Tulsa, Oklahoma's Revival That Was Shut-Down
"This Country Is Full of Unsaved Christians" - Keith Green
Keith Green (see here to learn who he was) was the biggest hit in the Christian Music scene in the 1970s, a father of Contemporary Christian Music and festivals. At the time of the 1979 Awakening at Oral Roberts University, he had the No. 1 and No. 4 albums.
In 1979, Keith Green had a special encounter with God after reading Charles Finney’s Lectures on Revival (available free online) to the point where he believed he had just gotten saved - despite having played numerous Christian concerts and sharing Christ with others.
Keith Green at the Mabee Center in Tulsa, OK where Revival broke out. Students broken before the Lord.
This was after reading Leonard Ravenhill’s book “Why Revival Tarries” (Leonard would eventually mentor Keith Green) . Also, this was after Keith had preached a message of repentance and commitment at Jesus Northwest in 1978 to a crowd of tens of thousands.
His wife Melody wrote of this time:
In the midst of all this, Keith continued to explore the questions that had risen after Jesus Northwest. He plunged into a time of soul-searching and reflection, praying for revival in his own heart. He was also fasting regularly as he buried himself in the Word and the writings of Christian leaders of the past and present. The pages of many classic books were worn and underlined by the time Keith got done with them. He’d often grab the nearest person and read the good parts out loud to them.Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (p. 262). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
This soul-searching of Keith’s led to a meeting he had with his own team, in which Revival broke out.
This is part of what Keith addressed:
Keith explained the two kinds of sin Finney talks about. Sins of commission are the things we do that we shouldn’t. Included on Finney’s list were lying, cheating, gossip, wasting time, slandering others, love of possessions, vanity, envy, bitterness, hypocrisy, having a bad temper, and hindering the usefulness of others. Keith added in a few areas that Finney didn’t list because they weren’t as prevalent in his day—things like sexual sin, drugs, and involvement with false religions.
If that wasn’t enough, there were the sins of omission—the things we don’t do that we should. Included in these were lack of love for God, for the Bible, for prayer, for the poor and needy, and for the lost all around us and in foreign lands. Also listed were the sins of ingratitude, neglecting to be careful about our words and actions, and a neglect of self-denial.Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (p. 269). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Not along after this, Keith’s next major event scheduled was in Tulsa, Oklahoma at Oral Roberts University.
Keith believed God wanted to start a revival (mass conversions unto the glory of God) in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
After being invited by a student group at Oral Roberts University, Keith was then told he could NOT have a concert at Oral Roberts because the administration didn’t want him to.
In response, Keith and his ministry at Last Days Ministries began round-the-clock fasting and prayer, and went to to Tulsa, OK anyway.
Not only did the Oral Roberts Administration eventually relent, but they offered the Mabee Center at ORU for free, as well as lodging and free meals.
Keith had previously preached at Oklahoma Baptist University, and while he waited to preach at ORU, his team lived in the Tulsa area and had meetings at a Baptist church in west Tulsa, the Tulsa Christian Fellowship, and the Caravan Ballroom in Tulsa.
Keith, Melody, and the team handed out copies of “Breaking Up the Fallow Ground”, a summary of Finney’s Lectures by Keith and Melody (free PDF version here).
Melody wrote of the events at the Caravan Ballroom:
On the Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, the Caravan Ballroom, with an eleven-hundred-person capacity, was packed with people from churches and colleges in Tulsa.
Keith’s basic theme was the same—getting Christians saved. “This country is full of unsaved Christians,” Keith said, “and this city is probably full of more of them than almost anywhere else in America.”
Both nights the dirty dance floor was filled with people on their knees making commitments to Jesus Christ. I could sense that things were starting to build toward the coming ORU meetings.Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (pp. 286-287). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Then Came the events at Oral Roberts University.
