THE BELOW EXCERPTS ARE FROM DIFFERENT REVIVALISTS / AUTHORS / SCHOLARS

Lloyd-Jones, D. M.

There is nothing, I am convinced, that so ‘quenches’ the Spirit as the teaching which identifies the baptism of the Holy Ghost with regeneration. But it is a very commonly held teaching today, indeed it has been the popular view for many years. It is said that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is ‘nonexperimental’, that it happens to every one at regeneration. So we say, ‘Ah well, I am already baptized with the Spirit; it happened when I was born again, at my conversion; there is nothing for me to seek, I have got it all’. Got it all? Well, if you have ‘got it all’, I simply ask in the Name of God, why are you as you are? If you have ‘got it all’, why are you so unlike the Apostles, why are you so unlike the New Testament Christians?

The teaching that I have just mentioned is false. The apostles were regenerate before the day of Pentecost. The baptism of the Holy Ghost is not identical with regeneration; it is something separate. It matters not how long the interval between the two may be, there is a difference; there is an interval, they are not identical. But if you say that they are identical, you do not expect anything further. And if you do not believe that it is possible for you to experience the Spirit of God bearing direct witness with your own spirit that you are a child of God, obviously you are quenching the Spirit. That is why so many Christian people are miserable and unhappy; they do not know anything about crying out, ‘Abba, Father’; or about ‘the Spirit of adoption’. God is a Being away in the far distance; they do not know Him as a loving Father; they do not know that they are His children. They may believe it intellectually, theoretically; but Paul says, ‘You have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear’. We are not to go about groaning and wondering whether we are Christians or not. We were in that state under the law; then we were wretched and we cried out, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?’ But no longer! ‘We have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry’—and it is an elemental cry that comes from the depth of the personality—‘Abba, Father’.”

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Warfare: An Exposition of Ephesians 6:10-13, 280 (Edinburgh; Carlisle, PA, Banner of Truth Trust, 1976).

Scholar N.T. Wright   When the New Testament speaks of God’s kingdom it never, ever, refers to heaven pure and simple. It always refers to God’s kingdom coming on earth as in heaven, as Jesus himself taught us to pray. We have slipped into the easygoing language of ‘the kingdom of heaven’ in the sense of God’s kingdom being ‘heaven’, but the early church never spoke like that. 

 In the Acts of the Apostles, the point of the coming of the Spirit, which we shall celebrate next week, isn’t that the Spirit will comfort us in our loss of Jesus and take us to be with him. The point is that the Spirit is given so that through the work of the church the kingdom may indeed come on earth as in heaven. 

The kingdom will come as the church, energized by the Spirit, goes out into the world vulnerable, suffering, praising, praying, misunderstood, misjudged, vindicated, celebrating: always – as Paul puts it in one of his letters – bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest.

REVIVAL BRINGS PERSECUTION...

George Whitefield... "I was honored with having a few stones, dirt, rotten eggs and pieces of dead cats thrown at me."  At one meeting a man tried to stab him to death.  At another, opponents hired a drummer to drown him out.  He was beaten, his pulpits were smashed, and on several occasions cattle were driven through his audiences.  He even preached one sermon while a man tried to urinate on him.

Mansfield, Stephen. (2010).  (Healing Your Church Hurt) (pp. 24). BarnaBooks.

Now Jonathan Edwards was probably one of the greatest minds—I say it advisedly—that the world has ever known. He is certainly the greatest brain America has ever produced, a brilliant, outstanding philosopher, the last man in the world to be carried away by false emotionalism. Indeed, he wrote a great treatise on the subject, called The Religious Affections, to teach people how to differentiate between the work of the Spirit and the carnality that often simulates the work of the Spirit. So Jonathan Edwards was the last man who was likely to go astray at this point. This is what he says:

As I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that was for me extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God as mediator between God and man and His wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. The grace that appeared so calm and sweet appeared also great above the heavens, the person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent and an excellency great enough to swallow up all thoughts and conceptions, which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour, which kept me a greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust and be to be full of Christ alone, to love Him with a holy and a pure love, to trust in Him, to live upon Him, to serve Him, and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity.

That is Jonathan Edwards.

Then, from Jonathan Edwards we come to a very different man—D. L. Moody, who was not a great brain, not a great philosopher, not a genius in any sense of the term. He always described himself as a very ordinary man, and he was right. But he experienced exactly the same thing. He said:

I can myself go back almost twelve years and remember two holy women who used to come to my meetings. It was delightful to see them there, for when I began to preach, I could tell from the expression on their faces that they were praying for me. At the close of the Sabbath service they would say to me, ‘We have been praying for you.’ I said, ‘Why do you not pray for the people?’ They answered, ‘You need power.’ ‘I need power?’ I said to myself, ‘I thought I had power.’

I had a large Sabbath school and a large congregation in Chicago. There were some conversions at the time and I was, in a sense, satisfied. But right along the two godly women kept praying for me and their earnest talk about the anointing for special service set me thinking. I asked them to come and talk to me and we got down on our knees. They poured out their hearts that I might receive the anointing of the Holy Ghost and there came a great hunger into my soul, I knew not what it was. I began to cry as never before, the hunger increased. I really felt that I did not want to live any longer if I could not have this power for service. I kept on crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York, oh what a day, I cannot describe it, I seldom refer to it. It is almost too sacred an experience to name. Paul had an experience of which he never spoke to fourteen years. I can only say, God revealed Himself to me and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. I went out preaching again, the sermons were no different and I did not present any new truths and yet hundreds were converted. I would not be placed back where I was before that blessed experience.

A similar thing happened to the great Baptist preacher, Christmas Evans; it happened to Wesley; it happened to Whitefield.

 Lloyd-Jones, D. M. (1997). God the Holy Spirit (pp. 249–250). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

If you are under the power of evil, and you want to get under the power of God, cry to Him to bring you over to His service; cry to Him to take you into His army. He will hear you; He will come to you, and, if need be, He will send a legion of angels to help you to fight your way up to heaven. God will take you by the right hand and lead you through this wilderness, over death, and take you right into His kingdom. That’s what the Son of Man came to do. He has never deceived us; just say here: “Christ is my deliverer.”

 Moody, D. L. (1878). Anecdotes and Illustrations of D. L. Moody Related by Him in His Revival Work. (J. B. McClure, Ed.) (p. 104). Chicago: Rhodes & McClure.

What makes the Dead Sea dead? Because it is all the time receiving, never giving out anything. Why is it that many Christians are cold? Because they are all the time receiving, never giving out anything.

 Moody, D. L. (1878). Anecdotes and Illustrations of D. L. Moody Related by Him in His Revival Work. (J. B. McClure, Ed.) (p. 79). Chicago: Rhodes & McClure.

I remember when I was in Chicago before the fire, I was on some ten or twelve committees. My hands were full. If a man came to me to talk about his soul I would say I haven’t time; got a committee to attend to. But now I have turned my back on everything—turned my attention to saving souls, and God has blessed me and made me an instrument to save more souls during the last four or five years than during all my previous life. And so if a minister will devote himself to this undivided work, God will bless him.

 Moody, D. L. (1878). Anecdotes and Illustrations of D. L. Moody Related by Him in His Revival Work. (J. B. McClure, Ed.) (p. 84). Chicago: Rhodes & McClure.

Whit... I found this portion of a statement by John Piper and loved it... He may not be seen as a Revivalist but this word is STRONG... Read on below...

Brothers, we are not professionals! We are outcasts. We are aliens and exiles in the world (1 Pet. 2:11). Our citizenship is in heaven, and we wait with eager expectation for the Lord (Phil. 3:20). You cannot professionalize the love for His appearing without killing it. And it is being killed.  The aims of our ministry are eternal and spiritual. They are not shared by any of the professions. It is precisely by the failure to see this that we are dying.  The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God’s Spirit the flesh and the world have been crucified and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river.

 Piper, J. (2002). Brothers, we are not professionals: a plea to pastors for radical ministry (pp. 2–3). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

The Return of the Spirit: The Second Great Awakening

Awakening in the West

[Christian History originally published this article in Christian History Issue 23 in 1989 ]

In the West

BY THE YEAR 1800, nearly a million people had made their way west. They settled in the area west of the Blue Ridge in Virginia, in Kentucky, Tennessee, the Northwest, and in the Indian Territory. In 1803, the crowning achievement of Jefferson’s first administration came: the Louisiana Purchase. This doubled the area of the United States and gave an enormous new impulse to western migration.

What appeared to be an opportunity for national expansion, however, seemed dark for the future of the Christian faith. How, believers wondered, could the Church possibly keep ahead of the vast movement to the new areas? An Episcopal preacher described the Carolinas:

How many thousands . . . never saw, much less read, or ever heard a Chapter of the Bible! How many Ten thousands who never were baptized or heard a Sermon! And thrice Ten thousand, who never heard of the Name of Christ, save in Curses . . . ! Lamentable! Lamentable is the situation of these people.

With the later arrival of great numbers, the situation did not improve. In every southern state, religious leaders voiced their fears and distress. A French nobleman who made a tour of the states wrote that “religion is one of the subjects which occupies the least of the attention of the American people....”

Outpourings of the Spirit

Then suddenly, about the year 1799, the atmosphere changed dramatically. In that year a Presbyterian pastoral letter stated that although there was still much immorality and vice,

We have heard from different parts the glad tidings of the outpourings of the Spirit, and of times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord. . . . From the east, from the west, and from the south, have these joyful tidings reached our ears.

They expressed still greater joy in 1801:

Revivals, of a more or less general nature, have taken place in many parts, and multitudes have been added to the church. . . . From the west, the Assembly have received intelligence of the most interesting nature. On the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee, the influences of the Spirit of God seem to have been manifested in a very extraordinary manner.

These were the beginnings of the Second Great Awakening. God had not abandoned his people. The heritage of awakening, last seen in the Great Awakening of the 1740s, was surfacing again. However, this awakening would be much longer in duration than the first, lasting from approximately 1795 through 1835. It would come in two phases, and its effect on the nation would be titanic.

The Great Camp Meetings

In the West, the Second Great Awakening began with James McGready (1762?–1817). McGready was a stirring preacher and under his ministry an extensive awakening spread over north—central North Carolina after 1791. Perhaps equally important was his influence upon young men such as Barton W. Stone and William McGee.

In 1796 McGready became pastor of three small churches at Muddy River, Red River, and Gasper River in Logan County, Kentucky. This was in the southwestern part of the state, and, as the Methodist preacher Peter Cartwright described, it was called Rogues’ Harbor. Here many refugees from almost all parts of the Union fled to escape justice or punishment. . . . It was a desperate state of society. Murderers, horse—thieves, highway robbers, and counterfeiters fled there, until they combined and actually formed a majority.

The area was primitive in the extreme, and the pioneers lived hard lives, full of danger, loneliness, and privation. But McGready was a fearless preacher, and he informed his hearers that they had not left the eternal God behind them; He was as much there on the frontier as he was anywhere. McGready spoke magnificently of heaven and its glories, thundered about hell and its torments, and questioned his hearers about their salvation. His message was so powerful that by 1798 many were “struck with an awful sense of their lost estate.”

The first real manifestations of God’s power came, however, in June 1800. Four to five—hundred members of McGready’s three congregations, plus five ministers, had gathered at Red River for a “camp meeting” lasting several days. On the final day “a mighty effusion of [God’s] Spirit” came upon the people, “and the floor was soon covered with the slain; their screams for mercy pierced the heavens.”

