S01E16 — Jesus Revolution
SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Jesus Revolution.
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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.
Jesus Revolution explores the spiritual revival of the 1960s and 70s, as a wave of countercultural hippies turned to faith amidst a turbulent era. The book dives into the lives of Chuck Smith, Lonnie Frisbee, and Greg Laurie, chronicling their struggles and triumphs in spreading the gospel. The movie brings this journey to life, blending heartfelt moments with the challenges of acceptance within a traditional church setting. Both versions celebrate transformation, community, and the unifying power of grace.
Final Verdicts
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)
The Jesus Revolution book dives deep into the history and personal stories of the revival, while the movie focuses on the emotional highs and key moments that bring the era to life. Both are powerful, but our opinions were split!
Tim: The book was better
Donna: The movie was better
Rebekah: The book was better
Josiah: The book was better
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Full Episode Transcript
Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.
[00:00:00] Rebekah: Well, welcome to the book is better podcast. Jesus is a
[00:00:02] Josiah: friend of the book is better podcast.
[00:00:04] Rebekah: He is a friend of the book is better podcast. This is a podcast that is clean, though we talk about some some adult topics. Uh, we’re a family of four reviewing book to film adaptations. Today we’re going to be reviewing the biography and movie inspired by the biography, both entitled Jesus revolution.
So got a little bit of a housekeeping spoiler warning. We are going to spoil Jesus revolution, both the biographical tale and it’s inspired movie. Uh, I will give you a content warning that there are some topics we talk about that may be difficult for some people. We’re going to discuss some drug and alcohol abuse things, some family and issues, uh, with child abuse and abandonment and things like that.
So be forewarned. Also, uh, we typically don’t get too much into the topic of faith and religion. However, based on the book and the fact that we are all practicing Christians, we are going to talk about that more today. If that’s not your thing, I encourage you to still give it a listen. Uh, we actually get into a book.
in our next normal episode that’s also very faith based in nature, but not Christianity. So, uh, yeah, give it a listen, see what you think. And, uh, let’s get started. We like to introduce the podcast by introducing ourselves and giving a fun fact. And I thought maybe we could do one related to all of the baptisms that we saw over and over at Pirate’s Cove in the film.
So, uh, The fun fact today is when and where were you baptized? And I’ll go first. Although I am gonna have a hard time and need dad’s help. So my name is Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the family. I have seen pictures of myself being baptized and I have a vague memory of it. I was baptized by my dad, Tim, who’s on the podcast.
Uh, but I actually, I think I was like seven or eight. I don’t remember what church we were at.
[00:01:57] Tim: We would have been at Steubenville. That was my guess.
[00:02:00] Rebekah: Okay.
[00:02:01] Tim: While TJ was a toddler.
[00:02:02] Rebekah: Yeah, so I was baptized at church at Steubenville First Church of the Nazarene.
[00:02:06] Josiah: Okay, I’m also gonna need dad’s help with this.
Dad, what is my name again? Uh, Timothy Josiah. Uh, yeah, I’m Josiah. I’m the brother son of the podcast group. And I feel like I remember that I was baptized At the age of five, but I believe I was rebaptized when I was a teenager at Chester first church Nazarene in that blue room that you, you took the plastic blocks out of the baptismal to get into baptismal
[00:02:39] Tim: was in the floor of, of, of a classroom.
A Sunday
[00:02:42] Josiah: class. Yeah. Very interesting. And,
[00:02:46] Tim: um, very interesting. That’s the same, that’s the same baptismal, perhaps even the same time that you’re talking about. That, uh, one of the young ladies came in. We always did baptismals in the winter since we did it inside and all that. Um, and she cut a little too tightly around the corner and fell in the baptismal before the baptism started.
[00:03:08] Rebekah: This sweet young lady was wearing a floor length Her coat, which all the fur ended up in the baptismal and, and her hair was down below her butt. She had long
[00:03:21] Tim: hair too. And half of it was also
[00:03:23] Rebekah: in the baptismal for the sweet people who had to get baptized that night. She left a lot
[00:03:27] Tim: of residual stuff in the baptismal.
[00:03:30] Donna: Um, Donna, I’m the mom. And again, I said it out of order, but who cares now? So for me, I was baptized when I was like, uh, I was 16. I got saved just before I turned 16 in 1980. And so, uh, sometime during that year, when we had a baptismal service, the pastor was like, you get saved. You get baptized. That’s the thing to do.
And I wanted to do it. And so, um, it was at my church. We did have a baptistry back at the, in the back corner of the platform. And interestingly enough, um, I grew up in Southern West Virginia. And my church at that time is very, well, the church still is in general, uh, but was very conservative outwardly. So you only wore dresses to church.
and included when I got baptized. So, I had to wear a skirt and a top. Um, I know some churches will use robes when they do, when they baptize people or whatever and, and things. Uh, but at the time, you know, that’s not what you did. You just wore a dark colored top and, and a skirt that wasn’t flowy. No flowy skirts for the baptistry.
[00:04:43] Tim: My name is Tam. I’m the dad of Uh, the husband of this group, uh, whatever we call ourselves from week to week. Uh, I was baptized when I was 14 or 15. Our church did not have a baptismal. And so the congregation came over to my home where we had a pool in the backyard. It was an above ground pool. And so most of the congregations gathered around the outside of the pool.
There is a decking part. And so some of the congregation was up on that part. Um, and I wore shorts and a t-shirt, uh, to that baptismal because that was appropriate. Mm-Hmm. I mean, it was, it was my pool in the backyard. And I remember not too many years later, um, I participated in my first baptismal as a pastor, as an associate before I was married, uh, at a church in Hartsville.
They, they also did not have a pool in the backyard, and so. We went to one of the members in ground pools and had a service. So that’s, that’s fairly common. Uh, baptismal is different of our Hispanic congregation that meets in our, in our facility. Um, they have used our baptismal, but they prefer, to go out to the river, and, uh, they do, even though it’s usually too cool to do that.
So, uh, it’s always interesting exactly what, you know, what the baptismal would be. The person on the, on the road that Philip talked to, the eunuch, um, said, what prevents me from being baptized? And he said, well, there’s a body of water. Let’s go do it. So Pirate’s Cove, um, it’s called Pirate’s Cove, that doesn’t sound very religious, um, but that’s where so many of the baptisms took place, uh, in the Jesus movement in California.
I
[00:06:31] Rebekah: have two questions. First question. So, dad, how do you think that watching the baptisms happen, like, at your home, did that impact you at all when you walked into ministry? Like, did that inspire or make you kind of connected to that even before you were sure that that’s what God was calling you to?
[00:06:49] Tim: Um, I don’t, I don’t know that it connected me.
Like thinking about ministry or things like that, but I think it did impact, um, how I feel about a lot of things as I’ve moved into ministry that sometimes we get in tight strictures and forms. We have to do it this way. We have to do it that way. And I’ve just seen, you know, from, you know, from my childhood and around the world where I’ve been on missions trips and things, I’ve just seen a lot of people following Christ.
In, you know, with some different forms and different structures and, uh, that’s okay. Well, Jesus revolution is inspired by the real life story of the massive revival that took place between 1968 and the late 70s. This particular story focuses primarily on the stories and early ministry lives of pastors Chuck Smith, Lonnie Frisby, and Greg Laurie.
Uh, we see the growth of a small, uh, small church full of, uh, squares, as they were called. They were being overrun by hippies who knew Jesus and had never been to church before. Spiritual awakening of previously unchurched people both sparked a new hope in those around them and also an uncomfortable fear from some church folks.
Couldn’t see past the long hair, bare feet, bell bottoms, and peace signs of their new pumates. Both book and film attempt to unwrap not only the timeline of events that occurred during the life changing revolution, but also the struggles of imperfect people and relationships in contrast with the service of a holy God.
And uh, I appreciated the fact that it set, set the book in the time that it was, that it was in. It was a time of upheaval. People were. It was anti war, anti government, anti establishment. Things were breaking apart. Different people groups were angry and there was violence all over. And I remember it not being a very hopeful time.
I’m old enough to have been a pre teen about the time. Uh, these things were taking place and, uh, I was a teenager and in high school, I wore those very same bell bottoms, wore those very same kind of clothes because they were still in style, uh, until I graduated from high school.
