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First Person is produced in cooperation with the Far East Broadcasting Company, who rejoice in the stories of changed lives through the power of Jesus Christ. Learn more at febc.org. We've seen a spiritual nationwide awakening in our country, and it's a course correction, and we have to have that course correction. God's got work to do, and He needs His church to be revived. ♪
And welcome to this week's edition of First Person, where you'll meet Bill Eliff, a pastor, writer, and speaker who's been tracking signs of revival in the world. I'm Wayne Shepherd, and we'll begin the interview with Bill momentarily.
Thanks for listening. First Person is here each week at this time featuring the stories of people who are faithfully following God's call on their life. If you'd like to review any of our past programs, you can do that by visiting FirstPersonInterview.com. There's also a schedule of what's coming up in the weeks ahead, FirstPersonInterview.com. And look for us on Facebook, Facebook.com slash FirstPersonInterview. There you can leave comments on what you hear and interact with other listeners. Facebook.com slash FirstPersonInterview.
Bill Eliff is someone I've looked forward to talking with for some time. He's the founding pastor of the Summit Church in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and the author of several books. He's also part of One Cry, a nationwide call for spiritual awakening. And since it's Father's Day weekend, I began by asking Bill about his family. I have 27 grandkids. I've got eight grandkids.
I've got eight sons and daughters and their mates. They're all married. Five of them are pastors and 27 grandkids, and 20 of them are under 10. Oh, my goodness. When they come to our house, which they came Christmas and stayed for 17 days, all of them.
Did you have to remodel when it was done? Oh, yeah. You just absolutely, I couldn't even stand up. And I went in to get it. I just said, I'm having to get a bowl of cereal. We bought like 20 things of cereal. There was four boxes and there wasn't one teaspoon of cereal left in any of those four boxes. Yeah.
So that's my life. That's funny. Well, you need to update your website because it says you have 25. You're telling me you have 27 grandchildren. And they're still popping out. That's a great blessing. It really is. Well, I wanted to talk to you, Bill, because our topic is revival. It's something that you've longed for and studied and really fostered for a long time with your own ministry.
You're with One Cry, of course, and Travel the Country. Let's look back, first of all, at what took place a little over a year ago at Asbury. Why does that happen in the history of the church? What are these events?
these times of renewal pop up like that? Well, that is a great question and a question we need to understand because it says something about the ways of God. I love Richard Owen Roberts' definition of revival. It's the extraordinary movement of the Spirit of God that produces extraordinary result. In other words, God's moving all the time.
But there are times in history when God chooses to manifest himself in an extraordinary way for multiple purposes. And I've added a word to Robert's definition, the necessary. And the reason I know they're necessary is because God keeps doing it. Yeah.
There's this cycle of the church walking with God. We fall away. God brings his judgments, which is a good thing. It's like pain to the body telling us something's wrong. It brings us back to desperation, and we cry out. I've studied this, Wayne. In fact, Byron Paulus and I wrote a book on it called One Cry.
You'll see in the scripture, it'll say all the people cried out. And I'm not fine one time in scripture when people didn't humbly, repentantly cry out that God didn't hear and bring a renewal to the church. And then it get us back on mission to do his great work of spiritual awakening.
And that's what God did at Asbury. I think it's the front edge of the next great awakening in our nation. Obviously, the meetings are not taking place at Asbury per se, but there is a simmering, isn't there, since Asbury? Oh, it's incredible. And, you know, I was...
I was, my passion for revival was birthed in the Jesus movement. 1970, I was in on my college campus and God sat down and took over. We cancel classes all day. Just an extraordinary movement of God's presence. And as a 18 year old boy, I saw, you know, God can do more than five minutes of his presence.
than 50 years of our best effort. And you get that taste in your mouth, you never get over it.
And that Asbury in that moment started something that lasted really for two or three years, culminating in Expo 72 where 100,000 students gathered in Dallas Stadium. Well, we have been seeing for 10 years, those of us who watch this,
what I call the preparatory work of God. It always precedes a great awakening. The rise of voices, new voices begin to rise up, an extraordinary rise in prayer, and even the increase of wickedness and lawlessness and anarchy. We're seeing a spirit of anarchy that was very similar to the spirit
In the 1960s, all those kinds of things precede the intervention of God because God's people get so desperate, they begin to pray. And they begin to cry out, and God sends his mercy. So we're seeing it now, great evidence of that across the country. Yeah, that's an interesting observation because as we speak here in mid-2024, college campuses are broiling again, aren't they?
With demonstrations and protests, and yet what's not being publicized is what you are observing on some college campuses where the Spirit of God is moving as well. You know, some people I hear, they say, oh, this next generation, you know, because all they see is the media hype. But what they're not seeing is
is that on multiple campuses all across the nation, there is genuine revival breaking out. I mean, here's 200 people baptized in a fountain on campus, and here's 300 over here and 200 over here. And not only is God moving across major campuses across the United States,
And this incredible rising tide of prayer that's happening. Dave Butts, our dear friend who died this last year, but before he died, the president of the National Prayer Committee, he said, we can verify that more people are praying right now, we believe, in America than any other time in human history. And I think that's the desperation factor.
And it's happening in campuses. It's also happening, Wayne, in churches. I'm getting calls from pastors across the country. You know, one guy texted me the other day at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and he said, can't describe it, just got out of church, 115 people spontaneously baptized.
Now, that's unusual. That's the extraordinary movement of God. And Samuel Davis, who was the president of Princeton and was in the First Great Awakening, said, I saw before the revival, he said, humble pastors preached messages with zero results. And he said, and then the revival came.
And I saw the same men preach the same messages and 200 people would be saved. And he made this statement, the gospel became almighty and carried everything before it. I love that phrase. Like a tsunami of the presence of God. And I think we're on the edge of that. I think we're beginning to see that. And I think if that's true,
And if we cooperate, and that's a big question. Yeah, I want to talk about that cooperation. I'll get to that in just a moment. But why college campuses? Why young people? Revivals in history, in New York, for instance, it started with a business gathering of men meeting to pray, right, in times gone by. But many times it's a college campus. Why young people?
I think college students are early adopters. They're vulnerable. They're emotional. They are at the point in their life when they're forming their real opinions about life and their beliefs about life. And so many of them come into college and they have dropped their faith for whatever reasons. They had a false faith.
kind of a institutionalized religion, and they're realizing there's something missing. And so I think just as we're seeing on campuses right now with this anarchy and students rioting about the craziest things,
that you just don't make any sense. They're looking for a cause. They're looking for something. And I think in the same way, though, when God begins to move, they find him. And so they're open. And, you know, the next generations are always our hope, isn't it? And so to see them coming into that is such a beautiful thing. In 1972,
71, 72, in the denomination that I'm a part of, we saw more people, more students saved and baptized any time since before or since that time. And it was during the Jesus movement.
Well, you have to have that because every 50 to 60 years, Wayne, since the first great awakening, we've seen a spiritual nationwide awakening in our country. And it's a course correction.
that brings us back and sets us back on God's missionary purposes. And we have to have that course correction. God's got work to do, and He needs His church to be revived. There is more to this conversation with our guest, Bill Eliff, and we'll continue it in just a moment here on First Person. First Person
Here's Ed Cannon on a vision for FEBC's weekly podcast. The primary purpose of Until All Have Heard, of course, is to share the experience that FEBC has because we have staff on the ground in so many oppressive places. But in addition to that, we're trying to speak to you in a way that only the kind of testimonies you'll hear from around the globe can do. Discover how the gospel is making a difference around the world.
Search for Until All Have Heard on your favorite podcast platform or hear it online at febc.org. My guest is Bill Eliff. Bill is the founding and national engaged pastor of the Summit Church in North Little Rock, Arkansas. National engaged pastor. I guess that means you're free to move about the country, right, Bill? Absolutely.
I do a lot of traveling. In the conference speaking, of course, you were an author as well. And we'll put information about all of this in our program notes at FirstPersonInterview.com. You serve as pastor, church director for OneCry. Our friend Byron Paulus and the folks at OneCry are doing everything they can to track and foster revival around the country. And thanks for what you're doing, Bill. We really appreciate it. Tell me more about that experience that you had back in 72, you said? Yeah.
Yeah. With the Jesus movement, Time of Revival. You know, I grew up in a pastor's home, and I came to know Christ early, but I'd wandered. And then at age 17, my junior year in high school, God just brought me to the end of myself. And in that moment, I had always thought that you—
Put Jesus up on a pedestal and try to do what he says. You know, the book In His Steps was famous at that time. And God so brought me to the end that I realized I began to learn that the Holy Spirit lived in me. I didn't know that.
And that it's a matter of surrendering to the spirit and letting him live through you. Well, I went to my college campus and I didn't even know as a freshman that the Jesus movement was going on.
But that campus was just simmering with the presence of God. And there were a group of us that began to pray. We'd pray all night. I'd wake up on the steps of the altar at the chapel at 8 o'clock in the morning and realize I was late for class once again. So we were just praying for this revival, and we began to hear these reports. A guy came to our church.
who had been in a, he had scheduled a one-week meeting in his church, and that meeting had gone four and a half weeks, and he just told about it. Well, I happen to be in charge of a 15-minute noonday service, and I just asked him if he would come, and he walked across the commons. He spoke for five minutes, and
And the Lord just fell on that chapel. And it went on hours and hours and hours. We canceled all classes on the campus. And kids were saved. Kids were getting right. We had this thing back then, Wayne, some of your listeners will remember. It was called a phone booth. But it was out on campus. And there was literally a line about 25 minutes.
kids at all times that afternoon at that phone booth calling, get right with their parents, seek reconciliation. It was just beautiful. A group of us went to the college president and we said, can we continue this? And I will never forget standing in his office. And he said, no. He said, tomorrow it's business as usual. And it was.
