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Revivalism or Fake Revival, Jesus Revolution, and Asbury, pt. 3
Religious or Spiritual Ecstasy, Soft Continuationism
Again and again through the years, I wrote on religious ecstasy, a perversion of true spirituality experienced in Corinth (1 Corinthians 12:1-3) [see here, here, here, here, here, and here]. In 1 Corinthians 1, when Paul said that the Jews seek after signs (1 Cor 1:22), they were seeking for some experiential means of authenticating their spirituality. God settled the faith once and for all (Jude 1:3) with the completion of scripture. God chooses to use the oracles of God and that glorifies Him (1 Peter 4:11).
With true signs not available, except for something demonically manufactured to impersonate them, men use cheap, superficial counterfeits. Usually these are a form of what some termed, “soft continuationism.” What Paul confronted in Corinth was ecstatic experience. Ecstasy means: “an emotional or religious frenzy or trance-like state, originally one involving an experience of mystic self-transcendence” More than any other way, to give this mystical feeling that the Holy Spirit is working, what is religious ecstasy, comes through music.
Asbury “Revival”
A Description
Someone seeking to justify the recent Asbury, Kentucky experience as revival, challenged what I wrote in part one in the comment section, to which I wrote on March 2:
I watched the earliest posted meeting at Asbury and zoomed through a very long period of Charismatic style emotionalism, repetitious, rock rhythmed, sentimental, superficial, doctrinally ambiguous, led by women, ecstatic music before getting to the “sermon,” which was nothing like Edwards or Whitefield. Maybe the aesthetic and spirit of the so-called worship means nothing to you, but it clashed with the biblical nature of God. It more reminded me of a Corinthian style revival.
If Charles Finney were alive, he would likely be proud of it. Everyone appeared in the egalitarian, postmodern casual, sloppy, and disordered dress (ripped blue jeans, etc.), giving no indication of anyone in authority. The man I heard used a few verses from a modern version, but at best you would be unsure what salvation was. It sounded more like Jesus as therapist. His list of sins that you put into your makeshift cup to give to Jesus included racism and terrorism. No one would even know who Jesus was, why or what it meant to believe in Him.
In Contrast
I continued.
I heard no biblical exposition. This is an updated kind of revival for today’s generation, like one of those Bibles with a hippie cover, to show how relevant the Bible could become. All of what I saw and heard conformed to the spirit of the age, would not dare distinguish itself, probably could not do that and be acceptable to that crowd.
It seemed that people in the audience were stirred to a certain degree. They were affected. I saw some emotion. Is that indications of the Holy Spirit? I have seen the same spirit, aroused by music in Charismatic settings, giving the impression that something spiritual is going on, but it choreographed by the feelings led by the music.
Similar Comments at the Shepherd’s Conference on March 8-10
After I wrote that on March 2, in the Q and A at his Shepherd’s Conference (the conference was March 8-10), someone asked John MacArthur about the Asbury so-called “revival.” The host referenced Jonathan Edwards and his historic and biblical teaching on the marks of revival. If it is revival, Edwards would say it must bear certain marks, or else it is fraudulent, a kind of impersonation like I said above. He said one assesses a true work of God based upon the Word of God and not emotion or feelings.
John MacArthur and Scott Aniol
MacArthur commented then on the Asbury Revival:
For most of those kids, it was not about Christ, but about the chords. It was about singing the same words for twenty minutes in a row in some kind of mesmerizing pseudo-spiritual experience that had no relationship to sound doctrine, to the depth of the gospel. I would like to know if that same revival would have occurred without the music. Shut the music down and find out what God is really doing.
I’m glad to hear MacArthur say essentially the same thing I said. Scott Aniol also picked up on this with an excellent article, you all should read, written on March 13, entitled, “Christ or Chords? The Manipulated Emotionalism of Hillsong, Asbury, and Pentecostalized Evangelical Worship.” He picked up on the comment by MacArthur, “not about Christ, but about the chords.” This is such an important theme for today.
Strange Fire?
