Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: It is a pleasure to be here at Asbury Theological Seminary with President David Watson.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah. Well, it's great to have you here at Asbury, Todd.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Well, today I'd like to talk about revival. What is it from a biblical and historical perspective. And many people have heard about this Asbury revival that's taken place in the last year or so. So I want to talk about that from a biblical and historical perspective. So let's just dive in.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Okay, sounds good.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: So how would you define revival? What is that?
[00:00:29] Speaker B: I mean, revival is any that God specially enlivens the church with his Holy Spirit. When you see people being drawn to the church, being drawn to Christ in kind of supernatural ways. When you see people coming to the church, and not just coming to the church, but lives being changed from it. Right. There has to be fruit, then that is revival. And it's happened a lot of times through Christian history.
As Wesleyans, we're most familiar with the evangelical revival of the 18th century and John Wesley's role in that. But that was just part of the larger first Great Awakening, which we could talk about later.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: So revival doesn't necessarily have to be a great awakening. Revival happens all the time.
It's when God is waking up the.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Church to something, one soul at a time.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: So angels rejoice when one sinner repents.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: And comes to Christ. Yeah, that's right.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: So it cannot be manufactured, a true revival.
And it begins and ends with God.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Right. We can't program our way to revival.
Revival is the work of God. We can pray for revival, and we can do things that make ourselves that. That make us open to God's work of revival, like receiving the means of grace. But revival is God's work. And when God moves powerfully among his people, then we begin to see revival happening.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Well, it's interesting, the different perspectives about revival. I remember a street preacher that I encountered. I heard him yelling, there's revival coming to America. From the outhouse to the White House, I just kind of chuckled. And then I think about some of the great evangelists, like George Whitfield in the 18th century and Billy Graham. And I remember reading one of Whitfield's journals, and he said, lord, give me souls to save or take mine. And so there's this passion, this commitment and dedication to the last words of Christ before his ascension. In Matthew 28, he said, you know, all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me, and I want you to go and make disciples baptizing those in the name of The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. I want you to start here in Jerusalem and then go to Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. And historically, that's exactly what happened. Christianity will spread. It will go essentially north and then head west into the earth with the Roman Empire at the time.
But let's talk about that a little bit.
So Pentecost, 50 days after that Passover, the disciples who knew Jesus had been crucified were these scared followers. You had one, Peter, who said, I'll go with you to the death, right?
Despondent, dejected, fearful, denied Christ three times, which was predicted later he'll go to his death. But here they are, these disciples and many others in this upper room, waiting for the helper, this counselor, this Holy Spirit at Pentecost in Acts, chapter two. Talk about that a little bit.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's interesting. The first quest of the historical Jesus was kicked off by Herman Samuel Reimarus. And he wrote that essentially the resurrection never happened, that Jesus disciples stole the body and faked the resurrection in order to preserve their status in the community.
Which is just. It really is a silly argument on its face when you consider the fate of the apostles, that only one of the apostles died a natural death. All the rest, excepting Judas, were martyred, and many of them died gruesome deaths. Now, why would they do that? What status in the community did they really preserve?
If they were, as we read about in Acts, really under duress and persecution for a lot of their ministry, why would they do that? It's impossible to explain Christianity and its emergence in the first century apart from the resurrection of Jesus. And Paul talks about this at the end of 1 Corinthians.
He talks about the number of people who saw Jesus alive.
But it's very clear, unless you're just a hardened skeptic, Jesus followers saw him after he had died, after he had died on the cross.
Crucifixion was used so often because it worked. It was extremely effective. It was used to squash slave rebellions. It was used to squash political rebellions. And it. And it worked.
And we only have, if I'm remembering correctly, one archeological example of a crucified person, and that's in the museum in Jerusalem, where it's a nail through a heel bone, which kind of gives you. It's through the side of the heel bone, which gives us a little bit of insight into how people might have been crucified.
Everyone else, their bones are just scattered. They get no honorable burial. They're not remembered because crucifixion worked, but in this case, it didn't. It had the opposite effect.
Why? Because Christ rose from the dead.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: And I think of Gamaliel, who mentored Saul, who became Paul. I remember in the book of Acts, where, you know, this is post resurrection, and you have Peter and Silas and John and all them, they're boldly claiming the good news of the risen Lord. And they're told to stop speaking that name. And they said, we cannot deny nor stop speaking what we know to be true. We were eyewitnesses to this. Despite being in prison and all the things happened, it says they were even flogged. And yet they were rejoicing to be counted, worthy, to suffer for his name. And I remember Gamaliel, at one point, he pulls the leaders aside. He says, look, we've seen this before. We've seen people claiming to be the Messiah. They have a following.
And then, you know, you cut, like you said, you cut off the head of the snake, or you kill the leader or whatever, and the movement dies and it ends.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: But in this particular case, Gamiliar said, if this is of God, you will not be able to stop it.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: And so I think the fact that here we are 2000 years later, and you and I are talking about this, but what are there 3 billion Christians in the world today?
