Bonus Post : The Asbury Revival

    The spirit of God is at work at Asbury College. Or so they say. And who is to say really? While many miraculous reports are coming out of Asbury, there are voices of caution even within the movement. These voices of caution, while good, still lend credibility to the movement as a whole. There's a tendency in Evangelicalism to have a sort of All Press is Good Press mentality when it comes to this sort of thing. The ends justify the means. If it's not of God, it'll sort itself out, but the lives that will be changed will be because of God, so why make a fuss about the means of getting there. 

    My own experience of revival is that it is shallow, leaves people changed for a time, but largely becomes more about what was experienced than what was accomplished in the heart. People talk about "What God is doing", yet nobody can really ever tell you what he's doing. Revivalism at its heart is a movement of emotion. Of group dynamics, a sort of group psychosis. The revivalists of the 18th and 19th century spoke of stirring the believer to repentance. We see the seeds of this is John Wesleys talk of his heart being "strangely warmed". 

    The concept that the Holy Spirit pours out his spirit at specific times and specific places seems to originate in this 18th century movement of revival. Prior to this, one would be hard pressed to find this phenomenon happening in the annals of the Church. And that's precisely because it's a new paradigm produced by the assumptions being made about how God acts and moves in history that strongly leans on a certain type of Old Testament interpretation. 

    How should we understand the outpouring of Gods Holy Spirit and how does it happen today? From the traditional perspective I would say this. 

    Just like Christ coming and acting for our salvation in a final and definite way, the Holy Spirit also comes in a final and definite way at Pentecost. In salvation we act in accordance with the gift that has been given. We take up our cross and work out our salvation with fear and trembling. In the same way we respond to Pentecost through prayer, through participation in the sacraments of the Church and through almsgiving, in hopes of acquiring the fruits of the spirit in our lives. The outpouring of the spirit need not be repeated because it has already come, just as Christ need no longer die for our salvation. We simply need to respond. 

    The revivalist paradigm replaces the sacramental nature of the Church with the experiential nature of the altar call. 

    Be careful out there.  

Terror

 “Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.”

—- Matthew 24:38-42

Fear. Absolute deep down bone chilling, hair raising fear. I just knew that I was going to be left behind. According to those books everyone was reading, the rapture was imminent. Any day now, you’d just be minding your own business and then boom, someone next to you would just vanish. Cars would careen out of control down the highway crashing and killing those poor unraptured souls who undoubtedly would be going straight to hell. This idea of rapture tormented me. Made worse by a popular play at the time “Heavens Gates, Hells Flames”. Seems like there was another play about people in a waiting room, waiting to be called to heaven. Those who are left are dragged violently into hell while strobe lights flash and teenagers dressed in black, drag the unfortunate souls into hell. It was like some kind of live action Dantes Inferno but without any real conviction. A sort of cheesy bible tract in theatrical form. But to a small boy it was absolutely terrifying. Upon witnessing that, my typical fears became even more entrenched and I couldn’t sleep through the night. My nightly ritual was to lie on my bed wide awake with the covers pulled around me and just my mouth sticking out enough to breath. I could feel the demons crawling around the edges of my bed. I knew if I looked up, some kind of gollum would be crouching in my room. I would stay there as long as I could stand and then jump up and run down the hall and knock on my mom and dads door (which was kept locked) and stand with my back to it so I could see clearly down the hall. 

 The idea of sinning so bad that the demons could drag you to hell haunted my mind. The first time I kissed a girl, I knew I was done for. I knew that doing those things before you were married was a sure way to get on Gods naughty list. So the first time that happened, I vividly remember blaming it on Satan. Not my raging hormones. Not the fact that I was a young boy going through puberty and I was curious. Nope, none of those things. It was obviously part of Satan’s diabolical scheme to get me to kiss that girl. And I did. And I cried bitter tears over it.

The big question in those days was “If you died tonight, do you know where you’d be spending eternity?” I always thought it was a little presumptuous to know the answer to that question. “If the rapture happened today, would you still be here?” That’s a lot for a 10 year old child to deal with. And at a certain point, you start feeling like you’re never gonna get to live your life. I remember crying over the fact that I probably wasn’t going to ever be given the chance to get married, have children or be any of the things I wanted to be. A person told me that Jesus was probably going to return in about five years. Well, that was when I was 13. So I just figured my life was over.

Dark Forces

 Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

— 1 Peter 5:8

Prayer meeting always went late. I didn’t mind. That meant getting to play longer with my friends, watching Adventures in Odyssey or McGee and Me on the old Zenith television in the fellowship hall. We’d sneak over and check on our parents from time to time. The church was dark with only the front of the church lit up. Music was playing over the sound system, usually setting a mood of intense prayerful contemplation. Someone would be lying on the floor. My dad might be in a baseball catchers crouch with his back against the wall, bible open, his hand atop his balding head. My mom, fists clinched would be pacing back and forth whispering in tongues under her breath. Then suddenly my dad would stand up, walk over to someone, lay a hand on them, or give them some kind of “word” he felt the Lord had laid on his heart for this person. Sometimes, a reading from the scripture would be loudly proclaimed, or maybe a pronouncement of what God was “showing” someone. Those things would be offered up, and then it was back to the intense prayer. It was really something and if I had to tell the truth it always struck me as odd. I never felt right about any of it. But what was I going to say? This is what being a Christian was for all I knew. And for all they knew for that matter.