MacArthur in the past gave a pass to contemporary style worship, using it in his own conference again and again. If anyone, like myself, criticized it, the MacArthur allies came out of the woodwork to attack me vehemently. In his now renowned Strange Fire Conference, MacArthur said the following, actually in contradiction of much of his own historic practice:
The contemporary evangelical church has very little interest in theology and doctrine, so you’re going to have a tough sell. It’s about style. And style is the Trojan Horse that lets Charismatics in the church. Because once you let the music in, the movement follows. It all of a sudden becomes common.
We sound like the Charismatics, sing like they do, have the same emotional feelings that they have. It’s a small step from doing the same music to buying into the movement. So the tough thing is you’re going back to a church that is thinking like that. It’s hard to make sound doctrine the issue when style is much more the interest of the leaders of the church.
Later he said:
I don’t think it has to do with what the teachers are saying. I think it’s the music. It’s like getting drunk so you don’t have to think about the issues of life. If you shut down the music, turn on the lights, and have someone get up there and try to sell that with just words, it’s not going to work. You’ve got to have some way to manipulate their minds.
Consistency and Discernment
The people MacArthur used in the Shepherd’s Conference in the past use a Charismatic style of worship, led by women very often, and giving the same kind of trance-like ecstatic experience. I believe he’s changing on this, and Scott Aniol latches on to that in his article.
Independent and even unaffiliated Baptists regularly produce their ecstasy in a kind of soft continuationism. It is a huge lack of discernment and it is very often ignored completely as a matter of fellowship. In other words, they encourage false worship through these forms of strange fire. Let this be a serious warning to us all and for the glory of God.
Revivalism or Fake Revival, Jesus Revolution, and Asbury, pt. 2
When someone speaks of revival, built into the terminology is a return to something right, that was wrong. A change takes place. True revival is not the invention of something new, not seen before in the history of true, biblical Christianity.
Hippie Movement from Haight Ashbury, San Francisco
In the 1960s, especially centered in Woodstock, New York and the Haight Ashbury District, San Francisco, a hippie movement began. Called the flower children, they distributed flowers or floral decorations to symbolize their peace, love, universal belonging and protest the Vietnam War. They formed their own counter culture.
Men of the culture at large still wore short hair, which conforms to biblical teaching (cf. 1 Cor 11:14). God willed men to keep this gender distinction. Male hippies rebelled against God’s design by growing long hair — not just long, but not combed or neat either. Today some might call what hippies wore, “casual dress.” They spurred this informal appearance, a kind of egalitarianism communicating that no one was above anyone else. More than that, they appeared slovenly, unkept, disordered, and ragged, some now might call “authenticity.”
Being hippy also meant sex, drugs, and rock n roll for adherents of the hippie lifestyle. Christians at no point in history would permit those as “Christian liberty,” a manifestation of God’s grace. Hippies practiced free sex, ignoring the conventional and biblical requirement of marriage. They took drugs like LSD and marijuana apparently to enhance their experience. While others sat on chairs, they went so far even to forego those for the floor or ground. Many wouldn’t wear shoes, embracing their noble savage, uncorrupted by civilization.
Jesus Freaks
Northern California Move to Southern
With the growth of hippiedom, some went into the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco to bring the Bible to the hippies. I’ve met some from that time period and they believed that their drugs took them out of their bodies into a greater God consciousness, an ecstatic experience that transcended themselves. Then they tried to take this novel Christianity into some Northern California churches. When no churches accepted, this branch of religious hippies, known as Jesus Freaks, moved to Southern California.
Lonnie Frisbee
The Jesus Freak hippies, who migrated South, were under the influence of a leader named Lonnie Frisbee. Randall Roberts, reporter for the Los Angeles Times, wrote about Frisbee in an article titled, “Jesus, drugs and rock ’n’ roll: How an O.C. hippie church birthed contemporary Christian music”:
The birth of contemporary Christian rock and pop music in America can in part be traced to a vision received by a 17-year-old runaway from Costa Mesa named Lonnie Frisbee.
After stripping naked and taking LSD in 1967 near Tahquitz Falls outside of Palm Springs, the young man called to God.
