Sixteen days of 24-hour prayer and worship at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky drew pilgrims from around the world, including some from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, who say their lives were changed..The “Asbury revival” as it has come to be known, began February 8th when a handful of students remained in Hughes Auditorium following a chapel service..Student body president Alison Perfater told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a student decided to openly confess some of his sins to the small group. Then 'the atmosphere changed'. Sixteen days of non-stop praise and worship ended February 24 at 12 a.m., but regular scheduled services continue..The hashtag #asburyrevival has had more than 70 million views on TikTok. An estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people flooded Wilmore, which normally houses only 6,000. .Lonnie Sims, an evangelist from Melfort, Saskatchewan, and his daughter were among those who journeyed to Asbury. He said he was impressed with the transparency of people participating and said it lacks a “high powered” leader with a known profile, unlike the Brownsville revival in Pensacola that he saw in the late 1990s..“Yesterday, one of the teachers said, ‘If you're suicidal, and you're having dark thoughts like this, please stand.’ And all these kids stood. There's no inhibition to getting up and saying, this is what my issue is and my problem. And there's not a judgement, but a desire for them to be set free,” Sims explained..“When you get here, you have no names leading the singing, no names talking, there's not really much preaching, more kind of an exhortation. And it's low key with a piano and acoustic guitar, and maybe a kahone. It’s an organic worship.. There's no great evangelists here. There's no great song leaders. In fact, they've turned them away, and said, you can sit up in the balcony or wherever, like everybody else.”.Tucker Carlson wanted to see the phenomenon for himself, but as he explained in a February 18 monologue, the school refused..“We got a call from Asbury University asking us not to come. ‘It’s not personal, they said.’ They like our show, but the ongoing service at Asbury is purely spiritual. It’s got nothing to do with politics or business. No one there is making money from it or planning a run for office… It’s not really a place for TV cameras,” Carlson said..“And we understood that. In fact, we deeply respected it…God bless them for turning us down.”.Sims said a large common area outside of Hughes Auditorium facilitated more than 20,000 people at a time, as did a handful of overflow buildings with a live stream. He said part of the mystery of Asbury is its simplicity..“You're looking at it going, ‘This is crazy, like, how can this simple worship draw these crowds?’ It's amazing watching it because it's so simple, honestly, that you're going, how can this be?” It's the purity of people that are hungry for the Lord who are all in the same place wanting the same thing,” Sims said..Bee farmer Kent Pierson drove from Duchess, Alberta to join in. Pierson said what marked his Asbury experience was “that hunger, a mass amount of people to get closer to God. And then the worship experience is just amazing. We worshiped in a secondary location yesterday for about two and a half hours, and it went by just extraordinarily fast. It was awesome.”.Pierson said his experience at the main venue was similar to that in the secondary locations..“The highlight…was the passionate worship with the presence of the Holy Spirit. The testimonies of the young people accompanied by prayer was also very powerful,” he said..“[They included] a turning back to or discovering Jesus, combined with deliverance from suicidal thoughts, depression, and addiction. The leaders asked attendees to stand if they were struggling with something similar and then had the person who just gave the testimony pray for them. I was amazed by the Spirit filled prayer and could feel the Spirit moving in the hall.”.Generation Z has been called the least religious of all, yet were the main participants at Asbury. Those aged 16 to 25 had an easier time being admitted to Hughes Auditorium. In the final week, older adults were only allowed during afternoons and on a first-come, first-served basis. .Twenty-year old Victoria Maracle, who works for the federal government in Ontario, made the 14-hour drive to Asbury with her father Barry. She said it was worth it to “put life on hold for three days.”.“[Our first full day] I spent 9 hours in total… at the altar crying, repenting, praying, and praising. I was overwhelmed by the peace and love I felt from Jesus and the prayer team there. The first time in my life I was at an altar with people my own age- to see a revival break out for my generation Gen Z is something I never knew could actually happen, until it did,” Maracle said..“Depression no longer holds a place in me, anxiety has been defeated, and insecurity has been overcome by Jesus. [I learned] this one thing, take Jesus as a whole because when He is fully present, not one thing is missing. I will tell my legacy about my experience at Asbury, how impacted I am from my time there. They had a such a sweet way of housing His presence.”.Asbury has had continual prayer and worship in past Februaries, according to its university webpage. In 1950, “a student testimony led to confessions, victories, and more testimonies. This went on uninterrupted for 118 hours and became the second leading news story nationwide; it is estimated that 50,000 people found a new experience in Christ as a result of this revival and witness teams that went out from it.”.In 1970, “Classes were cancelled for a week during the 144 hours of unbroken revival, but even after classes resumed on February 10, Hughes Auditorium was left open for prayer and testimony… Some 2,000 witness teams went out from Wilmore to churches and at least 130 college campuses around the nation.”.The current movement in Asbury is too fresh to know what the final impact will be. School officials estimate that 210 colleges and universities were represented among those who visited. According to the Washington Post, Asbury sparked similar happenings in Cedarville University in Ohio; Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama; Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee; and Belmont University in Nashville..Sims said people from around the world came to Asbury to bring the spiritual fire back with them..“We met a lady from Chile, and [she] and her husband sold their vehicle to come over. There seems to be a sense and a longing in people's hearts that they want to take what is here and take it to where wherever they live, whether it's US, Canada, or international,” Sims said..Pastor Paul Dubois of Northeast Christian Fellowship in Melfort said hunger for God drove him to make the long drive, but adds the people he met there from Brazil, Chile, and Asia made his pilgrimage seem short by comparison..“My body is suffering right now because we drove 26 hours, but you know what? It's worth it. So, we're hungry. We want revival in Melfort, we want it in Saskatchewan and our nation desperately needs it. So that’s part of the reason we were here,” Dubois said in an interview on February 20..“The only thing that's going to change our [church activity] calendar is revival, it's going to wipe our calendars out. We're going to have to focus on what Christ is doing, and the harvest [of souls] will come in. I believe the church is upside down, but God wants to put it right side up again.”
