It’s Time For A Jesus Revolution
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It's Live in the Bream with the host of Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream. Today on Live in the Bream, we welcome back one of my very favorite guests and favorite people, frankly, in the world. He's got a big event coming designed to bring hope and healing in a world that so desperately needs it. Greg Laurie is the Senior Pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship.

But I feel like, Pastor, that's just the beginning. I mean, he's written more than 70 books. He's involved with television and filmmaking, radio shows. I mean, you do it all, Pastor. So in the midst of that, we're going to talk about what really big event you have on the horizon as well. Thanks for making time for us. Well, Shannon, thanks for having me on. Always great to be with you and love all that you do and your wonderful reporting and work and also the way that you always look for opportunities to let your light shine as a follower of Jesus.

Well, thank you, my friend. And you do this on steroids for people who have seen the movie Jesus Revolution. And I cannot recommend it highly enough, whether a person of faith or believer or not. It is such a moving story. And Pastor, your story is at the heart of it. And the fact is, I always think it's good for people to know. I mean, you really struggled as a young person. The film is very transparent about drugs and all kinds of things you had going on in your life until you found a place of hope and faith.

It's true. I was just like so many of my generation. I was raised in an alcoholic home. My mom was buried and divorced seven times.

And so I started asking the big questions of life very early on. Questions like, what is the meaning of my life? Why am I here? What happens after I die? And I followed my mom's example. I became a drinker in high school. Then I shifted gears and started taking drugs. But back then in the early 70s,

sort of the drug culture was quite different than it is today. Today with fentanyl or other drugs, people use them in different ways, in a recreational way, in a way to escape, in a way our generation

thought, and we didn't know because drugs were so new to so many of us, but we thought that drugs would open up portals of information and give us answers. And one thing I heard said about drugs is they make you more aware. And I used drugs and I became more aware of how empty I was. But I was walking across my high school campus in 1970 and

And there was a group of very outspoken Christians sitting there singing songs about Jesus. And I literally felt sorry for them because I thought they were delusional, crazy. Like, why would anyone do such a thing? But for the first time in my life as a 17-year-old, I tried a new thought on Forsyth, which was simply this. What if it's all true? What if Jesus can be known? And I quickly dismissed it because I was very...

pessimistic because of the way I'd been raised and I'd been disappointed so many times. How could I entertain such a hopeful thought? But it came back to me, what if it's true?

And a young man got up to speak. And if you've seen the Jesus Revolution film, his name was Lonnie Frisbee. He's played by Jonathan Rumi, best known as playing Jesus in The Chosen. So there's a scene in the film where you see this happening, recreated. And so I walked forward with some other kids. I prayed a prayer. And that was the day that Christ changed my life and changed the trajectory of my life as well.

Well, and that's what you're hoping to lead other people to. You've done this work as a pastor for decades now, but you've also, and you started decades ago hosting these really large events. They've now become known as Harvest Crusades, and this involves thousands of people, thousands

top-notch musicians, you're going to speak and you're inviting everybody to come. And you talk about how, you know, we as believers, we have good news. We want to share our faith. It's really up to us to share. Now, whether people choose to believe or accept this for themselves, that's up to them. But we have a duty to say, hey, there's something hopeful here and I want to share it with you. And this crusade does that in a huge way.

Really does. You know, and actually we do something similar to this all the time. We make recommendations. For instance, you know, if I'm in a town I've never been to and I want to get something to eat, I'll go and Yelp and I'll read the recommendations of complete strangers as to where I should go eat.

You know, because I'm looking for some help. And so we'll tell people, oh, hey, you want to get the best burger anywhere? Go to this place. Hey, you want to, you know, the best hotel is this place. Whatever it is, we'll tell them this is the best one. Well, here we'll give recommendations for accommodations and for meals. How about a recommendation for the most important thing of all, the meaning of life and hope for the afterlife? And that's all found here.

and a relationship with Jesus. So Shannon, we've been doing this event mostly at Angel Stadium here in Southern California for now 34 years. - Wow. - We've had something like 5 million people come to these events here in California alone.

We've had probably well over half a million, maybe 600,000 people walk forward in the field to make a public profession of faith to follow Christ. So it's like this event is designed for someone who's a skeptic, a non-believer.

