Dr. Brown Answers Your Questions on Revival

The following is a pre-recorded program. I'm answering some fascinating questions about revival today on the Line of Fire. It's time for the Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown.

Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the Line of Fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, friends, to the Line of Fire.

Boy, so much is happening already in this new year. If you've gone to our social media pages, if you're on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, you've noticed instead of Ask Dr. Brown, you're seeing the Line of Fire. That's because everything is being put under that heading, as I explained in the Tuesday broadcast. Everything is being put under that heading because today, friends, we are all in the Line of Fire. And it is my calling, my role, my assignment, my privilege to help stand with you on the front line so that you can see the overcoming grace of God in your own life so that we together, as God's light in this world, could push back the darkness and glorify Jesus.

And we're here to infuse you with faith and truth and courage. So, if you go to AskDrBrown.org, you'll see it is now TheLineOfFire.org. All the information is there. All the thousands of hours of free resources, they're all there.

Our bookstore, all the materials, our school classes, they're all there. But when you go to AskDrBrown.org, forget about that because it is now TheLineOfFire.org. And The Line of Fire is not just our radio broadcast.

It is a movement of people around the world as we stand up together and say, enough is enough. We're taking a stand today in Jesus' name. We're making him known.

We are not ashamed. By God's grace, friends, I want to commit to you again. By His grace and help, I will not back down. I will not compromise.

It doesn't matter how hot or difficult or challenging or costly it gets. I'm here, by His grace, to be your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. So, one last reminder, to our friends listening in Phoenix on KPXQ, to our friends listening in Dallas on K-word, you will continue to hear The Line of Fire at this same time, except it will not be the live call-in show. You can still get that on your app easily without any problem. You can still go to TheLineOfFire.org and listen live there if you like or catch the shows afterwards, but you are going to be getting our brand new 30-minute equipping broadcast that will absolutely rock your world starting this Monday. If everyone else says, when can I hear that?

Ah, fear not. We'll be posting that online in the weeks to come as well for everyone else. Reminder, my new book, Seize the Moment, is out, How to Fuel the Fires of Revival. This will be one of the most eye-opening books you ever read because it will give you a picture of what real revival is like. It'll take you back behind the scenes where you see what God is doing, but then the toll it can take on people and how we can get off track and what some of the pitfalls are. So, Seize the Moment, How to Fuel the Fires of Revival, you'll see on the top it says, From Revival to Reformation, book one. That's because there's a book two that'll be coming out in May, Turn the Tide, How to Ignite a Cultural Awakening. How do you go from revival in the church to revival in society or reformation in society? How do you go from outpouring in the church to awakening in society?

Oh yeah. So, Seize the Moment, get this book if you haven't gotten it, wherever you get your books online or on our website, thelineoffire.org, and I believe it'll greatly impact you. All of you got the pre-orders, hundreds and hundreds of you got the pre-orders, please post a picture of the book on your social media, tell others about it. I write these books with an urgency from the Lord because it is critically important for us to get these messages out.

Get a copy for your pastors, leaders, so that together we can see God do everything He has promised to do in His Word. Alright, revival. What is revival?

I'm not going to be taking calls today, I'm taking your questions that have been posted on social media. My definition of revival, it is a season of unusual divine visitation. That's the heart of it, that's the essence of it. A season of unusual divine visitation, resulting in deep repentance, supernatural renewal, and sweeping reformation in the church, along with the radical conversion of sinners in the world, often producing moral, social, and even economic change in the local or national communities. Charles Finney's definition, revival presupposes that the church is sunk down in a backslidden state, and a revival consists in the return of the church from her backslidings and in the conversion of sinners.

Alright, some of your questions. Daniel, how do we make sure to pursue a culture of revival that incorporates both the young and old, and does not define as an age-related move of God, although God is moving upon my generation? Daniel, to be perfectly honest, my experience is when God moves, people from all ages will come. We had young people flocking to the meetings in Pensacola. We had the school children from middle school, and to older ones in high school. I mean, elementary school kids wanted to be there. College age, they'd be flocking to the meetings.