How do we explain that? And maybe despite or in spite of this persecution, because when your faith is. Is under trial or duress, it's proven genuine.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: And for these disciples, as you mentioned, they were willing to. To die martyrs, deaths, and for what they knew to be true.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: And when I think about the first martyr mentioned in the New Testament, Stephen, I remember his bold prayer, his preaching.
And we'll talk about this as a catalyst for revival. But it's interesting, because when Stephen is stoned to death, I remember it says that he looked up to the heavens, opened, and he sees Jesus standing.
So we hear metaphorically, Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. Here he's standing almost as if to say, well done, thy good and faithful servant. This you were faithful even unto death. And it says, then they laid the garments, Stephen's garments, at the feet of Saul, who was ravaging the church, going from town to town. And then you see in Acts 9 and other places how he has this radical conversion.
He hears this voice, saul, why are you persecuting me? Who is this? And it's the Lord. And then, of course, here, the main persecutor of Christians historically, Saul of Tarsus, becomes really its most powerful. One of the first missionaries with all these journeys, and that's really inexplicable unless he himself, more so than the others. I mean, they had to return to, you know, the fishing nets or whatever. But here's one Saul who.
How do you explain that he had absolutely nothing to gain. The disciples didn't even believe him at first. They were scared of him. But let's talk about his conversion a little bit.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: And then how he took that, that good news.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Well, I mean, it was a radical change, of course, wasn't it, from persecutor of Christians to Christian evangelists and the, you know, it's not. I mean, the account in Acts 9, you know, that we get of Paul. Paul also talks a little bit about, not exactly in the same terms, and it's narrated in a little bit of a different way later in Acts.
But somehow we see that Paul encountered the risen Christ.
And the encounter with the risen Christ helped him to realize that he'd been entirely wrong about this new sect of Jews that had begun to believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. And even to claim that Jesus was Lord and by the change in him was so radical, people at first didn't believe it. Right. They were scared of him at first, as they would be.
But eventually, over time, I suppose he gained their trust and really dedicated the rest of his life and was even martyred in order to spread faith in Jesus Christ across the Roman world.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: And so 13 of those 27 New Testament letters are attributed to. To this apostle Paul.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: You know, and then I think about Jesus himself. We see in scripture that he had siblings, four brothers mentioned by name, sisters, plural. And we see that they. Scripture says that they didn't believe he was the Messiah until after the resurrection. Which if you've known, if you've lost a loved one and you were at the funeral, knew they were dead, and then all of a sudden they're alive again.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Certainly that would get your attention, wouldn't it?
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Definitely get your attention, which obviously did. So to those brothers, you had James and then Jude each wrote an epistle that are found in the New Testament. And you think about James having stayed in Jerusalem kind of as the home base.
And you know, I know with, with James, he ends up being martyred.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: And we hear from Josephus and others, you know, he had a. Had a following. He was, you know, killed. And it says that he had the knees of a camel because of his fervent prayer life.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: And that he's so enraged, you know, enraged. These religious leaders, you know, they had him stoned. And it says as he's dying, legend tells us that James said forgive them, they know not what they do, which we've heard before with Jesus on the cross.
And yet then we go back to Peter who did deny Jesus and yet we know he does take the gospel to the ends of the earth to Rome. Paul ends up there as well in the 60s.
Peter, they're going to make an example of him. They think, okay, it's time, let's kill these two leaders of Peter and Paul, right? Peter, they say he had to watch his wife execution first. And then as he is going to be crucified, he said I'm not worthy to die in the way of my Lord. So he's crucified upside down. And then shortly around the same time, shortly after or maybe before Paul's beheaded under Nero.
And I mean Nero's the one that you know, set the city ablaze because he wanted the new palace for himself and all of that and said he played the fiddle on the roof and all that. But. But the Christians became kind of that scapegoat. But they were trying to stop or snuff out the spreading of the gospel of the Good News. And then we look at the subsequent generations we had. John, you mentioned earlier, he's the only one of the disciples that died of natural causes much later. But he mentored Ignatius Polycarp. They both died martyrs deaths. Polycarp influenced Irenaeus and it just goes forward despite the persecution. So talk about that and the opposition not just to revival but to historically to the spreading of the Good News.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Resistance to any kind of move of God can come from without, from outside the church and it can also come from within the church. And we have to be mindful of both. We also have to be discerning what really is a move of God. Because not everyone who claims to be a prophet is a prophet. Not everyone who claims to be moving in the gifts of the Spirit is moving in at least the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I mean there are other spirits and some people are very willing to co op the language of revival for their own gain.
And so it requires discernment to know when God is genuinely moving. And we have to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves as we assess these things.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: The scripture says to test the Spirit, test the Spirit for the discernment. Because I think that has been an unfortunate are common characteristic of, of even true revival is that you have the, the charlatans. Yeah, they Come along, I guess, with their shenanigans, right?
