

So there's two entirely different theological foundations for what is happening, which affected the methodology, which then affected whether or not there really was fruit.

And I think what you see under Finney's ministry, there wasn't fruit to the point where the places in which those revival meetings happened, and there was a lot of fire, they end up being described later as burnt -over districts, because there wasn't true regeneration taking place, and the people who experienced those sorts of things were literally burnt out and actually led to apostasy and even a hindrance for the gospel in those regions following what happened.

Yes, yes, exactly. And so much of what we see today in modern evangelicalism is that it's basically the ghost of Charles Finney walking around the hallways of our churches and our meetings.

Absolutely. And with more modern day, quote unquote, revivals, really the only thing that we've had in the last, well, in our lifetimes would be like the charismatic renewal, the

Pensacola outpouring, Toronto, Brownsville, and then in 2008,

Lakeland, with Todd Bentley kicking elderly women in the face with his biker boot upon the instruction from God.

So, you know, when we think of revivals today, within our lifetime, they're heavily, heavily charismatic

Pentecostal. So how much of that element do you think that dynamic is at play in what we've been seeing in Asbury in the last couple of weeks?

Yeah, I would just say as we look at this latest, quote unquote, revival,

Justin, as you mentioned, you know, the connection to the Toronto Blessing and Lakeland and all of these, you even mentioned

Bentley, interestingly enough. I mean, he found his way to Asbury and was in the chapel and in the balcony and spent a few days there and praised it.

Obviously, we see a massive connection to all of these things that we're seeing flow from Finney's ministry.

Scott mentioned the anxious bench and all of this come forward to the front, this crisis moment, and all of these pictures that are flowing out of this latest, quote unquote, revival on this university campus seem to have those very characteristics.

We see them at the front, you know, praying. We see a lot of the same sorts of methods.

Right. As we think about, you know, the inspection of fruit, if you will, just being able to look and see whether or not this is a legitimate movement of God or whether or not it's, you know, something that was planned by man.

When we evaluate these things according to Scripture, it just seems that this doesn't pass the test.

Again, I don't want to be seen as just being overly judgmental, but to be clear, we are actually called to examine such things and such movements according to God's word.

And so we're seeing those characteristics that are very much connected to Finney's ministry rather than someone like, say,

Jonathan Edwards, for instance. We talk about the ghost of Finney, and we think about, you know, how

Finney's ministry really impacted the whole of evangelicalism, that of Billy Graham, the

Southern Baptist Convention. Even in my own pastoral ministry over the last, say, decade of ministry, there have been, you know, many people, an enormous number, in fact, great percentages of people that I've baptized, not for the first time, but for the second or even third time, which

I think is a tragedy. And so that, along with all the videos that I've seen coming out of this latest, quote unquote, revival, this movement, it has been very much connected to the charismatic movement.

Even as late as yesterday, I saw a group of people on the campus circled up and one figure in the middle preaching and instructing everyone to hold their hands high above their head to receive the blessing of God so that they could speak in unknown tongues.

Hey, dear friends, I wanted to interrupt Josh just for a moment here to insert something because this is a good point to insert.

Josh was just talking about how he saw video just, I think, from yesterday as of this recording of people at Asbury being instructed to hold hands to receive the gift of speaking in tongues.

And this is a good point to, a good opportunity to point out that holding hands is a common technique amongst

Word Faith NAR type folks. Benny Hinn, especially, is a good example.

Benny Hinn will tell members of his audience to hold one another's hands, and he does that right before he slays them in the spirit.

Now, this is because when you're holding someone's hand, that makes your audience much more manipulatable.

You can control them more easily. And then he yells fire on them or shouts.

And if one person falls back, because they're preconditioned to do this, but when one person falls back, well, if you're holding someone's hand and the person next to you, they're kind of also going along with this.

Well, when your neighbor begins to go back, then you begin to go back. And pretty soon, you've got dozens, if not hundreds, of people being slain in the spirit all at the same time.

So I don't know how much of this hyper charismatic element was there at Asbury.

I know some of it was because it even made it into the national news. Watch this video clip that I found.

I was actually on Twitter and discovered this. I think I believe it was Terry Green who posted this, and I went and found the clip and downloaded it.

It even made it on Fox News. Listen very carefully to the interview here that Ainsley Earhart does with this young lady who is an

Asbury student there at the Revival. Listen very carefully to this. All right. Thank you so much,

Ashley. Well, we are here at Asbury University, as we've been saying, where the spirit of God just touched so many people in this auditorium behind us.

It is alive on this campus. We're in Kentucky. People have been worshipping here 24 -7 for the last two weeks.

It has been wonderful to see. We're here with Kirsten Williamson and Khalil Akiki. Am I saying that right?

Akiki. Akiki. OK, beautiful name. Well, thank you all for being here. You're both students here. What year are you? Actually, I am not a student here, but I'm a senior in high school.

Amazing. Even better. So you live in the area and you just are coming by? Southern Ohio, about two and a half hours.

What? Yeah. OK, so when did you start? When was your first service? Two weeks ago or was it?

So it started the 8th and I came on that Sunday. And yesterday was my sixth time coming here.

That is great. So where are you staying in a hotel? How are you pulling this off? We have been

I've been coming with friends. We've been traveling back and forth. And then last night was like the only night we stayed in Airbnb. But it's all worth it.

So what have you seen so much? We have seen limbs grow back.

We have seen our limbs grow back. What do you mean? So Ainsley Earhart asked this young lady who turns out high school senior.

But she says, what have you seen? And she said, well, we've seen limbs grow back. What you've seen limbs grow back in Ainsley rightly is struck by that.

She said, wait, limbs grow back. What do you mean? So I'm going to back up and play this again for you.

Watch carefully. Listen to what she says in response. What have you seen so much?

We have seen limbs grow back. We have seen our limbs grow back. What do you mean?

We have seen people just go up to people, pray for them. Even yesterday, I saw a girl take off her boot.

She had a sprained ankle. A guy came back in line, prayed for her. She threw it off, started running and just weeping for what

God had done for her. And she said it didn't hurt anymore. Just incredible. OK, dear ones, there's a huge difference between a limb growing back and someone running around with a sprained ankle.

Those kinds of healings, you know, the sprained ankles kind of stuff, you know, bursitis in your shoulder, those are all psychosomatic healings.

Those happen all the time at charismatic conferences and events and crusades and all that.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I have seen a psychosomatic healing.

Mind over body. Those happen constantly in charismatic crusades.

Benny Hinn. I mean, if I did have a nickel, I'd be a very wealthy man right now.