[00:09:08] Rebekah: I’m glad that somebody liked that part of the book because it took me a while to be like, uh, I want, I don’t want to read this anymore.
And I finally got into it when they got into the story that The movie, she doesn’t like history.
[00:09:21] Josiah: To be clear,
[00:09:22] Rebekah: I hate history. I don’t you in love with the Oppenheimer book, right? Format. Listen, , I’m still scarred.
[00:09:30] Josiah: So I, I did not, uh, love the introduction to the book for a different reason, but I did appreciate, I thought it was a very succinct but effective description of how all of the political assassinations affected the country.
Uh, from JFK, uh, but also to Jack Ruby live on television when how many hundreds of thousands of children were watching as a man died in front of them. Yes. You know. It was
[00:10:01] Rebekah: traumatic. Yeah, I
[00:10:02] Tim: totally remember what you’re talking about. And, and you guys have never seen a world leader assassinated, you know, to, to make speeches and, and.
On live television now. Well, there they are on TV and then be assassinated. Yeah. Again. It was scarring to a generation. Rebecca,
[00:10:17] Josiah: just as a reminder, Lee Harvey Oswald is supposed to have killed JFK.
[00:10:25] Rebekah: JFK. I knew that. Yep.
[00:10:26] Josiah: And a couple days after the assassination, there was a live telecast of him killing him.
Being, I think, transferred from Dallas police to FBI and they were going to put him on a plane. But while he was being transferred, a nightclub owner shot him dead on live television. Jack Ruby. Jack Ruby killed Louis Oswald. And that was live. And I guess JFK was kind of live. I don’t know that anyone really got a great Yeah.
So it was It wasn’t like So it was just a lot of, a lot of death came into the home that had never with, you know, before television and before, you know The Changing Times had never been in the home like that, and I thought that that, I didn’t, I thought a lot of the introduction to the book was nostalgia bait, but I did think that that was particularly effective at transporting you to a time that was different than the time that came before it.
Yes.
[00:11:28] Rebekah: Well, as with the other true life story we’ve covered in biography form, um, we’re going to talk about changes from book to film. And in this case, we are actually talking about how in a lot of ways the film displayed things that happened differently than they happened in real life. I obviously know we share our thoughts on the changes, but I wanted to know your opinions as we kind of go through these as to why you think some of them happened or were chosen, you know, to be altered in this way or that.
So the way we typically do these is, uh, there’s three types of changes we like to cover. Changes to the plot and timeline, changes to the setting, and changes to the way characters are portrayed and their characterization imperatively. Do we want to start with settings since there’s literally just one and then kind of move into plot and timeline?
[00:12:19] Josiah: Sure. Yeah, there aren’t many setting changes at all, but there is no mention that Kathy’s family had lived in Malaysia until recently moving back to the States. Kathy was, Kathy ended up being Greg’s wife.
[00:12:35] Tim: Right, and that was, when I was reading that, I was surprised at that, because it was not part of the film
[00:12:41] Josiah: at all.
It wasn’t even hinted at. Yeah, I went to see Jesus Revolution with a few friends, also Christians, and they, they were fine with the film. They didn’t love it, but they didn’t really, they didn’t like it very much, but they didn’t hate it. They just thought it was okay. Um, and I like, I liked it more than they did, but my main problem with the film was that Kathy, there were not, not to be woke or anything, the, there were no impelling women characters for me.
I thought all of the women were just props for the male characters. I thought that was unfortunate. And so in the book, Kathy got some, I think at least one chapter from her point of view. And so she got a lot more development. I know she’s not a character, she’s a real person, but I did feel like the book did a better job of portraying Kathy as a, as a dynamic human being with, with a background, with flaws and with strengths instead of, Oh, she’s just the girl that the main character is trying to date.
[00:13:42] Rebekah: And she’s like, got integrity as she grows. That was kind of the only takeaway I had.
[00:13:48] Tim: Yeah. I suppose, uh, that, that kind of change was. probably for the film to try to keep it a little more concise because it’s already about three different ministers, um, and their stories and how they, how they are interwoven, uh, to add a lot more.
Would probably begin to confuse the plot a little bit. I agree. But
[00:14:13] Donna: in the, but in the books, in the book, I think Greg’s wife and Chuck Smith’s wife were clearly, like, treated well by them, loved by them, cherished by them in the way that you would want to see a strong man, a leader. I
[00:14:30] Rebekah: did note that Chuck Smith’s wife, Pastor Smith, uh, in the book, it was mentioned that she would see neighborhood kids passing by their window all the time and she would often pray for them.
And I think there was like mention of the fact that a lot of them looked like they were on drugs or things like that and that she actively prayed for them, including Greg Laurie. So before she ever met Greg, he did live in the neighborhood that she lived in and she was praying for him. Um, and I thought that that was just such a good.
Portrayal of the type of woman that she was. So I kind of agree. She was a
[00:15:03] Tim: powerful character and a powerful influence, a little less dramatically influence, uh, in the, but the, but the book pulled her story very well.
[00:15:15] Josiah: Well, let’s go through some more character changes since we’re there with Chuck’s wife. I thought it was along with Kathy.
I did want to mention that her other sister is not portrayed in the movie. I think that ties in with her role getting a little reduced, maybe from the book to film. But I also wanted to mention that Lonnie and Connie, I can’t believe those are their names, but Lonnie Frisbee, who’s played by The Chosen’s Jesus actor, Jonathan Rumi.
Lonnie and Connie were 18 and 19 in real life when they moved into the Smiths house, but the actors in the film seemed much older. Jonathan Rumi, I think, was in his mid 40s. when they filmed. And along that same line, Kelsey Grammer was in his 60s, even though the in real life character was in his 40s, Chuck Smith.
And I thought it was funny that Joel Courtney, who played Greg Laurie, was the closest in age. He was only around 7 to 12 years older than his character.
[00:16:15] Donna: And has a great baby face. It was very, it was very believable. The movie mentions Greg drawing. with his dad. But Greg’s mother had, uh, she was married like seven, six or seven times and had many boyfriends in between.
So she lived a very, a very rough life and made some very hard choices, uh, made some very poor choices. Um, Greg said that, you know, she came home every night, passed out and passed out drunk. There was a consistency to what she did and she tried to hold down a job as well to try to have some, some income because it was just her and Greg there.
But she did, one of her husbands was named Oscar Laurie and so, uh, it was Greg’s stepdad, one of his stepdads. And he did remark in, uh, in a tweet in August of 23, and I’m sure answering questions that people had about, about his life. In an ex
[00:17:14] Josiah: post. Yes, in
[00:17:16] Donna: an ex post. Greg tweeted that he never knew his biological dad, but he was treated properly as a son by Oscar Laurie, who his mom married after after Greg was born.
He’s really open about his life growing up with his mom. And
[00:17:35] Tim: she had told she had told Greg that Oscar Laurie had left them initially. And then finally, she admitted to him, No, we left him.
[00:17:45] Speaker 6: Yeah, we
[00:17:45] Tim: walked out on him and he didn’t, he didn’t know because he wondered why this man that he was really beginning to have a decent relationship with would suddenly leave them and it was his mother who initiated that and, and Greg, Greg did not know that initially when they moved to California
[00:18:03] Donna: and I was very glad to read in the book.
That, that what they portrayed in the movie did go along with, they, they did follow that line that he was able to pray with his mom when she was older and, and make some inroads with her that she recognized that a lot of what she had done was just so ruinous to her life.
[00:18:24] Tim: The film, uh, the film begins about a third of the way through the book and covers about a third or so of the book.
Uh, there’s a lot of stuff that wraps, wraps stuff up. Some of that is in the montage at the end of the film, not all of it. Uh, some of it’s there in, in capsule form, uh, and in the book it’s, it’s there a little more deeply. Um, it follows the story. Um, the book goes ahead and follows the story beyond where Chuck receipt or not Chuck, but uh, where Greg Laurie receives the church.
He’s the new pastor of this new thing. Um, the book does go on through details about Chuck Smith’s life, apparently in the, uh, in the eighties, he was involved in a fairly popular minister, uh, thing in the eighties about predicting when Christ was coming back and the end times. Uh, and he did do that.
