Revival is in the air, and many Christians are wondering if the Body of Christ is on the brink of another great spiritual awakening.
In an hour-long special production, CBN News recently spoke with Pastor Greg Laurie and his wife, Cathe, the real-life couple whose life and love story is played out on the big screen in the new movie “Jesus Revolution”, about whether they think we’re about to witness another movement of the Holy Spirit akin to the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s depicted in the film.
“God’s on the move,” declared Pastor Laurie. “People are hungry for this, and I was amazed when I saw how it outsold movies like Top Gun, Avatar, and the new Ant-Man movie.”
“I’ve never heard of a movie in the theater that had people breaking into spontaneous prayer and worship,” Laurie continued. “I heard one story about it was shown in the theater and afterwards some kids wanted to be baptized and they baptized them in the fountain in front of the theater, I’ve never heard of these things. I think these are all like little indications that God is at work.”
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Pastor Greg has been working in ministry since he was 19 years old, and he is now the senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship, one of the largest and most influential churches in America with about 15,000 attendees at campuses in both California and Hawaii. Since 1990, Laurie has also hosted large-scale, evangelistic events known as Harvest Crusades that have led more than half a million people to pronounce faith in Christ.
In this hour-long special on revival in America, CBN’s John Jessup and Abigail Robertson speak with Greg and Cathe Laurie about the surprising box office and streaming success of “Jesus Revolution” and the ways they saw God move throughout the making of the movie, including by protecting the movie from premiering in 2020 and the remarkable story of filming a baptism scene that turned real for the actors.
“While they’re shooting the film they look over and I’m baptizing this guy in real-time, and it’s blowing everyone’s minds, so I think this kind of leaked into the film and so when you watch it, it feels real and the reason it feels real is because it was real,” explained Laurie.
The Lauries also share with CBN News their thoughts on the Asbury Revival and how it coincided with the premiere of “Jesus Revolution”.
“We’ve had four big awakenings in American history the last being the Jesus movement,” explained Laurie. “That’s something God does, and we don’t orchestrate it, we don’t work it up, we pray it down.”
“We don’t organize it, we agonize for it in prayer,” continued Laurie. “We need to pray, but this is something God wants to do. So I see very promising signs, very hopeful signs, and I think this, if we don’t have a spiritual awakening America, I tremble to think of what the next few years are going to look like in this nation.”
The Lauries also share advice on staying close to God and each other through 50 years of marriage even when they’ve been through challenging times like when their 33-year-old son, Christopher, tragically died in a car crash in 2008.
“In the midst of all of that, Jesus is present, He is with us, He has a plan, He has a purpose,” said Cathe Laurie. “Through the death of our son, although we will always call that a horrible day, it was a horrific day…I will say God has brought incredible blessing into our lives, nothing less than giving us our own son Jonathan, who was living a wayward life, He brought him back to Himself through the death of his brother.”
“I would just say hold tight, read the Word, they’re promises all throughout scripture that He will redeem even the hard things in our life,” continued Cathe.
BELOW: To see our CBN News interview with Greg and Cathe Laurie, watch the Live release of the “Revival in America” special, airing Wednesday night at 8 p.m. You can also see it on the CBN Family and CBN News apps.
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN