Welcome to the For the Gospel podcast, where we provide sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and I want to welcome our listeners on Spotify, Apple, and other podcast platforms, along with those of you now watching our brand new video podcast format on YouTube. All of these editions are the result of your support and the talented teammates that I'm blessed to serve with here at For the Gospel. If you haven't already, hit subscribe on YouTube. And if you'd like to become a gospel patron through a one-time or monthly gift, you can go to forthegospel.org and you can check out information about our team, our ministry, what we do, and why partnering with us provides free resources for people online on social media and around the world. Thank you again for your support and your prayers. On today's episode, we're finishing up a three-week series on revival and answering the big three questions that we've asked. Number one, what is revival? Number two, what are the marks of true revival? And then this episode now, what are the marks of false revival? To start, I want to highlight an important truth for you to consider. And then we'll jump into the marks of false revival. Here's the important truth. If the church would be faithful, false revival stands no chance. The reason that false revival has a foothold at all in the church now and in church history is because the church abdicates its role and does not propagate truth. And also because we're in a spiritual war. Because Satan does seek to undermine the church and infiltrate leadership, he takes a divide and conquer strategy. So we need to think deeply and critically about true and false revival. We need to think critically about these topics, and we should never be cynical to the point where we're not optimistic or prayerful for revival. But we should and we ought to, we can use discernment because the Bible gives us truths we can stand on in these times. But if the church will thrive and if the church will stand on truth, false revival doesn't stand a chance. Now, under the marks of false revival, and in his book Revival, Martin Lloyd Jones lays out some hindrances to revival and some truths about revival that I've been reading through, and they have inspired me a lot in this series to see revival from different angles. Lloyd Jones was no stranger to revival in his day and certainly no stranger to the Lord using his ministry powerfully. And so I would recommend his book, Revival to You. And as we walk through these marks, I want you to be thinking deeply about history, about present day, and then of course arming yourself with truth for the days ahead. When people ask you, you know, what is this or what is that? You can have answers. A book like that will help you, and also hopefully these episodes. The first mark is what I'm calling a house of mirrors. A house of mirrors because false revival puts you in a place that makes you think you're looking at something, but you never get anywhere. It's designed to ignite the senses, yet it leaves you walking into walls still. Looking back at the Dark Ages, which was the period of time leading up to the Reformation, the church was marked by this reality. The vital truths of salvation could not be seen. They were cluttered up, they were covered, and they were covered by all that mass of teaching which characterized the Roman Catholic Church at that time. Lloyd Jones says this in his book Revival. The people back then were blinded. Essentially, people felt like they were religious and saw religiosity, but they wandered in that blindness. People had no spiritual life, they were kept in total darkness, and they were in ignorance. They did not know the truths of the gospel, and the Roman Catholic Church had crippled them like a disease in the body. Leading up to the Great Awakening, you have the church in the same state. Lloyd Jones commentates on both of those eras, both the Dark Ages and then the time leading up to the Great Awakening. He says that Christians and the church essentially was useless. And it is said that unbelief is a hindrance to genuine revival, and I agree. So any revival that would tolerate unbelievers or tolerate blindness spiritually is a false revival. We can't participate in things that don't call for the repentance of sin. We can't tolerate things that contribute to a form of godliness but with no genuine power. This is the house of Mires, wandering around from corridor to corridor, thinking you're seeing things and getting caught up in what you might be seeing, but all the while you're going nowhere. This is the peril of unbelief, isn't it, in the world today? This is what people think. They think they know things, they think they are feeling things, they think they understand things, and all the while they're blinded in unbelief. No revival in history denies any part of the gospel, overlooks habitual sin, and does not provide clarity and direction for lost sinners. True revival leads people out of the house of mirrors. And might I go further with this to say that we have a lot of house of mirror problems in the American church and so-called revivals. They can pack stadiums filled with people, they'll entertain them, they'll offer some religious tokens, and then they'll send them out under the claim that God did amazing things. When in reality, we just filled a stadium using marketing and hype. We felt the feels, we played the lights out, but unbelief still dominates the hearts of many who attended. Friend, you cannot experience genuine revival, and you did not experience genuine revival if people are still wandering around in unbelief. A house of mirrors will mark false revival. Number two, doctrinal error will mark false revival. Isn't this interesting? Not only is doctrinal error the reason why we need revival, it's the mark of false revival. If you hear claims to revival or some massive move of God, but there's false doctrine, false teachers, or impure teaching there, steer clear. You're not missing out on anything except deception when you avoid a movement or a meeting where doctrinal impurity is present. If a false teacher is loving what they see and loving what they hear, and that's not repentance, by the way. But rather they're just loving the hype. It's not wrong at all to use discernment. If a false teacher is getting hyped up on some movement or some event, you're wise to consider deeply what this might be. And if there is concerning evidences in that movement or that meeting, you're wise to consider that while the false teacher and others might be hyped, God is likely not hyped about