Lonnie Frisbee’s illness and death are mentioned in the montage at the end. So obviously the book is broader, uh, and the movie has a much shorter timeline. But they do use the montage at the end, I think, effectively to conclude people’s stories, at least, at least in a satisfying way that, that the audience doesn’t walk out thinking, I, I wonder what happened to them.
[00:19:47] Donna: Um, according to the book, Greg and Kathy met at a Bible study at Calvary Chapel when he was 17, she was 14. The film shows the meeting before either of them got saved and getting high together, both seeking a quote unquote truth before being drawn to the gospel message that was shared by Lonnie Frisbee on their high school campus.
And if you remember, Greg was even there the night that Kathy’s sister Almost OD, uh, and just about killed herself, but in the book, uh, he was involved in a lot of those things, but it was slightly different. I was a fan of that change because I felt like they were able to use storyline that didn’t didn’t go far off the rails of, of what really happened, but they were able to use the storyline to highlight the, a lot of things that were going on in that day in the hippie movement and the, the love ends and just all getting together in an apartment and just getting high drugs, whatever drugs were available and, and, uh, whatever you can get your hands on, but also things like the rock concerts, the way, the way music was used.
And, uh, I love the fact that they did touch on in the book, um, that music is a very, and we all know because we’re involved in music in a lot of ways, music can be used to evoke emotions. And that sounds wonderful. And in the context of church music, I know that, that it, it is very impactful to me in a lot of ways, certain chord structures, the way music is written, melody lines and things like that can spark emotion in me.
And bring me to tears, but it can also be used in a negative way as well. It can be used to hype emotions in a, in a negative way. And a lot of the rock bands of the day were into it. And a lot, well, because a lot of the musicians in the bands would be high while they were performing. I mean, and I’m not saying that doesn’t
[00:21:59] Tim: still go on.
I thought it was an interesting fact that, you know, in, in portraying some of those things. Uh, especially in the book, it expands on it a little bit more, but they all talked about, you know, when we’re on drugs and things, we see things so clearly and I can write my music or I can write stories or I can draw pictures.
But then when they come down from their high, they realize they just wrote words over and over and over again, or it wasn’t, they weren’t experiencing in reality what they thought they were while they were high in this culture.
[00:22:33] Rebekah: And I thought that whole portrayal, you know, with him and Kathy, even though that isn’t exactly how it happened, it was a good way of showing what Greg talks about in the book or when he was interviewed or whatever, that he would seek drugs for that reason.
And he would have friends that had great trips and felt like it was this connection with the divine. And for him, it was just nightmare fuel. Like it was always dark. It was all like, he never found what he was hoping to find. And so I thought that was a really interesting way to show that. I also didn’t mind this change in terms of the fact that it connected you to the people you needed to care about.
And it really did walk you through what both of them had encountered. Cause Kathy and her sisters did get into drugs and the hippie life and a lot of that stuff. It just was before she technically had met Greg.
[00:23:24] Speaker 6: Mm hmm.
[00:23:24] Donna: An extra article I read, told, uh, an account from Greg that it was during one of these trips that he saw himself in the, what the reflection that he saw was like skeletal and wasting away.
And a voice came to him and said, you’re dead, you’re dying. You’re going to be dead. And it, it actually was a catalyst. For him to say, Oh, wait, wait, this, I, that, that was a step. Something needs to change. Right.
[00:23:56] Rebekah: I also had a really funny little experience, uh, watching the movie again. We watched it with our son and two of the boys that live with us.
So they’re all like between 17 and 22. And so we were watching the scene where Greg and Kathy are at the Janis Joplin concert. And the, there’s like an old hippie that talks about. connecting with the divine and all that. And then they drop stuff from like a plane. And so I knew what it was, but it was really funny because I think one or two of them looked at me and they were like, what is that?
And I was like, it’s LSD, like it’s acid on pieces of paper. And they would just drop it. And you would just like the paper and get high. And that was what people did. And I think even for them, I mean, I They’re all pretty sweet church boys and don’t do a lot of that. Haven’t done those kinds of things as far as I know, but I think to even them they were like, they just took something that someone dropped from a plate.
Like it was shocking, but at the time that was kind of a thing.
[00:24:56] Tim: Would it be surprising to know that, uh, one of, one of your mother’s friends that was actually a part of our wedding? I think, no, let me back that up. One of your mother’s friends, from her high school experience said, yeah, I used to go to some of those drug parties when we were in high school and everybody would just, there would be a punch bowl and everybody would drop in whatever drugs they got from their parents house and you just, you just pick out whatever you wanted.
And he said, I did that all the time. I’m thinking, Oh my goodness, I just I just can’t imagine that. I, like I said, I grew up in this time and this was all around me. And even some of the kids in the church that I went to and the high school that I went to, different day and age, we actually had a smoking area for students behind the school.
It wasn’t, it wasn’t restricted. It, you know, it was just restricted to an area. But when they would go out to smoke, they would smoke pot. And that was a big. That was just a normal thing for them and it was all around me, but I just can’t imagine that recklessness. Um, it just, just so reckless with things that are so, so powerful.
[00:26:07] Rebekah: But it underscores what Lonnie says in the movie when he’s talking to Pastor Chuck and he’s like, These people are looking for God. They just don’t know that Jesus is what they’re looking for, but that’s why they do drugs. That’s why they do, you know, this and that. Another thing I noticed in the plot that was different from book to film was that In the film, Pastor Smith’s daughter, like, meets Lonnie while he’s hitchhiking, brings him home, kind of just because, I don’t know, his, it was kind of unclear to me in the movie why exactly she brought him home other than, oh my gosh, this guy knows Jesus, he’s a hippie, I have to show my dad.
So the reality of what happened in the book that I loved was that that daughter was actually dating a boy who was a Christian and would go out and pick up hitchhikers to minister to them. He would pick them up to tell Jesus, tell them about Jesus. And so he picked Lonnie up like to tell him about Jesus.
And then Lonnie started trying to evangelize to him. And then he said, Oh my gosh, you have to go meet my girlfriend’s dad, Pastor Smith. And the other background to that. was that Chuck and his wife had actually been talking about the fact that they cared for and wanted to minister to hippies, but they didn’t know how and they didn’t know how to find them.
So it was all kind of this ongoing conversation and the boyfriend introduced him to Lonnie. But it was like something Chuck had been seeking out. It didn’t just slap him across the face, if that makes sense. Um, there was also kind of this plot line where the daughter becomes closer to Jesus, seeing her family, her dad, especially not only accept hippies, but draw them into ministry and see them as the same.
And while that part wasn’t Clearly based on true events from what I understood. I did think it was a good way to kind of portray what it felt like for people who are maybe not hippies, maybe not doing drugs, maybe not on the fringes, but we’re on the fringes of Christianity feeling like everybody was a square and that they couldn’t like accept anything but their boring staid traditions.
I thought that was a good way to put it. Portray that even though it wasn’t exactly the way it was explained.
[00:28:21] Tim: Sometimes we talk about amalgamating characters in books where you’ve got two or three characters and you turn them into one for the film. Um, I think they did that some with the circumstance with the plot and timeline and that they kind of amalgamated culture and all of the things going on to try and say this one thing will really push it and help you understand the context.
[00:28:47] Donna: Couple little changes here. Um, there’s no mention in the book of the old car being bought for Greg or the prayer over
[00:28:55] Tim: it to work there again. I think it’s kind of that amalgamation. Um, it was to show the kind of faith that was common among them. You know, I don’t have a car, but I need one. God will provide.
I It doesn’t work all the time, so let’s pray over it. You know, I don’t have food that’ll provide you all those kinds of things. I think there again, it was kind of an amalgamation of the culture that they were living in to try to get that across in the movie.
[00:29:21] Donna: Um, there’s a female and there’s a female evangelist in our, in our denomination, in the church of the Nazarene that tells the story of a missions trip she took with teenagers.
It was out of the country. Um, but she took a group of teens and then some adult, um, sponsors and they had to make a trip and the bus they were driving was pretty rickety. It was a pretty big bus. There were probably 30, 40 people on this trip. And they had, where they had to drive was out of the, outside of the city, out into the country.
Um, and they were just out on a road and the bus broke down and she told a story about them getting out of the bus and they’re all kind of like, okay, what do we do? They tried to troubleshoot, tried to make sure a few things were taken care of and the bus still wouldn’t start. And so they were like, okay, we’re, we’re, we’re going to pray.