Self glory, self gain, manipulation of people or in vulnerable state, whatever is going on there.
And I think it's important that, that we're discussing this component of it because in more recent times there, there's been a lot of that going on and people being, I guess, taken advantage of. You know, I think on one hand when we talk about there is a spiritual realm, clearly there is opposition to the things of God being the enemy, Satan. And Paul says that, that the devil can disguise himself as an angel of light or masquerade as an angel of light. And so these things on the surf and surface in and of themselves may appear to be good. And yet they're the. They're the very. They're at the very core of this deception or manipulation. And if, I know with you mentioned earlier with the Wesleyan tradition in the 18th century, with the First Great Awakening, primarily 1730s and 1740s, it carried on longer. But you had, of course, one Jonathan Edwards, brilliant. I think Encyclopedia Britannica says he's the greatest theological mind in North American.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: A lot of people believe that history.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: And he says he was the match.
The itinerant international preacher. George Whitfield was the flame.
And so here you have Edwards Reformed doctrine, very carefully crafted sermons, would write them out, read them essentially somewhat in a monotone, nasally voice. And yet the precision of his words and how he rely on the God to work through them and the reactions of what was happening.
And then here comes Whitfield, who is extemporaneous. I mean, Whitfield had been, you know, champion in the theater. You know, he lost his father when he was 2, I think it was he. They said he could memorize the seven or eight years old. He can memorize the sermon and give a better delivery than his own pastor. And then he goes to Oxford where he runs into, you know, the Wesleys, and they have this pejorative nickname of this, this holy club because of their devotion to, you know, discipleship and prayer and the things of God. And they had to convince Whitefield, okay, theater was the devil's workshop. That was their perspective. And yet it says historically that it was like he went from the stage as being even respected by the greatest thespian of the times. David Garrick in England said, I've never seen anyone with oratory skills the way this young Whitfield has. So the Wesleys had to convince him that, no, the pulpit or the field preaching could kind of become your sacred stage. And then he has these international Tours, he comes over to America and entire towns would shut down to hear this great evangelist.
And even Benjamin, Benjamin Franklin said I had to leave my money at home because when I would hear him preach and then ask for money for the orphanage in Savannah that he said, I would empty my pockets. But talk a little bit about the theological stance of, of that first Great Awakening, because then we'll look at the differences with that one and then the Second Great Awakening later. So with Edwards and Whitfield, what were they really preaching? What were they getting at?
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Well, Edwards and Whitefield are both more out of the Calvinist or Reformed tradition than Wesley is. And Wesley and Whitefield actually had some pretty sharp disagreements about these matters at times.
And so they had kind of an on again, off again relationship with one another.
Whitfield, I mean, Edwards, yes, he may very well be the greatest theological mind to come out of North America. He certainly had a huge impact on the First Great Awakening in the United States, and in a lot of ways was Wesley's counterpart in the US And Whitefield had a role to play in all of this, certainly because he was the greatest preacher of his day.
He was an intercontinental rock star. You know, he really was a celebrity because of his great oratorical skills. And yet revival requires. Revival does benefit from great preaching. And so we're grateful for the souls that came to Christ through Whitefield. And at the same time, revival requires more than that.
It's more than conversion.
It's also discipleship.
And what Whitefield didn't do was organize his followers into groups like Classis that Wesley did. And so today we have a Wesleyan movement, but we don't have a Whitefieldian movement. Whitefield, at the end of his life, lamented that his followers were a rope of sand. That's how he put it, because he didn't organize his followers in the way that Wesley did. And so Wesley wasn't just about that moment of, of conversion, although he was about that. Right. He believed in the new birth. He believed in the infilling of the Holy Spirit, which is a theme that was really taken up strongly later by Henry Clay Morrison.
But he also thought that if you just preached and didn't then walk with people into maturity of discipleship, that you were begetting children for the murderer.
So Whitefield's legacy in this regard is kind of a mixed bag. So each of these figures have different. They made different contributions to the first Great Awakening, and they have different legacies for the first Great Awakening.
These are also very human figures in a Lot of ways, if you start to read the accounts of their lives, you know, reading, for example, Wesley, some of his foibles, you know, for example, that's kind of encouraging for me because I think, well, if he messed up like this, maybe God can use someone like me as well. And so they all have important legacies. And also these are very human figures who made mistakes, and yet God used them to bring glory to himself.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: And the beauty of that which you just mentioned is that that's the case from Peter. The earliest followers onto present day is that at the end of the day, each one of us is a sinner among sinners in a fallen, broken world.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: And with revival, it seems that it's oftentimes they are preceded by times of spiritual decline or stagnation, and yet always fervent prayer.
It's an expectation, it is a longing, it is a trust and dependence on God through prayer to bring about the revival. We saw it in the upper room in Acts, chapter two.
