By Pastor Dewey Roberts - Posted at Vanguard Presbyterian Church:
In recent days, I have had several people contact me about the Asbury Revival which is happening presently at Asbury University in Asbury, Kentucky. Time will tell if this is a true revival or just a work of the human flesh. Either way, there will certainly be some people who come to faith as a result of what is happening and for that we will rejoice. Yet, not all that glitters is gold. One of the things that concerns me is that Rick Warren and Francis Chan and other like-minded ministers have already gone to Asbury or they are on their way there to try to fan those flames into a revival that reaches other college campuses also. It makes me wonder if and when Andy Stanley and his entourage of LGBTQ supporters will make it there also.I have written often about the need for revival in our country and I still do. I have also tried to distinguish between true revival and false revival. As a youth, I was a member of two different United Methodist Church congregations in which the gospel was never preached by the pastors. Yet, the general concept of a revival was supported in both congregations. At Trinity United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem, NC, we had annual so-called revival meetings which were more experiential in nature. There were calls for decisions and emphases on lay renewal. One thing that has always stood out to me about those meetings is the person who was the “star” of them for three straight years. Each year, he would renew his commitment and tell the congregation how his life was now turned around and renewed. Then, the congregation would not see him again until the next year when the Lay Renewal meetings were taking place once again. Then, he got another fifteen minutes of fame. Meanwhile, I attended every service every week but never heard the gospel even once.
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