 Well, Dr. Brown, thank you so much for being with us on this podcast today. As we were just chatting before recording here, we were talking about just recently how you had come to Michigan and were a part of our conference, our annual conference that we host at Radiant Network called Arise Shine. And our schedule didn't necessarily go as we had planned, it was perfectly God's plan. And I loved the session that you started our conference with on Monday. It was, is there another great awakening coming to America? And in that particular session, you highlighted some of the things that have taken place in American history that have been predecessors or precipitating cultural index items that kind of set the stage for when America has moved into revivals in the past and even highlighted some of the things that you experienced when you were a part of the Brownsville revival in the mid-90s. And I would love if you would take a moment and remind us, or maybe some of us are unfamiliar with it, where you think America is right now in relationship to, I'll put it this way, either a great awakening or great judgment coming upon our nation. Do you see indicators that there is a new revival or a new awakening coming to America? Yes, I do see indicators and the bad news can be the good news. In other words, revival does not come when everything is wonderful and great and we're all prospering and happy and things are going well. Revival comes when we're desperate. Revival comes when we know that something is terribly wrong. Revival comes when things are hanging in the balance of a book coming out in October called Revival or We Die, a great awakening is our hope. And that's what's happened through history. When things are the darkest and the people of God fall in their faces and cry out in desperation, that's when God moves. If you think of the messages of the churches, the messages to the seven churches in Asia Minor in Revelation chapter two and three, only two out of the seven congregations are just praised or encouraged without rebuke. One is Smyrna. I know your poverty and your afflictions, yet you're rich. You know, they didn't have much outwardly. They were under persecution, but they were rich in God in Philadelphia. You only have little strength, but you haven't denied my name. The churches that get the most severe rebuke were the ones that seem to be doing the best outwardly. Sardis, you have a reputation for being alive and yet you're dead. Laodicea, you say I'm rich, increased in wealth and I'm deed of nothing and don't realize that you're rich, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. So often when we think we're doing well and we think everything is great and look at us and look at our numbers and often it's superficial and compromised and weak. And that's why a recent Barnapole came up with the startling data that the young generation, 43% of them either say they don't believe in God or they don't know about God and they don't care. They've been raised in the midst of a superficial American version of the gospel. They've been raised in the midst of increased atheistic attacks on the reality of God, the reality of Scripture. They've been raised in the midst of the culture wars, in which case their solidarity is with their gay friends and why does God hate gays? Those are their perceptions. They've been raised in the social media peer pressure era, which is like nothing we've ever seen. They've been raised with access to pornography and stuff that kids didn't have to deal with in the past. There's been a perfect storm of attack and rather than many of our churches in America strutting and boasting, we're on our faces crying out. We know that something is terribly wrong. We see how hyper politicized we got during the last presidency. We see the trauma coming to the nation over COVID. We see so many things that are deeply dividing us, divisions over race and justice and we're torn up. We see the all out assault on our religious liberties and freedoms that it's an unprecedented time in American history and there's no political band-aid. There's no social band-aid. We either have a visitation from God or it's over and when you study American history in the past, we talk often about the first great awakening, but again you don't have an awakening unless you have a slumbering. That's why the bad news is the good news or can be the good news potentially. During the great awakening, there was a powerful transformation in the New England colonies and you think, okay, those are the colonies. Those are almost like theocratic. Those were so God-centered. You even had laws, you had to go to church and yet in the midst of that there was legalism, there was backsliding, there was worldliness and one minister looking back said, religion lay as it were dying in America. It was in the 1720s and then you have the great awakening of the 1730s, 1740s. After the Revolutionary War in America, so late 1700s, there was a timer of real spiritual backsliding and declension. James Edwin Orr describes a scene that there were colleges in America. Remember, these were all founded as Christian schools. They trained pastors or trained godly people to work in every area of society. There were colleges in America where there's that a single Christian student identify. One of the colleges, basically every student had signed up for the foul language club. Another college had maybe five students that were Christian and they would keep their