You see it, you know, just keep, just move along the historical timeline. And you always see that. And now after this first Great Awakening, you're looking at the second Great Awakening. Yeah, you had Charles Finney, who. Right, I guess trained as a lawyer. They said his, his sermons were almost like a lawyer arguing a case, unlike Edwards and Whitfield with this focus on the total depravity of humans being objects of. Of wrath and, you know, God's grace to come along with Finney knowing it was clearly a work of God, but yet he. He did in a certain, and I'm not going to say manufacturer, but he did develop these methods.
He had the ancients bench of house to house visitation. Talk a little bit about the differences of that second Great Awakening in comparison to the first.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Well, I'm a lot more familiar with the first Great Awakening than the second.
But Finney definitely had a method that he used, and the method was in part to elicit an emotional response in the hearer.
I have to go back and look at my notes to remember exactly what that method was. But.
And so he was certainly trying to evoke a reaction in people.
And some people might say that that is, you know, that kind of thing is chicanery. I don't think that's right. I mean, I do think that faith does involve your emotions. It involves your whole person. Right. Conversion involves the whole person, and that that involves the emotional self. What we don't want is a kind of emotional reaction with no lasting impact.
And Edwards, for example, wrote essentially 12 marks of a legitimate spiritual experience and 12 marks of one that was not legitimate.
And to boil it all down, it was when you see lasting for fruit from the person, when there is a change in the person's character over time, that it's observable.
In those cases, that was a legitimate spiritual experience. But just having a mountaintop emotional experience doesn't mean that you've encountered the living God, because when you encounter the living God, you're changed by that.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: And I think it's so important to. Not to judge anyone, but there will be fruit. You even go back to Calvin and the reformers that says, you know, it's faith alone, solo fide.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Yet I think Calvin said, but that. That true genuine saving faith is never alone there. It's going to be accompanied by these. These fruits. You'd say fruits of the Spirit. Galatians 5. Paul mentions those fruits of the spirit, you know, faith working itself out in. In love.
And I think that's really important to highlight is that there will be a change of the person. The actions will reflect that. It's not just for Finney, you know, come up to this ancient anxious bench and, you know, be. Be pressured or manipulated into some conversion. And some would say that that was kind of the inception of the altar call.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: You know, is that others would say, oh, no, you've got to come forward. It wasn't necessarily the anxious bench, but, you know, Graham would do that in his, you know, crusades, you know, in the 20th century, is that. Know you've got literally hundreds, if not thousands of people in stadiums full of people that were coming forward.
And having been a part of one of those, you know, I know that behind the scenes, what some people don't know is that half the people moving forward, coming forward are the. Are the trained counselors to receive the people that are genuinely feeling the, you know, the spirit wooing them, or to, you know, to make a decision to come forward. That's neither here nor there. I mean, God's still at work despite what else is going on around us. But there can be the pressure to make these decisions.
I've been in situations where it's like look up at me or raise a hand or come forward.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I've seen an evangelist walk out into the crowd, grab people that he thought were on the verge of conversion and baptize them with a bottle of Dasani water on the way back, you know, and I thought, that's. That's horrible. That's. That's manipulative. That is chicanery.
I didn't like it at all.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: And that. Was that your experience?
[00:25:27] Speaker B: That that is not how I was baptized. No, no, no.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: But I agree. I think there is a danger there for these, well, false conversions, false hope. Again, we're not the judge of this. It's between each person and God. But I do think there can be this manipulation or those that want to capitalize on, you know, a genuine movement of the Spirit even within the church. Right, yeah.
Which, let's talk about Asusa street.
[00:25:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: So early 1900s, California, I guess some of the basic characteristics of the leadership there, they, they were kind of opposed to the formal education or training. It's like it didn't matter because the Spirit would empower you and give you words to say and maybe prophetic word.
Back to Acts chapter two, the speaking in tongues. I want to talk about that a little bit. So when the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples in Acts 2 and it said that there were 15 dialects going on there of people that were speaking in unknown languages but proclaiming the gospel, glorifying God, talk about that. And then fast Forward from Acts 2 with Pentecost and the speaking in tongues to the modern day versions of that, especially at a Sousa street.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Well, I've always read Acts 2 as kind of a double miracle. On the one hand, the disciples are speaking in languages that they don't know. Xenolalia, that's called.
And then people are also. It says that each is hearing in his or her own language.
And so it's a, it's the reverse of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis. Right. So in Genesis, God confuses their language. And now we have this miracle of understanding in Acts 2 of people hearing in their own language and the disciples speaking in different languages.
We do see examples of xenolalia at times in the history of revival.
I believe there's an instance where this is recorded at revival in China.
And there are other examples of this. What happened at Azusa Street, My understanding is that that's a little bit different because that's what we call glossolalia, not xenolalia. Glossolalia is speaking in a heavenly language. It is the Holy Spirit praying up through you, through the Son to the Father.
