Episode 138: Revival, Evangelism, Abolitionism

To the Ruled Church Podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

How are the Browns doing this season?

I have no idea.

Have you lost all, just, I mean, when the NFL refuses to play on anything but Sunday, you lost all desire to watch?

Yeah, you know, when I first got saved, I was an avid Browns fan. I was probably still a season ticket holder the time that I got saved. And I was the kind of guy who I'd go to church every Sunday,.

Come home, watch football the rest of the day.

And that started to fade away just over time as a result of, I think, the combination of growing in a desire to just do more godly things, but also the Browns being really bad. They weren't fun to watch, that was my team, right?

So God blessed me in a sense. But, you know, about six, seven years ago, I adopted the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. I started to believe that the Sabbath was binding on me today. And I see watching the NFL on Sunday as, I see it as sin, so I don't do it.

So I have lost all touch almost with the NFL entirely. I just have no, I mean, I know the Cowboys are gonna embarrass themselves every year,.

I know that much.

And I know the Browns don't even embarrass themselves because there's no expectation that they would do anything well. And so, otherwise, I mostly watch my Buckeyes,.

And that's about it.

The Cowboys beat the Raiders on Monday night. And now, I mean, the Raiders. And now everybody's talking about, well, not everybody, but some people are talking about like, how they're gonna be good. It's like, oh, it's so, which I'm a lifelong Cowboys fan.

So anyway, all right, that's depressing though.

That's what the Cowboys do to you.

At least I got the Razorbacks though.

What are they doing?

Right, yeah, breaking my heart, you know?

So.

Yeah, up here in Ohio, we don't pay attention to the Division II schools like that.

Oh, come on, bro. That's not what we're talking about. Yeah, what we're talking about is those, that's because there's so much lostness up there, right? That's what we're talking about today.

Revival at Ohio State and the Need for Discernment

Welcome.

They've got a special on Amazon about the revival at Ohio State University right now.

I wanna hear about that in just a second.

I haven't watched it, but I've heard about it.

Have you heard about the revival?

Yeah.

Okay, let's talk about that. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson. I'm one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas. This is not the first time, not the second time.

I don't know how many times. You've been on this quite a few times. My friend, Michael Coughlin, I believe we met in 2018. I think it was like January, 2018. So we're looking at eight years, just on the cusp of eight years.

Grateful for you, brother. We've journeyed through several things together, theological, personal, friendship. I've been in your home. Haven't been in the new home. You've been in my home. So I'm grateful for you, brother.

Grateful to have you on again. We're gonna talk about evangelism on this episode, but tell me about what's going on. I mean, maybe I've seen a clip or something, but I really know almost nothing about what you're talking about with Ohio State.

Is there some sort of, is it genuine? What's going on?

The reports are that the football players, last year and this year.

Oh, that's right.

I heard last year. Okay, yep, keep me on.

Yeah, so last year and then again this year, the football players have a event in the fall where they supposedly preach the gospel. They give testimonies. There's a lot of singing and worship. And then hundreds of students who attend these events have then basically jumped in the waters of baptism that are just right there at these events.

I don't know if they have local church pastors there, how that all plays out, but it's becoming pretty well known that as a team, they basically are, it's almost like Christian nationalism at a football team level.

You just have this group of guys that are being led by some guys that are outspoken Christians. And then the whole team is kind of being looked at as a team that's pursuing Christ with each other throughout the season.

And they say things like our identity in Christ is more important than our identity as football players. And they say all the right things. And there's a few guys that are obviously genuine believers that are really saying some good things.

When you say obvious, would you just clarify for our listener, when you say obvious, genuine believers, why do you say that?

Well, I guess I have to be careful how I say that because what I mean is that they are saying all the right things that you would expect a believer to say.

Yeah.

They're not committing any major blunders like mixing works and faith and things like that.

Yeah, good. No, I just, no, it's, amen, good.

But

They're not just wearing a Bible verse on their or whatever. They're also affirming, okay, yeah.