Saturday night, you think, ah, Saturday night, kids are out doing all the stuff they do. The buildings would be packed. When I say buildings, the main sanctuary and overflow buildings would be packed with young people, and even though we all wore jackets and ties, that was just the custom at that particular time in those church circles, we were in a traditional church building with pews and things like that. But young people came flocking, and I've seen the same thing, that even if the music is mainly oriented more to a younger generation, the sound and things, when God is moving, the older people will come. So my experience, and as I've read about this historically, is when God is really genuinely moving, people will come. Look, even when there are reports of the sick being healed, and those reports are legitimate, people come flocking from everywhere. It's been that way in biblical times, and it's that way through history. When God is moving, people will come.

So I don't think you have to tailor-make it a particular way. Whoever you are, whatever your life experience is, you walk in that. You don't have to become something new. You know, if you're some older pastor, you don't have to get skinny jeans and have a super cool-looking youth leader. I'm telling you, you could be wearing jacket and tie and preaching from the King James, and if God's moving, young people will come flocking. Conversely, if you're a young person and God's moving through you and your youth team of worship, you don't have to suddenly become something different to draw older people. God will draw.

The Holy Spirit will draw. As Leonard Ravenhole always used to say, you don't have to advertise a fire, and I'm an eyewitness to say it's true. Jeff, why don't they last? So, seize the moment.

Read the book. That's why I wrote the book, How to Fuel the Fires of Revival. There are three answers to the question. Number one, by their very nature, they can't last forever. What I mean is, you can't sprint a marathon. The intensity of revival, the demands of revival, the rigors of revival, just on every level, the intensity of revival is such that it's really not possible to sustain this over decades and decades and decades.

You just can't do it. It's too intense. All the people getting radically converted and the lives being dramatically changed and the meetings going on for hours and hours and hours and hours, you can't sustain that over 20 or 30 years.

That's number one. So, by design, it's meant to be an intensive move forward, perhaps over a period of years. Number two, many times, revivals are cut short. In fact, I would say in the vast majority of cases, they're cut short in terms of what they could be, which is why you hear so few historic revivals where we can put the years on it. This is when it started.

This is when it ended, etc. And again, that's why I wrote Seize the Moment. Something's been happening. For the last year plus, something's been happening where people are being radically and dramatically touched and saved and churches bursting with new converts and young people hungering for God.

God's moving. How do we see this deepen? How do we see it go to the next step? What are some of the errors from the past that we don't want to repeat today?

And I can speak again from experience there as well, in terms of errors or things where I look at things in the past and think, okay, I could have done this better or that better. So Seize the Moment will answer those questions. And then thirdly, where I end Seize the Moment, the goal is to go from visitation to habitation, to go from this intense outpouring of the Spirit that can maybe be maintained for a period of years into a life flow, a culture, a spiritual mentality, an ethic, a mindset that can last for centuries.

That's the goal, to go from visitation to habitation. And that's actually the last chapter of Seize the Moment. And that ties in with a question from Jesse, how long do you think the revival in the US will go on for?

So this is now a little bit different the way I'll answer this. This is like the Jesus people movement in terms of seeing outpourings of the Spirit in many different places, or like the Second Great Awakening that happened over a period of decades. So it's not going to be with a fire of intensity just in one place for decades, but because it's happening in hundreds and thousands of places, it could be for decades in that respect. So whatever's happening in America, if full scale, if the dream that we're dreaming of a massive spiritual awakening, a fresh harvest of souls, if that dream was to come to pass, let's say that's a hundred.

Where we are now in America is maybe a five or six. In other words, things are happening powerfully. But the amount of places that are being affected and the degree to which they're being affected, to me, we're barely scratching the surface.

It's just the beginning of that first wave. So could it be that something could go on for decades? Why not? Why not? We're in the very, very early stages, but why not something like that here, here, here, here, all over? That could go on for many years. May it be so.

May it be so. Josh, what was right or not right about the Asbury revival was what happened at Asbury, the spark of something even greater to come in terms of revival? I was never there at Asbury. I was in contact with colleagues of leaders in Asbury, but I don't have a lot of firsthand information.

What I can say from a distance is this. It was definitely sovereign. God birthed it out of the blue and it shocked a lot of people. They were planning on the 50th anniversary of Asbury revival, planning on gathering and call for prayer, forgot to do it again, and God said, I'll do it before you gather.