And we have great music this year. We have Phil Wickham, Chris Tomlin, a lady for the first time, her name is Brooke Lidgertwood. And it's going to be great. It's like a celebration. It's almost like a party. But then when we get to the message, it gets obviously very serious, though I try to weave some humor and illustrations into my message to make it understandable. But ultimately, it comes down to, have you heard this message about Jesus Christ that

Did you know he died on the cross for your sin and rose again from the dead? Did you know he's standing at the door of your life and he is knocking and can come and live inside of you and forgive you of all of your sin and give you a fresh start in life and give you the hope of heaven? That's my message in a nutshell.

Well, and listen, you're so good at understanding and interpreting what's going on in culture. I mean, a lot of the books and things that you've written are about cultural icons, people like Johnny Cash and others that, you know, you are very much the kind of person through movies, through music, you want to reach people where they're at with messages that are relevant to them. I think you're one of the people who does this the best about not

kind of walling off Christians like, oh, we have our own little community over here and, you know, we're kind of weirdos and this is what we do. You know, it's not always going to be so attractive to people. I mean, you're saying, hey, listen, if you got questions, you know, we're providing a way for you to come and have an experience that maybe will answer some of them. Yeah, it's really true. I mean, that's what I tried to do. And thank you for what you said. You know, we want to reach unexpected people in unexpected places with an unexpected message.

So you mentioned books and movies I've done. I did a movie called Steve McQueen, the salvation of an American icon. So,

Just take him as an example. The number one movie star in the world. In his day, he was like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Timothy Chalamet all rolled into one guy. And he did his own stunts. He was a very handsome guy, iconic guy. But at the peak of his career, he walked away from Hollywood and went on a search that ultimately led him to hear the gospel. And Steve McQueen...

"the most famous actor in the world "and the most successful became a Christian." So I thought, wow, I don't think people know that story. So I told a story in a book and in a movie, and here's a really cool thing. We have a streaming site. It's kind of like all of our content in a Netflix kind of format. It's just called Harvest Plus. So if you go to your app store, you can download it for your TV. It's an 8K. It's great to watch. You can get it for your phone, your tablet.

And we have these movies and the Harvest Crusade will be live there on July 20th. You can stream it live and it just has tons of content. And then the other thing I've started to work on lately is animation because, you know, I started out as a cartoonist and I've always loved art and cartooning.

So now I have the adventures of my cartoon character, Ben born again, and his little buddy, yellow dog to reach a younger audience. So we're always looking for new ways to build bridges to people. And sometimes I don't want to say sneak up on them, but I want to say,

reach them because there's a lot of people that will not darken the doorway of a church, but they might click a link to a video, they might watch a movie. And so we're using all of these mediums as ways to give people the good news. We'll have more Live in the Bream in a moment.

Hi, everybody. It's Brian Kilmeade. I want you to join me weekdays at 9 a.m. East as we break down the biggest stories of the day with some of the biggest newsmakers. And of course, what you think. Listen live or get the podcast now at Brian Kilmeade show dot com. Well, and you and I have talked about this, but through covid and just through the divisive tenor the world has taken on here domestically and abroad, you know,

it seems like there's so much upheaval. I found that people the last few years have been kind of more searching and more open, looking for some kind of peace. Now for some people, unfortunately, we've seen certain groups where suicide rates and drug use rates and all of those things have skyrocketed. So people clearly are hurting. I mean, they need something that can give them peace. And I mean, have you found that to be true too, that people are sort of in a searching mode these days?

Yeah, 100%. And I think that social media has sort of been like gasoline on that fire. Of course, you know, they have found direct links to social media use and depression and

and loneliness and people are just searching. Like I read a while ago that the two late night Google search words or phrases used the most are actually three of them, lonely, pornography and suicide.

I thought, wow, that kind of sums it up, doesn't it? People are late at night. I'm lonely. You're looking to Google to give you answers or you're having suicidal thoughts. And so these are people I want to reach. And I think people really are searching. And, you know, I read a poll that said from USA Today among young people, what do you want more than anything else in life? The two top things are I want to be rich and famous. But

You know, you see all these people who can have literally instant fame today through social media. You can be an overnight famous person. And years ago, Andy Warhol said, one day everyone will have 50 minutes of fame. It's coming true. And so all of a sudden you're famous. But a lot of these influencers, even you read of young people in their 20s, they just took their life because they get to the top and they realize there's nothing there.