However, if I had a nickel for every time I've seen a genuine organic healing, a healing that cannot be explained by just mind over body or temporary rush of adrenaline,

I'd be completely destitute and living under a bridge. Those healings do not happen at charismatic meetings.

Benny Hinn crusades, those kind of thing. Psychosomatic? Yes. All the time. Organic? No. And, you know,

I don't think this young lady was trying to deceive. I think she was just caught up in the emotion of the event.

The emotionalism, exactly what Josh was speaking of and to whom we shall now return.

And so as a sign that, again, that the spirit of God was moving upon them.

So in my estimation, I would say this does not pass the test of a legitimate revival, biblically speaking.

But I would also say that there are probably genuine converts that are there on this campus that are just confused and that are caught up in all of the emotions.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really important, too, talking about the, you know, the methods of someone like Charles Finney being employed here.

I mean, I watched several clips from or extended videos from this service.

You know, they frequently refer to the front area as the altar, right? Come down to the altar and receive prayer, receive, you know, lay everything down.

Another thing that I think is really important that I heard in language being used was about this, you know, this auditorium on Asbury's campus sort of being, you know, compared to like the temple or the tabernacle and coming to meet

God at this place, like His presence is here at this place. And that's another aspect, you know, that we have to we have to look at.

It's not the word of God, but it's this special anointed place that we have to go to and receive the spirit.

Right. Yeah, which brings up. I agree completely. And that's. Yeah. Yeah. No, I was just going to raise the issue of of the centrality of music in this

Asbury event, which is, to me, another real clear indication of the influence of the charismatic movement in and even even

Finney earlier in contrast to true movements of of conversion and repentance in church history and in Scripture, which are always centered on the preaching of God's word.

And music is certainly going to be part of the services. Music is going to be a way to teach doctrine.

It's going to be a way to respond to the Lord, you know, in response to the preached word.

But if you look at either scriptural revival or even, you know, the

Reformation or the Great Awakening under Edwards, there is the singing of hymns.

But that's not really what is producing the responses. What is producing the responses is the

Holy Spirit of God working through his preached word. Whereas at Asbury, there's very little, if any, preaching.

It's really song after song, after song, after song. The centrality of music, which again comes directly out of the charismatic movement where music has now reached a level where they even themselves describe music as a sacrament.

That's how we experience the presence of God. We experience God's presence through the music.

And so if you remove the music, then there's no longer the presence of God. And that's the kind of language and things that we're, you know, we're seeing take place at Asbury.

Music is very central. Right, right. And I've said in talking to some friends of mine about this, if you were to go up and unplug the keyboard, it would stop.

I mean, the Holy Spirit would just disappear somehow. And I told some of you this.

I've watched now, none of us, in fairness, none of us, I don't think, have been to this in person.

I haven't been there. I haven't had the opportunity. But I've I've watched quite a bit of it online, and I watched a lot of the live stream online.

And it was it was just what you're saying, Scott. It was heavily it heavily emphasized music.

It would be one song after another. But and I didn't see any preaching.

I didn't see any exposition. I didn't see any preaching at all until the final night as of this recording this past Thursday night, where there was, to be fair, some of that.

But I probably watched eight to 10 hours of the live stream in the days leading up to Thursday night.

And I didn't see any preaching. I didn't hear any preaching. There were a few testimonies, but it was 90 percent music.

And not only was it music, but it was these Bethel Hillsong songs, the quintessential 7 -11, a few words repeated over and over and over and over.

Very shallow music, very shallow lyrics, nothing overtly heretical, but but very shallow.

And and it was the same five or six songs repeated over and over there for a while.

I thought I was stuck in a loop in listening to it in the live stream because it's just the same stuff over and over and over.

So, Scott, that goes to what you were you were talking about. What is what is the effect?

What is the effect on the intellect? What is the effect on the on the mind when you have these?

Few songs with just a few words repeated over and over and over for some of these songs could last eight, 10 minutes or what does that do?

What does that do to the intellect? Yeah, well, the intellect actually gets in the way in that in that theology.

If you have if you have too much theological density, then you're actually prohibiting the spirit from from working somehow, because it really is this sort of psychosomatic, almost trance that you work yourself into.

It really resembles sort of New Age mantra where you just say the same thing over and over again.

And yeah, like you said, Justin, it might not be heretical. It might actually be, you know, theologically true statements.

But the effect is you're just saying the same thing over and over again. You're not really thinking about it. And you work yourself into sort of an emotional experience that then has come to be defined because of the influence of Pentecostalism.

That experience or those feelings, that's the presence of God. And, you know, waves and waves of God's presence is how it's often described.

And that's what you end up seeking after. Right, right. And none of us, you know,

I know one of the criticisms for folks in our theological camp, our sociologically reformed circles.

Oh, you're just a bunch of fuddy duddies. You know, you're so scared of emotion and all that kind of thing.

And to the contrary, I would honestly I would be afraid of the man whose emotions are not impacted by the profundity of Christ and who he is and what he's accomplished for us.

If your emotions are not impacted by him, then I would be concerned for you.

But but what we're seeing with this is something totally different. This is emotionally driven, emotionally sourced.

And as one part of this, one piece of this puzzle I have watched,

I don't know if you all have, but I watched the sermon, the initial sermon that kicked this thing off.

And again, kind of like I said a minute ago, nothing overtly heretical, but but there was no gospel there either.

The gospel was not presented. And it was from that sermon that this whole thing started.

So I'm assuming that it would. Yeah, in fact,

Justin, if you go back and look at the transcript of that of that sermon, Tacos is mentioned three times as many times as repentance is.

Interesting that notice that. But yeah. Yeah. So in other words, repentance was mentioned zero times and Tacos was mentioned three times in that sermon.

But it should be noted that the sermon itself is not really where the the quote unquote spark of revival happened.

It was after the chapel service ended and a group of students circled up to sing together.

And then the president sent a message some time later, a few hours later, that apparently that the spirit of God was moving in the chapel so that everyone flooded the chapel.

And then it shut everything down on campus at that point. Right. Yeah. And did y 'all see this?

So apparently as we all want us to talk about Asbury itself, some here, but Asbury has had,

I believe, 12 revivals to use that term. They've claimed 12 revivals in their history.

11 of the 12 have been in February. And the other one was in March.

That's just a that's it's a curiosity to me. So let's talk about that and talk about Asbury itself.

So Asbury is a college. So there's the college Asbury, Asbury University. And then there's

Asbury Theological Seminary. I went to their websites and both of them, by their own admission, they both say both the university and seminary say we are grounded in the

Wesleyan holiness tradition. They do, to be fair, have a doctrinal statement of faith that would pass a basic doctrinal smell test.

They affirm inerrancy in the originals and that kind of thing. They affirm marriages between one man and one woman.

