A small town in Kentucky has been inundated with visitors as a result of an unexpected religious revival event.
Beginning on the morning of Feb 8, during a chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, where the service was supposed to end after 45 minutes. It never stopped.
This event marked the beginning of a spiritual phenomenon that has since spread throughout the campus and beyond.
According to some of the students present, they were convinced that the palpable “weight” in the air was a result of a spiritual power.
As the spiritual phenomenon, which some Christians are calling a “revival,” spread across the campus and the surrounding area, it also began to draw people from across the United States and even the world.
Asbury’s president, By Dr. Timothy Tennent, refers to what’s going on at his university as an “awakening” instead of a revival.
“Despite the endless coverage in social media and the regular media which is calling this a revival, I think it is wise to see this, at the current phase, as an awakening,” Tennent writes. “Only if we see lasting transformation which shakes the comfortable foundations of the church and truly brings us all to a new and deeper place can we look back, in hindsight and say ‘yes, this has been a revival.'”
Local resources soon became overwhelmed by the sheer number of visitors pouring into Wilmore, which has a population of just 6,000.
By Feb 20, it became clear that the college and the city of Wilmore did not have the capacity to shelter and feed the over 50,000 visitors flooding the campus and town each day, according to a Fox News estimate.
In response, college and municipal leaders called for the revival services to move out beyond its epicenter in Wilmore to other communities and venues.
They also called for a resumption of the regular class schedule, not wanting to hinder the revival.
Throughout the event, school officials made many special accommodations, such as opening three additional auditoriums, altering schedules, and canceling classes.
The local infrastructure, however, was not equipped to handle such a large number of visitors.
While the small town of Wilmore may have been overwhelmed by the influx of visitors, the spiritual power and fervor of the revival show no signs of slowing down.
