Host critiques the Asbury revival, noting its February scheduling and planned nature rather than spontaneous outpourings. He expresses deep concern over heretic Todd Bentley's presence and queer students affirming the event while compromising on sexual ethics. The speaker argues that without sound, expositional preaching to guard doctrine, such gatherings risk perverting sin definitions and encouraging harmful public confessions of intimate sins, ultimately warning against these dangerous trends in modern religious movements. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Algorithms and Shadow Banning00:06:37
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All right, let's talk a little bit about the Asbury revival.
I kind of want to put revival in quotes.
I'll go ahead and do that just in case.
Hedge my bets here.
The Asbury revival.
I want to read, all right?
I'm going to give you my thoughts.
I'm not saying that there's no move of God at all.
I'm not saying nothing positive has happened.
These things are typically a mixed bag.
It's not so simplistic to say it's all bad or it's all good.
Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry, he had Judas as one of his disciples, right?
So even the ministry of Jesus, you know, you've got some nefarious figures who are in close proximity to Christ, Jesus Christ incarnate himself.
Okay, so there's always going to be a mixed bag.
You study, you know, bona fide revivals of the past, and of course there were abuses and there were certain, you know, malicious angles that people were playing and people who were there that weren't really there because they wanted to seek out.
After God, but rather they were trying to exploit something, this and that and the other.
So, revivals have a long history of being a complicated thing.
There's never been a revival without sin.
And, you know, the worst fake revivals that aren't actually revivals, even in those cases, it's not to say that God, in his sovereignty, doesn't do at least one good thing, right?
I mean, I have been a part of heretical services, church services.
That the Lord has in His mercy, in His sovereignty, if God's sovereign over all things, that the Lord, even in the midst of that heretical church service, He used it in a positive way, not because they were preaching the truth, but to reveal something that was true about Him to me, to be able to say that I'm sitting there with discernment, knowing the scripture, and the Lord is using that in a moment to teach me about the dangers of false doctrine, this, that, and the other.
Okay, so I don't have a blanket statement of bad or good.
That said, I lean towards this not being a true revival.
I'll just say that right up front.
I don't have a whole lot of points.
I'll just keep it nice and clear and simple, short and sweet.
Here you go.
First, I'm going to lead with this point.
This is from Asbury's own website.
Okay, so I'm just going to read you their words.
Okay, Asbury University has been known through the years for its history of great revivals.
That's not inherently evil or nefarious or bad.
But you just need to be aware of that.
The school prides itself.
This isn't somebody else writing about the school.
This is on the school's website.
This is what they say about themselves.
One of their points of pride is that they're a place of revivals, that revivals happen in this place.
So Asbury University has been known through the years for its history of great revivals.
There have been several occasions when significant moves of the Holy Spirit have swept the campus and reached across the nation.
Now, this is interesting.
They start to list the history of these revivals.
I'll go back and I'll read about a couple of these.
They list the date and then a brief synopsis of the revival that happened at that date, at that time.
But first, I just want to look at the dates.
I find this interesting.
I'm not even making a point about this, really, but it's just interesting.
All right, so here you go.
Here's the first one they list in February of 1905.
The next one in February of 1908.
The next one in February of 1921.
The next one in February of 1950.
The next one in March.
You didn't see that coming, right?
There's a curveball.
In March, still not that far from February, of 1958.
The next one, here we go, back to our roots on February 3rd, 1970.
After that, in March 1992.
Next one in February of 2006.
And here we are in February of 2023.
I don't think that's a coincidence.
All right, now let me read you a little bit of a description and I'll kind of flesh out why I don't think that's a coincidence and what that means a little bit.
So here's the first one.
We'll just read a couple.
In February 1905, that's the first one that they have listed on the website, during a blizzard, a prayer meeting in the men's dormitory spilled out onto the rest of the campus and the town of Wilmore.
Okay.
In February 1908, revival broke out while someone, Prayed in chapel.
The revival lasted two weeks and was signified by prevailing prayer and intercession.
Great.
In February 1921, the last service of a planned revival lasted until 6 a.m., and services were extended for the next three days.
