The Asbury Revival?

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Today on The Theology Throwdown, we are going to talk about, well, a topic that many others have talked about before, but we're going to give you a lot of different views maybe on it.

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The Asbury Revival. We're going to talk about what is a revival, what's a revival look like, how can we identify one and was the

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Asbury Revival a real revival or not? There's been lots of discussion on it, but this is going to be a theology throwdown.

00:57

Welcome to another

01:15

Theology Throwdown. This is where all of the podcasters at the Christian Podcast Community get together and discuss theology.

01:23

We don't all agree on all of our theology. We agree on the main premise, the main tenets of Christianity, but we have over 50 podcasts.

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I think we're getting close to 60 now. We don't all agree theologically on everything, but we do agree that Christ should be glorified in everything.

01:47

That's what we hope to do as we talk about the Asbury Revival. That's the topic for tonight.

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What I want to do is, as we usually do, start off by introducing those podcasters who are here in discussion with us tonight so that you get to hear their names and voices and know their podcasts.

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You would go to christianpodcastcommunity .org, check out all the shows, and you'll be able to find each of these podcasts out there.

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We do have some first -timers to this podcast with us, so we're going to get to them as well.

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Garrett, I'm going to ask you, you were the first one in, if you want to introduce yourself and your podcast for us.

02:28

Sure. I'm Garrett Hampton. I'm the producer of the Schoolhouse Rocked podcast, which is hosted by my beautiful wife,

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Yvette, and is all about homeschooling and Christian worldview. I'm also the director of Schoolhouse Rocked, the homeschool revolution of feature -length documentary on homeschooling.

02:46

You can stream that for free now at schoolhouserockedmovie .com. Okay. You're wearing an awesome t -shirt, so I just got to do it.

02:56

Could you tell everyone what your t -shirt says for those who are listening and then tell them where they can get that for homeschoolers that need that t -shirt because, well,

03:05

I think they do. Yeah. Every homeschool dad needs this t -shirt, especially. It says,

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Proudly Raising Unsocialist Homeschoolers. You can get it at our store, schoolhouserocked .com.

03:18

Oh, that's so good. Aaron, you're next up. If you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and your podcasts, because you have two.

03:27

Yes, sir. Well, my name is Aaron Michael Brewster, otherwise known as AM Brewster. My very first podcast was called

03:35

Truth, Love, Parent. It's been going now since 2016, over 500 episodes.

03:43

There's a ton of stuff that happens in parenting, but I'd say I think we've talked about a great deal of it.

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In fact, our most recent series was a kind of an overview of the past 500 or so episodes.

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It's called the Biblical Parenting Essentials. So I'd encourage you, if you're a first time listener, go check that out.

04:02

And then we have the Celebration of God. And Celebration of God is all about worshiping

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God better this year than we did last year. It's all about worship, discipleship, maturity, growth.

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And we do that both in the high days, the holidays on the

04:20

Christian calendar, but we also worship God in the low moments, those mundane, weird

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Thursday afternoon at 2 .37 times. So those are the two podcasts.

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And I will just say something really exciting. If you go to evermindministries .com,

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that's where you can see all of the ministries. Truth, Love, Family is part of that, and Yalong Celebration of God is part of that.

04:43

But I'll say that we are producing an app. So excited. The podcasts, you can listen to them on the app, but you can also get access to our growing library of resources.

04:55

So the app is actually live. You can search the iOS app store for that right now.

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But anyway, it's growing, and I'm super excited about all that. And what's the name of that app? The app is actually just called

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Evermind Ministries. And the logo is wrong.

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The wrong logo updated. So I have to update that, whatever else. But yeah, I'm super excited about all the cool stuff.

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And you can listen to the podcasts on there as well. All right. You just got one more download. And see, I always thought the

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M in AM Brewster was mischievous, but okay. Malicious.

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That works too. So for the first timer we have here, we can welcome Wayne to the

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Theology Throwdown. If you don't mind introducing yourself, your podcast, and give folks a little bit of background what your podcast seeks to do.

05:45

All right. I'm Wayne Floyd. I'm the host of the Faith Comes From Hearing podcast. My podcast is a combination of reading

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Puritan prayers from Valley of Vision. It's Spurgeon's morning and evening devotional.

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We've used a couple of different, read the Bible in a year plan, reading through in the

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Legacy Standard Bible, been focusing on that one since it is the most recent translation. And I've also been working through Bible study.

06:17

I've been swapping back and forth between Bible studying, working verse by verse. I did through the end of Ephesians, and we've been going through John.

06:24

We're going through the Gospel of John now. But also doing, I took a break from that for a while. And we read through Thomas Watson's The Godly Man's Picture.

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So did that as well, reading from the Puritan. So that's what it is. And it's just the purpose. A big purpose of it is

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I've run across people. My wife is one of these. Due to issues she has, as much as she loves to read, sometimes she can't sit down and focus to read the

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Bible, but she loves to take it in. So it's been a help when she could listen to it. So that was kind of what motivated me to start being able to do that.

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And it's become kind of a key resource for my home church, for Vail Valley Baptist Church in Vail, Arizona.

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It's become part of that and pushed out by our church itself to try to support and provide for the families there, to get their families involved as a group to sit down and listen and be exposed, both their children as well as the adults, to the

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Scripture and the Puritans. Yeah, and I actually enjoyed the fact of what you're doing.

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And you joined us because, you know, as you know, you know Squirrel Chatter. He read through the

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LSB in a year, and it was hard for him to do that with travel and things. But my habit is first thing in the morning,

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I listen to the Bible. I go through a different reading plan each year. I listen to the whole Bible in a year, listening and reading first thing in the morning.

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And then later in the day, usually in the evening, I will read and study and go through.

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I usually go to a different study Bible a year, and I read the study notes and all that. But with Squirrel, I was able to also listen through the

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Bible with that podcast. And now you fill that role. So, I appreciate that. It is good.

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It's for folks who want to just hear the Bible read. And you have a morning and evening, but you put it into one episode.

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So, folks that listen, they can listen to the morning, stop it, and then listen in the evening and get the same podcast episode each day with a morning and evening session.

08:31

So, check that out. Spencer, half of your podcast is here. I'll let you introduce yourself.

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And when your beautiful bride is done taking care of the kids, she'll probably join us. So, dinner time is there in that household.

08:46

I certainly hope so. But yeah, happy to be here. This is an exciting topic. But I am

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Spencer. We, well, I, along with my, I'll say beautiful wife, because it was already mentioned, someone had a beautiful wife.

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So, I don't want to undersell my wife. No, we all think all of our wives are beautiful. Mine's more beautiful than yours,

09:06

I'll admit. But my wife is more beautiful. Mine's more beautiful. It's good. We found a disagreement, because I'm certain that mine is.

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I don't have a wife. I'm proud of you, Melissa. That's good.

09:19

Yeah. So, yeah, I, along with my wife, though, we host the Religionless Christianity Podcast.

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We kind of do two different podcasts in one. Monday through Friday, we do five -minute daily devotionals, just verse by verse through the

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Bible, just giving our thoughts on what it means to us, what we take away from it.

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We're not pastors, theologians. We're just Christians reading the

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Bible. And that's kind of the way our devotionals come across. And then on Saturday, me and Nikki take a look at the news of the week from our

09:54

Christian perspective and try to figure out how we can digest this increasingly secular and religionless world around us, trying to keep our eyes fixed on Christ.

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That's the goal. So, we do those six days a week. And now that we're here,

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I used to do a Bible study at the jail. You're saying, where's here? Because folks that may not listen to your podcast may not know you just moved.

10:21

And we did just move. We're in Albuquerque now. So, why that's important is, in our previous location,

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I did a Bible study on Monday nights at the local jail, so I could never make theology throwdowns, though I wanted to.

10:36

And now we're free to do that. So, I'm not going to promise I'll be here every Monday, but we will do our best.

10:43

We're just glad they let you out of jail. Yeah, you know, it was really beneficial. I got that jailhouse religion, hoping it carries over.

10:52

And so, for folks to know, you move around a lot because you serve our country in military, and we do thank you for your service.

10:59

Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate that. It's been a rocky road these last few years, but we're holding on.

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Yeah. Stephen Dew, you actually have two podcasts, so introduce them.

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Well, actually, as of today, I only have one podcast, so yeah. But looking at starting up another one with the elders of our church, we talked about that yesterday, so maybe replacing the one.

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But the one that we just dissolved was the Christian Foundry podcast. Me and several guys from our church had a podcast together, but as of today, that's no longer.

11:35

But I do host the Doctrine Matters podcast, and we talk about all things.

11:41

Sometimes I feel like I should change the name to Box of Chocolates podcast or something, because you really never know what you're going to get with mine.

11:48

For example, I did an episode on marriage and then followed that up with some commentary about the

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Nashville shooting and where was God. And then I've got one in the tank here about the gospel and essentially thinking that people in your area or location know the gospel, but many of them likely don't.

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As I was evangelizing this weekend, it struck me again how many people just really don't understand the gospel, and it's truly heartbreaking.

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So really just taking a look at the scriptures and life and looking at things that are happening in our culture through a biblical lens and just helping people understand more about God and true biblical doctrine and anything else we can get into.

12:32

All right. Next on the list is Melissa Lex. Oh, thank you,

12:37

Mr. Rappaport. And I should say Melissa is one of the admins at Christian Podcast Community, so we'll give that title to our newest admin.

12:48

Newest, yes. And it's going great, by the way. My podcast is Thoroughly Equipped.

12:54

It's a podcast for women. We look at women's ministry as a whole, and then more specifically the

13:01

Bible studies within it. We basically take a Beth Moore study, which

13:07

I haven't done yet, but I will, take Bible study and just kind of go through scripture, and I critique it, basically.

13:16

Right now I'm doing the If Gathering. I've been doing it for a whole season, and it looks like it might go more into my third season, or I'm just going to extend my second season really long.

13:28

But we just opened up the fourth part where we're looking at the analytical tools that the

13:37

If ministry brings in, and the last one we looked at was psychology.

13:43

I looked at Dr. Kurt Thompson, who's a psychiatrist, and he talks about the soul, and I compare his book to scripture and what he teaches.

13:56

Now I'm going to be getting into social justice in this next one, so that's going to be interesting and a lot of information.

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And so for some of the guys, you may not know what the If Gathering is, but the ladies in your church probably do.

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This is a huge thing, and I did not know anything about it before Melissa started doing the research.

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So if you don't know, I would encourage you to go to Thoroughly Equipped and go back to the beginning where she started that and go through all of that.

