The Next Jesus Revolution?

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

~ Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3

As I write this, we are in a season of revival and the signs all reveal this is heaven’s time! 

We are living on the pages of divine orchestration. As college campuses across the country spontaneously erupt in 24/7 worship meetings not seen since the 70s, a beautiful new film is released that is all about — The powerful revival in the 70s.

As the premier date for Jesus Revolution drew near, my excitement and expectancy for this movie could not have been higher. I felt the presence of The Lord as I walked into the theatre and was teared up before the opening credits appeared.

The Jesus Revolution story is my story.

By the time I was exposed to the Jesus Movement in the 70s, the revival tide was receding but tasty waves were still breaking over the levees. To this day, I have not been in such a dynamic church community that loved Jesus more authentically, more boldly, and more publicly. They were affectionately called; Jesus Freaks.

The movie is set in southern California as the hippie movement of the Haight-Ashbury 60s migrated south from San Francisco to the shores of Newport Beach. We are poignantly reminded of how dark and divided America was in those days. The result was a rebellious upswell of a generation who rebuffed their parent's values and yearned for true love, satisfying purpose, and unchangeable truth to help make sense of a crumbling culture.

The parallels with today’s culture wars are quite sobering.

We are also starkly reminded how hellishly destructive the drug-induced free love movement truly was.

They are searching for all the right things in all the wrong places.

~ Lonnie Frisbee

Lonnie Frisbee, played by Jonathan Roumie, is a complicated, central catalyst of the Jesus Movement. After being rescued from the depths of the hippie movement, Lonnie became one of the primary preachers who led untold thousands to Christ. Lonnie was not a perfect vessel and his methods were far from traditional, yet he teamed up with the most unlikely of partners — The very traditional pastor, Chuck Smith.

Kelsey Grammar is perfectly cast in the role of Pastor Chuck. As he opened his heart and welcomed the Jesus Freaks into his church, Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa became the epicenter of a movement that would quickly spread across the entire country.

In lieu of reviewing or summarizing the movie, I will simply urge and invite everyone to quickly go see this soul-shaping film in a theatre near you. Instead, let’s pull the lens back and behold how timely the retelling of this story is.

A Tale of Two Times

Two never-forgotten covers of Time Magazine help set the stage. In April 1966, as the hippie movement was at a rolling boil, Time published their infamous Is God Dead? issue. This was a callback to Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote, God is Dead. And we have killed him.

This quote has been notoriously misunderstood for over 100 years. Nietzsche was neither making a celebratory declaration that God didn’t exist nor was he gleefully decreeing that atheism was correct. Instead, having carefully studied how The Enlightenment dismantled and discarded Judeo-Christian value formularies, he essentially prophesied that a sudden and dangerous moral decline was unavoidably imminent. 

The death of God unfurled a crimson carpet that welcomed the catastrophic havoc of nihilism to not only stroll in and occupy the throne room of culture — It seeks to destroy the throne room of human hearts.

Nietzsche believed that unless there was a new mechanism for creating virtue and morals, the West would certainly descend into a meaningless existence where people would become foundationless, chronically cynical, and deeply despairing.

Sure sounds like the same maniacal schemings secular leftism is trying to impose on our great nation today.

The second unforgettable Time Magazine cover to burst off the presses was June 1971: The Jesus Revolution. As the unstoppable revival was spreading like wildfire, the media had no choice but investigate.

The movie depicts a young reporter who reluctantly embeds himself with the Jesus Freaks hoping to report to the nation the movement was a sham. But as he beheld the powerful presence of God and witnessed countless miracles, he was genuinely convinced the movement was very real.

Our merciful Lord always parts the sea, calms the storm, and sends revival just in the nick of time. But stop to consider the tragic context that often births the need for revival in the first place: Something has to become so broken, it dies. 

There is no need to revive that which is vibrant, holy, and alive. So when God needs to revive something, it means something has gone horribly wrong.  See Genesis chapter three for more on this.

And while we should wholly magnify and laud any signs of revival, we have to keep in mind it is a far better thing to not let the fire go out in the first place.