Let me read that again, in case you missed it.
In February of 1921, the last service, the final service of a planned revival, lasted until 6 a.m., and services were extended for three days.
Let me stop there for a moment.
Okay.
First and foremost, revivals aren't planned.
That said, though, let me give a couple of disclaimers.
That's old timing language that people just use.
Now, it's not that old.
It's not like centuries old, but in the last, you know, 100 years, 150 years, that was just, that was a thing.
Southern Baptists, for instance, were notorious about this, right?
We're having our revival meetings.
And typically, what that meant was it was a Monday through Friday, or maybe a Monday through Thursday.
It was going to be weeknights, and it was going to be, Um, it was going to be in sequence, right?
So it was going to be back to back to back instead of just a you know, you have your typical you know, Sunday morning, right?
Southern Baptist, you got Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, which I would say, praise God, full Lord's Day, that's great.
And then you typically had a Wednesday night also, but sometime, usually, a lot of Southern Baptists, it was typically during the summer, and sometime during the summer, a lot of Southern Baptist churches, not just Southern Baptist, general Baptist, and it was a Baptist thing.
Um, and then a lot of you know, Baptists, you know, it's still in the Baptist vein, but of the you know, the Wesleyan, you know, um, John Wesley, Charles Wesley.
Theological Traditions in Ephesians00:14:57
The holiness, kind of that side of the theological scale.
Same thing there.
Planned revivals.
And it would typically be like 6 p.m., usually, 6 p.m. evening services, weeknights.
Instead of just your midweek touch point with a Wednesday night service, we're going to do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
And usually, what you would have happen is you would have the pastor, the local pastor of that church that's hosting these revival meetings.
That's what they would call them revival meetings.
And they would invite a guest speaker, an evangelist.
Usually.
You know, somebody who's maybe he's a local pastor somewhere else in another region, but a lot of times it would be somebody who's more like an evangelist.
And if you're wondering, well, you know, what is an evangelist?
Obviously, you know, most of you listening to this show understand, you know, the work of evangelism and sharing the gospel with others.
But in terms of the office of an evangelist, that's legitimate.
That's not bad.
That's not a, you know, a word of faith kind of thing.
That's not a heretical, you know, thing.
That's a biblical word.
Ephesians 4 talks about how Christ is given different leaders, Christ, who is head of the church, is given gifts.
To the church, namely leaders, offices to the church for the purpose of training and equipping the saints that the body may build itself up in love to the fullness of manhood, of full stature, of spiritual maturity, so that they would be grown up and no longer like children tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine.
So, this is a good thing.
And the things that are listed, a lot of people say the fivefold ministry, which I would reject.
I would hold to a fourfold ministry.
The four offices are apostles and prophets, and then evangelists and pastors.
And you might say, that doesn't say pastors, it says shepherd teachers.
Or teachers, shepherds.
Well, yeah, but in the Greek, it's like hyphenated.
So it's not just a comma listing.
And here's a fifth thing you know, there's shepherds, and then there's that's number four, and then there's teachers, and that's number five.
No, it's apostles, prophets, apostles, number one, prophets, number two, evangelists, number three, and then shepherd-teachers.
And what is, you know, it's like two roles, two sides of the same coin.
What office has those roles, responsibilities given to shepherd and to teach a pastor?
So, the way that I would read 1 Corinthians, or I'm sorry, Ephesians chapter 4, is that Christ is head of the church.
And as head of the church, who washes the church and nourishes the church and loves the church and gives himself, lays down his life for the church, Christ wants good for the church because he loves the church and he's the head of the church.
And one of the ways that Christ accomplishes good for the church is by giving the church gifts.
And these gifts are leaders.
Leaders, so long as they are faithful, are a gift to Christ's bride.
They're a gift to the church.
And Christ gives for particular gifts or types of leaders to the church, apostles, Prophets, evangelists, and pastors.
And then I, as somebody who would hold to cessationism, I would say that Christ has given all four of these roles to the church, and there is an end date in sight, right?
There is a certain goal that we're seeking to attain, and the goal is the fullness of the stature of Christ himself.
