The NXR Podcast - February 17, 2023


BONUS EPISODE - Not A Good Sign At Asbury： When Todd Bentley And Queer Students Like Your Revival

Topics
revival meetings Todd Bentley at Asbury revival preaching and revivals
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Charles Finney Todd Bentley Charles Wesley George Whitefield Jonathan Edwards Austin Peterson Jesus Christ John Wesley Southern Baptist St. Augustine Paul Washer Baptists Judas Boris Johnson Gordon Lindsay Billy Graham Steve Hall Benny Hinn James Gillier Joe Biden and 3 more
DAILY TRUTH - Utter Depravity VS. Total Depravity SUNDAY SERMON - Money, Debt, & Freedom From Financial Slavery

Episode Stats


Length

41 minutes

Words per minute

187.67

Word count

7,695

Sentence count

454

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

8

sentences flagged

Hate speech

12

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Revival has a long history at Asbury, and it s no secret that it s had its fair share of scandals. In this episode, we take a look at the history of Asbury revivals, and whether or not they re really revivals at all.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 All right, listen guys, I get it. Many of you are unable to financially support this ministry
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00:00:40 All right, let's talk a little bit about the Asbury revival. I kind of want to put revival
00:00:45 in quotes. I'll go ahead and do that just in case hedge my bets here. The Asbury revival. I want to
00:00:50 read. All right, I'm going to give you my thoughts. I'm not saying that there's no move of God at all.
00:00:55 I'm not saying nothing positive has happened.
00:00:57 These things are typically a mixed bag.
00:01:00 It's not so simplistic to say it's all bad or it's all good.
00:01:04 Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry, he had Judas as one of his disciples, right?
00:01:10 So even the ministry of Jesus, you know, you've got some nefarious figures who are in close
00:01:15 proximity to Christ, Jesus Christ incarnate himself.
00:01:19 Okay, so there's always going to be a mixed bag.
00:01:21 you study, you know, bona fide revivals of the past. And of course there were abuses and there
00:01:27 were certain, you know, malicious angles that people were playing and people who were there
00:01:32 that weren't really there because they wanted to seek after God, but rather they were trying to
00:01:36 exploit something, this and that and the other. So revivals have a long history of being a
00:01:42 complicated thing. There's never been a revival without sin. And, you know, the worst fake
00:01:48 revivals that aren't actually revivals, even in those cases, it's not to say that God in his
00:01:55 sovereignty doesn't do at least one good thing, right? I mean, I have been a part of heretical 0.98
00:02:02 services, church services, that the Lord has in his mercy, in his sovereignty, if God's sovereign
00:02:10 over all things, that the Lord, even in the midst of that heretical church service, he used it in a
00:02:15 positive way, not because they were preaching the truth, um, but to reveal something that was true
00:02:19 about him to me, to be able to say, uh, that I'm sitting there with discernment, knowing the
00:02:24 scripture and, and the Lord is using that in a moment to teach me about the dangers of false
00:02:29 doctrine, um, this, that, and the other. Okay. So, um, I don't have a blanket statement of,
00:02:35 you know, bad or good. Um, that said, uh, I lean towards this not being a true revival.
00:02:42 I'll just say that right up front. I don't have a whole lot of points. I'll just, I'll keep it nice
00:02:46 and clear and simple, short and sweet. Here you go. First, I'm going to lead with this point.
00:02:51 This is from Asbury's own website. Okay. So I'm just going to read you their words. Okay.
00:02:56 Asbury University has been known through the years for its history of great revivals.
00:03:03 That's not inherently evil or nefarious or bad, but you just need to be aware of that.
00:03:10 the school prides itself. This isn't somebody else writing about the school. This is on the
00:03:15 school's website. This is what they say about themselves. One of their points of pride is that
00:03:20 they're a place of revivals, that revivals happen in this place. So Asbury University has been known
00:03:27 through the years for its history of great revivals. There have been several occasions
00:03:32 when significant moves of the Holy Spirit have swept the campus and reached across the nation.
00:03:38 Now, this is interesting.
00:03:39 They start to list the history of these revivals.
00:03:42 I'll go back and I'll read about a couple of these.
00:03:44 They list the date and then a brief synopsis of the revival that happened at that date,
00:03:49 at that time.
00:03:50 But first, I just want to look at the dates.
00:03:52 I find this interesting.
00:03:53 I'm not even making a point about this really, but it's just, it's interesting.
00:03:56 All right, so here you go.
00:03:57 Here's the first one they list in February of 1905.
00:04:00 The next one in February of 1908.
00:04:03 The next one in February of 1921.
00:04:06 the next one in february of 1950 the next one in march well you didn't see that coming right
00:04:13 there's a curveball in march still not that far from february of 1958 the next one here we go
00:04:19 back to our roots on february 3rd 1970 um after that in march 1992 next one in february of 2006
00:04:28 and here we are in February of 2023. I don't think that's a coincidence. All right, now let me read
00:04:37 you a little bit of a description and I'll kind of flesh out why I don't think that's a coincidence
00:04:40 and what that means a little bit. So here's the first one. We'll just read a couple. In February