And so it's not an earthly language that we know of. And that really became one of the marks of classical Pentecostalism.
In classical Pentecostalism, the idea is that speaking in tongues is a necessary evidence of salvation after baptism.
Now, most Christians don't believe that, but many Christians do practice Speaking in tongues, regardless. And it is one of the gifts that Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 12, speaking in other tongues.
And what Paul says about this is, it's great for your personal edification. He says, I wish everyone spoke in tongues as much as I do.
But it doesn't build up the church. It builds up the person. And building up the person is important. But the greater gift, he says, is prophecy, because prophecy builds up the church.
Not everyone receives a gift of tongues.
Many people do. And I think God is very generous with that gift, but some people never receive it. But if you don't receive it, that's okay. I mean, these are gifts, and you have other gifts, and we don't need to have jealousy of one another's gifts.
But I think Azusa street was so important because it gave rise to the Pentecostal movement, which, by the way, I mean, it is the focal point of the rise of that. But other things were happening around the world at that time, too. For example, we see, like, around the same time, Smith. Smith Wigglesworth in England and kind of the miracles that were happening through his ministry. And I know that. That Smith Wigglesworth is a source of controversy as a controversial figure, but I don't think it's.
I can't read about him or read his work without thinking that God was working through him as well. Again, all of us that God works through are imperfect vessels. Right. We're broken or jars of clay.
And so Azusa was kind of the focal point of something that God was doing in different places at that time. God was moving in a new way at this time.
And it gave rise to the Pentecostal movement, which now is the. I believe it's still the fastest growing religious movement in the world.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Grant Wacker of Duke University, definitely an expert in that field, grew up in a Pentecostal home.
Trained at. He was at. Went to Stanford, Harvard. But the guy, he's been teaching this for 50 years, and he said there are roughly 600 million that would identify as Pentecostals today.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: In the world. That's a lot of people.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: That's huge.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: And this is worldwide. You don't see it as much in America. In America. And there's a difference between the Pentecostalism that's prevalent in America versus what, worldwide? In America, unfortunately, you do have a lot of the health, wealth, prosperity gospel. You pray hard enough, give enough money, you're going to be blessed with, you know.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Well, you have that in other places. Right. You have it in Latin America, you have it in Africa.
[00:31:16] Speaker A: Yeah, but I think there. What I've heard is that there's more of a genuine working, and it's not as much about the manipulation as you may see here. And I do think there's that danger of, you know, trying to manufacture these things and what can come with it, the attention personally as well as collectively, which this brings us. Let's. To more modern times. Okay. We had the Toronto Blessing. We had the Pensacola Revival, you know, in the last 30 to 40 years, and there was a lot of speculation, there was a lot of, I guess, resentment or criticism of those revivals. And we don't have to belabor those because I'm sure there was a genuine working of the spirit, but yet there was also some of the shenanigans and things that were.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: That you always get.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: You're always going to get that.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: And so let's bring us to today. So here we are, Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky. And you've been the president of Asbury now for, I guess, what, six months.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Since July, however long that is. Almost.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Almost six months.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: But you have a history with this place. You talk about your history. I know your son attended Asbury for, you know, for college.
And. And then put. Then. And then use that, I guess, to talk about the inception or your first hearing about the Asbury revival.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: Well, different revivals have different characters. Right. And. And you mentioned the. The Toronto Blessing, at which Randy Clark was the principal preacher. And I've known Randy for a long time.
I know he's come under tremendous criticism and really, in my opinion, very unfair and unkind criticism. And it's a sign of his character that he has received all of this with a lot of grace and forgiveness and praying for the people who have written really terrible things about him.
Randy is a very, very sincere man of God. And I don't think that there is, you know, any.
There's no fakery in Randy. I mean, he is the real deal.
People may not like the expressions of faith that came out of the Toronto Blessing, but that's neither here nor there. I mean, God isn't interested in what we like, really.
And was there also some fakery that came out of the Toronto Blessing? Of course, because people always want to capitalize for their own gain on something like that.
I mean, you go back to the Book of Acts and Simon the Magician, you see these kinds of things. Or the sons of Sceva, the seven sons of Sceva, who want to cast out demons in Jesus name, but without faith in Jesus and so there's always been that kind of thing.
But the Toronto Blessing was called the Laughing Revival.
And because it was characterized in part by holy laughter.
And why holy laughter? I don't know. I mean, I don't know why God does most of the things that he does. Right. But.
But it was a revival of joy. And then you see the results of it, by the way, in which people who are at that revival moved out into different parts of the world and then led people to faith in Jesus Christ. So there's fruit from that revival and there's fruit still today. Even the Asbury Revival had a very, very different feel to it than the revivals that I've been in that have been connected to Toronto. Okay, so the Asbury Revival was very peaceful and sweet.
So my son, as you said, was a student here. He graduated from Asbury University in 2024.