And they got around the bus and, and I have no reason to believe that. This lady was, was, um, embellishing the story. I mean, that’s not person she is, so I do believe her. Um, but she, she said they got her on the bus and they prayed and they started and it kind of made a little bit of a noise and whatever.
And one of the kids said, one of the teenagers said, we’ve got some cooking oil and stuff in the back that we have with our food. We’re preparing, could we, would it be stupid to anoint the bus? And she said, we all just looked at each other like, well, do we have any other option, we could try? Mm-Hmm. And they poured the oil over the bus and can, and prayed
And within the next few minutes, the bus started and they drove on their destination. And so I, I did like this. this in the, this piece in the, in the movie, because I know, I know that things like that aren’t just common and accepted things that people would want to believe. Um, and, and we’ve had things in our own lives that have happened that until I saw them happen, I would never have said to you, Oh yeah, that’s, I mean, I could see that happening.
And so I thought it was great that they, that they had it in there because, you know, God truly is concerned with our everyday needs. He’s not just a big ethereal thing out there. I mean, that’s the way we live our lives.
[00:31:41] Tim: That was a really big part of the Jesus movement was, was a dependency on God because we were living in a culture that said, if you’re, if you’re a good Christian, you have a good job.
You, you give to the church, you take care of yourself. And in this Jesus revolution, people were discovering, you know, I just need to pour myself out. Before God and let him do with me what he wants to, uh, which was a very different attitude.
[00:32:08] Rebekah: I think that the, one of the things that pops out to me when I was thinking about like the prayer over the car and things like that, kind of two connected ideas.
Number one, I love that. I did not know what denomination Greg Laurie was in, which is a thing. He is a pastor in a denomination church. Now, I did not know what denomination he was in by watching this. He just got to know Jesus and Chuck Smith’s preaching style was as stated in the book. I just exposited scripture.
Like I wanted to talk about scripture and the Bible and let people learn it that way, which I appreciate a lot because I think that that comes back to. Getting to know Jesus through the lens of the Bible and not always through the lens of everybody’s interpretation of what this means and that means.
But also, I think it’s interesting that The film also kind of gets a little bit into the fact that depending on what sect of Christianity you’re in, you may be more interested in like the signs and wonders side. Um, I go to a much more charismatic church than dad. You would pastor. I would say, I think Josiah’s church is probably somewhere in the middle of that.
And so there are definitely different versions of what people experience depending on the churches they go to. I prayed for a lot of cars to start miraculously. And I think that in a lot of places that would be considered really odd, even to Christians. But I liked that it was just kind of this raw, we’re just getting to know God through the lens of scripture, and we’re just doing things that seem like he would want us to do based on what we know about him from reading that Bible.
And that’s it. And I kind of, I loved that.
[00:33:45] Josiah: Well, in the book, slash real life, when the Episcopalian leaders, talk about denominations, ask that Greg Laurie stop teaching his Wednesday night Bible study, Chuck Smith immediately went to finding a church in Riverside that Greg Laurie could pastor, eventually the Abandoned Baptist Church.
Chuck, in real life, was very supportive at the time, and the Episcopalian leaders, uh, gave them a few weeks, I believe, if I’m remembering that correctly, to transition. But in the film, it seemed more like Pastor Chuck Smith supported the decision to pull Greg from teaching and there was a there was a period of time that passed between the loss of that preaching role and the purchase of a new church.
Now I personally wonder if this is a combination of a later event covered in the book that wasn’t in the film because I think it’s in the In the book, Greg talks about in, like, the 2000s, 2010s, he wanted to start a Bible study and he was having trouble finding a location who would take him. It seemed as though a lot of people were scared of him.
that the Bible study with Greg Laurie, who’s now a huge pastor, would take away.
[00:35:04] Speaker 7: Yeah,
[00:35:04] Josiah: it would take away from their service, or maybe it would, you know, it would take away from their congregation somehow. It would be too demand. It would be too much of a demand of a competition. At that point, Chuck Smith was unsupportive of Greg.
It was a very sad part near the end of the book. As Greg Laurie, who authored the book, did we mention that, um, Greg, Greg did author the book and with someone else, he. Talks about how he and Chuck are good now, but it was discouraging that so late in their live There was a period of time It was
[00:35:43] Tim: a bit broken
[00:35:44] Josiah: Yeah and so I wonder if the movie was trying to portray a little bit of that from later in life since since the movie doesn’t Go into the future that far.
It also
[00:35:53] Tim: gives the gives time for the other adjustment in the story of Greg’s relationship with his wife, Kathy, how they got back together, because when he’s rejected by the church and seemingly rejected by Pastor Chuck in the film, he goes back to, he goes back to Pirate’s Cove, um, and he’s reading his Bible and he runs into some people and he talks to them about Jesus.
They, the subject goes that way and they say, well, you know, he said, I could baptize you now. And he goes out and baptizes them and that kind of moves. It kind of connects that later part where he does something that he just feels he should do, and somebody doesn’t support him that’s important to him. It also connects so that he has an opportunity to connect with Kathy, because although, um, it’s a little, it’s different from book to film, that’s also a catalyst for them getting back together.
He says, I’m supposed to be a preacher, so.
[00:36:51] Rebekah: I think that it was interesting that the Episcopalian rector, like in the movie, it’s unclear, but in real life, he allowed Greg to come and say, Hey, our Bible studies moving to a different location and the kids that he’d been preaching to and young adults, yeah, the kids and young adults he’d been preaching to literally became the beginning of what would be Harvest Church.
Like they were his initial congregation. It wasn’t like he, it, in the movie it kind of felt like he taught a Bible study one time, then was told by the older guys he couldn’t.
[00:37:23] Tim: And they cut him off at the knees. And then
[00:37:24] Rebekah: later they, then later Chuck Smith bought him a church. Yeah. Like, and I just thought it was interesting that in real life it was actually a pretty significant fluid story of like, I, taught a Bible study that turned into the first church I pastored, you
[00:37:40] Josiah: know?
I think that is a weird change. I assume it had to do with pacing or something, but I think that that’s a significant real life event to not only change but exclude from the film.
[00:37:53] Rebekah: That was probably the one change that I felt that way about.
[00:37:57] Josiah: Yeah.
[00:37:58] Rebekah: Dad, did you want to say more about the changes between Greg and Kathy?
You marked it off, but
[00:38:03] Tim: I marked it off. Oh,
[00:38:05] Rebekah: sorry.
[00:38:05] Tim: Um, just, just the fact that, you know, they, they changed it from, you know, he, he was on a missions trip, you know, an evangelism trip for the summer and he was going to be gone all summer. And he and Kathy had broken up and they were, they were not, uh, not together anymore.
And she just felt like, um, he was the right person for her. And so she was praying and ask God that if he’s the right person, you’ll bring him back from this trip early that he’s not supposed to come back to until the summer’s from until the summer’s over. Uh, and for some reason he comes back home and the apology is really interesting in the book.
Um, there isn’t one. It’s just like,
[00:38:45] Rebekah: No.
[00:38:46] Tim: Okay. You
[00:38:47] Rebekah: got your eyebrows together.
[00:38:48] Tim: Yeah, you got your eyebrows done. And she said that was how they got back together. We were back together and we headed to marriage. So
[00:38:55] Rebekah: I do think it was interesting that like they kind of showed again, amalgamating things. They showed him proposing to her in front of her family.
family and which none of that happened. Uh, but like the dad accepted Greg after having rejected his desire to marry Kathy. And I thought all of that was a really interesting way to just kind of show that their families did end up connecting well and that he had good relationship with them. Um, it just all kind of happened in a slightly different timeline.
[00:39:24] Tim: Don’t you think part of the, uh, the difficulty in telling this kind of a story is who’s, Who’s the antagonist?
[00:39:32] Speaker 7: I
[00:39:32] Tim: mean, you’ve got, you know, you’ve got, um, a story is conflict and resolution. Um, the conflict in this was really that it was a cult, a church culture that had to begin to accept. a more organic way of worshipping, uh, and living as Christians.