00:04:45 1905, that's the first one that they have listed on the website. During a blizzard, a prayer meeting
00:04:50 in the men's dormitory spilled out onto the rest of the campus and the town of Wilmore. Okay,
00:04:56 In February 1908, revival broke out while someone prayed in chapel.
00:05:01 The revival lasted two weeks and was signified by prevailing prayer and intercession.
00:05:07 Great.
00:05:07 In February 1921, the last service of a planned revival lasted until 6 a.m.
00:05:15 and services were extended for the next three days.
00:05:18 Let me read that again in case you missed it.
00:05:20 In February of 1921, the last service, the final service of a planned revival lasted until 6 a.m.
00:05:29 and services were extended for three days.
00:05:32 Let me stop there for a moment, okay?
00:05:35 First and foremost, revivals aren't planned.
00:05:38 That said, though, let me give a couple disclaimers.
00:05:41 That's old-timey language that people just use.
00:05:43 Now, it's not that old.
00:05:44 It's not like centuries old.
00:05:45 But in the last, you know, 100 years, 150 years, that was just, that was a thing.
00:05:50 Southern Baptist, for instance, were notorious about this, right?
00:05:53 We're having our revival meetings.
00:05:56 And typically what that meant was it was a Monday through Friday or maybe a Monday through
00:05:59 Thursday.
00:06:00 It was going to be weeknights and it was going to be, it was going to be in sequence, right?
00:06:05 So it was going to be back to back to back instead of just a, you know, you have your
00:06:07 typical, you know, Sunday morning, right?
00:06:09 Southern Baptist, you got Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, which I would say,
00:06:14 praise God, full Lord's day.
00:06:15 That's great.
00:06:16 And then you typically had a Wednesday night also.
00:06:18 But sometime, usually a lot of Southern Baptists, it was typically during the summer and sometime
00:06:23 during the summer, a lot of Southern Baptist churches, not just Southern Baptist, general
00:06:26 Baptist.
00:06:27 And it was, it was a Baptist thing.
00:06:29 And then a lot of, you know, Baptists, you know, it's still in the Baptist vein, but
00:06:33 of the, you know, the Wesleyan, you know, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, the holiness
00:06:38 kind of that side of the theological, you know, scale, same thing there planned revivals.
00:06:44 And it would typically be like 6 p.m. usually, you know, 6 p.m. evening services, weeknights,
00:06:51 instead of just your midweek touchpoint with a Wednesday night service, we're going to
00:06:54 do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
00:06:56 And usually what you would have happen is you would have the pastor, the local pastor
00:07:01 of that church that's hosting these revival meetings.
00:07:03 That's what they would call them, revival meetings.
00:07:05 And they would invite a guest speaker, an evangelist usually, you know, somebody who's,
00:07:12 maybe he's a local pastor somewhere else in another region. But a lot of times it would
00:07:16 be somebody who's more like an evangelist. And if you're wondering, well, you know,
00:07:19 what is an evangelist? Obviously, you know, you know, most of you listening to this show
00:07:23 understand, you know, the work of evangelism and sharing the gospel with others. But in terms of
00:07:28 the office of an evangelist, that's legitimate. That's not bad. That's not a, you know, a word
00:07:33 of faith kind of thing. That's not a heretical, you know, thing. That's a biblical word. Ephesians
00:07:36 four talks about how Christ has given different leaders. Christ who is head of the church has
00:07:41 given gifts to the church, namely leaders, offices to the church for the purpose of training and
00:07:46 equipping the saints that the body may build itself up in love to the fullness of manhood,
00:07:52 a full stature of spiritual maturity so that they would be grown up and no longer like children
00:07:58 tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of darkness. So this is a good thing. And the
00:08:02 things that are listed that, you know, a lot of people say the fivefold ministry, which I would
00:08:05 reject. I would hold to a fourfold ministry. The four offices is apostles and prophets and then
00:08:11 evangelists and pastors. And you might say, no, it doesn't say pastors. It says shepherd teachers
00:08:16 or teacher shepherds. Well, yeah, but in the Greek, it's like hyphenated. So it's not just
00:08:21 a comma listing. And here's a fifth thing. There's shepherds and then there's, that's number four.
00:08:26 And then there's teachers and that's number five. No, it's apostles, prophets, apostles,
00:08:32 number one, prophets number two, evangelists number three, and then shepherd hyphen teachers.
00:08:36 And what is, you know, it's like two roles, two sides of the same coin. What office has those
00:08:44 roles, responsibilities given to shepherd and to teach a pastor? So the way that I would read
00:08:50 1 Corinthians, or I'm sorry, Ephesians chapter four is that Christ is head of the church and
00:08:55 as head of the church, who washes the church and nourishes the church and loves the church and
00:08:59 gives himself, lays down his life for the church. Christ wants good for the church because he loves
00:09:04 the church and he's the head of the church. And one of the ways that Christ accomplishes good for
00:09:08 the church is by giving the church gifts. And these gifts are leaders. Leaders, so long as they are
00:09:14 faithful, are a gift to Christ's bride. They're a gift to the church and Christ gives for particular
00:09:19 gifts or types of leaders to the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors. And then I,
00:09:25 as somebody who would hold to cessationism, I would say that Christ has given all four of these
00:09:30 roles to the church and there is an end date in sight, right? There is a certain goal that we're