And meanwhile, God has the answer to all of their questions. So, so many people say, well, I don't want to, I don't believe in the Bible. And you ask them, have you ever read the Bible? No, but that's beside the point. You know, you say you're seeking truth. Okay. Then why would you not at least give a cursory look at the statements of Jesus Christ and

who claimed to be the way to the Father. He claimed to be the one who could give us the hope of heaven. Would you not want to just look at that? And so that's what I say to people that come to our event that we're having on July 20th at Angel Stadium. And you can also participate online by just going to harvest.org or going to our Harvest Plus app. But, you know, really what I'm saying is,

Have you ever looked at what Jesus said? Listen to what he said before you reject it outright. And I find that many people are more than willing to do that. And I find young people are really willing to do this. I do too. I think that they're very much searching. And the fact is that when you are able to talk to people about Jesus and what his message was, it's often different than what they think. I think a lot of times they feel like Christians

Christianity or the church. And certainly there are people who have given this, you know, faulty, bad reputation that it's just condemnation and really pointing the finger at people. And I think about, you know, Jesus went to people who were kind of on the outskirts of society. He went to the people nobody wanted to hang out with, the tax collectors and the prostitutes and, you know, these people that say to them, I love you. I'm not here to condemn you. I'm here to redeem you.

And so I think for a lot of people, they've got enough pain, enough condemnation in their life, and they feel like, oh, religion is just going to be more of that.

Yeah, well maybe religion will be more of that, but we're not talking about religion. We're talking about a relationship with Jesus, and there's a big difference actually. You know, sometimes people say, "Well, I think I need to get a little religion." No, actually, you need to get a lot of Jesus. And here's a really perfect example from the Bible of what you just said. There's a woman caught in the act of adultery, and so these religious leaders bring her, throw her on the ground in front of Jesus.

And they say, the law says this woman should be stoned. What do you say? And we read that Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground. Then he stood up and said, let him that is among you who is without sin cast the first stone. And then he bent down and wrote on the ground again. Chris, I want to know, what did he write? Exactly. That's going to be one of my first questions in heaven. Okay. What do you think, Shannon? What's your best guess? What did he write?

I don't know. I mean, I've pondered that so many times, but I always wonder, did he write something about the law or the Old Testament that would have pointed the finger back at them? Well, they left from the oldest to the youngest. So maybe it was personalized. You know, hey, Josh, Joshua, I know what's up with you. You broke this commandment, this one, who knows. But whatever it is, he cleared the house and then he turned to that woman.

And he said, so where are your accusers? She said, I have none, Lord. He said, neither do I accuse you. Go and sin no more. But what I love is, wait, this woman was caught in adultery. How could he say that? Well, because she was a believer. Well, when did she become a believer? Well, probably when he dispersed her accusers. How do we know she was a believer? Because he said, where are your accusers? She said, I have none, Lord.

You know, so she believed. And, you know, Shannon, it doesn't take years to convert. It doesn't take months or weeks or days or even hours. You can believe just like that and put your faith in Christ. And that's what I'm hoping people will do at our event and through the things that we put in there, the things that we share with them. Yeah.

So the Harvest SoCal, excuse me, SoCal, not social, I added an I, but the Harvest SoCal Worship Concert. It's social too. It's social. It is social also at Anaheim Angel Stadium, Saturday, July 20th at 7 p.m. local time. Doors open at 530 local. Well, let's talk about the live event. Then we can talk about the streaming. But what if people want to go? How do they get a ticket? What do they do?

Well, there's no tickets. It's a free event. You can go to our website and just say you're coming, but we have seats for you. Just don't get there late. It could be full. We have packed it and turned people away. So just, you know, don't show up at the starting time. Come earlier, get yourself a seat. Takes a while to walk from your car into the stadium. Now, some people say, I don't want to go to an event that big. Let me just say, you've never seen anything like this before.

to see thousands and thousands of Christians singing together, praying together. You know, Jesus said, when two or more are gathered together in my name, I'm there in the midst of them. Well, this is a lot more than two. It's more like 45,000. And it's just a wonderful experience that I think every Christian should have. But the most significant

moment of the evening is when we ask people to come down in the field, to leave their seats and come down in the field and make a public profession of faith to follow Christ. There's something so moving about that. I often describe it

as a holy moment. And indeed it is, as eternal transactions are taking place. So I just say, get there probably around 4.30, 5 at the latest. You'll find yourself a seat and you're gonna love it.