The church has not attained that yet.
The church is not perfectly mature.
The church, sadly, there are many Christians still tossed to and fro by every wind and wave of doctrine.
So the end goal that's set in Ephesians chapter 4 has not yet been attained.
However, With a careful reading of Ephesians 4, because the continuationist is always going to use as an argument and say, all four of these or five, you know, the five fold ministry, all five of them, including apostles and prophets, are going to be in the church until the church reaches perfect maturity.
Joel, has the church reached perfect maturity?
Are you going to say, is that where you want to be when Jesus comes back, claiming that the church is perfectly mature?
Of course, it hasn't reached perfect maturity.
I'm not, that's not my argument.
And they'll say, well, then apostles and prophets are still here.
And I would say, no, it would be like a general contractor saying, agreeing and giving his word and a binding oath saying, I'm going to build a house.
From start to finish.
And I will not stop until the job is done, until the whole thing is done.
But then he's hiring out subcontractors.
And each subcontractor, each wave of workers, is not going to be on the job site simultaneously the entire time, right?
The first thing that we've got to do is we've got to lay a foundation.
And we're going to do some plumbing.
We're going to do some electric.
We're going to do this and that.
And so there's a certain wave of subcontractors, apostles and prophets, right?
To put this analogy back to the text of Ephesians 4, they're going to come and they're going to lay a foundation.
They're going to do foundational work.
And that's in light of Ephesians.
So, Ephesians 4 cross references with Ephesians 2, verse 20.
The foundation is on the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone.
We have that foundation.
It's the Old and New Testament, right?
The foundation of the apostles and prophets has been canonized for us, scripturized.
We have that foundation.
And that's the foundation that evangelists and pastors are now building on.
So, the job is not done.
Christ has given gifts to the church, namely leaders, different types of leaders to the church until this task is finished, until the church reaches maturity.
That hasn't happened yet.
So, there are still leaders given by Christ to the church to train and equip the saints for the work of ministry.
That's still happening.
But nothing in Ephesians 4 says that every single one of these leaders will simultaneously be on the job from the beginning to the end the whole time.
So, I would say, what?
First wave, apostles and prophets.
Second wave, now building on the foundation, going back to my analogy, like now you're talking about guys who are throwing up frame and sheetrock and things like that and roofing.
That's your evangelist and pastor.
So, evangelist is a legitimate biblical role.
Paul Washer.
Would be an example.
He would call himself an evangelist.
Justin Peters, right now, I don't believe Justin Peters is currently serving in the office of elder.
He has a local church that he's involved in, all those kinds of things as a faithful member, but I don't think that he's currently serving as an elder in that church.
And he would, you know, he would introduce himself every time I've had him on the show or you see Justin Peters, he would say, I'm an evangelist.
So, evangelist is a bona fide office.
And back to revival meetings, especially within the Baptist world, but also within the Wesleyan world, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, these guys.
They would have good old time religion, right?
Old timey revivals.
They would plan it.
They would schedule it.
And I'm not saying that's wrong.
Now, technically, I prefer not to use the word revival for something that's planned.
But I'm not saying that, oh, well, in that case, that means it's heresy and false doctrine.
That's not my point.
But I'm just giving you kind of a brief little history one, the exegesis, Ephesians 4, evangelists.
And typically, what would happen, history, and this is a recent history, this isn't something that happened over 2,000 years of church history.
This isn't something necessarily that St. Augustine was doing.
But in recent history, the last 150 years, especially with Baptists and with Wesleyan folk, having an annual planned revival meeting is kind of like your bread and butter for the church.
And it usually was a dynamic duo of the pastor, teacher, shepherd, or shepherd teacher, Ephesians 4, and the evangelist.
So you got the local pastor, he's going to host the revival at his church.
Sometimes they would, instead of the church building, they would go ahead and rent some land and put up a big tent, right?
And that tent revival.
Because they're hoping to have greater attendance and they're going to schedule these.
It's not going to be a Sunday.
Maybe it kicks off with the Lord's Day, but then it's going to be Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night.