As water from the falls crashed, Frisbee, who wore his hair and beard like the archetypal Jesus Christ, saw himself standing beside the Pacific Ocean, Bible in hand, staring out at the horizon. But instead of water, the sea was filled with lost souls crying out for salvation.
“God, if you’re really real, reveal yourself to me,” Frisbee, who died of AIDS in 1993, later recalled pleading. “And one afternoon, the whole atmosphere of this canyon I was in started to tingle and get light and it started to change — and I’m just going, ‘Uh oh!’”
Frisbee dressed like the popular, secular notion or stereotype of Jesus with flowing robe and long hair, using soft-spoken tones also ala the flower children. It played well with the rebellion of the hippy subculture. At first the hippies met on the beach and baptized in the ocean. They used 1-2-3 pray-with-me evangelism, where someone prayed the prayer and was dunked under the waves shortly thereafter. Their view of grace brought forgiveness and eternal life, while still being and living like a hippie.
Rejecting the Historical Church, Its Doctrine, Practice, and Worship
Chuck Smith
The Jesus Freaks found a welcoming host in a buttoned down traditional four-square Pentecostal church with Chuck Smith as its pastor. He had 25 in his congregation in 1965. His church sang hymns. He wore a dark suit and tie. That changed.
Smith’s encounter with Lonnie Frisbee offered the opportunity to take these hippies into his customary church. Smith did not come from a historical line of Christian churches. His trajectory came from the early 20th century heritage of the modern Charismatic or Pentecostal movement, founded on the continuation of sign gifts for today. Smith could embrace further deviation from orthodox, historic doctrine, practice, and worship. In 2018, John MacArthur described Smith’s predicament:
What’s he going to do? What’s the church going to do? So they had a meeting and they decided that, “We’ll lose them [speaking of his whole congregation] and they’ll [the hippies or Jesus Freaks] leave if we don’t accommodate them.” They didn’t like the music; they didn’t like the dress code; they didn’t like anything. For the first time in church history that I can find, an aberrant, small, deviant, subculture redefined the character of a church.
Acquiescing to a Youth Culture
On another occasion and I agree with him, MacArthur said, characterizing this Jesus Revolution:
That was already being discussed a lot of places, because the hippie movement caught fire across America – the movement of rebellion against authority, responsibility, duty, expectation; rebellion against right, honor; it caught fire. So the church feared, “We’re going to lose these people if we don’t acquiesce.” So for the first time when the Jesus people came to church, first time I can find in church history, the church began to redefine its own identity and worship based upon the wishes of a rebellious subculture. That definition started then and spread; started in California, spread clear across the country.
Prior to the ‘60s, nobody expected a church service to be rock concert. Nobody expected a church service to be entertainment, . . . worship to be physical stimulation, emotional feelings without engaging your mind, . . . church to be a manipulation of people’s desires to fulfill their own self-styled identity. A church was a church, and it was a place where there was thoughtful, prayerful, biblical, sober-minded hearing from the Word of God, leading to conviction and edification and elevation. It was a heavenly encounter.
Modern Generation
MacArthur continued:
But to this modern generation of young people – serious, sober, thoughtful, scriptural preaching about God, and confrontation of sin, and a call to holiness, and a call to separate from the world and from iniquity is far too absolute and far too offensive. People who want to feel good about themselves the way they are don’t want that, so the . . . church caved in and gave them what they want. And now pastors continue to accommodate those same people – irresponsible, lazy, undisciplined rebels who want what they want – and the church, instead of confronting it, conforms to it. No preaching on sanctification, no preaching on holiness can be done in those environments; they’d empty the place.
Broken People?
Professing Christian leaders now justify the Jesus revolution as ‘God using broken people.” He used Samson and David, is the explanation. God used Peter, but Peter was a believer, filled with the Holy Spirit, obedient to Jesus Christ, when he preached on the Day of Pentecost. He does not use unbelievers, these “broken people,” for a flurry of conversions.