It was on one such prayer meeting night that my mother, fists clinched and pacing back and forth began to speak in tongues. Which wasn’t unusual. She always did. But this time she spoke them slightly differently. It was more than just the few syllables here and there that made up her heavenly language. It was full sentences with inflections and rhythms. I remember as we left the church, her face joyfully lit up as she spewed out this new found language at a rapid pace, the church people around her smiling in agreement with whatever it was that was happening. Surely a sign from God. Maybe my mother was about to bring a word! A message, a message from the Lord! But despite the Monty Python humor, this would be a key moment for my family. My mother, by all accounts was possessed, but for good or evil, we didn’t know. I knew one thing. That was not my mom, and I was terrified. She continued with these utterances for what seemed like days and days. It took various forms, but my dad remembers it finally landing on what sounded like an asian language. She even tried to teach him words. Dad became concerned and so did others at the Church including the pastor. But I don’t think there was anyone more concerned than me. Mom was my best friend, and now I didn’t recognize her. One morning while I prepared to eat my cereal, mom babbling on in her preferred speech, I yelled at her. “Mom! English!”. She snapped out of it for a few seconds, spoke to me in English and then resumed. The hair on my neck stood up. I was scared.

  This would become a theme of my life, being scared. There was plenty to be scared of it turned out. Hell, the end times, Satan, Demons, Sin, Sex, Drugs, Rock music, witchcraft, idols, the basement, the hallway, my closet, under my bed...the list seemed to go on. Satan was behind it all though. He was the mastermind of my fears and this predicament with my mom would place my family firmly in the grasp of this fear and it would loom in the shadows of our lives from that moment on. This obsession with the devil and his activities became such a staple of everyday life and I was stuck in the middle trying to make sense of it. Suddenly everything was imbued with symbolism. God began to “show” my dad things. This could be in a dream, it could be during the study of scripture or any number of activities. History was a big source of inspiration for the symbolism. My father began carrying a real sword with him on frequent trips into our woods to pray. A 200 hundred acre farm on a dead end road was the perfect place for a “wilderness” experience akin to Jesus’s 40 days in the desert. The sword began to follow him to Tuesday night prayer meetings where I would see him symbolically “cut” off demonic influences from peoples backs. Pulling out invisible “darts” from the enemy that were negatively influencing the afflicted person. We came to call the demonic forces “stuff”. If referring to someone we suspected had demonic influence we would with wide eyes exclaim “Yeah, they’ve got stuff.”

 “The enemy will run like a wild ass from the man who has tasted the sweetness of prayer.”

— Elder Cleopas of Romania

Saved

"Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.” —-Sinners Prayer, Bill Bright 1950s

The church had red carpet. I always thought it was strange that a church would have red carpet because it reminded me of the “lake of fire” spoken of in scripture. So I would play a sort of “the floor is lava” game as I stayed up off the floor and on the gray cloth covered pews drawing on the little notepad I was given to occupy my time while the 45 minute sermon commenced. We started attending the Assembly of God when I was around 5 years old. My mother had gotten “saved” in a big pentecostal church in Kentucky while home visiting her parents in the late 1980s. Some lady with big hair was guest speaking at the church during a revival and pronounced that “the spirit of God” was about to hit my mom. Down she went in a heap of holy ghost inspired fainting. Slain in the sprit they call it, or sometimes “falling out”. This was all rather odd to my Father who spoke with her on the phone later that night. As she recounted the experience, he nodded his head, gave a few polite affirmations and went about his going to bed, I’m sure scratching his head. Dad grew up a nominal Methodist, baptized as a baby and attended Sunday school. The family wasn’t particularly religious, but like many small town upstanding citizens in the 1950s and 60s its simply “what you did”. His basic religious assumption by the time he was an adult was that as long as he didn’t murder anyone, he was probably bound for glory. So he didn’t pay it much mind. His church as an adult was a fairly liberal Presbyterian church where, rather than preach from the gospels, the sermons were usually reflections on “I’m Ok, You’re Ok” or the latest self help book polluting the minds of housewives and sensitive men around the country at the time. 


Pentecostals, Holiness and Evangelical types often talk about a “salvation message”. Meaning that, for one to be a proper minister of the gospel, sermons must always, no matter the subject, come back around to what’s most important...salvation. Making sure that the sinners in the pews understand how to “get saved”. This salvation message can and should be repeated every Sunday, so as to make sure that everyone has been given the opportunity to hear about the free gift of salvation. It was on such a Sunday that my Dad found himself sitting alone in the gray cloth covered pew, the red carpet under his feet, hearing the salvation message, and his life would forever change. All the exits were blocked as he recalled wishing he could make a break for it. The altar call was given. Sweat ran down his cheek. Conviction was upon him, so he stood up and walked towards the low wooden bench altars that ran from one side of the church to the other. And right there, on the lake of fire carpet, my father was saved.

Getting saved seemed to be simple enough. Say a contrite prayer from the heart and just like that, Jesus takes up residence. To this day I have yet to find this method of salvation taking place in the scriptures, but it was all the rage in the 90s. Especially since the time of the TV evangelists, namely Billy Graham. But it’s actually much older and a uniquely American. From Eleazar Wheelocks “mourners seat” to the Cane Ridge revivals in Kentucky to Charles Finney, this method of an experience became the gold standard by which the masses were converted in the 19th and 20th century while baptism became merely an outward sign of an inner reality.

 What I have no doubts about is this——My Dad. His sincerity.. His true earnest conviction that he was in need of a savior. My mother was happy and the two of them set out on this new journey together, trying to understand. My dad studying the scriptures diligently. I really don’t know that I saw him read much else in all those years.

This would be the church, the community and the environment of my earliest memories. I loved going to church. Playing with friends in the little nursery room became a favorite pastime. We’d play house mostly in those early days, later graduating to playing football and baseball in the side yard of the church, kickball under the the big trees next to the parking lot or sometimes games of cops and robbers. I was part of Royal Rangers, the Assembly of God sponsored version of the Boy Scouts. But amongst all this play, there was a spirituality that began to take over our thoughts, our ideas, our perception of the world and our place in it.