14:25

Last but not least, the other admin for the Christian podcast community is

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Eve Franklin. Actually, I'm not last. You're last. Oh, well. I'm Eve Franklin, and I co -host the podcast

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Are You Just Watching?, which we take usually secular movies and apply the

14:45

Christian worldview to them. Our last episode was actually on Jesus Revolution, which is sort of a

14:54

Christian movie. Anyway, it was an interesting discussion, because my co -host and I actually disagreed quite a bit as we covered that movie, and some of that might actually bleed over into tonight's discussion.

15:05

So it will be very interesting. So see, Eve's job is to correct me and keep me honest.

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I'm the other admin and the founder of the Christian podcast community.

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I have the most podcasts, I think, because I have five. Not all of them are in right now.

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This is one of the five. I have a podcast called So You Want to Be a Podcaster for any who want to learn about podcasting.

15:31

And then I have my main one is the Andrew Rapaport's Rap Report. Now, there was a daily, and I haven't been doing that one.

15:39

I know it was two minutes a day, five days a week, but that actually took more time. It takes a lot more work to do two minutes and be that concise on an issue.

15:49

But you can go back and binge those. There's over 500 episodes answering a lot of apologetical questions.

15:55

And a lot of times what I started to do is put all of what I said, the transcript, right in the show notes so you can have it there.

16:02

But my Andrew Rapaport Rap Report is a one hour, roughly, podcast. We deal with a lot of different...

16:08

Main focus is dealing with biblical interpretations and applications to everything that we have in Christian living and life.

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So the other one that I do is a live show, Apologetics Live. You can go to ApologeticsLive .com.

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You can join that any Thursday night, eight o 'clock Eastern time. We usually go about two hours.

16:27

We usually have a topic or a guest. And then you can ask any question. I say on that show, I can answer any question you have about God and the

16:35

Bible, because I don't know is a perfectly good answer. But we do get some good...

16:43

The last show I did was a debate on whether the

16:48

Trinity is a biblical concept with, I think it was five or six black

16:53

Hebrew Israelites. So that was quite interesting. You'll see what some of them believe.

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And I'll just say that it was a logical soup, logical fallacy soup on display.

17:09

I mean, there's so many things wrong. But those are the podcasts I have.

17:15

And on this one, we discuss theology. So let's talk about revival. Some of you have already discussed this on your shows.

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You've discussed revival, specifically this Asbury revival. And for folks who may not have known, maybe you haven't been following what goes on in Christian news, but at Asbury University, they had a day that they had a revival that occurred where they had chapels, it happens in many

17:49

Christian universities, and this time no one went home. And they stayed and they just kept playing some music and people were praying.

17:58

And then what ended up happening was people were coming from all over the country to come to Asbury to be part of this revival.

18:07

And then the school had shut that down. And so we wanted to discuss what a revival is and does this fit.

18:16

There's been lots of discussion with this. There's been a lot of support. There's been a lot of criticism. And so I don't know where the others here are going to land on this.

18:28

But, and I should have said this before we started recording, especially for Wayne's sake, but if you guys have questions, like if you want to speak, there is a way that you could raise your hand.

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All you have to do is, I think it's click on the gestures and there's a raising hand and that way we know.

18:50

Or you could physically do it and I'll see you. But I want to start with kind of to define a revival.

18:56

And Steve, I think you did this on your podcast a bit. So if I'm going to ask you to start us off, when we talk about a revival, what is a revival?

19:08

Well, I think for many, you have to understand that a revival is more of a spiritual reawakening of sorts.

19:18

And one of the biggest things that needs to happen in a revival is a confession of sin, not only individual sin, but corporate sin.

19:28

And I think there needs to be not only a confession, but a repentance of sin. And to have a true revival, the gospel needs to be preached.

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Christ crucified needs to be preached and proclaimed. And I just think from that alone, in a true revival, the

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Holy Spirit moves. Sin is confessed, and it is done in different ways,

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I guess. But I think confession and repentance have to be there. And of course, there's a lot more we can say that it isn't, in my opinion, as we relate it to the

20:02

Asbury revival. But just in a short sentence, I know that everybody else has some thoughts, but a spiritual reawakening that must include the gospel and must include confession of sin and repentance, turning from that sin and following Christ.

20:18

Okay, so anyone want to add to that definition? I know, Spencer, you talked about this on your show. Anything you want to add to that?

20:25

Yeah, absolutely. And I will just mention beforehand, my most certainly beautiful wife has joined us now.

20:31

So Nikki is in the house. So if you maybe want to give your thoughts first on it, or if you want me to go, why don't you go?

20:39

I was just, yeah, I'm in agreement with Steve there, right? Yes. Yeah, the word needs to be preached.

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I was just thinking how people are just drawn to anything different or new.

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People aren't traveling to hear the word of God. They're traveling to have an experience.

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So I think the revival, like he said, the gospel, the word of God is what, it's the power of God unto salvation.

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That's just my main thing. So we're just skeptical if it's not about the word of God.

21:20

So I got a definition of, so first off, I will say you guys are certainly underselling this

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Asbury thing. I don't know if you saw the gospel coalition. They proclaimed it to be the Asbury awakening.

21:31

So how dare you undersell what's happened there? But just, this is from Crosswalk and they mentioned that a revival.

21:39

Some folks may not pick up on your sense of humor and your sarcasm there.

21:44

Sorry, a little dry humor there. I think that was tongue firmly planted into cheek or would that be?

21:49

Yes, yes, yes. I don't know what the difference between a revival and an awakening is other than the gospel coalition's editorial board.

22:00

But it says a revival is when a church comes back to life and when the church becomes what it was always meant to be.

22:07

So that may not be an accurate definition, but that's the one I saw. And this was my biggest problem the whole time with this.

22:13

And we'll probably get into this more. These are people at a Christian university actively seeking

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God, going above and beyond what most people would do. They're in church confessing their sins.

22:27

Like why they're already, you would seem to think revived. What are they being revived to?

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I mean, again, the faith could not be genuine, but they're actively seeking God. They weren't far from him, you would assume.

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So it seemed bizarre for the revival in that sense to take place there. Not to mention all the other stuff with Asbury we make it into.

22:49

Yeah, we'll get into Asbury specifically. But Aaron, your thoughts. So you're right.

22:57

The word revival doesn't show up really in the, I think you said that earlier.

23:03

I mean, the word revival doesn't really show up in the scriptures. However, David, a number of psalmists used the word quite frequently.

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And I'm going to kind of repeat a little bit what's already been said, but do it right from the scriptures. David, he begs

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God to revive him. He does it a lot. But listen to how he says it. Revive me according to your word.

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Revive me in your ways. Revive me through your righteousness. Revive, he says again, according to your word, according to your ordinances, according to your word again,

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Psalm 119. So it's this call for God to revive him, right?

23:45

To actually just give life is really what it is. That basically break down that word, what it means.

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Not that David was, you know, asking to be saved again or anything like that. But to give him new strength, give him new life, give him new purpose, give him new focus in his relationship with the

24:01

Lord. And it always is tied back to God's word, God's law, God's ordinances, his righteousness.

24:07

And so I think this is going to be a really important sticking point later on, because if we see a quote -unquote revival going on that's running contrary to God's word, contrary to his righteousness and his ordinances, then it's completely appropriate for us to step back and say, that's not revival.

24:31

Yeah, I would agree. And I'll say this, I'm going to promote, and I think Rebecca on One Little Candle, which is another podcaster, she's not here.

24:40

I think she mentioned this book on her podcast when dealing with this. And it's a book called The Calvary Road by Roy Hennison.

24:47

And this is, when I think of revival, this is the book, it's only like 100 pages. It's a very quick read.

24:53

I encourage you guys to get it. It's, I mean, the one I got is, you know, saying 40 years later.

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So they added a whole chapter after 40 years of this book being out. So the book was originally done in 1950.

25:07

But it's interesting because the first chapter in this book, and this is something

25:13

I, as we talk about revival, that really, he sets the thing of the first step of revival is brokenness.

25:23

Brokenness. The second step is then being filled with the Spirit. He goes into saying you can't have a revival when people are all about themselves.

25:31

You have to be completely broken and empty of yourself and then filled with the

25:37

Spirit. And so one of the things I see with his definition is a revival is not going to happen where we're filled with self, where we're doing things for self.

25:48

Revival is where we're empty of self, and it's all about Christ.

25:55

So that'd be a little bit of my definition. Wayne, what are your thoughts? Yeah, well, I just,

26:00

I wanted to throw out something that kind of supported Stephen and everybody. Just when

26:05

I started thinking about it, I dug into the biblical examples of revival. And of course, the kind of the default one is

26:13

Acts 2, you know, Pentecost. But it's very, very clear. Peter is preaching to them the

26:19

Word of God. And then they, you know, they ask, what should we do? And he says, repent, and each of you be baptized.

26:26

So it goes to that point. And then they're filled with the Holy Spirit. Then there's revival. You don't see them standing in the square, you know, back and forth and moaning on and whatever.

26:38

It's their preach the Word of God. And I'm not, I'm not trying to insult. It's just, you know, they were driven by Peter's preaching.

26:45

You see the same thing with Cornelius later, still Peter. In that case, it's his families and family and friends.

26:54

But again, he's preaching. And you see it in Nineveh, of all places,

26:59

Jonah, who just didn't want to do it. But at the same time, they repented. He came in, he preached, they repented.

27:06

And the whole city, and I guess the, if I remember right, it's like 100 ,000 some people there, repented.

27:12

And there was revival there. Didn't last long, but there was revival there. I mean, you even see it in Samaria, a woman at the well, and that whole village of Sycharg.

27:23

Revival, but it's Jesus preaching the Word of God that did it. So it seems to be constantly driven, like Stephen was talking about.

27:32

It's the preaching of the gospel. It's the preaching of the Word of God. And that's where I struggled with the Asbury thing, because supposedly there was a message at the beginning, and supposedly somewhere down the road, somebody came in and preached a little more.

27:47

But my understanding from people that were there, that either the gospel really wasn't preached, or it was preached so lackadaisically, and with no real unction, that it was hard to tie that to.

28:01

And I think one of the separations we have to make, because I've watched too many people jump to the point of going, but people still could have been saved.

28:10

It's like, yeah, exactly. You know, a broken clock is right twice a day. Yes, somebody could have been saved out of that.

28:18

But to depend on that as true revival, it just didn't seem to fit what the

28:25

Bible shows. And I want to get into, we'll get into Asbury itself in a few minutes, because I really first want to lay the groundwork of what a revival is.

28:35

Because, I mean, I'll just say to what Wayne said, I mean, I knew someone that got saved at a Black Sabbath concert, because they saw a cross upside down, and it so offended her, she left the concert and thought about what her brother was sharing the gospel with her and repented.

28:50

So does that mean we should encourage people to go to Black Sabbath concerts? No. But it sounds like right now, at least, there's agreement.

28:58

When we talk about a revival, there's certain elements we want to have, right? Preaching. It's going to be based off the preaching of God's word.

29:06

The gospel is there, right? Garrett, you have some more you want to add to the definition?

29:15

Yeah, I think it's important to define, too, under what circumstances a revival would happen.

29:21

I was listening to a pastor years ago at a conference, and he said, everybody's talking about revival.

29:27

And it was definitely a topic that was on the tips of the tongues of everybody at this conference.

29:32

And he said, what I want you guys to understand is that revival only comes to dead and dying organisms.

29:39

And I think nationwide, we can see the church is at a place where we desperately need revival. But I do think it's important to evaluate each revival in light of what the condition is of that place going into the revival.

29:54

Yeah, I always remember my first pastor used to say, revival always starts with one.

30:00

In other words, people would be praying for revival. And I remember we had a prayer meeting, and someone was praying for revival.

30:08

And he ended up saying, don't pray for revival for others to do. If you want revival, start in your own heart, be broken before God, and let

30:19

God do the work in your heart that others see. And that's how revival—no one—and this is now going to get into one of the questions that I have is,

30:27

I was going to say no one plans revival, but I want to ask it as a question. Can we plan a revival? I just gave away my answer.

30:35

So what do you guys think? Is a revival something that human beings can plan? We could put it on the agenda.

30:40

And the reason I'm asking this is in light of Asbury, Asbury has a history, this time a year, of having revivals.

30:49

You go back in their history, every four to eight years, it seems, they would have an

30:56

Asbury revival. Steve, you brought this out in your podcast, if I remember correctly, but every couple of years, they would have this revival breakout.

31:04

And after Asbury, we saw other Christian universities saying that they had revivals breaking out.

31:10

And one of the reasons I'm asking this is because we also know that the school decided, okay, the revival's over.

31:17

They shut it down. So my question—I don't know which of you would want to answer this first, and you may all answer the same way

31:23

I did, I don't know. But can revivals be planned by humans? Stephen?

31:30

I would love to go first because I don't know who else is from the South. Is there anybody in the South here?

31:37

Well, when you were on my podcast, my Rappaport Podcast co -host, we established you're not from the

31:42

South. You're from the Deep South. Deep South. That's right. I'm from the Deep South, born and raised in Mississippi, now living in Arkansas.

31:49

So I grew up in the Baptist Church, and there was a spring revival, summer revival, and maybe even a winter revival at times.

31:59

And they would plan these things out like clockwork. It was just happening year after year, season after season, it seemed like.

32:05

And all these preachers would come in, and I never saw true revival take place as a result of that.

32:12

The short answer, in my opinion, is no, we can't plan revival, but we must pray for revival.

32:20

I believe the Puritans and the Reformers, I believe that when they wanted to see revival, they prayed to God for it, not tried to manufacture it on their own.

32:29

So my answer, as living in the South for so many years, is no, you can't plan it. Okay, Spencer?

32:38

Yeah, we aren't from the Deep South, but we did come from a very charismatic background.

32:44

And I mean, it's the same thing there. I mean, we just got a flyer on our Facebook for the monthly revival meeting.

32:52

Every month, it's a revival. And that was one of the things that struck us about Asbury when we started looking into it.

32:59

I think there's been eight to 10 revivals that have lasted multiple days, if not weeks, in the last hundred and some years.

33:06

They always fall in February or early March, which is super weird. So that does lend you to be a little bit leery,

33:14

I think you should be. And then maybe we can get into their faith, because I don't know a lot about the

33:20

Wesleyan holiness type faith, but I know that they expect sort of a, I don't know, like a second sort of filling or perfection of the spirit.

33:30

And I don't know if that was tied into this somehow, where this sort of outpouring of the spirit has something to do with their sort of revival culture that's been bred there.

33:39

I'm not sure. Aaron, your thoughts? What Spencer just said or alluded to there,

33:47

I think it was really important because the theology that the person has in other areas of their church ecclesiology, but also eschatology impacts this a lot.

34:01

I would agree with what Stephen said, that you can plan to speak or do something that would speak

34:10

God's truth into a situation and hoping that people come to Christ and are converted because of it and repent of their sins.

34:16

You can definitely plan the event, but you can't decide on this day, our nation is going to be swept with it.

34:25

But to what Spencer said, it's really actually very interesting. And this might be where some of us hit a little bit of disagreement.

34:34

Stephen said, it's good to pray for revival. And yeah, I get it. To pray for conversions and to pray for people in mass to come to Christ or to repent of their sins, obviously, who would say that's a bad thing?

34:48

But it's interesting to note that a lot of these guys early on, on the time of the

34:55

Great Awakening and things like that, we're talking about John Owen and Jonathan Edwards, Matthew Henry, Charles Finney, these guys,

35:03

George Whitefield, they all had something very interesting in common. They were eschatologically post -millennial.

35:11

And these are the guys who are urging believers to pray for revival and the ones who are more prone to interpret certain events as revivals or as awakenings.

35:22

And part of that was because of their eschatology, what they believed needed to happen on the earth and things like that.

35:29

So from my perspective, no, you can't plan it. And to be honest, I don't consider myself a pessimist.

35:36

I'm an optimistic realist. I'm optimistic because I know God. I'm realistic because I know man. Realistically speaking,

35:43

I don't expect there to be a revival anytime soon before God predicts that it's going to happen and that's going to happen during what

35:52

I believe is likely around the tribulation time. So again, my eschatology even is impacting that to a degree.

35:58

That's not to say that's not going to happen, but I don't expect it.

36:03

And I praise God for it, but I don't expect it. That's really an interesting view. I didn't think of it that way. Garrett, what are your thoughts?

36:10

I wanted to go one step further and say, not only do I not think we can plan it, I think it's really dangerous to declare a revival without some window of time to view its fruits.

36:22

The other thing is I think it's really dangerous to declare a local revival. And Asbury was certainly localized.

36:29

We had people traveling to hopefully this work that was local. And it's kind of like planting a fruit tree in your backyard and going, look at the huge harvest

36:41

I have as the things of sapling. We really need to wait and see. Eve talked a little bit about the

36:48

Jesus Revolution movie, and right now we're at a point where we can start to see what the fruit was over a couple of decades of the

36:57

Jesus Revolution. We can say, okay, this may have been the last great revival in the nation, and that may be argued by some people, but we're at a really safe place to view what the fruit was.

37:08

So I would say not only is it impossible to declare a revival prior to that thing,

37:13

I think you really need some time. And you mentioned that the school shut it down. Not only did they declare it essentially at the start, but then they said, and now it's over.

37:24

And my thoughts are, man, if you've got a revival where thousands of hearts are being changed for eternity, why would you ever shut it down?

37:33

You've got a chapel that's open. Keep it open. Yeah. You know, one of the things, a lot of people know the sermon,

37:39

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and they know that that was preached in a monotone.

37:46

But what a lot of people don't know is that was not the only time that message was preached. It was actually preached before that.

37:53

And he was criticized at the time for people were being critical of voice inflection and things like that.

37:59

And that's why he did it in a monotone. And he preached it many times after and never had the same reaction.

38:06

Why? I would argue because what happened at that one time, even though he preached it before and after, that one time

38:14

God used that message to strike hearts and bring people to repentance, even though the same message had been preached before and after, with voice inflection, without voice inflection.

38:27

It wasn't the only time he did it in monotone. And yet it was that one time that had the effect. And I would say it's because we can't produce that.

38:36

That's something God does. A revival is something I believe God does. And so you can't schedule it.

38:42

Now, I understand, like Stephen's saying, you know, the churches that have revival meetings, big tent revival meetings, and they go out and have a yearly event, and they're hoping for a revival, they're praying for a revival, and they're trying to preach the gospel for the sake of seeing a revival.

38:57

But it's not really, as Garrett said, not enough time to, you know, as time goes on, we say, okay, it's not really a revival.

39:03

We didn't see that effect. Now, maybe it's a local revival. Maybe there's a local area where people come to repentance.

39:11

But it's not one of these great revivals that we think of where, you know, the whole U .S. is starting to change.

39:17

And I do find it interesting, this is a complete rabbit trail that may get me in trouble, but, you know, like Eve is talking about the

39:25

Jesus culture film. I already forgot the title of it, but I don't do movies much.

39:33

So, and, you know, Eve knows that. So, but it is interesting that our culture is realizing these kind of, even if they're kind of Christian movies, even if they're not produced by Christians, they're the blockbusters.

39:50

They're the ones that everyone's going to see. And there's a lot of people, and we want,

39:55

I would just say, we want to be careful with what Garrett said, looking at the fruit. We have to be careful to say, okay, well, it's because there's a revival going on in America and people are turning to God.

40:06

I don't know that it's that as much as there's just so much filth. And even though people won't say publicly that they're not interested in all this homosexual agenda being pushed on them,

40:20

I think there's a lot of people that are sick of it. And so, when they see something that's family friendly, they almost don't care what it is.

40:27

It's just, they're not going because it's Christian. They're going, I think, more because they want something that's just clean and wholesome that they can enjoy without having an agenda shoved down their throats.

40:39

So, you know, when we talk about the fruit of it, I think even there we have to be careful because I know that there's been lots of talk right now that the fruit we're seeing in the movies that are being produced and how many people are going to see these movies and how they always, you know,

40:58

Hollywood says, oh, this won't go anywhere. And then a lot, you know, they are blockbusters, whatever that means.

41:04

But that becomes something where people are looking to kind of say, oh, see, this is fruit.

41:12

I will go back to what Pastor Stephen said and say that I think the real fruit is people coming to repentance, people becoming

41:22

Christians. Those that are, you know, maybe that are Christians that weren't really living a very spiritually mature life, being broken and humbled and coming to Christ and saying,

41:33

Lord, everything I have is yours and I give myself up and live for you. And I think that's what you'd expect to see, not blockbusters and, you know, or big ticket sales in, you know, movie theaters.

41:48

Spencer and Nikki, what do you guys think? I was just thinking on planning a revival, like just as parents, you know, you plan revival in your own home with your kids and you do all this work.

42:02

You pray and you read the word to your kids. You know, you do everything.

42:08

You don't love anyone more than your kids. And it is, it's in God's hands.

42:13

Like we plan, we do all this work every day, planting the seeds, correcting, discipling, and it's in God's hands.

42:24

So I can say, hey, we're doing a revival in our home tonight with our kids. That doesn't mean anything.

42:34

We're going to preach the word. We're going to correct behavior and error or wrong thinking, but, you know, you plant in your water, but God gives the increase.

42:47

And I mean, you could say, hey, we're having revival in our home. We're planning it. We're preaching the gospel, but we're all planning for revival.

42:56

We all want revival. But like you said, like we're waiting for the fruit. So Spencer, did you have anything you wanted to add to that or yeah, just on, you know, the idea of planning and kind of defining what revival is, um, you know, when you read in, what is it?

43:17

Second Kings 22 or 23 with King Josiah, that's kind of, you know, a revival in the old

43:24

Testament. And then also Ezra at the water gate and Nehemiah eight, you know, in 10 or eight through 10.

43:30

And what's interesting when you read those, at least what stuck out to me is I was rereading those thinking about this revival in both instances.

43:39

And again, it takes time to see this, but the result of it in both instances was returning to people living according to God's commands and then separating themselves from the sinful world in both instances.

43:54

In King Josiah's case, they cleansed their land of the false idols, the false preachers and all that.

44:01

And in Nehemiah's, uh, or in Ezra's case, the Israelites basically purged, um, or basically removed themselves from the secular folks around them.

44:13

So is that what's happening in Asbury? All those thousands of people that showed up, have they now devoted their lives to God's commands?

44:22

Are they separating themselves from all the entanglements that had them beforehand?

44:28

I mean, we don't know that, but you would expect it. Yeah. And so before we get into specific with Asbury, let me ask this question, because this is a question

44:37

I think we, you know, we've already kind of shown some kind of criticism that we might have with what happened in Asbury.

44:46

But one of the things that often comes up when you have these kinds of discussions, and you know, for those of you who did podcasts on this, maybe you already had this argument made against you.

44:56

But, you know, the question is, should Christians speak critically of proclaimed revivals?

45:03

I mean, do we, do we have a right or should we be critical of, in this case,

45:11

Asbury? Because this is a thing many people say, well, you, you, you know, this is a work of God. You shouldn't, you know, stamp on that or stop that or be critical of that.

45:22

And so this gets to the question of, do we as believers have a right to speak critically about what we see that happened in Asbury?

45:34

Aaron, your thoughts? The short answer is yes. And I'll explain why.

45:42

Obviously, we shouldn't stop there. Obviously, we shouldn't speak critically of what

45:50

God is doing. Right. But we've established already a really good format, a biblical framework for what to expect in revival.

45:57

There's conversion, there's repentance, there's a change, there's fruit of that repentance.

46:02

Okay. First of all, I will say that, you know, another theological element of this that we really haven't talked about too much is that, you know, the more of the charismatic side, you know, is if you have, if you're seeing miracles and prophecies and healings, well, then we're having a revival.

46:20

The side a little bit closer, a little bit further away from charismatic, more closer to the center, the emotionalism, all that's a clear sign of revival.

46:28

Right. But if we're looking at it from the biblical perspective, we're never going to down that. Okay. Because people are being saved.

46:34

Praise God, they're repenting of their sins. That's awesome. But just like everything else in life,

46:40

I don't care if it's some guy selling drugs on a street corner, a gang beating up an old lady, or a pastor standing in a pulpit preaching heresy.

46:50

I don't care where you are. I don't care who you claim to be. If you're saying something or doing something that is unbiblical, then that needs to be addressed.

46:59

And the reality was, I mean, I saw, first of all, I wasn't there. Right. So I'm taking, I'm taking other, what other people have said who were there.

47:06

Right. But there have been plenty of people who have gone, who've gotten video of it, who have testified to the fact that there were things going on and things being said and things being done there that were attently sinful.

47:20

And that other people were saying, well, you know, it was part of the revival. Now, I don't believe that anyone was being healed.

47:27

I don't believe that anyone was speaking in tongues. I don't believe, I don't believe anything like that. So if someone says, oh, the people were being healed there.

47:33

I'm already saying, well, okay, I, this is not a revival because that I, I categorically, you know, reject that, that concept there.

47:42

But in addition to that, I mean, when you have homosexuality being, being, maybe not encouraged, but being talked about in a non -biblical way, that's a problem.

47:51

If you've got female past, quote unquote, there's no such thing as a female pastor, but if you've got a female, you know, claiming to be a pastor who's there preaching at this revival, quote unquote, revival, well,

48:05

I'm sorry. No, that's not, that's not a revival. So, and yeah, we need to criticize that because it's unbiblical.

48:11

I do want to share real quick. Samuel Say is an up and coming young man writing some really great stuff.

48:18

He has a blog called Slow to Write. And he says something similar to what you said earlier, Andrew, that he actually came to Christ during a fake revival.

48:30

It was a female, a woman was preaching, basically, heresy.

48:37

And, but God used a series of these messages to, to open up his eyes to some really necessary truth.

48:43

And he was born again, right? Which is fantastic. But that doesn't mean that we don't confront the people who are speaking lies and we don't tell them that what they're doing is wrong.

48:57

Yeah. Gary, what are your thoughts? I just wanted to add one more thing for perspective.

49:03

The parable of the sower, I think is really important here to remember that even in the parable of the sower, the fruit couldn't be judged immediately because in some of those cases, in some of those soils, it looked like the people had received the word and been converted.

49:20

But over time, it didn't bear out as the heat of the day came up, that fruit withered or that plant withered.

49:26

So it is really important that we, that we determine what's going on with a window of perspective and really have a biblical perspective as to what the fruit was.

49:40

Yeah, that's a great point because, you know, John MacArthur always says, time and truth go hand in hand. Give enough time and the truth will be known.

49:47

I think that's really important because like you bring up with the parable of the soils, what you have is one soil clearly a believer, one soil clearly not a believer, but two soils that are hypocrites.

50:01

They look like believers, but given enough time, we realize they're not.

50:08

So Eve, what are your thoughts on this? You've been kind of quiet so far. It just hasn't circled around to me yet, so I thought

50:14

I'd raise my hand. Yeah. I was going to call on you next anyway, because you've been quiet too long.

50:20

You and Melissa, and then you raised your hand anyway. So it was good. Well, I kind of agree with Aaron about the, you know, the emotionalism of it all, because I think this was a point that I brought up in our episode on the

50:32

Jesus Revolution, that I really feel like there's a lot of peer pressure with the way that these revival services are formulated to create this feeling of necessary guilt or the movement of, you know, like they create the feeling of the

50:46

Holy Spirit through music and all of this. And then they kind of create the social and peer pressure that you have to do something or be something or feel something.

50:58

And then you have this tremendous experience in the group.

51:05

And then when that experience is over, you can never recreate that experience because it was a manufactured, it wasn't the actual movement of the

51:14

Spirit. And then I've read an interesting article, I'd have to look to see if I can find it again, but it was a theologian who was doing like a historical study of a lot of the revival movements through the history.

51:28

And one of the things he pointed out was that in every one of these instances where these revivals were sweeping the land, church attendance didn't go up.

51:38

And I was thinking about that in relation to the fact that you go to these big emotional services and you feel the movement of the

51:46

Spirit, quote unquote, and then you go to another church after the revival's over because the revival was just a one -time thing.

51:54

And now you need to become a part of the fellowship of the body and you can't recreate that experience anywhere.

52:00

And so you think the church is dead because you're not getting that emotional experience that you got at the revival.

52:06

And you're that shallow ground that the seed fell on that didn't take root and you never get the discipleship because you never stay long enough because it's not the experience you thought it was going to be or what you were led to believe it was going to be.

52:24

So I think that a lot of these revivals create a lot of false Christians, people who think they're saved and have this bar set of what salvation feels like and what the

52:35

Holy Spirit feels like. And one of my responses to the

52:40

Asbury revival I keep coming up with people is would they have stayed for several days straight if there had been somebody preaching that entire time instead of a bunch of music being played all the time?

52:52

And I don't think they would. I think they would have gotten bored and walked away after maybe an hour because that seems to be the attention span of most church goers as it is.

53:02

An hour? Really? Yeah. Well, maybe 20 to 30 minutes. You're right. No, you bring up a really good point.

53:10

I think we do need to dig into more maybe in the next section is because someone already brought up this the emotionalism versus biblicalism, you know, preaching versus emotional feeling.

53:22

I mean, clearly Wayne was agreeing with you because I don't think he could have shaken his head up and down more with what you said.

53:28

So, Melissa, what are your thoughts? As everybody was talking, I had this kind of thought.

53:34

A lot of what I see being described when we're talking about revivalism is actually regeneration.

53:41

So in my mind, I'm kind of seeing a differential thing between regeneration and revival.

53:50

Like regeneration is individual, but revival seems to me that it's a group thing.

53:56

I would say that it's not a group regeneration per se, but a group turning back to, as Aaron stated when he quoted scripture, turning back to the law.

54:13

So the group in essence is saying, yes, God's law is correct.

54:19

I want to go back to that. It's correct. And so we're talking about even in people who might be unbelievers, it's common grace for them to see that God's law is good.

54:29

They may not have faith. They're not regenerated. But the group as a whole goes back to the word of God.

54:38

Yeah. So let's dig into this a little bit more before we get to Asbury, because several of you already brought this up, the emotionalism versus really, we're describing the revival one way, and a lot of what we're seeing as we talk about some of these revivals is this emotionalism.

55:00

And a lot of it is from the charismatic influence. We're not saying that all charismatics are wrong because they're emotional.

55:11

We are emotional beings. Okay. That's one of the attributes that God has communicated to his creation of humans, that we would have emotions.

55:21

So emotions are not necessarily bad. So we're not saying, oh, if there's emotion, it's bad.

55:27

Or at least I'm not saying that. But I personally, when

55:32

I'm looking at a revival, I'm thinking what it is, is our thinking has changed, and that thinking change causes our emotional change.

55:45

And I agree with what you said, Eve, because you can sit and have three, four days of music and everyone raising their hands and jumping around and getting what they would say in the spirit.

55:59

But comparing that to what the Bible would say, where it's a right thinking we have to have, and a right thinking will affect our emotions, which will affect our behavior.

56:12

I know Aaron, as a biblical counselor, would agree with this, because this is where the world has it backwards.

56:19

The world's counseling would be, well, if you start doing right things, you're going to feel better about it, and your thinking will change.

56:25

And all that does is guarantee that that person will come back for more counseling and continue to pay you.

56:32

And I'm sure that when Aaron is counseling people, he's correcting their thinking, because right thinking will affect the right feelings, and the right feelings will affect the behavior.

56:43

That's the way the Bible lays it out. And I think that's what I really see with some of these revivals, like Asbury, not specifically with Asbury yet.

56:51

We haven't talked about that. But with these revivals that people talk about, it's more an emotional feeling.

56:58

And I'm just going to give a quick story from when I was in college. And, Granda, I was very ignorant of theology back then.

57:07

I was in the charismatic movement. We had our Christian group on campus. We had a woman that came, very charismatic, not just in the charismatic movement type of way, but a very charismatic person.

57:22

And she was teaching, and there were a number of unbelievers that got swept up in an emotionalism and claimed to get saved.

57:31

And I still remember one of the guys, I saw him two weeks later on campus, and he prayed in front of everybody to receive

57:40

Christ. And we didn't see him in any of the other Bible studies, and he was still going to the bar drinking.