So I guess you kind of needed some antagonism
[00:39:57] Josiah: there. Yeah. To be honest, I did. I did. I, in hindsight, I appreciate the movie was able to create antagonists that weren’t necessarily evil, but Kathy’s dad, I also think of some of the old guy, the couple old guys in Chuck’s church, That when he said,
[00:40:16] Tim: who’s with me, basically, and
[00:40:18] Josiah: a couple of people
[00:40:18] Tim: left and a
[00:40:19] Josiah: couple
[00:40:19] Tim: of people
[00:40:19] Josiah: walked over to the side where the hippies were and said, keep going.
Yeah. And so I, I think, yeah, the, the book reading more as a biography doesn’t need an antagonist, whereas the film. Films need antagonists, and that may be
[00:40:36] Tim: part of the reason that Rebecca doesn’t like this kind of story in book form, because it is not, the book did not have an antagonist, the, the evil person that you had to work against and finally conquer, um, that’s not in that kind of story.
Because real life is a lot more mushy than that.
[00:40:58] Donna: Well, let’s move on into some real basic info about this book and film. I found some of this interesting, I will say. I wasn’t sure that I would want to include it, but as I got into the details, I thought it was pretty interesting. Um, the book was released, In 2018, September of 18, the movie was released to one theater in L.
A. on February 15th of 23, and then the rest of the U. S. on February 24th, the next week. Uh, the non U. S. release began on 3 23, of 23,
[00:41:36] Josiah: honey. A whole month later.
[00:41:37] Donna: Goodreads, uh, got a 4. 4 out of 5. It was rated PG, um, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 54%. They’re not fresh.
[00:41:47] Tim: It’s consistent for most Christian based films.
[00:41:50] Rebekah: Yeah. A lot of the people that complained, really their biggest complaint was that the people in the movie seemed to be portrayed very, very whitewashed. It was the best version of something rather than using it as like a biographical portrait of what really happened. So I thought that was interesting that the majority of negative reviews weren’t negative because of the topic.
It was just negativity based on the portrayal. Yeah.
[00:42:15] Josiah: Well, I think that that’s still a dog whistle negativity. They’re saying, don’t, don’t listen to the Jesus revolution because it’s not true. And it’s like parts of it were omitted, sort of. I think that’s a dog whistle for non Christians, which is fine.
They can use their dog whistles if they want just, but call a spade a spade. I think that’s especially interesting because one of my favorite things about the movie, it wasn’t perfect. But I can’t think of a Christian movie that whose main characters have been more flawed,
[00:42:47] Tim: openly flawed. I mean, they, they make no openly flawed.
They make no bones about the fact that they were involved in the drug and. And free love culture. And they were, they were part of that. That’s what they were delivered from. They just don’t glorify
[00:43:01] Josiah: it. And Chuck Smith was intolerant. Right. Yes. One of the heroes of the movie.
[00:43:06] Tim: He started, he started off very intolerant and how dare those people.
And, you know.
[00:43:11] Donna: But in relation to what we’re talking about, uh, Connie Frisbee. Who is still living was interviewed, uh, after the movie’s release and the summary, a brief summary of the article is one, she was never consulted and never knew they were making a movie. And so her stepdaughter. went to see the movie with some friends and they were watching it and her character comes up and she said, Oh my gosh, I think that’s my mother.
I think they’re characterizing my mother. And she called Connie afterwards and told her. And so in a, in an interview or in a, a zoom call, uh, with the production company after, after that happened, they apologized to Connie and said, we thought you were deceased. Now, she makes it, she infers at the very least in the article that, I mean, they could have just looked her up, see if she was deceased, but.
She and Lonnie had been divorced since 1974. Right, they had been apart for, for many years, but one of the things that she brought up, she went to see the movie after talking to her stepdaughter, and she said one of the things that she disliked the most was. While they didn’t show the people as perfect humans.
They did look over a lot of the things and changed enough that were very distressing to her because she said, uh, the biggest one was Chuck, Chuck never offered Lonnie any compensation.
[00:44:47] Tim: I find that interesting because he That may very well be true, but he rented them a house to stay in that all of their people could stay in.
I mean, it’s not, it’s not like nothing was done for them.
[00:45:01] Donna: But, but she was saying that like, she said Lonnie and I were still eating out of dumpsters and out of trash cans. Yeah, that, that
[00:45:10] Rebekah: got me. By the time they left Calvary Chapel, that was still, her, Connie’s statement was that that was still how they were having to get food because they’d never been on salary but were working nearly 24 hours a day.
[00:45:23] Donna: And the only other thing she said that troubled me was that when in the film when she and Lonnie went to talk to Chuck about some marriage counseling and they sat down and tried to talk, she said, we literally went to his, the door of his study. He kept it very dark. He had like one little desk lamp on because he liked his office dark.
We stood at the door. We never went in and sat down. And when we began, when he said, you know, what are, what, uh, what’s going on today or what do you need today? And she said, we talked about some marriage counseling. She felt that he just dismissed her and said, Um, this is all about God now in this ministry, Connie, and you’re just going to put some things on the back burner until things are, well, she said in the article, she said
[00:46:08] Rebekah: your marriage doesn’t matter now.
Right. Your marriage. Right. And she, which who knows if that’s true, but I just mean, but I will,
[00:46:15] Tim: I will say something since, since I’m, I’m a part of that time period, um, it was, we’ve been married now for 38 years. And I would say that it’s only been the last couple of, a couple of decades, maybe a little bit more than that, that the church at large has basically said the pastor needs to have a good, solid marriage and you may need to work on it to make it work.
As opposed to, you need to do ministry. You need to be good to your family, but you need to do ministry and ministry is more important than anything. We’re paying you to be here and that’s what you, yeah.
[00:46:52] Donna: And I don’t think that was an intentional. No, I just think it was part of the
[00:46:57] Tim: culture, and so I’m not sure if he reacted that way to them, I’m not sure that it would have been odd in the culture.
I’m not, not sure very many pastors at the time would have said, you know, you’re a ministry leader, we need to do marriage counseling with you guys. It seems like it would have been a rather odd thing, unfortunately. And fortunately, now, nowadays people recognize the marriage is important and has to be worked on.
And, you know, there are times when counseling needs to be done, but that would not have been a part of that time period. What
[00:47:31] Donna: I got from the article. reading it, trying to use discernment. I heard a little bit of probably accurate information, and I heard a little bit of a very hurt woman. Now, she moved on with her life, and I believe that she is a, she is a Christian.
Um, and, and went on and is, I think she’s in her mid seventies now, but I heard a lot of hurt and, and, but at the same time, that one statement gave me hope that she, she wasn’t just fully bitterness overload, that kind of thing, that she would just try to be ruthless about it.
[00:48:12] Tim: I think for all of us, when we’re looking back, especially now at 62, looking back.
You know, at the early years of my ministry and things like that, it’s a lot more difficult to recall. of all the details of things that happened. What I, what I remember most are my feelings and things that really, that really got embedded in me. And I may see them more severely as they actually happened because they affected me more.
[00:48:43] Rebekah: One of the things that I did respect and the reason that I didn’t immediately dismiss just, Oh, she seems like a ticked off person. Right. Was that she, one of the issues she took with the movie, significantly was that it showed people like individual people as very, very important. And as much as I think it was actually good storytelling and stuff, she said that that movement was about God.
It was about how Jesus changed lives. And she didn’t like that. She felt it focused strongly on just three people. Which, again, I, she’s not a movie, a filmmaker, you can’t really make a film without making it about some individuals.
[00:49:22] Josiah: Yeah, read the book, it’s, it’s less about the three. Well, I wanted to mention before we move completely on from the statistics, that although it did have a Rotten Tomatoes, 54 critics rating.
I did have a 99 percent audience rating, which did surprise me for a few reasons, not only because, you know, Christians aren’t just automatically going to give it five stars, like I went to see it with other Christians, but also I’m surprised that non Christians didn’t review bomb the movie. Do you know what this is?
Review bombing? I could imagine. I mean,
[00:49:56] Donna: I can guess
[00:49:57] Josiah: from the context. Go to a movie that you wouldn’t watch anyway. Yeah, don’t, don’t go to the movie and just give it a bad rating. You know, people are upset for various reasons about the Marvels, uh, you know, Captain Marvel, stuff like that. So a lot of people who haven’t seen that movie give it a bad rating automatically.
