True or False?: An Analysis of Recent Events at Asbury

Transcript

JR 15
3/5/2023
True or False? An Analysis of Recent Events at Asbury
Selected Verses
Jesse Randolph

Well, alright, let’s get started. I’m doing something different tonight. I’m going to say a couple of words to those who might be tuning in first. For whatever reason, when we picked the topic that we’re going to address tonight, we picked up a lot of flak online from various groups so I want to say to those. (I think the camera is right over there.) That if you don’t know Jesus Christ, I’d invite you to come to Him in saving faith. I know that there’s a war within your heart. There’s a war within your members that is telling you that He’s not there, that God’s not real, but you know that He’s there. You are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and the greatest need you have is not to slam what our church is doing and what our church is teaching. The greatest need you have is to make sure you are right with the Holy God by trusting in the finished work of His Son on the cross. So I know you may not watch until the end of the video but I want to make sure that I get that in the beginning of the video so you at least hear that part. That it’s important that you know Jesus as Savior and Lord.

On February 8th of this year a chapel service was held. And you see the slide already here behind me. This chapel service was held within the four walls of… it’s called Hughes Memorial Auditorium on the campus of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. Wilmore is a small town, small community of about 6,000 that sits 1.5 hours southeast of Louisville. As is typical of any Christian college campus chapel there was a time of welcoming. There was a time of song. There was a time of announcements. There was a time of prayer. And that all was before this speaker came up to the podium. The speaker that day was this man. I’m going to attempt to pronounce the name, it’s Zach Meerkreebs, Zach Meerkreebs. His title is Envision Leadership Coordinator for the Christian and Missionary Alliance. This young minister’s message was derived from Romans chapter 12, a truly-powerful section of Scripture which contains something like 30 commands given by the Apostle Paul to Christians there at Rome. More on the content of his message later. But after he spoke for approximately 25 minutes Meerkreebs left the stage, took off his mic and according to at least one news report, and this endeared me to him. He texted these words to his wife, “Latest stinker. I’ll be home soon.” Words that any married teacher or preacher of God’s Word can relate to on some level.

Well, as Meerkreebs left the chapel the student praise team wound down the chapel service in song. And while most of the students in attendance filed out and headed out to lunch once the chapel service was over, approximately 20 students stayed back in the chapel building and they prayed. There are accounts of one young man who started in a little prayer group or a prayer circle there in the chapel and he shared how he had been suicidal a few years back. And how the Lord had grabbed ahold of him and spared him. That sort of caught fire and eventually, more students began to join him and this group of 20 or so huddling together in prayer. Then one of the students strapped on the guitar. Another student jumped behind the drum kit. Another student grabbed a mic. And the music started. Then, later that afternoon, the President of the seminary, his name is Timothy Tennant, sent an email out to the student body indicating that a special movement of the Spirit had started at the school. Then, more students started to come. Once the President of the seminary or the college writes a message like that they start streaming in. Then, Meerkreebs himself shared a video on Facebook of the chapel auditorium starting to fill with students praying for one another. Then, Meerkreebs came back to the chapel that same evening and presided over elements of this ongoing worship service. As you can see, some were kneeling there at the front of the stage. Others were huddled in clusters in the auditorium and others were singing worship songs led by Asbury’s student-led praise team.

Well, before you knew it, certain Christian social media outlets were picking up the story. This was going out through YouTube and it was going out through Facebook and Instagram. And that led to this initial wave of visitors, mainly younger, social-media savvy visitors who had picked up the news of this event and came to the campus. Well, not long after that, local, and eventually, national media outlets picked up on the story that revival had broken out at Asbury. Look at some of the headlines here. You have, top right corner, “Two Weeks of Worship at Kentucky School,” down beneath that “Asbury Revival Continues” and to the left of that “The Revival Continues.” Even fake news sites such as the satirical site “The Babylon Bee” got in on the fun and they poked fun you could say at this event. If you can’t read that, it says, “Report: Asbury University Revival Started Night Before Huge Group Project Was Due.” I always love the humor of the guys at “The Bee.”

And, of course, this went on to become quite the phenomenon over the past several weeks. By most estimates that I’ve seen, somewhere around 50,000 people traveled to little Asbury, Wilmore, Kentucky to Asbury College. They were predominantly younger. And they represented something like 260 universities and colleges. In fact, here’s a map, created by an Asbury student named Eliza Crawford, which tracks where all the attendees came from. Look at that, I mean you’re seeing Pacific, you’re seeing east coast, and look at all those red lines to the right taking you overseas. That’s how many people streamed in the event at Asbury.

So, this event has been in the news. It has been the subject of countless podcast episodes. It has been fodder for countless blog posts. It has been the topic of countless YouTube videos. And it has been the source of countless questions and comments I’ve personally faced about the legitimacy or the illegitimacy of what has been happening at Asbury. So, I thought this would be a good opportunity this evening with the dust having somewhat settled on the event, but with it still fresh enough in everyone’s minds to provide some analysis and some insights into the recent events at Asbury.

Now, before we get into it, I recognize very clearly that my job up here is not to be a cultural commentator or a culture warrior. I’m a pastor. I’m a preacher of God’s Word. I’m a shepherd of God’s flock. This isn’t a Fox News studio. This is the church of Jesus Christ. I get that. But as I’m about to lay out for you the matter of what is true revival and what is not. Is not merely a cultural matter -- it’s a biblical matter. It’s a theological matter. It’s a historical matter. And I would contend who better to hear from on this subject than from your pastor.