it. If the Holy Spirit is the author of a revival, it's going to be rooted in truth, not lies. Number three, rampant emotionalism is another mark of false revival. One of the key tactics that many false teachers and false movements use is to manipulate people through emotionalism. Now, when I say emotionalism, I'm not talking about passion, I'm not talking about zeal. In the last episode on revival, I mentioned zeal and passion are great when they're undergirded with truth. I'm talking about when stable, normal, strong people are turned into puppets on a string, essentially, after being emotionally manipulated through a series of strategic steps, like sporting events that use a specific roadmap to entertain the crowd and get them hyped up in order to lose their inhibitions. So much so that you could have the most conservative, reformed, stuffy type that would never lose their emotions, go to a football game or a sporting event, and lose their mind because of getting hyped up. That idea happens in false revival. False revival plays on the emotions of people, gets them real caught up in the moment. False revival can make people lose control, and thus those who are perpetrating these things can make money or capitalize on the hype. There are many things used to manipulate in these environments and to stir up emotionalism. You've got music, you have emotional stories, you have peer pressure, you have the power of suggestion, and you have the ability to convince people when they have been succumbed to this hypnotic environment that the key to truly experiencing God is letting go of your logic and letting go of your emotions. I'm sure you've seen this, I have too, and been a part of it, where you'll be in these mass services and they command you to speak in tongues, and everyone just starts babbling away. It totally breaches 1 Corinthians 14 order. And nobody is saying anything at all that makes sense. Nobody's interpreting, and people are bawling their eyes out. No one has any clue what's going on, but there's this hyped-up response, and the faith healer or the so-called revivalist hollers at the crowd, begin to just pray in the spirit and lift up your voices, and let's call down heaven to earth and all of these things. These are paramount experiences. And perhaps they'll say, Well, we just want people to experience God. You don't experience God when you disengage your mind and when you abandon all logic. You don't truly experience revival when emotionalism takes over and you're no longer standing on truth. And therein lies a huge detail. No matter how good the intentions are said to be of some revivalist or some people propagating a revival, if you're preying on the emotions of people or you're you're getting the hype going in order to stir up revival, you've missed it. Revival is not started nor sustained by human hype. True revival is marked by repentance and faith, explosive preaching, people turning to God and back to God, clarity in the truth, and the outpouring of the Spirit in line with his revelation in Scripture. You will not have widespread practices that contradict the word of God. Number four, sensationalism is a mark of false revival. Sensationalism is these unfounded claims and shocking stories and outrageous antics. It's really the showmanship of false revival. Now, this is not a pot shot against anything supernatural or believing God for great things that could be sensational. We serve a sensational and supernatural God. You know that. But false revival is hinged on people being swept up by revivalist claims or even visuals. Today, movements like Bethel Church in Reading, California will hold wild services, and Todd White will do this and many others. They last for hours and they include things like fire tunnels and touching people, and people are flailing and around, and the music is going, and they're they're screaming and shouting and they're rolling around, and people will say, Oh, that sounds a little intense. You know, that's probably just an exaggeration. It's not. You can YouTube it. And they do this even in their children's ministries where they say they're bringing heaven to earth to prepare this generation. And what they're doing is engaging in sensationalism to manipulate people. There have been claims, and this is an old story, but it's a prevalent one, about gold dust falling from rafters. And just when you think, you know, nobody does that anymore, there'll be another YouTube video or another Instagram post about some church that claims that jewels are showing up in their hands, or olive oil is showing up on places of their body, or gold and such is falling down on their Bibles. Of course, the old feathers are falling, and it's the feathers of the angels as they're worshiping in their midst. All these things are sensational claims to try to get people to come to where they are. Sensationalism is often associated with false prophecy as they make big claims like Jesus is going to show up in person, or I really feel like and fill in the blank, or God spoke to me, and they'll say as clearly as I'm speaking to you that he's going to and then fill in the blank. And you get the sensationalistic hype going, and people freak out and lose their minds. We used to do this with lining up wheelchairs on the stage to show people all the people getting healed out of their wheelchairs. And many of them were just the stadium wheelchairs that were rentals or just there, just like the airport will have a line of wheelchairs. Imagine me in an airport, lining up a bunch of wheelchairs I found, and then telling everyone there used to be people in these wheelchairs. God did it for them, He can do it for you. And then going on to take some mass offering after hyping people up with some prayer and some story of sensational miracles. Look, God is a healer. Yes, God is supernatural. Yes, God is sensational, he's amazing. We're in awe of who he is and what he does. But we don't hype people up into some false sense of supernatural sensation through our stories and manipulation. False revival takes place when people take the sensational to a whole new level, and either knowingly or perhaps ignorantly for some, they are self-deceived or deceiving people into thinking they're a part of the Lord's work. It is so important to use wisdom. And I want to offer a final word of caution on the topic of sensationalism. A lot of people today will hear what I say about Bethel or whatnot and go, oh yeah, that's not me. Hear me on this. You may use subtle phrases that ooze sensationalism. People will say, you know, I felt the Holy Spirit whisper