Just forgot to say watch, and did it in the most surprising way, kind of out of the blue. I believe it was supernatural and real, and it spread to many, many other places, far, far beyond the implications of just who went there. I know many, many testimonies of how it spread around the country, to other campuses, to other churches. I believe what was right that Asbury did was to shut down the big public outside meetings. As the town of Wilmore, Kentucky may have had as many as 50,000 people there.

What is it, a town like 6,000? I believe it was right to shut that down. I don't believe there's supposed to be just one place everyone goes to, but I do believe it was a beginning and a spark and a sign. There was only about eight days before Asbury that I got on the air and said, look, I've known this for some time, but I want to say it. We were in the beginning. We were in the beginning of the first wave of the next revival here in America.

About eight days later, Asbury happened. I said, you see? I'm Paul Burnett, a board certified doctor of holistic health, and I want to take this opportunity to talk to you about the importance of healthy blood flow and how it's enhanced by a miracle molecule known as nitric oxide. You see, blood vessels release nitric oxide, which increases blood flow known as something called vasodilation. At Triveda, we take blood flow seriously for our members, and we've developed a nitric oxide plus supplement that has been formulated with natural ingredients designed to maximize nitric oxide production in our blood vessels, which increases blood flow. You may be wondering why you don't have as much energy as you used to. One study that I came across revealed that by the age of 40, we only produce about 50% of the nitric oxide production as compared to our 20s. And by the age of 70, the study showed that we're only producing about 15 to 25%.

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May you live with greater wellness. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to the Line of Fire, answering your questions today on revival. No, I'm not here to be the Bible answer man, and that's why we have made our official switch from Ask Dr. Brown to Line of Fire, everything being under the heading in our ministry of Line of Fire, as we are all in the Line of Fire today in the world in which we live. But part of my calling is to help equip by answering your questions. So I'm not here to be the Bible answer man on every radio show.

I'm just taking your questions. There's a great role for that. My colleague, Hank Hanegraaff, did that for many years.

We had our differences, but did that effectively for many years and continues to do that in different ways. There's a great, great purpose for that. And you've got websites like GotQuestions. So we've got all our resources there for you.

But think of it in terms of not just Bible answer, but equipping, equipping, equipping, equipping, because that's what we are here to do. If you don't get my emails, sign up today. We're about to send out, later this month, we'll be sending out our frontline newsletter that you'll look forward to getting every single month chock full of special features. You'll look forward to getting it.

It's free. If you're ready to get our emails, you'll get it automatically. If not, go now to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org and sign up for those emails.

Okay, one last thing. As we start the new year, and so many are thinking about their bodies and health and wellness, and that's what we talked about on the Wednesday broadcast, give yourself a healthy shot in the arm. Check out our co-sponsor TriVita. We are listener-sponsored and we have the help of our co-sponsor TriVita. Call 800-771-5584. Get a wellness consultation. Say, hey, I'm struggling with this and this, not a medical consultation, but say I'm looking to get a boost here, a help here, no substitute for a healthy diet, but these are great supplements and I use them religiously, daily, a number of different ones. It's a great profit. So, call 800-771-5584 and of course, a substantial portion of your order is donated to the Line of Fire.

You can also go to trivita.com and use the code BROWN25 for the best discount when you go there. All right, more questions. Martha, I've been to the Pensacola revival. So glad I did.

So 1995 to 2000. I believe revival is birth from prayer. Why don't we see it more often? Do you think that everyone is the real deal? Number one, there are plenty of things claiming to be revivals that are just hype, human excitement, people getting worked up in the flesh. Some of them are just spiritual aberrations that claim to be revivals. You always check things by the overall message that's being preached. So, you check the creed and the deed.

You check doctrinally and you check experientially. In other words, what is the message that is being preached? If there is alleged revival and people are preaching that Michael, the archangel, is coming again and is actually Jesus, well, it's counterfeit. Obviously, you throw that out, right? Or if the primary message that is being preached is you don't need the cross, just take hold of the Christ within you, okay, that's deception.

You throw the things out. If someone is saying, you don't need the Bible because you have me, I'm a prophet of God, well, you throw the thing out no matter what claims to be happening. But, if the basic content of the preaching and ministry is orthodox, is biblical, it doesn't matter if people shake or fall or don't shake or fall, or weep or cry out or don't weep or cry out, or jump or laugh or sit silent, none of that matters in terms of how you judge. You judge first on what's the message that's being preached.