In fact, that’s become a real challenge if I can just get real with you for a second. And I would say even a real problem in our days. See, God has set up the church so that its members would receive biblical instruction from their pastors and elders and teachers in their church. Men who have devoted themselves to the study of the Word, and to study theology. And whose prayerful study serves as a sort of protective fence around what enters the minds and the hearts of our people. But also, we are men, elders, and pastors who live and function among our people. We are part of the same community. We shop at the same grocery store. We go to the same Runza as you do, right? Think about it. Historically, as church members would have been confronted with topics and issues that were related to the culture around them whether it was the Civil War or the Cold War or the war on the lives of the unborn, who would they go for answers about how to think about these matters? They would go to their pastors! They wouldn’t go to news, the news stations or the news cycles. They would go to their pastors. They would go to the men they knew would look them in the eye and give them an answer from the Word and who would shepherd them in the direction of faithfulness and truth as they gave them their answers from the Scriptures. But that’s not how it works anymore. See, in this younger generation, which I define as my age, 24, (laughter from audience). Oh, come on, that’s a little rough… [24]plus 20 and younger. See, this younger generation represents the future of this church. And this younger generation, they don’t call the church to speak to the pastor about to think through this issue or that issue. Instead, they’ll go to YouTube or to social media or they’ll go to the news sites. They’ll go to Matt Walsh or Jordan Peterson or Allie Stuckey. They’ll go to InfoWars or to Fox News or to Drudge. They’ll go to Twitter or Parler or to the ‘Gram and that’s how they’re going to form their thoughts about how things function in the world.

And then what they are going to do, is with this sea of information, this sea of these episodes and seasons of podcasts and all this loosely assembled data floating around in their minds -- they come to church on Sundays and they expect the pastor not only to have answers from the Word, the text that he’ll be preaching that day, but to have answers and specific responses to the various things they’ve been listening to all week from the various cultural commentators in the world.

Not only is that unrealistic and unsustainable, it completely rejects the blueprint of what life in the body of Christ was designed to look like. Christians are to study God’s Word. And as we do so, we are to be taught, and instructed, and shepherded by our local pastors and elders as we grow in our understanding of the Word. Duane Leach and Mike Shrader have a lot more wisdom to offer you than Tucker Carlson. Ray Terry and Rob Jensen have a lot more wisdom to offer you than a cultural crusader like Doug Wilson. Larry Riekenberg and Scott Bailey have a lot more wisdom to offer you than your favorite Instagram influencer. How do I know that? Because Acts 20 says the Holy Spirit has made them, those men, the elders of this church. The Holy Spirit knew what He was doing when He made them elders here and the Holy Spirit knew what He was doing when He brought you into this body of believers of which they are overseers and shepherds. Those men are the ones who care about you. Those are the men who pray for you. And those are the ones, and actually I, too, (I’m the Chairman of the Elder Board) who will one day give an account for your souls as to how we shepherded you.

So with that very long rant, this is one pastor’s attempt, tonight’s presentation is one pastor’s attempt, your pastor’s attempt, in the midst of this bottomless sea of competing voices and opinions and hot takes to give a really simple and high-level analysis of what’s been happening at Asbury over the past several weeks. I don’t intend to be exhaustive. I can’t be exhaustive in a single hour. But I do hope to lay out some of the biblical and theological and historical track for you to give you some guidance as to how we should be thinking about and evaluating, not only this event but future events like this as they arrive.

This is not an expository message. If you object to that, you can get up and go out and we’ll see you next Sunday. This will not be a sermon. We will not be taking a text of Scripture and working through it verse by verse like we did this morning. This is more like a lesson or a lecture. But that it won’t be devoid of Scripture. Not at all. In fact, I’ve been meditating on this passage all week as I have thought about this message and this talk about Asbury. 1 John 4:1, it says “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” And why? Well, it says, “because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Now, I’m sure, again there’ll be some out there who will see this now or you’re here night now or you’re watching online or you’re going to watch it later who will say this is just another mean-spirited, close-minded attack on a genuine work of the Spirit at Asbury. That I’m just another one of those “Bible-thumping fundamentalists” who are clobbering people who are more charismatic than I.

But that’s not at all the spirit which this assessment tonight is to be offered. My job is to instruct this church “in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict,” that’s Titus 1:9 and in that vein, providing this sober analysis of Asbury through the lens of Scripture. and for tonight’s purposes, with some historical and theological insights. I think it’s good for the health of our church. So that we can as 1 John 4:1 says, “test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”

So, as we shove off the dock here tonight and get started we need to define our terms. Let’s start with the obvious one, what is a revival? You know, the events at Asbury have been described by many as a revival. They’ve been described by others as an awakening. Which some, as they distinguish awakening and revival, will say that an awakening is an elevation of the religious consciousness before true revival comes. Others will call it ‘an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.’ We could spend a lot of time… I could teach a whole class on charismatic theology. For instance, where we could sift through the nuances of these ideas of true revival, awakening, or outpouring of the Spirit. Tonight though, for the sake of simplicity and time we’re going to use the word “revival.” The word that’s been most frequently attached to this event.

Now, interestingly, that word “revival,” is not actually, technically, a biblical term, at least in noun form. You can see as it says here on the slide here, “The Bible never refers to “revival” in noun form, i.e., where the term is used to describe an event in which the Spirit worked or moved in a unique way.” However as we see here in this next slide there are places where the term “revive,” the verb “revive” from the Hebrew “haya” meaning “to make alive,” is used. We see examples of that verb “haya,” in places like Habakkuk 3:2 where he says, “Lord, I have heard the report about You and I fear. O Lord, revive,” there’s our word, “Your work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.” Or Isaiah 57:15, “For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy, ‘I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive,” that’s our verb, “the spirit of the lowly and to revive,” there it is again, “the heart of the contrite.” Or Psalm 85:5-6 says “Will you be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger to all generations? Will You not Yourself revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You?” Now the passages there in Habakkuk and Psalms are prayers. They are prayers that God would lead His people to a place of repentance and to pursue Him after a period of time in which they were not pursuing Him.