meetings in secret code, but they were journaled because they didn't want to be found out. This is in America and Chief Justice John Marshall, according to James Edwin Orr, say that the church has fallen too far ever to recover. That was 1800. That's amazing. After that, we have the second grade awakening and that brings a transformative effect. In the mid 1800s, immediately before the prayer revival of 1857-58 that started New York City, again, James Edwin Orr describes the setting there that atheism was on the rise, witchcraft was on the rise, sexual immorality was on the rise. You've got all this going on. Then out of that, the cry, the desperation, the looking to God, there must be more. In the same way, before the Brownsville revival and the other renewal movements that took place about that same time, there was a lot of humbling, a lot of shaking in the church in America. I remember vividly the fall of Jim Baker and then after that, the fall of Jimmy Swigart. Baker known more for the positive prosperity message, but Swigart was the holiness preacher. Repentance preacher. He viciously went after Baker after he fell and I thought, oh, that's not a good idea, but I still love so much of his message. Then he's exposed in sexual immorality and instead of all the boasting, now there's, oh my God, there's this revelation, this realization. It's almost like you go out jogging, you've done it before and you got a little bit of a cough and then three days later, you're laid up in bed and you got cancer. It was like suddenly everything became undone. Even the situation in America now, aside from so many people dropping out of church for the first time in history of Gallup during a poll, over half of Americans do not attend church regularly. This is not a COVID related issue. This is just people- Right, spiritually. Yeah. Yeah. The rise in religious nuns, so people who said they have no religious affiliation, so going from in a decade, 85 percent of Americans professing to be Christian, obviously most just superficially, that drops to 75 percent. So just a sudden drop we've not seen. And then, and I don't say this to throw stones or attack, but think of all the scandals we've had recently. Right. It's true. I think major Christian leaders denying the faith, like a Josh Harris denying the faith and I just stating goodbye, that whole movement to the purity culture. Right. It doesn't even believe anymore. And he's identifying with gay activists. You have Jerry Falwell Jr. at Liberty and the scandals there. So you've got that whole academic political world. Then you have Carl Lentz Hillsong Church in New York City. So that's kind of the, you know, a whole other sphere of the body. And then you have Robbie Zacharias, the apologetics. Again, I don't say just to throw stones or attack, but it's like and every quarter you've got another scandal. So this is not the time to strut or boast. It's the time to be on our faces crying out. But I'm seeing it consistently around America, where people are crying out, where believers are desperate, where they recognize it is revival or we die. Yeah. God is meeting them. I saw it beginning to rise before COVID. And then during COVID, I saw it even greater desperation with the race protests that turn into riots and things. I know people that were actually in the midst of that on the streets preaching and they were seeing God moving. One of my friends said they had to set up a portable baptismal tank to baptize the people that were coming to faith. And now I'm seeing it as we're getting past some of the COVID restrictions and more and more gatherings are taking place that wherever there's hunger and thirst and desperation, the Holy Spirit's moving. And I'm seeing the exact opposite of the polling trends. I'm seeing where Jesus is being preached without compromise, where people are free to have an encounter with God because the Holy Spirit is welcomed and where the love of God has demonstrated. People of all ages are flocking and churches are trying to figure out what to do with all the people. Yeah. We've noticed it as well. You were just with us. In 2020, we weren't able to have, like everybody, our annual conference. And so the last time that we did was 2019. What we were struck by this year in the spring of 2021 was the level of hunger, even among leaders that had increased. You could just feel it. It was a tangible hunger. And I really do believe it was more than just, well, we haven't been able to go to a conference or be around one another. It was more than just kind of physical excitement. It was a deep longing and a hungering. And I really do think among leaders in the church, there is a realization that is taking place, not just because of COVID, but because of everything that's kind of taking place within culture, that it's more than just finding a new method. We need more than just a new model of church. We need a authentic move of the Holy Spirit. And without that, nothing is going to shift or change. The days of just being able to do pop-up church and think you're going to attract the market share of the Christian world and start an effective church in the community and be highly regarded and respected, those days are over. It's going to be a birth and prayer. It's going to require unity. And it's going to demand that we preach the whole counsel of the Word of God. And I think now we're starting to see where culture is diverting in a much more secular, much more atheistic, and I would