The Asbury revival:
On 8 Feb 2023 Asbury University, Wiltmore, Kentucky, US, held a scheduled service in their auditorium. According to student president Alison Perfater, a small group of students lingered behind after the service to continue with their prayers.. A young student got up to voluntarily offer his testimony and confession and then the emotion spontaneously took off and spread. They felt an immense sense of peace and joy and the spiritual presence of the divine. Word spread very quickly via social media and fellow students joined in. A tik tok video soon spread the message in the university and then around the world. By 15 Feb the tik tok video had garnered 63 million viewers. Believers kept pouring in and the service continued non-stop 24 hours till 15 Feb. Initially, believers came from within the campus. Then local residents, and soon all over the US and some foreigners, including Singaporeans (as mentioned by Tucker Carlson on Fox News). People came to have the chance to experience the presence of God and they poured in, forming a kilometre long queue.
It seems this is not the first time there has been a revival at Asbury. It has happened several times over the years. In 1970 they had a revival which spread throughout the US. This recent revival has spread to 20 other campuses.
What exactly is a revival:
It suggests a quality that already exists but waned and has been given a boost or a turbo charge. In the context of a Christian revival, it is of course about the faith.
But an evangelistic campaign, outreach or meeting is not revival. Such a campaign may end successfully with many making decisions for Jesus Christ, but they, the community, the church, are not touched by God.
Manipulative emotionalism is prevalent in certain types of churches, especially in prosperity churches. Weak attendees often take in the con because almost everyone are carrying some kind or other of emotional burdens. Prosperity preachers are masters of psychological manipulation. In a manipulated revival, one can discern the praises and prayers are forced and organised.
In a divine revival, God moves through the community, the district and its churches and people are touched by the Holy Spirit. Supernatural events manifest and there is spontaneous outpouring of spiritual fervour that is contagious. People cries, asks for forgiveness, mercy. Souls are saved. The Spirit sets hearts on fire. Believers understand the Spirit is with them and they breathe in the Love and Praises for the Lord pour forth.
The fiery revival of New Hebrides:
One of the most powerful revivals occured between 1943 to 1953 in the New Hebrides, a group of islands off the coast of Scotland. More specifically on the Isles of Lewis. The folks who live there are Gaelic speaking and amongst the poorest of the poor. The folks had moved away from God, especially the younger ones. In 1949, the presbytery in the parish of Barvas wrote a proclamation to be read in all the churches. It called the people to consider the "low state of vital religion . . . throughout the land . . . and the present dispensation of Divine displeasure . . . due to growing carelessness toward public worship . . . and the growing influence of the spirit of pleasure which has taken growing hold of the younger generation." They asked the parishioners to repent and return to God.
Two sisters took it seriously. Peggy Smith, 84 and blind; and her sister, Christine Smith, 82 and almost doubled over with arthritis. They wanted to do something for God. So they gave themselves passionately to prayers and wait upon God in their cottage. One night one of the sisters had a vision. She saw the churches crowded with people and interpreted it as a sign of a coming revival. They summoned the Rev. James MacKay who asked what should they do. The sisters said they should pray twice a week and to wait for God. The sisters will do thus in their cottage, the minister will gather some elders and young deacons and do similarly in a barn on their side of the parish. They prayed and waited for God from 10 pm to early morn. This went one for 3 months and nothing happened. Then at the end of the 3rd month, a manifestation took place and that was the start of the revival.
They sought out mainland priest Duncan Campbell who was persuaded to go to Lewis to help in the increased demand for services. Incredible manifestations occurred but I shall leave the details to a transcript of a taped message by Campbell to students of Faith Mission Bible College in Edinburgh, Scotland, which you can read here.
I will only narrate this one manifestation, for reasons which you will soon see why. In one of his services, Campbell noticed 17 year old Donald Smith who seemed deeply in the Spirit, tears rolling down his face. Campbell knew the lad was very much with the Spirit so he asked the lad if he would like to say a few words. Donald was saved and baptised just a couple of weeks ago and had been reading up the Bible. The young lad stood up and prayed. He said something he had read that morning :"I seem to be gazing into an open door and see the Lamb in the midst of the throne and the keys of death and hell on his waist." He was of course referring to Revelation 4. Then he looked towards heaven, raised his hands, and said, "God, there is power there. Let it loose!". In that instant, one side of the congregation suddenly put their hands up, heads tilted back, and remained in that position for 2 hours. On the other side, the folks slumped over, crying for mercy. God came upon the congregation and swept across the whole parish that night. Many villagers were saved that night.
