The Jewish Jesus Revolution [Part 1]
January 1961. I am watching newly-elected President John F. Kennedy give his inaugural address. In it was the promise to send a man to the moon and his famous dictum: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
The United States was entering a season known as “Camelot.” Kennedy was handsome, urbane and, as the youngest president ever elected to office, full of vitality.
His wife was beautiful, charming, and sophisticated. In a later book about that era, his advisors were labeled “the best and the brightest.” There were grave dangers to be faced, including nuclear war with the U.S.’s nemesis, the Soviet Union. He seemed to be the right man in the right place.
And then, in the time it takes bullets to hit their target, it was all over. On November 22, 1963 Kennedy was assassinated. Camelot ended. And with it, the United States’ sense of innocence.
Beginning with the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1965, riots erupted in cities across the country for the next number of summers. As the outside temperature rose, so did anger. In 1967, my birthplace Newark, New Jersey experienced some of the fiercest, most violent riots. Newark burned and people died. My father had his car stoned driving home from work. Newark has never been the same.
During this time of upheaval, Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963. Five years later the preeminent leader Martin Luther King was killed by an assassin’s bullet. A few short weeks later, John Kennedy’s younger brother, Robert Kennedy, was also struck down after a campaign speech. He was running for president at the time.
Violence. Murder of public servants and heroic individuals. But that wasn’t all that was happening. The Vietnam conflict was raging and President Johnson was regularly and inexorably increasing the number of our troops in Vietnam.
The war was unpopular at home. Some viewed it as necessary to help stop the spread of atheistic communism. Others viewed it as taking place far from the shores of America and not our fight. Demonstrations against the war increased in intensity and frequency. Not all, but much of this was led by younger people and college students.
In 1968 the Beatles traveled to India to study Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This opened the door to an influx of Eastern religions and a keen interest in the hippie community that sought to live counter-culturally from their parents.
My college in Washington, D.C. was six blocks from the White House. We became the epicenter of the anti-war demonstrations. I saw national guardsmen billy club students, then drag them off.
One night, some anti-war protestors took over a building on campus and hung out a red flag and a picture of Chairman Mao. A fight broke out between a hippie protestor and a fraternity jock. They were big guys and I inched closer to watch them. Unbeknownst to me, someone on the second floor took a wooden standing coat rack and threw it from the window. It hit me on the head and I had to be rushed to the hospital for stitches.
In May 1971, a huge protest took place. The Attorney General declared martial law on the streets of Washington. I wondered how this could possibly happen in the home of the free and land of the brave. This kind of thing happened in third world countries, not the United States!
Added to all this division and upheaval came the rise of the drug culture and the era of “free love.” The Harvard professor Timothy Leary told students to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Drugs were everywhere. Nudity, sexual promiscuity, and the mantra “don’t trust anyone over 30” captured the young of our nation. If you didn’t engage, you just weren’t cool, man. We were a nation in rebellion against our parents, our teachers, all authority, and God.
However, God in His infinite goodness heard the prayers and cries on behalf of this nation and its lost sons and daughters. Stories began to be reported of young people, hippies, giving their lives unreservedly to Jesus. In larger and larger numbers, those who once used drugs and/or were sexually promiscuous turned their lives over to God.
Reports of spiritual renewal sweeping the nation were on the nightly news and in our most widely read publications. It didn’t happen in a corner; it happened for all the world to see. In God’s mercy, He brought a revival that was termed the “Jesus Revolution.”
Only God knows the exact numbers of people who escaped the destructive forces gripping the nation. Some joke, “If you remember the 60’s you weren’t there!” because seemingly everyone was high.
Growing up Jewish, I came to faith toward the end of the Jesus Revolution in 1978. But my early faith experience was with those who had been directly involved and had their lives transformed. Many Jewish friends became believers in Jesus as Messiah. And many of those went on to lead ministries and plant churches. I shudder to think what might have happened to the U.S. if God hadn’t intervened. This nation was hurtling towards destruction.
Is what’s happened at Asbury College, and now elsewhere, the beginning of a new revival? I pray so. Tune in next week for more on the "Jewish Jesus Revolution.”
Written by Marc, Life in Messiah staff
Have you had a personal “Jesus Revolution”?
What do you think God is up to today with the talks of “revival”?
Will you join us in praying for a new generation of young people to be drawn to saving faith in the Lord Jesus?