God does not use believers, who are living in sin. They are vessels unto dishonor, who are not meet for the Master’s use. The Jesus revolution was not a blessing to Christianity, to the church, or to the world. This revolution started something new and wrong. It was a bad revolution, like many other revolutions in the history of the world.
David Wilkerson and Historic Confrontation of Jesus Freaks
David Wilkerson was a mainstream evangelical in the late 1950s and through the 1970s. He is known for the popular Christian book, The Cross and the Switchblade. Youtube above showed a historic confrontation he had in the 1960s with the Jesus Freaks that indicates how much they clashed then with even evangelicalism. These men present a deviant view of biblical sanctification, however, a false view that has become much more mainstream today in evangelicalism.
The Jesus Freak argument with Wilkerson represents a neo-libertine view of sanctification. It combines with a portion of early woke or social justice warrior. For instance, in the video above these men contradict Wilkerson by judging him by the standard Jesus imposed on the rich young ruler. Sell all that you have and give it to the poor. They see righteousness in their disheveled look, which someone could pose just as easily as any external or formal appearance. Conveniently, they evince faith parallel with the lifestyle preferred by hippies.
More to Come
Revivalism or Fake Revival, Jesus Revolution, and Asbury
Other Work By Me On This Topic (Here1, Here2, Here3, Here4, Here5, Here6, Here7, Here8, Here9, Here10, and Here11)
What do you think is worse? Fake Revival or No Revival? I would say, fake is worse. I’ve got, I think, good reasons for fake being worse than no revival. Fake revival does far more damage than nothing happening. True revivals through history occurred. Probably more fake ones though.
Jesus Revolution and Asbury University
In recent days, attention focuses in the United States among religious folk especially about an apparent revival in the 1960s, called the Jesus Revolution in Time Magazine. Descendants of Calvary Chapel made a movie, which is in mainstream, secular theaters. Another apparent revival presented itself in Asbury, Kentucky, at Asbury University, a historic Wesleyan/Holiness institution. I see it as a great interest that these two so-called revivals dovetailed like they did.
Revival moved up as a conversation topic. Conservative podcasts even among non-believers discuss the two, Jesus Revolution and Asbury. I think Fox News mentioned the two in various instances. Because Emmy award winner, Kelsey Grammer, starred as Chuck Smith in the Jesus Revolution movie, that brought greater coverage and consciousness.
Asbury reads as Woke or somewhat woke, which modified its revival in the traditional sense. In the history of the United States, historians point to two revivals they call “the First Great Awakening” and “the Second Great Awakening.” Before the second, the first was just the Great Awakening, like the first was just the Great War until a second World War occurred.
The two, the first and second Great Awakenings, were much different in nature and in effect. A big chunk of professing Christendom rejects the second Great Awakening and says only the Great Awakening in colonial America actually happened. I would be one of those. I agree the Great Awakening was a revival. The second was a fake one.
Controversy of Calling Something “Not a Revival”
Calling a professed revival, not a revival, is as controversial as denying the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. People who accept the revival, like those who say the Covid vaccinations were wonderful, want to hear only positive affirmation of their revival.
Questioning a revival is very close to questioning salvation, which is taught in scripture. If you read either 1 John or James, those two epistles among other places in the Bible, you see challenging or questioning a salvation profession. John does it. James does it. Paul does it. And Jesus does it. Some will stand at the very Great White Throne before Jesus, professing salvation, and He will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”
Revival, as I see it in scripture, is a larger than normal flurry of true conversions. The idea of revival indicates something dead becoming alive, which speaks of regeneration. People are getting really saved in large numbers and based upon true gospel preaching.
The Asbury leaders say that God brought a revival there starting on February 8. They also say they can’t stop it, since God brought it, even though they did stop the regular meetings there just this last week in part because of a case of measles. As you might comprehend already, I don’t think the Asbury “Outpouring” or the Jesus Revolution were revival. I don’t need to wait to see on those two. I’m saying right now. They’re not.
My Experience
School Camp
As a senior in high school, I experienced my only gully-washer so-called revival experience. My academy had school camp, which it also called “spiritual emphasis week.” We got revivalistic style preaching morning and night. In long and emotional invitations, weeping students knelt at the front. Thirteen made professions.