Convinced that God was moving, McGready and his colleagues planned another camp meeting to be held in late July 1800 at Gasper River. They had not anticipated what occurred. An enormous crowd—as many as 8,000—began arriving at the appointed date, many from distances as great as 100 miles. Tents were set up everywhere, wagons with provisions brought in, trees felled and their logs cut to be used as seats. Although the term camp meeting was not used until 1802, this was the first true camp meeting where a continuous outdoor service was combined with camping out.

After three tense days, the emotions of these backwoods people used to loneliness were at the boiling point. At a huge evening meeting lighted by flaming torches, a Presbyterian pastor named William McGee gave a throbbing message on a doubting Peter sinking beneath the waves. McGready recalled:

The power of God seemed to shake the whole assembly. Towards the close of the sermon, the cries of the distressed arose almost as loud as his voice. After the congregation was dismissed the solemnity increased, till the greater part of the multitude seemed engaged in the most solemn manner. No person seemed to wish to go home—hunger and sleep seemed to affect nobody—eternal things were the vast concern. Here awakening and converting work was to be found in every part of the multitude; and even some things strangely and wonderfully new to me.

The Gasper River camp meeting was the turning point of the Awakening in the West. Interest in spiritual things now became commonplace; concern for one’s salvation was uppermost in that region where recently lawlessness had ruled. Other huge camp meetings were held in later months, and the area of revival soon spread into Tennessee.

Cane Ridge

Yet the full force of the movement was yet to be experienced, and it came about through the activity of Barton W. Stone (1772–1844), Presbyterian pastor of the Cane Ridge and Concord churches, northeast of Lexington, Kentucky. Stone traveled to Logan County to observe McGready’s work, and returned home to plan a similar meeting for August 1801 at Cane Ridge.

Being better publicized than the meetings in Logan County, Cane Ridge attracted an amazing multitude. The numbers arriving, coming from as far as Ohio and Tennessee, were estimated between 10,000 and 25,000. (Lexington, then the largest town in Kentucky, had fewer than 1,800 citizens!) Stone looked on as “the roads were crowded with wagons, carriages, horses, and footmen moving to the solemn camp.”

While Stone and his colleagues had not expected these numbers, preparations had been made so that the crowds could be divided into separate congregations. Invitations had been sent by the Presbyterians to Methodist and Baptist preachers from far and near, and Stone was delighted that “all appeared cordially united in it. They were of one mind and soul: the salvation of sinners was the one object. We all engaged in singing the same songs, all united in prayer, all preached the same things.”

The Rev. Moses Hoge described the Cane Ridge camp meeting, in an account that could stand for similar meetings of that period:

The careless fall down, cry out, tremble, and not infrequently are affected with convulsive twitchings. . . .

Nothing that imagination can paint, can make a stronger impression upon the mind, than one of those scenes. Sinners dropping down on every hand, shrieking, groaning, crying for mercy, convulsed; professors praying, agonizing, fainting, falling down in distress, for sinners or in raptures of joy!. . . .

As to the work in general there can be no question but it is of God. The sub jects of it, for the most part are deeply wounded for their sins, and can give a clear and rational account of their conversion. . . .

Emotional Awakenings

Cane Ridge became famous not only for its numbers, but also for its excesses of enthusiasm. Hysterical laughter, trances, and more bizarre forms of behavior were seen occasionally. This wildness was of course grossly exaggerated and often used to discredit the camp meetings by their enemies. Nonetheless, it could not be denied that audiences at frontier awakenings often became highly emotional.

Most clergymen opposed this, but often it was beyond their power to control, and in some ways it was inevitable. The roughness of frontier life, its absence of social controls, and the scarcity of social contacts for those living in isolated cabins, made such people very susceptible to uncontrolled displays when they found themselves in the company of large numbers. And under the intensity of much powerful preaching within just a few days, emotions boiled over.

However, though camp meetings were sometimes the scenes of excesses, they were much more the scenes of great spiritual awakening. The rough, violent, irreligious frontier, which many felt threatened to undo the morals of the new nation, was being tamed by the Lamb of God.