And this is our planned annual revival.
And we invite an evangelist.
The pastor's hosting, he's going to do some stuff.
Maybe he'll speak a couple nights.
And then the evangelist is the guest speaker.
And he's a guy who's kind of on the speaking circuit and he goes around speaking at all these different revivals.
And this evangelist, he's coming here to our hometown and to our church and blah, blah, blah.
And we're going to have a good old fashioned revival.
And that revival could be good or bad, but it's not really a revival.
And that doesn't mean, again, that doesn't mean it's heresy.
I'm saying it could be good in the sense that if there's good preaching, it's biblical, it's sound, the doctrine is true, then sure.
Worshiping God every night of the week, not a bad idea, right?
I'm not saying that we should do that 365 days a year because we need to lead family worship in our homes.
We have marriages, we have jobs, we have, you know, so I'm not saying you should always do that, but to have one week a year where we're going to gather as a church every evening at 6 p.m. P.M. to 8 p.m. or whatever to hear the word of God preached and to sing to God and worship and address one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.
And we're going to have a guest speaker who is credible and biblically qualified in the office of an evangelist to come and preach afresh and anew to us the basic truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the setting of a local church with our pastor who's overseeing these things and he's a biblically qualified elder.
Great, right?
That's not a revival in the sense that it's a sovereign outpouring of.
The Spirit of God, it's just a planned week of church meetings.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
It's a planned week of church meetings.
Revival, I don't think, is the best label to call it that, but it's not necessarily immoral or heretical.
That's Asbury University.
They're Wesleyan.
They're Wesleyan.
That's their roots, that's their heritage, that's their background, that's their language.
Every theological camp has a lingo, it has jargon, that's their language.
I mean, you can find it right on their website Asbury University.
This is them talking about themselves.
And I'm not even saying this is immoral.
I haven't even made my point about it being bad yet.
I'll get there.
But this is just, I'm just giving you the facts.
This is their language.
This is their theological tradition.
This is their history, at least recent history, in the last, you know, 20, a little bit over 20 years of, you know, starting in 19, what was it?
1905 was the first one.
1905, right?
So this would be right before Azusa Street revival.
That would be 1906.
That would be a bad revival.
I'm not a fan of Azusa Street.
This is right before that, in February 1905.
I don't know about this revival at Asbury and February 1905.
So I'm not going to say it was bad.
I'm not going to say it was good.
But the point is, these are planned.
Not all of them, but some of them, they even expressly say, right?
In the case of February 1921, the last service of a planned revival.
So Asbury University, in the Wesleyan holiness, that's Arminian, I'm not saying it's heretical.
I'm a Calvinist, but I'm not saying it's heretical.
But in that Arminian Wesleyan holiness theological tradition, There's very much a pattern of planned revivals.
And to be fair, it's in the Baptist tradition as well.
All that being said, that's not inherently wrong.
Asbury prides itself as being a place that has had historically over the last hundred plus years lots of really great revivals.
Okay, great.
And some of them may have actually been good by biblical criteria sound doctrine, people repenting of sin, those kinds of things.
But I just want you to know that.
It's not that unusual.
I guess that's my first point.
My first point is that I don't think the reaction should be, oh my goodness, something spectacular is happening that's never happened before.
This is literally the university's MO.
They plan revivals, and you read it, and virtually every single one of them happens in the month of February.
Hmm.
Oh, it's lo and behold, it's February.
That probably has something to do with the students' schedule and what speakers they schedule for chapels during that time and different things with the, you know, the.
The itinerary for the school and its syllabus and what happens in the month of February.
I don't think that's a coincidence.
It's following the calendar of the university.
It's the beginning of a new year.
Students are back coming after the holidays.
They've been back for a few weeks now.
We're into the month of February.
And maybe we tend to schedule a highly gifted evangelist for the month of February, hoping that maybe it'll kickstart some kind of.
So, my point is, I don't think that what's going on should be interpreted as this is an incredibly unique, miraculous thing that never happens.
By the school's own website, this is a thing that happens in the month of February almost exclusively, just about every few years for the last 100 years.