00:09:37 seeking to attain. And the goal is the fullness of the stature of Christ himself. The church has
00:09:41 not attained that yet. The church is not perfectly mature. The church, sadly, there are many
00:09:45 Christians still tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine. So the end goal that's set 1.00
00:09:52 in Ephesians chapter four has not yet been attained. However, with a careful reading of
00:09:57 Ephesians four, because the continuation, this is always going to use as, as an argument and say
00:10:01 all four of these or five, you know, the fivefold ministry, all five of them, including apostles
00:10:05 and prophets are going to be in the church until the church reaches its perfect maturity. Joel has
00:10:10 the church reached perfect maturity. Are you going to say, is that where you want to be when Jesus
00:10:14 comes back claiming that the church is perfectly mature? Of course it hasn't reached perfect
00:10:17 maturity. I'm not, that's not my argument. And they'll say, well, then apostles and prophets
00:10:21 are still here. And I would say, no, it would be like a general contractor saying, um, agreeing
00:10:27 and giving his word and a binding oath saying, I'm going to build a house from start to finish.
00:10:32 And, and I will not stop, um, until the job is done until the whole thing is done. Um, but then
00:10:37 he's hiring out subcontractors and each subcontractor, each wave of workers is not going
00:10:44 to be on the job site simultaneously the entire time, right? The first thing that we got to do
00:10:50 is we've got to lay a foundation and we're going to do some plumbing. We're going to do some
00:10:52 electric. We're going to do this and that. And so there's a certain wave of subcontractors,
00:10:56 apostles and prophets, right? To put this analogy back to the text of Ephesians 4,
00:11:01 they're going to come and they're going to lay a foundation. They're going to do foundational
00:11:05 work. And that's in light of Ephesians. So Ephesians 4 cross-references with Ephesians
00:11:09 chapter 2, verse 20. The foundation is on the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the
00:11:14 cornerstone. We have that foundation. It's the Old and New Testament, right? The foundation of
00:11:18 the apostles and prophets has been canonized for us, scripturized. We have that foundation,
00:11:24 and that's the foundation that evangelists and pastors are now building on. So the job is not
00:11:29 done. Christ has given gifts to the church, namely leaders, different types of leaders to the church
00:11:33 until this task is finished, until the church reaches maturity. That hasn't happened yet. So
00:11:40 there are still leaders given by Christ to the church to train and equip the saints for the work
00:11:45 of ministry that's still happening but nothing in ephesians 4 says that every single one of these
00:11:49 leaders will simultaneously be on the job from the beginning to the end the whole time so i would say
00:11:55 what first wave apostles and prophets second wave now building on the foundation going back to my
00:12:00 analogy like now you're talking about like guys who are throwing up frame and and sheetrock and
00:12:05 things like that and roofing that's your evangelist and pastor so evangelist is a legitimate biblical
00:12:11 role. Paul Washer would be an example. He would call himself an evangelist. Justin Peters right
00:12:17 now, I don't believe Justin Peters is currently serving in the office of elder. He has a local
00:12:21 church that he's involved in, all those kinds of things as a faithful member, but I don't think
00:12:25 that he's currently serving as an elder in that church. And he would introduce himself every time
00:12:31 I've had him on the show or you see Justin Peters, he would say, I'm an evangelist. So evangelist is
00:12:35 a bona fide office. And back to revival meetings, especially within the Baptist world, but also
00:12:40 with the Wesleyan world, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, these guys, um, they would have good
00:12:46 old time religion, right? Um, old timey revivals. They would plan it. They would schedule it. And
00:12:52 I'm not saying that's wrong. Now, technically I prefer not to use the word revival for something
00:12:56 that's planned, but I'm not saying that, Oh, well, in that case, that means it's heresy and
00:13:00 false stock. That's not my point. Um, but I'm just giving you kind of a brief little history.
00:13:05 One, the exegesis Ephesians for evangelists, and typically what would happen history. And this is
00:13:10 a recent history. This isn't, you know, something that happened over 2000 years of church history.
00:13:14 This isn't something necessarily that, you know, St. Augustine was doing. But in recent history,
00:13:19 the last 150 years, especially with Baptists and with Wesleyan folk, having an annual planned
00:13:26 revival meeting is kind of like your bread and butter for the church. And it usually was a
00:13:32 dynamic duo of the pastor, teacher shepherd or shepherd teacher, Ephesians four, and the
00:13:38 evangelist. So you got the local pastor, he's going to host the revival at his church. Sometimes
00:13:43 they would, instead of the church building, they would go ahead and rent some land and put up a
00:13:49 big tent, right? And that tent revival, because they're hoping to have greater attendance and
00:13:54 they're going to schedule these. It's not going to be a Sunday. Maybe it kicks off with the Lord's
00:13:58 Day, but then it's going to be Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night,
00:14:01 Friday night, right? And this is our planned annual revival. And we invite an evangelist,
00:14:07 the pastor's hosting, he's going to do some stuff. Maybe he'll speak a couple nights. And then the