And of course, then we see, in Scripture, outside of these three verses these periods of repentance and restoration at various points in the life of the history of Israel and the hearts of these individual worshipers, and even Israel as a whole when they were, to use the verb form here, revived. We see it in the day of the Judges in those repeated cycles of sin, and judgment, and then at least some form of repentance. We saw it in the days of King Josiah who brought about those various reforms in Israel once the book of the Law was discovered. So, there were these periods in Israel’s history where I think we’d be comfortable saying those were periods of national revival. Even if the term, the noun “revival” isn’t used. It’s like the word “Trinity.” It’s not there, but it’s there.

So it’s no surprise that those who throw around this term “revival” in our day will cite instances like these from the Old Testament where national Israel repented and returned to the Lord. And when it’s affections toward Yahweh were at least temporarily revived. And it’s no surprise that people will cite this passage, we see it frequently, 2 Chronicles 7:13-14, “If… My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” And of course, when we see this cited, often you know, Cracker Barrel or Hobby Lobby or something like that, it’ll often be cited as though this applies to America when, in fact, this very clearly applies to the people of Israel, the land promises that were made to Israel.

Well, as with the Old Testament, the term, the noun “revival” also doesn’t appear in the New Testament. But of course, that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a record in the New Testament of scenarios and situations in which hearts were being revived, in which people were genuinely turning from their sin and turning to Christ. You know, Acts 2, of course, records that special Day of Pentecost, a day on which the Spirit was poured out upon people which led to the conversion of 3,000 souls who then began gathering and “devoting themselves to the apostle’s teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer,” Acts 2:42. And that’s, of course, a verse that refers to the real outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And that’s a verse that Pentecostals today will latch on to and say, “Ah-hah, see, that’s what the Spirit does.” More on that later.

But the reality is that once the Spirit was poured out in that way at Pentecost, once the gospel was spread, there’s nothing in that text of Acts 2 to indicate that this was to be a regular or a repeating occurrence. Rather, the testimony of Scripture is that after those very significant early events in the book of Acts, the key roles that the Holy Spirit would then play would be to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment, to regenerate the lost, Titus 3:5, and to conform believers into the image of Jesus Christ. Is the Spirit at work and active in the lives of believers today? Absolutely. But it is not an outpouring of the Spirit that some seem to look for. It’s not that outpouring of the Spirit that happened at Pentecost. That was a unique, one-time event. Instead, what we should be looking at in the age of history in which we live, what we should be looking for is that upbraiding and upbuilding work that the Spirit does in our hearts as He regenerates us, as He instructs us, as He convicts us, as He guides us, as He sanctifies us, and as He conforms us into the image of our Savior.

So, the word “revival,” the noun form “revival,” does not appear in the Bible. So where does the concept come from? How have some come to call events, like what took place at Asbury, a “revival”? Well, to answer that question we need to do a little bit of theological excavation and some historical explanation because that word “revival” is a theological term with a distinct history. And the roots of this concept, as we think of it today, of revival, go down deep into some theological soil that has some very interesting elements to it. See, our usage today, culture’s usage today, like Fox News, of that term “revival,” goes back to a very revered forerunner in the faith and their very strong commitment to a postmillennial worldview. But it also goes deep into Methodist and Pentecostal soils. See, this unique combination of postmillennialism and Methodism that we’re going to get to in just a second starting with postmillennialism.

Postmillennialism, what is postmillennialism? Here’s a definition of postmillennialism from a postmillennialist, Augustus Strong. He says, “Through the preaching of the gospel in all the world, the kingdom of Christ is steadily advanced to enlarge its boundaries, until Jews and Gentiles alike become possessed of its blessings, and a millennial period is introduced in which Christianity generally prevails throughout the earth.” So that’s a postmillennialist’s view on postmillennialism. Here’s Gary Gilley. He’s not a postmillennialist, he’s a premillennial guy, but here’s how he defines postmillennialism or how he tried to explain it. He says, “Ultimately, there will be worldwide acceptance of the gospel,” again this is his comment on postmillennialism, “which will usher in the millennial kingdom. Entire countries and civilizations will be spiritually changed. The church has replaced Israel as the recipient of God’s covenantal blessings, and Satan is bound… which is why the world will ultimately be transformed for Christ, then Christ will return.” Well, as you know from American History class in eleventh grade we had this event which was called the Great Awakening that happened in the 1730s and 1740s here in America and it happened overseas as well. But these were the days of the Great Awakening, where guys like Jonathan Edwards were reading “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” And by the way he was reading a manuscript, monotone, hardly looked at his audience at all in that sermon. Just read it, tick, tick, tick, tick, like a very steady pendulum. But it was haunting. It was eerie. And he preached that sermon in Enfield, Connecticut, in 1741 and there were reports that many were converted as they sat under that sermon.

The Great Awakening were the days of George Whitefield as he was going up and down the eastern seaboard and making multiple trans-Atlantic voyages as he preached the gospel in the open air to tens of thousands of people. And the stories of Whitefield’s ministry are especially amazing and especially encouraging. There are stories around Whitefield’s ministry of people standing for hours on end outdoors waiting to hear him preach. There are stories of coal workers who were coming out of the mines to hear him preach and they were so impacted by his preaching and his delivery that tears were streaming down their eyes and creating these track lines in their coal-stained faces. These were the days where, as Edwards would later recall, they were marked by a surprising work, he said, of God’s Spirit -- as more people took interest in religious matters and as churches which in the face of modernism in those days had been dying but now they were starting to fill up again.