And some of it, they even admit, was planned.
And again, not saying that's malicious or evil to plan.
Again, I think there are better words than calling it a revival, but that's just a difference of opinion and a difference of jargon, different church history, theological camps.
So, all that being said, that's the first thing.
All that being said, the last thing that I want to address is this Todd Bentley was on the scene.
Famous heretic.
He was a part of what was that revival even called?
I can't remember.
It wasn't John Kilpatrick and Steve Hill.
That was the Brownsville thing.
I can't even remember.
But Todd Bentley, one of the things that I do remember is there was a revival going on.
And here, so, okay, so in terms of markers of revival, how do you test a revival?
How do you measure a revival to see if it is genuine, to see if it's a real move of God?
What kind of criteria should you look for?
Well, traditionally throughout church history, you think of like the first great awakening, second great awakening, not a fan.
Charles Finney, if you want to read the worst theology you'll ever read, In your life, aside from maybe reading a Bill Johnson book, then read Systematic Theology by Charles Finley.
Not Finley, but Finney.
Charles Finney, his systematic is some of the worst.
Basically, he took everything from the first Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, that John Wesley was a part of that, but then also you've got George Whitefield.
He took all the Reform doctrine, and I understand Wesley wasn't Reformed, but Whitefield was, Edwards was, and he took this idea of God sovereignly outpouring, an outpouring of his spirit.
And he made it something that revival was basically.
Finney was one of the first guys who said revival is basically a formula and it can be manufactured by man.
If you put this and you put that, so altar calls, right?
A lot of people, you know, like come down to the altar, Asbury, you know, that's one of the things that they're doing.
You come up front, right?
And you confess your sins and you're praying, students are praying for one another at the altar.
Todd Bentley, you know, he did a post on Twitter where he said, I just, the whole time I was there, I could feel tangible waves of God's presence.
I just wanted to get down to the altar.
Where does that come from?
That's Finney.
That's not the Bible.
That's not Edwards.
That's not George Whitefield.
That's not Augustine.
That's not Calvin.
And it's not Jesus.
It's not Paul, more importantly.
That's Finney.
Finney came up with the concept of what he called, what now is an altar call, but what he called the anxious bench.
The anxious bench.
Some of you have heard of this.
Confession Beyond Song and Prayer00:15:07
It would be on the front row, typically, and he'd be doing one of his revival meetings.
And his whole thing was with the right cadence of speaking and the right emotion and the right this and the right timing.
Mega churches, if you don't like mega churches, And I mean the typical megachurch, right?
Not just a large church that's biblically faithful, but your typical megachurch with, you know, Hillsong worship and fog machines and lights, and it feels like a concert.
The lights are turned down low.
The music is super loud.
The preaching is an 18 minute TED talk that's fluffy and it's not expositional preaching.
If you don't like that kind of machine business, the brand megachurch, then, you know, you have Charles Finney to thank for that.
He is the father of his ideas birthed.
Uh, later on, it was the fruition of his ideas that birthed the mega church 100%.
And so, um, you know, making a business out of this idea of gathering together, um, is an event, right?
The Sunday big revival event.
And so, he had the anxious bench, and basically, in the middle of his preaching, he would call out to people who were there and he said, Some of you are underneath, you know, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, you need to come up and sit on the anxious bench, this front row, and I'm going to preach the rest of the sermon or for the next 15 minutes.
Directly to you.
And then for the next 15 minutes, he would look at those individuals and be preaching to them, you know, and ignore everybody else.
And so, and that's kind of where we've gotten the altar call from, which my church doesn't practice.
A lot of reformed traditions don't do, but there are a lot of Christians today who still, you know, practice an altar call kind of thing.
The second great awakening with Charles Finney was manufactured.
And since that point on, basically, from Finney on, there's been good and bad.
But the bad is that I think a lot of people think, well, we can.
There are certain things, having a revival is like baking a cake, right?
You just get some flour, you get some water, you get some eggs, you get some sugar.
And if you have the right ingredients in the right measure and you mix them in the right way and you put them in the oven, then revival is what pops out.