Revival is Nothing New

Historically, each significant revival has been marked by a primary distinguishing element. The Great Awakenings were marked by strong pulpit preachers like Whitfield, Edwards, Moody, and Finney. Upon hearing a sermon, entire crowds would drop to their knees in repentance and become believers on the spot.

The Azusa Street Revival was highlighted by the Baptism in the Holy Spirit accompanied by signs and wonders. The ensuing Tent Revivals that popped up across the country primarily manifested in miraculous physical healings. And the Jesus Movement was uniquely marked by how easy it was to evangelize people to faith.  

A simple, "Would you like to know Jesus?", and the person would immediately say yes, be set free from their sin and addictions, and never be the same again.

This brings us to today.  

In light of this robust history of revivals here in the homeland, I have heard prophetic leaders for the past forty years say;

This next revival that will hit America will be marked with three things. First, it will start with the younger generation. Second, it will come from outside the church walls. And third, this next revival will be centered on worship.

Those of us who have been hungering and praying for revival immediately understood what was happening at Asbury University in Kentucky. My wife and I were in tears watching students worship and pray around the clock. And now as it is spreading to a growing number of college campuses across the country, reports are rushing in of massive outbreaks of revival in other parts of the world.

Just in the nick of time.

As if the past three years weren’t sinister and demoralizing enough, 2023 started with a hellish bang: Satan worship at the Grammy’s. If Nietzsche’s God is Dead rightly predicted the collapse of a virtuous society, Sam Smith’s unholy Satan is Alive pushed all of Hell’s chips into the center of our living rooms declaring evil has won the day.

Before the show, the CBS Network unconscionably tweeted specific to Sam’s upcoming performance:

We are ready to worship!

Little did they know a handful of students at Asbury were about to declare the same thing.

Like Elijah confronting the prophets of Baal, February is our Mount Carmel. The Grammy’s opened the battle of two kingdoms by showcasing Sam Smith’s hellish specter that amounted to embarrassment, retractions, and lasted about three minutes.

In contrast, Adonai sent down the fire of His Spirit to consume the hungry hearts at Asbury where uncountable students are being set free from sin, delivered from addiction, and filled with the love of Our Father. And, it has lasted almost three weeks and shows no sign of retraction.

Messy or Neat?

Adonai will use the most unlikely and often unbecoming characters to accomplish His will. Think about this: If we removed every book of the Bible written by someone who committed murder, we would lose the five books of the Torah, the Psalms, and all of Paul’s epistles.

And while The Lord never winks at our sin, He does sometimes accomplish great things through flawed people. Lonnie Frisbee was no exception.

The movie hints at Lonnie’s flaws but mercifully omits his most egregious ones. Nonetheless, I am deeply inspired by both his gifting and his effectiveness.

In one of my favorite scenes, Chuck and Lonnie butt heads in the middle of a service. At this point in his ministry, Lonnie had begun receiving words of knowledge and was performing healing. Chuck wanted Lonnie to learn when and when not to use those gifts.

As Chuck was about to teach, Lonnie exclaimed there was someone in the room with deafness in one ear and God wanted to heal them.

Chuck sternly says, “Lonnie, not now.”

Most evangelicals would agree with Chuck on this point. Teaching is superior to healing, so it’s probably best to tamp down the theatrics so the preacher can get to work.

Unless that is; I was the deaf person in the room that God wanted to heal.

So much of modern church life has been marked with, “Not now.” As this fresh revival is bringing the next high tide of the Kingdom to the shores of our hearts, I am very willing for things to get messy for a while.

. . .

To watch uncountable students kneel and weep in these 24/7 worship gatherings evokes a feeling deep in my soul I haven’t sensed since 1978. If we could only gain heaven’s vantage to see that the Great Awakenings, Azusa Street, the Tent Revivals, and the Jesus Movement are found within the same kingdom jet stream that is lowering upon Asbury right now.

And as I continue to lead worship in different prayer rooms, I can confidently say this: Since Asbury broke out, everything feels different. Worship comes easier, His Spirit comes quicker, and the prayer runs deeper.

May we all lift our eyes, catch the flow of heaven’s jet stream, and embrace a Jesus Revolution!