But it’s also important to note (and this is why I mentioned post-millennialism earlier) that as clear as their presentations of the gospel were and as doctrinally-rooted as their messages were, and they were -- these men, George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, the men we link most directly to the Great Awakening, were postmillennial. Meaning that they believed they were in this ‘time of refreshing,’ this period that the Lord was allowing, to bring about a mass conversion and mass sanctification because the Second Coming of Christ was imminent and this ‘golden age’ of Christianity was underway. So they prayed for it and you can see it in their preaching. They were urging these conversions to happen so that this golden age could come, the return of Christ would happen, and their postmillennial eschatology would fall in line.

Now were many souls saved through the preaching of Whitefield and Edwards? There’s no doubt. But were there false professions brought about by this emotional excess? There is also no doubt. In fact, it was that worry, that about false professions, which is what prompted Edwards to write “A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections” in 1746. Seeing that the kingdom of God hadn’t yet come and that this golden age of Christianity hadn’t yet arrived and that Christ hadn’t returned, Edwards’ “Religious Affections” were written as these measured, thoughtful reflections on what marks a true awakening, or a true revival, and what marks a false one.

But the main point, the main idea, as we think ahead to Asbury, which we will get to, is that the men that we think of as sparking the greatest revival, awakening, on American soil, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, were postmillennial. Meaning they believed that their preaching and that their evangelism and their gospel labors were bringing in the kingdom, ushering in this golden age which would bring about the return of Christ. So on the one hand, our modern conception of revival goes into that soil, the postmillennial soil.

The second soil that we need to consider is Methodism. And for that, we need to turn to a discussion of John Wesley and the Methodist movement. And we’ll also need to get into Pentecostalism which is a poisonous offshoot of Methodism. We’re not going to have a whole evening to do a deep dive into John Wesley and Methodist theology but what you need to know is that he held that it was possible for believers to achieve a status of perfection in this life. It’s called Wesleyan holiness theology. Wesley and his followers, they affirmed many of the things we would believe, much we would believe -- the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ. But they also taught that there was a moment in the Christian life where a Christian could achieve perfection. Not in glory, what we would contend, but here on planet earth in these bodies of sinful flesh.

Well, this Wesleyan idea of perfectionism was really this idea rooted in this idea that there were two tiers of the Christian experience. There was one tier at which you experienced conversion, the moment in which you trusted in Christ. But then there’s this second tier at which you would achieve perfection. That would give birth to later the Pentecostal movement. Now they are different. The Methodist movement and the Pentecostal movement, they are different, but one bred the other which we will see in just a second. The Pentecostal movement, the modern Pentecostal movement, was really birthed originally in Topeka, Kansas, not too far from here, at Bethel Bible School which was founded by this man Charles Parham. It was there at his Bethel Bible School that this woman, Agnes Ozman, was said to have spoken in tongues. She is credited by Pentecostals as being the first in this era to speak in tongues. And by that I mean in the Pentecostal gibberish way, not in the book of Acts kind of way. Now these early Pentecostals would eventually migrate out to Los Angeles where the so-called Azusa Street Revival of 1906 took place.

Now, as I alluded to earlier there is a relationship between Methodism and Pentecostalism but there are key differences as well. One of the similarities is that both systems taught this idea that there are two stages of the Christian life. You know, salvation, and then this second thing. For Methodists, John Wesley’s crowd, they would say that that second thing was perfection, you achieve holiness, perfect holiness in this life. While the Pentecostals, men like Charles Parham, they would say that that second thing was not holiness but what was rather an experience, an experience with the Spirit specifically which typically involved some manifestation of one of the unique gifts that were on display back at Pentecost in Acts 2, hence the title “Pentecostal.” They believe that those gifts are still in operation today and they are normative in the church today. Pentecostalism is not marked by holiness the way that we think of that term, a life lived in obedience to God’s Word, the demonstration of the fruit of the Spirit. It’s rather more experiential, that look for that second experience, what they call that second blessing. That additional dose of, or infilling of, the Holy Spirit which they will call the baptism of the Spirit.

Well, getting back to the Methodists and Methodism, they were originally called Methodists under Wesley because of the methodical way that they lived their lives. They believed, again, that a person could achieve perfection, holiness in this life. And their founder, John Wesley, was known for a particularly holy and devout manner of life going all the way back to his days at Oxford University where he started this very pretentious society called the Holy Club. Which by the way, George Whitefield was a member of that club.

But what the Methodists also became known for, especially as the decades rolled on into the 1700s and into the 1800s were the evangelistic and revivalistic methods they employed in establishing Methodist encampments on the frontiers of what was then known as the American West, places like Ohio and West Virginia and Kentucky. And in these days, the camp meeting was what it was called. That’s where they had these Methodistic camp meetings. They were popularized out on the western edge, the western frontier, as this new way outside the four walls of a church to share the gospel and to teach people about Christ and to bring the lost to Christ. These camp meetings were known for their focus on singing, on emotionalism, and various other ways to secure a commitment to Christ from whoever was in attendance at that event. So the methods of the Methodists, in other words, by this point, by the 1800’s, were designed to produce and stimulate revival.

Well, one man who was familiar with this Methodist approach to stimulating revival was Charles Finney. Good luck sleeping tonight, look at that face. What Finney is known for as he introduced with these what were called new measures as a way to further stimulate camp meetings and the revival culture in the American West. Finney was a former lawyer who was known for his methods. The anxious bench he would place in front of the assembly to publicly have people come up and tremble in fear as to whether they were right with God or not. The emphasis on music was another one of Finney’s measures. The prolonged nature of the revival meetings to wear them out, to push for a decision. To ask people to physically walk forward and answer the call to come up to the altar, sit on the bench, and talk to the pastor or preacher, and make a decision for Christ. I bring Finney up here, not because he was a Methodist. He wasn’t. He wasn’t even a Christian. He was a heretic who denied original sin. He wasn’t even preaching a real gospel. But I bring him up because he was this charismatic figure that in this same period of history that we’re marching through right now, brought in these man-made means and these man-made methods to evangelism to revival. And Finney and Finneyism is stitched deeply into the fabric of modern evangelical culture today. That’s where we get pastors and preachers saying things like, “I see that hand, come on up, and walk the aisle and pray the prayer. That all goes back to Finney, long ago.