Now, here's the deal.
All that being said, Todd Bentley's there, right?
And Judas was hanging out with Jesus.
So a bad guy showing up doesn't, right?
That would be a logical fallacy to say that that's definitive proof that something is bad.
And not a move of God.
But it's not a good sign.
It's not a good sign.
That doesn't discredit everything that's happening.
That's not to say that none of the students are actually confessing real sin and there's not real prayer and there's not real worship.
I'm not saying that.
I don't know.
I'm not on the scene.
I'm sure there's some things that are in line with the scripture that are pleasing to the Lord that have been beneficial for God's people.
I believe that.
But it's not a good sign when Todd Bentley's there.
And what I was going to say in terms of criteria for genuine revivals, one of the things that you can see with genuine revivals throughout church history as it's been measured.
In hindsight, is that they tend to be at least somewhat ecumenical, right?
So, the first great awakening, going back to that as an example, you've got Wesley and you've also got Whitfield, and there's a friendship.
And these are guys who dynamically disagree.
Neither one is a heretic, they're both well within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy.
But you've got a staunch Arminian and you've got a staunch Calvinist, and they're working together.
And so, ecumenical, this ecumenical spirit, now not to the point where you're partnering with false teachers, right?
So, Billy Graham got too ecumenical.
Especially towards the end of his life.
So, I'm not talking about partnering with people who deny the gospel itself, but partnering with guys of different theological persuasions, but within the realm of Christian orthodoxy.
That does tend to be a criteria, a marker for genuine revivals.
However, here's the deal there's a difference between Whitfield and Wesley versus Asbury and Todd Bentley.
Todd Bentley is not within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy.
So, again, that's not definitive proof that this is not a move of God.
Nefarious characters can show up on the scene and it could be a real move of God.
That said, though, right, I mean, Simon the Sorcerer showed up with the Apostles' ministry and tried to buy, right?
So Todd Bentley could have been there because he wants to, you know, I just want to get the power of God so I can use it and get back on the big stage again, get back to my calling, you know.
Well, I mean, Simon the Sorcerer was trying to buy the Apostles' ability to impart the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
And Peter says, may your riches perish with you, right?
You're a wicked man.
So nefarious characters showing up doesn't.
Definitively discredit something.
But an ecumenical movement is only good insofar as all the characters, the leaders who are representing this movement, who are giving their credence to the movement being genuine, they have to fall within the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy.
That's first.
Second, in addition to that, one of the things that I've noticed is that there are some queer students who are publicly, they publicly identify as being LGBT.
At Asbury, and they're on the scene in the revival, and they're saying, We're for it.
We like what's going on.
Now, that actually gives me more pause, more hesitation than even Todd Bentley being there.
So, Todd Bentley being there and saying, I can feel God's presence, this is awesome.
I'm like, Ooh, that's not great, but that doesn't definitively discredit it.
That's not a deal breaker for this revival being genuine or not.
But when you've got outspoken gay students at a Christian university and they identify as sodomites or queer or lesbian or transgender or whatever, and they're on the scene and they're saying, We like this.
We're hopeful that the seeds of this revival, like one of the things that I read was a student saying, We've made a lot of progress on campus over the last four years.
Meaning, we've made a lot of compromise, biblical compromise on the campus over the last four years.
We're making strides to get this Christian university to affirm sodomy and to forsake a biblical stance on sexual ethics.
That's what they're saying.
And so this student is saying the last four years has been a lot of progress in this particular arena of sin, namely perversion and LGBT, LMNOP.
There's been progress in this.
And we're hopeful.
That student who said that says, and I feel like.
There's some bad things coming out of this revival, but more good than harm.
Well, that's not encouraging.
If a person who affirms homosexuality is saying that the school has, there's been progress on campus towards that end of getting the school to be affirming, not that they are, but working towards that, they're saying we're making strides, we're making progress, and we're on the scene.
I've been to these revival meetings, the Asbury revival, and I like it, and I'm hopeful.
That this is going to have a good fruit, and what they mean is the good fruit of more people affirming what God says is an abomination, namely sodomy.
