Former Vice President Mike Pence took to social media on Friday to share how his experience at Asbury College more than four decades ago moved him spiritually, as the evangelical service at the central Kentucky college known as the ‘Asbury revival’ entered its tenth straight day of worship.
‘As a college student, I too traveled to Asbury in 1978 for a Christian music festival. There it was as though I heard the gospel for the very first time,’ Pence wrote in a tweet. ‘I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior and my life has never been the same.’
Pence, who was baptized and raised in a Roman Catholic parish, said he was ‘deeply moved’ by the revival that’s currently taking place at the school and suggested that ‘lives will be changed forever’ because of it.
Asbury also played a role in encouraging Pence while he was vice president under former President Donald Trump. Pence, who has offered numerous hints that he may enter the presidential race in 2024, shared a portion of his memoir in another tweet, stating that Asbury’s ministry reminded him ‘that even when it doesn’t seem like it, God is still working!’
The routine morning service on Feb. 8 at Asbury University — a small private Christian university, in Wilmore, Kentucky — has been celebrating nonstop for 10 days in what many of its participants are calling a ‘revival.’
Christians of numerous faith traditions have visited the chapel service at Asbury. Fr. Norman Fischer — a Catholic priest in Lexington, Kentucky — reportedly told Catholic publication Our Sunday Visitor that the ongoing worship service was ‘pure’ and ‘definitely of God, definitely of the Holy Spirit.’
The movement began after students refused to leave following a chapel service last Wednesday, and the services have since grown to pack the room with worshipers from all over the country, according to Christianity Today.
The ‘Asbury Revival,’ as it has been called, echoes a widely reported worship event that took place decades ago.
A revival erupted at the same university in 1970 in Hughes Auditorium. The service began inside the campus chapel before more and more students arrived to worship, pray and sing over the course of 144 consecutive hours.
In Protestant Evangelical Christianity, a ‘revival’ is a sudden and enthusiastic restoration of religious vigor among a church, town or larger geographic region.
The Asbury Revival is having cascading effects as congregations elsewhere in the United States join in the marathon worship.
Students at Samford University in Alabama are now entering their fourth day of continuous prayer.
Samford’s service, held in Reid Chapel, began as usual before Thursday classes were canceled due to weather.
Church-goers stayed and continued the meeting until it began to be compared to the Asbury event.
‘For over seven hours, students gathered in Reid [Wednesday] and well into the morning worshiping, praying, sharing testimonies and reading Scripture,’ Samford Ministry Training Institute executive director Kevin Blackwell told the Alabama Baptist.
Fox News’ Timothy H.J. Nerozzi contributed to this article.