They affirm the bodily resurrection of Christ and all these things. But what? So two questions.

What is the Wesleyan holiness tradition? So we know exactly what Asbury is and the theological ground from which they're they're coming.

What is that? And should we expect to see a true a true move of the

Holy Spirit start in a university as opposed to the church?

Matt can speak to the Methodist holiness movement, I think. Well, OK. Yes. So, you know, the

Wesleyan holiness movement, there's a I guess as far as I understand it, there are sort of two kind of branches, you know, in terms of Wesleyan tradition,

Methodism and the holiness movement is rooted in kind of coming out of that revivalism of the 19th century, especially kind of the things we were talking about earlier with Charles Finney.

And, you know, this emphasis on, you know, the Wesleyan idea of perfectionism or the second blessing theology, which, of course, then eventually leads us into Pentecostalism.

And the idea of being baptized in the Holy Spirit is a separate event from conversion. And so I think it's a lot of emphasis on, you know, this idea of what they would call holiness or maybe even holiness of life.

But it seems to be rooted primarily in the experiential, this sort of these mountaintop experiences of experiencing what they perceive as the outpouring of God's spirit for them and taking them to higher and higher planes of sanctification each time that happens.

And it's not really holiness and how in the way we would think of it in like, you know, a life is characterized by, you know, virtue, by living out the fruit of the spirit in every area of life.

But it's this experiential kind of holiness where we were coming before the throne of God and we're pouring ourselves out.

We're getting these these, you know, everything we've been talking about, these experiences of God. And so.

I think I think that's where they find themselves. You know, I was actually part of a when I was in college,

I was actually part of a campus ministry that was part of the Wesleyan holiness movement, tradition, whatever you might want to call it.

And and I can just tell you that the things that I've seen on the videos, the live feed from this this event, this revival, so -called revival at Asbury is very similar to what

I experienced on an almost weekly basis on those Wednesday night meetings on campus, the same kind of even the same kind of language being used, even the same way of talking about God and talking about even the

Bible and the way we talk about experiencing God, those kinds of things, a lot of similarities into what

I would see, not just like on a, you know, like one time or certain periods, but almost on a weekly basis.

That was the same motivation that was driving those meetings. And so I find it very interesting that, you know, we could see like you you brought forward,

Justin, about these meetings happening every always happening around February, March.

Could there be something about, you know, we're getting close to the end of the school year, but we're not. We still got a lot of time left.

I mean, who knows what's driving that time factor? Yeah, but it's interesting that we've seen 12 of those in the history of the school, which is just, you know, a little over 100 years old.

And we've seen 12 revivals, you know, these special moves of God's spirit there. And then to answer your other question,

I don't think we would see revival taking place outside of of Christ's church.

I mean, it only makes sense biblically to read the text of Scripture that if there's going to be this revival taking place, it would happen in the local church, which is

God's where God's ordinary means of grace are taking place. And again,

I keep going back to this connection to this idea that this is a special location, sort of like a, you know, a special temple that we have to go to.

We have to make this pilgrimage to which, of course, we have seen that with, you know, I think over 100000 people visiting the campus over the last two weeks coming to experience and get a taste of the presence of God in this location.

So why is why is it this location where we're experiencing this outpouring of the spirit?

If it's a true revival, shouldn't it be happening within the local churches and be more, you know, broad than this one place?

Yeah. Right. Yeah, Matt, I would I would agree with that. I think we look to God's church as being where, you know,

God is placing his emphasis and moving upon his people and growing us through the ordinary means of grace.

That is not to say that God can't use college students to do extraordinary things and and to, you know, really take bold stands where necessary.

I mean, we've seen this historically. If you study the Reformation, you'll find that in many ways it was a a student movement in terms of the grassroots idea of the

Reformation. I mean, you find Luther there at, you know, teaching theology in Wittenberg and you see the the ninety five theses nailed to the castle church door typeset spread abroad.

And then you have college students getting together at the White Horse Inn and they're reading

Luther's writings eventually. Right. They're stirred inwardly to to take this stand for the

Lord and to, you know, do these wonderful things like Tyndale being in that group, saying,

I'm going to, you know, move to have the Bible translated into the common man's language.

And so you see God using these individuals. But the distinction is they weren't calling everyone to come join them at the pub at the

White Horse Inn. They were actually moving people to the local church, to the word of God preached.

And then, of course, the ordination of grace in the life of those individual local churches, both throughout

Germany and throughout all of Europe, really, in those early days.

Right, right. But before we leave Asbury itself. So it comes from the

Wesleyan holiness tradition. Asbury is fully on board with the social justice movement.

They have a statement on social justice that a friend of mine called it and said it would be like a eight out of ten on the wokeness scale.

Now, they wouldn't go and affirm homosexual marriage or anything like that.

They wouldn't go that far. But they do have at least one foot in the social justice movement, if not both.

They're egalitarian, fully egalitarian. Now, by that, for those watching who may not know that term, that means that they believe that women can serve in the same capacity in church leadership as men.

They can be elders. They can be pastors. Of course, those terms are interchangeable, but they can they have no problem at all with women being pastors.

So that raises a question with me immediately. If this were a true move of the

Holy Spirit, then I would expect that the the place upon which it would have the most immediate impact would be

Asbury itself, given that that's where this thing supposedly started. Which would result in them repenting of their egalitarianism and no longer affirming women pastors.

But that's not the case, is it? Right. Yeah, I think that this is illustrative of what we're seeing just in broader evangelicalism in general, and that is the fact that people can say they believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and they can say they believe in the authority of Scripture, when really the issue is the sufficiency of Scripture.

So whether we're talking about the nature of what true revival is, or whether or not a woman can be a pastor, or all of the social justice issues, it really comes down to people who want to affirm that they believe in the authority of the

Word of God, but they don't believe that the Bible is sufficient for conversion, for sanctification, for ecclesiology, how the church ought to be ordered, for the order of men and women within the church and society.

And so it's really, it's not surprising, unfortunately, that Asbury takes these stands when this is really how much of evangelicalism, the problem that we're seeing in much of evangelicalism today.

Right. And Scott, before we started recording, I believe you told me that, was it last night that you were watching?

No, it wasn't last night, but it was right after the official revival was closing down, that at the seminary, the president preached a sermon explicitly on the issue of whether or not women can be pastors, and he argued that the command that says women shall not exercise authority over a man, that that doesn't really mean authority, that that was a word in that day that refers to being domineering, and so the passage is not forbidding that women be a pastor.

And he explicitly said at the end of the sermon that Asbury has always believed in both the inerrancy of Scripture, he used this language, we've always believed in both the inerrancy of Scripture and the fact that women can be pastors.