Um, yeah, that's not a good sign, and and this is the last thing, okay, the very last thing in terms of criteria, okay, ecumenical, um, confession of sin, all that.
But the last thing with revivals throughout history is preaching, and I think that's.
To me, the biggest hang up that I have, the biggest hesitancy that I have is preaching the word of God.
That it's not just worship through song, it's not just confession and prayer, but it's preaching.
Because if you keep saying this must be a move of God because there's confession of sin and repentance and prayer, for me, one of the things that I want to ask is confession of sin, great.
Sin according to what standard?
By what standard is something, because Because you can have people confessing, right?
Where I'm confessing, but then who knows what they're confessing, right?
The person is like, I'm confessing the sin of how I've been bigoted and harsh and haven't been affirming enough and loving enough towards my gay brothers and sisters in Christ.
Well, that's not confession of sin.
That's affirmation of sin.
That's compromise.
You know, so the kind of if you're bowling, right?
And you don't want to get any gutter balls, right?
You put up the bumpers, you know, and.
The bumpers to make sure that the revival bowling ball doesn't go into the gutter.
One of the chief bumpers is preaching.
And preaching, not topical preaching, not just preaching the devices and inventions of men, but preaching the Bible, expositional preaching.
When there are claims of a revival and you show up on the scene and there is singing and there is confession and there is prayer, but the bulk of it, it's all the confession and the prayer and the singing is all being guided and facilitated out of the doctrine of the preaching.
And the preaching is sound, expositional preaching night after night after night.
So that when someone's confessing sin, they're confessing sin as defined by the sermon.
And the sermon was preached from the Bible and what the Bible calls sin.
And what the Bible calls holiness is actually called holiness.
And what the Bible calls sin is actually called sin.
That gives me a lot more peace, right?
A lot more peace of mind when there's sound biblical preaching.
But when preaching is kind of absent and it's a free for all, which is singing and songs, and any random person is getting up and grabbing the mic and confessing something that may be a sin, but maybe isn't.
And even if it is a sin, I've been a part of those meetings too.
For those of you who don't know, I have a charismatic background.
And I remember being.
On campus at Christ for the Nations.
Some of you, you know, most of you don't even know what that is.
Some of you might.
That came out of the 1950s healing revivals with Jack Cole, you know, and Gordon Lindsay and these kinds of things.
And Christ for the Nations, for the most part, I would argue, is a word of faith heretical school, not just Pentecostal, but even further than that, word of faith, Benny Hinn kind of thing.
And at Christ for the Nations, I remember when I was there, there was one day where we called it a revival, and it actually wasn't planned.
It was during the morning chapel, during worship through song.
And one of the girls on stage, right, so you already got a problem, but one of the girls on stage who was singing in the middle of the song, she started, you know, confessing her sin.
And then another student, a band member, I think, grabbed a microphone and confessed their sin.
And then a line started to form from the students and the audience to go up and confess their sin.
And it went from morning chapel, which was supposed to be 8 a.m. to about 8 45.
It went from 8 a.m. all the way till 3 p.m.
Classes were canceled, all this, very similar.
It reminds me, Of what's going on at Asbury.
Now, here's the problem.
First, because it wasn't preaching and the school had bad theology, I'm not saying this for Asbury, but for Christ and the nations, it certainly did.
Some people, in hindsight now, knowing what I know about the Word of God, having matured in my doctrine, I look back, some people were confessing as sin something that actually wasn't a sin.
Number two, this was happening in a prevalent degree, was that people were confessing things like sexual sin that really was.
Sin, but you had girls, not just guys, and that was a problem too.
But you had a line of guys and girls, and so you had young women, 19 years old, going up in front of the whole student body, a thousand people, and the school faculty, and confessing their personal struggles with masturbation, their sin of sexually engaging, committing sexual immorality, and promiscuity with other students on campus.
And I remember looking around, even at the time, I knew there was something wrong with this, and my theology wasn't very good.
This was, you know, 20 years ago.
But I remember looking around and seeing some of the male students as females were confessing their struggles with lust.
