Apostolic Preaching & Prophetic Worship on Campuses!

Apostolic Preaching & Prophetic Worship on Campuses!!!

I am writing this message because I sense strongly in my spirit God wants to release another “GREAT AWAKENING” upon the university campuses of America. We are coming upon the wake of another “Jesus Freak” movement. In the late 1960’s there was a major move of God among young hippies all over California. Radical hippie preachers like “Lonnie Frisbee” preached on campuses, street corners, bars on Hollywood blvd, & baptized thousands of hippies in the ocean beaches. What happened in those days was like it came straight out of the book of Acts… “Signs, wonders & miracles, speaking in tongues, thousands of young people swept into the kingdom of God, they were living in 24/7 communes together, sharing all things together and enjoying fellowship while radical street preaching was bringing in the masses to Christ.” Do it again Lord! I know You will & now is the time!

In the last 6 months the Holy Spirit has been impressing heavily upon me to see the book of Acts happen again on college campuses. There is too much “timidity” among Christian’s every campus I visit. There is a fear of what other’s think…and it is justified by an “I don’t want to offend others mentality.” It is compromise. The national average of Christian’s on each university is 4% and more than 90% of those 4% come from Christian backgrounds (Ivy Jungle Network: source). In other words, Christians are mainly reaching Christians on campus. If we don’t see revival now, we will have a post-Christian generation tomorrow. It’s time for radical Christianity…or should I say “normal Christianity” to be released on this generation with power.

I’ve been studying the book of Acts. The more I read, the more I am challenged. Church was never meant to be in a “temple” or a “building” it was meant to be on the streets. It was meant to be in the marketplace, 24/7 where the people were. Where would Jesus be preaching if He were here today? Where would Peter and Paul be preaching if they were here today? I highly doubt a Sunday morning church service or the next large group fellowship meeting. I know exactly where they would be preaching…. in the middle of the campus where all those students organizations are promoting their beliefs. It’s sad, but there is too much preaching in the four walls of the church & there is not enough preaching to the lost. Preaching was meant for the lost! Yet we have turned the powerful art of preaching into “sermonizing.” Lord have mercy & turn us back to the power of God unto salvation!

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me to PREACH good news to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God!” Isaiah 61:1-2

Where am I getting at? There is a move of God that will sweep thousands of young people into His kingdom beginning on university campuses across California and then all over the United States of America. What is this move? It will be a move of two things…


1. Prophetic Worship
2. Apostolic Preaching

Last week a student leader in our campus church network was inspired during his early morning quite times to bring his guitar to school. This student goes to San Jose State University. Not sure why, he went with his guitar to the middle of campus where there was the most student traffic. He sensed the Holy Spirit wanted him to break out his guitar and worship at the top of His lungs. He did. At first, he was scared out of his pants, but as he continued to worship the manifest presence of God began to descend on the ground he was worshipping on. He later told me that all he was asking God for that morning was one thing, “Lord I want to see HEAVEN ON EARTH come down on this campus!” Well, he got what he was praying for.

As the Holy Spirit prophetically lead him to sing new songs by proclaiming Jesus over the campus, he sensed he was to pull out his Bible and read it out loud. With authority, he began to read out loud at the top of his lungs, the written Word of God. Students began to look at him, stare at him, even laugh at him. He didn’t care because he was in the zone with Jesus. As students gathered around to watch this Jesus freak, he began to read the Scriptures and prayed for students the Holy Spirit was pinpointing out to him. While praying for students, he saw a fraternity table with a fraternity brother sitting there. This fraternity brother was completely gripped by the Scriptures being read. All of a sudden the frat brother left the table and walked up to my friend.

He said, “I don’t know who you are, but while you were singing those songs to God, I felt the presence of God touch my body. You see I’ve been a backslidden Christian for over 3 years & this weekend our fraternity house burnt down. Everything I’ve ever owned burned down in that house this weekend, but there was only one thing left… my Bible!”