57:46

And I remember talking to him. I saw him, and I pulled him aside. I said, hey, you prayed to receive

57:52

Christ, and I don't really see you walking with Christ. You're still acting the same way you were.

57:58

And he goes, yeah, I just got caught up in all that emotionalism. I didn't really believe any of that.

58:04

It was just an emotional moment. And that's kind of, Eve, to your point, you produce false converts when they...

58:11

This was a guy that was honest with his emotions to know, yeah, I got caught up in it, and I'm done with it.

58:18

The hard thing was I could not share the gospel with him after that because he was just hardened to it because the experience didn't match his thinking, which is why

58:32

I would say you start with the gospel and right thinking. But those that aren't honest with themselves, they think they're saved, and now they're unbelievers sitting in churches, and they think they're going to heaven when they're going to go to hell.

58:46

That's the worst thing, I think, of some of these emotional revivals. Wayne, what are your thoughts?

58:54

Well, so to clarify for the readers and for y 'all, so I actually live in what is considered one of the darkest places in the

59:03

United States. New Jersey? No, no, no, no. No, around Tucson, Arizona.

59:08

We're in the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. It is one of the most unchurched places in the

59:15

United States. Really? Yeah, it doesn't mean the churches aren't there. Because I think that New England is...

59:21

I mean, the only place worse than New Jersey that I thought of was New England. That's a pretty dark... So I didn't know that about Arizona.

59:29

Yeah, yeah. It's not... It's all James White's fault. Well, exactly. It's James White. Yeah, exactly.

59:35

Oh, I'm going to get it if he hears that one. Exactly. And it's not that the churches aren't here, and it's not that there aren't solid churches.

59:42

It's that there are so many that are so lost. And in a lot of cases, the churches aren't reaching them.

59:47

So I say that to say there is a church here that I've been to before. My wife and I had been to before when we were first saved.

59:58

And he actually preaches a great message. But what they would do, and they would do it in a revival style.

01:00:04

They would have their Easter, their Resurrection Day celebration. And it would be huge. And it would be in the

01:00:09

Tucson Community Center. So huge coliseum. They would load the place up. They'd bring in all this music and, you know, very, very emotional experience.

01:00:18

And there'd be thousands flock down to the stage to declare for Christ and all this stuff.

01:00:26

And yet church attendance across the board goes down and down and down and down.

01:00:33

And it happens every year. But it is so focused on the emotionalism.

01:00:38

Again, like Garrett was saying, you don't see the long -term fruit. You see them caught in the emotionalism.

01:00:45

And like you were talking about as well, and all of you were talking about, then people walk away. They just, the emotionalism is gone.

01:00:52

And they go back to what they were doing before. Yeah. What are your thoughts,

01:00:58

Garrett? Well, I wanted to give a tiny bit of insight into emotionalism in the

01:01:03

Christian's life. And this is a personal story. So it's not perfectly applicable across the board.

01:01:10

But my wife was saved at Hume Lake Christian Camps and had what everybody knows as a mountaintop experience.

01:01:18

She was there. She still remembers the title of the speech and the guy who gave it. The name of the talk was bonus or,

01:01:25

I'm sorry, bona fide or bogus Christianity. And she was converted there.

01:01:31

And it was an emotional experience. But now, some 35 years later or 40 years later, my wife's still walking with the

01:01:38

Lord. And her life is bearing fruit. At the same time, I grew up in a Christian home. My dad was a pastor.

01:01:44

And I knew the truth of the gospel growing up. But if I was saved,

01:01:49

I was severely backslidden. And I was not taking anything seriously. And in a separate event at Hume Lake Christian Camp, I heard a message and was deeply stricken in my spirit and recommitted my life to Christ in essentially a completely emotional outpouring.

01:02:10

Right? It was literally the stereotypical mountaintop experience again. And yet that stuck.

01:02:17

And I think part of why that stuck is because both of us, my wife and I, were immediately brought down from the mountain and into discipleship scenarios.

01:02:26

She was going to a good Christian school. She wasn't getting really great discipleship at home.

01:02:32

But she was getting it at school. And I was still in a Christian home and was in church and was reading my word and growing, not my word,

01:02:40

God's word. And so we were both discipled and growing. And that fruit persisted.

01:02:47

But I do want to just say, we can't immediately dismiss an event because it is emotional.

01:02:54

Good point. Aaron, what are your thoughts? So far, I do agree with a lot of what has been said.

01:03:01

You might not know this about me. But I spent about a decade in from the late 90s into the early 2000s in an alternative rock band.

01:03:12

So I started off as the drummer. We keep learning new things about you. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. And eventually became one of the guitarists and the lead singer.

01:03:20

Right? So no, I'm not going to tell you what the name of the band was. So don't ask. I was going to ask you to sing.

01:03:27

No, not right now. Um, so one of the reasons I bring that up is the fact that we as musicians, right?

01:03:36

And as a secular musician, my goal was to hook you to draw in really the only way

01:03:45

I could do. I mean, you could like my lyrics. There are people who love the poetic lyrics and whatever else. People who just get into poetry.

01:03:53

But really, when it comes to music, this is why so many songs are even in Christian realms are so empty lyrically, right?

01:04:01

Because they don't need that. Because the music is really why people are listening to it. They want to feel they want to be drawn in.

01:04:07

So we would, I mean, we would write music to elicit responses from these people.

01:04:13

We actually had a song. It was called No Jumping. At random intervals throughout the song, the music would come to a screeching halt, and there'd be a guy like on a

01:04:22

PA be like, no jumping. And but the music was written in such a way that you couldn't help but bounce listening to it.

01:04:32

All right. So I'm always very skeptical of emotion because emotion is so incredibly easy to manipulate.

01:04:41

It's exceptionally easy to manipulate. Now, what you said earlier about our emotion being controlled by what we think is 100 % right.

01:04:49

And that was a really interesting way of admitting to everybody that you've come to me for counseling, because, I mean, you know, that's exactly what

01:04:54

I counsel. Just kidding. He doesn't often. Anyway, the idea is what we think on it is true.

01:05:03

So to what Garrett was saying, when I moved emotionally to by God's truth, when

01:05:12

I'm in awe of who he is, when I'm broken. How many times is

01:05:17

Jesus in Matthew chapter five? Nope.

01:05:23

I think we got I think he froze. Oh, no. For a second there. I thought it was me. But but I saw still there.

01:05:29

Yep. There we go. I'm not there. Yes. I'm there. Yes. I'm so sorry about that. Yeah. Thank you.

01:05:34

That's what you get for making fun of me. I had to take a smoke break. I'm sorry. Play my guitar.

01:05:41

Um, no, the Matthew chapter five, James tells us to weep and to mourn and to grieve over our sins.

01:05:46

Right. But it's grieving it over a truth. The the problem with the parable and the parable of soils with the the seed that fell on the thorny ground is,

01:05:56

I believe, as you study that passage, you recognize that that's really a very emotional response. It accepted certain things and it split up.

01:06:04

But then look how easily it falls away. It gets choked out by the by the distractions of this world, because that's what emotions do.

01:06:11

In Acts chapter eight, you see Simon, the magician, right? Astonishing people, all the, you know, the disciples come into town, they see these great miracles and whatever else.

01:06:20

And it says that he was constantly amazed. Right. And so much of Simon's response to what he saw is his his quote unquote, believing the truth was later revealed to be false when he basically asked for the same power the apostles have.

01:06:33

And he got a really stern rebuke from Simon, basically saying, I mean, leaving it very difficult to believe that that sorry,

01:06:40

Simon, the magician was actually born again. But then in, you know,

01:06:46

Psalm 51, David is pouring his heart. I was broken over his sin.

01:06:52

And he's saying to God, revive me, restore to me what the joy of my salvation, joy is an emotion.

01:07:00

Right. But you still see that that idea tied up in there. So I agree that we are emotional beings.

01:07:07

I don't trust them. I don't trust them at all. Because I mean,

01:07:14

I won't take the time to do it right now. But again, as a biblical counselor, I do this all the time with people. I especially do this when

01:07:19

I'm speaking with children. I can manipulate your emotions like that. It would take very little to do so.

01:07:26

But why? What does that mean? And who really cares that you were emotional? The question is, why are you emotional?

01:07:33

And if the answer to that question is this unrefutable, clear teaching of God's word, praise

01:07:42

God for the emotion, whether it's there or not. I mean, if that's what it's about, who cares if we're not even emotional about it?

01:07:48

But that's that's really what we need to be looking for, because otherwise it can't be trusted. Yeah, well,

01:07:54

I mean, we're going to talk emotionalism while we go to one of the ladies, Melissa. Yeah, that was so unfair.

01:08:02

Hey, I admit it. You know, setback that women have, but it's also a blessing.

01:08:08

But yeah, I wouldn't piggyback off of what Mr. Brewster said there.

01:08:14

One of the things that I think Asbury really shows is there's a lot of emotionalism.

01:08:20

And then there's the claim, oh, a bunch of repentance. They're broken. Look at how they are. But here's the thing.

01:08:25

What are they broken over? You see the confessions coming forward, and it's yeah, there's sorrow and shame, but shame over, you know, being white or shame over not having one of the ladies confess that she didn't know her sexual identity, but now she does.

01:08:49

So she was repenting because she didn't know her sexual identity. But now, you know, she's

01:08:56

God has told her and she's solid in it. And but we don't know what that sexual identity is.

01:09:02

And we don't know if that's a sin. And, you know, so the repentance and the sorrow is, like you said, matched or started from the truth.

01:09:14

And the truth, again, is rooted in God's law and what is good and what and repudiating what is evil.

01:09:23

And I think you're nailing one of the issues I have with this revival, right? I have not publicly said anything so far.

01:09:32

This is the first show that I'm doing on this revival. And one of the things that I noticed was some of what you're bringing out.

01:09:40

Now, I will say to the point that Aaron was making, I have an article on our website at strivingforeturning .org

01:09:48

on a biblical view of music, I think is what I titled it. But it talks about how music has a greater influence on you than the lyrics, because most people, when they talk

01:10:00

Christian music, they look at the lyrics of the lyrics are good. It's good. The music affects your emotions that is closer to your volition.

01:10:09

It bypasses the thinking. And that's the reason you can have people sing songs that are theologically inaccurate.

01:10:17

And they don't think about it because the music is so good. I'm trying to remember the one song that says kingdom authority flows from the throne unto his own.

01:10:27

Written by a guy, the author of that says that what that is, is the kingdom authority is authority over sickness, disease, sickness, poverty, you know, things like that, because that's where his thinking is.

01:10:41

Well, that's not a lot of churches that sing that song. I think it's called majesty. They don't think and believe that, but the tune is so good that people overlook it.

