Counterfeit Revival: Looking For God in All the Wrong Places

 

In light of all the recent talk of “revival,” I am reminded of Hank Hanegraaff’s seminal work, “Counterfeit Revival: Looking For God in All the Wrong Places.” Hanegraaff documents the many popular “revivals” in the late 20^th century and why Christians should heed the stark warning of Scripture: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1).

These counterfeit revivals are nothing new and the 20^th century is littered with them from the Azusa Street Revival (1906) to Calvary Chapel in the 60s/70s (i.e. The “Jesus Revolution”) to the Pensacola Outpouring and the Toronto Blessing in the 90s, to the myriad of 21^st century movements such as Jesus Culture, Bethel Church, and now Asbury University (this is Asbury’s ninth “revival”). 

All of these counterfeit revivals have one thing in common, they are all an outgrowth of the 20^th century Charismatic Movement, which as Fr. Seraphim Rose documents in his excellent book “Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future,” are nothing less than occultism dressed-up in the guise of modern-day Christian revivalism. 

The Charismatic revival is “the product of a world without sacraments, without grace, a world thirsting for spiritual ‘signs’ without being able to discern the spirits that give the signs, is itself a ‘sign’ of these apostate times” (Fr. Seraphim Rose, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future).