So, Finney was no Methodist. But this man was, Francis Asbury. Francis Asbury was a circuit riding evangelist who was renowned for his methods in spreading the Christian gospel. Many have called Francis Asbury the “father of American Methodism.” And guess what or which educational institution is named after Francis Asbury? You guessed it, Asbury University. Let’s just say that it’s not by accident that the events that happened last month, in Wilmore, Kentucky happened at Asbury University, a school named after Francis Asbury. Indeed, the expectation of revival is woven deeply into the theological tradition of Methodism. And it’s woven deeply into the history and the culture of this flagship Methodist school. In fact, we’re going to work through its history, right now, of the revivals, revivals that have taken place at Asbury in the past 100 years.

These are all according to their website. I’m going to have about ten slides here. These are from the school itself. “Asbury University has been known through the years for its history of great revivals. There have been several occasions when significant moves of the Holy Spirit have swept the campus and reached across the nation. In February 1905, during a blizzard, a prayer meeting in the men’s dormitory spilled out to the rest of campus and the town of Wilmore. In February 1908, revival broke out while someone prayed in chapel; the revival lasted two weeks and was signified by prevailing prayer and intercession. In February 1921 the last service of a planned revival lasted until 6 a.m., and services were extended for three days.” File away those words, “planned revival,” for later. “In February 1950 a student testimony led to confessions, victories, and more testimonies. This went on uninterrupted for 118 hours and became the second leading news story nationwide; it is estimated that 50,000 people found a new experience in Christ as a result of this revival and witness teams that went out from it. In March 1958 revival began in a student fasting prayer meeting that spilled over into chapel and lasted for 63 hours. On February 3, 1970 Dean Custer B. Reynolds, scheduled to speak in chapel, felt led to invite persons to give personal testimony instead. Many on campus had been praying for spiritual renewal and were now in an expectant mood. Soon there was a large group waiting in line to speak. A spirit of powerful revival came upon the congregation. The chapel was filled with rejoicing people. Classes were cancelled for a week during the 144 hours of unbroken revival, but even after classes resumed on February 10, Hughes Auditorium was left open for prayer and testimony.” A couple more. “In March 1992 a student confession during the closing chapel of the annual Holiness Conference turned into 127 consecutive hours of prayer and praise. In February 2006 a student chapel led to four days of continuous worship, prayer and praise.”

Now one thing that’s striking to me as we go through these is not only that in some of these there is this idea of a “planned revival” which sounds somewhat oxymoronic in that a revival one would think would be an unplanned, unexpected movement of the Spirit. But here’s another thing worth noting. I’m not sure you caught it as we were going through those, but 11 of the 12 revivals that Asbury apparently had took place in the month of February. The one that wasn’t in February was in March. Now, wild theorizing here, but even as newly-minted Midwesterners, even we understand that February and March are those dead-of-winter months where people are finding themselves in the doldrums. They are stuck indoors. They are needing something exciting to bridge them to the warmer months of spring and summer. You know, for me, it’s knowing that baseball is around the corner and the smell of fresh cut grass. But might it be in a school and a tradition that is expecting and looking for revival that it’s not a coincidence that these revivals at Asbury always seem to happen in the dead of winter? I digress.

So we have this Methodist school named after this renowned Methodist minister with this history of revivals. And then going back further in history we have in our American Christian tradition the notion of awakening and revival brought about by various postmillennial preachers. So where does that bring us? Well, it brings us to the perfect storm of the past four weeks at Asbury University. With that background now in place I’m going to spend the rest of my time up here this evening laying out some concerns and cautions I have about the events at Asbury as a whole. And by the way I’m going to follow those with some cautions and counsel for us in this room as we think about it.

So we’ll start with the pre-revival stage. The pre-revival stage referring to the pre-revival stage at Asbury a month ago. Now the first thing to mention is that this event, the Asbury event, though it was said to have started on February 8 of 2023, less than four weeks ago, or less than a month ago, it actually got rolling in the weeks leading up to that date. In a blog post that he wrote on January 4 of 2023 the president of Asbury Theological Seminary, Timothy Tennent, indicated that the campus was in a, what he called a “pre-revival” stage. Now, either he is a prophet with a gift to predict the event that was about to come to his campus or this entire event was planned or there’s a middle way which Tennant knew that revival historically occurred in February, in the dead of winter. And it had been awhile, February 2006, and it was time for a revival.

Now I bring this up, I assure you, not to make accusations because the reality is I don’t know, nobody knows whether there was any planning or staging behind this event. But instead to surface concerns about those old Methodist ways. Going back to the “new measures” implemented by a guy like Charles Finney. That a revival, a purported work of the Spirit, can somehow be planned or put on or staged. It’s also at least a bit odd that Asbury, the events of Asbury, they came to an end on February 23, 2023, not many days ago. And that happened when they brought the campus portion of the revival event to a close. They basically said in an email from the President of the university that their infrastructure could no longer support the event. And that they needed to return to normal campus life activities which had been disrupted with all that was happening and all the attention in the news media. But when you think about it that’s sort of a deflating way to end a work of the Spirit, don’t you think? To cap it at two weeks and say, “it’s time to get back to class now?” I mean, if a revival is truly of the Spirit, how can any human bring the curtain down on it?

So one series of concerns relate to this fact that there had been many revivals on this campus, termed revivals, over its history -- that they all occurred in February, except one -- that there were rumblings that a new revival was about to happen just a month before this so called revival did happen -- and that the seminary, the university, shut it down a couple weeks into it saying it was time to get back to class. So that’s one set of concerns.