And so he was strongly arguing for that. It just was ironic right in the context of everything that's been going on there at Asbury.

Yeah, yeah. And so this is one of the dangers, right, because people in the social justice movement, they will use some of the same lingo, some of the same terminology that we would use, but they mean very different things by those terms and what we would mean, and so it's very dangerous to say, oh,

I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, but I also believe in female pastors.

Josh, did you want to say something? Yeah, I was just going to agree with you, Justin. I mean, I think it's a contradiction of terms, right?

So you have this idea that the Spirit of God is leading us, but now our behavior is in contradiction to the very word that the

Spirit of God has written. And so that's problematic at the foundational level, but it's this idea of women being pastors, women being pastors, women being pastors, women being pastors.

Or queer Christians or gay Christians, you know, this contradiction of terms, right?

Either the Spirit of God is leading us to be in submission to God through his word, or we're just opening up the

Bible to our own private interpretations, and that's problematic. I think

I would add just to that before you go on, Justin, to the next point, I would just add to that, you know, this idea of what

I said earlier about the holiness movement, the Wesleyan holiness movement sort of being in this experiential, you know, and it's not really holiness of life in terms of what the

Bible actually says that looks like, right? And I think we see that even probably more so with what you're saying with, you know, social justice, you know, using the same terminology, but meaning something different by it.

I've seen the very same thing, and I'm sure you have too, because you spent a lot of time studying Pentecostal movement, the very same things, you know, using the same terminology, but meaning something totally different by, you know, phrases or even theological terms, you know, using the same language, but meaning something very different as you read into what's actually being written, or you hear sermons being preached, there's very much this emphasis, this affirmation.

Yeah, we affirm the authority, maybe even saying they affirm the sufficiency of But in practice, it's not like Josh is saying, it's not submission to what the word of God says in its totality, the whole counsel of God, right?

Not just cherry picking a verse here, a verse there that we like, and just kind of using those as these places we hang our hats, you know, that we want to focus on and kind of leaving the other just kind of down, minimizing that.

So again, I think this is evident both in not just in the sort of the wokeness and the social justice movement, but also in the

Pentecostal movement as well, and the charismatic movement that follows. Yes, indeed. Thank you for that,

Matt. Very helpful. Absolutely. And that the egalitarianism leads to,

I've always said that once you compromise on that issue, it is a very slippery slope into full -blown theological liberalism.

And so let's, let's get to the, the homosexual aspect of this, because I took a lot of heat because I put up a tweet, some screenshots of tweets that some current

Asbury students themselves put up and another group that calls themselves the

New Evangelical, some liberal wackadoodle group, but anyway, so there is the video, in fact,

I'll, I sent this to you guys. So the video of this man talking about how there is, there are current gay, queer, and even a transgendered, quote unquote, transgendered man at Asbury.

Let's watch this. I talked to three different people who were all queer, who were all related to Asbury in some way.

I've talked to an actual student who's a trans, a trans man, who's in the process of transitioning, and they are out about this at Asbury.

I've talked to someone on the seminary side, not, it's a different university, but it's right across the street and it's part of the

Asbury world, who is a side B gay Christian. And I've just talked to an alumni who is out, who's a gay

Christian, a gay black man. Okay. I've talked to all three of them and I've asked them this same question.

I said, so what do you think? Like, how do we measure, you know, what it means for this to be successful?

And I will tell you that all three of them express that they are hopeful based on conversations and what they've said and what they've heard and experiences that they've had with faculty and other students that, that Asbury will continue on the path that they've already been on of really waking up to the reality that there are some systemic, that there are some systemic issues, both in their history of racism and also of, of mishandling and mistreating the queer community.

So he says that there are current gay students, queer, by the way, what, I don't know, what is the distinction between queer and homosexual?

Are they the same thing? Do you know? Well, I mean, I would say that they definitely are the same thing in the sense of, you know, what they, what they stand for, they, they oftentimes will make distinctions between, you know, a queer and a homosexual and in various different capacities, and sometimes it's even difficult to determine those distinctions, but, but yeah,

I mean, it's, it's very confusing at times to be able to determine where they're drawing the line on that.

I think where it becomes most disturbing for us within the church is when they start calling themselves either gay

Christians or queer Christians, and then we have to start, you know, really getting down to the brass tacks and defining terms at that point, obviously.

Yeah, exactly. Elijah Blake is a man who's a current student there.

In 2019 and 2020, I graduated from Spring Arbor University. I opened up about my sexuality and faith.

I started the ordination process for the Free Methodist Church, and I started attending

Asbury Theological Seminary. And he said this, he put up a tweet. I didn't go looking for this.

It was just, it was sent to me. But anyway, Elijah Blake says, quote, day eight of the revival, day eight, and my seminary friends are still leading worship.

Did you know, POC, people of color, women, and queer students have been leading worship all eight days?

And there's been multiple sources affirming the same thing, that there are homosexual students, queer students leading worship.

Now, the position of Asbury is that any sexual activity outside of a heterosexual marriage is sinful.

That's at least what they say on their statement of belief. But they're okay with this side

B Christianity, which means same -sex attracted, so they believe, and it's borne out in their student body because they have gay student, homosexual students who are same -sex attracted, but they say that they are celibate.

Now, Josh, you just hit on this. There is a problem when we, as Christians, we identify ourselves with our sin, right?

There's a problem when you say, I am a gay Christian. We should no more say that I'm a gay

Christian than I'm a bank robbing Christian, I'm a Christian who just likes to rob banks,

I'm a pedophile Christian, I'm a fill -in -the -blank

Christian, that's a problem, right? Or even I'm a Christian who desires to rob banks, but I don't act out on those desires to rob the bank, but I still hold on to these desires.

Yeah, right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when you look at the Scriptures, you don't see that sort of category.

You don't see this hyphenated sort of view of Christianity. You see that we are in Christ.

We are the children of God. But even further, you see the apostle Paul writing to the church at Corinth, and he's saying, such were some of you.

So he's pointing to their sin. He's saying that you have been delivered from that.

You are now changed. You are in Christ. And so this whole gay

Christian movement has been, you know, the talk of evangelicalism over the last, you know, five or six years, if you remember the

Revoice conference that really was a bombshell for the PCA, they are still to this present moment debating that very issue.

And so, you know, again, this is not just a PCA thing. This is all through evangelicalism across denominational borders.

We're seeing the impact of it. But the fact is, we should never allow for people to continue to live in their sin and to be identifying themselves by their sin and then be in good standing within the local church.

We should actually engage in, you know, the spirit of correction to reprove them, to rebuke them, to bring them into a right standing with God.