01:10:52

And the thing is, is that when you look at the emotions that are raised in music, I'll go back to a really good song, amazing grace, right?

01:11:03

None of us would probably have a problem with that. I did when I heard Sandy Patti sing it with a very breathy, sensual way of singing the way that, you know, you had

01:11:14

Marilyn Monroe singing happy birthday to JFK. Well, what's the emotions that's coming at you?

01:11:21

She's all that breathiness. It's a sensuality. Well, now I have a problem with that song, not with the lyrics, but see what's the emotions that it brings out.

01:11:31

And so as we end up looking at this, my big issue with the revival that we're discussing here is the fact that you had people who were practicing homosexuality, pro -homosexual, leading the music, leading the worship.

01:11:54

What they're saying is worship. Well, how can people who don't repent of clear sin want to identify themselves by that sin?

01:12:07

How do you say that's a revival? How do you say that, as I said at the beginning, right?

01:12:14

It should take brokenness. And you're not seeing these people broken over their sin.

01:12:20

You're seeing them to ask people to celebrate their sin and they're leading worship.

01:12:28

That's not worship, and that's not revival, in my opinion. I'm sorry.

01:12:34

And I think that we have the right to criticize it, because actually Scripture commands us to criticize and to judge professing believers.

01:12:44

We're commanded to in Corinthians. Paul tells us to do that. I think 1

01:12:50

Corinthians 15, if I'm not mistaken. But we're commanded to judge one another by the fruit.

01:12:57

And so I'm sorry. I don't think people that are unrepentant in their sin, leading what they're going to say is worship in what they're going to claim is a revival, it's not worship and it's not a revival.

01:13:10

Spencer, your thoughts there, or maybe Nikki's. Yeah, she may have something to say here as well, but I will just say on that, we are commanded to, and I always go back to, if the

01:13:22

Bereans could test the apostle Paul to see if his words were true, how can we say we can't test

01:13:28

Asbury to see if their words are true, right? But I do think, you know, kind of what you were talking about on the music and the

01:13:36

Aaron as well, how, you know, oftentimes it's designed to bring that emotional experience out.

01:13:43

And I think that's why we should tell Christians to be critical and think critically about this, because, you know, sadly we live in a culture where Bethel music is like the premier

01:13:52

Christian music in America. And, you know, if you listen to people that come from the

01:13:57

Bethel school and it's specifically designed, I mean, that is what they teach in the school is to bring people to an emotional high.

01:14:07

And that's what everyone listens to. I mean, most churches around the country are promoting Bethel music and listening to it and they have no problem with it.

01:14:14

So there's nothing wrong with emotion. I mean, like you, if I sing, how great thou art, you know, acapella in a church,

01:14:21

I get moved emotionally. There's nothing wrong with it, but you should question it. And that can't be the sole thing that you rely on to say, yeah, my faith or I have faith now because my emotions were stirred by Bethel music or, you know, whatever it happens to be.

01:14:36

I think we should be telling people, you know, test all things, think critically about everything you're hearing, especially in 2023,

01:14:44

American Christianity, question everything. You know, we do have to question everything.

01:14:49

I was just thinking on just someone's experience at the

01:14:55

Asbury revival, just in one of the interviews, how someone said, I just didn't want to leave.

01:15:02

I think a lot of the students said, we just couldn't leave. We didn't want to leave. And I was just thinking, okay, they just wanted to keep abiding there.

01:15:10

But like, can we be like that with God's word? Can we just be in his word? I don't want to stop reading his word and I want to abide in his law.

01:15:20

Like, can we be just as passionate and about his word and love his word so much?

01:15:27

But you don't hear people talk like that. It's, I just didn't want to leave this experience just on the emotionalism.

01:15:38

So Eve, what do you think? That's, that's interesting. Cause I brought up when we were talking about Jesus revolution,

01:15:46

I made the comment that to me personally, I think revival should be something that we can each have even alone with our

01:15:53

Bible or in, you know, in within the, just the home with the family, it shouldn't be something that needs to be a corporate thing that is, you know, that the music's playing and, and there's been a, a hell hell raising, you know, sermon or anything like that.

01:16:12

It should be something that, you know, we're convicted in our hearts that we have fallen away in our daily practices and we're reading the

01:16:20

Bible and the Holy Spirit convicts us that we have fallen away and we revive our spirit there while we're reading the

01:16:28

Bible. And, and it's a personal thing and maybe that personal thing can be done in a corporate way for a church because the church is the body.

01:16:38

So I can see it being a corporate thing, but it does have to start with the individual and it has to be a genuine, uh, as we mentioned earlier, it has to be a genuine brokenness.

01:16:50

And some of the things that I heard about Asbury was that, you know, like they were switching out music groups to sing and the people who would come up next to sing would stand backstage, just off the stage and read the room, get accustomed to the feel of the room before they would get up on the stage so that they could just pick up the worship where it was and keep going.

01:17:14

And I'm like, reading the room? When I read that, I was like, that's what con artists do.

01:17:21

Um, I, to me, I just feel like it's one of those situations that you really do have to test the spirit.

01:17:29

I brought this up about the Jesus revolution. It's like, you know, the spirit may be moving, but my question is, which spirit is it?

01:17:38

Because we are ordered in the New Testament over and over again to test the spirits, to call out false teachers, to be wary of the false gospel and the wolves among the sheep.

01:17:48

And I don't know how we can possibly see those things and not speak out publicly about them, regardless of what kind of flack we might take for it.

01:17:58

And maybe even ruin friendships because of it, because I had some people get very upset with me for speaking out publicly against it.

01:18:07

Well, so let's, let's get into you. I think we've laid a good groundwork for what revival is and whether we can criticize it and some of the emotionalism that we see and whether that's a good thing.

01:18:21

I want to go around and have each of us, you know, just to answer specifically to this revival, you know, that we're discussing here.

01:18:33

Was the, in your opinion, is the Asbury revival, so this is a question I'm going to ask each of you, is the

01:18:39

Asbury revival a biblical revival? I'm going to start with Pastor Steve.

01:18:48

No. You want to expound on that or just?

01:18:55

Well, I think I want to be careful here because I don't want to have a too critical of a spirit because I don't want to be that guy that is just, you know, railroading everybody.

01:19:11

But I mean, when I listened to the sermon that quote unquote sparked the revival, there was really no gospel presented.

01:19:21

And there was, I mean, it was really a very light hearted sermon. It was about, you know, it exalted self more than anything.

01:19:33

And just seeing how that progressed through the time and really then you had the homosexual worship leaders that proved to be true from many sources.

01:19:50

And I went back and forth saying, you know, well, were they practicing or not? And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if that's their stance.

01:19:56

They should have been repenting of that sin and, you know, confessing it, not celebrating it.

01:20:03

And then the more it went, the more it progressed into just things that got further and further, in my opinion, away from the

01:20:11

Bible. Especially when there was a deliverance of the demon there on the floor of the college and deliverance ministries is probably a good topic to talk about at some point.

01:20:28

But there was one moment in there when that happened, this girl screams and the guy that preached the first sermon was on the ready, on the go at the mic and said, you know, if this is new to you, if you have questions, if this is concerning, we have a team ready to tell you what just happened.

01:20:46

So the more I heard things like that and the more I hear from people that were on the ground there telling about the gospel that was preached and hearing about the spirit in the room, one of the guys said that when the music stopped and someone came up to give a sermon or to preach, which happened to be a female that did this, she sensed the spirit of frustration in the room and she said,

01:21:12

I promise we'll get back to the music in just a few minutes. And to me, for a true revival, these people will be saying, you know, somebody stand up and give us the book, teach us the

01:21:25

Bible, and preach the gospel, not let me sing Reckless Love for 30 minutes and just sing my heart out.

01:21:34

And then, of course, I'm sure with a group like this, there are many different thoughts on the signed gifts.

01:21:43

I don't mind saying I'm a cessationist and just seeing those things start to unfold there.

01:21:50

And then hearing about fire tunnels can happen on the outside and they're encouraged, it just told me all

01:21:59

I needed to know. That's kind of where I've come to the conclusion of, no, this was not a true revival.

01:22:07

Now, our brother Wayne earlier said, could God have moved in people's lives? Could God have saved people as a result?

01:22:13

Absolutely. But even in that, I don't think I would call it a revival, I think it's just God working and doing what

01:22:19

He wills for His glory. So that's my thoughts in a nutshell.

01:22:29

Garrett, what do you think? What's your views with the Asbury Revival? You know, we are all in a profession where we're moved to speak quite frequently, and we also live in a social media world where everybody thinks they need to have an opinion right away.

01:22:46

And I really, really try to not speak quickly, because I think there's good biblical reasoning for that.

01:22:53

And so I hadn't said a word about the revival at all on social media or anywhere else, because I wanted to wait and see what

01:23:02

God would do. And also, I didn't want to prejudge what

01:23:07

God was capable of doing by a move of His Spirit. But I will say,

01:23:13

I think we're expected to judge stuff by its fruits, and it's pretty clear that the fruit there was bad.

01:23:22

It has already been referenced that there were homosexuals leading worship. I am not a cessationist, but I'm also not a charismaniac, and I think that so many times in charismatic movements, the way the gifts are practiced evidences how they treat the

01:23:43

Word of God, and if they're practiced outside of what's prescribed in the Word of God, I think it's indicative of a false spirit moving, and I think that some of those things were evident.

01:23:54

So long story short, I would say it doesn't look like it was a real revival. Also, the fact that there have been many quote -unquote revivals at Asbury, and yet seemingly no super long -term fruits is worrisome.

01:24:10

The other thing is, I don't mean to go into denominationalism, but we were talking about Bethel music, and that's another place where this holiness theology is there, and the

01:24:28

Wesleyan movement is a holiness movement, and I think the whole movement is based on a bad foundation, and I think over the years the fruit of the movement has been bad.

01:24:39

You see the United Methodist Church just in a shambles, and these people expecting sinless holiness apart from what real biblical holiness is, which is being called out and separate from the world.

01:24:54

I think it indicates a bad starting point, and so when you're starting from a bad place,

01:24:59

I think you end up in a bad place. So I know that was a lot of words to say. No, I don't really think it was a good revival.

01:25:10

Eva, how about you? What are your thoughts on this revival? I don't think revival was the word for it.

01:25:17

That's what I've been telling everybody. You may want to call it lots of things, but revival does not apply, and I do believe the school said that it was not a revival, but a worship service, maybe, if you think that singing feel -good music is a worship service.

01:25:38

I don't know who they're worshiping. The other option would, I mean, a revival would be where people, sinners will feel uncomfortable with their sin and want to repent, and if people, sinners were feeling comfortable about their sin, then it was definitely not a revival.

01:25:58

So, no. Okay, Aaron, how about you?

01:26:06

I'm going to say what I said before. On a broad scale, it would be inappropriate to call it a revival.