The next set of concerns related to Asbury, have to do with where we started tonight. The sermon, the sermon that was preached on February 8th, 2023 that started this whole event at Asbury. Now let’s go back to this message from Zach Meekreebs from Romans 12 on February 8th. We’re not going to pick apart the message in its entirety, pick it apart in detail. But I do want to give you a taste of it just to give you a sense of the words he used and the emphases he gave in that sermon. Here are some of his closing words in that sermon as he sort of “landed the plane.” He said, “[I]s your source of love… white-knuckling it, trying really hard, or is it the love of God for you? What is the purpose of your love? Is it to look good at chapel, to look good to your family? Is it to get love in return from the person that you’re giving love to?” “That’s not this love we’re talking about… Some of us need to sit in the love of God. Some of us need to taste and experience the power of the Holy Spirit. If you really want to become love in action, you start by prostrating yourself before the love of God. If you want to become love in action, you have to experience the love of God.” 45 “I pray that this sits on you guys like an itchy sweater, and you gotta itch; you gotta take care of it. Become the love of God by experiencing the love of God. Holy Spirit,” this is his closing prayer, “if you spoke to anyone… would you produce fruit in this room, in these souls, in these minds and these hearts? Do a new thing in our midst. Revive us by your love.”

Now, I’ve read the whole sermon, the transcript, and there’s nothing that’s outwardly heretical in this sermon. There’s obviously heavy emphasis, maybe even exclusive emphasis on one attribute of God as though that’s all God is or that’s all who God is. But that’s really just the soft-serve style of messaging that’s going out from pulpits all around the globe these days, sadly. Also concerning is what we see here toward the end where he says, “Do a new thing in our midst.” The Holy Spirit doesn’t do new things. He does the same thing which is what He was sent by the Father and the Son to do which is to convict the world of sin, and righteousness, and judgment. To illuminate the Word that He has breathed out and to conform believers into the image of Jesus Christ.

But this sermon was not really special or especially marked by what’s in it but more so by what’s missing from it. There’s no mention of sin in this sermon. There’s no mention of the cross. There’s no mention of repentance. There’s no mention of hell. You know, the sermons that brought about genuine conversions in the days of the Great Awakening like the sermons that have been preached here and in other faithful churches throughout the years are those sermons which mention God’s holiness and God’s justice, and man’s hopeless, sinful condition. Those sermons that state that unless a person is born again as they repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ on the cross they will spend an eternity in anguish in the flames of a real and eternal hell. That’s much different messaging than ““Become the love of God by experiencing the love of God.” The love of God certainly is central to the gospel message, don’t get me wrong. But there is more involved in the gospel message than just the love of God. In other words, Meerkreebs didn’t preach the gospel that day. And there can be no revival, true revival in any individual human heart until the gospel is preached. All that to say, the message given that day in chapel by Zach Meerkreebs is quite different than Edwards in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and the type of heavy appeals to the conscience and the calls to repentance which you’d expect to hear in a sermon that brought about a true revival.

Here’s another concern with Asbury, the pneumatology. Meaning the views of the Holy Spirit that undergirded this entire event. Being a Methodist school Asbury would certainly be an environment where they would be more open, than we would say or where we would be, to the present-day operation of certain apostolic-era gifts. But that’s not actually what I’m referring to here when I mention “pneumatology” or the doctrine of the Holy Spirit here. What I’m referring to is the fact that tens of thousands of people made a pilgrimage to Wilmore, Kentucky in Jessamine County, Kentucky to experience the Holy Spirit, to encounter the Holy Spirit, to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, as is true of each of the other members of the Trinity, is omnipresent. The Holy Spirit is just as much present in Lincoln, Nebraska and Honolulu, Hawaii as He is in Wilmore, Kentucky or any other part of the world. So why would a resident of Lincoln, Nebraska or Honolulu, Hawaii need to travel to Wilmore, Kentucky to experience the Holy Spirit or to have an encounter with Him? Those who are, of course, more on the charismatic side as it relates to whether gifts, the apostolic gifts, are in operation today, they will often accuse guys like me as cessationists, as putting God in a box. I would actually argue that it’s putting God in a box to say that a person must travel to Wilmore, Kentucky to experience the Holy Spirit. No! We experience the Holy Spirit when we read His Word wherever we are. We experience the Holy Spirit when we pray in the Spirit. We experience the Holy Spirit when we defeat sin with His help wherever we are. We are experiencing the Holy Spirit when He molds us more and more progressively into the image of this Savior wherever we are. We can experience fully the Holy Spirit, from right where we are on any given day. We don’t need to rack up SkyMiles or FuelSaver points to experience the Holy Spirit.

Here’s another concern, the focus of the event. And the tale of the tape really shows this. That the focus of the event at Asbury was not the preaching of God’s Word. It wasn’t even the proclamation of the gospel. The focus of the event was music. Now, I’m all for music. I can’t remember how many times I’ve commended and shared how much I love the music our team performs here. But music, if you study the great movements of God throughout church history whether it be Pentecost or the Reformation or the Great Awakening. Or you could even lump in to what the Lord did here at Indian Hills in the 1970s. It wasn’t music that brought it about and especially it wasn’t repetitive music, that led people to changed heart postures before God. No. What was it? It was the preached Word. It was always the preached Word. It’s not music, beautiful though it may be, that brings about awakening and revival. It’s the preaching of Christ and Him crucified. It’s the preaching of the whole counsel of God that brings about true conversion in one heart or fifty hearts.