So I’m surprised that this wasn’t a review bombed on Flickster, but I am also encouraged that people did enjoy it because I do think that if you compare it to other faith based films, first of all, It is a higher quality film. Angel Studios is making a name for themselves in making high production quality content that’s still faith based, but on the other hand, I think comparing it to normal films, I think it is a worthwhile story.
To put to celluloid, as they say,
[00:50:51] Rebekah: yeah,
[00:50:52] Tim: I’ve found some of the production cost stuff. Interesting, uh, the, the numbers just, uh, 15 million to produce and opening weekend, it made that and just a little bit more, uh, and in us and Canada, it ended up 52 million, which is good, but the worldwide was 2. 2 million.
So it makes it look like it was definitely. A U. S. Canada culture movie.
[00:51:18] Donna: They only estimated opening weekend to be about 5 6 million. And then the opening night, the first night, it pulled in 7. 1.
[00:51:28] Tim: Oh, what
[00:51:28] Speaker 7: they were anticipating.
[00:51:30] Donna: And then opening weekend ended up at 15. 8. It was the third largest movie that weekend.
And it just blew out their projections. Now, I don’t know if that was projections by the mass public, or
[00:51:44] Josiah: Well, it was up against Cocaine Bear. Oh,
[00:51:47] Speaker 7: yeah.
[00:51:48] Josiah: Which might have beaten it in one of those weeks. Um, I, I wanted to point out that briefly, for about a month, Jesus Revolution was Lionsgate’s highest grossing film since COVID.
Until John wick chapter four came out the month after.
[00:52:05] Rebekah: According to an archive page from the Jesus revolution site, it looks like it may have only been released in four other countries outside of us. So they named Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand. And so it seems like it may just have had a very limited worldwide release, which, oh, it looks like, sorry, I looked at the updated page.
So they added. United Kingdom, Ireland, and India that were, but those weren’t released until into the summer. Okay. Okay.
[00:52:34] Donna: One thing I did read was, um, a pastor did, did baptize people on the set while filming while that during filming, if they’re, they did have a, and I think it was just kind of an unintended unplanned thing that just came up and, um, I’m assuming that’s part of that would be when they were out in the ocean filming stuff like that.
Just
[00:52:56] Rebekah: as you were saying, mom, we didn’t find a ton of trivia in terms of filming and a lot of the things we typically talk about, but I know a lot of people listening to this will have only seen the film. And so we had a few things that we wanted to share, some of which are included in the book. If you read the biography, um, about.
Just what happened to people afterwards and some of the complexities that happened. Uh, one of them was that central character, Lonnie Frisby, had a very complex life. Uh, after leaving Calvary Chapel, he and Connie divorced in 1974. Um, he did live in a drug culture and in at least, uh, multiple homosexual relationships, I believe, From what he shared later, he did contract AIDS early in the AIDS epidemic, meaning he got it when there were very, very few treatments that would have allowed him to, uh, live a full and healthy life.
So Greg Laurie. did an interview one time and said that he wasn’t familiar with what a lot of Lonnie was up to when he had moved to Florida after leaving Calvary Chapel. But at one point, it was clear that he was clearly backsliding, I think, were the quoted works. But later on, Lonnie served in ministry again.
He reconciled with Chuck Smith and with Greg Laurie. He was a central figure in launching the Vineyard Movement, which is a more like, you know, Charismatic church movement in the, I want to say 80s and he was openly serving Christ at the time of his death. He did die at the age of 43 in 1993 from complications from AIDS, which at the time again was very normal unfortunately.
So I thought it was an interesting choice not to include anything except the fact that That he died
[00:54:42] Tim: in the film. They did show that he was eccentric, um, which kind of kind of leads to some of those things. Um, and he was very, very interested in care in being charismatic in that, uh, what you would consider the charismatic movement.
Uh, and so that kind of foreshadows the founding of the vineyard, um, Calvary Chapel was led by Chuck Smith. It actually shrunk significantly, uh, after 1981 Smith suggested that he believed the rapture would occur in 1981, which was actually, um, a fairly popular thing. And I remember as a pastor. Uh, seeing a book entitled 88 reasons why the rapture is going to happen in 1988.
Uh, and I remember his sequel, uh, not 89 reasons why it didn’t happen in 88, uh, but it was a, it was a reg, it was a, a large part of church culture at the time, uh, former church members like to predict the rapture. Yeah, exactly. Uh, but former church members confirm he, he didn’t present it as something that God told him, Smith didn’t, uh, as opposed to the person who wrote the book I referenced.
Um, some sources state that the congregation’s confusion over the rapture not taking place at that time, uh, caused the church to lose, lose a lot of its members. Um, if you build a congregation for that kind of thing and it doesn’t happen, I could certainly see that. see why that would take place.
[00:56:12] Donna: It’s interesting that you said that, Rebecca, when your dad was reading that or when he was sharing that, um, that you, you kind of, you guys kind of chuckled about it, but around that time in the eighties, the reason I think that those opinions popped up in books and I mean, it was everything, any way you could capitalize on it, honestly, um, but.
If you read certain scriptures certain ways from the time that Israel became a nation again in the late 40s, the 80s would be the number that you would come up with that you could easily extrapolate this time to this time according to these scriptures. And I think I was glad to read that, I was glad to read there where, some church members said he never, he didn’t list a date.
He didn’t say, Oh, it has to be this day. But he was saying around that, uh, in that year seemed to be the, the, a reasonable time. And I was really glad for that because you know, it’s, it’s very, it was very easy. It’s still very easy. But around, around that time period, which would be just before dad and I, uh, were in, while we were in college and, and getting married, people were all over this topic because of just things going on in the world as well and blah, blah, blah.
And so, so predicting the times. Just for some people. I’m sure it was a very serious venture for others. I believe it was something to just gain them more fame
[00:57:47] Rebekah: One of the things the book does state in terms of Chuck Smith and the end of his life I believe he passed away in 20. I think it was 2012 or 2013 He had contracted was it lung cancer?
It was, I think it was cancer of some kind, but anyway, I, he told Greg, you know, that he was dying and continued to have a lot of faith and just said essentially a lot of things about how just because this is happening to me doesn’t mean that all of the things we know about Jesus aren’t true. And, uh, his funeral was attended by 8, 000 people.
And it said there was a live stream of 50, 000 others watching. So despite the fact that, you know, he had some controversy and in his later ministry, there were still a lot of people that I think regarded him as a very central figure to a pretty societally transformative movement.
[00:58:41] Donna: Yeah. And we mentioned the, the things that Connie had said in an article.
About her experience in finding out they did the movie, but they do, they do talk about Lonnie’s, um, past the movie, past where the movie ended. They do talk about Lonnie’s life in the book. and talk about the fact that he, he fell, um, he fell prey to, to his old life. And that in part of that was, uh, back into a homosexual lifestyle, but other things too, he just fell back into a lot of the things that had, had drug him down in his, as a young man.
And I was so thankful to read that at the end of his life when AIDS was just had, had taken him and was, was, he was getting ready to die. I was so thankful to read that, uh, Chuck and Greg both, I think, right? Didn’t they go together? But that they, they were able to speak with him. I think they did
[00:59:39] Tim: go together at that time.
Yeah, they were able to speak with him. That was before they had a little, a bit of a break.
[00:59:44] Donna: Yeah, but they were able to speak with him and pray with him and encourage him and thank him for. The things that he did and, and the, the, you know, some of the differences he made and that kind of thing.
[00:59:57] Tim: I think that the use of Jonathan Rumi as an actor was a, was a good choice.
I think Jonathan Rumi was a good choice because the roles he plays Um, he plays with sincerity, and I would say that even when I see him in interviews, I don’t see the character that he’s playing, even though he’s playing Jesus in The Chosen. I see Jonathan Rumi. When I watch The Chosen, I see him playing Jesus.
When I watched Jesus Revolution, I saw him playing Lonnie Frisbee, uh, and he plays it very sincerely, and I think it was a very good choice.
[01:00:28] Rebekah: I did think it was funny as far as I’ve followed him. I believe Rumi is actually a practicing Catholic. And I just thought it was funny because like in the story of Jesus revolution, Kathy’s parents were Catholics and one of their major problems with Greg Laurie was that like he was an evangelical and it was like this big deal.
And then, um, the, I just, I cracked up about, Like him being the complete opposite version of probably his real life self, which I loved it.
