I grew up during the Jesus People/Charismatic Renewal of the 1970's—in fact, I was saved during this time in 1975, and I can assure you that the revival was very real. Furthermore, the experience among the people my family worshipped with—at the beginning—was actually very similar to what was reported at Asbury: great hunger and repentance marked with simple worship, droves of people coming to Jesus and getting saved, services that lasted hours and hours, and while the LORD showed up in demonstrative ways, it wasn’t overly sensational. It was actually only after we began an attempt to manage what we were experiencing in the 80’s through a cultish overcorrection in the discipleship or ‘shepherding’ movement that it began to slip off the rails—at least on my side of the fence.

The reason for that correction, however, is because fakery and sensationalism had snuck in, and was distorting the authentic work of the Holy Spirit in people’s lives; and so the response was equally unbiblical to the issue it was meant to correct.

As an adult, I studied the beginnings of the modern Charismatic movement, and found that these pendulum swings are not new; it began with the Wesleyan Holiness movement in the mid-late 19th century. They wanted the baptism of the Holy Spirit to assist them in living holy lives according to Scripture (WOW—imagine that.) Here’s a video that is part of my teaching series Vision for Survival that talks about the subject and the pendulum swing that followed.

American culture has been marked by waves of Christian revival, with much of the fruit being a mixed bag of real transformation, healing, and advancement of the Gospel that sets new generations on course to carry the faith; but also ugly sensationalism/emotionalism, opportunism, manipulation, false teaching, and psychological damage that turns many people away from God. The question that we’re all thinking is, “Why isn’t this pure?” On a recent Remnant Radio video podcast, Randy Clark admitted that the ‘Toronto Blessing’ revival of 1994 was “…70% God, 20% flesh, and 10% demonic…” Why isn’t it 100% God?

There are two answers I believe I can give:

1. We have an enemy who wants to get in to steal, kill, and destroy any work of the LORD. Any time that the LORD enlightens His people and moves them toward His plans and purposes in history, the enemy is right there, sowing confusion, doubt, counterfeit—anything that can be used to deflect people from reaching the goal that He wants us to reach—derailing us into something that is futile, despairing, and even anti-Christ if that’s possible. We are seeing a lot of that right now through erosion of the Bible’s authority, progressive Christianity, the adoption of false ‘apostolic’ and ‘prophetic’ authority structures and New Age practices infiltrating the Church—especially in Charismatic/Pentecostal circles, legalism infecting the Torah-observant movement, sexual scandals in Evangelical and Catholic denominations, etc.

2. Human beings are bent toward self-worship; we continuously re-center our lives around ourselves every chance we get. And so it’s easy for us to take the bait. This isn’t new: God has often visited His people in extraordinary ways with strong manifestations of His presence that last for a while, and then corruption sets in because of sin, causing the movement to stop or even reverse course. Even ancient Israel was marked by ups and downs, with its political success being married to its renewed worship of YHWH, while its decline was directly tied to idolatry and worship of the self. We are no different.

So why does God send revival, and how can we avoid being part of the problem?

Ephesians 5:25-27 provides a picture of the ‘marriage’ between God’s people and Himself:

And Revelation 21 starting at verse 2 shows the culmination of this image:

Finally, Peter shows in 1 Peter 2:4-10 that we, the assembly, the people of God, are living stones being built into the dwelling place of God—a temple for the Spirit:

You see, the New Jerusalem is going to be made of the living stones of God’s people, and He’s removing our spots and wrinkles in preparation for that time. These three Scriptures are part of the reason why I am a restorationist:

During the first few centuries after Jesus’ resurrection, I believe God allowed His people—both Jew and Gentile—to move away from His intentions in order to set world events in such a way as to fulfill prophecy, all according to the mystery of His divine plan; though even in our broken, unbiblical state, He has still met us and used us to reach one third of the world’s population to recognize Jesus as the Messiah and Savior of the world. But I also believe He is moving His people from that state of disrepair toward an end-time state where we are ready for the wedding feast—a beautiful Bride without spot or wrinkle against all odds, so we can fulfill our calling—both Jew and Gentile—as His kingdom of priests and holy nation, and so the nations will know that He alone is God. I certainly believe that God is doing this with every believer all the time through the process of sanctification; but one of the biggest purposes of revival is to present us with opportunities to allow major shifts to occur in the transformation back to Biblical Faith.