This fraternity brother broke down under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the spoken word of God. He encountered the presence of the living God in the middle of the day on a university campus while sitting outdoors at his fraternity table. Now, that’s what I’m talking about!

“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.” Psalm 100:4

We don’t need more persuasion evangelism in this postmodern generation. What we need is more presence evangelism, encounters with an Almighty God. How do we bring the presence? It is only through worship and prayer. It’s prophetic worship that sings to Jesus from the heart, not from a power point slide. It’s passionate, raw, un-plugged worship that touches the heart of God and ends up touching the heart of a generation.

I see thousands of new prophetic worship bands hitting the shores of the college campuses during the day and into the night. Bands of young radicals who pull out their guitars, banjos, drums, all kinds of instruments and worshipping at the top of their lungs in the middle of campuses. It’s a prophetic band of worshippers who aren’t just singing the latest hit worship song, but they are worshipping in their own way, singing new songs, creating new lyrics, going all out, undignified like King David. It’s a sound that even the Christian world has never heard. They are the new sounds that come from the streets of heaven. Get ready because the sons of thunder are coming! They worship in spirit and truth while students are passing by, while others are gathering at tables, while others are watching…the presence of God comes. The lost have never heard this kind of worship, with such passion, with such beauty & attraction. It’s prophetic, for the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. This prophetic presence all of sudden invades and touches the hearts of young people & they begin to come under the overwhelming love of God. This generation is waiting to see true passion. But where is it? True passion is only revealed when we passionately worship the passionate One…our suffering King Jesus. When this generation sees true worship, they will come to worship God!

Prophetic worship is what ushers in the presence of God. But it’s Apostolic Preaching that ushers in the power of God.

“And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of the Lord. Then seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the Lord went on continually and blew with the trumpets. And the armed men went before them. But the rear guard came after the ark of the Lord while the priests continued blowing the trumpets.” Joshua 6:12-13

Joshua followed the strategy of the Lord. He sent out the priests (the prophetic worshippers) into battle first, while the armed guard (apostolic preachers) stood prepared to attack. The presence of God must be ushered in first, in order for His presence to anoint the army for war. This is the same in relationship to prophetic worship and apostolic preaching for the campuses.

First of all, what is apostolic preaching? Let the book of Acts explain…

“Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Then Peter said to them, “Repent and let everyone of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. “For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” Those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them.” Acts 2:37-41

Apostolic preaching is the so powerful preaching of the Gospel that it cuts the hearts of men resulting in deep repentance and mass conversions. It happened in Peter’s day where we see three thousand coming to Christ in a day. We see 5,000 saved in a day later in the book of Acts and whole cities pushing their way into the kingdom through Paul’s apostolic preaching. You say that happened in the days of old, but certainly not in highly sophisticated campus cultures like Yale or Stanford? Why not? It happened in the 1st and 2nd Great Awakenings of America. Where Jonathan Edwards a young preacher who attended Yale preached an unapologetic message around 1734 called “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” that sent all of all of the East Coast into repentance and ushered in a sweeping revival to a hell bent America. In 1790’s Yale University had totally forgotten about the great revival just years before. The student body had fallen into drunkenness, blasphemy and the majority of students were attacking the Christian faith because of a turn towards atheism & deism. During that dark hour, a young man named “Timothy Dwight” the only Christian on campus began to preach on the infallibility of God’s Word and His moral standard. By the end of the year more than one half of the entire Yale University campus had turned in repentance toward God. Do it again Lord! Surely, He will & now is the hour!

I’m passionate about this kind of preaching coming on the scene again, because I’ve experienced it. I use to travel from campus to campus preaching to crowds of students sometimes three & other times hundreds. There was never a time that the anointing of God to preach did not show up. No, when there is the preaching of the Gospel, God is obligated to show up, because He is obligated to His mission. “Go, and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them everything I have taught you, and I am with you always unto the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18)

I remember one time when I was at a junior college and a crowd of nearly 500 students gathered the day after the school was saved from a planned bomb attack. I got up in the middle of campus and began to preach how God had spared their lives, how Jesus had saved them with a calling through his suffering, death and resurrection. I challenged each of them to repent & turn to God. No one threw a stone at me, instead the entire crowd was dead silent while I preached and many began to cry under the conviction and presence of the Holy Spirit.