Yeah, but to that point, I don't see any of these guys lives.

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

And then the second thing is that I do start to hear as they interview more guys, you start to hear more things where you think, all right, that guy doesn't sound like a believer to me though. He sounds like someone who's a bit confused.

Maybe he's Roman Catholic, whatever I might notice in a guy. And so the concern is that they're affirming their entire team and it's Christian because they're all praying together and talking about the Bible.

And some of the guys maybe aren't. And then you have these students on campus who, okay, you have the number one team in the nation, potentially back-to-back champions. They decide to have, if they had a rally about anything, hundreds of students would show up to hear them speak.

The topic wouldn't matter, right? And if they exhorted people, hey, do this, do that, people are gonna get excited and do it. And so you have people jumping into pools that are made saying they're getting baptized and you don't know what's real.

You don't know who's following up on these things. It reminds me almost of what Jonathan Edwards dealt with, like trying to follow up with people after the revival in the 18th century where he was trying to determine what is the real result of conversion in someone's life?

Are people really being converted or did they just have a moment where they got excited, said they wanted something and then there's no real lasting change? So we really don't know what's happening for sure, but it's hopeful things.

Hopeful but Careful About Revival Claims

So there's so much, like I had this idea of evangelism, but there's so much actually I wanna, we'll see how far this takes us. I wanna pry into, maybe you can give me some counsel here as we're talking, but, and maybe you felt this way before yourself, but how I felt is, I see these things, what was it a few years ago or was it last year or two years ago, Asbury or whatever?

See these things I see these things come up and here's where I'm at, brother. On the one hand, I'll alliterate. I don't wanna be the cold, cranky Calvinist. I don't wanna just be like, that's not revival, that's not revival, that's not revival.

You wouldn't know revival if it hit you in the face. Like, I don't wanna just be a jerk about it. I want, I understand that God has even historically moved in the lives of his people and there have been things that I wouldn't agree with as a result.

I'd be like, ah, you know. So I don't wanna be a stifler, that's one hand. But on the other hand, I think that the church today is quite undiscerning at times we're so eager, so hungry for revival maybe that we're really willing to let a lot of things slide.

So I don't know if you feel that tension any, I probably do lean more towards being the cranky guy. So I try to put that in check. But I don't know if you have that tension in your own life, but how would you navigate what I'm trying to say there?

What would you say?

I sense the same tension. And I think that there's a couple of principles involved. One is love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And so there is a sense where we want to be hopeful when a person who previously did not profess Christ, hears the true gospel, and then says, I want to believe this, I want this.

I think we wanna be hopeful about those things even amidst circumstances that don't seem ideal to us. Secondly, I think that we have a fear in our current culture of being wrong or of being the guy who is slow to pick something up.

So we live in a world where the moment somebody opens their mouth publicly within seconds, everybody states their black and white opinion on what was just said. You have to take a stand. Like if Joel Webben has a video, we all have to take a stance within five minutes or we're either accused of being against him or for him.

This is the way the world has now indoctrinated all of us to have to react to everything instead of carefully examining evidence, understanding what's going on, asking questions, and then making determinations.

We are all compelled to quickly decide, yes, it's real revival or no, it can't be real revival. And then you get more popular online, especially the faster you make that quick choice, the hot take, they call it, right?

And so I think that mature men of God need to resist the temptation to always have a hot take and resist the temptation to feel the need to definitively say like, yes, I'm discerning X, Y, Z, and I'm doing it right now.

I think we need to be okay saying, I wanna wait and investigate more and at the same time, I wanna be hopeful. And if it turns out after a year later, someone says, ha ha, Quatro, you were wrong about this one thing, it turns out it was a real revival or it turns out it wasn't, that's okay, I was wrong.

I think we just have to be okay with, we don't know all the things all the time and it's all right to just wait to make a determination.

I appreciate you saying that. We need to be, yeah, humility is a characteristic that ought to be more prevalent in all areas of our life, but particularly when it comes to, I don't know, maybe I'm just speaking a little more broadly, but yeah, that's good, that's helpful.