[01:01:00] Josiah: I had a very interesting religious experience having to see the person who played Jesus in The Chosen play a flawed character as Lonnie Frisbee, who, you know, we don’t really get into his struggles with his sexuality in the movie.
But we do go through movie struggles that were very uncomfortable for me to watch in a good way about him being arrogant and narcissistic and being like, yeah, people are coming to these because of me by the end of the movie, you know, he, he’s not portrayed in the best light ever. And I was like, gosh, I really have to.
And one of the things in the movie that I enjoyed. That I didn’t get as much of in the book was the struggles these characters are going through that these characters are making selfish choices, despite the movement happening around them, which I think ultimately just goes to show that it was not the people.
Who were the movement? I also thought it was hilarious when I was reading the book and it literally said, Lonnie Frisbee looks like Jesus. I thought that they were playing that up in the film.
[01:02:05] Rebekah: As it turns out, so does Jonathan Rumi, weirdly
[01:02:07] Josiah: enough. Well, here’s something about, uh, Greg, the, played by Joel Courtney in the movie, Pastor Greg Laurie.
started doing harvest crusades in 1989. These were large Christian gatherings for tens of thousands of people. Wow. He has never taken any payment for these crusades, including book sales and royalties, which is why I wanted to mention it. That hurts me. I’ll take his book sales and royalties.
[01:02:33] Rebekah: He sells his books at the Crusades, but he pauses all of the royalties.
[01:02:38] Donna: I think that, um, his choice not to charge for those things is amazing. Um, also Billy Graham. Nora and Graham, his daughter, and Graham Watts will not charge. And she has, she’s been invited to many, many, many women’s conferences that are out there going and will not go when they charge their people to come.
She said, when I speak, I’m not, I will not charge people to come because that will always leave someone out. That is fascinating.
[01:03:07] Tim: We haven’t mentioned it, but, uh, but Greg and Greg and Chuck Smith, but especially Greg. Was very connected to Billy Graham and learned a lot of that, um, ethical way to pastor, uh, when you’re well known.
So he learned a lot of that from Billy Graham, who now years after his death is still a revered pastor. leader, a Christian leader.
[01:03:33] Rebekah: Greg Laurie said this, I don’t think that I’m his contemporary. I would be happy to know that I had a 10th of the kind of impact that he did
[01:03:41] Tim: during his ministry. Amazing. Um, there is a, a tragic note that we get as we move toward the end of the book.
Um, Greg’s oldest son, Christopher, uh, was converted to Christianity after his own foray. into drug use. Uh, eventually he began working for Harvest Church, spreading the gospel. And after marrying his girlfriend, having a child with another on the way, Christopher was tragically killed in a car accident. Um, this, yeah, it was extremely sad, very traumatic for the family.
Shortly before that, his brother Jonathan, who had been living a double life and was, you know, In his own sinfulness, uh, had, you know, his brother Christopher had said, what’s it going to take for you to come back to the Lord? Uh, well, after Christopher’s death, uh, Jonathan repented of the private sins that he’d been hiding and was converted and serves now as staff at the Harvest Church.
So it’s tragic, and it’s redemptive, uh, and it’s reality. We’ve been talking a lot about the fact that this is a portrait of real people, and they have real issues. Sometimes they think more of themselves than they should. Sometimes they make selfish choices, um, because they’re real people. The same kinds of things that we all do.
[01:05:01] Rebekah: Yeah, I also thought it was really sad that when Christopher died, one of the things they mentioned that was really hard for the Laurie family was because of Greg’s notoriety, there was a lot of press, but also some people that got into the negative press side. They brought up Christopher’s past and his drug use and different things with Like his driving record, because Chris had kind of been a reckless driver for a while.
He was technically at fault for the accident. He rear ended a slow moving truck at a very high speed and stuff like that. And that breaks my heart. I’ve
[01:05:34] Tim: heard some, some pastors say, you know, when, when the devil is come, is battling you, he’ll always bring up your past. Um, and the part of the way that you battle him as you bring up his future.
Um, I thought the media played that kind of role. And that’s really sad at a time of tragedy and heartache. I mean, no family, no matter who they would be, uh, would just be, Hey, you know, hey, a kid died. Yeah, it’s traumatic. And people, I think people need to be aware of that.
[01:06:06] Donna: The original Time Magazine article that’s shown in the film and referenced Was published on June 21st in 1971.
It begins by positioning the person of Jesus as this notorious figure and was entitled the Alternative Jesus, Psychedelic Christ. Uh, there were just a couple of little snippets of the article I wanted to share. They end this, this beginning setup of Jesus being this notorious, uh, outlaw guy. Um, it says warning he is still at large and the author says he is indeed as the words of this wanted poster from the Christian underground newspaper demonstrate Jesus is alive and well and living in the radical spiritual spiritual fervor.
of a growing number of young Americans who have proclaimed an extraordinary religious revolution in his name. Their message is, the Bible is true, miracles happen, God really did love the world, so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. In 1966, Beatle John Lennon casually remarked, the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ.
Now, the beat, now the Beatles are shattered. Now, think about, this is written in 71, so it’s after they disbanded. The Beatles are shattered, George Harrison is singing, My Sweet Lord. The new young followers of Jesus listen to Harrison, but they turn on only to the words of their master. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
And so he goes on and just remarks about what the movement started. And he has a couple of paragraphs about how. A part of the movement was the upstart of highly organized interdenominational youth teachers and youth movements that would spring up out of this in how they really affected culture. And there’s also young life and youth for Christ are both large offshoots.
This was after the decision back in the sixties to remove prayer from school. But I did appreciate the fact that. Uh, with all the things he said about the movement, he closed up by saying, you know, there are concerns about it and things that can be worked on, but it is a really world changing, uh, thing that happened.
[01:08:32] Rebekah: Well, the last thing I wanted to just very, very quickly mention that I’d come across was that, uh, Kelsey Grammer, who played Chuck Smith. Uh, has been a Christian. He said he originally met Christ during the same period, um, during the Jesus revolution or the Jesus movement. Uh, he did stray quite a bit. He recollects being arrested for cocaine use in 1988, uh, and some different things that he got into.
However, when discussing this more recently, he talks about the fact that he feels that doing Frasier was a ministry of sorts for him. Uh, he also recounts that playing Smith kind of motivated him to come back even more strongly to his faith. Um, there were some reports that he’d had a radical conversion and all of these things, and it, as it turns out, he’d been a before that as well.
Uh, he Kind of says that this was one of his favorite roles, and his wife, Katie, said that Jesus Revolution, after seeing the film, was, quote, the best thing you’ve ever done. And so she just was over the moon about it, which I thought was wonderful. As we move into final verdicts, I would love to give mine first, if you don’t mind.
Um, If you have listened to this podcast at all and got to listen to Oppenheimer. Yeah. Uh, I typically am not a big fan of biography formats. I don’t like nonfiction. Um, I just, it doesn’t interest me as much as reading something that’s designed as a narrative. However, uh, I think my verdict might be slightly surprising.
I was thinking about a lot this morning. So when I started reading slash listening to Jesus Revolution, I. It took me, like I said, about a third of the book in until I actually wanted to keep listening. And that’s partly just because of the setup that they did. I know biography wise, you kind of have to explain where you’re at in the course of history and yada, yada, yada.
Uh, I didn’t mind so much listening to the portrayals of like, what happened and the things that were shown in the film as well. And I thought it was interesting. Uh, the part that got me was honestly everything that happened afterwards and the difficulties that a lot of these people faced that required them to take a step back and decide, like, am I still going to follow Jesus?
No turning back despite Um, you know, Laurie losing his son and Chuck going through a very difficult illness near the end of his life and, uh, all of Lonnie Frisbee struggles and so on and so on. And so I was thinking about how to answer, like, do I think the book was better or was the movie better? I think the movie made me sob like a baby the first time I saw it.
inspired me to, to be like, God, I want to be doing more active ministry in my day to day life, regardless of, you know, whatever else it may look like. And it was inspiring. I mean, Josh and I just cried so much the first time and watching it again last night. It was a great experience and just kind of reminded me of all of the things that I’d felt when I first watched it.