Right. And there are people who would say, oh, well, you know, it's

OK as long as you just don't act on your desires. It's OK to have the desires.

It's OK to have that orientation as long as you don't act on it. So you can be a gay

Christian who is, say, you're a man and you're attracted to other men. That's OK as long as you don't act on it.

But any desire for something that is inherently sinful, that desire is also inherently sinful, is it not?

It is. In fact, we see that language in the Bible. We see, you know, if we are, you know, thinking about a woman in an inappropriate way with lust in our heart, that we are committing adultery with her in our heart.

So, you know, we should never allow for people to consider themselves to be celibate, quote unquote, gay

Christians who have a desire that they're, you know, enabling to stay, you know, harbored in their heart, but yet just not acting it out.

I mean, we would not do that with a pedophile. We would not do that with a pastor who says, you know, I really just struggle at lunch.

I really want to take a lunch break and go down to the local bank. And I really want to rob the bank. I'm holding myself back, but I just want to be honest with the church.

I'm really struggling with that desire. I mean, look, this whole idea of we're just going to be really super transparent and, you know, honest, that we're just, you know, having these desires, but we're going to hold ourselves back from it.

That is absolutely in contradiction to the Scriptures. Well, and it's also, I mean, harmful in so many ways, because what we're saying is we want to be free from our sin, but not really fully freed from the dominion of sin, the reign of sin.

We want to be under Christ's dominion, but we're still going to kind of hold on to this other part of our old identity.

Even though we're not acting out of those things, why would we as Christians ever want to be identified with who we were before Christ?

You know, I think about the sin in my life before Christ, and I don't want to hold on to any of those things. And I want to continually repent of those things.

And I think so what this really is, it's really a matter of not wanting to fully call sin what the

Bible says is sin. What God's Word tells us is sin, to sort of minimize it, or, you know,

I think it probably has something to do with the individualism that just pervades our culture.

You know, this idea that, you know, this makes me unique, so I can kind of hold on to this identity, that I'm this kind of a

Christian. But that's really nothing that a Christian should desire to keep.

Right. And really, all of these things are related and reveal a fundamental unbiblical theology of the nature of sanctification and personal holiness.

Like Matt alluded to earlier, it's holiness not rooted in obedience to the

Word of God, not rooted in our lives being progressively changed over time by the

Word of God, by the regular means of grace. Rather, it's defining sanctification or holiness as this emotional experience.

And so that's why we're constantly searching after these emotional experiences, because we've come to define that as the definition of a relationship with God, a definition of worship, a definition of holiness.

And so we're hunting after these emotional experiences all the time, actually forsaking the regular ordinary means of grace and progressive sanctification in which we are daily submitting ourselves to the

Word of God and seeing actual growth in which our very desires are being transformed away from sinful desires to actually desiring the things of the

Word of God. Amen. And I would just add just to that, Justin, back to your original question, and then again to this idea of examining the fruit of this movement.

The very fact that we haven't seen these homosexuals or these queer students repenting of their homosexuality, and the very fact that we haven't seen these, quote unquote, women preachers repenting of their lack of understanding of biblical theology as it pertains to the calling of an elder or pastoral ministry.

The very fact that we have individuals like Rick Warren and others who are praising this movement seems to be indicative of the fact that this is a movement that lacks authenticity.

And so, again, I don't want to just broad brush every single person that's been on this campus for this movement, but I just want to be clear.

If we examine this movement through the very lens of Scripture and disconnect this emotional plug from us as we evaluate this,

I think we're going to see clearly that there's some massive problems here. Yeah. And I think if I could just add one more point, if we go back to the music discussion and we're talking about this emotional idea, this emotionally driven idea of sanctification and holiness, going back to the songs,

Justin, you mentioned the repeating of the same songs over and again, sort of the quintessential 7 -Eleven type songs.

Why is it that we haven't heard any doctrinally rich songs with multiple stanzas that teach doctrine, that teach sound theology, that are the songs that Christians have been singing for hundreds of years?

Why haven't we heard Amazing Grace? Why haven't we heard And Can It Be or Holy, Holy, Holy? But we're hearing these same kinds of songs that are written within the last two or three decades at most, and they're just on repeat.

And we see how the music drives the intensity level. You see dancing and you see clapping as everything just gets built up, built up, built up, and there's sort of this explosion moment.

And I think even the exhortations coming, at least from what I have seen,

I'm sure there's a lot of hours I haven't seen, but what I've seen when I watched, a lot of the exhortations coming from those kind of in leadership positions in this revival are, you know, this is real life.

Like this is where all Christians should be all the time. Well, what is it exactly that is real life? Like living a life of worship to God, yes, and amen, but if it means like building up these mountaintop experiences where we all come together and we just stay here for hours and we just do this over and over again, well, that actually isn't real life.

That's something else. That's a secret, this emotional, you know, experiential thing that isn't actually sustainable.

And going back to Scott's point earlier, if we look back at the Second Great Awakening and we see Charles Finney and the

Burnt Over District, there's a reason why it was called the Burnt Over District, because when you are burnt out with this sort of facade of seeking emotionalism and instead of true biblical holiness, then you will actually get burnt out.

I experienced that. I mean, you know, not to make this about experiences, but I experienced that very thing growing up in a

Pentecostal church and then being involved in the charismatic movement and even the Wesleyan holiness movement in college when

I was first converted. And it's a very much like burnt out is a very good way to describe it because you're coming back and you're trying to get the same sense of emotional high every time.

And if you don't get that, you know, you're not really worshiping God. So your worship of God is defined by how intensely you feel.

And that's just not sustainable. Yeah, that's right. It's a glorified youth summer camp.

You know, most of y 'all probably went on these. I did when I was a kid and you go to summer camp and you go off to, you know, wherever and spend a few days and you sing some

Michael W. Smith songs and you cry and slobber all over one another and you come back on this emotional high. And then, you know, a few days later, it's gone.

I think that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. That's been my concern in all of this. You know, people have criticized those of us who have offered cautionary words about what's happening at Asbury.

Like, why are you speaking out? Are you trying to, you know, criticize what's going on? And, you know,

I think both Justin and Josh, you've made comments about the fact that there are no doubt sincere people there.

No doubt. For sure. But my concern is that they're being taught that they need to constantly be hunting after these high emotional experiences, which is going to lead to the exact burnout that Matt was talking about.

You know, that's why we need to caution against this. And instead, tell people you need to go to, you know, join a local church.

Get plugged into a local church. Submit yourself to biblical elders. Sit under the preaching of God's Word.

Emotions are going to be there. Emotions are good. Emotions come and go. But that's not the essence of spiritual experience and growth.

