As the flames of revival rage on various college campuses, Pastor Shane Idleman of Westside Christian Fellowship in Leona Valley, California, is making some bold predictions about what could follow.
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Idleman, who joined CBN’s Faithwire this week to discuss the Asbury University revival that sent tens of thousands of people from around the world to the college to worship in the small town of Wilmore, Kentucky, believes God is at work.
“God’s everywhere, but there are seasons where He will meet a group of people that are seeking Him, and praying, and fasting and begin to just bring revival, and people don’t wanna leave,” he said. “The manifest presence of God is there.”
Idleman continued, “[Revival] is when God supernaturally does amazing things, spiritually.”
The preacher said the heart of revival is to “awaken the sleeping dead” and explained the impact he believes these events can have on the communities experiencing them.
“God, during seasons of revival, will come in and just completely overtake the event or the church service,” he said. “Genuine revival is when God is leading, and you feel the power and presence of God.”
Idleman believes some of the fruit of these revivals won’t be seen for years, though he said some spiritual freedoms from “demonic strongholds” could be more immediate.
Watch what Idleman had to say about the revival at Asbury, the Lee University revival, and other similar gatherings unfolding on college campuses:
Idleman has had his own experience with revival, with his church going through periods when they’ve held services every day for two weeks, worshipping Jesus throughout.
The pastor believes these spiritual resurgences can happen even as culture continues to deteriorate, looking back to the First Great Awakening and Jonathan Edwards’ journals, which said the “religious low” had never been more significant and that drunkenness was, at the time, increasingly abounding.
Even then, though, revival was possible. Idleman believes the same is true of today’s modern era — when many have turned away from the eternal.
“During these dark times, if people are calling on God and seeking Him with all their heart … they’re praying, they’re fasting, God will deliver on His promise to bring a season of revival,” Idleman said. “It might be personally, it might be corporately, it might be … to an area like this.”
Watch everything Idleman had to say about revival here.
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