The Real Story of St. Patrick’s Day - ARTICLE BY VOICE OF THE MARTYR’S

March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day, a day Americans focus on good luck and all things Irish. But most of those celebrating don't know that the man for whom this day is named was a Christian who was persecuted because of his Christian actions.

The following comes from “A Note from the Author to Parents and Educators” that is included in Patrick: God’s Courageous Captive, a book for children published by VOM that tells the true story of St. Patrick’s Day.

Many celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on March 17 and hang pictures of shamrocks and mythical creatures called leprechauns. But who was St. Patrick, and why do we celebrate his life on this day?

Patrick lived a full life, but not without his share of suffering and adventure. He was born in Britain, in the fourth century A.D., during a time of great uncertainty for the Roman Empire. The Roman legions that once protected civilized Britain from barbaric invaders were called away to defend themselves in other regions of the Roman Empire. Therefore, Britain was left vulnerable to attacks.

Just before Patrick turned 16 years old, he and his family spent time at their holiday villa by the sea, located outside the town of Bannaventa Berniae, when Irish pirates attacked it just before dawn. Some say the villa was attacked during the day while Patrick played on the beach. Although Patrick’s family escaped, Patrick and many of the family's workers did not; and soon they were en route to Ireland, where Patrick was sold as a slave to Miliuc of Slemich, a Druid tribal chieftain.

Patrick was given the task of a herdsman. Though raised in a Christian home (his father, Calpornius, was a civil magistrate and tax collector, as well as a church deacon), Patrick never made a decision to follow Christ until he was kidnapped and made a slave. In his autobiography, Confessions, Patrick wrote, “…‘the Lord opened my senses to my unbelief,’ so that, though late in the day, I might remember my many sins; and accordingly ‘I might turn to the Lord my God with all my heart.’” He also wrote about how his faith in God grew as he prayed to Him while he shepherded the flocks: “But after l had come to Ireland, it was then that I was made to shepherd the flocks day after day, and, as l did so, I would pray all the time, right through the day. More and more the love of God and fear of Him grew strong within me, and as my faith grew, so the Spirit became more and more active … In snow, in frost, in rain, I would hardly notice any discomfort, and I was never slack but always full of energy. It is clear to me now, that this was due to … the Spirit within me.”

But Patrick’s devotion to God did not go unnoticed. He soon earned the nickname “Holy Boy” among his fellow slaves.

One night Patrick had a dream. In it he heard a voice telling him, “Soon you will be returning to your own country.” In another dream he received a response to the first dream, being told, “Come and see where your ship is waiting for you.” At the age of 22, Patrick escaped and traveled 200 miles to the coast of Ireland. Of his long journey across Ireland, he wrote: “I turned on my heel and ran away, leaving behind the man to whom I had been bound for six years. Yet I came away from him in the power of God, for it was He who was guiding my every step for the best. And so I felt not the least anxiety until I reached the ship.”

Patrick approached one of the men on the ship that rested on the coast. When he asked to board, the seaman scowled at him. Patrick started to leave when the man called back to him, saying the other passengers wanted him on board. Patrick wrote, “In spite of this, I still hoped that they might come to have faith in Jesus Christ.”

The journey by boat was long, including a stop where they journeyed on land for 28 days. After having run out of food, the captain turned to Patrick and challenged him to ask his God for more. Glad to oblige, Patrick responded, “Turn trustingly to the Lord who is my God and put your faith in Him with all your heart, because nothing is impossible to Him. On this day, He will send us food sufficient for our journey, because for Him there is abundance everywhere.” According to Patrick’s autobiography, when the men turned around, a herd of pigs was standing before them. They feasted for days and gave thanks to God.

Two years later Patrick finally made it to his beloved Britain and into the arms of his mother and father who pleaded with him never to leave them again. Patrick began to settle back into his life in Britain and studied to become a priest and a bishop. But one night Patrick had a dream of a man who seemed to come from Ireland and was carrying a letter with the words “The Voice of the Irish.” As Patrick began to read the words, he seemed to hear the voice of the same men he worked with as if they were shouting, “Holy broth of a boy, we beg you, come back and walk once more among us.”