I appreciate what Josh Buice of G3 Ministries has said on this subject. He says, “Robust doctrinal preaching produces genuine change in people and at the end of the day, regardless of your definition of revival, that’s what we need. We need our minds to be renewed, our hearts to be changed, and our emotions to be checked. This happens through faithful preaching. When Peter and the others left the upper room at Pentecost and went out into the streets, Peter didn’t gather everyone’s attention and say, “Hey everyone—we’re going to sing some songs and pray together and share testimonies.” No, Peter stood and preached a bold and doctrinally rich sermon which resulted in the outpouring of the Spirit and the salvation of 3,000 people.” There were many songs. And there were many Finney-like methods at Asbury. But there was very little preaching, and that’s concerning.

Since I just mentioned songs now would also be a good time to mention the participants. Some of the participants in the event and specifically, the role of Asbury Theological Seminary and the University in the event. Now it’s important to note this seminary, Asbury Theological Seminary, which is across the street from the University, is openly egalitarian. They are contrary to the clear teaching of God’s Word which prohibits women from being elders or pastors in a local church. So they are for female pastors and elders at this seminary. Well, we have to remember that the Holy Spirit never acts or moves in a way that contradicts the Word He has breathed out. So if this were a true move of the Holy Spirit at Asbury do you know what we’d be hearing stories about? Repentance as the administration of this university and the seminary realize that they need to stop trying to get with the culture and get with the times and affirm what God’s Word plainly teaches and repent of their egalitarianism.

It’s not only that though. This college and seminary are affirming of homosexual students and transgender students being students at this seminary. Homosexuals who are out, who are not closeted about their same-sex attraction. And consistent with that this man, his name is Elijah Blake, he proudly tweeted during this whole event that homosexual people, openly homosexual people, were leading worship during this so-called revival. Now, the official position of Asbury in their doctrinal statements, if you look on their web site and see all their doctrinal statements, is that any activity outside of heterosexual marriage is sinful.

But they have also expressed approval of what has become known today as “side B Christianity.” Meaning those who don’t engage in homosexual activity, yet are openly unrepentant in their same-sex attraction. Well, same-sex attraction is sin. Just as same-sex activity is sin. Since when has it only been actions that are sinful? We saw it this morning even. It goes down to the heart, right? It’s even same-sex passions and desires that are sinful. For me to lust after a woman would be adultery just as to actually engage in the physical act of the adultery. So it is here. We saw this morning, anger is murderous, not just the murderous act. So like any sin, same-sex attraction must be repented of by anyone who dares call themselves a Christian. 1 Corinthians 6:11, “Such were some of you.” The point being, if these events at Asbury were a genuine revival we wouldn’t be hearing these excited stories about homosexual and transgender people leading worship. We’d be hearing stories about homosexual and transgender people encountering the living God through His Word, coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ and repenting of their sin, all of it, as we’re all called to do.

Next on the list of concerns would be the attendees. Here’s the first one I want to mention, Todd Bentley. Todd Bentley is… I’ll just give you the tweet first, he tweeted this out soon after arriving at Asbury. He said, “The Holy Spirit lingers, and you feel tangible waves of his presence!” Well, Todd Bentley is a charlatan. He’s a notoriously false teacher who proclaims a false gospel. He absolutely hates the God of the Bible, you can see it in his teachings. His life is in total shambles, his affairs, his adulteries, his divorces and they totally disqualify him from ministry. Now there are a few other figures, who in addition to Bentley, who were attracted to Asbury.

Now, the figures I’m going to mention, they actually didn’t make it to Asbury. But they were getting ready to go to Asbury before the school shut down the revival on February 23rd. They had plans to be there though. One of them is Mike Bickle. Mike Bickle is from the International House of Prayer, not pancakes, in Kansas City. And IHOP as it is called, is linked to various problematic charismatic groups including the Kansas City Prophets and the New Apostolic Reformation. He and his ministry, they fancy him a prophet, but his track record… let’s just say is less than stellar. He’s batting a lot lower than a 1000 on his predictions. Anyway, he was attracted, too, and was planning to go before they shut down the event.

Francis Chan. Francis Chan grieves me because he is a Master’s Seminary graduate. He’s always been a personable guy. He’s written prolifically some books that were helpful to a lot of people but in recent years, he’s gone way off the deep end. These days, he’s aligned himself, again with the New Apostolic Reformation. He’s spoken at conferences featuring heretics like Todd White and Joyce Meyer and he’s drifted, oddly, in the direction of Roman Catholicism in certain ways. Including his belief he’s sort of adapted, the Roman Catholic view of the Eucharist, Communion, where like we saw this morning, we were very clear that we’re holding a cup and bread. He is actually more open to the Roman Catholic idea those elements are the physical, tangible body and blood of Christ. Also a guy that nearly got there until they shut it down was Rick Warren from my old stomping grounds in Orange County, California. He’s the founder of Saddleback Church, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” a friend of the Pope, a man who ordains women as elders in his church, and who recently named a husband-wife team to be the new pastors of Saddleback.

Well, as I’ve already mentioned, Bickle, Chan, Warren, they didn’t get to make it to Asbury cause the revival ended before they got there. But Todd Bentley, the first guy I mentioned, did get there. And his presence was felt. See one of Todd Bentley’s common tricks that he plays, under the guise of evangelism, is this old parlor game where he talks to somebody and he says it looks like one of your legs is shorter than the other. I have this way where I can help you lengthen the shorter leg so you can walk better and have better balance and fulfill the purpose that God has for you somehow in a new properly aligned legs. Well, what has it to do with the gospel I don’t know. But look at this. I had showed you the still shot of this earlier. But that young lady in the middle. She was interviewed on Fox News and this is just a still shot of her interview. But this young woman stated that she had been driving to Asbury for several days in a row, a 2.5 hour drive each way and the first thing she mentioned was what you see here. “We have seen limbs grow back.” Not, I have repented of my sins and put my faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. Not, I have seen others falling under conviction of sin as they turn to the Lord. No, it was “we have seen limbs grow back.” That’s very Bentley-esk, it’s odd, it’s strange, and it’s concerning.