00:14:10 evangelist is the guest speaker. And he's a guy who's kind of on the speaking circuit. And he goes
00:14:16 around speaking at all these different revivals. And this, you know, this evangelist, he's coming
00:14:20 here to our hometown and to our church and blah, blah, blah. And we're going to have a good old
00:14:24 fashioned revival. And that revival could be good or bad, but it's not really a revival. And that
00:14:32 doesn't mean, again, that doesn't mean it's heresy. I'm saying it could be good in the sense
00:14:35 that um if there's good preaching it's biblical it's sound the doctrine is true then then sure
00:14:41 worshiping god every night of the week not a bad idea right i'm not saying that we should do that
00:14:47 you know 365 days a year because we need to lead family worship in our homes we have marriages we
00:14:52 have jobs we have you know so i'm not saying you should always do that but to have one week a year
00:14:56 where we're going to gather as a church every evening at 6 p.m to 8 p.m or whatever uh to hear
00:15:02 the word of God preached and to sing to God and worship and address one another with psalms and
00:15:08 hymns and spiritual songs. And we're going to have a guest speaker who is credible and biblically
00:15:14 qualified in the office of an evangelist to come and preach afresh and anew to us the basic truths
00:15:20 of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the setting of a local church with our pastor who's overseeing
00:15:25 these things, and he's a biblically qualified elder. Great, right? That's not a revival in
00:15:31 the sense that it's a sovereign outpouring of the spirit of god it's a it's just a planned
00:15:37 week of church meetings and there's nothing wrong with that it's a planned week of church meetings
00:15:42 uh revival i don't think is the best label uh to call it that but it's not necessarily you know
00:15:48 immoral or heretical that's that's asbury university that is they're wesleyan they're
00:15:55 wesleyan that that's their roots that's their heritage that's their background that's their
00:15:59 language, right? Every theological camp has a lingo. It has jargon. It has, that's their
00:16:04 language, right? I mean, you can find it right on their website, Asbury University. This is them
00:16:09 talking about themselves. And I'm not even saying this is immoral. I haven't even made my point
00:16:13 about it being bad yet. I'll get there. But this is just, I'm just giving you the facts.
00:16:18 This is their language. This is their theological tradition. This is their history, at least recent
00:16:22 history in the last, you know, 20, a little bit over 20 years of, you know, starting in 19,
00:16:28 what was it 1905 was the first one 1905 right so this would be right before azusa street revival
00:16:34 that would be 1906 that would be a bad revival i'm not a fan of azusa street uh this is right
00:16:40 before that in february 1905 i don't know about this revival at asbury in february 1905 so i'm
00:16:45 not going to say it was bad i'm not going to say it was good but the point is um these are planned
00:16:50 not all of them but some of them they even expressly say right in the case of february 1921
00:16:55 the last service of a planned revival so asbury university in the wesleyan holiness that's
00:17:03 arminian i'm not saying it's heretical i'm a calvinist but i'm not saying it's heretical but
00:17:08 you know but in that arminian wesleyan holiness theological tradition
00:17:14 um there's very much a pattern of planned revivals and to be fair it's in the baptist
00:17:21 traditions. Well, all that being said, that's not inherently wrong. Asbury prides itself as being
00:17:29 a place that has had historically over the last hundred plus years, lots of really great revivals.
00:17:36 Okay, great. And some of them may have actually been good by biblical criteria, sound doctrine,
00:17:42 people repenting of sin, those kinds of things. But I just want you to know that
00:17:47 it's not that unusual. I guess that's my first point. My first point is that I don't think the
00:17:55 reaction should be, oh my goodness, something spectacular is happening that's never happened
00:17:59 before. This is literally the university's MO. They plan revivals and you read it and virtually
00:18:07 every single one of them happens in the month of February. Lo and behold, it's February. That
00:18:14 probably has something to do with the student's schedule and what speakers they schedule for
00:18:18 chapels during that time and different things with the itinerary for the school and its syllabus
00:18:24 and what happens in the month of February. I don't think that's a coincidence. It's following
00:18:28 the calendar of the university. It's the beginning of a new year. Students are back coming after the
00:18:34 holidays. They've been back for a few weeks now. We're into the month of February and maybe we
00:18:38 tend to schedule a highly gifted evangelist for the month of February, hoping that maybe it'll
00:18:44 kickstart, you know, some kind of, so my point is, I don't, I don't think that what's going on
00:18:48 should be interpreted as this is an incredibly unique, miraculous thing that never happens
00:18:55 by the school's own website. This is a thing that happens in the month of February, almost
00:19:01 exclusively, um, just about every few years for the last 100 years. And some of it, they even
00:19:07 admit was planned. And again, not saying that's malicious or evil to plan. Again, I think there
00:19:13 are better words than calling it a revival, but that's just a difference of opinion and difference
00:19:16 of jargon, different church history, theological camps. So all that being said, that's the first
00:19:23 thing. All that being said, the last thing that I want to address is this. Todd Bentley was on the
00:19:27 scene, a famous heretic. He was a part of, what was that revival even called? I can't remember. 0.73
00:19:34 it wasn't john uh kilpatrick and uh steve hill that was the brownsville thing uh
00:19:40 i can't even remember but todd bentley one of the one of the things that i do remember is there was
00:19:47 a revival going on and here so okay so in terms of markers of revival how do you how do you test a
00:19:51 revival how do you you know measure revival to see if it you know is genuine to see if it's a
00:19:56 real move of god what kind of criteria should you look for well traditionally throughout church
00:20:01 history, you think of like the first great awakening, second great awakening, not a fan,
00:20:04 Charles Finney. If you want to read the worst theology you'll ever read in your life, aside
00:20:08 from, you know, maybe reading a Bill Johnson book, then read a systematic theology by Charles
00:20:14 Finney, not Finney, but Finney, Charles Finney, his systematic is some of the worst. Basically,
00:20:22 he took everything from the first great awakening, Jonathan Edwards, that John Wesley was a part of
00:20:27 that, but then also you've got George Whitefield. He took all the reform doctrine, and I understand
00:20:33 Wesley wasn't reformed, but Whitefield was, Edwards was, and he took this idea of God
00:20:38 sovereignly outpouring, an outpouring of his spirit, and he made it something that revival
00:20:43 was basically, Finney was one of the first guys who said revival is basically a formula,
00:20:48 and it can be manufactured by man. If you put this and you put that, so altar calls,
00:20:54 right? A lot of people, you know, like come down to the altar Asbury, you know, that's one of the
00:20:58 things that they're doing. You come up front, right? And, and you confess your sins and you,
00:21:02 and you're praying, students are praying for one another at the altar. Todd Bentley, you know,
00:21:05 he did a post on Twitter where he said, I just, the whole time I was there, I could feel tangible
00:21:09 waves of God's presence. I just wanted to get down to the altar. Where does that come from?
00:21:13 That's Finney. That's not the Bible. That's not Edwards. That's not, you know, George Whitfield.
00:21:19 That's not Augustine. That's not Calvin. That's it. You know, and it's not Jesus. It's not Paul,
00:21:23 more importantly. That's Finney. Finney came up with the concept of what he called, what now is
00:21:29 an altar call, but what he called the anxious bench, the anxious bench. Some of you have heard
00:21:34 of this. It would be on the front row typically, and he'd be doing one of his revival meetings.
00:21:38 And his whole thing was with the right cadence of speaking and the right emotion and the right
00:21:43 this and the right timing. Mega churches, if you don't like mega churches, and I mean the typical
00:21:49 megachurch, right? Not just a large church that's biblically faithful, but your typical megachurch
00:21:53 with, you know, Hillsong worship and fog machines and lights. And it feels like a concert. The
00:21:58 lights are turned down low. The music is super loud. The preaching is an 18 minute Ted talk.
00:22:03 That's fluffy. And it's, it's not expositional preaching. If you don't like that kind of machine
00:22:08 business, the brand megachurch, um, then, you know, you have Charles Finney to thank for that.
00:22:13 Um, he is the, the father of his ideas birthed, uh, later on, it was the fruition of his ideas
00:22:21 that birthed, uh, the mega church 100%. And so, um, you know, making, uh, a, a, a business out
00:22:30 of, out of this idea of, of gathering together, um, is an event, right? The Sunday big revival
00:22:36 event. And so he had the anxious bench and basically in the middle of his preaching,
00:22:40 he would call out to people who were there and he said, some of you are underneath, you know,
00:22:43 the conviction of the Holy spirit, you need to come up and sit on the anxious bench, this front
00:22:47 row. And I'm going to preach the rest of the sermon or for the next 15 minutes directly to you.
00:22:51 And then for the next 15 minutes, he would look at those individuals and be preaching to them,
00:22:55 you know, and ignore everybody else. And so, and that's kind of where we've gotten the altar call
00:22:59 from, which my church doesn't practice. A lot of reform traditions don't do, but there are a lot
00:23:04 of Christians today who still, you know, practice an altar call kind of thing. So first great 0.97
00:23:08 awakening great right that's that's got wesley that's got whitfield that's got edwards the second
00:23:13 great awakening with charles finney was manufactured and since that point on basically
00:23:18 from finney on um there's been good and bad but the bad is that i think a lot of people think well
00:23:24 we can there's uh there are certain having a revival is like baking a cake right you just
00:23:29 you get some flour you get some water you get some eggs you get some sugar um and if you have
00:23:33 the right ingredients in the right measure, um, and you mix them in the right way and you put them
00:23:38 in the oven, then, you know, revival is what pops out. Um, now here's the deal. All that being said,
00:23:46 um, Todd Bentley's there, right. And you know, like Judas was hanging out with Jesus. So, so a
00:23:53 bad guy showing up doesn't write that, that would be a logical fallacy to say that that's, you know,
00:23:58 definitive proof that something is bad and not a move of God. Um, but it's not a good sign.
00:24:03 It's not a good sign. That doesn't discredit everything that's happening. That's not to say
00:24:07 that none of the students are actually confessing real sin and there's not real prayer and there's
00:24:11 not real worship. I'm not saying that. I don't know. I'm not on the scene. I'm sure there's
00:24:15 some things that are in line with the scripture that are pleasing to the Lord that have been
00:24:19 beneficial for God's people. I believe that. But it's not a good sign when Todd Bentley's there.
00:24:25 And what I was going to say in terms of criteria for genuine revivals, one of the things that you
00:24:29 can see with genuine revivals throughout church history as it's been measured in hindsight is that
00:24:35 they tend to be at least somewhat ecumenical, right? So the first great awakening, going back
00:24:39 to that as an example, you've got Wesley and you've also got Whitefield and there's a friendship.
00:24:45 And these are guys who dynamically disagree. Neither one is a heretic. They're both well
00:24:49 within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, but you've got a staunch Arminian and you've got a
00:24:54 staunch Calvinist and they're working together. And so ecumenical, this ecumenical spirit, now not
00:25:00 to the point where you're partnering with false teachers, right? So Billy Graham got too ecumenical,
00:25:06 especially towards the end of his life. So I'm not talking about partnering with people who deny
00:25:10 the gospel itself, but partnering with guys of different theological persuasions, but within the
00:25:17 realm of Christian orthodoxy. That does tend to be a criteria, a marker for genuine revivals. However,
00:25:24 Here's the deal.
00:25:25 There's a difference between Whitfield and Wesley versus Asbury and Todd Bentley.
00:25:31 Todd Bentley is not within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy.
00:25:35 So again, that doesn't, that's not definitive proof that this is not a move of God.
00:25:40 Nefarious characters can show up on the scene and it could be a real move of God.
00:25:44 That said though, right?
00:25:46 I mean, Simon, the sorcerer showed up with the apostles ministry and tried to buy, right?
00:25:50 So Todd Bentley could have been there because he wants to, you know, I just want to get
00:25:53 the power of god so i can use it and get back on the big stage again get back to my calling you
00:25:58 know well i mean simon the sorcerer was trying to buy the apostle's ability to impart the holy
00:26:03 spirit the baptism of the holy spirit and peter says may your may your riches perish with you
00:26:07 right you're you're a wicked man um so so nefarious characters showing up doesn't definitively
00:26:13 discredit something but an ecumenical movement is only good insofar as all the characters the 0.96
00:26:21 leaders who are representing this movement who are giving their credence to the movement being
00:26:26 genuine they have to fall within the boundaries of christian orthodoxy that's first second in 1.00
00:26:32 addition to that um one of the things that i've noticed is you know that there are some queer
00:26:39 students who are publicly they publicly identify as being lgbt at asbury um and they're on the
00:26:49 scene in the revival and they're saying, we're for it. We like what's going on. Now that actually
00:26:57 gives me more pause, more hesitation than even Todd Bentley being there. So Todd Bentley being
00:27:04 there and saying, I can feel God's presence. This is awesome. I'm like, Ooh, that's not great,
00:27:09 but that doesn't, you know, definitively discredit it. That's not a deal breaker for
00:27:13 this revival being genuine or not. But when you've got outspoken gay students at a Christian 0.98
00:27:19 university and, and they identify as sodomites or queer or lesbian or transgender or whatever, 0.99
00:27:28 and they're on the scene and they're saying, we like this. Uh, we're hopeful that the seeds of 0.99
00:27:34 this revival, um, like one of the things that I read was a student, you know, saying, um, you know,
00:27:40 we've made a lot of progress on campus over the last four years, meaning we've made a lot of
00:27:47 compromise, biblical compromise on the campus over the last four years. We're making strides
00:27:52 to get this Christian university to affirm sodomy and to forsake a biblical stance on sexual ethics. 1.00
00:28:00 That's what they're saying. And so this student is saying the last four years has been a lot of 0.73
00:28:04 progress um in this particular arena of sin namely perversion and lgbt lm nop um there's
00:28:11 been progress in this and we're hopeful that student who said that says and i i feel like
00:28:17 um there's you know there's some bad things coming out of this revival but more good than harm
00:28:22 well that's not encouraging if if a person who affirms homosexuality is saying uh that the
00:28:32 school has, there's been progress on campus towards that end of getting the school to be
00:28:36 affirming. Not that they are, but working towards that. They're saying we're making strides,
00:28:42 we're making progress, and we're on the scene. I've been to these revival meetings, the Asbury
00:28:47 revival, and I like it. And I'm hopeful that this is going to have a good fruit. And what they mean
00:28:55 is the good fruit of, of more people affirming what God says is an abomination, namely sodomy.
00:29:03 Yeah, that's not a good sign. And, and this is the last thing. Okay. The very last thing in terms
00:29:08 of criteria. Okay. Ecumenical confession of sin, all that, but the last thing with revivals
00:29:14 throughout history is preaching, preaching. And, and I think that's to me, the biggest hangup that
00:29:23 i have the biggest hesitancy that i have is um preaching the word of god that it's not just
00:29:32 worship through song it's not just confession and prayer um but it's preaching because because if
00:29:38 you keep saying this must be a move of god because there's confession of sin and repentance and
00:29:43 prayer for me one of the things that i want to ask is um confession of sin great um sin according
00:29:50 to what standard by what standard is something because because you can have people confessing
