Students at small Christian college in Kentucky gathered for their regular Wednesday chapel service. Thirteen days later, it was still going on. People from around the country and the world had been joining in. No matter your religion or lack thereof, this is an exceptional happening. More exceptional, even, is that this spirit has spread to other colleges and universities.

On Wednesday, February 8, 2023, a young man in a regular weekly gathering at the chapel of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky stood up and began to speak about what was going on with him, the mistakes he’d made and where he thought he’d gone wrong.

He poured out his soul, they say. According to others in attendance, there was nothing terribly catching about his words. But, those words held enough power, somehow, to ignite a movement, a revival, a “marathon church service” in the words of Tucker Carlson, among people around the world.

There have been confessions, singing, praying, dancing and support from one participant to the other, and a continuous flow. Social media has drawn many of them together.

After the young man finished, more and more stood to say their piece – and feel their peace. The service continued all day and night. People began showing up on the campus in Wilmore, a quiet country town twenty miles southwest of Lexington.

They have come, so far, from all fifty states and several foreign countries, including Brazil and Indonesia. More spaces had to be opened up and the gymnasium was pressed into service. It continued for more than ten days after it began.

This strength of spirit has overflowed from Asbury University to other Christian colleges: Lee College in Cleveland, Tennessee, Ohio Christian University, Circleville, Ohio, and Campbellsville University with seven locations throughout Kentucky, and a graduate school for marriage and family therapy in Encino, California.

Stopping Our Rapid Slide Into The Dark

This is not the first time this has happened to this small university in Kentucky. To realize this is to be even more amazed by the power of the Spirit.

In 1970 as the hippie/free love/Gloria Steinem years were going full-steam, a spontaneous revival began at the then Asbury College and lasted over a week. Some of the 2023 attendees these past two weeks were there at Asbury back then.

Young people of the 1970s were feeling as off-course then as they do now. Their societal norms were being shattered and their moral guideposts challenged with hatred and division. Just like today.

Today’s Gen Z, too, is suffering head-spinning changes in their world, many of which show the direct face of evil. These shocks to normalcy are coming even faster and more severely today than fifty years ago because they are being forcefully and openly installed by a rogue government.

I can attest to that. I have been around for both.

We didn’t get tagged with Generation “Alphabetology” back then, but we were at the beginning of the boomers and we were told to question everything and leave nothing the same.

From attitude to attire, everything was changing suddenly and not for the better. How different is that from today? Truly, it was just part of the same Marxist continuum we see now. The youth of today are at ground zero of life’s rapid slide into the dark and they sense it. They have their whole lives ahead.

Asbury Is Our Isaiah Moment

Asbury’s student body president believes that a “young army of believers is rising to claim Christianity for its own.” The school’s director of communications says that she believes students today are “desperate for something other than what the world is giving them.” Many students who have attended the gatherings say they are experiencing a release of inner darkness. Would that this might happen for us all!

Asbury University has approximately 1,800 students from 41 states and 33 foreign countries. They are taught by a faculty of scholars seventy-five percent of whom hold the top degrees in their fields. There are four master’s programs. It is a good small university in the middle of our country.

There is nothing at all special about it at a cursory glance. Yet as of this writing, this spirit of revival – or is it a revival of the Spirit? – is still growing. I truly pray that this is just the start of something Biblically huge and that the dark clouds of evil are beginning to part.

Why am I telling you this? You may well have heard it on the evening news, if you listen to one of the more conservative outlets.

First I thought I just wanted to share some good news because, Lord knows, we all need some. Then, it struck me that the Lord does know and would like this to be shared in other ways than social media. I think He wants this to get around to all, and of every age, and everywhere.

I am not a formally religious person. I try to live my faith rather than preach about it. But this happening is so near to the Scriptures that we all need to feel it – really feel it – and consider it as a bright spot of light in our ever-darkening world. In the Bible, the book of Isaiah was written as a message of great hope during a time of great distress. In it the Lord calls the people out of sin and selfishness. It was said that then – as now – great disaster looms in the future if the present choices and lifestyles are continued.

At a moment of personal despair when Isaiah felt certain that he had failed in his mission, God answered him with the staggering promise that his efforts would reach the entire world and bear great fruit – and that was in the days of difficult communications: very different from our electronically-linked age today.

Isaiah became a great prophet giving the promise of salvation from the darkness engulfing the earth. Is the young man at Asbury our Isaiah?

After all, Isaiah chapter eleven, verse six says,“The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion, and the fattened calf together; and a child shall lead them.”

Spontaneous Religious Revival

On Monday, February 19, 2023, over ten thousand people were on the Asbury University campus in Kentucky joining in the revival of morals and values. They have come from all over the world propelled by a personal necessity to be part of an amazing happening. Of course, there is a healthy amount of curiosity involved along with the very human need to be a part of a community. #asburyrevival

It didn’t take long. Just this month, Satan performed at the Grammys and has shown his darkness at the fifty-seventh Super Bowl (Super Bowl LVII), that we know of. I am sure there have been many more horrors.

Now the Lord is speaking back.

Where I live is less than a four-hour drive from Wilmore. I would love to go there myself. I too feel drawn. It is as simple as that. I, too, would love to become a part of this happening and imbibe some of the ebullience of spirit that I know is there. But I can’t.

For now the town has been closed to further entrance. Over ten thousand people – and counting! – have descended on a town whose population is 6,900. I get it completely.

Throwing Up The Barricades

What a wonderful, even heavenly reason to block off human movement, albeit, in this case temporarily. The little rural town is ready to burst with people coming to celebrate their Lord. Food, lodging and sanitary facilities are at capacity, not to mention just ground space on which to park cars and pitch tents.

Glory to God in the highest! This is exciting!

Especially so if you look at where else we have experienced barricades in recent years:

Our nation’s Capitol was barricaded on January 6, 2021 after the overthrow of our legitimate government in 2020.

This is common practice after a coup. Banana republics with illegal governments called juntas, once formed, fear their citizens because they know that we know that they are frauds to the core. They fear retaliation – hence the attempt to purge the leaders of the national opposition. In the case of the United States in 2021, the opposition would be those who believe in our Constitution and rule of law.

Polling places and ballot-counting locales in November 2020 were barricaded as Republican poll-watchers and workers tried to verify the count. This occurred in the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona, where the count was shut down for hours to allow suitcases, vans and trucks full of fraudulent ballots to be added to the count.

Police stations, government buildings, public utilities and streets of commerce on formerly bustling thoroughfares of commerce have been barricaded to protect them from the hired goons of the junta. Think “Summer of Love,” Anno Domini 2020.

You get the picture. There is no need for me to go on. So, to me, the notice of a barrier to control the crowds rushing to celebrate and reaffirm the ethics on which this nation was founded is heavenly. Literally. Thanks be to God.

Human Souls Are Desperate For Companionship In The Truth

The need for community everywhere is growing stronger as each day rolls by. As our families, friends and associates have been tainted by the intentionally-instilled divisiveness and hatred that is poisoning our world, our human souls have become desperate for companionship in the truth. It strengthens us and gives us the fortitude to live each day. Soon it may well provide the mechanisms for survival. I would advise you to seek and strengthen yours.

Blessings.

A report by People magazine quotes an NBC (Universal) interview with Asbury University president Kevin Brown, who said the morning service started out very ordinary and unremarkable. The magazine continues, “But what started with about a dozen students eventually grew until something special, thanks in part to images of the worshiping going viral on TikTok.”