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“Are we facing another Great Awakening?”

“Are we facing another Great Awakening?”

MAY 5, 2023

/ Programs / Key Life / “Are we facing another Great Awakening?”

Steve Brown:
Are we facing another Great Awakening? The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase, and worship. So, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hello Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey, how you doing Steve?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing really good.

Pete Alwinson:
Good.

Steve Brown:
You’ve making some changes with Forge, aren’t you?

Pete Alwinson:
Well, we’re moving one of our sites from our northern on the western side, down to Maitland area coming up after Easter.

Steve Brown:
You’re heading for downtown man. Pretty soon you’ll be taking over all of Central Florida.

Pete Alwinson:
No, just a part of the game.

Steve Brown:
Hey, listen guys, do check out ForgeTruth.com especially if you’re living here in Central Florida and would like to be involved in one of the most dynamic men’s ministry in the country. ForgeTruth.com that’s a deep website. A lot of good stuff there and you’ll rise up and call me blessed for having told you about it. And Pete Alwinson as you know, comes in on Fridays. We’ve been doing this since we were both little children, actually, we’ve been doing it for over 25 years sitting in this studio on Fridays answering questions. And we do it for a lot of reasons. We like each other and I like to share the guilt. I get tired of all the critical letters, so I give half of them to Pete and that works for me. And Pete has so much good stuff to say, as you know, and we love your questions. You can send your question to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

Or you can e-mail your question to [email protected] or, 24 7, you can pick up the phone, dial 1-800-KEY-LIFE and follow instructions. Give us your question and sometimes we put your voice on this program. And by the way and you knew I was going to say this, all of those places are where you could make a contribution to Key Life. And if you really love Jesus, you would. That’s manipulative, I’m sorry. Some of you can, some of you can’t, if you can, we promise to use your gift, squeeze every dime for the glory of God. And if you can’t say a prayer for this ministry. We are not for profit, obviously, you can put it on your credit card, etc. Help us if you can, if you can’t pray for us. Now Pete, you pray for us.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. Let’s pray together. Father, we do come to you at the end of this week. What a joy to be able to pause just for a minute and to praise you, and to honor you, and to live up your name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We thank you that you came after us before we came after you. We thank you that you brought us to the end of our self-righteousness and our brokenness, and you have shown us your mercy and grace and truly your salvation in Jesus. And Lord Jesus, we honor you and praise you. You are high and holy and lifted up. And yet, through your Spirit, you are in our hearts and we pray that you’d continue to transform us. Lord, help us in our relationships and our work, Lord, with the issues that we face and just facing ourselves honestly. And so, now we come to you and we ask this week-end that you’d be honored and glorified. Lord, use your priests, your pastors, your teachers, your worship directors, all those that work together to bring us into your presence in worship. We pray you’d be honored and glorified, and we commit this time of Q&A to you right now as we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Pete, let’s first go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I think we’re in for the great awakening. I believe it may be the greatest awakening, and I just want to know what I can do to help it move forward. Films, communicate to the unsaved, and then follow up getting them into Bible believing churches and discipleship groups.

Steve Brown:
I think, first, I agree with you by the way. I think we’re sitting on top of something that’s going, Aslan is on the move. And Jesus, if you haven’t seen the Jesus Revolution movie, you ought to see it. We interviewed the producer of that here on our talk show and the thing at Asbury, which is spread to other Christian colleges and universities, God’s doing something, but we have to be very careful because we want it so bad. Sometimes because, and I talk to a lot of Christians. I did a seminar at The Cove, the Graham Training Center on that we were sitting on top of a great awakening. But you have to be careful because when it comes, you’ll know it because God is doing it and you won’t have to ask what to do. People will be looking for Bible believing churches. They came to our church 50 years ago and nobody invited them. They just came in droves. And you’ll find the questions that are being asked are the, you’ll have the answers you’re already prepared for. So, just be aware and be sensitive and do follow what Jesus is doing. And that will be enough. How do you feel? Are you feel that we’re seeing God’s doing something?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, I do too. I agree with you a hundred percent. Wouldn’t it be wonderful this time of life? We did a podcast for Forge Truth podcast with Doug Hankins from First Baptist downtown. And he’s kind of studied this and he went to the Asbury. He went and hung out.

Steve Brown:
What did he say?

Pete Alwinson:
He, you know, he said that, in his study of, and J. Edwin Orr is a great guy to read too.

Steve Brown:
I’ve read those books.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. He’s good.

Steve Brown:
He wrote one book and then some others on it too.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. So, I think what we see in common in preparing for these things is the repentance of God’s people.