to me, and you insert some ultra-spiritual sentiment after that. Or they'll say, I just could sense the Spirit of God just telling me, you know, to lean into this moment and just let go and whatever. And you can fill in the blank with that. We do this because we don't want to seem weird, but we kind of want to use some sensational thing to prop ourselves up. Like I heard the Holy Spirit whisper to my heart. Well, now we don't sound as weird as Bethel or as crazy as some false faith healer, but we're subtly propping ourselves up as someone who has an in with God. No, we're just getting sucked in by the mood music and the minor keys, and we're caught up in a moment. We should just worship God if we're in a real moment of worship. You're not actually hearing from the Holy Spirit. You're feeling feelings and thinking thoughts, but in the end, when you hear from God, you'll know it. So we don't need to try to act spiritual and prop ourself up as leaders as though the Holy Spirit's really doing something in us, and now you don't want to miss church on Sunday, or you don't want to miss this moment that I'm leading you into. It's all sensationalism. It's the mark of false revival. Number five, narcissism is the sign of false revival. The untouchable self-love of a narcissist will mark false revival. They want unlimited power, they want unchallenged authority, they want unending attention, they want unbelievable riches, they want unlimited possibilities. And that all accompanies the narcissist in his or her or their groups of people quest for false revival. When false revivalists are challenged, narcissism will enter the conversation through many gates, but perhaps none more than Psalm 105.15, where they'll say, Touch not my anointed ones, do my prophets no harm. And they'll use that verse out of context where God is saying you couldn't kill or assault his anointed kings or his prophets in Israel in the Old Testament. This passage has nothing to do with calling out false revival, calling out wolves or deceivers, but they'll use it to strike fear in anyone that would challenge their so-called movement. Friend, you're allowed to question things. You ought to test the spirits. You ought to rightly discern based on scripture and filter all these so-called things through the word of God. Especially important is calling out things that are self-centered and false. Narcissism also comes in the way that revivalists will say, you've got to come here to get this anointing. Because narcissism thinks it's the center of the universe and is highly entitled, you'll hear things that force others to think, oh, if I don't go here or there, I'm going to be a less than. I'm not really getting the full experience. The presence of God is not going to hit me in the same way. Friend, if you are a believer, don't buy that lie. God's power and presence is in you already. Lay aside the temptation to go and try to get in there in order to experience God. He's right there. He's omnipresent. You can have revival in your heart by simply falling to your knees in repentance and faith. And if you're already a believer, turning to him in times of regular prayer and the ministry of the word in your own life and following Christ. Next, syncretism. Syncretism. One of the biggest marks of false revival is when evangelicals will link up with false religions like Roman Catholicism to achieve some false unity. There was a big so-called revival in 2016. It was called the Azusa Now meetings, and they all went to the Coliseum in LA and they were going to try to re-usher in the Azusa revival, Lou Engel, Todd White, and some others, all kind of new apostolic Reformation types that think they're apostles and prophets. They held special services and then they held a special time of prayer unifying Catholics and Christians. As part of this service, then Roman Catholic leader laid prostrate at the feet of Lou Engel to emulate what he said is the example of Cornelius in the New Testament, who worshiped Peter in Acts 10, verses 25 to 26. Peter told him to get up. Now, that didn't happen at Azusa. They just let him worship at their feet or kiss their feet or lay before them. I'm not sure all that was going through their minds, these new apostolic prophets, but they just sat there and let it roll. This sort of thing is really popular with the next generation for two reasons. One, these leaders look really spiritual and really powerful. So they want that honor. And two, they're showing this tolerance and unity. And that markets revival really well as God brings us all together and people come under this banner of false unity. But you always got to remember the devil loves unity that ignores the truth. And thus it marks false revival by presenting faiths that damn as under the same banner of those that save. And so use wisdom. You have the marks of syncretism, narcissism, you have emotionalism, sensationalism, you have false doctrine and purity in teaching, and you have what is a house of mirrors, that unbelief still exists, that people aren't finding the truth, they're not landing in a church, and they're not ending up in the family of God. They're ending up in a false movement. As you apply these marks, I want to encourage you to use wisdom. I want to encourage you to be slow to speak and slow to accuse, and yet exercise strong, courageous, biblical discernment. In your discernment, do remember to be careful, as Martin Lloyd-Jones once said, lest we quench the spirit and let us keep our eyes fixed on the glory of God and the outpouring of his Holy Spirit upon us. That's what we should long for. And so, again, in all of your discerning, will you be praying that God would move in power in our churches, in our country, and around the world for his glory? I hope this series on revival has been helpful for you. I hope the marks of true revival, the definition of revival, and the marks here of false revival will equip you and edify you to walk in the truth. In the next episodes, I'll begin a series on Easter that will help you prepare your heart for what has been widely regarded as the Super Bowl of Christianity. And I hope it blesses you and your family. For free resources, go to furthegospel.org. And if this podcast has been helpful, would you be willing to leave a review on Apple and share it with others? And don't forget, if you're watching this on our brand new video podcast format, hit subscribe and share these videos with someone who will be blessed by the resources. Thank you for your support. I'll be back next Monday with another episode. For now, keep on living for the gospel.