The speaker shares their thoughts on the Asbury Revival, expressing reticence to embrace it as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
They emphasize the importance of waiting and seeing, rather than jumping to conclusions.
The speaker highlights the need for a standard, citing the church fathers and the Ecumenical Councils.
They caution against judging prematurely, encouraging others to wait and see what God will do through the revival.
Your thoughts, two more questions. Your thoughts on the tremendous outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Ashbury, Kentucky. Well, I'm not God. I can't give you a final judgment. since you're asking my thoughts, I have to say that I am very, very reticent to embrace it for a variety of reasons. Some of you heard tonight. I'm very reticent to embrace it as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And I would encourage everyone to do the same thing. And I would say, wait and see. Of course, God can do whatever he likes in anywhere on the face of the earth. God can inspire people to embrace him. But the problem is the context and the way does not resemble God. Like Christ says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. The truth of Protestant evangelicalism is not the truth of the gospel. It's an extortion, a perversion, a falling away. The way in which the prayer and the offering is going on may be very, very heartfelt. It may be very, you know, blameless in terms of desire. I have no doubt. But the way of Christ does not resemble the way of evangelicalism as seen where Where the standard How do I know Who am I to say right How do I know What the standard The saints The saints of all the ages are the standard Christ is the standard in their lives Christ and they are inseparable They become the elders at the throne the ones who worship at the throne They are the ones who sit on the thrones the apostles of every age right They will sit and they will judge and all the saints are the criteria, the standard, because Christ lived in them, preached the gospel through them. He led them and he was with them in their crucifixion and their witness of truth and God throughout the ages. So we have a standard. It's like, oh, how can I judge? No, we have a standard. We always have. That's why the church can say anathema to this heresy. How can the church fathers dare in council to turn to this group of sincere people at the time, right? The Nestorians or the iconoclast or whatever it is, right? How can he dare to turn to them and say, Anathaba? How did they dare do that? Because they, just like in the Acts of the Apostles, said, and how did the apostles dare to say that? Because they said, it seemed good to us, not just us, and the Holy Spirit. You see how those two go together? The us are the successors of the apostles who have the same faith and the same life. And the Holy Spirit which inspires and speaks through them and guides them in every age as promised by our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ they can speak to the truth of things And they said, this teaching of yours is inspired by the demons, anathema. Right. So we have a standard. We have the Ecumen Hope Council. We have the lives of the saints. We have the writings. So when we come to Ashbury and every Ashbury, we don't sit there and say, oh, who's the judge? I don't know. Well, it could be, it seems good. They're very kind. They're very sincere. There are millions of people who are kind and sincere all over the world. That doesn't mean much in terms of whether it's true and whether it's the truth and the life and the way that has been witnessed to for 2,000 years. That's the standard we have to judge it by. Now, does that mean that in spite of whatever problems or limits or delusions that exist already in evangelicalism, God can't work with those people? Absolutely he can work with those people. He can work in spite of it, though. And he's working in spite of all the delusions. And so they're not the fruit of those, right? That's what we have to understand. Many people, myself included, I used to go to evangelical, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic gatherings before I became Orthodox. I was sincere. I was offering up prayers. I was looking for God. I was trying to be righteous, trying to be judge, you know, judge righteously and to be righteous and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All the things that people want to do. They're sincere. And in spite of all the delusions that I held at the time, God led me out of that and showed me his church is the body of Christ and the truth of the gospel for 2 years The same can happen in and through the flurry of activity and flurry of desire and flurry of goodwill that could be happening in Ashbury But I'm not going to hold a big, as we say in Greek, a big basket, right? It's going to be a small basket because there's so many obstacles that we can see as Orthodox to that being a clear, clearly guiding people to the truth. There's a lot of obstacles. So they're going to have to overcome those obstacles. And in spite of those obstacles, they're going to have to make their way to come back to Christ. Now, again, I don't think we should judge prematurely, ultimately, what God will use and do through whatever is going on in the world, because he's constantly seeking to lead people to the truth. So we should just wait and see, and of itself, it will come in due time. But it would be premature, it would be enthusiastic, and it would be without the criteria of the gospel and the saints to run to conclusions and to be excited. to be i mean these things have happened innumerable times right and still we're on the path of apostasy generally speaking right so we'll see
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