Is the Spirit of God bringing revival to the believer and a spiritual awakening to the seeker on the American college and university campus?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #168 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Revivals, or spiritual awakenings if you prefer, broke out on Christian college, private college, and public university campuses in 2023.
Now in 2024, perhaps we’re seeing the continuation of these experiences with the Lord.
Recently, “a revival event was held on the Ohio State University campus…where a few Buckeye football players gave testimonies and dozens of students were baptized. The event was held…outside OSU’s Curl Market and organized by numerous on-campus Christian student groups, featuring multiple members of the university’s football team leading the worship. Approximately 60 attendees were baptized that evening, reported the OSU student newspaper, The Lantern.
Another report said, Ohio State University’s campus witnessed a bunch of different churches joined together in a public place to worship. Ohio State football “players joined the crowd in worship. (which one attending faculty member estimated at 2,000). “It was all Jesus-based, all focused on Him,” the faculty member said. “Very vulnerable and very moving.”
Soon, ice bathtubs were brought and filled, and Gee Scott Jr. began preaching and baptizing his teammates…This comes just two weeks after over 25 players showed up to fall camp wearing custom OSU shirts that simply said, “Jesus Won.” (Someone at the event said) God is doing amazing things within this team, and it deserves to be publicized and praised.”
In 2023, Auburn University, Florida State University, University of Georgia to name a few, witnessed tens of thousands of students gathering, sometimes spontaneously, sometimes in sponsored events, to worship, praise God, hear sermons on various sins – yes, not just feel-good peptalks but sermons about darkness of the soul, slavery to sin and the freedom from that sin available to all through saving, forgiving, transformative faith in Jesus Christ. Such sermons were often followed by large-scale baptisms of hundreds of students in nearby bodies of water, even available campus fountains.
Impromptu nonstop prayer meetings, Scripture reading, public prayers, confessions, arms raised, worship singing, some students being saved by making professions of faith in Christ. Personal testimonies went viral on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, racking up millions of views and inspiring carloads of visitors to descend on Wilmore, population 6,000.
The movement then spread to other Christian institutions of higher learning: “Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee; Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio; Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky.” Also, revival was reported at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama and Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Kentucky.
At Asbury, students arrived from other universities: the University of Kentucky, Purdue University, Texas A&M University and Indiana Wesleyan University, Ohio Christian University, Transylvania University, Midway University, Georgetown College, Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, and many others.
Christian author Jennie “Allen, who was a speaker at three…college campus outreaches, in which thousands of students gathered and publicly accepted Christ, and hundreds were baptized, told Think Eternity News via text: “People keep asking us what is happening? How does this keep happening? They want a formula. I get it. I keep thinking the same thing. But we know in our bones, this is a move of God. We [pastors, ministry leaders] all have done the things we are doing now in rooms, and this hasn’t happened. I believe we are watching the beginnings of the next great awakening. At least that is what we are all praying for.”
Adult ministry leaders at these events observed, students “aren't interested in just going to church on Sunday but following Jesus Sunday through Saturday. They are up late into the night worshiping and up early the next morning praying. They are walking their campuses sidewalks and sharing the gospel with classmates.”
A Texas pastor who spoke at the University of Georgia last spring, said he was asked “to talk about finding freedom from sexual sin.” After doing so, he said, “It's not really a “crowd pleaser” message, but I gave it and Jennie Allen went up afterwards, talking about the importance of living in Christian community. The arena was full of over 6,000 students! Jennie wrapped up with an altar call and someone in the crowd wanted to get baptized. Someone else shouted there was a pond by The Red Barn, a notable landmark on campus. Thousands of students went out to the pond, and over two hundred students lined up to get baptized. We were in the water for hours. This was not a “dunk and next” situation. This was two hundred different Gospel-centered conversations. We went slow to confirm that they were believers and baptized past midnight!”
So, based upon what we have in limited media coverage, it appears the Lord did something special on these university campuses last year, and perhaps he will do so again this academic term.
Given what we have seen on college and university campuses in the past few months, it would be easy to write them off as spiritual wastelands: destructive protests, and not simply pro-Palestinian demonstrations calling for care and consideration toward the innocents among the Palestinian population, like children or women, but rather pro-Hamas rages demanding universities divest themselves of all involvement with the state of Israel, along with antisemitic chants aimed both at Israelis abroad and Jews here at home, including on the very campuses where such ethnic hate is being propagated. So, yes, it would be easy to walk away from this, to dismiss them all as unworthy, spoiled, hopeless brats.
But of course, that is not what Jesus would do. God commands Christian believers to love our neighbors, pray for our enemies, speak the truth in love, and act as ambassadors of reconciliation in a sin-drenched world. Surely this includes our youth.
But why are so many American kids so susceptible to hatemongering?
Well, American postmodern, post-Christian culture, writ large on the academic campus, makes no bones about rejecting God, absolute truth, morality, even biological science. In place of moral conscience and critical thinking, students are taught skepticism and cynicism, that nothing deserves their faith, that nothing and no one is worthy of their trust, certainly not the USA.
For a few decades now, throughout academia, students have been systematically taught the rubrics of Marxist ideology, that everything boils down to oppressor vs oppressed, class conflict seen in rich vs poor or as race or gender conflict,
victor vs victim, and the one who has power—not necessarily righteousness—is the victor. Radical professors, and so their students, reject the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights because they believe freedom from law is preferrable to liberty in law.
Students are taught something called nihilism: the idea life is meaningless. Think about this. If you truly believed life was hollow, inconsequential, that your own life was pointless, that it had no purpose, you have no value or worth, why wouldn’t you seek escape in hedonism, lust or substance abuse? Who cares?
And if your life has no value or worth, certainly other human beings have no value or worth. If we believe this hopelessness, then what’s left?
It is in this academic context that I pray the Lord will send his Spirit upon the land beginning perhaps with the most spiritually bereft of places in America, the college and university campus.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. Or check //www.youtube.com/@DrRexRogers">my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
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