even say a hostile posture towards Christianity that we're seeing what I believe is in some ways judgment beginning with the house of God. And what I mean by that is not necessarily judgment in a condemning ultimate way, but judgment from a weighing way, like putting it in the scales and determining the weight of it, and in order to bring about a purification, like Jesus speaks to the Laodicean church, he made reference to Revelation, buy from me gold refined in the fire. And the Bible says, Peter says, judgment begins in the house of God. And so we're starting to see, even through some of this exposure, even through what is being called deconstruction of faith, even among the leaders. Yes, there's a falling away, but there's also a real polarization taking place in the church, which in one hand, you could look at negatively. The other hand, you could look at it and say, no, God is actually demonstrating and showing us who we really are, who the church is, calling the Holy remnant together. And it's birthing a holy desperation on the inside of his people that we need you, God, we need your presence. E.M. Bown says, God doesn't anoint methods and he doesn't anoint machinery, he anoints men. And I think there's an old fashioned hunger and a cry, we felt it when you were here saying, God, we need a great anointing. We need a great anointing. Let me ask you this. So you just did an incredible kind of timeline, if you will, through the first, second grade awakening on in to the 20th century. Would you say there's a tendency, oftentimes, for us to idealize the periods of times in which God moved and kind of think to ourselves like, well, obviously, there was a revival in the 1700s, because back then, everybody went to church, nobody was alcoholic, all families were perfect, doctrine was pure. And so by idealizing those periods, it can actually steal from us our faith that God can do it in our day. E.M. Yeah, look, if that's the way things were, if everything was wonderful, you wouldn't have needed a revival. E.M. Yeah, look at the UK with Wesley, things were a mess. E.M. Yeah, so again, revival presupposes declension. That's what Charles Finney said, revival presupposes that the church is sunk down in a backslidden state, and revival consists of the church returning from its backsliding in the conversion of sinners. That was Finney's simple definition of revival. One of the most famous verses, revival verses in the Bible is Habakkuk 3.2, and the King James and some of the translations actually have revive in it, revive us in the midst of the years, or revive your work in the midst of the years. But the context is that Habakkuk sees the wickedness of Judah and prays to God, what are you going to do about this? And God said, I'm going to send the Chaldeans, the Babylonians in judgment, and he sees that, it's like, oh no, the cure is worse than the disease, so it's a real crisis. Habakkuk is roughly a contemporary of Jeremiah, and there's the psalm of Habakkuk, the prayer of Habakkuk that ends the book. But he says, Lord, I've heard about your fame. I've heard about the things you did in the past. I've heard about the past moves of God and the past deliverances for people. I've heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, but in other words, it's not happening today. Grandpa's stories don't cut it. The miracles of the past, you're not going to touch today's generation. Every generation must have its own encounter with God. So Lord, I've heard about this. I stand in awe of your deeds, revive them in the midst of the years, renew them in our time, and then in wrath, remember mercy. So there's this sense of the judgment and this sense that the fiery judgment coming, and it's ready to collapse on the nation, it's ready to destroy us. So in wrath, remember mercy, there's a desperation to the prayer. There's an earnestness to the prayer. There's a sense of if God doesn't move now, it's all over. And that's the place that we have to come to. And that's often the place that in America, it's very hard for us to come to, because the whole thing about being American, we can do it, where there's a thrill, there's a way. You know, the entrepreneurial spirit, make it bitter, make it bigger and better and so on. And those are positive aspects, you know, but Samuel Chadwick said the church always fails at the point of self-confidence. And that can be a real curse. And even the pressures of COVID and of course loss of life and upheaval, many Americans, it's been a very, very difficult season for them. At the same time, God was working in the midst of it. God did not stop working in the midst of COVID. Whatever the cause of it, whoever sent it, however it happened, the bottom line is that in the midst of it, God was bringing many of his people to a place of greater desperation, greater hunger, greater recognition of we need God. Through the scriptures, God fills the hungry. And my greatest concern prior to where we are now in the last five, 10 years was that there was not sufficient hunger, not sufficient desperation, not sufficient realization that we had to have revival. We had to have supernatural breakthrough. Things were much worse than we realized. And culture was collapsing much more quickly than we realized. And, you know, even having Donald Trump in the White House, evangelicals had access to him. He was putting forth many good policies and then his behavior, his behavior was as bad as his policies were good. But there was