We need to submit ourselves to those things that God has prescribed in His Word, within the context of the community of God's people in a local church.

That's what we ought to be urging these young people to do. Amen. Amen. Get plugged into a good, doctrinally sound, local church that is committed to expositional preaching.

Not topical, but committed to... That's the bread and butter of a church life, and worship expositional preaching.

A biblically qualified male elders. A church that does church discipline, per Matthew 18.

That's one of the things that I tell people to look for. If you want to get an idea of how seriously a church actually takes the

Word of God, then ask the leadership, what do you do with Matthew 18? Because that's hard.

And to further that point, how seriously they actually take the holiness of life and sanctification, right? So are you actually living a life of holiness?

Well, that's church discipline addresses that very issue. Yeah. On a corporate scale. Amen. And I want to kind of land the plane on the local church.

But before I do that, I want to, if we can go back, revisit something, what we were talking about earlier with the

SSA stuff, same -sex attracted gay Christian.

There are those who... In fact, I got an email last night from a professor who says, basically he equates, and I've heard this before, you have too, that they equate heterosexual attraction with homosexual attraction.

And they say, you have to mortify or you have to fight against both.

You have to, even a straight married man has to fight against looking at things that you shouldn't look at and that desire.

Hearty amen. Hearty amen to that. We've got to put to death the deeds of the flesh, take every thought captive, do all of those things.

Absolutely. But is it the same thing? Is it an apples to apples comparison when you equate that to homosexual attraction?

Because homosexual attraction is a distinctly post -fall attraction.

It's not inherently sinful for, say, a young single

Christian man to be attracted to a young single Christian woman. That's not a sinful attraction.

That's the way God designed it. That's not inherently sinful. But it is inherently sinful to be attracted to someone of the same gender, right?

Yeah, absolutely. It's against nature, right? It's against God's design.

It's against nature. So I agree with you completely, Justin. There are similarities.

If a man is lusting after a woman, that desire is sinful and ought to be mortified, just like a homosexual desire ought to be mortified.

But the desires themselves, attraction to someone of the opposite sex, that's how

God designed us. And attraction to someone of the same sex is actually contrary to the way that God has designed us.

It's completely different in that sense. There is no biblically righteous expression of same -sex attraction.

It's all against the Word of God. It's all sin. There are biblically righteous expressions of opposite -sex attraction and how that is played out.

So it's not apples -for -apples comparison. Yeah, good. Yeah, I'm glad we revisited that because I know that's an argument that a lot of people raise up in defense of, you know, it's okay to be a gay

Christian as long as you don't act on it. But it's not okay. It's not okay. How does this affect the local church?

And it goes along with what we were talking about, how people have been flocking to Asbury. And now it's apparently spread to other colleges like Texas A &M and some other places too.

But people are flocking to these locales to get the spirit, get an anointing or whatever, and take it back supposedly or however that works, which it doesn't.

But is this reflective of an underlying dissatisfaction with, as we've discussed, the ordinary means of grace and a dissatisfaction with the local church?

What are the impacts, as you men see them, potentially of what we're seeing with Asbury and these other campuses now with the local church?

Is it reflective of the dissatisfaction and what are the ripple effects there, potential effects?

Yeah, I will just begin by stating that I do believe it is indicative of that,

Justin. I think it's reflective of the fact that we have conditioned a lot of young people, in fact, generations,

I think, of young people who are now even adults that now have their own children at universities like Asbury to really long for the extraordinary, to really be looking for something beyond the local church, to be dissatisfied with preaching.

We have made a hard -line distinction, unfortunately, within evangelical circles between the pulpit and the guitar, that there is the worship and then there's the preaching.

And so you see that reflected in this movement. You see a deficient, a woeful lack of preaching and a whole lot of singing.

And as Matt said earlier, the singing has been very shallow. And so that's problematic.

And so I think that this movement actually hurts the church rather than helps the church for a couple of reasons.

Number one, I think that when you start thinking about, even if you go back to say

Acts chapter 2 at Pentecost, Pentecost, Acts 2, was never intended to cause the church to look for Pentecost 2 .0.

It was always intended for us to be driven to the local church.

So as I argued in my article, I think instead of looking for Acts 2, we should actually be looking to Titus 2 and various other passages in the

New Testament that teach about the order of the church, the ordinary means of grace, this idea of organizational and orderly worship that brings honor and glory to God, rather than immaturity and just a lack of order.

Furthermore, I think that it teaches young people that, as Matt touched on earlier, this idea of just a whole lot of shallow music, hyped up emotions, resulting in teenagers embracing one another and dancing and jumping up and down and all the things that are happening there.

I mean, when you go to the local church, now you have to ask yourself an honest question.

Okay, is next Sunday at the local church boring? And are we looking for something more than that?

Or should we be saying to our friends, hey, what we did down at the chapel service, we should start doing it here.

Right now in our local churches to really hype up everyone. So I think the problem with a movement like this is it can actually be detrimental to the way that God has designed

His church to gather and to grow under the ordinary means of grace on a week -to -week basis on the

Lord's Day. Yeah, I agree completely. And the question becomes or ought to become when we read the

New Testament, particularly the epistles, which are normative for us as Christians, as the church, what do those passages, what do those books in the

New Testament teach us ought to be our normal expectation today?

Our normal expectation ought to be what we've been talking about for a while now, and that is reading the

Word, sitting under the preaching of the Word, pursuing holiness, which means obedience to the

Scriptures. Can God choose to do extraordinary things?

Of course He can. Has God chosen to do that throughout history? I think He has.

But really, if you think about it, when those true biblical revivals have taken place, whether it be the

Reformation or the Great Awakening, these sorts of things, the extraordinariness of those was actually not in what was occurring.

It was just the amount that was occurring. What was occurring was just the regular things that the

New Testament prescribes and tells us to long for, and that is the preaching of God's Word, the conversion of sinners, and the sanctification of believers.

It just has happened to happen in large numbers in a focused amount of time at certain junctions in church history.

But nevertheless, what we ought to be seeking after is not those high emotional experiences.

We ought to be seeking after the regular day -to -day grind of submitting ourselves to the

Word of God. That is what the Holy Spirit has promised He will use in our lives to both convert sinners and sanctify us.

He will use the Word that He has inspired, and that takes work, and that takes regular submission to the

Word. That's what we ought to be pursuing in our lives as Christians. Yeah, and one more thing

I would just add to that. I agree with both of what you men are saying completely, and I think one other thing that we've seen in this

Asbury revival that goes right along with what we're saying here is there's sort of this, you know, like so many of these revival movements, so -called revival movements throughout church history, there's a sort of a glorification of youth culture, right?