Donald J Trump:
That woman was Mary Smith Anne MacLeod and the child is Donald J Trump. Trump's paternal side is from rich German vintner family and his maternal side is poverty-stricken Celtic Scots. Perhaps that is why Trump always has the empathy for the poor.
Trump grew up in a Presbyterian family. His pastor was the famous Norman Vincent Peale who had a great influence on him. Peale authored many books and he is best known for The Power of Positive Thinking. He popularised the concept of positive thinking and his influence on Trump is obvious. Trump's deal making ethos and winner mentality are Peale hallmarks.
Trump has always professed his belief in God, said God is his boss, and gave glory to Jesus for various accomplishments. As the 45th president, that New Hebrides bible came with him to the White House. Obama before Trump, had chased God out of the White House and government, committed a sacrilegious act of using the rainbow, symbol for God's faithfulness and mercy, to bask the White House in the 7 colours to celebrate LGBT movement, and brought in the Muslim Brotherhood. Trump brought God right back in and who can forget the beautiful Xmas decoration of the White House put up by Melanie Trump in 2017. Evangelicals were delirious and expectant of a revival in the US. But that was not to be.
The spiritual warfare in US and the West:
Barrack Obama enshrined divisive identity politics in the US and changed forever the way two-party democracy worked. In the March 2012 hot mic incident, Obama was caught telling Russian President Medvedev that he will have more flexibility to negotiate after his re-election. After he left the White House, Obama once said in jest, or maybe it was a Freudian slip, that he relish the idea of him working behind the scene crafting policies. It does appear Obama never really left the White House and there is an old dementia puppet in the Oval Office. Someone is pulling the strings. Joe Biden has worked on the extreme leftism that Obama initiated and brought havoc and grave danger to the US. The country is now under a cabal of Godless progressive lunatic leftists and globalist elites that have transformed the US from the 'land of the free' to the depths of moral depravity such as what Moses saw how the Israelites had turned away from God when he came down from Mount Sinai. The New Hebrides prior to the revival is nothing compared to the decline of faith in the US of today.
Many are those who see in the US and much of the Western world today of a conflict beyond human political power warfare, but of a darker struggle of good vs evil in the spiritual dimension. Paedophile behaviour is being normalised, institutions of family and marriage are being destroyed, transhumanism is promoted as the future of mankind, same-sex marriages are celebrated, sex-change and non-binary genders are hailed, educational system is perverted, Love is replaced with racial hatred, good and bad is flipped as soft-on-crime policies prevail, conservative values are shunned as Baphomet, Baal and Satan worship increasingly pushing into mainstream, abortion as a corollary of promiscuous lifestyle must be protected, etc, etc.
What used to be a divide of political ideologies of Left vs Right, where folks sit down and negotiate for middle ground in the best interest of the country, they now stare across the table with Hate. And the hate is amplified through synchronised narratives via media, big tech social platforms and social influencers.
"For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring" (Isaiah 44:3).God cannot help if the people do not thirst for Divine embrace. When US goes dark, the rest of the western civilisation follows. Short of a spiritual revival, it is difficult to envision the US pulling itself back from its path of immoral depravity towards hell. The nation needs to awaken or all hope is lost. As of now, there is only one God-fearing non-establishment player with the courage, strength and support of more than a hundred million voting Americans to turn the country around.
The orange mop came bearing the Holy Bible. The St John photo shoot with the New Hebrides Bible in hand was a statement of how important God will play in his administration. Yet many chose to ridicule the trivialities of how he held the bible upside down, questioned how many times he attend Church service, that he cannot quote the Bible. The liberal left prefers a non-Christian Obama who chased God out of public life, and a Ku Klux Klan racist, corrupt Joe Biden with public display of inappropriate behavior towards kids and women, policies that murdered hundreds of thousands of unborn babies and a tyrannical approach to suppressing the Christian faith. They still prefer the war mongers over the peace makers, don't they.
Here in Singapore, 15,000km away from the US, we should be concerned with their 2024 election because our destiny is impacted by them. Will Trump 2.0 and his New Hebrides Bible kick off a fiery revival in the US. Be wary of godless progressives in bed with tech billionaires who think they can put some chips into the brain and make gods out of men. I am more comfortable with a God-fearing guy who said:
“I believe God is everywhere and in all of us, and I want every decision I make to reflect well on me when it’s time for me to go to that big boardroom in the sky. When I get permanently fired by the ultimate boss, I want the elevator to heaven to go up, not down” ... Trump
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