And when I heard that this was going on, I asked him about it. He said he'd been to it and that it was very, you know, it was a wonderful thing. And it was also really disrupting what was going on on campus.
And so I came down at one point and had lunch with him and then went to the worship service that was going on. And there was just such a sweet spirit there. It was a very, I think that God looked on this group of young people who just came forward to the altar in repentance and just poured out his love on them because that's what they needed, right? That so many young people today have grown up in environments where they don't feel loved, where they haven't really been parented well, where they don't experience very genuine relationships. And, you know, the Surgeon General of the US a couple years ago put out a piece called Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.
That's the environment they've grown up in. They went through COVID 19.
They've never known a world without social media, which contributes in very significant ways to loneliness and isolation, superficial relationships.
And I think God loves this generation and looked on them and was merciful to them and just poured out his love on them.
And there is lasting fruit. Lives are permanently changed because of what God did in the Asbury Blessing. The Asbury Outpouring.
Now, was that a revival? I mean, it was a bit of revival. It was a glimpse of revival. We'll see what the long term effects of that are over time and we'll see if it continues to spread.
But God is stirring something up in the Western world right now, and I don't know quite what it is Gen Z Christians are the most faithful in church attendance of any generation of Christians.
Ryan Burge, who's a sociologist that I follow, tracks a lot about trends in the Western world and religion, talks about how the number of people who identify as nuns has kind of leveled off over the last five years. The decline of Christianity in the United States has leveled off over the last several years. And what we're starting to see is pockets of revival people being places where the Holy Spirit is moving and people are coming to Christ.
It hasn't caught fire in the way that it did in the first and second Great Awakenings, but maybe it will. We just don't know.
But perhaps what God is doing here in the west is also what God has been doing in the global south for a long time.
That what we see, right. We live in one of the greatest times of Christian revival, perhaps the greatest time of Christian revival in all of history.
It's just not in the west. And so we're not as aware of it here.
Christianity is growing faster in sub Saharan Africa than any place in the world.
China will by mid century have more Christians than any country in the world.
And so God is reaching people in regions that have been bereft of Christian presence for some time.
And I love to see this. I love what's happening. And I think what the Western church needs to do is we need to humble ourselves, repent of our sins, and pray for God to move with revival here.
I don't like this kind of note of triumphalism that I see sometimes in evangelicalism.
I think pride of this kind will quench the spirit.
I see it sometimes in my own denomination in the Global Methodist Church. I see it in other evangelical denominations. But triumphalism and pride are the enemies of real revival.
And so we have to be humble and we have to repent.
And we have to ask God in his mercy to move with power and to draw lost and abandoned people to him in faith.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: You mentioned a moment ago about loneliness. I read a statistic that said the two loneliest segments of the American population are those entering nursing homes and those entering colleges.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: When I first read that, I thought, is that really true? So my oldest son graduated high school in 2020, you know, right at the beginning of COVID and he ends up in New York city. So there's 22 million people in the five boroughs.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: And I'll never forget him calling home one day, maybe two, two weeks in, and he said, dad, I'm just so lonely. I'm so lonely. And I'm thinking there's 22 million people around you and it's a city that never sleeps.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Right. And.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: And yet he's, he's felt just isolated and lonely. And of course he found fellowship there through a, you know, a local ministry in that. But I think that is a common theme among the young people. I think it's a reason why those in Greek life, you know, why they agree to it to begin with. It's because parents know that you're signing them up for what's potential disaster because of the pressures that can come with that. But yet at the same time there is a inherent camaraderie and sense of belonging, which is great. And what's fascinating about what I'm seeing as one who goes and I mean, I'm usually on a different college campus almost every week. I've been to, you know, in the last few weeks, I've been to Indiana University, I've been to Auburn. And what I've seen that I, that I haven't seen in previous years is a genuine curiosity, almost a longing or a hunger for truth. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is not compulsory. I'll show up because someone invites me in and the guy that invited me, who's usually a Christian, says we might have five or six or 10.
And in Indiana we had 65.
[00:42:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:09] Speaker A: Auburn, we had 25. They didn't have to be there.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:42:12] Speaker A: No one's looking at their phones. They are genuinely just listening and like longing for the better story. And I think about Jesus says, you know, to where to be were to be light and lights most evident in darkness. And as some that think the sky is falling, I'm like, no, as you said, there's never been a more important or better or exciting time to be a Christian, to shine brightly for the Lord. And if our hearts are fully yielded to God and we truly are genuinely humble and fervent in prayer and longing just to be obedient. It is unbelievable what God can and does do, what he does through, through just one person or a group of people. And I think back on the young people in particular historically with revivals.
1802, you had President Timothy Dwight, a descendant of Jonathan Edwards, is at Yale College.