The last concern I’ll raise tonight is this one, the church. This so-called revival happened on a university campus, albeit a Christian university campus. It did not happen in a church. What is it the Lord has promised to build? His church, Matthew 16. He said nothing about Christian universities. He said nothing about Christian chapels. There’s obviously nothing wrong with Christian universities and Christian chapels. But to look there as opposed to the church of Jesus Christ for an experience with or a so called outpouring of the Holy Spirit, in some ways it undermines the blueprint of the primacy of the local church in the life of the believer. Where were the pastors and the elders to shepherd those who were earnestly seeking the Lord. Where were the pastors and the elders to shepherd those in this situation who were earnestly seeking the Lord? Where were the pastors and elders at this event who were fending off the wolves? They weren’t there, at least in any official capacity because this didn’t take place in a church. Where were the ordinances? Who was being baptized in water as an expression of having been placed into Christ? Where were the elements of communion, allowing for these new believers to now remember the Lord’s death? Those things weren’t happening, because this didn’t take place in a church. Where were the deacons, maintaining order, and making sure that the services here were running smoothly? They weren’t there, because this didn’t take place in a church.

Now, is this to say that all genuine works of the Spirit in reviving souls must happen within the four walls of a church building? No. Genuine spiritual awakening in an individual’s life can absolutely take place outside of a church with a ceiling and a roof and all the rest. It can happen at Christian camps, it can happen at a Christian school, it can happen in a Christian home. But if there is a genuine movement of the Spirit, one outworking of whatever profession that’s been made, will be long-term involvement in a local church where believers are baptized and taught, where believers are fed through the preaching and teaching ministry of the Word, where believers are shepherded by godly elders. In other words, a spiritual awakening of a single person or many people, now it doesn’t have to start in a church necessarily but it’s always going to end in the church.

Again, I appreciate what Josh Buice has to say on this. He says, “The church of Jesus Christ should be aiming in the direction of Titus 2 rather than Acts 2. God has not promised that another Acts 2 movement would occur nor should the church be aiming in that direction.” That’s so helpful. Acts 2 is Pentecost. Titus 2 is that model that Paul gives to Titus to have older men pouring into teaching, training younger men in the faith, and older women doing the same for the younger women. This is so helpful because it recognizes that conversion isn’t the end of the Christian life. Rather it’s the beginning of the Christian life and if one has truly been regenerated and brought to faith in the Lord they will naturally graft in with a local body of believers where Titus 2 is modeled. Again, one of the concerns I have about Asbury is not only that it was not attached to a local church but if you go through the tape and read the transcripts and look at the reports very little was said during these times of worship here about the importance of getting attached to a local church.

Now, I’ve been fairly critical of the event at Asbury tonight and I did say at the beginning that I did want to give a caution to all of us in the room as well. Here’s my caution. Let’s not undervalue or not give proper weight to the power of God and the supernatural and miraculous work of God in saving souls. Does Asbury University and Seminary, do they have concerning doctrinal positions? Yes, they do. Does the history of Asbury and its involvement with revivalism raise red flags about the legitimacy of this event? Yes, it does. Could there be, could there have been people at Asbury who actually heard the gospel and got saved? Yes, for sure. Did God speak through a donkey back in the days of Balaam? He did. So, couldn’t He accomplish His purposes in saving some souls through an event like Asbury? Sure. There may very well may have been some who were truly converted at Asbury. Maybe, as an event, it wasn’t a true revival. But at the same time, maybe individual hearts were revived and for those there was true conviction of sin as they heard about the Savior. And maybe now those individuals are cultivating true religious affections, to borrow from Edwards, and maybe some of these will actually go on to live fruitful lives for Christ. So while we may have certain concerns about the event as a whole we dare not demean what God can do in the hearts of individuals that He is already drawing to Himself.

As we wrap up and conclude I’m going to borrow a line from Solomon in Ecclesiastes 12:13. At the end of that book he says, “The conclusion, when all has been heard is:,” and he goes on to say, “fear God and keep His commandments.” I’m going to borrow that line tonight to close and say that “The conclusion, when all has been heard is” as it relates to Asbury, we’ll see. Time will tell. We don’t know. So all we can do, and it took me an hour to say this, is wait. We wait, we pray. We pray that hearts have genuinely turned to God and hearts will genuinely turn to God. Not only in Wilmore, Kentucky there at Asbury, but here in Lincoln, Nebraska and around the world. Amen? Let’s pray.

Father, thank you, for the clarity of Your Word. Thank you, that You are God who is all wise. You’re all-knowing. Your ways are perfect. Your ways are sure. Thank you that we do have in Your word clear guidance for how to live, how to function in this world, how to live and how to function in the Church and how to assess the various things that happen around our world. And we’re not omniscient, we’re not all-knowing or all-wise or all-powerful as You are. You know what happens here in this church and You know what happened at Asbury. We don’t want to be mean spirited, we don’t want to be demeaning. But we do want to be discerning and to test the spirits and to not credit what is not of the Spirit but at the same time not to take away from what You genuinely may have done in the hearts of individuals. So God I pray that we would be a prayerful people as we think of those tens of thousands of people that streamed to Wilmore, Kentucky over the past month. Let’s keep praying that those people, that many would be turned to You as they say good-bye to the old life. As they repent of their old way of living, their sinful ways, and instead turn to the Savior, Jesus Christ and be washed and be purified by His blood and now go on to live a fruitful life of godliness and holiness for His glory. Thank you for the dear people in this room. Thank you for a wonderful morning in the Word and evening in the Word and a time to worship through song and prayer and simply to be together. Thank you for our church. May we be bright lights and examples for the gospel this week. It’s in Christ’s name we pray, amen.