I will watch the movie again. Like, it’ll probably be something I can put on when I’m just wanting to be close to Jesus. And I love that that was my takeaway. However, I think reading the book changed me more. Um, as much as I don’t love the format, reading the things that they went through and the challenges they faced in the, the difficulty of having to stay, say like, you know, the Lord gives and takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.
That changed me. changed me more. I, I felt a little more transformed at the end of reading the book. And, um, Oh, dad, don’t cry. You’re going to make me cry. Um, and I think that as much as the movie was inspiring and it was such a good story, I think that I was really more changed by the less pretty parts, um, that we got to read about.
Um, there’s a, YouTube channel recently that had to drop one of its four members, uh, after learning that a cast, and this is not a Christian YouTube channel, um, after learning that a cast member had an affair, uh, he was married, his what, his, uh, the girl he had an affair with was also married and she was on staff for their channel.
And I read this story recently about how they found out about it and completely cut ties. They literally, they literally, edited him out of videos that he’d already been in and, like, have said, like, he’s no longer our friend. And it was such a stark contrast reading this book, um, and realizing that, like, despite the fact that Lonnie Frisbee and other people did things that in even non Christian circles, like, sometimes would get you barred from being a friend anymore or cut out of our lives, like, Jesus has a more excellent way.
Um, it really got to me that, like, the world says, like, we cancel people when they do things we don’t agree with. And it was such a poignant comparison for me, reading that story and finishing the Jesus Revolution book very close to one another, to realize that despite The many failings that we all walk through and the imperfections that define us in some ways, like when we walk with Jesus, not only do we have the opportunity to live differently and to trust, despite hardship and conflict, but we also have the opportunity to be different when it comes to the people in our lives.
And we don’t have to cancel or reject people based on what they do it. you know, whether sin or not, like we have a chance to be different. And I just, yeah, I think the book was better. I think the book changed me more despite, you know, the entertainment value. The movie was more entertaining. The movie was easier and more palatable, but I liked the book because it wasn’t.
[01:14:26] Josiah: Well, I don’t know how anyone will follow that up, but I’ll, I’ll, uh, I’ll just give my simple. Yeah, the, the movie was more entertaining. I think, um, the book for me, you know, starts off rough for me. I don’t, I don’t want to disparage if, if mom and dad liked it or anything. I, I did get the impression it was a lot of, Baby Boomer nostalgia bait of, ah, just remember, remember what it was like when we were kids.
Remember how innocent it was? And then when we became adults, everything was awful. Remember all that? Ah, the good old days. I always, uh, advocate for watching the movie first, because then you can probably enjoy both of them instead. Yeah, I did that this time. I know. And I think that the movie had some very powerful scenes like the baptism scene.
One of the persons that I went to see the movie with, one of the people that I went to see the movie with, although they weren’t the biggest fan of the movie, they thought that it was the best depiction of a baptism spiritual experience. The euphoria Yes, going all in for God, she thought that that was one of the best depictions of that set to screen.
And I would have to agree with her that there is something supernatural and spiritual that I get from the movie that I didn’t necessarily get from the book so much. The book was very interesting to me. and filled in a lot of gaps. Um, the movie, the movie probably had a bigger effect on me in a few different ways.
And so I’m going to say that the movie was better, especially in my personal experience. And you know, I won’t try and one up you with, Oh, I was transformed in this way. So I’ll just, I’ll leave it at that and get off the stage. Like good old Everett.
[01:16:16] Donna: I’m with Rebecca on The start of the book, I didn’t know what to expect, but I got into it and within just a few chapters.
I said to Tim, oh, Rebecca is not going to be excited when she gets started, but we didn’t want to discourage her from it. Um, and I did get a lot of reminding, not so much how things were, oh, they were so good at this time and then they were bad at that time, but I did get a lot of reminders of, of historical events.
that I just didn’t remember in a timeline. I’m, I’m not really adept at historical, at recalling things historically over a timeline. My thoughts were right on point with you, but just about something different. When it got to the end, when they got to this part about his oldest son, Christopher. I knew when they were coming up to it, I could feel it coming, that this boy must have died suddenly.
And they got to it, and he did it, it happened, and they go on describing how they survived the aftermath. And, as a parent, the concept that your child would leave you before you, before you leave this earth. It’s, there’s no emotion that beats it, except your spouse going before you go, okay, and I’m not going to go on all teary eyed here, but I was so inspired and uplifted by Greg Saying I could have just said why I could have and I did I did ask the question I could have gone on with that and doubted God and cursed God and and all these things but what I realized was after all that God had shown me about who he was and who he is and who he’ll always be I Knew that life had to go on and it would not be the same life.
It would be altered You But I could go on living, I could survive, I could go on and even find joy in life, and God God would honor. He would, he would never leave me. He would grieve with me, and he did grieve with him. And so I got kind of that same experience just from a different, just from a different aspect, and it, uh, it would definitely, it definitely caused me to give the same verdict as you.
Living this life is messy, regardless of the path you choose to take. If you choose to accept Christ as Savior, and accept that life and walk that path, you’re, there’s no promise, nor would it be, uh, realistic for there to be a promise that the rest of your life is perfect and it all plays out beautifully.
And anyone who tries to share that with you or tell you that is lying to you. Um, but I, I, we still live in a messy world. Um, and, and so for that, for those reasons and the things like you said, that you had stated. to I would definitely say the book is better in this case.
[01:19:28] Tim: I’ll conclude this part. Um, I was born in 1961.
Uh, when I was two years old, the president of the United States, uh, was assassinated. That had not happened in my, my parents lifetime, nor my grandparents lifetime. By the time Greg Laurie had started his church, uh, the president, the next president of the United States had resigned from office under a huge scandal called Watergate.
[01:19:56] Josiah: Mm hmm.
[01:19:56] Tim: Uh, so big as a matter of fact Never happened before. Yeah. Yeah. So big as a matter of fact that any time we talk about some big scandal, we put gate on the end of it, um, you know? Mm hmm. It’s trash bag gate or whatever, you know, referring to whatever. Mm hmm. Um, so I appreciated all of the extra stuff in the book that painted a picture of the reality, uh, for the time of this movement.
Um, things were not great and there were a lot of things that were rough and I didn’t look at it as, oh, you know, times were beautiful and then I got to be an adult and it was horrible. I remember sitting in front of the television, uh, watching the Vietnam War come into our home every night. Um, you know, in the previous wars, these were newsreels that had been edited and they were played, uh, in the theater.
You had to want to see them and they were sanitized. Uh, what we saw was the raw footage of what the people had gotten today and gotten it out. So, I remember those times, and I’m very appreciative of how God continues to move. No matter what time in which we live, God continues to move. Problems don’t surprise Him.
They don’t overwhelm Him, though they may overwhelm us. But this was a story of God moving in regular people with faults and problems and warts and all. Um, and I liked the book for that. Um, I enjoyed the movie. It was, it was an enjoyable watch. I liked it. It was a feel good movie in, in some respects. I mean, you know, the good guys win in the end.
They all. They all work together and those kinds of things, but I appreciated the book because of the reality, the reality of the beginning and the reality in, you know, in the middle and toward the end as they were talking about the fact that all of these people involved didn’t make all the right choices and just skipping down the highway.
They had troubles and difficulties and had real issues and real things to deal with, and I appreciated that. So I think in this case, I would say the book was better. But the movie was wonderful, uh, and I appreciated that.
[01:22:18] Rebekah: Well, that is all for us today. This has been a really exciting and, uh, impactful one, I think, for us to experience and record together.
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star rating or review. Reviews helps us a ton to get in front of new people. If you didn’t love this Please send us an email. You can send any feedback you have, questions, ideas for future episodes, to bookisbetterpod at gmail. com. You can also find us online, most places, at bookisbetterpod.
And I am super excited for our upcoming schedule this year. We just worked on it and I’m on board! Uh, next week we actually are going to release an episode we recorded as a bonus for you on our review of the Dungeons and Dragons movie. It’s a little bit different than our traditional episode since it’s not based on a single book, but would love to have you listen to that.
And two weeks from today, we are going to start reviewing the Dune movies, which again, is really exciting. Exciting. Uh, our first episode on Dune will be reviewing the original Dune one and the newer first Dune movie, uh, and its book counterpart. And then we will review the brand new Dune 2 movie coming out.
So definitely stick around for those and until next time, God loves you.