this sense of, okay, we'll get another Supreme Court justice in or we'll tip the Senate in this direction or the House in this direction, and then Trump will do this and Trump will do that. And look, I would rather have someone in office who is making policy decisions that we feel are good for the nation or in the best interest in the sight of God. But it's a very subtle thing when you begin to look to a person, when you begin to look to a party to bring social and moral change, that can't happen. That can only happen through the gospel. And we're in this place now, where are we going to go? We've got an administration that's not entirely evil, but it stands against so many of our values. It's got the Equality Act ready to pass which guts religious freedoms. It's strongly pro-abortion. It's made transgender rights the issue of the day at the expense of Christian rights and fairness to women. And one thing after another and potentially disastrous policies in the Middle East and so on and so forth. So where are we going to do? What are we going to do? We're going to get on our face and say, God, I need you. But we've always needed him. That's the reality. We needed him just as much in the Trump days as in the Biden days. Just to always realize it. Now, what else are we going to do? So it's painful if you've ever gone on an extended fast or the early days, the end days, you're hungry, it can be painful. So hunger itself is difficult, but that's what prepares the way, that desperation. And I'm seeing much more holy desperation today than I did five years ago, even three years ago. So that to me is encouraging. That is the great precursor to revival. You know, when you were here and we were talking about the Jesus people movement or the Jesus revolution that took place, we were highlighting, I remember you mentioning the Time Magazine from June, I think it's June 7th or June 6th, 1971. And on the cover of Time Magazine was a kind of a psychedelic Jesus. And it said the Jesus Revolution. And inside that article, it highlighted the revival that had swept across America, beginning on the West Coast and impacted much of our culture and much of our nation, even today, the ripple effects of it in our worship styles, our non-denominational churches, and those kinds of things is still being felt. But we were talking about that, and you actually were born again in 1971, I believe. Yep. That was the year I was born, by the way. And after your visit, I went and I have a copy of that magazine, the original, the whole magazine. And I took it out and I was going through and reading all the articles, not just about the Jesus revolution, although that was very interesting. But it was interesting, ironic in some ways, that in that magazine also was a whole separate set of articles that were dealing with the Israeli PLO conflict in 1971. So there was this whole section about how Israel was fighting a war within itself and then also having to face off against some of the enemies that were dead set on their own destruction, which I thought was very interesting because here we are, and in many ways, a lot of the cultural issues that were facing America, whether it was Vietnam, racial tensions, economic downturn, political corruption, they had just gone through the 60s counter-cultural revolution, drug, sex, rock and roll, Eastern religion, all kinds of things taking place at the same time, really in a lot of ways, parallels where we currently are today, 20, well, almost 50 years later, actually 50 because I just turned 50. And also things that globally were taking place, especially in Israel. Do you think there is in some way a link between what is happening in culture and even the church and the prophetic signpost of Israel connected in all of this? Yeah, well, first, let's look at the Time Magazine situation. Because in April of 1965, Time Magazine had another cover story. And it was unique because for the first time, there was no picture, just text on the front cover. And it was very stark red and black color, and that was it. And it asked the question, is God dead? That was God dead? Of 65. Six years and two months later is the Time Magazine cover, The Jesus Revolution. It's again encouraging that light comes out of the darkness, that things are so crazy in these strange theologies about the death of God and all of this, that Time Magazine asked that question. And six years later, God comes shouting with the answer, no, he's not dead. And that Jesus Revolution article, as you know, is an amazing article. It's edifying. It's amazing to read. And what happened was in the midst of the sex, drugs, rock and roll, rebellion, Eastern religion, generation gap, everything that was going on, people began to pray. It was a remnant. I don't know that it was a large national prayer movement as much as intercessors really began to seek the face of God. But they began to pray in particular for that young generation. And there must have been similar prayer in other parts of the world, because suddenly, God begins saving hippies, radicals, rebels, and some of the earliest stories like 67 in the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. And it was this conservative Baptist church, the gospel and people coming to faith. And the things were so raw. I mean, you'd have people using LSD and doing Bible studies and just, and then little by little, they'd get serious and get discipled. And it's quite extraordinary. And here we end up in this little