And it's unbelievable because it was, you know, typical college scene and you know, people are living for anything but God and yet he decides to preach a series of sermons. Yeah, you know, about Christ and what is the great commission, things like that. And of that senior class, I think there were like 60 something conversions of maybe 200 and something students. Half of them go into vocational ministry. And then there's a legacy. And then you had the Haystack revival up in Massachusetts, and you had a group of students that decided just to get together to pray.
[00:43:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: And then one particular day, there's a bad storm, and so they take shelter under this kind of haystack. And then from that, out of that fervent prayer of just saying, you know, God, here I am. Use me, send me, change me, and it starts a revival.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: And so with. With Asbury, was that essentially what happened? Did you just have a bunch of younger people that decided, let's just seek the face of God. Let's just pray?
[00:44:07] Speaker B: I think that is what happened. I think that is what happened. I think, you know, it was just a normal chapel service. It started out that way anyway.
And some younger people tarried at the altar, you know, and they just wanted more of God's presence, and they came in humility and repentance, and God blessed that.
And it. You know, then tens of thousands of people descended on Wilmore, Kentucky.
And Wilmore is not set up for that.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: It's a quaint little rural town. It's beautiful. But wow. So tens of thousands of people showed up.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, there are only four restaurants here. Yeah, five if you count the one in the gas station. And, you know, there's the Asbury Inn. And there are no other hotels in Wilmore. Wow. And certainly can't accommodate tens of thousands of people. And so eventually they did have to move the revival off campus, the outpouring off campus, because the town just couldn't take it. I mean, the plumbing couldn't handle that much.
There weren't places for people to stay, and there were also safety concerns for students.
But God really blessed the yearning of those college students.
And I think his message to them was simply, I love you, I see you, I love you, I'm here for you, and I want to be part of your life.
And there was not a lot of.
There were people there who showed up, kind of Christian celebrities who wanted to lead worship or preach or something like that. And they just said, no, this isn't about that.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: Good for them.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: Yeah. It's about what God is doing, and God just ministering to the hearts of these students. And I really do think it was about the students who were there.
Anytime you have something like this, you'll find people. I mean, people came from all over the world.
Now, why would they do that? Right. Because people are hungry for God's presence. They want to feel something, something real.
They don't just want a God who is an idea.
They want a God whom they can encounter.
And I think that's why the Toronto Blessing was so influential. And I think that's why the Pentecostal movement is spreading so quickly.
And I think that's why the Asbury outpouring was so significant, because people are yearning for God. It's like Augustine wrote, you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
And so that experience of God is something that people just want.
And it's not enough just to preach ideas. They need an encounter with the living God. This is very much part of the Wesleyan Revival. And. And the whole notion of the new birth and regeneration.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think a lot of people have heard a lot about God.
They have an idea of God, but they don't know God. And yet I think when people realize that God created them in his image, you look at Psalm 139, says, God knew you before you were born. You're in your mother's womb, knows the number of days in which you'll live, that each one of us is fearfully and wonderfully made, unique and like no other.
[00:47:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:46] Speaker A: And I. And I've just shared just basic truths of scripture. And just the good news is that, you know, no matter how bad you think you are or how bad you've messed it up, you're probably a lot worse. Yeah, that's bad news.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: But the good news is that God loves you despite your sins. And in fact, he did something about that.
[00:48:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:04] Speaker A: And with religions that try to reach towards God or appease God, God says, no, I know you'll never be good enough. And so I'm going to come to you.
And the Incarnation, which we'll celebrate, you can celebrate it daily. But with Christmas on the horizon, you just think about that. The God of all creation decided to enter into his creation, to show us what it looks like to live that life free of sin, that being fully human, he was tempted in every way. And yet, because he was fully God, he did not succumb to it. And yet he bore the sins of humanity.
He took our place and exchange that for his righteousness. That says all you have to do is believe by grace, unmerited favor. It's a free gift. You can't earn it. You don't deserve it. And he says, if you accept this free gift of grace, by faith, you could enter into that relationship with me and have peace now and then forevermore.
[00:49:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: And you tell people that, and they think, well, it's almost. It's too good to be true. And yet it is too good to be true. It's the only thing. It's the ultimate truth. He says, I'm the way, the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
But to get your. Get our minds around that and the fact that there's never a moment when we're not in the presence of God.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:21] Speaker A: We're all mortal. You know, life expectancies, 76 or, you know, years, something like that. Maybe you live to be 103, like my wife's grandmother. But yet, compared to eternity, even the longest life is very brief.
And so I think with these revivals and the evangelists and that, I think it was a lot of. It was just the motivation to remind people that life is short.
[00:49:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: Eternity is. Is forever. And then when. But when you know Christ.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:51] Speaker A: You really don't have to worry. You don't have to fear death when you know Christ is alive.
[00:49:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: And when people hear that good news, that message, it just. It brings. It brings hope, and it changes lives. And you realize that the things I'm stressed about really aren't that big of a deal.