The attractive females who were confessing, I have a voracious libido, especially for a girl.
And you're looking at her and she's attractive.
Some of the guys, you could just tell, they looked like drooling wolves, they were taking mental notes.
Like, they might as well have busted out a notebook and writing down that person's name and sketching a description of their face and what they look like so that they know who's easy prey.
And there were stories after the fact of some of these individuals who confessed sin and it actually got worse.
Because here's the deal it's first, to confess sin properly, there has to be a biblical standard for what's actually sin.
Number two, even if we're confessing sin as the Bible actually defines sin, the question is how are we confessing sin?
So, first, what are we confessing?
Is it actually sin?
But then also, the methods and manner.
How are we confessing sin?
And one of the questions we should ask when coming to the methods of confession, who we confess to, is who we confess to.
Not how we confess, meaning do we confess out loud, publicly, to a thousand people?
Intimate, private sins.
Now, the Bible does say, confess your sins one to another that you might pray for one another that you might be healed.
So, one, all sin should be confessed to God.
Some sin, I would argue, should be confessed to fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
In that category of confessing sin, not only to God, but to one another, the question should be who are the one another's that we should confess that sin to?
And I would argue that as a rule of thumb, as a rule of thumb, this is my rule of thumb for confessing sins to fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
The rule of thumb is this confess a lot of sin to a few people, not a little bit of sin to a lot of people.
What I mean by that is if I'm going to confess my sin to brothers and sisters in Christ, which I do, I want to not use ambiguous language, not be vague, not be general, not minimize my sin, not blame shift with my sin, not defend against my sin.
Well, I kind of sort of, you know, had some, not using that general, ambiguous kind of language that makes it sound like, well, did you even sin at all?
Or are you just a victim?
You know, and sin just grabbed you and pounced upon you, and, you know, and it's not, you know, it was outside of your control, right?
You hear some confessions and the language is so ambiguous and so defensive.
Deep and Real Confessions00:04:17
It's like, was that even a confession?
So the rule of thumb is this if you're going to confess, let the confession be deep.
Let the confession be real.
Don't minimize the sin.
Confess it.
Confess the details of the sin.
Don't be overly detailed, but also don't hide things to where you're not confessing at all.
Confess the sin in truthfulness.
Be honest about the sin.
Be honest about the details of the sin.
So, in terms of the sin itself, big confession of sin.
But in terms of the audience of who you're confessing to, narrow.
Be very careful with that.
Very careful.
Better to confess 10 sins to two people.
Than to confess two sins to ten people.
And in the case of the revival at Christ for the Nations that I was a part of, and the Asbury revival currently going on right now, you have individuals confessing sin to one another privately, but you also have some stage confessions and things like that.
I think that that's concerning.
So the biggest factor is yeah, there's some nefarious characters there Todd Bentley, queer students on campus that are saying, We like this revival.
That's incredibly concerning.
But that alone, both of those, Doesn't definitively discredit the revival and say that it's not a revival at all.
I do think it's a little suspect that Asbury has a history of revivals and they all happen in February.
So, you know, take that for what you will.
I find that interesting, is probably the most charitable way that I can put it.
But the last thing is that I would say is where's the preaching?
Preach, preach, preach.
And not just getting up for five minutes, not soapboxes from this student and then soapbox from that faculty and soapbox from this person in the audience who traveled from Tennessee to be there or whatever.
No, I'm talking about.
I have a text.
I'm going to exegete the text and apply the text in a biblical manner to all of life.
And we're going to do that for an hour.
And then we will accompany that with worship through song and confession and prayer.
The preaching, expositional preaching of sound doctrine is the guardrails for everything else.
The confession is protected by sound preaching, the worship through song is protected by sound preaching.
The prayers, even, are protected by sound preaching.
And without sound preaching, there could be some genuine things that God is doing, some bona fide movements of God, but even the good stuff is vulnerable.
For Satan to come in and twist and pervert and deceive.
Because preaching is a way, by preaching sound doctrine, that's the way we guard people's minds in Christ Jesus.
All right, those are my thoughts.
Thanks for tuning in.
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