We need revival because during the experience, the LORD activates our hunger for His presence to speak to us in life-transforming ways; we are endeared to Him, and we get close, listening to what He has to say to us. But it is completely up to us whether we allow His Word, by His Spirit, to cross over our hunger into life-sustaining nourishment that is 100% God, propelling us back toward Biblical Faith—whether we will choose to obey and hasten the day when we will be without spot or wrinkle, or return to a half-hearted state marked by self-worship, concerned only with the mundane, temporal things of life. How far will we let Him take us?

History tells us that we have a limited window of time to apply ourselves before this intense, collective drawing of our souls and spirits ebbs away.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit that is occurring right now which began at Asbury University is encouraging. From the reports that I have heard, the leadership of the university was very wise in its handling of the authentic outpouring of the Holy Spirit while blocking the sensationalist and self-worshipping tendencies to get people off track from what God is doing. As this spreads across the country and around the world—which it seems to already be doing, we will see what it brings.

To sustain the LORD’s presence and favor in this critical time, revival hunger needs to be turned to reformation. In 2014, when I was publishing my first book, Reclaiming Christianity Series, Vol. 1: The Upside-Down Kingdom, the LORD gave me a vision of seven paradigms that I believe He said the Western Church must adopt in order to maintain its lampstand in the culture. If we don’t, we will lose our influence, and become totally absorbed into the culture where we are indistinguishable from the world—either that, or we will be completely marginalized and persecuted for our faith, having lost our position from 1700 years of Christendom. We are on the knife’s edge between great harvest or great apostasy, and the outcome of this revival may be the determining factor.

The kingdom of God will not fail either way, of course; but our participation in it will most certainly be affected. The LORD has told me that I am to spend the rest of my life teaching these seven paradigms as the major portion of my work: I started off with a video series on YouTube called Vision for Survival; the content is also referenced as a page here on my website and in my book The Judeo-Christian. Here’s a quick summary of what we must do:

This last Shabbat, I was reading about the story of King Josiah in 2 Kings 22:1-23:30. By this time, the northern tribes of Israel had already been decimated by Assyria for their idolatry, and Judah was not far behind. Josiah’s grandfather, King Manasseh, had so wickedly fallen into idolatry that God had already made up His mind to remove Judah from its land and send them into the Babylonian captivity. But when Josiah looked at the Torah and realized how far Judah had fallen from God’s intentions, he was broken. He gathered all the people of Judah and read the Torah to them, and they were cut to the heart. Revival broke out, and as one people, they rid themselves of everything that was contrary to God’s Word, bringing the greatest reform that Judah had ever experienced. As a result, God delayed the captivity of Judah for another day, and the people of Josiah’s generation lived out their lives in peace.

The problem is that they didn’t transfer their fervor and obedience to their children; and so the very next generation was just as wicked as Manasseh’s. And so the Babylonian captivity happened in the time of Jehoiachin, Josiah’s great-grandson.

At the end of the Babylonian captivity, we saw the plot of Haman against the Jews to completely destroy them from the earth, in which Mordecai and Hadassah (Esther) rallied the people to fast and pray, and God divinely orchestrated the salvation of the Jewish people from destruction. As I am finishing this article, Purim is fast approaching—and I don’t believe it’s just a coincidence. Will we continue to contend for our children and grandchildren as the LORD draws their hearts to Him in revival? Will we allow that revival to turn into reformation as Josiah did with the people of Judah? Will we engage our children and grandchildren to pass on this reformation to them, or will we play spiritual games with the graciousness of His presence while continuing to revel in the idolatry of self-worship, and thereby fall into persecution? We were born for such a time as this—we must not waste it.