It’s hard to take claims of revivals seriously after the nonsense “revivals” of the past that resulted in more devastation than devotion.
Now there are reports of revival at Asbury College in Kentucky, near Frankfort, the state capital. As it happens, I am from Kentucky and I’m here right now about three hours away from Asbury college. I thought about going and then decided it wasn’t necessary.
I hope what is happening there is genuine. If it is, I believe it will result in the advancement of the mission of the church: to preach the gospel and the salvation of many. If it’s not genuinely from God then nothing will come of it.
Having said that, I did find a YouTube of the chapel service that started it. The link is provided here, which should open to a chapel service with a teaching from Romans 12.
I recommend you watch it and judge for yourself. You will probably have to muscle through the YouTube ads first. Just wait them out and watch the video. It’s worth a little of your time.
Discover more from The Coming Kingdom of God
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
Last year, I wrote a post about this called “Spiritual Highs and the Ordinary Life.” Since some bloggers don’t like to have links from others posted on their sites, I won’t do that. However, if you go to my site, you can find it in the list of posts under “Archive” in the main menu. Take a look if you’re interested.
I read your post. I think we write about similar things. I haven’t gone back and read my own Asbury post again but it was not far off from yours if I recall correctly.
I would not exclude the special experiences of God’s presence as helpful to growth and even deliverance. Both the special moments and the ordinary life lived in righteousness are in play. What I look for from the Asbury experiences are a return to the word of God, the gospel preached accurately and continually, and people standing in faith when given the opportunity. I don’t know if that happened but all the polls that measure trends in the faith are not encouraging. We’ll see.
The reason, in my opinion, the gospel is not preached effectively is because people are not trained to do so. It doesn’t mean they are not saved necessarily, it just means they need the training and practice. Even most pastors sadly have no training in this area and simply want people to come forward and pray a prayer.
You can read about my own journey about trying unsuccessfully to find a good church, but that’s where the culture is right now.