Recently, we had a meeting with a person. I try to keep this, this is public and the meeting is not public, so I'll keep this really close to the vest as it were, but we had a meeting with a person, someone says, how did the meeting go?

And it's like, well, the meeting didn't go bad, but I'm not willing to say yet that it went good, but exactly what you said there, I am hopeful. Okay, so then what would make the meeting go good? Well, if we see fruit, if we see fruit and fruit is defined, you don't just get to say anything's fruit, you're not like, well, it's true revival if we make it to Mars, you're like, wait, wait, what?

No, no, if there's actually biblical fruit that we have the scriptures teach us is true, then we'll know if revival's true, same with like meeting, is there biblical repentance? Is there a following in the path of scripture?

So anyway, rambling there, I don't know if you wanna say anything on that, we can move to evangelism.

I think just to piggyback on what you said, it's okay to see fruit individually as well and not be overly concerned about collective revival. So for example, these Ohio State players may be quite imperfectly preaching the gospel right now, some of them may not even be real believers, some maybe are not really qualified to be public teachers of Christianity.

There may be people hearing truth about Jesus that God is still using to lead them to his son and I can rejoice in that and you might not call it a revival if it's not 10 ,000 people or 1 ,000 or whatever we think the revival means, but for those maybe 10 or 20 people who God has revived their hearts, it is a revival and we can rejoice in that, we can rejoice that Christ is preached, whether it's in pretense or in truth and we can know that the gospel is the power of God and the salvation regardless of the messenger.

And we have to be really careful, I know in our world too, like there are some people who are gonna have some theological disagreements, even important theological disagreements, but they are actually not just the words, they are actually preaching the true gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and that is backed up by their life of, you know, they're not living some debased ungodly life and we have to be, not only do we have to be okay, like we rejoice, like Paul says, that Christ is preached and if God is pleased to bring in his elect through that means we give glory to him.

I know when I was saved, I'll just say this, when I was saved brother, it wasn't from a 1689 reformed Baptist preaching, I can tell you that. And so praise God that the gospel is being proclaimed and that's probably a good segue there into evangelism.

Evangelism in a Small Town and the Call to Local Witness

Why don't you tell us, I mean, we've talked about your evangelism before, why don't you just give us a little bit of update about how things have been going? Anything of note that you wanna mention recently in your time?

What are you doing? What are you seeing out there? I know since Charlie Kirk's death, there has been a lot of murmuring in the, just, hey, are we gonna really see some sort of spiritual awakening in our nation and so what are you seeing?

How are things going? I'm turning it over to you.

Well, people don't know me that are listening right now. One of the things that happened was, you remember two years ago, we moved and we did move from a city to a rural church. And so here I am on the rural church podcast and I attend a rural church, I'm a member.

And so one of the big things that has changed for my life, I still like to go preach at Ohio State and big events like that, is that I'm now more interested in, I've always been interested in local evangelism.

And so I'm trying to come up with creative ways to preach and evangelize in a small town. Remind me, how big's Perryville?

It is, depending on which side of town you come in, it's either 1 ,400 people or 1 ,300 people.

Okay, so where I live is 700 and it's a small town and there's a few things that are very different in a small town like Perryville or LaRue that I'd never experienced before. And one of those is you see these same people over and over all the time.

And so it's easy in the big city context to preach the gospel, go home and you never see the same people again. Just the same two people work at the gas station all week long, every week here. And so it's a different level of neighborliness that we're having when we're talking to people about the gospel.

And so what we're really hoping to do is to give people the gospel and then because of the circumstance, continuously be adorning the gospel with our good behavior, our good works, our kind speech, all the things that we're supposed to do as Christians that is amplified in my life right now in the sense of local evangelism.

I'm not just trying to blow up a small town because a lot of people aren't Christian. We live in these areas where most people have what's called a Christian memory. They've been baptized, they've gone to church and they're the kind of people who when you talk to them about the Lord, they will affirm that Jesus is Lord.