The first night, about a thousand people showed up, with over half committing their lives in surrender to Jesus Christ:
Many were down on their knees in front for the altar call, weeping and repenting. Someone even got healed when Keith sang “Easter Song,” which often happened at Keith’s concerts.
Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (pp. 288-289). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
On the Second night, about two thousand people showed, with another half committing to Christ. Keith spoke strongly of repentance and actions:
Keith used a simple analogy: “An apple tree becomes an apple tree as a gift of God, but it proves it’s an apple tree by making apples.” Again there was a dramatic response. More than one thousand people came forward to get right with God and quit playing Christian games with their faith.
Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (p. 289). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
On what was to be the final night, 4,500 people showed up, people from ORU, local churches and colleges.
Keith cut straight to the point - touching on holiness and the necessity of God’s Law:
“Tonight we’re gonna speak about holiness. What is holiness? It means ‘to be set apart.’ It doesn’t mean you live in a monastery. It means you don’t do worldly things. First John says if any man loves the world he is an enemy of God.”
Keith went on to talk about the importance of the law and why it needs to be preached—so that sin can be exposed for what it is. “Rules are beautiful because they tell you you’re breaking something. Without the law, there is no knowledge of sin—and without knowledge of sin there’s no salvation from sin. That is pretty simple and I have a definition of sin that’s pretty encompassing—‘anything that causes God pain.’ ”
Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (p. 291). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Then Keith pulled out a list of sins he wanted to rebuke on campus - worldliness, sexual sin, homosexuality, not being good stewards of time and money:
Keith started reading. “There is worldliness on this campus. How many people believe that?”
A good number of hands went up, but not all.
“Oh! Only half of you,” Keith laughed. “What about the worldly half? Don’t you think so?”
“There is sexual immorality on this campus,” he went on, “and there is homosexuality on this campus.”
Now the audience was as still as a roomful of tombstones.
“There are people who waste the time and the money God gives them,” Keith continued. “But the time is short. ‘For we must work the works of him who sent us while it is still day, for night is coming when no man can work.’ Nobody who believes the Bible would dare waste his precious time.
“And I’m telling you, there’s dope being sold and smoked around here. There are people going out and drinking. There’s an honor code here, right? No dope allowed. People have to be in by a certain time.
No one’s allowed to lie or cheat and so forth. There’s a spirit of deception and self-deception among the students with their lying and cheating and hiding things.”
Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (p. 292). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Then, the gates were opened, and people began flooding the stage and the front of the Mabee Center.
Keith at the Mabee Center 1979
Read it for yourself:
People from every part of the arena were starting to stream forward, filling the stage around Keith and pressing right up against the piano. As the stage area filled, people started lying in the aisles and across the front of the stage area. It looked like a bomb had gone off! There were bodies everywhere—people on their knees or on their faces, broken and weeping. It was an incredible sight.
Keith was softly playing the piano, not even looking at the people. His gaze was focused upward, on the Lord. No one was focused on Keith either. People were on their faces crying out to God.
In a moment, with his head resting on the piano, Keith began to sob. The response had been tremendous. It looked like twenty-five hundred people had come forward to get their lives right with God. But Keith’s burden was for more than that. He believed God wanted to bring a revival, and suddenly he burst out with a tearful, pleading prayer.
“Lord Jesus, send your Holy Spirit, and honor your Word. My preaching is garbage! I don’t know what to say. The songs I’ve sung are all trash without your Spirit! God, send your Spirit, for without it we’re all dead! Coming forward doesn’t mean a hill of beans to you unless we’ve come forward in our hearts. God, send your Spirit upon us to break our hearts.”
Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (pp. 293-294). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Then open confessions of sin were made, one after the other:
As Keith opened up the microphone, it was almost as if the very atmosphere caught its breath for a moment. There were already thousands of people lying in the aisles and on the floor, or on their knees with their faces buried in their chairs. I could hear a few nervous coughs around the arena, and it seemed like an eternity until the first person made his way slowly to the microphone to say, “God has shown me tonight that I’m not really a Christian. I’ve gone to church all my life, but it’s been a farce. There was no real commitment. I had everyone fooled except God.”