Well, and if you can't come to SoCal, you can also participate online. You can go to harvest.org and find out more about the event there and how you can stream it at home. And God doesn't need you to show up at church or anywhere else. He can connect with you anywhere.

That's right. Yes. And, you know, you can watch it on your TV. It's a very it's a great signal. It's a high definition image you're going to be watching. So you can have a watch party at your house, invite people over, you know, bring the crusade to them. Right. So you can do it wherever you are. Watch it wherever you are. You can watch it on your phone, your tablet.

You know, it's there. It'll be streaming. And then it's archived, which means that you can watch it later and share the link with a friend. And, you know, we have a very robust inter-

what I'm looking for the word, interactive. That's the word. Interactive kind of experience when you watch it online. There's places for you to comment and hear from people around the country. So it's actually around the world. You know, we find that at every one of these crusades that we have people literally from every state and from many, many nations. Because, you know, California, despite our weaknesses...

And despite the fact that the number one export of California seems to be Californians these days, a lot of people still come and visit. And many of them find their way to the Harvest Crusade, which has become a summer tradition and something people really look forward to every year. It

It really is kind of a cultural phenomenon, all these decades of doing this. I want to ask you what you make of what we've seen on a number of college campuses and other places with what appear to be revival. I mean, kids embracing the hope that they're hearing. And I talked a couple of weeks ago with the woman who was behind that original gathering, and she says there are several more coming in the fall that numerous colleges have reached out to her and said, please come here. We need this on our campus.

What do you make of that? Do you think that it is sparking something larger or something happening? Is that Jeannie you're referring to? There's a lady we just saw. Tanya Pruitt.

Okay, that's another lady. We know a lady named Jeannie who just is very involved in the college campuses too. Yeah, there are a lot of folks. I think the answer to your question, Shannon, is I think something's happening. And it's sort of like when it rains. You know, sometimes my wife and I will be out walking and I'll say, hey, Kathy, it's starting to rain. She'll say, no, it's not raining. I'll say, no, it is. She'll say, no, it isn't. But she has very thick hair, as you know, Shannon. She has beautiful hair. Yeah.

But she does. So she won't know for, you know, maybe a day if it's raining. But I'll say no, it's raining because bald men always know when it's raining first. Right. So. Yes, it is true. And so a drop here, a drop there, then maybe it turns into a downpour. And I see that happening.

You know, we had a baptism not long ago. We called it the Jesus Revolution Baptism. 20,000 people showed up. And in one day, we baptized 4,500 people. Well, you know, we talk about the great spiritual awakening back in the 70s called the Jesus Revolution. How wonderful it was. But listen, we never had anything on that scale back then. So I think God is at work. And I think that so many kids on campuses today say,

are searching. I think all these kids that have been protesting and find themselves pro-Hamas and, you know, chanting these anti-Semitic slogans, I think these kids just don't know. You know, they've been influenced by the wrong voices.

But then we see other kids on campuses praying and calling out to God. We don't hear enough of those stories. And so I think God's going to intervene. You know, Shannon, it reminds me a lot of the 70s, late 60s, early 70s, kind of a youth revolt and a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of division.

And I see similar patterns in our culture today. So people were calling for a political revolution, a sexual revolution, and God sent a Jesus revolution. Time magazine coined that phrase, by the way. They did a cover story and they were sharp enough to recognize this is a revolution of sorts. And so they called it Jesus revolution, which became the name for our film, the title for our film. But

We need another Jesus revolution. We need another spiritual awakening. We need another outpouring of God's spirit. And I just pray it happens. And I'd like to be around to see it.

Well, part of that may be this Harvest get-together at Angel Stadium, July 20th, 7 p.m. local. But again, as Pastor Greg Laurie says, think about getting there 4.30 or 5 if you are going to come in person. Doors open at 5.30, and then, of course, you can stream it online. Pastor, at a time, it seems like people are really searching for hope. I know it will be a beautiful, uplifting night. Thank you, and please give my best to Precious Kathy as well. And God bless you guys.

Thanks so much, Shannon. Thanks for having me on. Say hey to your wonderful husband as well. And we appreciate you both. Listen ad-free with the Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

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