They will affirm that he is God, that he came and died on a cross and rose again. And it takes more effort to draw out of them in a sense what their idols are when you're recognizing that you're talking to somebody that doesn't seem to believe, they're not a member of a church, they don't even attend church, their life doesn't really outwardly look Christian but then when you talk to them, everything about them is Christian in their profession.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

And so it takes a more patient and I'd even say wise person, I think it's Proverbs 20 verse five, which is one of my new verses that has really been making me think a lot, reads the intentions of a man's heart are deep waters but a man of understanding draws them out.

So I wanna be a man of understanding. I'm gonna draw the intentions of other people's hearts out which takes more than just preaching. It takes listening and talking and getting to know people. So it's something that's changed for me being in the small town context.

And then the other thing, well, here, why don't you comment on that if you like.

Yeah, no, no, no, yeah, go, just keep, yeah. They hear enough from me, bro.

You're good.

The other thing is that in the past few years, more and more people in Ohio especially have adopted the stance of abolitionism in regard to abortion. And in the past few years, I have been with more groups of people that intentionally go on the street.

And rather than just approach people with the intention of attempting to evangelize them, we are approaching people and usually holding signs with the intention of using abortion and the evil of abortion as either a launching point to start discussion, to get to the gospel.

Or when we talk to Christians, to try to exhort Christians to maybe a different way of thinking than they've been taught about how to deal with abortion. And so I've done a lot more of that in the past two and a half years than I had the previous 10 years where it's just really the hot button issue.

I've noticed more and more Christians are open to discussing how to deal with abortion. And I've also noticed more non-believers who normally would ignore me are more triggered by talk of abortion. And it actually gets a better opportunity to share the gospel with them.

When you say that about, restate what you mean there about the Christian, you say that, how'd you say it again? You're noticing more. Christians are what now?

Open to discussing anti-abortion strategy from a biblical standpoint. For years, the pro-life movement, and there's a lot of resources that can help people understand what some of these big terms, I'm saying pro-life and abolition, and there's differences that we don't have to get into all the details, but for years, the pro-life movement was really the only big anti-abortion movement in Ohio.

And if you were a Christian, you just joined the pro-life movement. That was just what you did.

I mean, who wants to say they're not pro-life?

Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's well-named. Who wants to say they're not pro-choice?

Yeah, right, yeah.

These things are named for this reason. And so when I talk to Christians who are genuine believers, I'll say, what do you think about abortion? Oh, well, they hate it. They think it's murder. They think it's wrong.

And then we can talk to them and say, well, did you know that the pro-life movement in general, not every pro-life individual, but the pro-life movement in general opposes this bill that would abolish abortion in your state?

And they say, oh no, I didn't know that. And we can start to ask them, well, did you know that this or this has happened? And we point to real events and we talk about real concepts that have been made public now by the pro-life movement and abolitionist movement effectively having public debates.

And a lot of people, what I found is they say, well, I agree with the abolition side. I didn't have to convince them. I just presented, here's what this side generally teaches. Here's what this side generally teaches.

And a lot of Christians say, well, I think abolition's closer to what the Bible says. And so that's been a fun way to reach out to people and in a sense, disciple other Christians even outside your own local church while being on the street, also doing evangelism.

If only there was a place that people would go to to ask questions about abolitionism. Do you know of any place?

I am shocked and glad that you asked. I recently developed a website that you can find at abolition .ing. So I've made abolition a present participle verb. Abolitioning, and you can get there just on the browser, abolition .ing.

And what it is, is it's a question and answer website, kind of like gotquestions .org, where I'm intending to load as many questions and answers about abolition of abortion, pregnancy, birth control, anything related to that.

And it's intended to just be a resource hub for anybody who maybe could stumble upon it or for people that know about it already. And so I do invite anyone listening, if you wanna contribute questions or answers or both, I'm open to adding any good content that I can.

And some of it is right now being generated by AIs that I've trained with abolition work. And it's interesting that sometimes the AI gives you an amazingly good answer first try. And sometimes I really don't like its response.

And so I would like more human authors. And I think readers would appreciate more human authors, but I'm hoping that even AI generated answers will flood the internet with just more good text.

About abolition.

That sounds like a movie, Michael and his team of AI. I don't know.

Yeah, there's been movies about this.

Yeah, I was about to say, usually it's bad. Okay, so let me, with all this whole discussion, right now I'm preaching through Acts and I've made this comment a couple of different times. So I hope you agree with it.

But I cannot imagine the apostles and the early church railing against the sins of their culture without having a priority and a connection in all revolving around the proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

So what I'm saying is we must preach law.

Amen.

And we preach law to our nation. And we preach, there is a sense that we ought to and we must preach against the sins of a nation and the sins of a society and the sins of a culture. What I want to ask you and give your thoughts like, what would you say to those who are preaching, let's say anti-abortion or anything?

But the gospel seems to be missing. Maybe there's the law, there's no gospel. Anyway, you want to comment on that thoughts, thoughts on that and how does this, I guess what I'm asking is, you've already really covered this, but just to be clear again, how does this connect?

How does an abolitionist or abolitionism connect with evangelism?

I think it connects the way you described it in that we use the preaching of the law and we preach the law wisely. Anyone who uses the law and uses it lawfully is commended, right? But those who want to be teachers of the law, but pervert it and do things that aren't the way God has told us to use it are in error.

I want to look up that verse actually. We know that the law is good. If one uses it legitimately or lawfully, it's not enacted for the righteous, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for killers of father or mother, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for anyone else who is averse to sound teaching.

It's 1 Timothy 1. And then after outlining, I believe the 10 commandments for us and for Timothy and for saying that the law is laid down for the ungodly, Paul then adds, if you're averse to sound teaching, he says, that agrees with the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

And there's this sense that the law and the gospel are never to be mixed, but our confession says they sweetly comply or the law sweetly complies with the gospel. So there is a sense that when we bring the law to people, we are being righteous, we are exposing their sins, we're holding up for them the mirror that shows them their heart.

And if we believe what the New Testament says, we're exhorted to do, basically the great commission, then we should want to give the gospel because it is the gospel that accords with the sound teaching.

It's the gospel that can save people. The preaching of the law without the gospel is utterly damning to others. And I don't think anyone has a commission from God to simply be a preacher of judgment.

Yeah.

Yeah. And so the balance I want to have, because I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear anybody saying like, I'm not saying you've preached with me, we've preached together, we know each other. So you know this, but make sure our listeners are like, I'm not saying that what we need to do is just go out there and say, Jesus loves you.

God loves you. Has a wonderful plan for your life or whatever. Like, no, no, no. Preach the law. You know, we had, so in Arkansas, and it's just my fear, brother, in Arkansas, there's a big, big push.

It got, it got pushed down, but got taken away because of a technicality. But there's a big push to constitutionalize abortion in our state. And there's a big bullseye on our state because, you know, we're in the South, we're in the Bible belt, you know.

And so technicality got thrown out. I assume it's going to come back around in 2026. I guess, I'm not sure. I don't think it would have to wait till 2028. Anyway, so I assume it's coming around next year.

Well, in 2024, when it came around, we went out and we preached and we preached. They came because they came, they came to our town. They came to Perryville, Arkansas, to gather signatures for their wicked bill.

And honestly, that made me mad. And I think it was a righteous anger. And so we went and we stood and we preached and we preached, this is wicked. But we did not preach the wickedness of this without the hope of Christ.

You know, the only type of people that God justifies, Michael.

The ungodly.

The ungodly. And so, yeah, I think there's a connection. So all I'm saying, and I don't know if this is even an issue out there with, but I have seen people, or at least clips I've seen sometimes. And I understand you share a clip.