Italian Pentecostal church, you know, the men wearing suits and the women wearing dresses. And that's where we get saved. You know, coming in as hippies in 1971 and then a bunch of our friends in the years after that. And as I travel around the world, I've run into people, same background as me. I was a drummer in a rock band. This was a guitarist of the rock band. This played keyboards. This was lead singer, you know, and this one into transcendental meditation and this one in a commune. And we all got saved within a period of a couple of years around the world in the most interesting circumstances. So that's encouraging to see what God did. And many of us have been believing for years and even felt the Lord showed us that there would be an outpouring like this in the gay and lesbian community. The great question was, would the churches be ready? Because the churches really weren't ready for all the hippies to come in and help them get assimilated and really discipled and things like that. Will we be ready for the new harvest? But on the one hand, things are different in that there was a more of a seeking for peace and, you know, make love, not war. Right. Give peace a chance. You know, we declared war. Age of Aquarius. Yeah. Exactly. And we're coming into new and better realms. So you had the anger against the war. You had the protests. You know, that was there. You had the Black Panthers. You had the weathermen. You had those that were engaged in acts of violence against the government or against the system. And cops were considered pigs and all of that. But in the midst of it, it was kind of this looking for utopia and and Woodstock was the way and, you know, peace and drugs and all this. On the other hand, even though there's more anger being expressed today and there's more of a shrill cry, you could say, in the midst of it, it's another manifestation of that seeking for utopia. It's Marxist ideology, even more openly in the forefront, is basically promising a world of perfect equality for everyone. Right. It's a world where everybody has the same outcome and there's no competition, etc. And the oppressed class is now elevated and it's exactly the same as where the rich were. Of course, we know it doesn't work like that. Right. It doesn't happen like that. It's at the animal farm scene that what's going to happen is you're going to have what one class is going to rise up and oppress the other class. And the only way you get to the path of so-called equalities, you basically take everything from everybody and you bring tremendous oppression and even violence with it. So we see those manifestations. But behind it, young people are still thinking things are not the way they're supposed to be. Things need to be leveled out. Things need to be fixed. So there's a parallel in that sense to what was happening in the 60s and the social justice movement could parallel the anti-war movement in certain ways. And what we have to do is see past the carnality, see past the extreme elements of BLM, Antifa, etc. And say, okay, there's something you're looking for. There's something you're crying for. There's something you want and it can only be found in God. And then we as the church have to lead the way in racial reconciliation. We have to lead the way in working together for true justice and addressing inequities where we see them. And we have to show the way of real liberation for the captives found in the gospel. So in that sense, there's that parallel again. It looks so foreign. It looks so hostile. It looks so anti-God. And yet, in the midst of it, I believe there is a cry that only God can fulfill. Yeah. So based on what you have seen both in history, what you have experienced personally, both as someone who was saved in the midst of a revival of sorts that last touched our nation, and also as a leader in a renewal that took place and really touched the globe in many ways, what are the things that as you look forward in time at the church and go, okay, if we know that God is dealing with us, confronting our false allegiances and expectations of politics, and culture is looking at all these empty avenues to bring about this change and equity and utopia. But as you look at the church in the future and saying, for us to be prepared for the harvest, how should the church, how should we, instead of using this entity called the church, how should we, the people of God, be positioning ourselves right now? And here's why I asked that question, because 25, 30 years ago, the church was looking at, at that time it was the seeker sensitive model, and then it was the attractional model, and then it was the missional and the emergent church model. Churches and leaders are constantly looking for, okay, what's the next greatest thing? But I think when we do that, oftentimes we miss the ancient landmarks that have been established. What are the things that, based on your experience of leading, need to be leading cultural indexes of the church to become the wineskin that's ready for the harvest? Right. First, we need to understand that there are different models, and the models are not in and of themselves all bad or all good, you know, just like different foods or different, right, or different hairstyles. Some is just cultural, it's a matter of taste, it's a matter of what fits best, what works best, but we don't put our trust in any of those things. We don't put our trust in the setup or in the system of it. We have to have God moving