And over and over again, you hear them just encouraging the Gen Z, the youth, this generation,

God is doing a special work in this generation, this Gen Z generation. And even to the point where they were boasting in the fact that this revival was being led by the students, like the faculty were pretty much hands off in this.

And so if we think about the fact that this is being led by a bunch of, I mean, immature, you know, students, and maybe some of them either aren't believers or just brand new believers, and they're the ones who are organizing and leading this revival movement.

Well, that also doesn't corroborate with what Scripture tells us, right? Titus 2 is mentioned by Josh earlier.

Like, what does that tell us? The older women should be teaching the younger women. The older men should be training the younger men.

It's not like we're going to, you know, glorify the youth as they're the ones that have the answer. They're the ones who are going to save us from ourselves or whatever.

But again, I think you see that not just here in Asbury, but you've seen that with so many movements throughout church history.

Yeah, I think that's a great insight there, Matt. And I agree, you know, some people may be thinking, well, what about what

Paul said to Timothy? Let no one despise you for your youth. And a lot of people don't realize that the reality of that text,

Timothy was probably saved somewhere as an older teenager, 16 to 18 years of age in that neighborhood, give or take.

And when Paul wrote that, that was a full 15 years later. So when Paul wrote to Timothy, let no one despise you for your youth,

Timothy was probably in his early 30s. So it's not like he was this, you know, teenage kid with braces on.

And, you know, he was a man in his early 30s when

Paul wrote that. Yeah, I was just going to add to that. He was also serving as a pastor.

He's shepherding souls in a very difficult pastoral ministry where he would have likely had very difficult people that he was having to deal with.

And so Paul is just encouraging him as a younger pastor to remember that, you know, he's called to be a shepherd.

And so obviously, this requires for him to take, you know, big, bold stands and to correct people who are living in sin.

That's obviously not, you know, what's happening here at this university campus. Right. And I think along with that, you know, the fact that he's a pastor, meeting the qualifications for a pastor, which, by the way, they are listed in one of the letters to Timothy.

And he's showing maturity. He is very likely very mature in his faith. And he may be serving as a pastor over men who are far older than him, who don't have the same kinds of spiritual maturity as him.

And so it's not an exhortation to, you know, don't let them despise you for your youthful immaturity, but rather for your age, despite the fact that you show, that you exhibit the spiritual maturity to actually be a pastor.

Right, because his argument is actually the opposite. Don't let them despise you for your immaturity and youthfulness.

Be an example of a believer. I think we all would praise a 18 to 22 -year -old who is standing up with maturity and setting an example of a godly believer.

We all would praise that. We're not praising them for their immaturity. We're praising them actually for their spiritual maturity.

Right. As defined by the Bible and specifically with pastors, as defined by the list of qualifications, therefore a pastor, right?

Not just like your ability to like really, you know, really sing really well and lead us in this worship experience.

Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, as cessationists, we very much affirm the working of the

Holy Spirit of God, that he is active, that he is doing his work, that he is convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, convicting of the truth of the gospel, granting faith and repentance.

And Christ is building his church, and every genuine Christian is indwelled by the

Holy Spirit, but Christ is building his church through these more, to use the term, ordinary means, and primarily through the local church, not through these, you know, things that happen at universities where there are no biblically qualified elders, where there is no church discipline.

You know, Asbury University is just that, it's a university, it's not a church, right?

I was just going to say, absolutely, Justin. I mean, obviously you can become a student, obviously at a university, and that's distinct from your church membership.

And how the Spirit of God moves, and how the Spirit of God uses a local church is quite distinct from a university.

Obviously, you know, higher education can have its pros, and it can be a wonderful thing, and it can benefit people.

But we should not be looking to, you know, some movement like this on a university campus as being the, you know, the means by which

God is going to really just usher in this great movement, this revival. Again, I think you mentioned it, as you stated, the ordinary means of grace.

We should never look to the ordinary means of grace as being, you know, boring, or that we need something more than that.

And again, we mentioned preaching earlier, and I would just argue that the preaching is the primary ordinary means of grace in the life of a church.

So the first mark of an authentic church is going to be the right preaching of the

Word of God. And unfortunately, in this movement that we've been talking about, you know, you just see a lack of preaching.

And what preaching has been at the center of this very movement on this university campus has been deficient.

It has been full of, you know, theological error or just sappy emotionalism.

And so, Justin, you mentioned earlier for the students to be looking for a church that preaches the

Bible. And how do you preach the Bible rightly and properly? Well, you do so in a verse -by -verse manner, which is called expository preaching.

And so, again, we need to be driving these students, many of which are going to be truly saved to local churches where they can grow as God has designed.

Yeah. Amen to that. Amen. And we're not saying that perhaps maybe there haven't been some people converted, you know, as whenever the gospel has been presented.

And I think it was at least on the final night, Thursday night, when so many people were watching and Rick Warren and Francis Chan were supposed to have been there.

They advertised it as such, but they weren't. So I don't know what the deal with that was. But anyway. I read on that,

Justin. Apparently, they decided not to come because they didn't want it to be. Or maybe the, I don't know, maybe the higher ups at the college asked them not to come.

So it wasn't about celebrities. That was what was the reason given for them not coming. They were scheduled for that, you know,

National Collegiate Day of Prayer. And then they didn't come because of that. Oh, OK. Thank you for that,

Matt. That's helpful. So, you know, in and of itself, as the gospel has been presented, and I think it's not been the regular fair there at Asbury by any stretch.

We've talked about that. But on occasion, it has been presented. Sure, the Holy Spirit could use that in and of itself to convert a sinner, convert a lost person to Christ.

But that is not a stamp of approval on this being a new move of the

Holy Spirit, endorsed by the Holy Spirit, led by the Holy Spirit at all. I mean, I've heard, for what it's worth,

I've heard Benny Hinn present the gospel well enough for someone to be converted.

I have no doubt there have been people converted listening to Benny Hinn preach because,

I mean, a broken clock is right twice a day. But that's not, he's still a false teacher.

He's still a false prophet. I mean, it's not an endorsement or commendation on any level of Benny Hinn. It's just that the gospel does, whenever it is presented, the

Holy Spirit can use that to convert someone. But it's not a stamp of approval, a divine stamp of approval on that person or that movement.

Yeah, this is a whole, the classic question, do the ends justify the means, right? The means that we're using, we get the gospel where we say it here and people can respond, and God can use those distorted means, obviously, because he's

God. He can use those distorted means when the gospel is preached to be able to save sinners. But we see, like we said earlier, the idea of using the right terminology, even the term repentance,

I heard used several times, and I can't remember exactly what time I was watching. Maybe it was that final night.