And now we were never the same. There was some movement, but you can quench the movement of God. Yeah, which leads me back to cooperation. What is our part in this movement of revival, awakening, whatever you want to call it? You know, there's a fascinating little passage in 1 Thessalonians 5.
Quench not the spirit. And then it says, don't despise prophetic utterances. Examine everything carefully. Throw out what's bad. Hold on to what's good. Well, there's a wide disparity of what a prophetic utterance is. But at the least, it's when God speaks. And to quench means to stop. Like you, you know, God spoke and you just said no.
So if you want to cooperate with God as he's moving, as he's speaking, just do everything he says. Just don't hesitate. So there's this obedience to the Spirit, and then you cannot separate revival from
from unceasing prayer and believing prayer. I just wrote down prayer is essential. I wanted to talk to you about that, and there you are. You know, I told a guy just 10 minutes ago in our meeting, I said, if I didn't know you and I got it and we were on a 10-hour journey in a car and we never talked to each other, we'd get out of that car 10 hours later and we would have no relationship.
Because communication is the substance of all relationship. Well, prayer is not just a little thing we do. It's the way we enter into the presence of God and experience him and he with us. So,
So God always precedes revival with placing on the hearts of people to cry out to him and to start entering into his presence. And really what revival is, is just his presence, right? I mean, it's just him. I remember Dick Roberts one time saying, I can sum up revival in one word.
God. It's God in his rightful place, God on the throne of our hearts, of our churches, of our schools. It's God.
And so the way we experience him is through word-driven, unceasing prayer. And that's why you always see prayer, the presence of God, coupled together in movements of revival. Yeah.
I know it's important to study the phenomenon when it happens. Asbury, for instance, was a good example, and people want to be where the Spirit of God is, where the presence of God is. But at the same time, we don't have to be there physically, do we? Yeah, absolutely not. You know, personal revival with a small r is available to anyone, anytime.
And we can pursue that. I think one of the great passages about that, Wayne, is James 4. And God is writing to Christians. James is addressing Christians. And he gives us this formula, if you would. You become a friend of the world. And so you need to cleanse your hands, purify your hearts, humble yourself, mourn, and pray.
And surrender back to me. You know, draw near to God. And he will draw near to you. It's just a beautiful formula for how we experience personal revival and ultimately corporate revival. That's available. And here's the great thing. Right now, to any listener who's listening can say, I want that.
And God says, okay, draw near to me. I will draw near to you. And when we get near to him, this is what happened at Asbury last February. I was there for five days. I came back to help with a collegiate prayer at the end. And everybody knows the story, but, you know, the pastor of that normal chapel was preaching about the love of God and how we can't
give the love of God until we know the love of God. And he said, some of you just don't know the love of God. Why don't you tarry and seek to know him? And 19 students stayed behind and just said, Lord, would you show yourself to us? And God, so beautiful that he would do it this way to this generation, particularly. God began to make himself known.
You know, Psalm 48 talks about this. The Lord has made himself known. And he loves to do that. He wants to do this. And those students began to see the love of God, and they wouldn't leave. And then more came and more came, and that phenomena happened. I have a friend who's now with the Lord. He used to say God does his best work through a remnant.
That's a good example of those 19 who stayed behind and triggered all of that. So you're encouraged about where we are right now here in 2024. Asbury was more than a year ago, and it has fostered so much good in terms of spiritual growth. But you're encouraged about where we're headed. I'm very encouraged about where we're headed. I am very cautious as I see almost a movement happening.
uh, against that a little bit. I see a lot of people who, you know, they, and it was the same, it's been the same story in every great movement of people who, because of emotionalism, they don't want that. They are kind of anti experiential, anything, maybe overanalyzing, overanalyzing every little thing. And, uh,
I just think you can stop, you can quench the movement of God. And, you know, it may go on down the street, but not be there in your church.
and not be there in your life, and you miss the manifest presence of the Lord. Very grateful for the disciple-making work Bill Eliph is doing, including helping us prayerfully watch for signs of revival. He's written a number of books you'll find interesting, and we'll place links to them at FirstPersonInterview.com. You can read more about Bill and his calling there. Once again, it's FirstPersonInterview.com.
Reaching the spiritually unreached is a major goal of the Far East Broadcasting Company, who partners with First Person. There are many signs of awakening among minority ethnic groups in the world, and FEBC's programs are reaching many of these communities with broadcast and social media teaching programs, bringing the Word of God to remote areas. You can learn more about these programs and what God is accomplishing through FEBC when you visit febc.org.
Now, with thanks to my friend and producer, Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Join us again for First Person.