powerfully in our midst. So to me, it's all about back to the basics, back to the basics. And that means that for each of us pursuing God to anew us in our first love, pursuing God to reveal areas of backsliding, or compromise, or sinful strongholds in our own lives, or loss of vision, or loss of faith, or a sense of calling. By God's grace, I'm setting my schedule now to go away once a month after my radio show on a Friday, just a little cabin or little place, just a bit more isolated, just for the intentionality of it. I could easily pray in my house, it's just Nancy and I in the house, we don't have kids or grandkids in the house, but there's an intentionality about going away, and then spending all Friday night, all day, Saturday, Sunday, all day, all night, just seeking the Lord in the word, praying, just that, and then driving back on Monday morning, because I know that I have to break through into a deeper place. And I can't do that without intentionally making a decision, how many are not able to do that with schedule, but maybe it's getting up earlier in the morning, maybe it's skipping meals and seeking the face of God, maybe it's turning off the TV, or the computer, or the cell phone, whatever at night and just getting alone and closing the door in a room, whatever it is, it's in God, I've got to break through there, there must be more, I know from experience, I know from history, I know from your word, that there must be more, I know from this burning inside of me, there must be more. So the very first thing is my own walk with God, and going back to the promises God's given, going back to things that I've journaled over the years, and praying over them again, or true prophetic words that were spoken, and fighting the good fight of faith based on that, and looking to have everything I've ever had in terms of intimacy, and love for Jesus, and love for the lost, and then back to the basics in terms of what we do as a church, are we as a body seeking the face of God? Are we a prayerful people? Are we as a body giving room to the Holy Spirit to move and have His way? Are we as a body intentionally going for the lost and praying for the lost? Are we really seeing people set free, disciples being made? And I believe if we make the main thing the main thing, that when God is ready to move, that we'll be on track, that if secondary things have our interests, or if our whole thing is how to get people in and out within a certain period of time, rather than how they can really encounter God within that time, if we make the main thing the main thing, then when God begins to move, we're ready to go in the right direction. And in 93, 94, into early 95, as I was hearing reports about God moving, the Holy Spirit being poured out in different places, I was excited. I could tell something real was happening, but I knew there had to be more. In England, they were calling it the blessing. And I remember going over to England in 94, and God gave me a word how to move from the blessing to revival. And I said, when God begins to move and pour out His Spirit, you tend to get ditches on either side of the road. You have the ditch of religious traditionalism, and you have the ditch of superficial sensationalism or manifestation mania. So God begins to move, and whenever God moves, something unusual is going to happen. Some of that rocks our boat, shakes our world. So the religious traditionalists see that, and they say, that can't be God. We've never done that, but now we don't accept it. That's too emotional. It's too loud. It's too intense. And they fall into that ditch. And then on the other side, let's say it's Pentecost, and you have the sound of a blowing of a blowing violent wind and tongues of fire. Well, now you want to have violent blowing wind meetings or tongues of fire meetings. And you end up majoring on the secondary things, the things that were signs, but we're not the ultimate substance in terms of the Holy Spirit was the substance, the fire, and that was those outward signs. It was the Spirit and the preaching of Jesus. So you get this manifestation mania. Everyone wants to come and shake or fall or laugh or whatever the thing is. And you end up missing the central thing that God is doing. And what I said in the midst of this is the way to avoid the two ditches is simply this, that you keep your eyes focused on Jesus with an atmosphere where the Spirit can move and preach repentance to the church and to the world, preach holiness and preach harvest. So you're going for the lost and you're going for cleansing in the church. And if you'll do that, you'll move from the blessing to revival. And of course, that was the essence of what Brownsville was all about, that twofold message of repentance to the church and to the world holiness and harvest. So we get back to the basics, spiritual desperation crying out when God moves the containers will be ready to receive him and they won't burst open and spill out. Yeah. So I'm wondering what your sense is knowing everything that you know, seeing everything that you see. Are you optimistic that that is the direction that the church and on its heels the culture is moving? I am in fear and trembling but with hope. Because things are really in a very dire situation now. Franklin Graham was asked a couple years ago why he speaks about politics more than his father did. And he said when my father went to school, they read the Bible in school. It just kind of reminded us that we're in