But even that, there's not an explanation of what that actually looks like. What does it mean to repent? You know, it's just repentance, you know, just kind of thrown out there.

That's right, Matt. And actually, since you brought that up, that jogs my memory, I'll edit this in. But I saw an interview that on a

YouTube channel, Conversations That Matter. There were two pastors that went to Asbury, and they stayed for several hours one day.

And one of the pastors made the point, they actually both did, that sin in Asbury, and repentance and sin in Asbury, the way it appears to have been handled, like you're a victim of sin rather than someone who is actively committing sin.

You need to be like delivered almost like in a spiritual warfare kind of way, an erroneous view of spiritual warfare.

You need to be delivered from some kind of oppression that is oppressing you, but you're the victim of it as opposed to the perpetrator of it who needs to repent from it.

Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. I went online to see if I could just watch some videos as well.

And I listened to the first sermon that was preached that apparently kicked this whole thing off.

And there's a lot of good things in the sermon. I didn't see any heresy from what

I listened to, but the emphasis was very similar to the testimony that we just played, where people have problems, they're broken, they're hurting, which is true, the effects of sin.

He doesn't say sin, I don't believe. He doesn't talk about hell. He doesn't talk about God's wrath. He doesn't talk about Christ, the justification in Christ.

He just talks about how some of us are hypocrites. And then when you think he's getting towards that cliff of repentance, he kind of turns around and does this, everyone's hurting and if you're broken, if you're hurting, then

God is with you. He hears you and it's very therapeutic. And the other videos that I was watching seemed to fit in with that, like a lot of singing, repetition, nothing wrong with singing songs, but it seemed like it was just one flavor.

And historically, revivals in biblically have an element of repentance in them.

What do you think, Pastor Keeler, about that? I mean, is there something lacking in this?

Or do you think it's a legitimate revival, but there's just, there's elements of maybe watered down doctrine present?

Well, I want to remain hopeful and I know that the Lord by his spirit can do work with messy means.

But I think what we heard in that clip that is common with what's going on here is that sin is something that we are victimized by rather than something that we have done against God.

And so if it's depression, it's a spirit of depression that's attacking me.

If it's anything else, it's something that has come against me that is hindering me from a closer relationship with God that needs to be prayed away.

When we were in line, we were in line with the Word of Faith Church. And then one thing

I'll add that we're hearing in all the worship leaders, and this may just be something that's true of most charismatic groups, is what's called the territory view of spiritual warfare, as opposed to the truth view.

And the truth view being the biblical view that we're in a spiritual warfare for truth in the hearts and minds of individuals and where sin is actual sin against the righteous and holy

God. Whereas the territory view, as Austin described it, is that sin is something imposed on me and it's done to me.

So Austin, I think you were telling me just a minute ago, you heard them casting out the spirit of depression or anxiety because if you're experiencing depression or anxiety, then that's caused by a territorial spirit that has caused that to happen in your life.

So therefore you must bind them. You're not being anxious. The spirit upon you is causing you to be anxious is effectively what happens.

Sin is deferred. So it's not something I repent of. It's something that I have to cast out or I have to be freed from by Christ.

That's interesting. Yeah. All right. Well, brothers, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Thank you for joining me. And do any of you have any final thoughts, concluding thoughts?

You know, Justin, my concluding thoughts would just be that, you know, I would like to exhort, you know, any student that might be, you know, at this university that's caught up in this movement, maybe a genuine believer, but obviously trying to make sense of what's happening.

This has been under national spotlight from all sorts of media outlets and personalities and it's been all over social media.

I guess my exhortation would be just what we've stated in this conversation, you know, just to be encouraged in the gospel of Jesus Christ, recognize that God has indeed, if they're a true believer, has saved them for his glory, but to not ever diminish the importance of the local church and to be discipled properly.

Again, just my own personal testimony as an example, I was converted sitting at work at my desk, listening to a preacher who was not a really good expositor and who did not have the best doctrine.

And so the Lord used that to bring me to faith, but I knew as I grew that, you know, the internet wasn't enough.

Obviously I needed the local church and I understood that, you know, I needed sound biblical theology.

So I would just exhort those students to really get themselves into a healthy biblical church and to grow in grace, to be satisfied with the regular preaching, the ordinary means of grace on an average

Lord's Day morning, not always, you know, just discontent with the local church and the ordinary aspect of the local church, not always craving the extraordinary, but instead just grow week by week as God has designed from the very beginning.

Yeah, I would just add to that. My experience of conversion was very similar to Josh's, you know, just like I mentioned earlier,

I was, you know, saved in the middle of being part of the Pentecostal and charismatic movement. And, you know, many of the ideas we've talked about today, the sort of the wrong views, that kind of made up my thinking about what

Christianity was and what it was supposed to be like. But it was the genuine gospel that I heard preached, that I went to the word and read myself, that actually convicted me of my sin, the spirit of God using his word to convict me of my sin, bringing me to an acknowledgement of my sin and my need to confess and repent.

And then I spent the next several years just really hungering for truth. And it took me a while to get there, you know, because of the influences, sort of the circles that I was in to really get to not just bits and pieces of the truth, but rather the whole counsel of God.

And so my exhortation along with what Josh has said would be for those of you who are truly converted, who have tasted and seen that the

Lord is good, to truly hunger after the word, study the word, study and strive to understand it and to apply it to your life in every aspect, not just to be satisfied with, you know, cherry picking verses here and there, or going back to the same passages over and over again, that might be your favorite verses that make you feel good, rather read the word and ask questions about the word.

It's a book, God gave it to us and it follows all the rules of language and writing of any other book.

We need to look at it. The difference is it's the living word, it's active, sharper than any two edged sword.

So it actually will change us and it transforms us. So just seek to understand, to read the word, to study the word and to apply it, to meditate on it and apply it to your life over and over again, day by day.

Yeah, amen, amen. Thank you for that, Matt. Scott, do you have any parting words for us, brother?

Yeah, no, I would echo both of those sentiments and just further emphasize the necessity of going to the word, the word is what the spirit has promised to use and especially let's align our expectation of what it means to commune with God, of what it means to grow in sanctification.

Let's align those expectations with what the word of God actually prescribes for us.

And so just rest in that and trust that that's what God is going to use in our lives.

Amen, amen. Brothers, thank you so much. I appreciate each of you. Thank you for your time.

And this has been very helpful. I hope it will be encouraging and edifying, helpful to those watching.

So dear ones, thank you so much for joining us. I think you can see through our discussion here, we bring these concerns out of genuine concern and not trying to be judgmental.

We want only what is best for God's people and for His church. So thank you so much for watching.

Until our next time together, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.