It's like, you can't share the fullness of the whole preaching. But I've seen clips sometimes I thought, well, I hope they got to the gospel, you know. What they're saying is right, what they're saying is true.

And I say amen to it, but I hope they got to the gospel. So all I'm saying is, would you say yes or no, or maybe you need to nuance it some, but would you say that you can separate your abolitionism from evangelism?

I think you can in a context. And that is that when we preach the law, the law has multiple uses. One is go master to lead people to Christ. One is for the Christian to know what God approves of. And there's another use of the law, which is the general restraining of evil in society.

And by proclaiming for people the truth of the law, even apart from the gospel, it can be used by God to cause those that are fearful of judgment to try to behave a little better. And I would much rather a woman, like if you had two women, and both of them are not gonna get saved, I'd much rather they keep their baby than not keep their baby.

Like I'd rather there be less murder than more murder. And so I do think you can preach the law at times without being overly concerned with making sure you get the gospel into that situation. Just don't call it evangelism when you do that.

And secondly, if a guy is a a guy's running for office and he's making a law about speed limits, or, you know, I'm just picking a example off the top of my head. So it might not make sense. But in the civil sense, we don't tell people every single time you deal with legal matters, you have to invoke the gospel.

You know, when they're defining what grand theft is, maybe they wanna change the monetary amount, due to inflation or something. We don't say, well, make sure you put the gospel in there. You know, there's certain aspects of society that this is just what we need to do.

And so if somebody is in my town trying to promote abortion, I feel like in a sense, I can politically just oppose him and I don't have to be gospel-y at the time. Now, I would think I try to be as often as I can personally.

But there is a sense that, you know, somebody's breaking in my buddy's house, I don't need the police to make sure they get the gospel to him. Like, come get the guy. And so there is a sense where the restraining of evil is part of the use of the law.

And that's something that we try to enact in the civil sphere as abolitionists. That's one of the things we're working toward.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think that, yeah, I think that the difference, understanding the different spheres that we live in is what is important. You know, I would argue, I guess one thing I'm trying to make a case for is the church has a clear responsibility in the proclamation of the gospel.

Agreed.

But the members of the church, I love what you said, I think you had a great example. For example, Dusty Devers, who I've met and I know, and a good brother, I've lost touch maybe last year, a couple of years, but it's a good brother, faithful, a senator, right?

Oklahoma State Center. And do I expect that, like he wants to introduce or he has introduced like banning pornography.

Amen.

And the abolition of abortion.

Amen.

I do not expect that when he is in that realm, that in each one of these bills, he also has to have the gospel, right? So I think that's good. It's good, good, good clarification. But what exhortation, we're going to kind of land the plane here.

What exhortation would you give to churches when it comes to evangelism? And then maybe if you want to talk about abolitionism as well, but what kind of exhortation would you give? You've given these before on the podcast, so maybe some of them, it'll be a refresher, but maybe there's new folks listening.

What kind of exhortation you want to give on? And by evangelism, we're saying the public proclamation of the gospel. I know there are, maybe it's kind of a broad category for some, but we're not just talking about, okay, I'm passing out water bottles in the name of Jesus, but we're talking about giving the gospel, preaching the gospel.

What kind of exhortation do you want to give?

I have several. One is to be cautious that you do not mix inviting people to your church as evangelism. I think some people have very good churches that preach the gospel well every week, and they think, well, if I just invite the guy to church, I'm getting them there.

And I think we need to recognize that that's not evangelism. That may lead to evangelism,.

But it's not.

I would say churches need to take this more seriously. A lot of people treat evangelism like just one thing that some Christians decide to do. I think that evangelism is something God has commissioned his church to do.

And that each local church should have some kind of collective plan for reaching out to the community and the surrounding areas with the gospel. And that may mean certain individuals do more than others in the actual speaking or preaching or handing out tracts.

There's multiple ways to give the gospel out. There may be some people who are less inclined, naturally or gifted, but the whole church should have an idea that this is what we are doing. This isn't just what Michael's doing.