The week ended with a session of emotional testimonies. Then we headed home. It did not translate into anything lasting. Not long after, it was the same-old, same-old with rebellion, apathy, and lack of biblical interest. The effects of school camp and spiritual emphasis week, despite the “revival,” didn’t continue.
Jack Hyles
When Jack Hyles was alive and in his heyday, in many instances I was in meetings where almost everyone in massive auditoriums came forward at his invitation. They streamed forward with only a few people left in their seats. I would think that Hyles could easily vie with any revivalist in his production of effect. If immediate outward manifestations measured revival, Hyles did better than anyone I’ve ever seen and on a more consistent basis.
At one point, independent Baptist, revivalist churches in the Hyles movement were the largest churches in the world. Huge crowds gathered to hear a line-up of revivalist preachers. They were pragmatic and doctrinally errant, but people felt intense closeness to God. I’m telling you that I’ve seen it.
Jack Hyles compared his gatherings to the Day of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This recent “revival” at Asbury University its advocates also call an “outpouring.” This reflects a particular viewpoint about the Holy Spirit, that since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, more outpourings of Him might occur.
Mexico
I took a trip to Mexico after my Freshman year in high school, and we drove into remote mountain villages around Monterrey to hold revival meetings. I didn’t know Spanish except for six or so verses I could quote then. Dozens and dozens made professions of faith with the pragmatic, emotional manipulation that occurred by my group. I would contend that much greater fake revival occurred in the 60s and 70s through revivalists than the Asbury one. These revivals did not get popular media attention of Asbury or the Jesus Revolution, but they resulted in explosive numerical growth as significant as the Jesus Revolution and much greater than Asbury.
Revival?
In listening to a few evaluations of the Jesus Revolution, a significant effect of this revival, mentioned by supporters, was the rise and popularity of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and informal or casual dress in church attenders. I could add others from reading and observation. I’ve read Calvary Chapel Distinctives and the Philosophy of Calvary Chapel. I got especially interested, because of one of the largest evangelical churches in the state of Oregon is in Applegate, very close to where we started our church in Jackson County there. Many people involved with the movement, it’s obvious have no true conversion and don’t even understand the gospel.
I listened to at least one of the revivalists running the Asbury revival in one of its earlier video recorded services. I would not characterize what I saw as revival. I wouldn’t call it gospel preaching. It was so shallow, superficial, sentimental, worldly, woke, and Charismatic that I would have nothing to do with it. I hope someone gets saved through it, like Paul hoped in Philippians 1 with men who opposed him. Of course, I would want the salvation of people in Kentucky in the Asbury vein and through the Jesus Movement out of California. I believe both hurt the overall cause of Christ like any fake revival would.
Many years ago, Ian Murray wrote the classic Revival and Revivalism, distinguishing between true revival and only revivalism. Almost everything today is revivalism, which is fake revival. People want God to do something. God is doing something. Instead of being so overtly concerned that He does something, they should surrender to what He has done, is doing, and will do in the future.
More to Come
The Relationship Between Wokeism and Revivalism in Churches
Some of you may know that right now the Southern Baptists (SBC) convene in Southern California for their 2022 annual meeting. At this very time, Mark Dever and 9 Marks, a Reformed faction of the SBC, produce their journal with the emphasis on revivalism (June 2022). I wish I could be happy to join their concern. Their accepted wokeism proceeds from the same root as revivalism, which is pragmatism.
One would think professing Reformed or Calvinists would insist on dependence on God for conversion and church growth. I don’t believe these men. They use measures as extreme as Charles Finney to produce results. Among many ways, their wokeism reveals their contradiction or hypocrisy.
Jonathan Leeman writes in his introduction, and I agree, “Revivalism depends on God’s Words plus our methods.” I also concur with these sentences:
Revivalism, which depends on our ingenuity and energy, brings short-term gains. It looks fruitful. It appeals to our yearning to see the results of our labors.
The SBC, evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and independent Baptists are all rife with revivalism. The adherents depend on more than the Word of God for the results.