a very, very different world. So it is revival or we die. It's a real treacherous situation. Our oldest granddaughter is going into her junior year at Liberty in the fall. Just reminded me she's a junior now because she just finished her second year there. So she's 20. We've got 17, 14. It's not that long from now that they could easily be married with kids of their own. What kind of world are those kids going to grow up in? Could they even be in a public school setting where things are? Will there be liberty to homeschool the way you want? Will there be liberty to preach the way you want? I'm not exaggerating when I'm talking about the urgency of the hour and how precarious things are. And obviously I've written books about these subjects with wake-up calls and it is an extreme, extreme moment in our nation's history. So there's fear and trembling knowing that America as we know it could be collapsing. At the same time, I do deeply believe that we're right on the edge of something that in fact there are pockets around the country where God is moving and the Holy Spirit's being poured out. Nothing that we would call revival yet, but the trickles, the first things that give us the hope that the rest is coming. More desperation. Even churches that I've ministered in over the years, we saw a pattern where say during the days of Brownsville, if you were one of the leaders there, I mean, you could be booked 10 years out. I mean, people were so desperate to have you come and wherever you'd go, the fire would fall and God moved powerfully. And then as the years went on, I've had people say, could you come in and teach on the culture wars? Or can you be gained Christian? What does the Bible say? And that's to this day because these are issues that we're dealing with. Or could you come and teach on this and teach on that? And I'm happy to do it because it's serving the body in different ways. But what I began to notice starting in late 2019 is more and more churches saying, could you come and preach on revival? And it wasn't, could you come and teach, but you could come and preach. And we just want to have open-ended meetings instead of, could you teach and then afterwards have a Q&A session? Could you preach and call us to the altar? Again, it was just a little sign to me. You mentioned Israel earlier. I think, stand with that. There's always so much happening in Israel. And on the one hand, you have the Abraham Accords that were amazing step forward, but then ongoing war with Hamas and the splitting of the Palestinian people between Palestinian authority in Hamas and Israel within itself in great upheaval with the elections and no clear leadership for the nation and one election after another after another. It could well be that that is yet another sign of the upheaval that the world is in. But it's a reminder of how everything is on edge. And I think the word that you mentioned is the keyword, the if word. If you look in Joel, the second chapter, there's a call for repentance and weeping between the porch and the altar. But then it says this, who knows? God might turn back from his wrath and he might even leave us a blessing. And when I was studying that many, many years ago and looking at some commentaries, one made this interesting point that if you tell people it's over, it's done, judgment's coming. There's nothing you can do to stop it. It's inevitable. It's over. Your nation is going to be destroyed. Well, with that despair, that hopelessness, you're not going to pray. A few people will try, but it's like, what's the use? It's over. On the flip side, if you say, hey, guys, if we just pray and cry out, everything's going to be great. God's going to move. We're going to have great time. Well, you get kind of complacent, like, ah, no big deal. But when you say, look, it's an urgent time, maybe, maybe if we cry out, it's not too late, then you get that desperation. Yeah. And that's really how I feel. I don't know what the future will hold. Or I don't know that we may have to sink really, really low before the change comes. I am absolutely convinced that I'm going to see, with my own eyes, a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution. And that'll be right in the thick of it. I am convinced to the core of my being of that, just as God showed me before Brownsville, 13 years before he called me there, that I would be in the midst of a revival that would change the world or touch the world, I should say. Yeah. When he spoke that to me in April of 1983. And I was nobody in terms of no connections and not known and freshly excommunicated from the church. I was part of it. The Holy Spirit was rejected. I got rejected with that. And here, God says that to me. What's been burning in my heart now for over 20 years, that we will see a gospel-based moral and cultural revolution. And I'm seeing the pushback more and more. I'm just seeing people waking up saying, this is crazy. Enough is enough. Even with laws being passed statewide and not just Christian leaders standing up, but secular society, even with cancel culture. You've got every kind of secular leader in Tennessee. This is crazy. What are we doing? We're destroying ourselves. Things are in that extreme position. We may collapse and go through really, really bad times before awakening comes. So there's that sense of urgency. But I do believe if we will not take our foot off the gas. I'd even said that before the elections, look, if President Trump is elected and