But church leaders and Patrick’s parents fiercely opposed his plans to return to Ireland. They did not think the Druids were worth saving. His family shuddered at the thought of him returning to barbaric Ireland with the gospel, as the Druids were known to weave criminals and runaway slaves into giant wicker baskets and suspend them over a fire. Of this opposition Patrick later wrote, “So at last I came here to the Irish gentiles to preach the gospel. And now I had to endure insults from unbelievers, to ‘hear criticism of my journeys’ and suffer many persecutions ‘even to the point of chains.’… And should I prove worthy, I am ready and willing to give up my own life, without hesitation, for His name … There was always someone talking behind my back and whispering, ‘Why does he want to put himself in such danger among his enemies who do not know God?’” Patrick had to sell his title of nobility to become the “slave of Christ serving the barbaric nation.”

While in Ireland, Patrick shared the gospel with his former slave owner, Miliuc the Druid. But instead of turning his back on his pagan gods, Miliuc locked himself in his house and set it on fire while Patrick stood outside and pleaded with him to turn to Christ. It is said that Miliuc drowned out Patrick’s pleas by crying out to his false gods.

Miliuc's refusal to hear the gospel was just the beginning of Patrick’s challenges with the Druids as he spread the Good News across Ireland and taught its people how to read and write. One story that some believe is legend mentions Patrick challenging the Druid wizards in 433 A.D., on the vernal equinox, which occurred on Easter Sunday that year. Patrick challenged the wizards' power of control by starting a bonfire, which was central to the Druids’ ritual, on a hillside opposite of the barbaric idol-worshippers. Patrick was dragged before the Druid council where he had the opportunity to share about Jesus, the light of the world. While some Druids believed, others tried to kill him.

Patrick continued his journey across Ireland. He preached at racetracks and other places of worldly indulgences, seeing many come to Christ. However, this was not without opposition. The Druids often tried to poison him. One time a barbarian warrior speared Patrick’s chariot driver to death in an attempt to kill Patrick. He was often ambushed at his evangelistic events and was enslaved again for a short time. He had to purchase safe passage through a hostile warlord's land to continue on his journey. Another time Patrick and his companions were taken as prisoners and were going to be killed, but they were later released. In Confessions, Patrick wrote, “As every day arrives, I expect either sudden death or deception, or being taken back as a slave or some such other misfortune. But I fear none of these, since I look to the promise of heaven and have flung myself into the hands of the all-powerful God, who rules as Lord everywhere.” 

Patrick journeyed throughout Ireland, sharing Christ until his death on March 17, around the year 461 A.D. Later Irish mythological creatures known as leprechauns would creep into the holiday celebrations, as well as the symbol of the shamrock, believed to have been used by Patrick to illustrate the Trinity as he preached and taught. Some legends have circulated stating Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. Since there are no snakes in Ireland and snakes often symbolize the devil and evil, many believe the “snakes” were a metaphor representing his work of driving the idol-worshipping Druid cult out of the country.

Enslavement, torture, imprisonment and death for one's faith in Christ were not confined to Patrick’s lifetime. Today Christians in communist nations like China, Vietnam and Cuba are imprisoned if caught sharing the gospel with fellow countrymen. In Sudan, a Christian boy named Demare was kidnapped by militant Muslims and sold as a slave. And in Vietnam, when members of some tribal groups have come to Christ, they destroy the altars used to pray to their dead ancestors. When fellow villagers and even members of the government hear about this, these new believers in Christ are harassed. Some are even imprisoned for turning away from their empty religions of idol and ancestor worship.

We may never be enslaved, imprisoned or beaten because of our faith in Christ, but many may make fun of us for believing in Jesus’ promise of heaven and placing our faith in a God they do not see with their eyes and cannot touch with their hands.

We pray this version of Patrick’s courageous life will inspire you to stand firm in Christ and stand strong for Him as you tell others about the greatest gift we can ever be given – salvation through Jesus!