Steve Brown:
Yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
The prayer of God’s people. And then the willing to be bold as God’s people, you know, just be ready to talk. And I think what you said is right, God’s, it’s a thing of God. It’s just absolutely stunning.

Steve Brown:
Oh, it really is. And that, you know, when we did the talk show with the producer, And he was wonderful, but he sent us a live stream and I went into my study here at Key Life and watched 15 minutes and fell apart. I thought, I’m a wuss, I’ve got a day job, I can’t watch anymore of this, I’ve got to go see it in a theatre where it’s dark and nobody will know you’re crying cause we all know real men don’t cry. But I was there for that one.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, you were up there and I was in Southern California.

Steve Brown:
So, you saw it too.

Pete Alwinson:
Well at the whole Maranatha thing. I was in Long Beach and we’d drive down to Costa Mesa and go to the Maranatha concerts on Saturday night. So, we saw a lot of that.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. It was something.

Pete Alwinson:
And yeah, it was exciting.

Steve Brown:
And it was so of God. We’re, we are, up until recently we’ve been running on the gasoline from that awakening. But now, people are dying off. And I say, the Lord, you know, this is your church, you ought to do something pretty soon cause we’re going to die if you don’t. And I really believe that he is. And that we’re seeing the beginnings of an awakening.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And like

Steve Brown:
respond with truth, yeah.

Pete Alwinson:
No, and like you so often say, you know, there’s no perspiration on God’s upper lip. He’s working this and we get to be a part of it.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. This, I cannot lie, this comes from our boss, Dr. George Bingham, who is the president of Key Life. So, you know, we’re gonna answer this question no matter what.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Okay.

Steve Brown:
But what happened was, I think George read a blog you wrote on this particular subject and said it would be a good question for you guys to deal with on the Q&A broadcast. And the question is this, what does the Bible teach about civil disobedience? Is it ever appropriate for a Christian to break the law?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. It’s a great subject. We had fun with this, as you know, guys, when guys get together and that’s what we do, is, you know, they get fired up about things going on that they don’t like.

Steve Brown:
Oh yeah, I do too.

Pete Alwinson:
I do too. Yeah, we both do. And so, the blog is if you pull out on disobeying the government, and you know, one of the things we said is you’re in the spirit of the early church.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Pete Alwinson:
Acts 4 and 5. But they did it when they were really pushed to do something that was against God’s word and the gospel.

Steve Brown:
And their response, we must obey God rather than men.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. Yeah. Isn’t that that, and that’s a definitive cross the line kind of thing for American Christians,

Steve Brown:
oh, I agree.

Pete Alwinson:
men and women.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, I agree. And sometimes you just do it and ask forgiveness, do you think?

Pete Alwinson:
Sometimes, yeah, I, you know, Steve, I think too there’s this sense that a lot of us are, we are so afraid of offending people.

Steve Brown:
I know.

Pete Alwinson:
That I think, and we want to be nice. And now, here is really where the grace discussion comes in. Is it gracious as a Christian to push back on somebody who holds a wholly, unbiblical, political position?

Steve Brown:
Of course it’s gracious to do that.

Pete Alwinson:
It is. It is.

Steve Brown:
But that has eternal consequences.

Pete Alwinson:
Exactly right. But a lot of us don’t want to be that person to bring it up.

Steve Brown:
We really don’t. And you know, I was listening to somebody talk and I don’t even remember who it was who said, if our culture bothers you, and by the way, I, when you came into my study, just before we came in here, I was working on material I’m doing for a Cove seminar

Pete Alwinson:
Yea.

Steve Brown:
on how to respond to a crazy world. And it is crazy. It’s a, I mean, it is incredibly, it’s an insane asylum where the patients are running the institution. And it scares you to death. And that the most important thing you can do in response to that is to support a church. Stand up and be with the church and let people know where you stand. And then secondly, speak the truth. Thirdly, be kind, but cool. And love. And that’s all you can do.

Pete Alwinson:
And love practically. But you know, as you said, the church, don’t abandon the church and move away into isolation, speak up and be kind and serve. So yeah, those are three really good points. I think one thing that, you know, if you’re going to disobey the government in any particular way. Like for instance, if they say, don’t talk about X. But clearly, we should be able to talk about that, then I think you do it knowing that you may have to pay the consequence.

Steve Brown:
Yeah. And be willing to pay the consequence.

Pete Alwinson:
And be willing to pay the consequence.

Steve Brown:
That’s true. That’s good stuff. I would bring up another question, but we don’t have time.

Pete Alwinson:
Sing, sing.

Steve Brown:
Well, I don’t want to lose the whole audience, so I’m not going to do that. So, I’ll just relax and say what I always say. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.

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