you think he's best for our country, don't stop praying. Pray all the more desperation. Pray more. He's not the solution to save the nation. So we've got to do that. That even if we start to see breakthroughs, then it's like, praise God, this is wonderful, but we can't stop here. And then as you and I chatted when I was with you at the conference, the idea of a great reset of a cultural reset. So in my mind, I'm thinking about generations of factors that got us to where we are. I mean, we can point dramatically to the 60s and the tremendous shift that happened in culture then, but then what led up to that? What were the curses of that? What happened in the educational system in the early 1900s and so on? And what philosophies came in? And then how are campuses impacted and so on and so forth? How are families impacted? So what I want to do is in conjunction with great outpouring of the spirit, seek to turn culture in a godly direction, not a theocracy, but something where better values are instilled for everyone as if we're doing a hundred year reset in the other direction and hand the baton over to the next generation in better shape than it was handed over to us. And then if Jesus comes in the midst of all that, that's the goal. That's what we want to see. But either way, I look at it like I'm in a relay race and I don't know if I'm the last runner or if the 10-run is after me. But what I do know is, I'm going to run with all my might and then do my best to then turn over the baton to either to Jesus as he returns or to the next generation. And I've got this one race, one life to live, one race to run. And that's that's what I'm thinking. So there's urgency, but there's hope and there's confidence at the same time. It's shouting, wake up, wake up, but knowing that God will come if we're truly desperate. I remember Mario Morello years ago commenting that America and when we're talking about renewal, revival, awakening, obviously we want our mindset to be global because we're living in a global world. Jesus' eyes are on the nations. This is not just about America, but as people that are living in this nation, which really is a unique place, Mario Morello was commenting that America is in a period of time much like King Josiah, where it wasn't immoral, it was just amoral because for so long in King Josiah's day, the Word of God had been unknown, they really even have copies of it or have availability to it or it wasn't front and center. And King Josiah is this young leader, he emerges, they find the Word of God in the house of God, they bring it back, he reads it and he repents. And it created an extension of the blessing of God at least for several years. And in many ways, I think when we're looking at the landscape of American culture right now, it's not even that we're moral on one hand, like maybe some would think 50 years ago America was more moral. And it's not even that it's immoral where we know what is right and wrong and those are clearly accepted and embraced. It's like this amoral where anything goes and it's a spiritual, it's a level of spiritual bankruptcy. But the good news is if the church and if leaders and prophetic voices begin to rise up with the Word of God and bring it front and center with clarity, with accuracy, and with holiness, I really believe that there can be a Josiah generation within the church and outside of the church that radically responds in repentance and brings about cultural transformation. I mean, Josiah, he radically transformed the culture in his community around him in response to that. And Dr. Brown, we're so grateful for you because I feel like you are running like that. You're one of the most disciplined men I know being around you. You've written, I think over 40 books and you do a daily television program called Line of Fire. For those of you who are listening, you need to listen to that. And you are leaving it all on the field. And for that, we are so grateful. We are grateful for your voice, your leadership. And we need your voice. And we just honor and we respect you so much. So we want to thank you for coming on and joining us today. Well, my joy to be with you. And one other thing that brings me confidence is when you've been preaching the gospel for decades, when you've been pouring into students in ministry school and hungry leaders, and when you've gone around the world and seen what God is doing in many parts of the world, you have a sense of a harvest that can be reaped because we've been sowing seeds for many, many, many years. So in the midst of the darkness and the midst of the depravity and the midst of the confusion, the midst of the compromise and everything happening in society, there's this confidence that there's so many serious believers, young men, young women, others that are going after God that are passionate. And then the world is a whole seeing the failure of its system, that it can be the perfect storm in the other direction, where these that have been trained and are hungry and thirsty and serious can be raised up as the society is beginning to say something wrong, something that's messed up here. So let it be, I appreciate the kind words and expect to see amazing days ahead. Amen. Thank you, Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us on Spirit and Truth. God bless. Thank you again for joining us. Hopefully you learned and even laughed. Stick with us, subscribe to the podcast, and we'll see you again right here on Spirit and Truth.