That's first thing. Then the second thing is what's being produced in the lives of the people. Are they being drawn to the Jesus of the Bible? Are they being drawn to the Word of God? Are they turning from sin?

Do they have a burden for the lost? If you see these things in the lives of people, that's the work of the Spirit. Satan can't produce that. The flesh can't produce that.

Only God can produce that by His Spirit. Now, things may be different than you're used to. Look, you go from country to country, the food's different than you're used to, hairstyles are different than you're used to, music is different than you're used to, go to church services, they'll be different than you're used to. That's not how we judge. You say, well, there's certain things out of order. It may be out of order because of human enthusiasm and needs some correction here and there, but it doesn't mean it's not from God.

It may mean that some human responses are a lot of order, so you deal with it accordingly. Jonathan Edwards wisely addressed that and said, we ought not to limit God where He has not limited Himself. So, he very forcefully said during the Great Awakening in the 1730s and 1740s in America that you don't judge by whether people jump or shout or cry. No, no, you judge by the change in their lives based on conforming to Jesus in the Word.

That's ultimately what you judge by. Why don't we see more revival? Because we're willing to live without it.

That was Leonard Ravenhill's classic answer. Why don't we see more revival? Because we're willing to live without it. And that's the case.

And that's the case. People aren't hungry enough, aren't thirsty enough, aren't desperate enough, aren't recognizing their need enough, aren't recognizing the urgency of the hour. We're too filled with the world and too compromised and too complacent, and therefore, not crying out with urgency and desperation. Because of that, we don't see. We don't receive, as James Jacob would say, because we don't ask. Joey, what were some of the biggest lessons learned from the Brownsville revival?

Also, what were some of the top memories, testimonies you had from Brownsville as well? Ooh, okay. Number one, read the book, seize the moment.

I did my best. Twenty-five short chapters, each one will leave you hungry for the next. And by the way, when you get the book, and it just came out January 2nd, so a couple of days ago, when you get the book, you can read it out of order. You don't have to read it in order. Whatever chapter interests you, you can read it.

They all stand by themselves, but reading it cover to cover, make sure you read all the chapters one way or another. So, I put some of the key lessons learned in the book, some things that I would say we've learned together as leadership of the Brownsville revival, some things I learned in particular. One I would say is, we're human beings, and the old Vince Lombardi saying, fatigue makes cowards of us all, that I did get run down. I did push too hard. I look back now at my schedule then, I look back at some journal entries, and just reading the journal entries is stunning.

I'm not exaggerating. I mean, literally reading the journal entries, I'm thinking, how was that humanly possible? How could any of us keep this pace? And we were sustained by God in the midst of it, and we were carried by supernatural grace, and the results were so incredible. And you got to strike while the iron's hot, the urgency of the moment, you give yourself to it. How can you not give yourself to it in the urgency of the moment? And then, on top of that, the hunger and the thirst was so tremendous from people flocking from around the world, and we'd never go to speak, flocking to come to the meetings. How could you not give yourself to it? But we're still human. And even though I talked about this, I knew it was a reality, overwork. I used examples of others that had overworked. Still, in the midst of it, you almost think, well, this is different.

This is different. You know, when John Kilpatrick and I reconciled, Pastor Kilpatrick, who I honor deeply from the bottom of my heart, is one of the great revival leaders on the planet today. And when we had a split at the end of the revival between church and school, between me and him, when God reconciled us and we sat together that beautiful night until the early hours of the morning, he said to me, Mike, if we weren't so exhausted, I don't think the enemy could have gotten in between us, because we always had a good relationship. And I honored him as the senior leader there, the pastor of the congregation and the senior leader.

So even though I was a ministry leader myself, when I was there, I was in submission to his authority. And we had a great relationship otherwise, and we worked through minor issues that would come up here and there. So we both recognize that, that there is fatigue and there is overwork. So that's one lesson. But all the lessons are in the book. That's why I wrote it. As for top memories, oh, I mean, how can you even start? How can you start? I can only say this. Some nights, the presence of God was so overwhelming and the outpouring so evident in the hearts and lives of the people, and especially the young people getting dramatically touched and on their faces weeping and crying out for Jesus to save their school.