A word to describe a particularly wicked kind of “our ingenuity and energy” and “our methods” is pandering. This manifested itself in the seeker sensitive movement and the purpose-driven movement. A church studies its particular demographic and forms a strategy that conforms to the culture. The region likes either pop rock, rap, or southern gospel through which a church panders to its audience.
In “Six Marks of Revivalism,” Andrew Ballitch writes, “Revivalism can actually make this happen,” referring to meeting conditions that spur church growth. He also writes, and I agree again, “This revivalism was by no means monolithic.” Revivalism changes in how it manifests itself, because it centers on man, not God. The new measures of Finney have morphed into whatever measures seem necessary to produce numbers.
Not that long ago, churches and their leaders decided they needed a neutral name to attract the lost to the church. About one of the journal authors who wrote a few of the articles, the journal says “is the senior pastor of Fellowship in the Pass Church in Beaumont, California.” A part of the church growth movement, which is an insidious form of revivalism, is that you’ve got to market your church with a branding or label. If it’s all God, why not just call yourself “Beaumont Baptist Church”?
Church growth philosophy says it might offend an unsaved person to hear “Baptist.” Someone might think, “Hell fire and brimstone.” You don’t want to have that happen, so instead you call yourself, “Fellowship in the Pass Church.” This practice illustrates a pragmatic mindset in the trajectory of revivalism.
The name “Baptist” carries with it doctrinal connotations. Revivalism isn’t monolithic. Unsaved people don’t like the feeling of “Baptist,” and you can change that feeling, help along the process of church growth and increase your numbers, by choosing a neutral, apparently non-offensive name.
Like we know that gas prices went up before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we know that revivalism in its present iteration panders to unchurched Harry and Sally. That means the “blended worship” that 9 Marks won’t include in its presentation. You also might want to appear “woke” to your younger and perhaps ethnic demographic.
To get and keep a specialized population, you must show support to its grievances. For instance, you should call January 6 more than a “dustup,” as a recent NFL defensive coordinator, Jack Del Rio, did and was fined 100,000 dollars by his team. It means muting strong statements against popular sin, especially homosexuality and even abortion, in the spirit of Tim Keller. You might be complementarian, but you manage your speech so as not to offend egalitarians. Be careful of delineating male and female roles as if those distinctions exist.
Mark Dever, Jonathan Leeman, and 9 Marks promoted and still push wokeism. This matches the spirit of corporate America flying rainbow flags to celebrate gay pride. You can’t go into a McDonalds or Starbucks without rainbows hanging all over.
Have you heard of “virtue signaling”? Wokeism sends a signal to a demographic to attract, gain, and then keep their allegiance. It is a new measure.
Ballitch gives as a characteristic of revivalism, “emotional manipulation.” Wokeism is emotional manipulation. He also lists “reductionist views of conversion.” Revivalism reduced conversion to something short of true conversion. Wokeism better “reconstructs conversion.” It calls for repentance over implicit racism in all white people, specifying group guilt rather than individual.
Critical theory claims special knowledge of racism, a modern form of gnosticism. The true gospel eliminates racial and ethnic barriers and sees everyone the same. Including race in the gospel corrupts it.
With wokeism, wokeness becomes a necessary fruit of repentance like speaking in tongues among the Charismatics. Important transformation of language must accompany the repentance. Leadership attracts followers by modifying language, conforming to wokeism. This easily fits a particular view of the kingdom compatible with the amillennialism of Dever and his church.
Root to Finney’s revivalism was pelagianism. In his Systematic Theology, he denied man’s total depravity. He saw within man a spark of goodness, which he could fan with human measures unto salvation. With man’s sinful condition, his rebellion, the only solution is divine. A theoretical Calvinism with God at center does not reach actual practice.
Is there a particular approach for growing an urban church? Revivalism and wokeism both say, “Yes.” The Bible says, “No.” Don’t do anything different. Just preach the gospel. Don’t change based on white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, African, whatever. Depend on God.
When 9 Marks points out the moat of revivalism in its audience’s eye, it should remove the beam of wokeism in its.
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