As this person was sharing, several more people made their way to the front, slowly picking their path over everyone on the floor. Each person took turns repenting for things like gossiping, not supporting the faculty, lack of prayer, being lukewarm, or being a phony Christian. Most were weeping, and there was a very tender spirit moving through the whole place.
For the next half hour or more, the confessions started getting more serious and more personal. The weeping that accompanied these confessions was also getting more intense—maybe because the students realized they could be expelled for what they were sharing, especially the confessions about using drugs. Two or three people confessed to smoking grass or using drugs of various kinds. But these young people seemed more concerned about getting right with God than the possible consequences of their sin. Still, I wondered what the faculty members present were thinking.
Over and above all this, though, it felt like the Spirit of God had settled on us in a thick cloud. It was a brightness you could almost see— something gentle and tender, yet infinite. I knew something powerful was taking place.
So did Keith. He’d crawled under the nine-foot grand piano to pray and cry out to God. I sensed he was getting himself out of the way to let the Holy Spirit do his work. I could barely see Keith from where I was sitting. And people kept going up to the microphone, crawling over a sea of bodies to get there.
Then a young man, especially, paid the costly price of repentance- death to hypocrisy:
In a few more minutes, one young man got up and confessed an area of sexual immorality in his life. He was very broken and extremely sorry. This threw us into an even deeper level of God’s dealings.
Pretty soon a clean-cut, neatly dressed young guy took the microphone. He was trembling and weeping so much before he spoke that I just knew he was going to say something pretty heavy. He started off slowly. Haltingly.
“You . . . you all know who I am. You think I’m one of the most spiritual students on campus. Well, I’m not. I know what I have to say may get me kicked out of school, but I believe God wants me to share it anyway. . . .
“I don’t know how to confess this, except to just come right out and say it. I’ve been involved in homosexuality here on campus . . . and God has broken my heart tonight. I see how much I’ve been hurting him, hurting you, and hurting the school. I really need God to forgive me. With his help I’m going to change.”
His confession sent shock waves across the arena. Many people burst into fresh waves of sobbing as this precious brother continued to share.
It was apparent that we were just coming to the deep level of breaking we’d been praying for since God had told Keith to preach revival in Tulsa. The Holy Spirit was so strongly present. He had been raining on us all night, first in a gentle sprinkle, then in a steady shower.
Now it felt as if the very floodgates of heaven were about to burst wide open. Whatever was about to happen, we were all willing to do what was needed, even if it took hours, all night, or all week to walk it through. What Keith had seen in his spirit was starting to take shape before our eyes.
Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (pp. 295-296). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
And then, the “cloud of glory”, was removed, killed by an administrator:
Then I saw one of the men in pastoral responsibility at ORU threading his way across the stage toward the young man who was still sharing. He came alongside the student and put an arm around his shoulder.
This man took the microphone and assured the student that he really appreciated his sharing and that the Lord forgave his sin. He also told him that ORU would take no disciplinary action against him, which I thought was really neat because the student seemed so sorry.
Then the ORU official gave some guidelines for the rest of the meeting, in essence saying, “We feel things like this are to be confessed privately, and we don’t think it’s a good idea for any of you to share personal sins openly.” It seemed like a good principle, and it was given in a loving way. But the second he was done speaking, something happened.
The change in the atmosphere was so immediate it was staggering.
Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (p. 296). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Keith was furious, and just like that, the Awakening ended:
There was a knock at the door. The ORU administration was ready to talk with Keith about the possibility of further meetings. Keith and Winkie met with them backstage. They expressed their appreciation for what they said were wonderful meetings. But they didn’t think things should go any further.
Green, Melody; Hazard, David. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (p. 300). HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Keith Visiting With Students at the Mabee Center