There are more testimonies where we even saw a few hundred saved at one time at San Jose State University after preaching the Gospel to a completely unsaved crowd of students in the middle of campus.

Just today at the university, while my two friends were leading prophetic worship outside on campus I began to join them in prayer. As I paced back and forth interceding for the lost students on campus out loud I could sense the anointing of the Holy Spirit increase. People thought I was crazy, who cares, but as I prayed out loud I began to preach. We were only there for an hour, we didn’t draw a crowd of hundreds, but we did get to pray for at least 4 students who randomly came up and asked for prayer. We did get to converse afterwards with a bunch of fraternity and hip-hop looking brothers who wanted to know more about Jesus. Whether it’s one or one thousand, my question is what happened to the powerful preaching of the Gospel? Isn’t this what Jesus did most of the time…preach? With signs, wonders and miracles confirming the preaching of the Word.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” Romans 1:16

“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” Romans 10:14

Where are the apostolic preachers in this generation? Where are those who will preach with authority and power in the Holy Spirit? Where are the Peter’s and Paul’s who preached with a holy fear of God that resulted in entire cities coming to Christ with signs and wonders confirming? There was a Jonathan Edward for the 1st Great Awakening. There was a Timothy Dwight at Yale University in the 2nd Great Awakening. Where are those who will step up to the plate, pray like no tomorrow and preach like there is only today in this last Great Awakening?

As the Son is shining, during the middle of the school day, I see university campuses with prophetic bands of young warriors worshipping with all their heart and preaching with pure passion. These apostolic & prophetic warriors will have big posters advertising… “FREE PRAYER, FREE DREAM INTERPRETAION, FREE PROPHECY…CAUSE GOD LIKES YOU!” I SEE OTHER WARRIOR BANDS WITH “THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST” PLAYING AS A BACKDROP AS THEY PREACH…PASSING OUT TESTIMONIES AND GOSPEL TRACKS EXPLAINING THE SUFFERING, DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF THE PASSIONATE SON OF GOD! I SEE YOUNG RADICALS CARRYING A HEAVY WOODEN CROSS WITH THEM AS THEY WORSHIP & PREACH THE GOSPEL WITH IT FROM CAMPUS TO CAMPUS…I SEE A HOLY REVOLUTION.

There is going to be an outbreak, an uncontrollable movement of God…a spontaneous revival hitting the campuses of America once again. There will be hundreds of students here, & thousands of students there, and small pockets of students everywhere having Church in the university courtyard. Yes, it’s church without walls, it’s a holy movement of God that can’t be touched or defined by some method of evangelism or some slick small group program. No church building can contain it and no conference can explain it. It’s God or nothing. There is a nameless and faceless army God is raising up at this hour on campuses across America. Do you hear the calling? Will you be willing to lay down your reputation, your comfort zone, your Christian bubble, possibly your very life to see revival on your college campus? Now is the time, now is the hour. Get on your face and pray until it hurts. Worship until He comes. Then get up and preach unapologetically & watch if God shows up! I’m praying to see HEAVEN ON EARTH on every campus in America. REVIVE THE CAMPUSES OF AMERICA LORD! REVIVE THIS GENERATION LORD! REVIVE OUR HEARTS AGAIN AND USHER IN THE LAST AND GREATEST AWAKENING THIS NATION HAS EVER SEEN…LET THE JESUS REVOLUTION BEGIN….

Praying for campus revival,

Jaeson Ma
www.campuschurch.net

(If you are one who desires revival & is committed to lead out in prophetic worship and apostolic preaching on your university campus email: coach@campuschurch.net)

posted by Jaeson Ma @ 2/10/2005 01:19:00 AM