01:26:14

I want to quote just a couple authors real quick, some short paragraphs that really says well, what

01:26:22

I'm thinking. Back to Samuel Say, he said, and I found the snippet, he said, God saved me in spite of mostly heretical series of sermons by a prosperity gospel female pastor.

01:26:33

If God can save a wretch like me in that chaotic environment, I don't doubt that he can save anyone anywhere.

01:26:40

He experienced in that moment revival. That doesn't mean that there was a revival like the way we like to think of it going on.

01:26:47

But then he says, it's concerning, however, that so many of us are seemingly bored by ordinary worship at a local church that produces extraordinary change in one's soul.

01:27:00

And Scott Anuel wrote a piece on the Asbury situation, and he ended with the similar thoughts.

01:27:08

He says, expectation of quote -unquote ordinary conversion and sanctification. He said, the

01:27:13

Holy Spirit of God converts souls to the faithful ordinary preaching of the word, and this normally happens not all at once or in mass numbers, but gradually as God's people faithfully proclaim the gospel to the ends of the earth.

01:27:27

He says that my fear is what caused the Asbury events to take place in the first place, and certainly what has influenced interpretation of the events as a quote -unquote outpouring of the

01:27:34

Spirit is an unbiblical expectation concerning what God has promised for this present age. And he ends his article by saying, let us be content with the ordinary way

01:27:44

God has promised to work in this present age, and let us long for our blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our

01:27:49

Savior, Jesus Christ, when true revival will come. And that, so no, yes, certain individual moments of revival may have happened as people were convicted of their sin and repented, where people potentially were born again, but that was on the individual scale, and it happened in an ordinary way.

01:28:10

The truth of God's word convicted them about the sin or the need for God in their lives, and that's always how any revival on a mass scale or an individual scale is going to happen.

01:28:24

Okay, Spencer and Nikki, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I'll go first, and I'll start by saying

01:28:31

I would love to be proven wrong. I hope revival sweeps the nation, but I do not believe that it was a real revival.

01:28:40

There is, I kind of mentioned before, you know, when we see revival in the

01:28:45

Bible, you see people returning to following God's commands and separating themselves from a sinful and secular world.

01:28:53

And as people have already mentioned going through here, you know, homosexuals leading worship, female pastors, you know, onstage exorcisms, you don't see necessarily, and even as Eve had mentioned,

01:29:06

I believe the, or maybe it wasn't Eve, but the woman who found her gender identity, you know, you don't see them separating themselves from sin necessarily.

01:29:17

And I do think this is just kind of a problem with American Christianity and how so many people are taught to expect the

01:29:27

Holy Spirit to work in their life that, you know, you should be moved to this emotional state and that,

01:29:33

I mean, how many churches did we go through in our life where, oh, we can, the spirit is here. We can feel a move of the spirit in this place.

01:29:40

And you're somehow supposed to be, oh, now the spirit's here. Cause I'm, you know, excited about it.

01:29:46

And people aren't taught necessarily what a Christian life should look like. And that is not going to be emotional highs 24 hours a day, but it's going to be, you know, like you mentioned brokenness, it's going to be affection towards God love of his word, love of his commands, but also a proper fear of God.

01:30:04

And do you see people there that are fearing God properly? I think that's a huge problem in Christianity today.

01:30:11

God's there just to supercharge your life, help your girlfriend not leave you and get you a promotion at your job, but there's no proper fear of him.

01:30:19

And again, as so many people here have said, I don't think we saw a lot of that at Asbury. Yeah.

01:30:26

I would say no, just because people were flocking there not to hear the word of God, they were flocking there for an experience just to kind of, maybe they were just curious of what they were going to see or feel.

01:30:41

Um, I just think the people who were going there weren't hungry for the word of God, but if the word of God was being preach and people were flocking just to hear his word, then

01:30:54

I would be more inclined to say yes. And I, I mean, I agree with most people on here said,

01:31:01

I mean, you need to see the fruit. I don't know anybody personally who went there and to even see evidence in their life.

01:31:09

Uh, if they were revived, um, I don't know if any of you know anybody personally that you can, um, keep in touch with to see if they, so I would just be curious if somebody knows somebody who was there and they said they were revived, what were they at now?

01:31:30

I know several people who were there. Um, all of the people, some people from my church went,

01:31:36

I live fairly close to Asbury. Uh, I had several people who went get mad at me for saying on Facebook that it was not revival.

01:31:48

Um, and a lot of them said that it was a really good experience, but all of the ones

01:31:54

I know who went are already declared themselves to be Christians. So I don't know of any salvation testimonies, only experience the worshipful spirit of testimonies.

01:32:12

Okay. All right. So Melissa, what are your thoughts on this revival?

01:32:19

Um, yeah, like Garrett said, I was very quiet in regards to this.

01:32:27

I did, uh, on my blog write a letter to the students of Asbury Revival.

01:32:34

I'm sure nobody read it, but, um, uh, it was a letter just, again,

01:32:40

I was asking questions. I, I think everybody has the right to, uh, um, not maybe pronounce judgment on it right away, but we should all be willing to ask questions should be asking questions.

01:32:54

And that's kind of what I did in, in the letter to them. And, um, so now as we're about what a month since the end of it, am

01:33:03

I right? Is it two months? I don't it's yeah. Yeah. It was, it was,

01:33:09

I guess in late February, early March or April. Yeah. So one of my questions was, uh, what are the fruits

01:33:17

I would expect to see if they, um, loved God's word is you would see probably faculty changes.

01:33:26

You would see the whole school system in a way change. You would see, um, the ideas of, um, you know, transgender or homosexuality kind of stuff that would definitely be repented of and woke ideology would be repented, repented of.

01:33:50

So those were type of things that I was looking for to see possibly in the news or anything.

01:33:57

And so far I've seen nothing. So I have to say that for me, the answer is no, it was not a true revival.

01:34:04

Okay. Wayne. How about, uh, yeah, I would definitely say no.

01:34:10

Uh, my wife and I approached it when it first came up, we were, we were prayerfully hopeful, but we had a feeling and I would just, my criteria,

01:34:18

I, you know, biblically it doesn't, it doesn't match what we've all laid out as what a revival should consist of it.

01:34:25

It did not, it did not meet that from the scripture itself. Um, it did not read.

01:34:30

I've, I've been reading, um, or is it, there we go. Dallimore's, um, biography of Whitfield.

01:34:39

Um, and he, he goes into the preaching as, as we go into the first great awakening and, uh, of Whitfield and Wesley and all of them.

01:34:49

And when you, you go through that and the, and the big, big preaching they were doing, but it was scheduled preaching their criteria and what they did, which ended up leading to the revivals that were happening fit what we were talking about as our criteria.

01:35:04

So it doesn't meet the anecdotal and we have the fruit we've seen the fruit of those.

01:35:11

So, uh, and again, like Garrett and many others have said, I'm not,

01:35:16

I'm not seeing any fruit coming out of it that, that that would tell me that, yes, this has really been a

01:35:23

God led revival. So no, I don't, I don't think it was.

01:35:29

Yeah. And I, I mean, I kind of already gave my view as well. I think that, um, the fact that they had people who were not repentant of their sin to lead was concerning.

01:35:43

I think the fact that so many false teachers, known false teachers like Todd Bentley and others who went there and was praising it, well, you know, and I forget what she has said this, that, you know, the point of we, we'd see repentance.

01:36:00

That's what should be the overarching, the overarching message.

01:36:07

I think in a real revival would be repentance. And that's what everyone would be talking about.

01:36:13

And you wouldn't have false teachers. I mean, knowingly there's, there's no, it's not even up for debate.

01:36:21

If you understand the Bible that a guy like Todd Bentley, if you know who he is and know what he he's teaches and does, he he's not regenerate, maybe demon possessed, but he's just, he's not regenerate.

01:36:35

And for him to go there and come back praising it and saying, this is a work of God. Well, he's of the devil.

01:36:42

If he thinks this is a work of, of a spirit, it's not going to be

01:36:47

God unless he repented. So I, you know, I just like Garrett and others,

01:36:54

I reserved, I mean, when this happened, I think when it first happened,

01:36:59

I was in Israel. And so I knew nothing about what was going on. Came back from Israel the next day,

01:37:06

I flew out to California for Shepherd's Conference. And I really wasn't looking at, at the news and things.

01:37:13

And so it wasn't until after Shepherd's Conference that I started to really start hearing about it.

01:37:19

And to be honest with you, after Shepherd's Conference, I was, I was so sick. I was sick for like three weeks, just now recovering.

01:37:27

And I really was out of it. And so I haven't been following it too deeply. And so I just kind of stood back and watched.

01:37:35

But it greatly concerned me when you had people that were in unrepentant sin, not repenting.

01:37:44

You had false teachers going there and claiming this is an act of God when they're unregenerate.

01:37:51

And so I just believe a real revival would bring regeneration. I think,

01:37:57

Pastor Stephen, you said this at the very beginning in the definition, that would be the mark of a revival, is regeneration.

01:38:06

And we're just not seeing that. We're seeing a lot of emotionalism, a lot of feelings. It feels good.

01:38:13

And I think what we're seeing is people who, and this is kind of, several of you kind of voiced this with people either you know or whatnot, but I think there's just people who go, they want to believe.

01:38:32

And they don't want to be critical of anybody else who might want to believe that this is a legitimate thing.

01:38:43

And so what I think you end up seeing is people who are, you know, they may have good intentions to say, we really want this to be something that is, you know, we're going to be positive and we're going to promote this and say this is a good thing, but the reality is,

01:39:05

I just don't see this as something that fits with what we would see in a biblical revival.

01:39:15

And so therefore, I would have to agree with each of you guys and say, I'm sorry, but I don't think we need a long period of time on this one.

01:39:26

Garrett, you were the one that mentioned that, saying, hey, we got to give time. We got to wait and see and look at the fruit.

01:39:36

But I'm looking at the fruit at the event. A lack of repentance, people comfortable in their sin, people promoting their sin, false teachers saying that this was a good thing.

01:39:50

I look at all that and go, there's a problem here. And I just can't see that this is something that would be a biblical revival.

01:40:03

Garrett, you put your hand up. Yeah. And just to be clear, you can judge bad fruit right away.

01:40:09

I think it takes time sometimes to see good fruit grow, but bad fruit is evident usually right away.

01:40:18

Yeah. And that's what I guess I'm saying there. Spencer? Well, yeah, he just said what

01:40:25

I was going to say along the lines of judging fruit.

01:40:31

You're looking for fruit based off what kind of seed was sown. And we're talking about the seed that was sown there.

01:40:40

Was the gospel preached? We don't see anything going on there that would have good fruit to show.

01:40:50

So it kind of goes along with what you said. You can judge from the start. Yeah. And I think that's what we're trying to do.

01:40:58

Garrett, you had more you want to add? Yeah. Ironically, I'm on the website for Asbury right now, and they have a page for the outpouring, as they call it.

01:41:07

And one of the things that I think is telling is they have a button that says, share your testimony with us.

01:41:15

But they don't have any testimonies listed. And it seems like we've had enough time where they should be sharing the fruits of this outpouring.

01:41:24

And yet they're still asking for testimonies and not sharing any. I think that's at least ironic, if not very telling.

01:41:33

Yeah, I would agree. Eve? I'll throw just a small wrench into this.

01:41:40

When I had brought this up with my co -host, we actually disagreed on this. And I think if he were here tonight, he would be the one naysayer, the one who would be opposite what all of us are saying.

01:41:56

And I wanted to just bring up the point he made with me just briefly to see what everybody else thought about it.

01:42:04

He is a strict Calvinist and believes that God saves who they will save. And he brought up the parable of the soils as well.

01:42:12

And he said that it doesn't matter whether they're preaching the right gospel, and it doesn't matter whether the gospel is even preached, it matters that it brings the gospel out into the public eye, because God will save those he will save, and it will fall on the fertile soil regardless.

01:42:31

And so it was a good thing, because people heard about the gospel, even if they didn't hear the true gospel.

01:42:37

And it would make them curious that the ones that God will save, he will save through this. And so therefore, it was a good thing that the

01:42:44

Asbury revival happened. I guess I have difficulty with that just because... I mean, if the biblical gospel is being preached,

01:42:53

I would say yes. But you know, God could use anything he wants.

01:43:01

He could use people's sin. This is a doctrine known as the doctrine of concurrence. You see it most often in the life of Joseph, that God could use other people's sin to bring about his glory.

01:43:14

So the question becomes, so should we just say, should sin abound so God could be more glorified? No, as Paul would say, absolutely not.

01:43:23

Spencer and Nikki. Yeah, sorry, I would just say to her

01:43:28

Calvinist partner there, and I would agree in a sense, I think

01:43:34

Aaron mentioned Samuel Say, and how he was saved from some very charismatic female pastor.

01:43:41

I forgot all the stuff, but a really, what you would consider not biblically sound environment, that he was saved out of it.

01:43:49

And I would agree with that, that you can, I mean, you mentioned the Black Sabbath concert, but we wouldn't then just go, well, a

01:43:55

Black Sabbath concert's a revival then. And I would say the same thing with Asbury. Were people saved there?

01:44:00

I would say, or I would assume most certainly people were saved there. But does a few people being saved mean that there was this outpouring of the

01:44:08

Holy Spirit, like we would see in Scripture, where it was all sound? There was widespread and all those sorts of things that we've already talked about.

01:44:17

But having handfuls of people getting saved, I don't think would classify this as what we would consider a revival, just in general.

01:44:27

Yeah, I would actually go back to, I forget which year, but Cedarville University, where someone spoke at one of the first chapels.

01:44:36

I think they had like 125 students come forward to receive Christ. And they didn't make a big,

01:44:43

I mean, they mentioned it, but they weren't calling it a revival and trying to make it on the news and things like that.

01:44:50

They were glad that those that got saved, got saved. And they got saved because they heard a biblical message of repentance.

01:44:57

So that would be my thought. Pastor Steven. Yeah, a couple of things here that I would like to say about the

01:45:05

Calvinist friend is, first is, I would be labeled a Calvinist myself. I believe that God is going to save those whom

01:45:12

He has chosen in eternity past. And I would also say that He is going to save those by means of the true gospel, not a false gospel.

01:45:26

As a matter of fact, Paul says, let anyone that teaches that be anathematized, be accursed, be damned. And the

01:45:32

Bible is clear that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. So I would also say that if anyone was saved at Asbury, it was a result of somebody likely on the side, because we didn't hear the true gospel being preached from the platform, but it would likely be in a smaller group on the side, somebody teaching the true or proclaiming the true gospel that we find in the

01:45:57

Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 15, and the gospels themselves about Jesus' life, death, resurrection.

01:46:09

So I just find that hard to swallow, is that whatever they're hearing, they can be saved.

01:46:17

I think Scripture's clear that they have to hear the true gospel to be saved. I agree.

01:46:24

Mr. Brewster. Yeah, I was just searching the Scriptures, just doing a little bit more study, and I came upon Isaiah 57, and this is really amazing, because Isaiah 57 verse 15 starts with, for thus says the high and exalted one who lives forever, whose name is holy.

01:46:44

This is God, this is Yahweh, this is sitting on the throne.

01:46:50

And he says, I dwell on a high and holy place. That's really important.

01:46:57

And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit. And understanding what this is, these people, contrite means to be crushed.

01:47:07

Lowly of spirit has the idea of being someone who's been abased, subjected, humbled, right?

01:47:13

So he is on this high and holy place, dwelling with the contrite and lowly of spirit.

01:47:19

He says, in order to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

01:47:28

And that, I think, ultimately is really the thing that we're all getting at here, is that this person, by God's working in his life, has come to the place where he recognizes the depravity of his sin and spiritual destitution.

01:47:49

And he comes to God crushed. He comes to him broken.

01:47:55

And that is the person who God is going to revive. Not the person looking for an experience, not the person wanting to have fun.

01:48:03

The person who is contrite and lowly of spirit. Again, this is from the Father. This is from God himself seated high on his throne.

01:48:11

This is what he said at this moment. And I think it needs to inform our view of how

01:48:17

God is working specifically in what we may think is a quote -unquote revival. I agree.

01:48:25

And so I think, again, we've had a lot of agreement, some slight disagreements there.

01:48:30

But I think that a healthy discussion, and I think a needful discussion when we have these, because I don't think this will be the last of these so -called revivals that will occur, because I think people are looking, and one of you said it, but people are looking for the experience.

01:48:50

And they're jumping from experience to experience. And that's why everyone was flocking to, I think, to Asbury.

01:48:56

Because I forget who, one of the podcasters said it on their own podcast, where you can have a revival anywhere.

01:49:07

Why do you have to go to Asbury? Well, because that's where the experience is happening. And so people are jumping from experience to experience and looking for something that I just don't think is, as we discussed tonight, is aligning with scripture.

01:49:25

So my challenge would be this. We've talked about this this evening.

01:49:31

What would we expect a biblical gospel message to be if it was a true revival?

01:49:37

Well, let me share what I would expect to hear. The fact that every one of us, even you who is listening or watching this, you and I both have broken

01:49:49

God's law. Now, God is infinitely holy. That means set apart.

01:49:55

He is infinitely just. But one of the things we don't often talk about is

01:50:00

He's infinitely wrathful because He's just. And so because of that, when we break

01:50:06

God's law, it has an infinite consequence, not because of how bad the sin is, especially compared to other people, but how great

01:50:17

God is and who we offended when we broke His law. And so when we violate the law of an infinite

01:50:25

God, it has an infinite consequence. That means paying it forever.

01:50:31

We can never stop paying that punishment that we owe because we've broken the law of an infinitely holy

01:50:39

God. And that justice demands that there be a consequence.

01:50:47

This is one of the things people, oh, they talk God is just. But how can you have a

01:50:53

God that is both just and merciful? You see, those two are mutually exclusive. You can only have it if God Himself, an infinite being, pays it because He's the only one that can pay an infinite fine.

01:51:10

But guess what? He can't pay it for you and I unless He's also truly human.

01:51:16

So God had to become a man, never breaking the law of God so He could be a substitute for mankind, and then being truly man and truly

01:51:29

God, as man He could be our substitute, as God He can pay an eternal fine.

01:51:36

So even though you and I, and listener, you may be a far more moral person than I am,

01:51:42

I will grant that to you. But it's not our morality that gets us in a right state with God.

01:51:48

That's like saying, I can swim across the Atlantic Ocean, and maybe Aaron here can swim twice as far as me, but we both drowned.

01:51:56

What good is it? Right? The reality is we can never pay that penalty.

01:52:04

It takes forever. And the consequence is called the second death, eternity in a lake of fire. All liars will have their place there.

01:52:11

That includes every single human being. And if you are trying to tell me you've never told a lie, you just did.

01:52:18

So the reality is God made a way of escape when He came to earth 2000 years ago, and He took on sin.

01:52:30

He became the punishment of sin. He became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God.

01:52:39

That's what we would want to hear at a true revival, that God can offer you forgiveness for your sin.

01:52:47

You're not going to stay the same way because when you realize what God did for you as a sinner, you're not going to go back to that sin.

01:52:58

You're going to turn from that and turn to Christ and want to live a life that's pleasing to Him.

01:53:06

And that's the message we weren't hearing at Asbury. And that's the message we would hear at a revival, that you can have forgiveness for sin in what

01:53:15

Jesus Christ did on the cross. And so if you're hearing that message for the first time, my challenge to you is to repent, turn from trusting yourself as a good person or your good works.

01:53:28

That's the pride of humans to think, I'm good enough. No, turn from that sin, turn to Christ.

01:53:35

What Jesus did on the cross as a payment of your sin and have eternal life. And so that'd be my challenge.

01:53:42

And I would say that if there's any quote unquote revival, that's not preaching a biblical gospel like that, where it's calling people to repentance based upon what

01:53:54

Jesus' death, burial and resurrection, then I just can't believe it's a revival.

01:54:00

I believe it's a goat farm. It's producing more goats, more false converts, so that they'll turn a blind eye to the true gospel because they think, well,

01:54:11

I had this experience and that was enough. That's why it's so important that we discuss this.

01:54:17

And I'm sure there's you, listener, you've probably heard a bunch of others, other podcasts and other people talk about this because it's been some time and we waited on it, but we waited so that we can evaluate.

01:54:34

And when we look at this, it just isn't a biblical revival. And we pray that people would come to repentance, but I'd pray that they would do so by hearing a biblical gospel preached, not in spite of it.

01:54:48

And therefore, I wouldn't want to encourage people to go to a false revival because, yeah, you may be curious and may hear something biblical, but how good is it hearing something biblical when it's filled with falsehood?

01:55:09

You're more likely to be influenced by the falsehood than the truth. And for that reason,

01:55:15

I would say we have to be concerning with it and have to call out what we're seeing.

01:55:24

I think it's our call. So we thank you for joining in on this Theology Throwdown. I hope and encourage you all to go and check out all the podcasts at christianpodcastcommunity .org.

01:55:35

It is where you'll find all of our heavily vetted podcasts where you can check them all out, listen to ones that you enjoy because we have something for everyone.

01:55:48

You are guaranteed, I'm sure, to find something you would like as a Christian on there, something for women, something for homeschoolers, as you've heard tonight.

01:55:59

We have a lot there, so check them all out, and we'll see you next month for another