00:29:57 right where i'm confessing but then who knows what they're confessing right the person is like i'm
00:30:01 confessing the sin of how i've been bigoted and harsh and haven't been affirming enough and loving
00:30:07 enough towards my gay brothers and sisters in christ well that's not confession of sin that's
00:30:12 affirmation of sin that's compromise um you know so so the the the kind of if you're bowling right
00:30:19 And you don't want to get any gutter balls, right?
00:30:21 You put up the bumpers, you know, and the bumpers to make sure that the revival bowling
00:30:28 ball doesn't go into the gutter.
00:30:30 One of the chief bumpers is preaching and preaching, not topical preaching, not just
00:30:36 preaching the devices and inventions of men, but preaching the Bible, expositional preaching.
00:30:42 When there's claims of a revival and you show up on the scene and there is singing and there
00:30:47 is confession and there is prayer, but the bulk of it, it's all the confession and the prayer and
00:30:53 the singing is all being guided and facilitated out of the doctrine of the preaching. And the
00:30:59 preaching is sound expositional preaching night after night after night. So that when someone's
00:31:04 confessing sin, they're confessing sin as defined by the sermon. And the sermon was preached from
00:31:11 the Bible and what the Bible calls sin and what the Bible calls holiness is actually called
00:31:18 holiness. And what the Bible calls sin is actually called sin. That gives me a lot more peace,
00:31:24 right? A lot more peace of mind when there's sound biblical preaching. But when preaching
00:31:29 is kind of absent and it's a free for all, which is singing and songs and any random person is
00:31:35 getting up and grabbing the mic and confessing something that may be a sin, but maybe isn't.
00:31:40 And even if it is a sin, I've been a part of those meetings too.
00:31:43 For those of you who don't know, I have a charismatic background.
00:31:45 And I remember being on campus at Christ for the Nation.
00:31:49 Some of you, most of you don't even know what that is.
00:31:51 Some of you might.
00:31:52 That came out of the 1950s healing revivals with Jack Cole and Gordon Lindsay and these
00:31:59 kinds of things.
00:32:00 And Christ for the Nation, for the most part, I would argue, is a word of faith heretical 0.82
00:32:04 school.
00:32:05 Not just Pentecostal, but even further than that, word of faith, Benny Hinn kind of thing.
00:32:10 And at Christ for the Nations, I remember when I was there, there was one day where
00:32:14 we called it a revival and it actually wasn't planned.
00:32:17 It was during the morning chapel, during worship through song.
00:32:20 And one of the girls on stage, right?
00:32:23 So you already got a problem. 0.97
00:32:24 But one of the girls on stage who was singing in the middle of the song, she started, you 0.83
00:32:28 know, confessing her sin.
00:32:30 And then another student, a band member, I think, grabbed a microphone and confessed
00:32:35 their sin.
00:32:36 And then a line started to form from the students in the audience to go up and confess their
00:32:40 sin.
00:32:41 And it went from morning chapel, which was supposed to be 8 a.m.
00:32:44 to about 845.
00:32:45 It went from 8 a.m.
00:32:47 all the way till 3 p.m.
00:32:48 Classes were canceled.
00:32:49 All this very similar.
00:32:51 It reminds me of what's going on at Asbury.
00:32:53 Now, here's the problem.
00:32:54 First, because it wasn't preaching and the school had bad theology.
00:32:59 I'm not saying this for Asbury, but for Christ from the Nations, it certainly did.
00:33:03 Some people in hindsight now, knowing what I know about the word of God, having matured
00:33:08 in my doctrine, I look back, some people were confessing as sin, something that actually
00:33:12 wasn't a sin.
00:33:12 Number two, number two, this was happening prevalent in a prevalent degree was that people
00:33:21 were confessing things like, like sexual sin that really was sin.
00:33:25 But you had girls, not just guys.
00:33:27 And that was a problem too, but you had a line of, of guys and girls.
00:33:31 And so you had young women, 19 years old, going up in front of the whole student body,
00:33:37 a thousand people and the school faculty and confessing their personal struggles with 0.93
00:33:43 masturbation, their sin of sexually engaging, committing sexual immorality and promiscuity 0.83
00:33:49 with other students on campus.
00:33:51 And I remember looking around, even at the time, I knew there was something wrong with
00:33:55 this and my theology wasn't very good.
00:33:56 This was 20 years ago.
00:33:57 But I remember looking around and, and, and seeing some of the male students as females
00:34:04 were confessing their struggles with, with lust.
00:34:09 The attractive females who were confessing, I have a voracious libido, especially for 1.00
00:34:16 a girl and you're looking at her and she's attractive.
00:34:19 Some of the guys you could just tell they, they looked like, like drooling wolves.
00:34:25 they were taking mental notes like they might as well had busted out a you know a notebook and
00:34:31 writing down that person's name and sketching uh you know a description of their face and what
00:34:36 they look like so that they know who who's easy prey and there were stories after the fact of
00:34:44 of some of these individuals who confessed sin and it actually got worse because here's the deal
00:34:50 It's first, to confess sin properly, there has to be a biblical standard for what's actually
00:34:55 sin.
00:34:56 Number two, number two, even if we're confessing sin as the Bible actually defines sin, the
00:35:03 question is, how are we confessing sin?
00:35:06 So first, what are we confessing?
00:35:08 Is it actually sin?
00:35:09 But then also the methods and manner.
00:35:11 How are we confessing sin?