[00:50:06] Speaker B: Right, Right. Yeah.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: So moving forward with Asbury Seminary and you being here as the president and one that is articulated and lived. Well, you've practiced what you've preached, and I've watched this for years, and I'm very grateful.
And a phrase that you use often is being spirit filled or spirit led.
[00:50:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: Explain that.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Well, I think that all Christians should expect the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
And there are a lot of ways in which the infilling of the Holy Spirit can manifest itself. But there's one way in which it must manifest itself, and that is in love in your heart. Okay. And that's what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, 14, where he has that beautiful meditation on love in 1 Corinthians 13.
So he says, if I speak in tongues of angels and of men, but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. In other words, I can speak in tongues.
But if God hasn't created love in my heart, then it's all just noise. It's all just fireworks.
And Wesley followed along these lines as well. He believed in the different gifts of the Spirit. And you can read about these in his journal. And he practiced these. He practiced healing. He would make decision based on words of prophecy and Things like that.
But at the same time, he was very insistent that sanctification, which is another way of talking about the love of God, holiness, again, another way of talking about love.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Christ says, be holy because I am holy. So sanctification to become more like Christ.
[00:52:00] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. That these things are the most. These are the central gift.
And every other gift is ancillary to the gift of love that's in your heart.
And so to be spirit filled is to be changed by God. First and foremost, is to be changed by God, because God wants to sanctify us. God wants us to be holy. God wants our character and our will, our desires to come into agreement with His.
And too often, we want to remake God in our image, but God wants to remake us and restore his image in us that's been tarnished by sin.
So that's really first and foremost what it means to be spirit filled. It means that God creates that the love of God is shown forth in your heart, that you're a changed person because of that.
And then because he's generous, God will give us other gifts as well, like words of knowledge or words of wisdom or healing or gifts of teaching or gifts of generosity or other things like that, you know?
[00:53:11] Speaker A: And I think back at Pentecost, when these followers are awaiting the Holy Spirit, and now it seems that when revival occurs, it's as if people realize the Holy Spirit's been waiting on us.
It's that reversal.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:30] Speaker A: And so we really seek the face of God. And through fervent prayer and humility in just asking God to reveal himself, but to fill us with love.
[00:53:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That.
Philip Yancey says God goes where he's wanted. And there's a line in a hymn by G.K. chesterton, take not thy thunder from us, Take away our pride.
We don't want to be bereft of the power of God, but we want God to move within us in such a way that we lose that prideful state that keeps us from God.
[00:54:06] Speaker A: And I think when that happens, I think we will start to be asked for the reason for the hope that's within us.
[00:54:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:54:14] Speaker A: And then even when it's challenged or people scoff at those who, you know, are Christians, you can give a defense for why you believe what you believe, but also to do so with. With gentleness and respect and love.
[00:54:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think these days, the defense is not so. It's not like when we were younger. I mean, that, you know, the Generation X.
Are you Generation X?
Yeah. So the Generation X and Baby Boomers you know, Tim Keller really spoke, I think, to us and people like him, William Lane, Craig and other such apologists because they were asking the. Answering the question, is Christianity intellectually responsible?
But I think today the question is, is Christianity good?
And so one of the greatest apologetic means we have at our disposal is the way we live.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:55:12] Speaker B: You know, does the power of God manifest and change lives?
Yeah.
Are we loving people? Are we generous people? Are we kind people? Are we righteous people?
Do we practice what we preach? Are we coherent?
Do we manifest the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ in our own lives?
[00:55:38] Speaker A: I think it's very well said because you've heard the expression, love others as you love yourself. Well, a lot of people don't love themselves and it's because they haven't realized how much God loves them and that he loves each one of us the way we are not as we should be, because none of us are as we should be, but yet he wants us to be more. More holy and like Christ. But the only way that'll happen is if we just yield our hearts to Him. And it's. It's a day at a time. This doesn't happen overnight. I love.
There's a quote by Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, you know, 19th century preacher in London, said that, you know, we should be. Seek the face of God every morning before the face of another. And I think it starts with prayer. And that conversation of prayer goes throughout the day.
Uh, but I think when you are around people that are really living that.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:28] Speaker A: Walking with God constantly.
Like, like William, Billy, Abraham.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:56:33] Speaker A: Mentor to both of us. You just knew that guy had been with the Lord.
[00:56:36] Speaker B: Yes, every day. Yeah.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: And that just motivates me and I know you and so many others to do the same.
As we wrap up, I asked us questions of, of, of just about all my guests. Is that how do you want to be remembered?
[00:56:55] Speaker B: To the extent that I'll be remembered. I want to be remembered as someone who was faithful and invested in the lives of other people.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: Well, David Watson, this has truly been a pleasure. I'm so grateful that you're at the helm of Asbury Theological Seminary.
[00:57:13] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:57:14] Speaker A: Thanks for your time today.
[00:57:15] Speaker B: Thank you, Todd.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: God bless you.
[00:57:17] Speaker B: Bless you as well.
