Jonathan Roumie 'No Coincidence'; Jonathan Roumie said revival could signal a Cultural Embrace of God

Known for his role of Jesus on the hit series "The Chosen,"

Jonathan Roumie is changing his first century tunic for his hippie style flower patterns in the new hit movie, "Jesus Revolution,"

The movie, showing the Jesus Movement that quickly moved through Southern California in the early 1970s, is now debuting in many theatres across Canada and the world. In this movie, Jonathan Roumie plays hippie evangelist Lonnie Frisbee, whose radical relationship with the Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith sparked a enormous revival.

Jonathan said, "There's so much packed into one film. It's pretty extraordinary that they were able to condense it and tell it in such a way that I think it's gonna be a really powerful film."

Lonnie Frisbee's story, one of childhood abuse, drug use, and his struggle with sexual immorality, imitates the experiences of so many people in today's society. The hippie evangelist, spiritual experience that came to him on an LSD trip in the California desert, where the hippie phenomenal thing and God equipped him with some phenomenally powerful and intense gifts of the Holy Spirit." who died of AIDS on March 12, 1993, turned to many different things to deaden the deep pain within himself that he was feeling, even after coming to Jesus.

Even with all that going on in Lonnie's life, it didn't stop Jesus from using him to leave an enduring mark on innumerable people's lives.

During his research of the movie, Jonathan, who is a Catholic, learned about Lonnie Frisbee's unconventional salvation story: A evangelist saw a vision of himself spreading the Gospel with thousands of people from his own hippie generation.

Jonathan said, "He came out of this vision pretty sobered and started immediately just preaching the Gospel. He had always had a connection to his faith from the time he was a kid, I think from some of his maternal authority figures in his life. But when he had this vision, he kind of got the call, got the commission from God to go do this

The story of Greg Laurie, the founding pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, is central to "Jesus Revolution." It was Lonnie Frisbee who played a vital role early in Laurie's faith journey; he even baptized the well-known evangelist in Pirate's Cove fifty years ago.

Greg Laurie wrote in a blog about the movie saying, "Lonnie led a multitude to Christ and was one of those characters whose whole was more than the sum of his parts. From a distance, he seemed unimpressive. But up close, he had a powerful charisma that was larger than life."

But unfortunately, past traumas had led Lonnie Frisbee down a path that often led him from the conviction and calling the Lord had placed on his life. Some of the distractions often came about by sexual promiscuity, recurring drug habits and theatrics rather than authentic discipleship, and it caused Chuck Smith to distance himself from Lonnie Frisbee. It was a split that Greg Laurie said was unfortunate, but necessary. Greg Laurie said, "Chuck stayed put and nurtured his flock while Lonnie went to a fellowship in Florida. It was unfortunate because, as long as Lonnie was around Chuck Smith and his systematic teaching of Scripture, he seemed to thrive. But without Chuck's influence, Lonnie was drawn in by people with skewed theology."