00:35:12 And one of the questions we should ask when coming to the methods of confession, who we
00:35:17 confess to is who we confess to. Not how we confess, meaning who do we confess out loud
00:35:25 publicly to a thousand people? Intimate, private sins. Now the Bible does say, confess your sins
00:35:33 one to another that you might pray for one another that you might be healed. So one, all sin should
00:35:37 be confessed to God. Some sin, I would argue, should be confessed to fellow brothers and sisters
00:35:41 in Christ. But in that category of confessing sin, not only to God, but to one another,
00:35:46 the question should be who are the one another's that we should confess that sin to and i would
00:35:52 argue that as a rule of thumb as a rule of thumb this is my rule of thumb for confessing sins to
00:35:57 fellow brothers and sisters in christ the rule of thumb is this um confess a lot of sin to a few
00:36:04 people not a little bit of sin to a lot of people what i mean by that is if i'm going to confess my
00:36:12 sin to brothers and sisters in Christ, which I do. I want to not use ambiguous language,
00:36:19 not be vague, not be general, not minimize my sin, not blame shift with my sin, not defend against
00:36:24 my sin. Well, I kind of, sort of, you know, had some, not using that general ambiguous kind of
00:36:29 language that makes it sound like, well, did you even sin at all? Or are you just a victim? You
00:36:33 know, and sin just grabbed you and pounced upon you and you know, and it's not, you know, it was
00:36:37 outside of your control, right? You hear some confessions and the language is so ambiguous
00:36:41 and so defensive. It's like, was that even a confession? So the rule of thumb is this.
00:36:45 If you're going to confess, let the confession be deep. Let the confession be real. Don't minimize
00:36:51 the sin. Confess it. Confess the details of the sin. Don't be overly detailed, but also don't
00:36:57 hide things to where you're not confessing at all. Confess the sin in truthfulness. Be honest about
00:37:03 the sin. Be honest about the details of the sin. So in terms of the sin itself, big confession
00:37:09 of sin. But in terms of the audience of who you're confessing to, narrow. Be very careful
00:37:16 with that. Very careful. Better to confess 10 sins to two people than to confess two sins
00:37:24 to 10 people. And in the case of the revival at Christ for the Nations that I was a part of
00:37:30 and the Asbury revival currently going on right now, you have individuals confessing sin to one
00:37:35 another privately, but you also have some stage confessions and things like that, that I think
00:37:42 that that's concerning. So the biggest factor is, yeah, there's some nefarious characters there,
00:37:48 Todd Bentley, queer students on campus that are saying, we like this revival. That's 0.99
00:37:51 incredibly concerning, but that alone, both of those doesn't definitively discredit the revival
00:37:58 and say that it's not a revival at all. I do think it's a little suspect that Asbury has a history
00:38:03 revivals and they all happen in february so you know take that for what you will i think i find
00:38:08 that interesting is probably the most charitable way that i can put it but the last thing is um
00:38:13 that i would say is where's the preaching preach preach preach um and not and not just getting up
00:38:18 for five minutes not soap boxes from this student and soapbox from that faculty and soapbox from
00:38:23 this person in the audience who traveled from tennessee to be there whatever no i'm talking
00:38:27 about um i'm talking about i have a text i'm going to exegete the text and apply the text in a
00:38:32 biblical manner to all of life. And we're going to do that for an hour. And then we will accompany
00:38:37 that with worship through song and confession and prayer. The preaching, expositional preaching of
00:38:44 sound doctrine is the guardrails for everything else. The confession is protected by sound
00:38:50 preaching. The worship through song is protected by sound preaching. The prayers even are protected
00:38:56 by sound preaching. And without sound preaching, there could be some genuine things that God is
00:39:03 doing, some bona fide movements of God, but even the good stuff is vulnerable for Satan to come in
00:39:10 and twist and pervert and deceive. Because preaching is a way, by preaching sound doctrine,
00:39:17 that's the way we guard people's minds in Christ Jesus. All right, those are my thoughts. Thanks
00:39:21 for tuning in. Can I be frank with you for just a second right here at the end? Look,
00:39:26 Some of you guys, you're financially supporting this ministry, and from the bottom of my heart,
00:39:31 I say thank you.
00:39:32 I cannot thank you enough.
00:39:35 However, some of you, you just, you can't afford it.
00:39:38 In fact, some of you, you shouldn't afford it.
00:39:41 Let's be honest. 0.91
00:39:43 I mean, we're living in Joe Biden's ridiculous economy. 0.96
00:39:46 Our nation and our totalitarian political elites lost their minds over the last three 0.91
00:39:54 years due to COVID.
00:39:56 We have written checks that we simply cannot cash.
00:40:00 It doesn't matter if people change the definition of a recession.
00:40:04 We are living in a recession right now, regardless.
00:40:08 Some of you are struggling to afford a carton of eggs at the grocery store.
00:40:13 You cannot support financially this ministry at this time, nor should you.
00:40:19 But you could still help us tremendously.
00:40:21 I am asking you, please, if you're willing to do so, take one minute of your time.
00:40:28 Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, iTunes, Spotify, whatever
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00:40:41 We need to be strategic.
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